Descenders, an indie sports game from RageSquid and No More Robots, is quietly one of the best games on Xbox Game Pass thanks to its engaging bike-riding gameplay and endlessly playable, procedurally generated levels. Now, it’s getting a sequel called Descenders Next that trades in biking for snowboarding and mountainboarding.
In Descenders Next, players can choose from a variety of handcrafted parks or procedurally generated level “nodes” across several different biomes. Players are then free to snowboard or mountainboard down the mountain, performing tricks and building up their reputation along the way.
Descenders Next fully embraces multiplayer too, so it’s possible to play every level with friends. With its only real competition being Steep, Descenders Next looks like it will fill a disappointing void that currently exists in the extreme sports genre.
The developers are planning to offer many more customization options for riders and their gear, and the game will feature gear from unspecified “real brands.” Other promised features include an in-game way to edit gameplay, a reputation system tied to game progression, and a soundtrack by Monstercat. On X (formerly Twitter), Mike Rose, No More Robots company director, teased that Descenders Next will “start life with boarding sports, before adding more and more extreme sports over time.”
Descenders Next will be released on PC via Steam and Xbox Series X/S sometime in 2025. It will be available as part of the Xbox Game Pass catalog from day one as well, building off the success its predecessor found on the subscription service.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.