Forestrike is a newly announced kung fu action game from popular indie publisher Devolver Digital and Olija developer Skeleton Crew.It stands out from its peers because it turns a roguelike beat ’em up into a puzzle game with its titular ability.
In Forestrike, players have to make it through a series of encounters with just three health points. Attack animations are slow, so enemies will likely hit the player first if they don’t know what to do. Players can use the titular Forestrike ability to enter a meditative state before every battle to see how enemies will behave and find out what the best strategies to defeat them are.
I went hands-on with a very early build of Forestrike ahead of its reveal, and it’s promising. I’m already digging how this system turns the game loop of a beat ’em up into that of a puzzle game. When elements like guarding, dodging, picking up weapons, and roguelike run-specific buffs get added to the mix, fights get even more complex and thrilling. It turns what’s typically one of the most frustrating and repetitive parts of a beat ’em up game into a core mechanic that gives players the space and time to discover the proper series of attacks required to come out on top in a fight.
The most courageous players don’t even have to use this ability but doing so will make Devolver and Skeleton Crew’s latest incredibly difficult. Think of Forestrike as a 2D Sifu that swaps out the aging system with a mechanic that lets players practice every fight before they get into it.
Forestrike will launch sometime in 2025.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.