Doom will have a reversible cover with an alternate box art image, developer Id Software announced Thursday, following complaints from fans and pundits that the game’s official box art was too generic.
Bethesda published the official box art, which is still what customers will see when they find the game box at retailer or see the cover online, during a media push last month. The cover features an armor-clad soldier carrying a shotgun, face covered by a visor, standing in front of yellow smoke. Pundits such as Polygon’s Ben Kuchera criticized the company for turning one of gaming’s legendary franchises into something that “perfectly content to blend into a wall of boring, mechanical protagonists.”
“The Doom cover looks like the front of a fake game someone mocked up for a television show to keep from paying to use any official art,” Kuchera said. “It looks like someone turned Bud Light into a video game.”
Developers, such as Bioshock Infinite creator Ken Levine, have said market research suggests putting a stoic man with a gun is the best way to shooters to people judging games by their covers, which explains why so many games rely on the trope.
The developer is currently holding a poll on Twitter to help decide between two potential designs that will serve as the alternate cover. One cover, a clear iteration on the original Doom box art, shows an armored soldier standing on a pile of skeletons, surrounded by demons.
The second is black, with a red-eyed skull with long horns on the front, and a vaguely satanic-looking red seal on the back.
You can vote for Doom‘s alternate box art on the game’s Twitter account. The poll will remain open until 11 a.m. EST on Sunday, March 6.
Doom will be available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC May 13.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.