The popular Dune series made an appearance at Gamescom 2022. Unlike past games under the series’ umbrella, this new title, Dune Awakening, is taking a step away from the real-time strategy genre and presenting fans with a new open-world survival, massively multiplayer online experience by Funcom.
Not much is known yet about this new Dune title besides the genre and that it’s set on Arrakis. As with titles in the series’ past, it can be assumed that spice trading will be an integral part of the game’s monetary system.
Dune Awakening is the latest in what feels like a recent revival that the entire Dune franchise has been going through since the release of the 2021 Dune reboot film.
The most recent Dune title to be released was Dune: Spice Wars, a real-time strategy game that we at Digital Trends called a strategy game more for die-hard RTS fans than Dune series fans.
This has been the case with Dune RTS games for years, as the genre is steeped in a large barrier-to-entry for newcomers. With a new Dune film making the series larger than ever thanks to an all-star cast and larger budget than ever before, Dune Awakening could serve as a game that is actually open to more than just a specific audience.
Dune Awakening doesn’t yet have a set launch date or window yet, but it is set to launch on most current-gen consoles, including Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC. The game also has an upcoming beta.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.