Star Wars fever has reached the wasteland of Fallout 4. Canadian YouTuber Ops_Specialist showed off a giant settlement building in the shape of a giant AT-AT Sunday. In addition to looking cool on the outside, the residence at the Commonwealth AT-AT comes fully furnished with light, power, bedrooms, aesthetically pleasing common spaces, and even a bar. It may not walk or crush rebels, but as far as post-apocalyptic high rises go, you could do a lot worse.
With analysts predicting Star Wars: The Force Awakens will make $175-$220 million on opening weekend, everyone seems to looking to create, share and otherwise tie-in into the cultural force. ESPN, for example, will air a documentary special about the history of lightsaber duels Tuesday night.
Fallout 4‘s settlement building mechanics, the game’s most expansive new feature, has received mixed reviews from critics. In our Fallout 4 review, Will Fulton liked the crafting systems, but also appreciated that the game “doesn’t force these new systems on you, but leaves them available to reward the effort you put in.” Within certain circles, however, building and sharing large and intricate Fallout 4 settlements has become all the rage.
This is not Op_Specialist’s only impressive Fallout 4 settlement building: He’s also used the game’s building tools to create a giant version of Edward Munch’s Scream and a replica Eiffel Tower, among others. He’s also posted a variety of tips and how-to videos for exploration-minded wasteland wanderers.
If you want to see how the AT-AT settlement came to be (and perhaps replicate it for yourself), Ops_Specialist livestreamed the mutli-hour build and has posted an archived version of the broadcast as a series of videos on YouTube as well (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Hopefully they’ll help hold you over until Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in theaters Friday, December 18.
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.