Update by Adam Rosenberg: The plot thickens. Sony delivered a lot more detail on Far Cry 4 than Ubisoft’s look at the game intro did earlier today. The key takeaway: there’s co-op play in the game, and any friend that joins you won’t need to own the game to join in. The particulars of how this works aren’t clear, but it’s an exclusive feature on PlayStation 4.
We’ll have a deeper look at the gameplay this week, but the video also served up a look at the two-player action, with a fortress invasion that involved a mini helicopter, weaponized elephants, and many massive explosions.
ORIGINAL POST: Ubisoft set the tone for its E3 Media Briefing by opening up with the first five minutes of Far Cry 4, and the preview of the upcoming, highly anticipated game certainly didn’t pull any punches.
In the brutal cinematic sequence, the player-controlled protagonist finds himself riding in a bus through the Himalayas accompanied by an NPC character that offers to help him out with the soldiers who have stopped the bus and are now demanding to see passenger s’ passports. Things quickly take a turn for worse, though, and the player soon finds himself surrounded by armed men and the bullet-riddled bodies of his fellow passengers.
The situation escalates when the well-dressed man the soldiers are taking orders from (as seen in the promotional images for the game) arrives via helicopter and takes his frustration at the solders’ management of the situation out on one of the men — a violent encounter that leaves his face and hands covered in blood. After apologizing and taking a selfie with your character (yes, you read that correctly — the blonde-haired villain is clearly a little … off), the unnamed, psychotic villain hints at a connection with your character, saying he’d “recognize those eyes anywhere.” He then encourages you to join him for a party in your honor.
The cutscene ends with a few minutes of The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go.”
And that is just the first few minutes of the game.
Speaking to the premise of the game, Far Cry 4 creative director Dan Hay laughed, “We give you a fake passport, a little cash, and a gun. After that, you’re f***ed.”
Far Cry 4 is scheduled to hit shelves November 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.