A new trailer of Team Ninja’s new Final Fantasy spinoff, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, gives players a closer look at the combat of the game. As one would expect from a game from the development team behind Nioh and the 3D Ninja Gaiden games, Final Fantasy Origin offers players a wide variety of tools and unlockable fighting styles to keep combat fresh.
At a glance, FFO is a very “Dark Souls-like” title. However, Team Ninja added a few touches that keep the game feeling original and closer to the mainline Final Fantasy series.
The game features the return of a staple mechanic of the Final Fantasy series, Command Abilities. These spells/special moves likely have a variety of uses such as the announced move Lightbringer, which acts like a burst that blows enemies back.
These aren’t the only special moves players can make use of either. The trailer shows that players can use the Soul Shield to absorb and fire back enemy projectiles, adding another layer of strategy to the combat since one enemy may be susceptible to an ability of another.
Another series staple showing up here is jobs. The main character, Jack, starts the game as a Swordsman and throughout the game will gain access to other classes and weapons such as Lancer, Duelist, Mage, Marauder, and more. As with other action games of this style, players can instantly change classes at the push of a button to mix together different move lists and abilities for larger combos.
Each class is able to unlock a wide variety of command abilities that players can use to create their own class combinations. To unlock these abilities and affinities, players must use the classic experience map to upgrade their various jobs.
The trailer also reveals that players can join with others in multiplayer missions, no matter how far each player has progressed through the game.
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin releases March 18, 2022, for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
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.