Sonic Frontiers will receive its first of three planned updates on Wednesday, March 22. The free DLC — dubbed Sights, Sound, and Speed — has a load of new features, including Photo Mode, Jukebox, and new challenge modes.
Sega previously detailed its plans to support Sonic Frontiers in the long term last November, but it didn’t share a timeline for when the updates were coming. Now that first wave is finally here, giving the game it’s first significant update since it launched last year.
Photo Mode can be accessed from the pause menu and brings up a camera for you to move freely while gameplay is paused. Pause the game at just the right moment and let your photography skills run wild by zooming in, zooming out, tilting the camera any which way, and applying filters.
The Jukebox feature allows fans to play songs not just from Sonic Frontiers, but also from other games in the Sonic series while running around the Starfall Islands. The list of tracks includes classics such as Live and Learn from Sonic Adventure 2. An aura of music notes will surround Sonic while songs play. There are 53 songs available in total, with only 13 available at first. The remaining 40 songs are unlocked by collecting Sound Memories on each island.
After completing the main story, players will unlock two new challenge modes from the title screen: Cyber Space Challenge and Battle Rush. The Cyber Space Challenge is a time-attack challenge where players race against the clock to beat multiple Cyber Space stages in a row. Battle Rush is a timed-battle mode where the goal is defeat multiple robots, Guardians and Titans in one sitting (and you won’t have to worry about losing your rings when fighting the Titans).
Sonic Frontiers’ Sights, Sound, and Speed update launches on March 22. The game is now available on PlayStation 5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.
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.