With each new season of Fortnite, you can count on there being at least some sort of mobility item added that helps you quickly move across the map in a unique and exciting way. With the arrival of chapter 5, season 1, players can now seek out and equip the brand-new Grapple Blade item. If you want all of the mobility of a Web-Slinger with the damage output of a Kinetic Blade, you’ll want to pick one of these up. Here’s where to find them and how they work.
Grapple Blades can be found on the ground and in chests all across this season’s map. Keep in mind, however, that they’re relatively rare, meaning it’s sometimes possible to go entire matches without seeing one. Of course, that’s just a good incentive to track down and defeat your opponents to see if they leave one behind.
When this hybrid mobility and damage item is equipped, you’ll notice that it shows a cursor on surfaces you can grapple to. Doing so will send you propelling toward the surface pretty quickly, making it a great choice for escaping a firefight or finding high ground in the midst of one. But before you get carried away, it’s worth noting that you only have four charges at a time with a Grapple Blade, though it will recharge one at a time every 12 seconds.
As useful as a Grapple Blade can be for mobility, it can also deal some significant melee damage. By pressing the fire button, you can do some very fast and flashy attacks that hit for 60 damage each, making you a force to be reckoned with in close quarters. In other words, the Grapple Blade is a must-have for most players looking to be both mobile and aggressive in chapter 5, season 1.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.