Fortnite is once again holding a special in-game edition of The Game Awards, and players can vote for their favorite creator-developed islands.
The limited-time world, called The Game Awards Vote in Fortnite, lets players easily explore the nominated islands, which include an MMO, multiple escape room, and a roguelike. They can vote by going to the world and voting before 9 p.m. ET December 11, the day before the awards air. You can get there with island code 0853-1358-8532.
Since this is Fortnite, it also lets players battle in an arena to earn currency. Then there’s the Unreal Engine-generated Game Awards host Geoff Keighley.
Keighley was very excited in an official Epic Games blog post about getting re-created in Fortnite, which was done through MetaHuman in Unreal. The framework purports to make it easy for developers to create realistic-looking human characters in less than an hour. It also has a cloud-based app that lets you create a character quickly, multiple presets, and an app you can use to animate your person. Keighley’s uncanny likeness was brought into Unreal using greenscreen video capture. You can see how it turned out in the video below, but we think we’ll stick with the real version for now.
This is a special The Game Awards category that was introduced last year. The winner is announced during the broadcast, alongside new game reveals and trailers … and some other awards too. You can check out the full list of nominees below:
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.