The newest Epic Games’ title, Fortnite, has had a long, hard road towards a full release. It was announced in 2011, which Epic creative director Donald Mustard said recently was just three weeks after development began, and then underwent a number of major revisions and setbacks in the very public eye. That’s a lot of work, and a lot of criticism, for a game to suffer on its way to release.
But that’s all over now, and Fortnite has entered the tumultuous world of Steam Early Access on July 25. The standard edition costs $40, while the deluxe edition with all eight heroes unlocked will run you a full $60 with some bonus items thrown in, as well as a special pistol for founding members only. Upon the final release, the game will go free-to-play with built-in micro-transactions.
For now, it’s all about building bases and defending yourselves from Husks, the zombies of the Fortnite universe. Equipped with a slew of weapons, traps, and base-building tools, players will work in small groups to fight off wave after wave of vicious, hungry monsters. There’s also a complex building, crafting, and upgrading system built around each round, allowing top players to specialize their skills and select from an ever-increasing range of options.
While we haven’t gotten a chance to spend a whole lot of time with the game yet, we thought we’d give you, the reader, a chance to check out our hands-on process, and join us for a bit of learning and a whole lot of Husk-slaying at 4:00 PM PST on the Digital Trends Facebook page, and embedded above on this post. We stream every week on Wednesday afternoons, typically with whatever the newest title we can get our hands on, or at least something fairly new.
We’ve fallen back on popular games like Overwatch and Playeruknown’s Battlegrounds in the past, however, so make sure to stop by each week to see what we’re streaming. We stream to Facebook Live, typically from a computer, although we’ve used an Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch in the past. Make sure to join in on the fun, and share with you friends on Facebook.
For years, Call of Duty’s campaign mode has used big, scripted set pieces to tell the overarching story amid all the adrenaline-pumping action. The 2023 Modern Warfare 3 tried to shake up the established formula by introducing a handful of short open combat missions, and I genuinely liked the idea, but the game's overall negative reception seeped into how those missions were received.
I feared the next iteration might abandon the idea because of the backlash, but I am glad it didn't. MW4’s “Stranded” mission uses the same approach, but instead of fragmenting it across the campaign, it puts it all in a single large-scale open-world mission.
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.