During the June 2024 Xbox Games Showcase, The Coalition announced Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel to the Gears of War series. The game takes place 14 years before the start of the first game, and is built from the ground up with Unreal Engine 5. However, there is no release date, but it will presumably launch for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
The trailer starts with a protagonist Marcus Fenix as a younger man fighting against a big Locust enemy. When he barely manages to win, he gets pulled up by his friend, Dominic Santiago. The camera then pans out to show a city in ruins. Players are used to a seasoned veteran in Marcus, but E-Day explores a time when he and his comrades were ill-prepared for the Locust threat upon their home planet Sera.
The trailer also brings back the song “Mad World,” the Tears for Fears track covered by Gary Jules that was used for the original Gears of War game that was released in 2006. This time, the track is reimagined for the E-Day trailer, making it darker and grittier.
The Coalition has also confirmed that even though Gears of War: E-Day is a prequel, the studio is not abandoning the stories told in Gears of War 4 and Gears 5. However, The Coalition didn’t want to pass on the chance to tell an origin story, including one regarding Marcus’ famous iconic Chainsaw Lancer weapon. It’s also not a spinoff like Gears of War: Judgment is, but a new entry and mainline title.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.