Accessibility is a huge focus of the gaming industry in recent years and Santa Monica Studio is taking account of that with the upcoming release of God of War Ragnarök. As shared on the official PlayStation blog, Ragnarök is set to launch with over 60 accessibility options to suit various player needs.
From UI readability to controller remapping, Santa Monica Studio is covering tons of bases to make the new God of War entry as accessible to players as possible. Not only is the game adding options, but all accessibility features from God of War (2018) are retained in Ragnarök as well.
“For God of War (2018) on PC, we made sure to improve and continue to iterate on popular features from the initial PlayStation release,” Lead UX Designer of Santa Monica Studio, Mila Pavlin states. “We’re pleased to be continuing to support these features in God of War Ragnarök on PS4 and PS5.”
Pavlin also shared that the auto sprint, persistent dot (always on reticle), aim style, and block style features are some of the returning accessibility options, which were introduced in the God of War (2018) PC port. Here are the new features that’ll be joining that list in God of War Ragnarök.
In Sony’s blog post, Pavlin states that there are more options to come that will span even more functions of the game.
God of War Ragnarök is expected to launch this year for PS4 and PS5, though it has yet to receive a release date.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.