To cap off PlayStation’s September 13 State of Play, we got another look at God of War: Ragnarok, as well as the reveal of a special controller releasing alongside the game.
Sony Santa Monica Studios’ special-edition PS5 DualSense controller for God of War: Ragnarok is a crisp blue and white, and has two sigils engraved on its touchpad. It’s the first Sony-produced special DualSense controller of its kind, and it releases ahead of the customizable DualSense Edge controller teased at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2022. As the studio wrote on the PlayStation Blog, the DualSense controller sports a blue-and-white design inspired by Midgard, the mythical world of the Norse gods. The touchpad is engraved with the bear and wolf sigil to represent the relationship between Kratos and Atreus, as well as their personalities.
After that, we got a new story trailer for God of War: Ragnarok that gave a deeper dive into the threats Kratos and Atreus will face and the areas they will explore. In the new story trailer, Tyr questions Kratos’ true motives, and Atreus narrates that everyone keeps secrets for various reasons, one of which is to protect the people they love. That seems to be the case when Kratos asks Atreus what he’s hiding from him, to which he replies, “I can’t talk about it. But I just need you to trust me.” All the while, they’re both questioning whether they should do the things they’re destined to do or what they believe is necessary to stop the threat of Ragnarok from destroying the world.
God of War: Ragnarok releases on November 9.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.