Homefront: The Revolution will be available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on May 17 in North America and May 20 in other territories, publisher Deep Silver announced Tuesday in a new trailer.
In the original Homefront, players controlled of an American freedom fighter fending off a North Korean occupation in Colorado. In The Revolution, the setting moves to the east coast, where players attempt to liberate a North Korean controlled, but unpacified Philadelphia. The new trailer introduces the setting, the so-called “yellow zone,” where civilians “are kept under the heel of oppression through permanent surveillance, 24-hour propaganda, and an ever-constant military presence,” according to the Homefront website. As in the original, players will control a member of the American resistance, who seek to overthrow the occupying North Korean army.
The finalized release date means the end of long road for the Homefront: The Revolution development team, which has endured multiple publishing shake-ups in its five year development. Originally announced as a collaboration between developer Crytek and now-defunct publisher THQ in 2011, Crytek acquired the rights to the game when THQ sold off its assets in early 2013, teaming up with publisher Deep Silver. A few months after the team pushed the game’s release window from 2015 to 2016, Crytek announced in July it would be closing the studio and Deep Silver would acquire the project. Crytek shut down its Nottingham-based studio, Crytek U.K., and Deep Silver opened the team’s current home, Deep Silver Dambuster.
For now, Deep Silver also announced they will hold an Xbox One-exclusive closed beta for Homefront: The Revolution in February. Players who want in can register for the beta on the Homefront website. If you want to know more about what you’re getting into, check out our notes on the game from E3 2015.
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.