Hunt: Showdown, developer Crytek’s new multiplayer team-based demon-hunting PC shooter, is about to kick off a closed alpha. The Digital Trends gaming crew is getting an early look at the game, so we’re showing off our gunslinging skills on a live-stream to share it with you.
You can follow along with Hanif Jackson and Phil Hornshaw as we delve into dark swamps, armed with six-shooters, Winchesters, and our wits. We’re teaming up to stalk hellspawn and take out any other teams that get in our way.
Crytek is best known for its first-person shooter franchise Crysis, but Hunt is pretty different from the developer’s previous titles. It’s an online multiplayer shooter that could be described as a bit of a combination of Evolve and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Set in Louisiana in 1895, it imagines a world where demons are breaking out of hell and invading the bayou. It’s your job to send them back — and collect a bounty.
Part of Hunt: Showdown is the “hunt” part, in which you and a partner track a boss creature through the map, gathering clues to pin down its location. Once you kill it, you have to “banish” it to collect the bounty, which takes time. Trouble is, you and your partner are not the only team out hunting the creature, and you need to hold off the attacks of other duos who want to steal your claim and snag your cash. On the flip side, if another team takes down the boss, you’re going to want to do everything you can to relieve them of their winnings. Even once you have the bounty, you have to escape the bayou alive to keep it. We first saw Hunt: Showdown at E3 2017, and while we didn’t get to play it then, we were impressed by what we saw.
The official start date for Hunt: Showdown‘s closed alpha test is Wednesday, January 31, and invitations for the test are going out to a random selection of players who sign up on the game’s website, huntshowdown.com. Crytek said on its Hunt blog that invites are going out in multiple waves, so if you’re hoping to check out the game yourself, signing up now might give you a chance.
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.