A promotional poster for a sequel to 2013’s Injustice: Gods Among Us, Mortal Kombat studio NetherRealm’s DC superheroes fighting game, has leaked ahead of the game’s official announcement, presumably set for next week at E3. The above image of a poster was shared with Polygon, along with the accompanying letter to Gamestop managers indicating that the posters would be included with pre-orders of the game.
Injustice: Gods Among Us took the basic mechanical framework of NetherRealm’s long-running Mortal Kombat series, but populated it with a cast of DC Comics’ beloved superheroes and villains, such as Batman, the Joker, Green Arrow, and Bane. We loved it as both a fantastic fighting game and comic book game, with its engrossing alternate-universe campaign story that, in retrospect, outdid Batman v Superman as an excuse to get DC’s caped crusaders clashing.
Given the game’s critical and popular success, particularly in light of the studio’s excellent follow-up, Mortal Kombat X, a sequel should come as no surprise. The official announcement will likely come out in the next week, but studio creative director and Mortal Kombat series co-creator Ed Boon quipped about his frustration over the leak on Twitter:
Anyone know how to de-trend something on twitter? pic.twitter.com/AbOJThXqZg
— Ed Boon (@noobde) June 7, 2016
Injustice‘s combat felt immediately familiar to anyone who has kept up with the Mortal Kombat series. It added environmental interactions into the mix, however: context-specific opportunities for combatants to use the environment against their opponent in each stage. Mortal Kombat X subsequently adopted this feature. Assuming that feedback between the games continues, an innovation MKX introduced that is likely to make its way into Injustice 2 is every character having three alternate forms. More than just cosmetic character skins, the forms each supplemented the characters’ core move sets with different special moves and abilities, allowing for different fighting styles.
There is no word yet on platforms or a release date for Injustice 2, but we expect that information to be made public soon.
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.