Developer Insomniac Games released a mysterious trailer Tuesday teasing the upcoming announcement of the studio’s new project later this week.
The trailer, simply called “What’s Next?,” depicts the underwater ruins of a technologically advanced but aesthetically medieval civilization, animated in a hand-drawn art style. The camera descends throughout the trailer, showing undersea rock faces laced with moving gears and pipes, statues of stone faces, and sunken ships. Also, there are a lot of jellyfish.
The trailer announced that Insomniac will make a larger announcement about the game on Thursday, January 28, at 9:30 am ET. The trailer ends with the phrase “dive deeper.” The teaser does not feature any obvious connections to a game from the studio’s past.
Best known for its work on two of PlayStation’s long-standing first-party franchises, Ratchet and Clank and Resistance, Insomniac has moved toward working with other publishers in recent years, including 2014 Xbox One shooter Sunset Overdrive. Insomniac is currently working on two projects; a game based on the upcoming Ratchet and Clank animated movie, which will come out after the film opens in April, 2016, and Edge of Nowhere, an Oculus Rift-exclusive third-person adventure game involving arctic explorers who try to evade vaguely Lovecraftian monsters.
On popular gaming forum NeoGAF, gamers and fans have already started speculating on what the upcoming game might be. Predictions and hopes run the gamut, from a “2D point-and-click adventure,” to “a new AAA IP.” Of course, fans are also throwing out underwater puns for every possible sequel as well, such as “Resistance 4: Under Water,” and “Sunset Aquadrive.” Someone even suggested the trailer could be for “Fuse 2.”
We’ll keep an eye out and let you know what Insomniac is up to when they break the news Thursday morning.
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.