Cliff Bleszinski, the designer behind violent classics like Unreal Tournament and Gears of War, has been gradually disclosing more about the first project of his new, independent studio, Boss Key Productions. Recently revealed as LawBreakers, Bleszinski showed off the first gameplay footage in a new video shared at PAX Prime.
In a future where the government blew up the moon (thanks, guys), players are divided into teams representing the law, and its breakers, for intense, five-on-five arena matches. The trailer shows off several of the characters that players will have at their disposal: Kitsune, a nimble assassin; Breacher, who’s all about the guns; Maverick, a skirmisher; and Cronos, a big, bad, brutal heavy.
Dynamic mobility is a common theme throughout the gameplay, as has become a frequent selling point for first-person shooters in the last few years since Titanfall. Players are shown zipping around with jetpacks, swinging around corners with grapnels, and even doing some classic rocket jumping, in the spirit of Unreal.
“The Shattering” apparently wreaked havoc on the Earth’s gravity quite a bit as well, as evidenced by the floating chunks of rock around the arena, which amplifies all of this free-flowing, vertical movement even further. There is also an exciting range of futuristic weaponry on display, including grenades, rockets, energy weapons, and conventional firearms of all shapes and sizes. Creative tools of destruction are to be expected, after all, from the man who introduced us to the chainsaw bayonet.
LawBreakers will launch as free-to-play on PC sometime in 2016, with the possibility of consoles to follow later. It is being developed by Bleszinski’s Boss Key Productions and published by the Korean Nexon, best known for its free-to-play MMORPGs like MapleStory and Mabinogi.
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.