Lawbreakers is the latest arena shooter to launch for both PC and PlayStation 4. Developed by Boss Key Productions and former Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski, the game launched successfully on PC on Tuesday. Lawbreakers PS4 was another story, but a new patch has already remedied any hitching.
For anyone who was worried about buying Lawbreakers after yesterday’s news of stuttering framerates, a new patch from Boss Key has drastically improved the issue. “PS4 players, the Lawbreakers hitching fix is live! Thanks for your understanding,” said the developer on Twitter. “Now go kick some ass.”
Originally, whether players were running the game on the standard PS4 or the PS4 Pro, the game would hitch and stutter periodically. The problem disappeared when playing alone in a custom game, suggesting a possible network problem. The PC version of Lawbreakers was completely unaffected by the stutter.
Boss Key was aware of the issue and worked hard to send out a patch early this morning. According to its Twitter account, the hitching occurred when other players change roles or leave a match. “We broke something (showed only after we unlocked everything) and thought we fixed it,” tweeted Boss Key COO Arjan Brussee. “Accelerating hotfix patch process. Will update soon.”
In a short video from Digital Foundry, the in-game stutter appeared to max out at 316 milliseconds, with much of it occurring when a match first begins. Outside of the stutter, the game performs very well at 60 frames per second. After update 1.04, improvements have been made. Not only is the frequency of the hitches dramatically reduced, the length of each stutter has been decreased as well, topping out at only 100 milliseconds.
A game like Lawbreakers needs all the speed it can get. Frantic one-on-one fights can be interrupted due to stuttering, affecting a player’s performance. With fast movement and antigravity segments, short stutters could cost players that perfect headshot.
Last week, Lawbreakers wrapped up its public beta. During our time with it, the stuttering was nonexistent.
We are still working on our final review, but the first-person shooter is on Steam and the PlayStation Store for only $29. Now that Boss Key has been so quick to patch out some performance bugs, there is little reason not to jump in.
Update: We have added information and adjusted the wording based on the newly released Lawbreakers patch.
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.
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