During the June 2024 Nintendo Direct, Retro Studios showed off new gameplay footage of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. The game is coming in 2025 for Nintendo Switch.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was first announced in 2017, reportedly under the development of Bandai Namco. However, in 2019, development shifted to Retro Studios and was subsequently rebooted. There weren’t many substantial updates until now.
The trailer shows gameplay in first-person as Samus guns down a horde of space pirates. Tools like her scan visor return, as does her morph ball. We see her rolling through a vent with it as a facility explodes in the background.
It was also revealed that the bounty hunter Sylux is returning as an antagonist. He appeared in the special endings for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Metroid Prime: Federation Force, which set him up for the events of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.
The end of the trailer shows Samus coming out of a cave and into a lush green environment with waterfalls and birds flying. It’s then that the screen fades to black to show the 2025 release window.
What’s unclear, however, is whether Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will release on the current Nintendo Switch or its successor, or both. With rumors that the successor will also launch sometime in 2025, it’s certainly possible that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond could be a launch title for it. It could be a similar situation to how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released on both the Switch and the Wii U in 2017.
While Metroid Prime 4: Beyond won’t launch until 2025, fans can get their Metroid fix with Metroid Prime Remastered and Metroid Dread in the meantime.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.