Read our full Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor review.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment confirms that Monolith Productions’ Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor will be coming to PlayStation and Xbox consoles, as well as Windows PCs, on October 7. The third-person action game attempts to tell a new story in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy universe, with players assuming the role of a ranger named Talion. This is a special ranger though, possessing the same set of powers as Wraiths (the Rings series’ Nazgul). You run around the open world of Middle-earth busting heads and making enemies, thanks to the game’s Nemesis system (read about it here).
WB also revealed the details of Mordor‘s pre-order bonus, the Dark Ranger pack, which includes a Dark Ranger character skin and a “Test of Power” challenge mode, in which you fight Sauron’s captains to earn runes that give you a head start in the game. There’s also a new trailer, “Banished from Death,” which you can check out below.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.