Past iterations of Electronic Arts’ NBA Live series allowed you to create your own character, but your custom star had to be a man. That changes in NBA Live 19, which is adding female create-a-character options for the first time.
The female players you create in NBA Live 19 will have access to all the same gear and skills as male custom characters, and using the game’s iOS and Android companion apps, women will be able to scan their face and put it onto their character. This rising star can then be used in “The One,” the career mode focused on either the blacktop or the NBA, where you’ll be able to play on teams of both men and women.
“Furthermore, NBA Live 19 will introduce new Icon abilities modeled after some of the greatest female ballers of all time, including Candace Parker and others,” Electronic Arts said in a press release.
Parker spoke about the feature in a new trailer, detailing her own experience playing blacktop basketball and how women who show their skills on the court can get the same respect as male players.
“You have to have a little bit of creativity. Everything is not going to be scripted,” Parker said about playing pickup games. “I think just visibility has helped our game so much, and I hope to make it better and leave it better than when I came into it.”
Last year’s NBA Live 18 was the first game in the series to include the full WNBA roster, and Electronic Arts encourages players excited about the more inclusive follow-up to use the hashtag “#ShesInTheGame” on social media.
NBA Live 19 includes “Real Player Motion,” designed to make players’ animations smoother and more realistic, as well as highlight the unique moves of stars like James Harden and LeBron James. An “interactive environment” means you also see players leap into the bench to get a ball before it goes out of bounds, and artificial intelligence has also been reworked to make players behave more realistically.
NBA Live 19 comes to Buy Now and Buy Now on September 7. EA Access subscribers will get first access to the Xbox One game on August 31, as well as a discount on the full version when it launches.
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.