The Rebel Moon series is continuing at Netflix, although the most recent announcement isn’t for another movie. The streaming service announced Blood Line: A Rebel Moon Game, a standalone action video game set in director Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon space opera-verse, during its Geeked Week event on Thursday.
Blood Line is a top-down action game akin to Diablo 4 from Super Evil Megacorp, most recently known for the roguelike Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate. It lets players team up online to take down hordes of enemies. You can check out a little of the gameplay in the trailer above. Like other Netflix titles, this will only be available on mobile and only to Netflix subscribers through its app. You can sign up for the beta now.
The core gameplay involves choosing between four classes based on characters similar to the ones you meet in the movies: Bannerguard, Evoker, Kindred, and Forsaken. The Bannerguard is your high-damage tank, while Kindred is long-range. The Forsaken are for players who are fans of dealing damage with dual-wielding weapons. Finally, the Evoker is the healer and support character.
Netflix writes that each will have “unique backstories” and “specific Motherworld-vanquishing motivations” that will mirror what you’ll get with the characters watching the movies. The game will be live service, although because it’s available for free through a Netflix subscription, the updates will be in the form of narrative chapters that expand the story and help you build up a rebellion.
“And then when updates come in, it’s not just, ‘Oh, this one is always better,’ but it’s a new kind of piece to your puzzle and how you want to mix them up so they won’t just be the next thing that’s bigger and stronger, but it’ll actually be a different spice, as it were, to put into your recipes of your loadout,” Super Evil Megacorp design director Robert Gallerani said in a press briefing attended by Variety.
Super Evil Megacorp announced its partnership with Netflix in 2023, noting that it had been working with the media company on “an amazing new IP” that would allow it to be a “transmedia pioneer.” “We love building worlds, and with Netflix, we get the opportunity to be part of building a universe far larger than a single game – and we will build it simultaneously with the rest of the IP universe,” a spokesperson from the developer wrote.
While the first Rebel Moon did poorly with critics, including Digital Trends, Netflix reported it was the most-viewed title on the service within its first week of release with 29.3 million views. Later, Snyder claimed that it “probably” surpassed the number of people who saw Barbie in theaters. Netflix has since released the sequel, along with a director’s cut with extra scenes.
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.