Hello Games announced that the next No Man’s Sky update will arrive later this week. It’s called “Path Finder,” and will bring a new vehicle class called Exocraft to the space exploration simulator. The vehicles intended for home planet exploration, resembling dune buggies, rovers, and construction equipment. Rumors about planetary vehicles in No Man’s Sky have circulated since the first major post-launch update, “Foundation,” arrived in late November, but they’re just the tip of what the update has to offer.
The Foundation update added base building and two new game modes: Creative and Survival. Creative mode removed the threats from the game to give players the freedom to build and explore at their leisure. Survival mode did the reverse, upping the difficulty and creating more threats for those who thought the game was too tame. The update received its name because it laid the groundwork for future updates like Path Finder.
Players can use the Exocraft vehicles in new “races,” though the game will still not support multiplayer, instead creating challenges for other players to beat.
In addition to the vehicle, Path Finder also adds 4K support for PlayStation 4 Pro, high and ultra-resolution textures, new lighting and sun ray effects, and an HDR mode — you can check them all out in exquisite detail with the new photo mode. Players can now own multiple ships for the first time, as well, and they can be traded into vendors for a discount off future ships, which should cut down on resource gathering time specifically. In both space stations and bases, you’ll now spot additional vendors, as well, and a new currency called “nanite clusters” will be sold in exchange for unwanted blueprints.
New weapon modes can now be installed on your multitool device, allowing for more effective close-range attacks, mid-ranch, quick attacks, and even sniping. The multitool itself also features new specializations, with each offering a bonus to a particular task, like mining, scanning, or combat. Starships feature a similar specialization, offering bonuses to cargo, combat, or warp abilities.
A number of new base-building customization options have been introduced in Path Finder, including observation domes and colored lights, and bases can now finally be shared online with other players through Steam Workshop.
After the well-documented backlash against Hello Games — in which some users believed they were duped by false advertising — Hello Games appears to be ensuring that all of No Man’s Sky‘s current features are working as intended before trying to win back the goodwill of its initial user base.
“Shortly after we launched the Foundation Update, we released a number of patches to address issues reported by players before beginning work on the Path Finder update. We were surprised and excited by the response to Foundation, and we have been listening carefully to community feedback since then,” the statement read.
Adding a planetary vehicle to hasten and enhance exploration won’t be enough to bring all of the game’s disgruntled players back to the procedurally generated universe, but its inclusion along with the numerous other additions in Path Finder proves that Hello Games is in it for the long haul. Upon the release of Foundation, Hello Games claimed it was “the first of many free updates.”
“This is the next step in our journey. It shows the path forward. We hope you’ll join us,” the company said.
Updated on 03-09-2017 by Gabe Gurwin: Added additional details about the Path Finder update.
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.