Those of us rubbing our game-toughened thumbs together awaiting Oculus Rift’s release got some good news today. Lucky’s Tale, a platformer made for VR by Playful Corp will come with Oculus Rift for free.
The hardest of the hardcore may turn up their noses at the adorable fox named Lucky and his tail — or rather, tale, but it could be a lot of fun. Think of the first moments watching a third-person character traverse a 3D world — Mario 64 is a prime example — and you will be able to glimpse the awe Lucky’s Tale could inspire.
“It’s all about the interplay of the way the camera engine works, which is always to design first and foremost for comfort, and then the ways we can push that to do interesting things with the level design.” The director of Lucky’s Tale, Dan Hurd, told PC Gamer. Hurd wants to keep it “simple and accessible.”
As expected from any platformer, collectibles will be scattered throughout, and the platforming will be broken up with minigames delivered via clever management of a tight camera angle to keep nausea at bay. The usual VR experience is first person, which generally makes for a poor platforming game. Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey seems to think Lucky’s Tale is proof that the third-person perspective, connected to the traditional platformer, will fit nicely into the still-developing VR medium.
“We always believed there was an opportunity for platformers in VR, but it wasn’t until playing Lucky’s Tale and working with the Playful team that we truly realized its potential to change how people view this genre of gaming forever.” Palmer said. “Lucky’s Tale delivers on everything you want in a next-generation VR game — it’s thrilling, full of adventure, and incredibly fun to play.”
The founder and CEO of Playful, Paul Bettner, was one of the original five grand backers of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter campaign. He knew Oculus was going to be something great, and had Playful Corp. run prototypes of 40 games in VR before even starting to work on Lucky’s Tale. Bettner plans to include some of the better prototypes as mini-games in LT.
Oculus Rift is still set to release sometime in the first quarter of 2016. According to the company, it will open for pre-orders “soon,” whatever that means. If you want to be one of the first players, make sure you follow the firm on social media or have some news alerts set up.
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.