Overwatch‘s cutest robot has a whole new Lego-themed look in the game’s latest event, Bastion’s Brick Challenge.
Blizzard announced the limited-time event on Monday, along with a video showing the new epic Brick Bastion skin in action — complete with an adorable brick version of Bastion’s pet bird, Ganymede (who can somehow still fly despite being made bricks).
The challenge will last from September 17 through September 30, and will feature 12 new cosmetic rewards that you can earn by winning games in Quick Play, Competitive Play, and Arcade. You can also unlock rewards by watching Twitch streamers.
Along with the skin, challenge rewards include Lego-themed Bastion icons, sprays featuring brick versions of Pharah, Mercy, D.Va, Genji, and Hazo, and several Lego player icons.
Blizzard has made it pretty easy to unlock the new legendary Brick Bastion skin — along with all the other rewards that are part of Bastion’s Brick Challenge. All you need to do to get the skin is win 9 games in any mode. Here’s how that all breaks down:
If you don’t feel like actually playing Overwatch, you can watch someone else play to win rewards. By watching specific Twitch streamers — Blizzard put out a full schedule — you can unlock new sprays and icons. To get them all, you’ll have to watch six hours between now and September 30:
The Brick Challenge comes as Blizzard has teamed with Lego to create a real-life version of Brick Bastion (kind of). The companies have released 7 Overwatch-themed Lego sets, featuring the game’s most iconic levels and characters.
Overwatch has been out for three years, but has seen constant updates adding new content. The game is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One — and it’ll be released on Nintendo Switch in October. That’s seemingly too late to unlock the new Bastion skin as part of the event, but hopefully Blizzard will give Switch players another way to earn it if they want to play as a Lego gunner robot.
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.