Overwatch recently celebrated its first anniversary, and to mark that milestone, Blizzard has announced a double XP weekend set to take place between June 8 and 12. Players who are eager to grind out a few more levels should be sure to log in and grab a few games while the experience point (XP) bonuses are active.
Double XP will apply to almost all the in-game activities that contribute to leveling, including time spent in a match, matches completed, consecutive matches completed, matches won, backfilling a match that’s already in progress, and earning medals for your performance.
Players will also be able to stack the double XP bonus with existing group and Internet Game Room bonuses earned by playing with others. However, the First Win of the Day bonus will not stack, and will remain at a steady 1,500 XP, doled out just once for every 24-hour period.
Given that it’s only been available for twelve months, Overwatch has become an enormous success. It’s undeniably one of the biggest multiplayer games of the moment, with players hanging on every announcement of new maps, new characters, and the enormously popular limited time events that Blizzard has offered up.
The game looks set to go from strength to strength as it enters its second year on the scene, with new content set to arrive at a steady rate. For months, actor Terry Crews has been campaigning to voice an upcoming hero known as Doomfist, and there are persistent rumors that this might come to pass — although Blizzard has already stated that no Overwatch announcements will be made at E3 2017, so we might have to wait a while.
This weekend’s double XP bonuses go into effect on June 8 at 5 p.m. PT. More details, as well as a full listing of when the festivities get underway in various time zones, are available via the official Overwatch blog.
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.