Amid a wintry storm of data-mined updates and high expectations, Blizzard has officially confirmed that there will be an Overwatch holiday event, and that it will begin on December 13. The event follows in the footsteps of popular Halloween and “Summer Games” timed events.
The event launch was confirmed with a Tweet from the official Overwatch Twitter account. It starts with a recognizable shot of the King’s Row map, as snow falls gently to the ground, leaving piles in front of shop windows.
You're invited! pic.twitter.com/MQZPZOW4Y1
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) December 6, 2016
So what will Overwatch’s holiday event entail? There are no confirmed details, but we can make a few educated guesses based on previous events. We’ll certainly see some holiday-themed cosmetics, and the idea of Zenyatta throwing glass ornaments is one that’s been kicking around for a while. During the first “Summer Games” event, players could only earn new cosmetics by finding them randomly in themed loot boxes, which were only available during the event. For Halloween, Blizzard made the timely cosmetics available for purchase with credits, but at higher prices.
There’s also likely to be a brawl to go along with the festivities. Originally, the game only featured modes that pitted players against each other, but the Halloween’s event introduced a new mode where game mode where four players defended a point from AI enemies. Which we’ll see this time around is anyone’s guess.
If the tweet is any indication, there may also be modifications to existing maps like King’s Row. We saw similar additions, including extra candles and jack-o’-lanterns, decorating maps throughout the Halloween event, although snow has the potential for more substantial gameplay changes.
Or it might just be slight cosmetic changes and some new costumes. Either way, the event launches on Tuesday, December 13, so expect to see changes go live after the weekly reset that morning. Data miners found some of the data for the event, including a holiday version of the Overwatch theme song, in the last update, but there will need to be another with the rest of the puzzle.
For years, Call of Duty’s campaign mode has used big, scripted set pieces to tell the overarching story amid all the adrenaline-pumping action. The 2023 Modern Warfare 3 tried to shake up the established formula by introducing a handful of short open combat missions, and I genuinely liked the idea, but the game's overall negative reception seeped into how those missions were received.
I feared the next iteration might abandon the idea because of the backlash, but I am glad it didn't. MW4’s “Stranded” mission uses the same approach, but instead of fragmenting it across the campaign, it puts it all in a single large-scale open-world mission.
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.