Ever since Epic Games announced its new MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) game Paragon back in December, the community has been responding in great numbers through the Early Access Season. Millions of gamers have previewed the free-to-play Paragon thus far, and now the video game development company wants to share the love with even more fans, according to a recent post.
Beginning August 16, Paragon, which is powered by Epic Games’ own Unreal 4 Engine, will be entering Free Open Beta, which means anyone will be able to play without shelling out any money. In the meantime, the Founder’s Packs and Essential Edition will still give those who made these purchases deals on stuff in the game and Early Access. And those who are currently playing should look forward to updates in the next few weeks without worrying about any account resets.
New heroes will be launched every few weeks, such as the latest one: a melee fighter named Khaimera. He is the first duelist seen in Paragon, and he specializes at targeting individuals up close with his dual wield axes. His Pounce ability allows him to leap to a target hero, stunning the enemy and causing physical damage.
During combat, Khaimera’s Spirit Regeneration increases his health regeneration, stacking it with each basic attack. His Ultimate move, Cull, deals a ton of damage and both roots and isolates a target from his or her friends.
All heroes in Paragon are free, and if you have Early Access, you’ll be able to use Khaimera beginning June 21. If not, you can grab a Founder’s Pack to dive into the game or sign up and wait for the Free Beta Weekend.
Paragon will see a full release this year on PlayStation 4 and Windows.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.