It’s been more than seven years since Pikmin 3 launched on the Wii U but it’s relaunching this fall on the Nintendo Switch.
Pikmin 3 Deluxe will launch on the Nintendo Switch on October 30, Nintendo announced on Wednesday, August 5. The game is a port from the Wii U version and will come with the same storyline and look and feel. Nintendo plans to sweeten the pot a bit by adding new features, including the option to play the entire Pikmin 3 Deluxe story mode in a co-op. All of the game’s DLC and side missions can also be played in co-op mode and Nintendo said players can choose from new difficulty options to adapt the gameplay to their skill level.
Pikmin 3 Deluxe is an adventure game that centers on three explorers who work with a variety of Pikmin characters to survive on a world on which they’ve crash landed. The game features a variety of puzzles and battle moments and the Pikmin characters that players choose to have with them vary with their environment. For instance, in the game’s Twilight River area, blue Pikmin that can breathe underwater are more useful. Pink Winged Pikmin can fly over areas to help players move through puzzles in other areas.
When the game launched on Nintendo’s Wii U in 2013, it earned high marks from users and critics alike. It currently has a score of 87 from critics and a score of 8.7 from users on Metacritic.
Nintendo didn’t share too many details on just how different the Switch’s Pikmin 3 Deluxe experience will be. However, in addition to co-op modes, Nintendo said it has added new side-story missions allowing players to explore planet PNF-404. The company has also promised head-to-head multiplayer battles. Lock-on targeting has been added to the game and players can turn on a hints feature to make the title a bit easier to play. Nintendo said it designed Deluxe to be accessible to both veteran players and newbies.
Although Pikmin 3 Deluxe is largely a port from the Wii U hit, Nintendo said it’s still planning to sell the game at the standard $60 it sells other new titles for. Players can pre-order the game now to have it on launch day.
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.