During the February 2023 Nintendo Direct, Nintendo revealed that Pikmin 4 launches on July 21 exclusively for Switch. The game will bring a new Pikmin type, as well as a dog companion.
The latest trailer showed off some new features of the game, including a new ice elemental Pikmin. This creature can be thrown at enemies in order to freeze them, before throwing another Pikmin, like a yellow lightning one, in order to inflict major damage.
There’s also a new dog companion joining franchise protagonist Olimar as well. This dog can do a variety of exploration tasks, including breaking down big rocks, dragging large objects out of the way, and carrying Olimar and his Pikmin around across bodies of water.
Aside from Pikmin 4, Nintendo’s tentpole release this year is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but the company has several other releases such as the already launched Fire Emblem Engage and March’s Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon. That leaves Nintendo’s Fall 2023 release calendar rather light so far. However, knowing Nintendo, it should fill up as the year progresses.
Nintendo now has a big release hitting in the summer to keep its momentum of exclusive game releases going until the inevitable Nintendo Switch successor. New hardware isn’t likely until at least 2024, seven years after the Switch’s initial launch in 2017.
Pikmin 4 was already confirmed to be in development all the way back in 2015, but was seemingly rebooted in 2019. It’s been 10 years since Pikmin 3 released on Wii U. However, if Pikmin fans want something similar to play in the meantime, Tinykin is a great Pikmin-like game that will tide them over.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.