After a week or so of rumors and leaks, Sony has finally announced July’s PlayStation Plus lineup, and it includes high-profile titles Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time and The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan alongside a brand new cooperative shooter called Arcadeggedon.
Crash Bandicoot 4 is no doubt the month’s biggest and most recognizable game, bringing challenging platforming to subscribers who haven’t had a chance to dive into the 2020 revival of the beloved franchise. Despite retaining the series’ trademark difficulty and precision requirements, this newest release comes packed with plenty of improvements to the established formula and a handful of appreciated options that allow players to reduce the punishment for failure.
2019’s survival horror adventure Man of Medan was the first title released in Supermassive’s The Dark Pictures Anthology series, and like the developer’s newest game The Quarry, it focuses on a multi-character narrative with branching paths and multiple endings based on player choice. It received decent reception upon release and should keep horror fans busy while waiting on this year’s other big hitters like The Callisto Protocol and Capcom’s recently-announced Resident Evil 8 DLC.
Lastly, Arcadeggedon is a new four-player cooperative shooter with PVE and PVP elements that takes place entirely within an arcade game. Originally announced last year, the title is making its debut via PS Plus. Historically, releasing as a free game on the service has helped many otherwise under-the-radar multiplayer games to draw more attention than they might have otherwise, so it’s possible Arcadeggedon could be quite a hit with subscribers.
All three games will become available beginning Tuesday, July 5. Until then, you can still get your hands on June’s PS Plus titles, including Sony’s first-party mega-hit God of War.
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.