In March, Blizzard officially unveiled StarCraft: Remastered after months of speculation that a rerelease was in the works. Now, the studio has officially opened pre-orders for the game, which will launch on August 14 at a price of $15.
StarCraft may have started out as something of a spinoff from Blizzard’s other big RTS franchise, Warcraft, but it soon took on a life of its own. The game was a true phenomenon, and is still played competitively to this day — especially in South Korea, a major hot spot for the game’s popularity.
With that in mind, Blizzard has made sure that StarCraft: Remastered doesn’t make any changes to the tried-and-tested gameplay of the original release. Taking command of Terran, Zerg, and Protoss forces should feel exactly as it did when the game first launched in 1998, albeit with the benefit of subsequent updates and its Brood War expansion pack.
This parity allows Remastered players to take on opponents playing the original version of the game — which is now free to play. The rerelease also features a brand new matchmaking system that will pit players against someone of a similar skill level.
Some big changes have been made to the game’s visuals, in order to bring it up to the stringent standards of modern gamers. Blizzard has introduced 4K support and a native widescreen aspect ratio, and all artwork and visual assets have been remade to look their best at HD resolutions, according to a report from Gamespot.
Veteran players may look at the remastered graphics and think that nothing has changed since they first got their hands on the game — but, of course, that’s the benefit of rose-tinted glasses. Pressing F5 at any time during gameplay will switch between the new and classic visuals, showing off exactly how much work Blizzard did to refine the experience.
It’s long been rumored that Blizzard has plans to rerelease several of its classic games, and StarCraft: Remastered seems to be the first installment of that initiative. It wouldn’t be too surprising at all to see the classic titles from the Diablo and WarCraft franchises get a similar treatment over the coming years.
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.