Bandai Namco announced a sci-fi third-person shooter called Synduality at today’s PlayStation State of Play. Its reveal trailer doesn’t explain much about the story or its characters, but it offers a glimpse at the futuristic setting and gameplay. It starts with a cryptic quote from science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It’s clear that technology will play a major role in the game.
Synduality takes place in a dystopian future where poisonous rain and mutants have wiped out most of humanity. The survivors have built an underground haven called Amasia, where they work with AI to survive. Those same survivors spend most of their days collecting AO crystals, a valuable resource needed to survive. An AI called Magus, who is presumably the white-haired girl in the trailer, and a dark-haired man who communicates with her from inside his “Cradle Coffin” (or mech) work together to survive the dystopia.
It looks like something out of Star Wars — or maybe Tower of Fantasy if it had a higher budget.
Magus narrates the pair’s crystal collection chores and exploration as they zoom through green and blue grasses and mechanical hallways. Some of the third-person shooter gameplay and real-time combat also pop up in the preview. While it’s advertised as a shooter, it also seems to involve some RPG elements. We don’t know much about Magus and the protagonist, but they seem to have a master-and-servant relationship. At the end of the trailer, she calls him “sir” when she apologizes for suddenly rebooting the systems around him.
“Journey alongside your AI and Mecha to survive this dystopian futuristic adventure,” reads the trailer description.
Synduality is currently in development for PlayStation 5. In the trailer, the subtext notes that a multiplayer component will be locked behind a PlayStation Plus membership. Expect to hear more before its release in 2023.
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.