Episodic adventure game developer Telltale Games made key announcements about two new games coming out next year at The Game Awards 2015 Thursday night.The developer released a short teaser announcing a new Batman game, done in their episodic adventure style. Telltale did not reveal the game’s formal title, but said the first episode of the game will come to digital platforms on “home consoles,” PC, Mac, and mobile devices in 2016.
Batman is the latest in a long list of high-profile game adaptations from Telltale. In addition to its critically acclaimed series based on The Walking Dead, Telltale has made games based on film and tv franchises, including Jurassic Park, Back to The Future and Game of Thrones. More recently, the company has moved on to making story-intensive side-stories for other game franchises, such as Tales of the Borderlands and Minecraft: Story Mode.
“At Telltale, we’ve been honored to bring our unique approach to interactive storytelling to some of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world, and we’re excited to announce that we’ll soon be exploring what it means to be Batman in an all-new series starting next year,” Telltale Games CEO Kevin Bruner said in a statement published on the Telltale blog. “This iteration of Batman will give fans a first-hand opportunity to dive deeper into the complex life and mind of Bruce Wayne, the duality of his own identity, and the struggle of responsibility in saving a city overcome with corruption and villainy.”
Telltale also announced that the first episode of The Walking Dead: Michonne will be released in February, 2016. As Polygon pointed out, Telltale said the game would be released in Fall 2015 after the game was announced at E3 in June, but did not hit that target.
Unlike past Telltale’s past game based on The Walking Dead franchise, Michonne will follow an arc tied directly to the comics. The three-episode mini-series will take place during the events from The Walking Dead, issues 126-139. Telltale has confirmed they are working on a third “season” of their own The Walking Dead series, but has not released any details beyond the fact that it will be “considerably larger” than parts one and two.
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.