As part of the United Nations’ Playing for the Planet initiative, Ubisoft has announced it will host in-game events in Riders Republic and Skull and Bones to raise awareness for climate change.
In Riders Republic, it will teach players the consequences of wildfires by setting the outskirts of the game map on fire. Ubisoft won’t announce when exactly that will happen. Instead, when booting the game, players will be greeted by an orange sky, their avatar equipped with a gas mask by default, and parts of the map being closed off due to nearby wildfires rendering them unbreathable. In other words, they’ll be immediately immersed in a wildfire in order for Ubisoft to point out how quickly wildfires ignite and spread without warning.
Players will be tasked with participating in collaborative activities to reduce the risk of wildfires across Sequoia National Park by identifying the most fragile and flammable areas of the forest using photo mode and protecting the Sequoias by various methods, such as placing aluminum foil on tree trunks and “cleaning” the forest path. The event will take place sometime between the end of 2022 and early 2023, but Ubisoft won’t say exactly when.
Skull and Bones, which curiously doesn’t have a release date yet, will have a few environmental awareness events too. As the themes of the game are piracy and naval warfare, the first event will address resource exploitation — specifically, the overfishing of sharks as a result of the high demand for shark fins.
Ubisoft said it will be one of the first seasonal live events in Skull and Bones, with players being encouraged to participate in community challenges and earning rewards depending on the turnout. Once the event is over, the company said it will work with marine conservation NGOs for other environmental awareness events.
Ubisoft’s environmental campaign announcements come on the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling saying the Clear Air Act doesn’t give the EPA broad authority to curtail greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming.
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.