I’ve been on the fence about V Rising, which came out of early access this past May. On the one hand, it’s an RPG where you play as a vampire — hunting for victims and building your influence in a dark, gothic world. On the other hand, that comes along with survival game mechanics, which can be difficult to balance between intricate and fun. Off the bat (pun intended), you have to manage your days to avoid sunlight and drink blood regularly, which feels similar to more challenging survival games that require you to eat and drink.
If you’re like me, you might be interested in this limited promotion from the developers at Stunlock Studios. From today, September 12, until 1 p.m. ET on September 16, you can check out V Rising on PC for free as long as you have a Steam account. If you become drawn in during the event, you can get the game for $25 (30% off), along with all cosmetic DLC for 20% off, until September 24. The full V Rising game and DLC bundle is 31% off at $72. This matches the biggest discount on the game since launch to date.
V Rising also released a Legacy of Castlevania special edition at launch in June, with various Castlevania-themed cosmetics for both PC and PlayStation 5 players. The Steam version of this DLC is also on sale for $16.
Unfortunately, there is no such deal for PS5 players. Sorry, PlayStation owners. Maybe next time.
V Rising launched in early access before taking off on Steam. Seems that a lot of people took to its genre mix, open world, and resource management since Stunlock was able to boast 500,000 players within the first five days, and a million in the first week. So far, a lot of people have been enjoying this free weekend. At the time of this writing, SteamDB has it tracking at around 10,900 concurrent players.
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.