Video game characters, by and large, have been created to make war, not love. It should not surprise you to find that when they do decide to take some time out to look for love, they don’t employ the most nuanced approaches to seduction and romance. Highlighting this point is YouTube gaming humor channel The Warp Zone, whose latest entry in their “if video games had” series envisioned the terrifying world of inter-game Tinder dating.
In the video, Nintendo it-couple Mario and Princess Peach have broken up for whatever reason, and Peach has decided that she’s going to get back on the open market. She peruses a veritable who’s-who of gaming characters and, profile-by-profile, discovers that, even in video-game-land, most Tinder bros aren’t even worth talking to. Normally paragons of virtuous living —well, most of them— most of the guys’ introduce themselves with AO-rated pick-up lines.
“I suck in a good way,” said Castlevania: Symphony of the Night hero Alucard, “Swiping left would be a mis-stake.” (That’s one of the tame ones, by the way.)
At least some of them, like Final Fantasy X hero Tidus, use some preferred keep things civil with a thinly veiled “cutscenes and chill?”
Even when her suitors make don’t make her immediately groan in disgust, it doesn’t take much digging for Peach to find something… Let’s say “unbecoming,” about them.
While we’re on the topic, we should probably talk about Peach’s taste in men, here. Her two “favorite” guys were Solid Snake, who she was totally into until she saw his “old Snake” look from Metal Gear Solid 4, and Trevor from Grand Theft Auto V. To be fair, though, compared to Master Chief he’s positively chivalrous. (At least in this video.)
Despite all the “things I learned from video games” memes, it’s pretty clear these characters still have some growing up to do before they’re ready to become proper role-models, at least in the realm of online dating.
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.