It’s October, which means it’s Call of Duty season for Xbox and Activision. So expectedly, Xbox Game Pass’ offerings for the second half of the month into November are all about Activision Blizzard.
October 25 is the big day for Call of Duty fans. The next entry in the shooter series, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, is hitting cloud, console, and PC for Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers. Modern Warfare 3, which was the first Call of Duty game added to the service in July, is also specifically coming to Xbox Cloud Gaming on October 25, along with Call of Duty Warzone.
A lot of what’s coming to Black Ops 6 is standard Call of Duty fare: new multiplayer maps, Zombies mode, and a single-player campaign. However, developer Treyarch and Raven Software have added a new movement system called Omnimovement, which allows the player to spring into action in every direction. Players will also get the old Prestige system back for progression, along with a fully customizable HUD.
Activision announced Tuesday that preloading begins at 9 a.m. PT on October 21. It’ll roll out on PC from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. PT.
Xbox Game Pass will also get StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft 2: Campaign Collection on PC for Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers on November 5. Players can still use Battle.net to play the multiplayer for free, but with Game Pass, the single-player campaigns — including all the expansions — have been upgraded with 4K and widescreen support.
If you’re not into Call of Duty or StarCraft, there are (surprisingly) other games coming to Game Pass in the last half of October. You can check out the full list below.
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 One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it.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.