We know a lot of you are playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on Xbox right now, but the company just announced some games coming to Xbox Game Pass — specifically the Game Pass Standard tier — in the first half of November.
The biggest game coming to the service (and we mean that literally) is Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. Xbox and developers Asobo Studio previously reported that it will have a smaller install size than its predecessor — 127GB versus 157GB — but it’ll also require 64GB of RAM. All of this is to help stream immense detail to the player as they fly around the world. Asobo says helped it to increase “the detail of its virtual environment by a factor of 4,000.” Alongside the hyperrealistic graphics is a new career mode where you go through training and missions to become a pilot and a challenge mode where you compete against other pilots. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is coming to Game Pass at launch on November 19.
If you’re a StarCraft fan, you’ll also want to check out StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft II: Campaign Collection through PC Game Pass and Game Pass Ultimate, which brings the classic single-player campaigns to the service. You can still play the multiplayer through Battle.net, but this gives new players the chance to hop in.
Neither Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 or the StarCraft remasters will be on Game Pass Standard just yet, but this first wave of November titles is going to pump up that tier. Indies like the over-the-top Turnip Boy Robs a Bank and the handmade Harold Halibut are hitting Standard on November 6.
Of course, if you still want to play more Black Ops 6, the Nuketown multiplayer map, which is modeled after the classic map from Call of Duty: Black Ops, is now available. You can also buy the Vault Edition Upgrade for the season 1 battle pass, an operator pack, and more weapons.
You can check out the full list of additions 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.