As the new game releases start to ease up a little bit next month, you might be left without anything to play on your Xbox One. But fear not, as April’s free Games With Gold has something for nearly every player, even if you prefer to play video games based on bad animated sequels.
For the entire month of April, The Witness will be free to download on Xbox One. Developed by Braid‘s Jonathan Blow, the exploration and puzzle game is cerebral without being stressful. Normally priced at $40, it’s one of the best deals we’ve seen through Games With Gold to date.
From April 16 through May 15, Xbox One owners can also grab Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Released in 2015, the game is set in London during the Industrial Revolution and features two playable protagonists, the Frye siblings. An underrated gem, Syndicate was a huge improvement over Unity, which released in a broken state a year earlier. Syndicate doesn’t use the role-playing combat style seen in Origins, but its reaction-focused gameplay is still a ton of fun.
Xbox 360 owners should keep their expectations a little bit more in check for April. From the beginning of the month until April 15, you will be able to pick up Cars 2. The action-racing game features characters from the film such as Lightning McQueen and Mater, as well as over-the-top stunts. Though the film wasn’t particularly well-received, the game actually received decent reviews when it launched in 2011.
From April 16 through the end of the month, Xbox 360 players can also download Dead Space 2. The horrifying second installment from defunct developer Visceral is often seen as the series’ high point. The third game was more action-focused and the franchise was effectively put on ice after its release.
As always, the Xbox 360 games available through Games With Gold in April will also be playable on Xbox One through backward compatibility.
If you’re looking for something brand new to play on Xbox One, you might want to check out Rare’s pirate adventure Sea of Thieves. The open-world online game can be played with up to three other friends and uses a “shared world” similar to Destiny 2 or The Division.
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.