If you’re low on cash after buying gifts for your family this holiday season, you’ll still have plenty of great games to play on your Xbox One. Microsoft has revealed the free games Xbox Live Gold subscribers will receive next month through the Games With Gold program, and it looks like the year will end on a very good note.
For the entire month of December, Xbox One owners will be able to download Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition for free. The crime adventure, set in Hong Kong, uses a great hand-to-hand combat system and a voice cast that includes Emma Stone, and serves as a successor to the earlier True Crime series.
From December 16 until January 15, Xbox One owners will also be able to download Outlast. The horror game, which is receiving a sequel next year, was one of the bright spots during an otherwise rocky launch for the current generation of consoles, and comes close to perfecting the combat-free horror we’ve seen in games like Amnesia and Slender.
Xbox 360 owners will have access to two very well-received games, as well, and as with all Xbox 360 games included in the program, they are fully playable on Xbox One. Outland, one of the few Xbox games made by developer Housemarque, is available from December 1 until December 15. Its gorgeous art design and combat resemble the action-platformer Strider, which saw its latest entry made free through PlayStation Plus in 2014.
Lastly, Xbox Live Gold members will be able to snag Burnout: Paradise from December 16 until the end of 2016. The racing game originally released in 2008 to rave reviews, with many praising the evolution of the series as well as developer Criterion’s take on open-world design. Since then, Criterion has also developed the acclaimed Need for Speed: Most Wanted before canceling an action-racing project this year.
What do you think about December’s freebies? Is it enough to keep you paying for Xbox Live? Let us know in the comments!
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.