After the holiday season, you likely have a huge mountain of new games to play, and if you’re especially lucky, you may have even received an Xbox One as a gift. But if you’ve already blown through your stack of games and need something new to play, January’s free Xbox Games with Gold have you covered.
For the entire month of January, Xbox One owners will be able to grab The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III for free. This is the first time the action-role-playing game has been released on Xbox One, and it comes with Xbox One X support. The original The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing was free in December 2015 through the program.
From January 16 through February 15, Ubisoft’s survival-horror game Zombi will be free on Xbox One. Originally a Wii U exclusive called ZombiU, the game uses slow combat and resource management to separate it from the more action-oriented horror games we see today. With a world that persists after your character dies and classic, dumb zombies in England, it’s an underrated and atmospheric adventure.
Two Xbox 360 games will also be available in January, playable on Xbox One systems, as well. From January 1 through January 15, players can get Tomb Raider Underworld. It’s a bit campier than the newer titles, but it still has plenty of puzzle-solving, platforming, and third-person combat.
Lastly, from January 16 through January 31 Xbox 360 and Xbox One owners can snag Army of Two. The cooperative third-person shooter features plenty of intense action and “a conspiracy so vast, it threatens the entire world.” Mostly, however, you will just be shooting people in the face with a buddy, which is often all you really need.
At $69 in total value, Games with Gold is a fairly nice deal in January, but it pales in comparison to what was offered in December. Last month’s freebies included Back to the Future: The Game and Warhammer: End Times — Vermintide on Xbox One, as well as Child of Eden and Marlow Briggs on Xbox 360. We hope Microsoft has some big-name games planned for February’s freebies, as very few new AAA titles are releasing before March 2018.
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.