The sun is shining, public pools are open, and the allure of the outside world might be drawing you out of your game room, but worry not! Xbox’s Games With Gold program has four new free games arriving to Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners in July, and it is an eclectic mix of titles.
Beginning on July 1 and running through the end of the month, Xbox One owners will be able to download Ubisoft’s Grow Up for free. A sequel to Grow Home, it sports a cute, polygon-filled art style and clever open-world platforming. Though it was criticized for failing to innovate, Grow Up received praise for its changes to the game’s overall mission structure.
From July 16 through August 15, Xbox One owners will also be able to download Runbow. With support for up to nine players both locally and online, each contestant must race against the clock, carefully avoid obstacles and take advantage of new platforms whenever the game’s background color changes. Runbow was previously released on PC and Wii U. If you don’t have an Xbox One or Xbox Live Gold, you can pick it up on Steam for about $5 right now. It also just released for Nintendo 3DS, if you haven’t put your old handheld into storage.
From July 1 through July 15, Xbox 360 players can download Kane and Lynch 2. The violent crime game can be played both solo and with a friend on Xbox Live, and like all Xbox 360 games released through the program from now on, it is fully playable on Xbox One, as well. Kane and Lynch 2 might be the perfect game to tide you over until Hazelight’s cooperative thriller A Way Out releases.
Disappointed with the recent film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales? Perhaps a video game will help ease the pain. From July 16 through July 30, Xbox 360 and Xbox One owners can grab Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game. Featuring all of the films’ major characters and contents from the first four movies, the game also supports local cooperative action. It isn’t Sea of Thieves, but it should keep us satisfied for now.
Which game are you most looking forward to playing from July’s Games with Gold lineup? How do you think it compares to last month? 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.