Microsoft might not have a huge lineup of exclusive games this holiday season, but who needs new games when you can play older classics for free? September’s Xbox Games With Gold lineup has now been revealed, and it includes a classic shooter and a terrific story-focused indie title.
For the entire month of September, Xbox One owners will be able to download Forza Motorsport 5: Game of the Year Edition for free. The game comes with 10 extra cars as part of the “Top Gear Car Pack,” and it’s the only Forza game that is exclusive to Xbox One — Forza Motorsport 6, Forza Horizon 3, and Forza Motorsport 7 are also on Windows 10.
Xbox One owners will also be able to grab Oxenfree for free from September 15 through October 15. The 2D puzzle and exploration adventure takes places on a creepy remote island and uses a dialogue system that allows you to build (and destroy) relationships over the course of the story. It was first available on Xbox One back in early 2016 before coming to PlayStation 4 a few months later.
Xbox 360 players will receive two very different games in September. From the first of the month through September 15, they’ll be able to download Hydro Thunder Hurricane, a speedboat racer that you’ll probably recognize if you’ve ever spent any time in a place like Dave & Buster’s. The game features both single-player and multiplayer modes, and like all recent Xbox 360 games in the program, it’s backward compatible with Xbox One.
From September 16 until the end of the month, the Xbox 360 version of Battlefield 3 will be available to download for free. Though it lacks the enormous 64-player battles of the PC version, the Xbox 360 port is still a ton of fun in competitive multiplayer, and its campaign offers a slightly more grounded take on the Call of Duty formula. Still, if you can find an inexpensive copy, we recommend playing the similar Battlefield 4 on Xbox One. The larger stages and destructibility make for some intense multiplayer matches, and the campaign features the always entertaining Michael K. Williams.
What do you think of September’s free games? Do you hope to get Forza Motorsport 6 in the future? 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.