As a company with several indistinguishable product lines, the last thing Acer needs is another family of laptops to follow. But with the Nitro 5, it's hoping to make a dent in the increasingly important budget gaming market. It's not the most powerful laptop around -- instead the company is hoping to attract people who game once in a while.
You can choose from configurations with up to NVIDIA GeForce 1050Ti graphics and 7th generation Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs, or AMD FX, A10 and A12 CPUs, with up to Radeon RX550 graphics. Either way, you can stuff in up to 32GB of RAM, and you have the option of PCI-E SSDs to speed up performance.
It was only a matter of time. After a quiet launch in Italy, then a larger one in Japan, Pokémon: Magikarp Jump is now available for download in the US.
Pokémon: Magikarp Jump is a free-to-play game that tasks players with raising the titular fish, training it to jump as high as it possibly can. It features all the mechanics we know and love about mobile games, including in-app purchases, always online connectivity and a progression model that retires your fish once it hits level 20. Snark aside, it looks like a cute addition to my phone that I'll have no trouble playing without spending any more.
If you want to give it a go like I will be this week, you can download it here for iOS or here for Android.
Developer Rain Games recently released World to the West upon gamers, but had to delay the Wii U port to further optimize it. While that may have been seen as a bizarre move (why bother releasing for a dead console?), this story seems to explain why they would put so much effort into the Wii U version. According to an interview with Gamasutra, Rain Games' CEO claimed that Nintendo's little box of joy saw the most profit for their previous game, Teslagrad.
"There was not many titles released for it [Wii U], comparatively. Indie titles actually got a good visibility on the platform," CEO Peter Wingaard Meldahl said. "Nintendo has this sort of double-split where two games are the entire top of the store. And we were one of those two games for two weeks in each area where we were released. That wouldn't have been the case on any other platform. That helped a lot."
Apparently Teslagrad stood right alongside Hyrule Warriors, so Nintendo wasn't shying away from sharing the spotlight with a relatively unknown developer. That takes guts and shows a strong dedication to nurturing bonds between game makers. Hopefully Nintendo keeps this up with the Switch, which they seem to be doing so far.
With 330 hours on my account, it feels utterly strange coming back to Awesomenauts after a long hiatus. I remember Clunk being my bestie, and not much else. There's a handful of characters I don't even recognize, which is frightening in a three-on-three MOBA where you have to pull your own weight.
What originally pushed me away from the game wasn't boredom so much as the dwindling active player base and everything that can entail in a competitive multiplayer title. I wasn't sure I'd ever care to return barring a sequel, but with Ronimo shifting to a free-to-play model (see the here's-what-you-get breakdown for returning players right here), I had to pay Awesomenauts another visit.
In short, the game's still got it and more players will mean faster matching queues and more evenhanded teams. Awesomenauts is a good, no-risk point of entry to MOBAs if you've ever been curious. It handles like an action-platformer, and there aren't so many characters or items to keep track of that you'll feel overwhelmed for very long. Really, I can't vouch for it enough.
"Looking beyond the coming weeks, I can tell you we already have lots of new content lined up as well," noted Ronimo in today's announcement. "We've recently been teasing a new character that will join the Awesomenauts in Update 4.1 and you can look forward to the full reveal on May 31st!"
Back when I was playing the original Injustice: Gods Among Us, I didn't think a superhero fighting game could get much better: A decent single-player story, some fun side diversions, and the opportunity to send that smug little prick Nightwing through a concrete wall face first.
I was wrong. It is way more satisfying to send Damian Wayne through a concrete wall face first. Preferably into mid-day traffic, or a piss-filled sewer inhabited by an enraged crocodile man.
Injustice 2 has fulfilled many of my weirdly specific dreams.
The extravagant MMORPG Black Desert Online has found its way onto Steam and that is a great excuse to share our favorite character-creator images. Let's see 'em. Personally, I've got to go with this one that looks a bit too much like Tom Cruise (and also the old video from which it originates).
Look at the smiles on all these shiny people!
The Steam version of the game starts at $6 thanks to a 40 percent launch-week discount, but a much-needed word of warning: you'll have to create an all-new Black Desert Online account to play here. There's currently no migration option, so pre-existing accounts aren't compatible on Steam.
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun is perhaps the coolest stealth game I'm not currently playing. It's a real-time tactical game set during Japan's Edo period in which you manage a five-person team, figuring out when and where to best make use of your crew's abilities and approaches to takedowns.
Darren dug the PC version enough to land on an eight out of ten for his review. That'll surely remain the best place to play, but Shadow Tactics is also coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on August 1 (North America) and July 28 (Europe), both digitally and at retail. Wasn't expecting that!
If you're unsure this game (or this port) is the right match for you, there'll be a demo at launch.
Those too lazy to get up and go play Pokémon GO the way it was intended have turned to third-party software to roam the game and collect monsters, without needing to physically move. Niantic has devised an interesting punishment for those with flagged accounts: replace all rare creatures with common ones such as Pidgeys and Weedles.
Unfortunately this also seems to affect players merely using map trackers and IV stat apps, who were previously flagged alongside the targeted bot accounts. Apparently cheaters have already bypassed this, and Niantic is working on a better solution to target only malicious accounts.
A teaser for the Castlevania adaptation on Netflix has just been posted on Netflix Latin America's Twitter. Watch it before it's gone!
Okay, there's not enough here to actually criticize. As for the visuals, I'm fine with it. Besides, it's written by Warren Ellis. I'm sure it'll be fine.
I still haven't really dug into Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, but I can rectify that soon now that it's in public beta on PC, PS4, and Xbox One (I mean, I kinda have since I played it in the series proper). While it was available for testing in closed form for months, everyone can pick it up and give it a go. The official site has a nice rundown of how to play if you've never touched a Witcher game before.
Much like Hearthstone, Gwent is billed as a semi-canon but basically not jaunt in the same universe, where existing protagonists can enjoy a respite from the harsh realities of their fantasy world. The cinematic trailer below is probably worth checking out if you're into the series.
If you're not a beta kind of guy/gal, you can wait until they eventually put it out on the open market. It's free, and supported by microtransactions in the form of items that grant more cards, alongside of a Hearthstone-esque crafting system.
In the latest update, Final Fantasy XV poses a survey to players asking what sort of DLC they'd like to see in the future, allowing just a single vote. Don't view the image below if you want to avoid story spoilers. Choices include a hard difficulty mode, "new stat-changing magic," new story content, and new playable characters. Story content options including exploring Ardyn's past, the line of Lucis, and Lunafreya's activities. The choices for playable characters are Cor, Aranea, Iris, Lunafreya, and Gentiana.
“We need wealth and power,” my huskarls would say. “Those with power are meant to be feared. Take what is yours.”
“No, I will not spread this negative, derogatory stereotype of Vikings that will inevitably reflect upon us in popular media!” I replied. “We will be kind Vikings. We will build alliances. We will trade.”
Suddenly, the day was upon us. A new world, a strange new people. “We come in peace, to build alliances and trade with your leaders,” I declared.
Long story short, about half an hour later I had sacked their convent and punched all their nuns. See? I punched them, not stabbed them.
Behold Hildiridr Mæginbjarnardottir, the kindest goddamn Viking.
Still haven't picked up Fallout 4 or avoiding the Season Pass since they jacked the price up from $30 to $50? Well, today at digital retailer GMG the prices have dropped on Fallout 4 to the lowest it's been so far this year -- for both the base game and the pass alike.
The drop to $16 for Fallout 4 and $25.57 are the best prices since winter sales last year. In fact, the Season Pass is currently at its cheapest ever since Bethesda raised the price to $49.99 back in March 2016. Based on past trends, we believe these prices are as good as they'll be, even when summer sales roll around in a few weeks time.
What's not hot in the GMG Fallout 4 sale are the prices on individual DLC packs. The elephant in the room is Far Harbor, which is priced at $21.57. If you need that DLC you might as well buy the full Season Pass for only $4 more and get all the add-ons (though you can also make an argument that all the other DLC isn't really worth buying).
With an eventual GOTY/Complete edition just around the corner, the current $17 + $25 price tag for the base game and season pass should be as good as it'll get. In fact, we're pretty sure it'll still be cheaper than the eventual $60 list-priced Fallout 4 GOTY edition.
The deals all require you to be a VIP member on GMG. That simply means you need to create an account or login to an existing one to get the best price. Deals listed above last until next Tuesday, May 30 at 9am Pacific.
Game deals from Dealzon. Sales help support Destructoid.
It sounds like the decision to port Bayonetta to Steam is paying off. John Clark, SEGA Europe's VP of commercial publishing, has stated that the game has sold "over 170,000" copies.
The report comes from an interview with Clark published on PC Invasion. According to Clark, the publisher is "really happy with [Bayonetta's] performance." The port released on Steam April 11th, and currently has a "Very Positive" rating.
It's still a down season in Japan as we progress out of the post-Golden Week slump into summer. Overall software and hardware sales remained on par with the low numbers last week while little changed: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Monster Hunter XX sip tea from their thrones while the Nintendo Switch pumped out another 25,000 units. Box sales are not counted. The only new Japanese title to rank this week was the Danganronpa 1•2 Reload combo.
What a time to release your revived shooter. Prey ranked fifth in software sales, but that is only just above 7,000. On one hand, you think it's not a great idea to sell a western shooter during such a down time; on the other I suppose it's perhaps better than lining it up around the time as major Japanese releases such as Splatoon2.
[Disclosure: This week Destructoid is sponsored by EVERSPACE]
Beginning with a Kickstarter campaign back in 2015, Everspace has been in an early access/beta stage since September 2016. If the comments on the Steam page are any indication, Everspace is a thrilling experience that grips players from the beginning.
Players pilot a variety of spacecraft on a journey through dangerous territories, facing a wide variety of enemies. Enemies challenge players to test not only their piloting skills, but also their ability to improvise and in order to survive. According to Rockfish Games, “…you piece together the puzzle of your existence through encounters with interesting characters, each having their own unique part of the story to tell.” The game runs on the popular Unreal Engine 4.
In addition to thrilling combat, players will also be able to loot equipment during their journey, as well as craft their own. Gamers will be able to upgrade their arsenal and increase their chances of survival. However, doom is always looming in that “death is inevitable but is also only the beginning of a much larger journey.”
The latest Humble weekly bundle is chock full of great choices. For $10, you can grab Grim Fandango Remastered, Day of the Tentacle Remastered, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Her Story, The Stanley Parable and a few others. Everything is offered for Windows and Mac while only a few games aren't available on Linux. Some also don't include DRM free keys, but for $10 you can't really complain.
You'll also nab some soundtracks if you "beat the average" or go for the $10 tier. Even with a few games I've never tried, this is one of the best bundles Humble has offered in quite some time. If you don't already own Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle, then what are you waiting for?
Quick, rhetorical show of hands: How many of you have heard of Digital Dragons? My assumption is that it's not many of you. That's because relative few consumers need to know about conventions like this. But, there's something happening here in Krakow, Poland that feels like it's set to be a pillar of Polish game development.
Last October, Destructoid visited the cities of Poznan and Warsaw to find a surprisingly impressive game development scene. Everyone knows about the giants like CD Projekt Red and Techland, but few realize how many ambitious people are trying to make a name for themselves and their indie games. It feels young in a sense, but we're already seeing some break through in a big way; Superhot cleaned up on a lot of end-of-year lists in 2016 and there's a good chance you didn't know the studio is Polish.
Like many of the people making games in Poland, Digital Dragons itself is still young. It's the fifth year of the convention, and the first in a new conference center. (Side note: The convention center has a stunningly nice concert hall.) Talking with people this week, they're thrilled with the change; this show has gotten too large for the old venue and the necessity for a bigger location can only be a good thing.
As for what it is, Digital Dragons feels like something that's a Polish GDC with more spirit (ignoring the fact that there already is a European GDC). It's half seminar, half celebration. There are talks all day long across six different rooms, and these seem like fantastic opportunities to learn. Some of the sessions are highly technical and granular in ways that I wouldn't be able to understand and you probably wouldn't want to read about. Others are business-oriented in ways that guide developers toward trends and models that they should pay attention to.
Four years on and the PlayStation 4's digital storefront is pretty well stocked. But finding more obscure stuff to buy isn't the easiest and the search function kind of sucks. As a way of addressing that on the store's web version, Sony is introducing curated lists of games from "the industry's most creative minds," dubbed The Creators. PlayStation's head of worldwide studios Shuhei Yoshida has his picks listed, as does Rocket League studio Psynonix, Street Fighter's Yoshinori Ono and the Final Fantasy XV team among many, many others.
When I was researching classic pads to use for just about any platform, a lot of folks pointed me toward the manufacturer 8Bitdo.
But it wasn't until I got a chance to try a remote that was packed into the Analogue Mini NT that I caught on. Now, everyone can use a multitude of NES and SNES variations (SFC30, SNES30, FC30, FC30 Pro, NES30, NES30 Pro) on the Switch, as there's a new firmware update available -- they just lack motion and rumble support.
Still, it'll be great for all of those SNK games on the eShop, as well as any old school fighters that happen upon the system, including Ultra Street Fighter II. We've reached out to the company to provide a report on how well the whole line performs, so stay tuned for that.
Based on my limited experience with the NES30 today, it works pretty well! You just need to upgrade your firmware, swap to Switch mode (hold Start+Y for one second), then use Down+Select for the Switch Home button. It took about five seconds to connect from the pairing screen, and I've been testing it out with Street Fighter and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with great success.
Every year, Valve holds a special event for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that allows community map makers to get some recognition. These take the form of "Operation" X and have seen major alterations to the core Counter-Strike gameplay along with a plethora of new maps. This year, "Operation Hydra" brings some new 2v2 modes, low gravity sniper battles and bomb squad shenanigans.
War Games is the biggest addition and it features a rotating selection of mods and mutators to mix up the gameplay. One mode limits all kills to headshots only; another mode sees you losing health for any missed shots (definitely me); there is also something similar to Call of Duty where you need to collect dogtags of fallen players.
Along with that, you can opt to get the $6 "All Access" pass that will grant you a cooperative campaign, a commemorative coin and a journal to track your stats. This is similar to previous years and will only be available during the event. Same goes for the stars you earn from completing missions, which can be traded for fan made gun skins.
I've always wanted to try out the co-op campaign from these events, but I tend to forget the event is even going on. Maybe this year I'll give it a shot...maybe.
It's hard to believe that Overwatch has not only been out for a year, but that it's one of Blizzard's biggest successes, and one of its only new IPs in over a decade. They're pushing hard when it comes to their global eSports presence, but there's also a steady stream of content and events to keep people interested all around.
One of which includes the "Overwatch Anniversary," which brings in new skins, emotes, plus a bunch of other cosmetic stuff on top of three arena new maps -- Necropolis, Castillo, and Black Forest. I'm not particularly impressed with any of the skins (outside of Sentai), and the maps are limited to arena play, so this isn't one of their better events -- but still, it's better than nothing.
I'm really just amazed that the game in general has held up this well. I play randomly during the week and typically rank Gold or above in competitive, and I'm still not getting bored.
Cancer treatments are becoming more personal. The Food and Drug Administration recently gave accelerated approval for Keytruda, a pre-existing drug from Merck, for use on patients diagnosed with solid tumors containing a specific biomarker. Rather than basing treatment on where the mutation originated, Keytruda will be used to treat microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) cancers, those that are mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) and are otherwise not able to be surgically removed. These types of tumors affect how the DNA is repaired inside the cell.
You no longer have to be part of a privileged few to try out Facebook's personal fundraising. The social network has just made its do-it-yourself donation campaigns available to every adult in the US. If you'd like help with a medical bill and don't mind Facebook taking a cut (6.9 percent plus 30 cents), a donation campaign is a quick hop away on your phone or the web.
Everyone loves getting robocalls, right? Because if there's one thing that everybody trusts, it's an automated system selling you something you definitely don't need. Unfortunately, it looks as if a whole new front in the war against telemarketers could open up if the RNC gets its way. Recode reports that the Republican National Committee has moved to support a system to let advertisers dump calls into your voicemails. Yay.
You may have heard about this thing called a gigabit phone recently. The term was thrown around a lot during the launch of Samsung's Galaxy S8, since that's the first commercially available handset to support the technology. But gigabit will also be included on Sony's Xperia XZ Premium and other forthcoming high-end phones, which means you'll probably hear about it a lot more later this year. And it's going to be a big deal.
DJI made a name for itself with its chunky flying Phantom drones, but within the last year we've seen the company really embrace the value of smallness. Despite numerous delays, the Mavic Pro was greeted very positively, and now the company has another small drone — the Spark — made for first-time pilots and drone dabblers alike. DJI likes to call the Spark the "perfect lifestyle accessory," which sounds like a stretch if we've ever heard one, but the company might not be totally off-base. After all, the Spark weighs less than a can of pop, comes in five colors, and can be controlled (at least a little) with simple hand gestures.
Russia's state-owned technology business, Rostec, is building a secure voice and video communications platform. In a statement, the company revealed that the system will be a "Russian analogue of Skype," albeit with more security. The software is expected to set a "benchmark in terms of information security," capable of handling voice and video calls, text messaging and file sharing. The as-yet unnamed platform won't directly access the internet, so it won't be "deciphered by hackers or foreign intelligence agencies."
If the Mirai botnet taught us anything, it's that no device connected to the internet is safe from hacking.
In that incident, malware hijacked thousands of devices, including DVRs, modems and security cameras. But as the worlds of sex and technology begin to intersect, the threat of hacking will enter a new, potentially more dangerous realm. Already, one connected vibrator has had its security called into question, and it won't be the last. When the inevitable happens, is there a legal framework to deal with such a crime?
Sphero's made a name for itself with connected, rolling toys like the Ollie, SPRK and, perhaps most famously, the Star Wars-inspired BB-8. Of course, the company couldn't have brought its replica of the Force Awakens character to market without Disney's approval, and the two seem to be keen on working together. Today, Sphero introduced its first app-controlled car, based on the "Ultimate Lighting McQueen" personality from Pixar's Cars franchise. Sphero says the new toy is its most animatronic device yet, featuring five motors for steering, drifting, lifting and moving up and down, as well as animated eyes and a mouth that make it feel more realistic.
