Asus and Microsoft’s ROG Xbox Ally X is more of a handheld PC than an Xbox console.
Hollow Knight: Silksong doesn’t need Xbox to capture our hearts. The sequel to the indie darling Hollow Knight blazes with a subtle intensity—the result of every squeak and bark from the hand-drawn enemies to the sweeping and foreboding music running like a river through the two abridged demo levels I played. Like the original Metroidvania-style side-scroller, Silksong is a game that could likely run on every system more powerful than a Tamagotchi without much fine-tuning. Even without playing the short demo players first had access to at Gamescom last month, the game sells itself. Xbox needs Silksong to help convince players they need its new handheld, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally.
Xbox brought the game to Gizmodo’s offices to give us hands-on experience with the game I already suspected I’d adore—and test out its first true novel hardware release of the past several years. The game is self-evident. It feels reminiscent of the first Hollow Knight yet distinct, with new protagonist Hornet focusing on swift dives and strikes with her needle and thread. As for Xbox, we still don’t know how much the handheld will cost, even though we’re edging closer to Microsoft and Asus’s shrinking October release window. The Xbox Ally X is running on the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, the long-anticipated APU—or accelerated processing unit—built for handheld gaming. It’s been closing in on a year since AMD announced that chip. It’s only now that we’ll get to see what it’s capable of. Silksong is the wrong game to test that.Xbox Ally X feels more Asus than Microsoft
In every way that matters, the higher-end Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is a sequel to the Asus ROG Ally X.
