Topic: PC Gaming

Once I got an SSD I never went back. I have 3 M.2s with two being NVMe's and two 2.5" SSDs in my desktop and three M.2s in my gaming laptop (one being NVMe). With prices plummeting year after year platter drive will only be used for commercial archiving and raw storage.

@6ch6ris6
Yeah, I've been a huge advocate of SSDs for years. I went as far as installing a 30GB ssd as a boot drive back when a 30GB ssd was a viable ssd size. Have had an SSD for boot in my main PC since probably around 2008

But I've always also had a HDD for mass storage. Usually an old spare laptop HDD from upgrading laptops to have an SSD. And I'd store the bulk of my steam library on that. But it's at the point now but where even that isn't really needed. You can comfortably be entirely SSD

The only reason I need, well "need", mechanical storage now is for Plex. An you don't need that much speed for even 4K video really

@skywake my current PC had a SSD boot drive (via SATA though) and a HDD for everything else. now i bought an m.2 NVME SSD für the games i currently play and i only use the HDD for games i dont play anymore, but might wanna come back to later. dont wanna download them so moving them from one storage device to the other via steam is very helpful. my next pc probably wont have any mechinical drives anymore

Playing The Quarry on PC. I am only a couple of hours in, but far enough in to say my emotions are very mixed. I guess this maybe sounds weird but I feel like I am almost too desperate to like this and it is holding me back from properly just enjoying it for what it is.

What I am trying to say is this is getting glowing reviews, I love these types of games and it is riffing on my favourite sort of horror so I thought I would just love this out of the gate. But right now I'm just... not loving this and so the whole time I am just focusing on why I don't love this, rather than just enjoying it. I dunno, it's weird. I am weird, I guess.

To try and explain why I am not loving it. There is some jank, I know that sorta comes as part of the package with these types of games and there is some clear mechanical refinement from previous titles, but I still far prefer sequences with QTEs than trying to awkwardly wrangle with the controls.

The game seems to run pretty ***** on my PC, too. Given it is a game of such high fidelity, it is difficult to know if it's just poorly optimised or my PC is just struggling to run it. But that might play a part, too. Especially when the game transitions to a new scene, it seems to almost breakdown entirely and that really pulls me out of it. Especially if the game locks up, which it has done a few times, requiring a force close.

But I do think there are other issues which are more baked into the actual design of the game. The environments, for example, are large and beautiful. This would be a positive, but they don't seem to add any extra points of interactivity to justify these larger environments and since characters always feel weird to control in these sorts of games, having more space to awkwardly bumble around isn't that fun for me.

Then there is the sort of core part of the game... choice. In past titles, there was always an immediate and then a longer term ramification for a choice. You were shaping the psychological profiles of characters and their dynamics with other characters in the short term depending on the choices you made, and then down the road this will culminate in a zig or zag. That may be happening behind the scenes here, but this isn't being relayed to the player. I guess in some senses this is a positive as it makes it less gamey, but I feel like it takes away some of the weight or excitement from a choice, as you don't have that immediate feedback from it. Like I say, it might still have huge pay off later on, but I'd like to see the cause and effect of my choices shaping things.

Also, the game looks almost so good it is a detriment, because sometimes the facial animation can be a bit weird and honestly, some of the animation in general is a bit weird. There is a scene where someone smears something on their face and it is like a prop hand on a string out of frame is wiping across the characters face or there is a scene where two characters are kissing and it looks like some weird unofficial mod for how strangely animated it is. In other games these wouldn't probably even hit the radar, but they pull me right out of the experience here, given how good it is uncanny valley territory the rest of the game looks.

Also the characters, too. They try to play to archetypes, modernise some of them and subvert others, it is all perfectly serviceable but I feel like they needed to do a bit more than just a bunch of stock characters, since we are spending way more time with them than just a 90 minute movie and are supposed to be fighting for their survival. However, I am happy to eat crow on this if further down the line when the ***** hits the fan I really bond with them. However, right now, everyone seems like different shades of emotionally stunted ***** and had this just been a conventional camp slasher, I would already be rooting for them all to die.

Haven't had much time to play that yet, @Pizzamorg .... I get what you're saying about the graphics, at least, though
I'll see about the rest tomorrow morning, now, though

Spoilers ahead for the Quarry so be warned (I am going to dip in and out of spoilers, so cba with trying to format all the tags, so just putting the warning up top).

I am up to Chapter 6 of The Quarry, probably just over five hours into my playthrough, and the game has really turned around for me. I do think the beginning takes far too long, the characters just aren't interesting enough to justify it. And I am sorta torn, because I kinda woulda like a pure 80s slasher done in the Supermassive style, but instead I guess this is more of a werewolf story? Unexpected, but werewolves and 80s summer camp slashers are like two of my favourite horror things, so I guess this was made for me!

I also thought I was doing quite well, but I am up to Chapter 6 and the culmination of all of my failure seems to be really stacking up!

Emma is wandering around alone and wet, and she may end up being my final girl, as she has survived multiple encounters with the monsters and my more obvious final girl is now dead.

One guy has turned into a monster and decapitated another character (the one I was so sure was gonna be the final girl) so that is one that is at least fully unsaveable. I have no idea if I can reverse the monsterfication of the other guy, so I may already be two down.

There is at least one another guy who got infected, we cut off his hand with an awesome Evil Dead referenced Groovy chainsaw, but I have no clue if this actually helped or will end up killing him anyway.

I also have another guy who might be dead after getting caught in a trap, too. I still don't know if the Hunters are actually the good guys, and how the weird ghost thing or the Hackett family, fit into all of this, so maybe this guy getting captured will guarantee his safety. But this is Supermassive, so probably not.

So yeah... this ain't going so well. Haha!

Oh, wow, you're way ahead of me, @Pizzamorg .... Because of all the demos available, I'm playing those, though I did finish chapter 1 & I don't think anyone is dead yet but I haven't looked into it all & will just see how it goes for now

Data hoarding basically. I have a NAS currently which has a tad under 5TB of movies. Maybe a few hundred GB other files, photos, music etc. Pretty much all of it is ripped from either my collection of DVDs/BluRays/UHD BluRays or family member collections. The DVDs don't take up much space at all, the BluRays are compressed a bit so take up 5-20GB each. The UHD discs are straight rips and are ~100GB each

It's setup with Plex so I can stream them from anywhere, bandwidth permitting. Although I don't have enough UL to stream the UHD movies anywhere but at home

tl;dr. It's basically like having a large HDD plugged into every device in your home that, if you want, anyone on your network can access

Cool, thanks, @skywake .... That's a lot of films! You been trying any of the demos up for the Summer of Gaming shows?

I am up to Chapter 9 of The Quarry now, so spoilers ahead:

I ended up getting another playable character killed. I ***** up a door puzzle and then after some cause and effect, chain of event, stuff later he ended up getting eaten. He kinda set everything in motion though, so I guess this is karma? It is a shame, as I actually found him quite likeable and I dunno if it's just because of the choices I made, but given he acts as sorta like the starting gun for everything, it sorta feels like he falls out of the main story very early on.

Same with Emma too, I dunno if it is because of my choices, but although she has had a few badass scenes, she is sorta floating in her own side story and seems to disappear from the game for hours at a time. Even when there are opportunities for her to seemingly join a more central narrative, the game doesn't let me.

I sorta thought she'd end up being my Final Girl because of all the encounters she survived, but they reintroduce Laura who is more like your typical Final Girl and Emma has sorta fallen out of the story entirely now.

I think overall though, given I am playing this blind and don't have the deluxe version with the free rewind, I think for a first playthrough I am doing relatively okay:

• I have two confirmed dead.
• I have got at least four infected (but at least one of them probably would have died had they not become infected). We do know now that there is a cure for the monsterfication, but I still don't know whether it is actually true or whether we can actually pull it off.
• That guy with one hand is now wandering around a scrapyard in the dark with only Brenda Song with a shotgun for protection. I guess we will have to see how this plays out. I can think of worse things than being trapped with a soaking wet Brenda Song, but I don't have a lot of faith in this guy living.

I have to big a backlog to bother with demos. If I want to try something new I just need to scroll down in my library a bit to find some game that I've never played and don't remember getting

So I finished my first play through of The Quarry, ended up ***** up right at the end, overthinking things and playing myself, so I ended up doing the final chapter twice. I know that kinda goes against the whole 'do it blind and accept whatever happens' first time around playthrough, but I was so close to the end, I just felt cheated.

Overall, I gotta be honest, I thought the game was fine but I am sorta confused by why people are going so mad for it. I do kinda wanna do another playthrough to mess around with the death rewind system, because reading some spoilers of some accounts of this, it seems like this system shows like how far back some of these choices go, with some decisions having payoffs hours later. I also think the director's chair movie mode is an interesting concept, setting up the characters how you want and then just hitting go and seeing where they end up.

However, from immersing myself in spoiler territory since doing my first run, it seems like a lot of the game is like locked in no matter what you do. And you could argue all of these games are smoke and mirrors in the end, but they made some really outlandish claims with this one (like a thousand different branches and 130 endings or something?!) and given this is getting mostly rave reviews with no one really calling this out, I wondered if maybe some mad lad had truly done the whole "divergent story" game we have been promised since games first began.

But no, it seems like a lot of the stuff that I thought was just the result of my choices, is just how the game has to play out. You might get to events in slightly different ways, but our stories are going to be almost identical no matter what choices we both made. I think the only way to get truly unique scenes is to get characters killed, but even then, the overall story will still be basically identical.

I think another thing that really hurts the replayability of The Quarry is there isn't the elasticity you are probably expecting. What I mean by this, is if you don't get characters to certain points in the story, it seems like you just don't get that story beat whatsoever. One of the biggest things I was looking forwards to seeing is how scenes will play out if X isn't alive to get to that sequence, however, the answer seems to be that the sequence just won't happen at all.

I was listening to Greg Miller's recount of his playthrough and because of who died in his playthrough, his game basically just ended at the conclusion of the second, it was basically missing the whole third act entirely which really brings quite a scatty story to somewhat of a complete whole. If that is what they mean by diverging paths, that you just lose content to give things a proper definitive ending then... that is bad, in my opinion.

I guess I won't truly know until I do my own playthrough, but right now I would say they are still very much chasing the shadow of Until Dawn, and I wouldn't say The Quarry is the huge leap from the Dark Pictures games in the way some are selling it as.

I just finished Chapter 7, still on track to keep everyone alive, I think.... Might just look up the alternate endings, if I succeed

@Yoshi2
I own a heavy duty PC and agree whole heartedly.

The law of diminishing returns is why games on a $500 console look 90% as good as they do on my PC. Is it really worth paying an extra $2000 for that extra 10%? I don’t think so.

I did not buy my PC for the graphics. I bought it for the gyro aiming. But now with the $150 XIM Nexus controller, you can have proper gyro aiming on Xbox Series S/X and PS4. Get a $300 Series X and a $150 XIM Nexus and there ya go. $450 buys you access to current gen games that look nearly as good as PC (just at 1080p), gyro aiming like PC, SSD like PC… you still gotta pay for online. But with gamepass being such a good deal it kind of masks the cost.

I still prefer PC. I like being able to use wired headset for voice chat for quality reasons and being able to run through my DAC/Amp (Xbox and PS5 are geared toward wireless), I like the free online, I like keeping Discord open for easy chat instantly, I like the gyro aiming, and I like the hybrid play via Steam Deck.

But honestly. A console with XIM Nexus gets you 90% of the PC experience for 20% of the cost. I don’t fault anyone who prefers consuls because the truth is it’s much better bang for buck. And they’re good enough.

If you got it like that and can do a 2080 ti + i9 9900k or better with a SteamDeck on the side, I highly recommend it. But if you don’t, it’s not like you’re missing out on much, barring the hybrid experience (that is, assuming you grab a XIM Nexus, otherwise you are missing out on that sweet, sweet gyro aiming).

I think it speaks volumes that the Series X is almost constantly out of stock after eighteen months on the market. It's a great platform in terms of value for money, ease of use, ecosystem and performance.

That said, you certainly can play almost all the same games on a PC if that's what you want. It's just good to have options.

@Yoshi2 I don't have anything against Xbox. In fact, my friend has an Xbox, and thanks to cross-play I can play Halo MCC and Halo Infinite with my friend. Even one of the first games I bought with my new PC a few years ago was Super Lucky's Tale, a Microsoft published Xbox and PC game. As a PC gamer, I like how Microsoft games come out on both Xbox and PC, it's also why I watch Xbox's presentation each year, it also means new PC games.

The big thing that PC has over consoles is free online. You pay for the game, and that's it, you can play online without paying extra fees. Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch, you have to pay to play online. Nintendo's previous consoles had free online play, which is actually why I'm critical over Switch Online. Also, gaming PCs in general are more powerful than consoles.

Keep in mind, I don't hate console gaming at all. I play both Nintendo and PC. Just my experience having played both for years, I got my first gaming PC when GameCube was current. Often played games I didn't have on GameCube on it.

Oh, wow, FFVII Remake Intergrade is 30% off on launch .... Buy it now to encourage them!

So since The Quarry didn't turn out to be as replayable as promised, I decided I'd go back and try and finish up the Dark Pictures games. Man of Medan, sadly, makes a... not so great first impression.

This game feels like it is significantly lower budget, with far less refinement passes. That isn't to say it isn't still quite pretty, because it is, but it just feels really rough after The Quarry. Maybe that isn't fair to Man of Medan, but sadly, this is where we are.

The janky parts of the Quarry are somehow even jankier here, with even more tank like control of characters in tight, fixed camera angle, environments. Oddly low quality animation in The Quarry, feels somehow of even lower quality here. Faces have a much more artificial, rubbery, gamey, look to them with far worse performances and oddly muffled and artificial sounding audio all making it feel far less convincing than The Quarry did.

It is also mechanically more involved, but I am not really sure if it is for the better. While in some senses The Quarry was too easy, at least you never failed any of the QTEs because you just had no idea what the game was going to throw at you. I am not sure if we really need face button QTEs, rhythm mechanics, stuff involving moving the analogue stick to a target before hitting a trigger within a timer and grabbing triggers and face buttons plus moving analogue sticks to interact with things all within the first 20 minutes. It is of no surprise to me at all that The Quarry basically did away with all of this stuff all together.

I do still think The Quarry perhaps overly streamlined the other systems though. It is weird The Quarry gives you only two dialogue choices, and the occasional interrupt, with no feedback on how your choices affect the character you are playing as or the characters around them. I think the one change I like in The Quarry is the removal of the timer, so you can really consider your choices.

However, otherwise, I think the systems are far better here. I like that I have the choice to say nothing at all. I like how each choice has direct feedback in terms of my characters psychological profile and relationships with other characters. It might all be smoke and mirrors, but it at least gives some sense of weight to even the smallest of choices. I feel like The Quarry lost a lot by taking this stuff away.

I liked Man of Medan when I played it, which wasn't long after release, so I dunno what I'd think now, @Pizzamorg .... It'll be interesting to see what you think of that after finishing & if you carry on with the others, too!

I actually bought Man of Medan a couple of years ago and made it a few hours in. I can't remember why I never finished it, but we're in for one hell of a dry spell for gaming now, so I went ahead and picked up the other two as they were very cheap. Gonna see it until the end, even if it sucks. 😂