Topic: PC Gaming

Finished Little Hope. Boy, that has to be one of the worst final twists I have ever experienced in a game - or really, in media in general. That is a 14 year olds fanfiction level of writing quality. It is a shame, as up until that ending, I was about to praise this as being a significant step up from Man of Medan. I used the accessibility settings to make the QTEs less punishing, I thought the story/location variety made things more interesting than Medan's mostly interchangeable series of corridors and they tweaked things like movement to make the game feel slightly better. But boy, they went from psychedelic mist to tossing out a random twist that doesn't really address anything, other than in the most sweeping, lazy of ways.

Oh and John died before it was over too. I really done him dirty, he had five bad traits as the demon crushed him to death. I didn't realise I made so many bad choices as him. I feel like I barely played him at all during the story, so I ***** up hard there somehow.

What do you guys think of the current GPU prices? do you think it'd be good to grab one now or wait for the holiday prices to drop even more? 🤔

I realised I totally missed the year anniversary of Biomutant. I know this game didn't land quite how many hoped, but I really enjoyed my time with it, overall. I wouldn't try and convince anyone it was a masterpiece, I know just how flawed the title is. However, I took a week off last summer and just vibed with it and had a great time. It has been a bad couple of years, but that is one of the few fond memories I have from them.

I'm pretty sure prices will drop further. Availability has caught up with demand, there's a new generation of GPUs just around the corner, the bottom has pretty much fallen out of cryptomining with GPUs, and pretty much all other PC components are now selling at or below the MSRP.

That said, if you're looking at a relatively low-end card, like a 3050 or 6600, there's only really scope for prices to fall by another fifty to hundred bucks. If that's enough to get you a better class of games right now, that might still be worth it. Also, if you need something right now for professional purposes or because your old card is on its last legs, you're not going to get fleeced nearly as badly as you would have been.

However, if you're after something high-end but already have a decent 10 or 20 series card, you should probably hang on. You'd stand to save several hundred dollars more if you do.

@markmarkmark @Matt_Barber
I'd definitely wait. NVidia is releasing 4000 series cards soon and Intel is entering the GPU space with what sounds like a 3060/3070 tier card soon. Both should give more options which can only really reduce prices. Even if it's just stores starting to clear out stock of the 1600/2000 series cards that are for some reason still being sold to make shelf space

@skywake I'd be a bit wary of Intel's cards if only because of their less-than-stellar reputation for drivers. Even when their integrated graphics have the processing power, which is actually more often than you might think, games are often glitchy or just don't work. Even if their forthcoming discrete GPUs are a lot more powerful, this could still be an Achilles heel.

As for Nvidia, they've still yet to set a date for the 4000 series and rumours abound that this might be due to an overstock of the 30-series. There are also credible reports that they asked TSMC to scale back production, on account of the crypto crash, but were refused; if that's true, there's unlikely to be anything like the same difficulty when it comes to buying Founders Edition 4000 cards.

After a couple of tough years, things are starting to look pretty rosy.

@Matt_Barber
Fair call. I mean the benchmarks of the A380 released so far are pretty all over the shop. Cost competitive in newer titles, well short on older titles. Also oddly punching above it's weight at higher resolutions. Which for it makes it a particularly bad buy because at that power bracket you'd be playing older games and lower resolutions, it's two weaknesses

But its relative strengths could swing its way with the higher tier cards. Eg if you have enough power that 4K is viable all of a sudden having a performance advantage at higher resolutions matters. And if you have more power then you're more likely to be able to push through driver disadvantages in older titles. Of course I don't expect Intel to win the "best performing GPU" crown anytime soon but in a lot of ways that doesn't really matter much anyways

If they release something that performs around the xx60/xx70 tier NVidia card at around the same price? Then that's enough to make it an option. Which is what always tends to happen with these sort of components. We all like to trawl through reviews, benchmarks and charts but at the end of the day? Most of the time they sell these things at a price similar to what their competitors are selling their performance-equivalent product at

I'd expect Intel to come in slightly lower in an effort to gain some market share. Drivers will definitely be a bit flaky early on but I think they're pretty serious about this. Expect them to close the gap a bit over the next few years (and optimisations for older games to increasingly not matter as much)

I finished the Outriders expansion yesterday (kinda), did one run of the end game and I uninstalled it. It is pretty easily up there with one of the worst things I have played this year. Oh and it appears to be basically dead already, too, as I had to put on crossplay to even find anyone to matchmake with (my friends who played base Outriders with me decided not to come back) and the lag during crossplay games is horrendous.

I said Worldslayer seemed more like a live service season than a full expansion, but I'd argue even that was too generous. The people who said they spent up to ten hours in the campaign had to be leaving their PC on overnight and finishing it in the morning. There is like three hours of content if you include your first end game run and then ???? amount of hours of mindless grinding, if you want to smash against RNG and slowly see numbers go up, as your soul leaves your body.

Between the awful AI, the oppressive RNG systems, the immense levelling grind and laggy crossplay games, 'the chase' just simply is not there for me.

Yeah, I think I can wait, thanks for the Tips.

Hopefully my other PC that desperately needs an upgrade can still hang on for a few more months.
I won't be going for super top tier anyway. But a clearance sale would be good. 😁👌

Just finished the last story mission in LEGO Star Wars: the Skywalker Saga (I also did a lot of exploring around to get as many collectables as I could between missions, and I finished with over 800 Kyber Bricks, out of 1,200). I can't believe I've put 60 hours into this.

I may run around and collect a few more things before I put it away (there are even a few planets, like Mustafar & Exegol, I've only ever been on via a story mission, so I haven't seen their open world areas at all), but at the same time I'm kinda ready to move on.

Just pre-ordered Soul Hackers 2: Digital Premium Edition via Steam a few days ago. Cost me about $114 or so, but I have no regrets. lol

There's the usual people making noise about Atlus being money-hungry, and they're probably correct, but I think Atlus deserves it for making some of my favorite SMT games. Now, go use that money and remaster SMT I & II please.

Stray is an absolutely gorgeous little game (though thematically a little darker than I'd have imagined). Despite being an indie it feels like it has thoroughly AAA production values.

Just finished the segment where I had to put a transceiver on an antenna & am back in the little open world town area.

@RR529 It's been on my wishlist ever since I first heard of it, but I'm worried the game might be too short. I heard people beat the game under five hours. Shame; I would've liked a full 10-15 hours of just exploring the world as a cat. Give me a full RPG adventure! lol

So I usually treat myself to two significant tech purchases a year, one for each of the two blocks of annual leave I book a year. Coming upto one of those breaks now and I had been thinking I'd buy a stack of HDDs and setup a new NAS. Which would be nice but between all the streaming services I have increasingly just nice. I'm starting to think I might instead pick up a "Meta" Quest 2. Because that seems like the most additional new fun things per $ I could do ATM.

Also, I like racing games and I want to gamify my fitness again the appeal of Ring Fit Adventure has long worn off. So between Project Cars 2 VR and picking up the obligatory Beat Sabre I know I can get value out of a VR headset. That and Quest 2 is about the same price as a non-OLED Switch. Seems like a pretty obvious toy to be picking up

Only thing that kinda makes me pause is the Facebook/Meta account BS and a bit of uncertainty about how nicely it'll play with Steam. Also what USB cable to pick up for it seems like a question with endless conflicting answers. But, seems like it's the only VR headset anyone is recommending and it's like 1/3rd of the price of some of the cheaper bundles from the competition. Kinda makes it a bit of a no-brainer

@RR529 I don’t know if you’re still looking for a BRD player, but this one is reported to work well with Windows 10. Use VLC Media player for good BRD compatibility.

https://www.amazon.com/External-Portable-Blu-ray-Compatible-b...

@BloodNinja, thanks!

I ultimately just got a player for the upstairs TV. It's only a 720p panel (which is why I was looking into something for my laptop, which has a 1080p screen), but the ease of use is probably worth it.

@RR529 Cool! Glad you got it solved!

NINJA APPROVED

I like the look of this. I've always been fascinated by the SCP universe (and just cryptids in general) but never got the chance to look more into it. Hopefully, this could provide a gateway for people interested in learning more. Will put it on my wishlist.

So I did end up ordering the Quest 2 and pretty glad I did TBH. Probably the most excited I've been about a new bit of gaming gear and what you can do with it since the Wii

Although I haven't really played much connected to my PC. I've mostly done Beat Sabre on the Quest itself. But from the few races I've had in Cars & Dirt? The wireless connection is surprisingly good! I don't think I need to bother with the cable which I'm kinda surprised about

I might give the VR mode in Tomb Raider a go at some point. And Half Life Alyx seems like the obvious next game to pick up. But mostly I'm probably just going to play a lot more Beat Sabre........

What you expect VR to be: Whatever the hell Zuckerberg was doing in that "metaverse" demo

What VR actually is: flailing neon sticks at boxes and being a god in google earth