Topic: PC Gaming

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 have the Nvidia RTX 3090 with more than 20GB VRAM with Windows 11 so I'm good. I don't see a reason to upgrade when I can play all of my games at high to ultra settings now.

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

I picked up Watchdogs Legion as I was in the mood for an urban open world. I am only about 5ish hours in, but man, this game is so impressive to me and so terrible to me, almost at the same time.

Firstly, the setting, I know Americans think the UK is just London and some vague countryside around it, but it actually isn't... that. Had we got another game set in London a couple of years ago, I probably wouldn't have cared. Give me a UK based game set in literally any other city, please.

However, with the pandemic basically killing all of my options for travel, Ubisoft urban open worlds are honestly a real treat. They offer a level of detail, recreation and one to one scaling really unlike anyone else is doing. I probably spent the first couple of hours of my playthrough just zipping from recognisable landmark to recognisable landmark, nostalgically dreaming about the days before the pandemic.

That said, reminiscent of Night City perhaps, you only need to spend a couple of hours in this London for the novelty to start wearing off and for you to really start noticing how lifeless the whole place is. From the immersion shattering Americanisms that should have never got by QA, to the repetitive, ham-fisted, exposition podcasts looping on the radio, to how buggy the game still is even today despite post launch support ending (including even a glitchy, bugged out, bench marking tool unlike anything I have seen) to just how surface deep everything is. Even shops aren't something you enter, you access from your phone on the outside.

Then there is stuff like all the procedural generation randomness, which is initially such a cool concept, but it is clear we aren't quite there yet with this tech. Almost all of my recruits sound exactly like someone fed a bunch of text through a text to speech bot. I know that is what they are, but I thought the illusion was meant to be there that they weren't? And they do mix in actual performances in between the robot voices, so it just makes the text to speech bots all the more obvious. I started to wish I was playing as just one character who was properly acted.

Then there is the gameplay. I have always liked the amount of options Watch Dog games gave you to approach a task, and that is no different here either, but much like with the London it is set in, I feel like a lot of these mechanics lack any real depth. If you think of each encounter like a puzzle to be solved, the number of individual puzzles is quite small and it becomes pretty easy to stop exploring out of the box solutions and to instead just go through the motions. I guess that is more of a me problem, than the games problem, as I could still experiment if I wanted but I wish they incentivised it more or just built up your options for longer so you got to use certain toys more before their use ends. I dunno.

ooh, very nice, I've been a fan of the SCP foundation for a long time now, and it's cool that another game is coming out. 😲

yeah, what actually proppeled me into the SCP universe so long ago, was the containment breach game, it was fascinating for me at the time. 😉

ah the old website. 😁
https://www.scpcbgame.com

also the new multiplayer looks interesting.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782380/SCP_Containment_Br...

I am about 20ish hours into Watchdogs Legion now and just feel like I have come around on it so utterly, I really love this game, warts and all. Like yeah, the world is plastic and lacking the kind of dynamic events we have come to expect, it is also way buggier than it feels like it should be. However, the recruitment system is so compelling, the sandbox and variety of ways you can engage with each mission is just so freeing and all the wayward ambition charms, more than it frustrates, because at least they were trying to innovate, even if the tech may not be there yet to fully realise it all.

I feel kinda sorry for this game that it got met with a mostly mixed reception and then disappeared. I hope in a few years time it gets the recognition it really deserves.

Glad to hear that, @Pizzamorg .... I had a lot of fun with that game! I started with one guy because he was the 'best' of the available options but pretty much everyone I recruited after that was a girl, lol

I am just spending so much time recruiting so many people, I can't believe how many "classes" and "perks" you can find, and I love dressing them up in random, silly, outfits. I think the game does a really great job in representing the wide array of races and cultures you would find in London. Probably the only generic white guy I have is my spy character I hired (who has one of the most robotic sounding voices out of anyone, weirdly enough). The spy class is really awesome.

I made a little gallery of some of the touristy shots I took around London with some of my recruits here: https://postimg.cc/gallery/sgJwSxT

Yeah, I soon felt like I had plenty of good people that to use for the missions, @Pizzamorg .... Nice shots, though