Topic: PC Gaming

Thanks to recent sales, some new PC games, along with where I bought them on sale...

Blake Stone: Planet Strike (GOG) - a classic FPS using the Wolfenstein 3D engine. You play as Blake Stone, an special agent assigned to stop the evil Dr. Goldfire from making mutants and taking over the galaxy. It reminds me of James Bond, but in space, and made improvements over the Wolf 3D engine, like ceiling and floor rendering, an automap, and lighting. Plus you can use a teleporter to teleport back to previous levels to find ammo or health pick ups.

Panzer Dragoon Remake (GOG) - Panzer Dragoon is one of those Sega games I haven't played. So far I'm liking it. It reminds me of Star Fox, it's a rail shooter, unlike Star Fox, I can turn the camera to the sides and back to shoot at enemies behind me. This game has some of the most beautiful graphics I've seen in a game. I just got to an episode that opened with one of the most beautiful looking enviorments I've seen. I love it so far.

Mortal Kombat XL (Steam) - I mostly have experience with the classic Mortal Kombat games, so this is my first foray into modern MK. Plugged in my game pad, and gave it a go, and beat one of the towers as Sub-Zero. Enjoying this one so far, haven't started the story mode yet, just did a few free fights against the CPU, and the tower, because I mostly played the classic MK games. Also, loved how Sub-Zero's fatality move used the same button combo as MK1, nice nod there.

@Sunsy
I played Panzer Dragoon on Switch for a bit but lost interest. It just wasn't as fun to control as Starfox. I hear the sequel is way better though.

@HotGoomba
If you're into all that I'm surprised it took you this long to actually get a PC.

Not sure how Steam detects the 8bitdo. You really want a controller that detects as either a Switch Pro Controller or PS4/PS5 controller, since Steam Input allows mapping mouse to gyro on those controllers. If it thinks it's an Xbox controller, or any other X-input controller, it thinks there's no gyroscope and locks that feature out. THE absolute best part of PC gaming, imo, is Steam. I don't use Epic Game Store- don't care how many free games they give away. The experience is horrible. Only Steam allows mapping gyro easily and completely customizing controls with mode shifts, toggles, etc.

The best-kept secret of Steam, is Steam Input. Be sure to enable Steam Overlay in settings from desktop mode, or play from Big Picture Mode (which is ideal for gaming). If you launch a game from Big Picture Mode in Steam, simply pressing the big fat Home button on your controller pulls up Steam Input menu, with a diagram of your controller and all the mappings. From there you can click the gyroscope symbol and select "As Mouse" to map the mouse to the gyroscope. Then in the gyroscope settings, tell it to either be "Always On" or "Activate when holding Left Trigger Soft Pull", however you like it. Done and done. Most games allow mouse control simultaneously with a controller, but there are some that don't (eh hem, cough cough Call of Duty). For those the only option is mapping everything to keyboard and mouse inputs, which is a pain.

THANKFULLY, the best kept secret of Steam Input is "Community Configs", where users all around the world set up the controls, often with gyro, and share it for you to use, all accessible from within the Steam Input menu. So you can just select "Browse Configs", select the Community tab, and look for one that says it has gyro aiming. Try a few out until you find one you like, then roll with it. You can always make small modifications to it afterward, like if the gyro sensitivity is too high you can turn it down.

So even when games don't allow mouse + controller, you can usually count on at least one person painstakingly crafting a control scheme to use gyro so you don't have to.

It's a game changer when you finally have access to modern aiming input methods for all your games.

@JaxonH Wow, thanks for the tip!

@JaxonH That's fine. I wish I could play the sequel, I'm liking the game so far. It feels good to finally play something from this series.

Some screenshots from my Steam year in review infographic.

August - September were clearly my XC3 months as I didn't touch my laptop then (ignore the translucent bar on Sept, it's only there because my finger was touching the screen there).

My games this year: platformers, anime boobs, and a few indies (surprised Final Fantasy Type 0 made my top 5 played games given I dropped it I assume pretty early on. Just goes to show how quickly most platformers can be cleared, and indies tend to be short).

A graph of my gaming interests apparently, which I find highly suspect, lol.

I have no idea how "cats" is so high up given that Stray was only my 7th most played game & I can't possibly think of what else is contributing to the statistic. I think Lollipop! has a few catgirl scenarios (exceedingly NSFW game, look up at your own peril), but again it's such a short game it can't contribute much.

I'm confused at the "LGBT+" statistic as well. I can only assume the ecchi trio (Gun Gun Pixies, Senran Kagura, Samurai Maiden) are being counted as they feature yuri elements at various levels, even though they probably wouldn't generally be counted as particularly "progressive" titles (clearly intended for the "male gaze" & all that, not that I have a problem with that, lol).

My top 3 games were Cities Skylines, Beat Sabre and Civ VI in that order. Which kinda surprised me because I don't really remember playing much Cities Skylines and Civ is such a time sink I'm shocked Beat Sabre beats it. Especially given most of the time I play Beat Sabre on the Quest itself......

Top genres/tags are VR, City Builder and Racing which doesn't surprise me at all

According to Steam, I played 18 games, 14 of which were new, and all without ever touching a controller!

My most played games were Neon White, Terra Invicta and the much improved Cyberpunk 2077.

I think the spider graph is just based on the tag cloud. I scored high for FPS, programming, walking simulator, great soundtrack, beautiful and cyberpunk all of which are tags on at least a couple of the games I played.

46 percent of my time on Steam this year was Monster Hunter Rise, which I believe also includes Sunbreak. Not bad given I already played like a hundred hours on Switch. I knew I played a lot of Rise (for me, I know my numbers are rookie compared to others), but it was interesting to see how it dominated my playtime for the first few months of the year, and then dominated my playtime over the summer when Sunbreak came out. That Sunbreak release also saw a massive spike in my playtime in a month, peaking at July and never coming that close again. It also made it look like I barely used a keyboard and mouse, but it is just because Sunbreak and Rise dominated my playtime and that was always on a controller.

Next up was Like a Dragon which made up 15 percent of my time (dominating most of August and September, as I was starting to get burnt out on Sunbreak and needing a change of pace), then WWE 2K22 at 7 and then Wildermyth and Wolcen both at 4 percent a pop (these three all dominated February and March for me, with a little of May, so I guess this was a slower portion of the year for me while waiting for new releases).

Apparently I played a total of 49 games through Steam though this year, which puts me in the top nine percent. And over half of these were new titles.

Somehow Warhammer 40k and Souls Like made it into my genre spidergraph? Absolutely no idea how that worked, but looter shooter, choices matter, hack and slack and party based RPG all sound about right.

It is also fair to point out, that this isn’t necessarily fully accurate as like “my year on PC” or whatever, because I play a bunch of titles outside of Steam. This year was the year I finally finished a play through of Cyberpunk, but i bought that through GOG. I tend to put a lot of time into the Division 2, Watchdog and AC games, but that is all through the Ubisoft launcher. I also play games on Xbox Gamepass PC or through EA Play.

All combined though, especially with my numbers from like PlayStation and Switch years in review, I played an absurd amount of games this year for an absurd amount of time.

I deleted Cyberpunk 2077 and Call of Duty Advanced Warfare from Deck since neither ran very well. Cyberpunk was running OK, then I changed some settings and it wasn't. Reverted settings but it continued having issues. Screw it. Wasn't that interested in it anyways.

And CoD also had performance issues, even on lowest settings.

I have Halo Infinite, DOOM, DOOM Eternal, Wolfenstein New Order, Wolfenstein Old Blood and Wolfenstein 2 for FPS. I can live without CoD.

But I did start playing Jedi Fallen Order again and wow, I really love this game! My one issue with it is difficulty. On standard difficulty it's too hard. Combat doesn't flow like you'd expect where you can attack, attack, dodge. Monsters attack suddenly without any tells. I kept dying over and over and over. So I changed to the easy mode, and it's way too easy. The damage reductions are fine, the issue is monsters and enemies just stand there half the time and don't attack. Like... come on. Isn't there an in between difficulty that's not super easy or super hard? So I've just been playing on Easy trying to upgrade my skills and get better at combat in hopes of switching back to Normal later.

Finished up Samurai Maiden today! I think it's more Ninja Gaiden/DMC with some Warriors elements than a Warriors clone (granted, it's more clunky than NG/DMC would be), and surprisingly challenging as it goes on. I think I may finish maxing out all the girls' affinities as I'm already pretty close to doing so, but I doubt I'm going to try & finish it on the higher difficulties as I think the only real reward will probably be extra concept art, which while neat isn't a huge motivator.

Oh, and for what it's worth it was patched last week (at least on Steam) to remove some of the wonky localization (or "censorship", depending on who who ask). When it launched all instances of "High School" or "High School Girl" were changed to "Gen Z" in the English subtitles which made some dialogue clunky as sometimes she was clearly describing a place (in one egregious instance, an explanation of how modern education goes from Elementary, to Middle, to High School, and University was changed to describing the differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, & Boomers), however all High School references have been restored.

So getting surround working on my PC was pretty trivial. The TV was a tad temperamental doing 5.1 PCM for a little bit but after a firmware update and reboot it was fine. What I need to get working now is 4K 120Hz which doesn't seem to be showing as an option for some reason. I could only get 4K 60Hz or 1080p 120Hz.... but looking now, I think my GPU might be the limit. The 1660Ti is HDMI 2.0 so 4K 120 isn't possible with HDR

Not that I'm going to be able to get 120fps at 4K on a 1660Ti anyways I guess!

You should be able to get 4K@120 via the Display Port output. There are converters from that to HDMI 2.1 if your TV doesn't have a Display Port input.

I just ordered a steam deck! Super excited to load it up with emulators. I can finally play certain games that are only on ps5!

Edit: I have heard the clunky argument but I don’t care because I never had a problem with the Wii U game pad.

@WaffleBoat
I think the difference is, Wii U gamepad wasn't designed to be taken with you. Steamdeck is. Clunky at home is one thing. Clunky on the go is another. It's also the weight of the system. It's much heavier than a Wii U gamepad.

Not that I'm arguing against it. I have one and love it. But I acknowledge it's very unwieldy and heavy, and as such not ideal for taking out of the house, or at least, not as ideal as a Switch OLED or Switch Lite.

Just keep in mind, most emulators were built for Windows and as such, have issues with Linux builds. Especially integrating into Steam. I couldn't get Dolphin to recognize the controller for my life. Only got PrimeHack working in a roundabout way because the default virtual device was KB/M inputs, so I manually mapped them all. You could probably get Dolphin working the same way, but would need to manually map keyboard keys in the controller config for each game. And it's a pain because when running through Steam, if sensor bar is set "above tv" it won't let mouse cursor reach the bottom to close windows, and if set "below tv" it won't let mouse cursor reach top to change tabs. There's a lot of nuisances like that.

Expect to put a lot of work into it to get everything working as intended. Going back and forth into Desktop mode every time you need to change something, using the on screen keyboard for everything which just makes it even more of a pain... As long as you're OK with that, you'll be fine. Me, I don't have the patience for it anymore, and frankly, I've lost interest in playing older games anyways (barring Metroid Prime via PrimeHack with gyro, and even that took me several hours to get working right, just for one single game). Any SNES/N64 I want are on Switch, but I honestly, I don't ever play those either.

Best experience will continue to be with compatible Steam games. Sticking with those it'll feel very console like. Still requires some tweaks on a game by game basis, but I typically just set everything on Low settings, cap at 30 (or 40 if battery life permits), and enable FSR. Avoid heavy games that, even on low settings, struggle to get 1.5 hrs battery. Unless you don't mind charging all the time.

Deck shines brightest with mid tier games and AAA that aren't from the last few years. The more recent stuff typically push the system too hard to run well, chew through battery like crazy, or both. However, there are exceptions. Gears 5 (playable if you edit the EAC folder name in desktop mode in game's installation files) and Halo Infinite single player campaigns run very well at low settings and get around 2.5 hrs battery life. Granted, you need to sign in online to play but, thats gonna be pretty common for games on Deck. Titanfall 2, Jedi Fallen Order, etc, they all require signing in and being online to play.

@JaxonH
Thanks for that! Im pretty sure it can run other OS though so windows isn’t a problem. And I mostly want it to be able to play Spider-Man and stray without supporting Sony.

@WaffleBoat
Oh ya, you can put Windows on it if you want. I would caution against it though because you’ll lose the best part of Deck- the console like experience and efficiency of SteamOS. You’ll see what I mean once you get yours. At least, do thorough research first to make absolutely sure it’s what you want. But, it’s certainly an option.

You’ll do fine with those two games. They’re both certified. Spiderman is a hog though. You can squeeze 1.5 - 2 hrs battery life on the lowest settings. But I have a nice trick for extending battery life, if you’re interested.

Deckmate attachment and the lightest 10,000 mAh battery in the world, the Nitecore NB10000. At just 150 grams, plus the weight of Deckmate attachment, you can increase your battery life by around 60% (It’s 38.5 Whr but that’s rated at 3.85 Volts, and devices use 5 Volts and have to “upconvert”, basically you only get around 60% of rated battery capacity in real use case- I don’t fully understand it but I do know that’s the case).

It took a lot of research to find a battery that light weight. As a result of being so lightweight it’s not going to output the full 45 W Deck can take. But it does output 20 W, and since the vast majority of games draw 20 W or less, it’s good enough. Even Spiderman averages around 20 W on lowest settings.

@Matt_Barber
Fair call, and they're a bit cheaper than I was expecting. Although probably shouldn't surprise given, you know, a DP to HDMI adapter is basically what the Switch dock is. But yeah, even so, I don't expect I'll be running that many games at 4K 120fps anyways with a 1660Ti. It'll probably be more along the lines of 1080p 120fps or 4K 60fps

@skywake
I’ve found 4k 60 to be the absolute most I want or need. The benefits beyond 60 frames, I can barely notice. And the benefits beyond 4K, I can’t notice at all. So that pairing seems to give the best bang for buck. I also don’t bother with HDR as I found it to be an absolute nightmare on windows, causing more issues than it solves, making some games look absolutely horrid. I’m just not a fan of HDR and don’t think I ever will be, as I can’t recall a single game I’ve played where I thought it was a notable improvement, but, I know some people swear by it.

Btw I use a Display Port to HDMI for my PC. In fact it’s the only way I could get it to work right. HDMI just gave me a black screen. So, ya. It’s totally viable.

@WaffleBoat, how would playing Spider-Man on the Deck be not supporting Sony? I guess they wouldn't get as much money since you wouldn't be buying their hardware & they probably don't make as much money via Steam as they do in their own ecosystem, but they're still definitely getting some of that money.

Stray is understandable though given it's self published by the devs on Steam.

I never understood the praise for Stray. I never bought it because it didn't seem worth my time. But I watched gameplay to see what it's about.

And while I am a huge cat person and think it's utterly adorable, the gameplay didn't seem compelling. In fact it seemed average at best. A cute little romp for cat lovers if you can catch on sale for $4.99 one day, but not a game I'd spend $30 on. I was particularly surprised it received a GotY nomination. While it certainly looks way better than Untilted Goose Game (another one I never understood the hype for), it just doesn't strike me as being that good of a game.

It's praise seems to hinge on 3 things- good graphics (and it does have nice, pleasing graphics, I'll give it that), it's appealing to cat lovers (which, I'll also admit it does appeal to me for that reason), and being bought and paid for by Sony, which, any time a game is PS exclusive it seems to be favored in the eyes of the media.

Idk. One day I'll catch it in a deep sale and give it a go on Deck.