Topic: PC Gaming

@Kermit1 Click on the video settings and turn off ambient mode, try to see if that works.

@StarPoint it's off in the photo and I keep it off because I find it weird.

@StarPoint Hmm, I just remembered this video. I guess I'll attempt to live with it then if a slight fix can't be found.

@SlashFuture on STEAM games with have an (i) saying they are playable on the Steam Deck. From what I've seen you can get at least 60% of STEAM games working on the Deck.

So yes most games JUST work.

@SlashFuture the Steam Deck is quite the device.

@SlashFuture I don't have one sadly but I've been watching them closely.

@SlashFuture I've heard their quite easy to mod and even upgrade. But I wouldn't try doing that until more complete guides are out.

@SlashFuture It's an honest 9/10 with how much can be done with it. Custom shells are even starting to pop-up so that's a plus.

Not a crazy amount to add, but now some 20ish hours into Dying Light 2, I am even more convinced this is a very good video game.

People said a lot of the narrative choices in the game are smoke and mirrors, but I've already seen far more consequence for my choices than in games like Cyberpunk 2077. And I do think they do a good job in making choices not too obvious, so you aren't just picking the bad or the good option neatly colour coded. My story has gone down a path I didn't really intend, and I actually think that is kinda cool.

I will say though, the game does lock you into things at times which I think kinda sucks. Like I wanted to try and play Aiden as a good person, but story branches will often inevitably result in Aiden having to kill a bunch of people. I love this in the sense that the combat is absolutely wonderful, but love this less as it robs me of my ability to truly roleplay Aiden.

I also think, maybe unavoidably, being a big open world game, it can be difficult to really get a sense of your choices truly shaping the world around you. It will change the direction of the story, and the characters in the world will comment on the actions you have taken, but really the world itself remains mostly quite static beyond taking over outposts or whatever and changing the flag on them. I will say they do a good job of actually including narrative reasons for these disconnects, so they were at least aware of this and didn't try and play it off like it doesn't matter.

And like I say, everything else is basically universally excellent. Combat starts great, then gets even better as you unlock more stuff. There is this running drop kick thing you can do to absolutely blast people off of rooftops, into each other or into traps and it really just never gets old.

Parkour starts excellent, and then if you side with the survivors you unlock all these additional traversal options, while also levelling up to get more stamina, and parkour options, that just means getting around this world is just getting more and more fun all the time.

It is just honestly a total blast, every part of it just feels so well crafted and loved.

I will say the only other negative I'd really have, is difficulty in Dying Light 2 is kind of an illusion. By that I mean that at least for side quests that take place in the world, there is a degree of RNG to them, like the kind of zombies that spawn or where they spawn etc. I have a bunch of early side quests that are in indoor locations, the idea is to tackle these at night time as the zombies come out to play at night, so you are going to have an easier path to the objective. Only for some reason every time I have attempted these some kind of super zombie is just waiting in the building for me, and no matter how many times I level up, this thing just absolutely destroys me. My RNG must be so bad, but I've basically had to give up on a bunch of side content and just focus on the main story, which kinda sucks as I love clearing a big map, which I am not sure I will be able to do here.

Luckily every story mission is beautifully crafted, so I don't mind too much. Sometimes in these kind of games, the best content is in the side missions, but that doesn't seem to have been the case for me here.

I started up Kandagawa Jet Girls over the weekend. It has a nice bright & bubbly vibe, but so far has been very easy.

I've cleared the first team's story mode & have just started on the second team's, but so far it's been extremely easy to leave the other racers in your wake even if you abstain from using any items. In fact, if one of a race's optional objectives is to hit every other racer at least once, you kinda have to let them pass you up at the start of the race otherwise you'll be way too far ahead to use items.

There's at least half a dozen teams though, so maybe their story modes will get progressively more difficult. Still a nice game though.

Ended up getting the PC version of Hogwarts Legacy, performance is apparently put to the test when you get to Hogsmeade, so I guess I will see what happens when I get there, but the opening hour of the game held up really well for me. With the help of DLSS, I was able to achieve far higher frame rates and resolution than I would have on PS5.

The first hour makes a pretty strong impression, too. The character creator was a little disappointing, lots of options but not a lot of granular detail. I would usually make a female character but it felt weird here as you are playing as a child, so I tried to make teenage me, and just ended up with a kinda generic ginger dude in glasses, oh well.

Game is gorgeous though, although there is some uncanny valley weirdness to the faces/voice acting, almost feels AI generated at times, just feels weird and off. I really like the animations for spell combat, just using that generic spell and the parry (which is wonderfully forgiving), my wizard looked and felt like a total badass. For the most part, with some tweaks, the default key bindings aren't so bad, either.

I let the Sorting Hat sort me, they sorted me into Ravenclaw. For those with intelligence, creativity and wit. I'll take it.

@Pizzamorg my mortal enemies are Ravenclaw lol LONG LIVE HUFFLEPUFF!!!!!!!!

@Kermit1 Aren't you the weirdos obsessed with plants?

@Pizzamorg Yes yes we are! Ya'll be gifted with "creativity" and "smarts" but I bet you can't make a Gillyweed grow even if you tried.

Keep telling yourself that as you play in the dirt, while we ponder the stars

@Pizzamorg keep your head in the clouds while WE grow the very things you need to survive.

So, update, performancewise Hogsmeade is indeed a disaster. Kinda reminds me of BOTW where you would go to that forest and the game would just absolutely tank for some reason. Like Hogwarts has a little hitching when you transition between gameplay and cutscene, but Hogsmeade is a total mess. Walking around tanks my FPS below 40 fps (bearing in mind the rest of the time it is around 80 plus), and you have to fight a boss in this location and my God, the game was literally down to single frames fighting this thing. I even tried turning a bunch of my settings down and it basically made no difference.

Been a bad year for PC Ports so far, the other big release was Forspoken and that is basically unplayable on my rig. Seems like unless you have a 4090, you can't play that game on PC, unless you wanna play it like upscaled 1080p at 30ishfps. Unacceptable. Apparently some big patch is coming for that, dunno when.

Also apparently there was a Day 1 Patch for Hogwarts Legacy, can't imagine how bad the game ran before this. I woulda been gutted to pay the extra for that early access, if the game was basically unplayable for three days.

So funny when I am also playing Dying Light 2, a game that is by technical definition an indie game, but also a big open world title and that runs basically flawlessly on my system on really high/close to max settings. And for people that know, Dying Light 2 has technology pushing draw distances, too, not to mention a huge amount of stuff just active at any one time with all the zombies going around and dynamic events with NPCs, and almost no visible loading screens at all when you transition between indoor and outdoor space.

I love my steam deck so freaking much.
I dislike Harry Potter so freaking much.

@WaffleBoat "You've got a Steam Deck, Harry"