What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

I got Disco Elysium and Control in a bundle (not sure why they were bundled together honestly) so I went and completed both of them over the last week and a half.

Disco Elysium is, uh, it's something. The closest thing I can get to describing the gameplay is an interactive graphic novel with RPG elements, because it's definitely not an RPG, but graphic novels don't typically have skill points either. It's somewhat slow-paced which is fitting as it is a detective murder mystery, but at the same time it's chaotic and confusing, because the main character is a walking disaster and savant. I'm not aware of any other game where over half the dialogue is literally just different parts of the MC's psyche having conversations or arguments with each other, and all the perks are just new states of mind or ideologies, but it's all executed so smoothly that it makes sense despite nothing about the MC making any sense. Plus, every single line of dialogue (except the MC's actual voice) is voiced, which is an impressive feat.

Control is considerably more conventional, but stunning in its own way. The setting of the Oldest House is interesting in that it's both mundane yet bizarre at the same time, so it's perfect for its paranormal theme. The lighting and environmental destruction effects are also top notch, and heated fights are a real spectacle. On top of that, combat just feels really good mid to late game, with early game being a bit of a slog until you unlock more powers. The story is fine, nothing incredible or terrible, but you can tell the environmental storytelling is much more prominent, as the missions encourage you to explore every inch of the map to see what strange things or experiments are going on in every corner. One of the DLCs is also centered around Alan Wake, one of the developer's previous games, which is a fun way to tie those universes together in a way that feels completely plausible.

Armored Core 6 has been amazing. It's been slow progress, but I'm finally coming up to my first ending and looking forward to doing the rest. Highly recommend if you like challenging games.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has also been tons of fun. Well, technically I haven't been playing it but my Wife has when she's been taking control for a game to play. I am, however, getting the core of the experience. I do highly recommend it, but it is a rare sequel these days that does actually benefit from playing the previous two. They also are great games though, so if you like JRPGs and have a Switch, just go play them.

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As for board games? I recently got myself a copy of Turncoats which has proven to be just as simple yet deep as I was hoping it to be. It took a moment for the people I introduce it to to wrap their head around the concept, but then once they got it they were enamored by it as well. Also, the version I got wraps up in a neat little pouch! Here's a review if you've not heard of it

I've also been hosting board game nights at the office lately. My last session they played (across multiple tables and groups)

• Monikers
• 6 Nimmit/Take 5
• CLANK!
• Castles of Mad King Ludvig

At this point, I think the average game level of the players has risen high enough to play some more interesting games my next session. I'm hoping to do some Co-op games, but I don't have a good personal selection other than Pandemic and Forbidden Island. I was wondering what other people think for a good co-op game. I need it to allow talking right now, as I'm also using it as a means to foster leadership abilities amongst the team. I've had my eye on Burgle Bros. 2, is it worth it?

I've been jumping between remastered Dead Space and Snow Runner. Dead Space is just a great horror shooter in space with 70's Alien/Sci Fi vibes to the in game universe. Snow Runner is just a relaxing offroading vehicle game where you drive around in all types of 2x4 and 4x4 vehicles and do "missions" that may involve finding lost or stuck equipment/vehicles to checking on water pumps in a swamp, a the while you risk getting your vehicle bogged down or stuck in nasty quagmire.

I've been playing starfield. The first 10 hours I enjoyed quite a bit - the gunplay is pretty good. After that, though, the very anodyne writing and generally boring quests started to drag me down... Bethesda, please: Stealth missions are not fun in your system. That's okay, but please, please stop writing them.

And whoever invented the temple "minigame" should be fired immediately.

I just restarted factorio after putting it down for a year or so to finish school (factorio and university are... somewhat incompatible.) Just got robots up in my current map (Have finished the game a couple of times, this map im going for a train-based megabase).

Wife got me to start playing outer wilds, immediately hooked. Hopefully ill still have enough time to play factorio.

Finally playing Mass Effect. Got the legendary edition. Just beat the first game and enjoyed it a lot. But the second game feels like a slog. The plot of the second game also feels a little shoehorned in. Like they didn't intend for a second game so they just thought of some random alien and made them the bad guy. A far cry from the excellent and well defined antagonist Sarin, from the first game.

I've been playing Talos Principle II every free moment I get since release day. I'm currently committed to completing every puzzle and bonus star in each hub area before continuing to the next. This is all coming off a quick replay of the Road to Gehenna expansion for the first game. The puzzles and new mechanics are very satisfying, and everything else has taken a big leap in quality from the original - brings to mind Portal 2 in that regard.

Hogwarts Legacy -- I guess it's okay open world Harry Potter game if you're into Harry Potter. It feels like it was more designed with the principle of "all within the Harry Potter experience", like the beasts, spells, potions and whatnot (no Quidditch). Those systems felt kinda surface level though, just to tick a box spreadsheet. Also the busy work like the Merlin "puzzles" are impossibly easy, no brains required after you solve the first one of each type, which all are super simple.

For a game that tried obviously steer away from Rowling's TERF assholery with a colorful cast of characters, the choice at the beginning where you kinda get to pick your favorite from two, it was so disappointing that the one I chose ended up having a much smaller role than the other one (even though neither had a direct part in the main story). And speaking of the main story, it wasn't bad but super basic with some neatish ideas (though left unexplored) and all the emotional beats and especially the ending felt rushed or just not there.

All in all, it's probably worth your time if you really want to experience the Harry Potter world, it's a solid game, but if you're not -- ehh skip it unless you are really desperate for open world games. But without the Harry Potter crust, I'd call the game forgettable.

This past week I finished playing Jusant, which is definitely my personal GOTY (tied with Planet of Lana), and continued to play Alan Wake 2.

Playing these two games has me reflecting on on this comment I read not too long ago:

What I always say about FromSoftware games is that they know they are games, they want to be games- They don't want to be movies. I feel like too many games (going back to when movie cut scenes and voice acting became standard) want to give you a cinematic experience. Games aren't movies.

Miyazaki said that the player's actions are the story of Elden Ring. I think that's very telling of how they approach storytelling. People say the story of Elden Ring is all in the lore, in the item descriptions- That's partly true. The backstory is told environmentally and through items and such.

But, there's also an effort to focus on gameplay as the story of the game, rather than gameplay being something you do in between the story scenes.

I'm definitely a classic example of the "can't play games anymore after FromSoft meme", and this sums up really well why I'm feeling disappointed in playing Alan Wake 2 right now. I'm really interested in the story, but the gameplay is letting the game down a lot for me.

This is where "indie" games like Jusant ultimately end up providing a more enjoyable experience for me than AAA games - they have to remain hyper focused on the quality of the core gameplay loop and use it as the primary mechanism for storytelling.

I recently got 4 games that were on my backlog at discounted prices (it is the most discountlicious time of the year after all). I did want to get through these before the 4 new and very attractive looking games from my list that were just released over a period of what, ten days? get their own discounts! (Slow down, 2023! That's too many games!)

Based on reviews and opinions I wasn't sure they'd be worth full price. Here are a few words about the two of them I have finished, so you can make your own decision. They do have a couple things in common.

Wavetale: This is an "open world" platformer that takes place in a watery world (reminded me of Submerged 2 a little, though I'd say Submerged 2 was better). The ambience is colorful and cartoonish. The protagonist is a nice teenage girl who wields a fishnet and has to deal with an ecological disaster created by the previous generations. Very relevant, right?

You start the game with all of the movement options, including air dashes, a magical unexplained hookshot style grab, multi-jump and gliding by spinning your fishnet above your head like the blades of a helicopter. You have a friend who is a shadow creature who lives underwater and runs upside down where you run, so you can "run on water" basically. All of this is extremely silly but it makes for very satisfying platforming, as you might imagine. If you're a habitual 3D platformer player you will be immediately at home traversing the world of wavetale and you will probably enjoy the racing and climbing sections of the game.

Now for the mediocre. There are monsters to defeat, but they're very generic and easy to cheese through by using simple strategies, except for a couple of boss monsters. There are side quests, but they're fairly simple and repetitive fetch/meet quests, usually resolved by searching around near the questgiver. No one will acknowledge that our protagonist has all these superpowers but they sure are more than happy to foist every basic task onto her. She should be ruling this city! Even though there are a number of interesting, charming buildings in the various main areas of the game, most of the many little islands are not only variations on the same reused assets, they more often than not don't even have any collectibles on them or anything to encourage you to explore this vast world. And the in-game currency is only useful for making cosmetic changes to the protagonist - there are way more costumes than time to enjoy them with, as the game only has about 7 hours worth of content.

And this is where we get into the bad. For an open world game where you can technically go wherever you want, the game sure is designed to be extremely linear. And if you go off the beaten path, you might get punished, because it's very, very easy to sequence break the game. At one point I climbed a building and broke off a spherical macguffin, which did nothing. A cutscene played that made no sense. Then I freed a questgiver which gave me the quest to go get the macguffin. That quest remained in my screen for the rest of the game and is even in the postgame.

Your extreme freedom of movement means you can climb buildings and bypass obstacles in various ways - good! Except later you might hit an outdated trigger and get broken cutscenes and spawning nonsense, including ghostly obstacles that can no longer be destroyed, nonsense sound effects, particles for monsters that have already been killed, etc. So, yeah. Don't stray from where the game obviously wants you to go.

I also found the clash between the shallow, childish characters, the goofy nonsense of the various parts of the premise and the serious themes of generational disconnect, pollution, bigotry, etc. very jarring. These things did not mesh well. In the end, I did enjoy the time I spent with the game; because of its issues, it would have made a poor longer game, so it's good that it didn't overstay its welcome. But like so many other games, they did most of the heavy lifting but failed to stick the landing, which is a pity. I wanted more platforming, more parkour, more boss monsters and... Really, they should have just junked the story if they couldn't do it properly. Ditch the sidequests and just let me go to hard to reach places to find collectibles.

The Last Case of Benedict Fox was - and I should stress this first - a much better game than I expected it would be. This one is a sidescrolling metroidvania and it took me 14 hours to get through it (all quests and upgrades).

The game has a deliberately lovecraftian theme and vibe. Our protagonist Benedict has a monster living inside him, the Companion, which speaks in his head and provides a mean, cynical perspective on everything. It also manifests itself as dark purple tentacles that help Benedict fight and traverse various obstacles in the environment. An environment, by the way, which is gorgeous - think the videogame "Trine," but in a terrifying, despondent way. Most of the game takes place in "Limbo," a dimension populated by the broken memories and traumas of the dead, as well as a healthy dose of eldritch monsters. Unlike Wavetale, these monsters cannot be cheesed so easily and required some strategy to defeat. Killing them for the first time yields Ink, which if successfully brought back out of Limbo can be turned into tattoos that expand the Companion's gamut of powers. Another way to unlock new areas in the map is by using various mementos found in Limbo to enhance Benedict's knife and gun. The better you move and the more places you can go to, the more satisfying the gameplay becomes. There is also a puzzle solving component to the game involving a number system, a set of keys and a magical device that allow you to use number combinations in various ways. I enjoyed all of this.

I thought the game's menu and inventory UI was also pretty good for the most part. There's a useful, informative map of the explored Limbo. The vast quantities of crap, including documents, that you collect throughout the game for various purposes can be examined closely in the inventory (and sometimes you'll find, for example, a hidden drawer in an item, or text written on the back of a photo). There's a help system that explains the Companion's various abilities including button combinations, and a list of ongoing quests. There's even a bestiary.

The game is fully voice acted, but the quality of the voice acting is... uneven, let's call it. Ranging from the Companion itself, which is excellent, to some character voices who I'm sorry to say were just no good at all. Some characters have good lines and bad lines, not sure what happened there.

The plot begins as follows: Benedict is investigating his estranged father's mansion, where he quickly finds ol' dad's corpse is in the basement. Dad was an obsessive occultist and not kind to his family. He had ties to something called the Circle - occultists who research Limbo. But society is actually controlled by the Ordo Ira Dei, who are religious, controlling and very mean. Dad traded them information for permission to conduct his experiments. As the game progresses, other (alive) characters appear in the mansion: Slippery friend of the family Harry Houdini, the mysterious Tattooist, the gruff Weaponsmith and the faithless Inquisitor Tomas. Eventually we find dad's wife's corpse. There's a cool view in the loading screen of the state of the investigation.

And this is basically all I know about what was going on, because the quest system is even worse than Wavetale's.

Quest triggers can be collected in any order without in any way changing characters' voice lines or preventing other triggers from being collected. Why are devs so bad at something so essential to the experience of narrative games as the actual story? Combine that with terrible voice lines and as you play things will get more and more confusing. At one point I had the ability to pick up a quest and to solve that quest at the same time from the same character. Sometimes the quest system will show past and present unsolved quest steps interleaved with solved ones even though logically information from the former should be required to expose the latter. Sometimes all quest steps will be crossed off (solved), but the quest itself won't be solved yet, and you have no idea why. Sometimes you have no idea why a quest point is in there or what it's supposed to mean. Characters' actions become progressively more nonsensical (because you don't know what's going on) and it's hard to sympathize with anyone's motivations.

Even outside the quest system, the game is bad at delivering important information to the player in a natural way. And I don't mean "you need to keep exploring until you find this key item" type of information - I don't mind that. I mean "you'd better just look up a guide online before you kick a wall in frustration and break your foot," because sometimes you're just stuck until you figure it out on your own this thing you have no way of finding out, and if you can't, that's it - no more progress. As an example, there are dark sections of the game that require you to use a flashlight to dispel tentacles of darkness, and I only found out late in the game that you're supposed to turn around once in a while and aim the flashlight in every direction to keep from taking damage - they just never tell you, and the visual cues are poor. I just took the damage and forged on.

In conclusion: Despite weird bugs and defects that are inconsistent with the amount of effort that seems to have gone into these games, I enjoyed them and found they were worth the (discounted) price, as long as you know what you're in for - especially Benedict Fox. They both have cool platforming, nice challenges, and if you try really hard to go into a sort of trance, you can pretend the horrible plot progression isn't there at all!

Previous

I picked up Deep Rock Galactic while it was on sale and it was a great buy. I’ve wanted it for a while but didn’t have anyone to play with but decided to give solo a shot anyway. The visuals and mechanics are so satisfying. The progression system is great and the gameplay loop is really fun to me. I liked it so much I bought it for my friend and we’ve been playing it a lot. I highly recommend it for playing alone or with friends!

Against the Storm

I started playing this game maybe a year or so ago, loved it for a couple months but ended up putting it down... Mostly so I could come back to it later when the devs stabilized it. They did - the game is now rounding the corner to its "1.0" release... And my goodness, it may or may not be one of the greatest games ever made: But it is certainly one of the greatest games ever made for me. A mashup of Slay the Spire and Warcraft 3? Or is it Dwarf Fortress and Caesar 3? It's hard to pin it down... There are probably close to 60 or 70 different production buildings, each with 3 or 4 different "recipes" for making certain goods (like barrels, for example). But not all those recipes are "equal": the 1-star version might give you 5 barrels for 1 unit of wood and 1 unit of copper... But there's some buildings that have a 3-star version of that same recipe that gives you maybe 12 barrels for that same input... So why not just build the 3-star version of you're making barrels? Well, here's where it gets interesting: the buildings "blueprints" are acquired through a "random draft" on each map.. you might never even see that 3-star barrel building... And even if you do, it might show up in a draft with another building that has a 2-star barrel recipe but also has a 2-star recipe for, say, cloth and maybe another product you want.

I know for some people, who like to step into a building game with a "perfect pristine build order, which must be executed just so" this sounds like torture. I get that. But for me, the pressure to read the situation and come up with the best way to address it (which might be a terrible choice on another map) in the way you might in games like FTL, is a stimulant. I can't get enough of it.

If you put this down a while ago like I did: Pick it back up. The addition of Foxes as a faction is just the thing that gave it the perfect balance (OK, maybe porridge is a little OP/broken). And the endgame "seals" are awesome.

I've been playing Asgard's Wrath on Quest 3 in anticipation of the sequel. I'm not big on RPGs because I don't enjoy all the inventory stuff and grinding, but AW isn't too bad so far. I got to a boss fight last night that was very fun.

The wonderful world of

Cities: Skylines 2

I started a second city, in the "River Delta" map, which I think it more fun than the one I started in. I'm up to 100k population, I have a pretty design for my city, things are going well. They've release 1 patch per week since launch, each one tackling major issues the game had. It's a good patching pace, I'm a fine of the pace they're firing at.

I'm putting the game down for a while.

It's kinda under-baked, I think anyone who has played it will come to that conclusion. I'm having fun, I'm warming up to the simulation underneath, but I'm not keen on burning myself out on it. The real turning point was the news today that the modding platforms are "months" away, as they said. Victoria 3 (another game under-baked on release) is releasing their big long-awaited 1.5 patch tomorrow, so I'm going to shift over to that until CO releases the modding platform for C:S2. The game still has a few major issues to it, and without the diversity of assets and even mods, it's a little bare. There are some areas where that's way more clear -- residential types have decent diversity to assets, commercial and office and especially industry, they're lacking. I'm really eager to see the game evolve, I think it's going to be a huge step once that modding platform comes out and the community can start farting out assets, and they fix the major bugs -- but it needs a little time, and I'm going to give it that.

I've been playing the second season of Diablo 4, which has been a good step in the right direction for the game. I was thoroughly underwhelmed by season one, and had to push myself to get through the campaign.

Back then the game felt like it was pretty restrictive in what was viable for leveling and enjoying the content. Season two seems to be much more relaxed in having multiple builds and themes being viable at least to the point I am at (early 50s levels).

They also cranked the loot drops to 11 compared to before. To the point I wish there were filters for lower level gear honestly.

The game isn't perfect but it's far better than it was, I hope they keep making steps in the right directions

I just picked up Duskers recently and wish I knew about it sooner. Only a few hours into it but I'm really liking it so far. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who likes roguelike/permadeath/survival type stuff.

I started Baldur's Gate 3 finally after prying myself away from Starfield.

A streamer I watch called it "the most video-gamey game ever" and I'm inclined to believe it. I gave myself to a mindflayer in the first 10 minutes and my run has been a series of save-scums via horribly prolonged combat-related deaths. I actually rolled back one decision after three tries by loading an older save. I then proceeded to aggro the a good chunk of the goblin camp and die because I forgot wildshape druid bears and ladders are incompatible.

It's not amusing in an obviously fun way, I often just find myself laughing at outcomes or long, convoluted solutions I missed.

I was playing Anno 1800 quite a bit until recently, but I think I've hit the point in that game where my brain goes, "Yeah, I get it." and then all desire to play it kind of ceases, which is unfortunate. I put a little less than 15-hours into it and haven't felt much desire to go back, but maybe I'll force it a little bit, as it does tend to grab me when I do. I'm not exactly sure why that is when I put heaps of hours into stuff like Transport Fever 2, but maybe because it feels...less organic? I can't say for certain.

Just last night I finished Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I won't say I loved it, because I definitely didn't, but I enjoyed it. More so than Circle of the Moon and probably Harmony of Dissonance. But I don't think it stacks-up even close to Aria of Sorrow which feels tighter and much better paced. I found the Inverted Castle to be pretty tedious overall, especially early on when I'm getting my ass kicked through it. Traversal through it is annoying, because I'm mostly forced to use bat form and the knockback in the game felt egregious in the Inverted Castle. It's not so bad in the first half of the game, but getting knocked back by stuff that also does huge damage or knocks you so far back down in a room that you're forced to slowly Bat form back up again is just tedious as hell. Shaft and Dracula were incredibly easy fights as well, which turned out to be fine with me, because I was ready to be done.

Overall, still enjoyed, but you can definitely tell that it's the first of its kind.

Next, I'll move on to Dawn of Sorrow on my newly purchased DSi and as a direct follow-up to Aria, I'm excited to give it a go.

Also been playing quite a bit of Turtle World of Warcraft and just taking my time. It's still WoW, but the changes they've made bring a little freshness to the game when you see something you haven't seen before. At any rate, I've been happy to take my time with it and not be in a rush to get to a higher level. Been actually going back and just bumming around with a friend and helping him out with quests, which is something I never really did before, because I was always just having fun leveling my character. Hard to believe I've been playing this silly game, on and off, for near 20-years now.

Playing through Gravity Circuit.

I'm enjoying it a lot, very reminiscent of Megaman/X/Zero.

I like that they do away with the lives system and forcing you to go back to the start if you die too many times.

I don't really care for how limited the use of your special moves are. In circuit mode you can use them however much you like, which is nice, but only being able to store up one or two uses at a time results in me only using Emergency Heal during boss fights and nothing else. An energy tank more like the Megaman X games with weaker but more general utility moves would have been preferable, in my opinion.

Marvel Snap has sucked me back in the last couple of weeks after I'd dropped it months ago. It's a Marvel themed head to head card game where you try to win 2 of 3 lanes combined with a push your luck/wager aspect to win tokens called cubes off each other to advance in the overall rankings.

In terms of pros it's really polished, things are nicely balanced with a lot of viable strategies to build a deck along with a lot of on the fly decision making each turn, and the game plays incredibly fast so you can get in as little as 5-10 minute bursts whenever the spirit takes you. It's sincerely a really fun game.

On the downside, I really should hate just how thoroughly it's fine tuned to be an addictive skinner box sucking you in with loot boxes on top of loot boxes and grinds for your grind. It's legitimately possible to be competitive and have a great time without paying a cent (I've never bought anything and am already close to the top bracket on the ladder, so that's not just a you "can" but it really sucks thing), but it really feels like you're looking at a masterpiece of scummy business practices and that should bother me more than it does.

On the boardgame front, I haven't been playing as much lately just because it's a bigger committment to get organized and block out time to get something set up for a whole session but the last couple of things to hit the table was Wingspan, which is a fantastic engine builder game with gorgeous art. You chain together birds with various effects, which create combos that make each of the actions you take the rest of the game more and more effective. It's light enough to be a great gateway game while still being interesting enough you won't get sick of it unless you're DEEP into the crunchiest of boardgame addictions.

I've been playing Guardians of the Galaxy. It's beautiful. It has also been surprisingly fun so far. I do enjoy the banter and get very amused when I stray off the main path to look for things and the NPC's will actually get annoyed that you've gone off looking at dead ends for no reason.

I've also been playing Suika game. It's 2048 but with fruits and physics. I was very stressed for awhile and the game actually helped me calm down. It's my go to relaxation game now.

Except for when I die because of flying fruits. Why physics, why!

I have been playing more "IRL Water Cooled PC Builder" than actual games lately ;) Got the water block for my 7900 XTX and installed it on Friday, which has been magical for GPU temps, although since the CPU is later in the loop it's running a fair bit hotter than before. Which ideally shouldn't matter - normally the coolant is moving fast enough to equalize. I did pick up a flow meter when I ordered the water block and installed it in the loop at the same time, and I'm getting about 2-2.5L/min, which from what I'm reading is on the bare bottom edge of target flow rates - the CPU is technically staying at a permissible temperature, but I am not satisfied and want to get things working optimally. So looks like I've got enough components in the loop between various bends, junctions, and blocks that the flow is getting restricted.

So, two more upgrades kicking in today when the Amazon truck gets here. First, add a bit more flow restrictions in the form of a second smaller (140mm) rad that will go between the GPU and CPU blocks in the back of the case to provide a bit of pre-cooling before it goes in to the CPU block. So I will have the net equivalent of a 420mm (3x140mm) rad setup split in to two sections. Second, make up for the flow restriction with a second pump. Still playing around with how to do it. I actually have the pieces for this already as I've played with a few configurations to try to stuff this all into a compact mid tower case (Thermaltake Ceres 300), since the others are getting used for a couple other maker projects (like cooling a laser cutter). Currently, I've got two pump/res combos and one pump/top combo, all with D5s. One Corsair XD5, one EKWB FLT120, and a Heatkiller D5 top.

Currently the FLT120 is installed, which I originally got for its squarish profile to fit into an out of the way part of the case. However, the water block on the GPU is a solid 50mm shorter than the old air cooler, and there's now room for other options. The ideal would likely be to get a dedicated double D5 top and a reservoir, but I've thoroughly exceeded the limit of how much my wife is happy with me spending on this already, so working with what I have - the XD5 is supposed to be really, really good for a pump/res combo and the FLT120 has been rather frustrating to work with (it's supposed to be really flexible for mounting but frankly, there's only one orientation I've found for it that doesn't have a lot of trouble getting all the bubbles out of the system), so I think I'm gonna swap the FLT120 out to use for the laser cooling, put the XD5 in for primary pump/res mounted behind the front fans, then add the separate pump in serial to boost the head pressure to help the flow through the restrictions.

My big question now is where to put the separate pump. I'd actually like to put it mid-circuit - so go XD5, GPU block, 140mm rad, D5, CPU block, 280mm rad. This should roughly balance out the restriction for each pump, and by having them in serial (instead of having them in parallel with one pump doing each of the CPU and GPU) it gives fault tolerance where if one pump fails the system will start warming but won't melt down. However, I'm not sure there's the best mounting spot near there. So maybe do a longer tube run and put it in the bottom of the case. Maybe I'll move the 280mm rad from the top to the front - there should still be room with the rad to include the XD5, although it will make filling/draining more annoying. That would free up the space behind the rear fan to put the booster pump directly after the rad, making a very short tube run.

So after all of this is done over the next couple days, probably hit up a couple more rounds of NG+ in Starfield before setting it aside until the mod toolkit is available, then do some Cities II, because if any computer can run that, mine certainly should be able to now. Also picked up Colony Ship on sale as well as Phantom Liberty, so I have no shortage of things to play, just been having fun tinkering with the WC setup!

Just started playing Cyberpunk 2077. I think the game is pretty freaking great, but probably won't ever come close to what was envisioned in my head after seeing the E3 2018 demo.

Pretty decent story lines, extremely well-voiced and relatively intriguing characters, and a beautiful (but not as interactive as I would have liked) world. The game has come a long way since it's release, and I only have encountered 1 major bug I think (a side quest disappeared because of it, I believe, and I don't know how it occurred)

I picked up Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game on Steam (currently 25% off as a release promotion, ends on November 16th) and I'm really enjoying it! There are a lot of builds you can make in the game and multiple ways you can approach many of the situations. My main character is primarily into talking and stealth but I've got enough gear that I can handle smaller combats without too much trouble, when I can't manage to avoid them.

The game itself is reminiscent of Fallout 1 & 2, and while its controls are perhaps a touch outdated it does what it does quite well. There's a "Hero" (aka. easy) mode and the regular mode. I'm playing in Hero because I want to mostly take it easy and enjoy exploring, but if you want a challenge then the regular mode is certainly that. Just be careful to save before you enter a room, otherwise you might find yourself trapped at the start of a combat you can't win.

The basic setup of the game is that you're on a multigenerational colony ship travelling to another star. Mid-transit there was a mutiny against the people running the ship. Since then, things on the ship have really fallen apart and people are just struggling to survive.

Coincidentally, I watched Silo last week as well, which has nearly identical themes. The two make for a good combination!

After only 9 months I'm replaying Horizon Zero Dawn on my Steam Deck. I just wanted to play the game once more and I still have that "New game+ on ulta hard" achievement waiting for me anyway :-)

Today I bought this weird game called Super Woden GP 2... It is kinda hilarious adn great at the same time. It has Gran Turismo 2/3 vibes while being isometric and not that demanding on skill. It will be fun to play when someone needs to take a break from "the big game" currently at play.

Over the weekend I came as close to 100%ing God of War Ragnarok as I care to try, finished the Crucible and have completed all the other map markers except for a few of the Berserker Gravestones and GNA because those are frustratingly difficult to the point of not worth my health to replay anymore.

But Ghosts of Tsushima is being delivered today and am looking forward to starting that.

Supernatural is a fitness game for the Meta Quest 3. Sometimes you have the experience, just for a moment, that virtual reality is fully realized, and I've had bits of that experience with this game.

The environments in Supernatural are all panographic photographs of beautiful and secluded natural or cultural spaces such as a mountain pass in the alps or a temple from ancient Egypt. There are fully effective NPCs as athletic trainers who are represented with stereo video.

For most of the workouts you are expected to hit targets with your fists or as if you held bats in both your hands -- the gameplay is quite similar to Beat Saber. You pay for Beat Saber once, but Supernatural is a subscription. (You can buy more levels for Beat Saber if you get bored)

The moves are a combination of boxing and martial arts movements that you might see in a Kung Fu class but that are often incorporated into dance instruction aimed at a more female audience.

On one level there is no accountability, you won't get kicked out for failing to keep up with the moves like Beat Saber, on the other hand it will schedule activity for a certain period (21 minute workout), you do the best you can, and your NPC will talk with you about the exercise, about the music, about life, etc.

The MQ3 establishes a boundary that you play within, I play the game in a spare bedroom with a couch that I push against the wall. There are multiple mechanisms designed to keep you from crashing into anything stationary, but I do find myself occasionally rapping a knuckle or feeling houseplants and such outside the boundary. If you weren't careful and got too excited you might bonk your head somehow so I try to stay aware of my surroundings, I sometimes double-tap the headset to switch on passthrough, for instance, which pauses the game.

Sometimes I wish though I could move to some other area of the room and have it center the simulation there.

Unlike a real dance or martial arts workout you are not really moving on the ground, rather turning around and squatting and lunging which does work your lower body.

It also has stretching and meditation workouts which are not really interactive but a set of instructions that your NPC gives you. My take was that the meditations were hokey.

I gave up on Horizon Worlds. I was hoping to author content with it centered around photography and visual arts but it does not let you import images.