I guess this is just a thing I like to do lol. I got an OLED Steam Deck and have been playing around with it for about a week, so I wanted to share what all I got.

TL;DR: OLED is the definitive version of this product. If you're at all interested, whether or not budget is a concern this model is worth looking at, especially if you can actually get your hands on one to try for a bit. Words aren't quite what they need to be to get across how it looks and feels.

The long of it:

Valve wasn't kidding about stuff like a little performance improvement and better battery life. It feels like someone took the LCD deck and made a checklist of every single thing that could be improved, and then did it. The result is just about the best refresh of a product I've ever seen.

The screen is the most obvious upgrade and it really is great to look at. It is a big jump to go from an LCD at 60hz, to OLED at 90hz with HDR available. As great as VibrantDeck is, no amount of color fuckery can really reproduce what is happening when you have these features. For games that support HDR, it can feel like you've actually made an upgrade, because of how differently it can handle things like bright flashes of light and particle effects on top of the color differences. The refresh rate is tied to the frame limiter by default, so when you drop the frame limit the refresh rate tends to stay double whatever that is. 40fps/80hz feels better than 40/40 to me, like stuttering just isn't as bothersome.

Be aware it's on developers to implement HDR, which means sometimes you run into a game with a shitty implementation. FFVII R comes to mind. Just know that if you run across a game where this feature seems to make the game look terrible, it's not the device doing it.

The improvements to the battery do mean something like a ~40% increase. Games like Armored Core VI and Elden Ring tended to last about 1.5-2 hours on the LCD model, on OLED it's more like 2.5-3, and this is the sweet spot imo. Rare that I'm gonna sit down and play for that long in the first place, so having this much power available means being able to play here and there with much less concern. Games that already played well in a low power state just get that much more time. One thing to know if you're coming from an LCD - it doesn't save your power profiles. Input profiles yes (if you saved them), but power settings need to be redone game-to-game.

The device itself is a little lighter, and it feels like it sits in my hands a little better. The difference is minute, but noticeable, and nice. All of the buttons feel good, the sticks have slightly more resistance to them, and the trackpads are much nicer to use. In particular, the way you click the trackpads is more forgiving by default, so while it is a little easier to mis-click it feels more like using a "real" trackpad. The deck in general is the only device I find doesn't really aggravate my carpal tunnel, and the OLED model keeps that up.

On the software side there isn't really a difference - SteamOS is more or less exactly the same with a few OLED-specific settings. Most of your info gets saved and loaded up when you log in. Cloud saves are one piece of course, but too, any controller profiles you saved will come back, and the SD card can just be freely transferred/there isn't really any setup to it. From boot to play I mostly just waited on the game to download - setting up the device was as simple as waiting for it to do an update, then log in, and that's it. It doesn't pester you to register for anything/no ads.

Things like sleep/wake and transitioning to desktop mode are faster and more consistent. Pretty regularly, my LCD model would fail to sleep/wake correctly - I'd put it to sleep and upon waking it, it would reboot. Inconsistent but often enough to get annoyed with. With the OLED model, i notice this doesn't happen as often. It still does, but much less frequently. The improvements to the trackpads means I use desktop mode more often, it feels much nicer to navigate. All of the stuff I had before was simple to install and restore - emudeck, decky, cryoutilities all installed without any issues and worked fine after I moved over all my stuff from the first deck. Haven't hit any issues with decky plugins either.

Even the carrying case got a pass. It's been redesigned a little, with an extra velcro fastener bit and tighter mold inside, black instead of white.

Transferring my information was about as easy as you could do. There are several options - I mostly used KDE connect, but there's also Warpinator, and a deck plugin called DeckMTP that can let you do a direct USB connection. Literally just copy/paste, once I installed all the stuff I had before I could just drop in the old device's things and be good to go. One thing to be aware of, is that for games which don't support Steam Cloud, you need to copy their save data over. That's gonna mostly be in a folder in /steamapps called CompatData. Takes a little doing but it's not hard to figure out. The hardest thing to set up was STALKER Anomaly, and all that was was about a five step process of clicking things in Wine. By the way, if you make a custom controller profile for a non-steam game, when you add that game to the library make sure it has the same name as before and your controller profile will be saved!

Overall I'm impressed to the point I intend to hold off buying any more PC hardware until a Deck 2 appears. If that product gets the same kind of attention this one did there's no doubt in my mind it will be fantastic. Considering too, the ability to dock and use peripherals, I think I'd feel safe recommending an OLED steam deck as a replacement for a gaming machine + non-work computer to just about anybody. $399 as a base price for PC Gaming is fucking awesome, and $549 for this improved model, at least I feel is very much worth it. $150 for an OLED screen, more storage, bigger battery is not bad. The deck is a hugely popular product, which means you get the added benefit of folks constantly tinkering and messing with stuff to make it work, on top of the odd developer specifically targeting it (such as in Cyberpunk, or how Bannerlord reworked its control scheme). Those kinds of communities exist around other devices, but not nearly to the same extent, and they'll die fast as those products come and go.

So that's what I got. I hope this was informative and helpful. If you have any questions I'm happy to answer as best I can. I'm super happy with the deck as a product, it feels a lot like getting to see what it looks like when someone goes the distance and throws their full weight behind this kind of product.

Edit: I don't know how well this will come through looking on different screens, but here are a few screenshots from AC VI and Morrowind that made use of HDR. Even if it doesn't come through - if you've never owned a deck and were considering one, yeah stuff can look this good on it! It's amazing.

I remembered that thread asking about the update to Cyberpunk 2077, and figured after finishing the expansion I'd offer what I've got. I played the game once on release prior to playing now.

The tl;dr - its a hell of a lot better, can totally recommend it, expansion was cool and fun

The long:

First, regarding the update. It's excellent. The game does feel significantly better to play, because a whole lot less is bugging the hell out. You do occasionally come across some silliness, like four of the same car all at an intersection, or the same child populating a cafeteria. But these moments are far, far less frequent, I think I can count on one hand after 50 hours, the number of times stuff like that happened.

Wanted system is functional now. It just works the way you'd expect, and it is pretty easy to escape. More lawless parts of town are appropriately easier to get away with shit in. Driving feels better but still feels weird to me, like everything is slippery/wheels never have good traction.

The skills/perks/inventory stuff is a thousand times better. It has a few weird things here and there but is easier to follow and use. It's nice not having to really mess around with clothes and just look however I want. Combat is a lot more fun now that stuff behaves appropriately. That's really the theme of it, they did fix what needed fixing, and what we're left with much more closely aligns with folks' original expectations.

Quests wrap up and sometimes into one another in ways which are genuinely very impressive, and I encountered all of one that had an issue with it. I pretty much constantly went from quest to quest and found there was enough variety that I didn't really care about wandering much. I still did, and that is all much improved too. Npcs behave a lot better and look nicer, and jobs consistently finish up the way they're supposed to.

I specialized in blades, pistols, and shotguns, and played on Normal, mostly on my steam deck. I mostly raised Reflexes, Technical Ability, and Cool. I got to turn into a Dragonball ninja assassin, occasionally dualing Japanese cyborg women with katanas in the street. I'd get into shit because melee is genuinely pretty fun to mess with.

The visuals are awesome even on the handheld, the preset for the deck is higher than I expected. Performance was consistently good, on the deck as well as my PC. PC can go maximum and is using a 144hz display, it looks really really good with everything pushed.

The expansion:

It fits squarely within the best of what the game offers. The storyline is complex and goes into the rest of the world in an impressive way, it's like it's always been there. The characters are exceptionally well done, as is the voice acting. The whole thing felt like a great season of a good show, it kinda proceeds like that too.

Dogtown is a really cool area. The detail is wild and sense of place really some of the strongest in the game. I felt uneasy at night in the rain, that's always cool for a game to evoke. It feels both like it's own independent spot and like a part of the city, they really nailed it with how it looks and what's available there.

Conclusion:

The complete package I'd say is totally worth it. Compared to release it is a completely different game. Feels like a much more realized vision, that consistently hits some pretty high notes. Panam is still the coolest, but Songbird was a really well done character too. With the game not being a flaming wreck, it's way easier to get into the storytelling, and it is pretty great for this medium. Especially those major characters, they're interestingly complicated and don't always behave how you'd expect. The overall experience is kinda like being a protagonist in a tv show, quests have their own arcs and climaxes and characters appear distinctly changed by the events as they unfold. That was always there, but now I'm comfortable saying you'll actually have that experience playing it.

Minor Starfield lore spoiler's ahead

Originally written for /r/games, but the last discussion thread of Starfield in that place saw many user who said they personally like the game downvoted and replied to by mentally-questionable individuals that said not-so-nice things.

As I pass 170 hours in Bethesda newest, hottest, controversial game. I am happy because it is just as fun as I had hoped it to be.
Yet as I explore the cities it has to offer there is always a small detail that I keep failing to ignore (whenever I'm not busy thinking of new ship designs that is).

200,000 units are ready with a million more on the way

So say the slender being that has been tasked with creating an army to defend a galactic spanning government of countless worlds. At this point Montgomery, Zhukov, MacArthur, Jodl, or any-other-WW2-command-figure-of-your-choosing are rolling on the ground clapping each other's backs laughing their socks off. Because 1.2 million is an absolutely puny and pathetic number of troops for a galactic war.
I'm no Star Wars deep lore fan, I understand that fans and later authors has since tried to 'fix it' by making the Clone War more that just the clones. And yet those 1.2M clones was all there was when episode 2 released to theatres.
Most Sci-fi writings has similar a problem with scaling to their subject. It is not news. It even has a tv tropes page (the page is more about distances, but it's in the same ballpark).

Quest for the Peoplefield

So where does Starfield go wrong in this? The ships are puny. The wars and the numbers stated are puny.
Certainty more ways than one, but the one that I wish to focus on is this: where the hell are all the people?
A brief summary of the lore. Humanity has invented FTL and has seemingly solved all energy problems. They had to evacuate Earth, but this was successful and so the starfield should be absolutely teeming with tens of billions of human souls spreading to all corners of the galaxy and its many already habitable worlds.
And yet, Starfield feels so barren. I see no grand interstellar civilizations. Only dirt huts on a hill surrounded by walls that support barely a thousand people. Yet this dirt hill is supposed to be a capital or an interstellar superpower. Heck, they are even scared shitless of their own fauna.
The opposites capital is no dirt hill, yet still smaller than a modern earth country town.
And it's not like the main population centers are just outside player-accessible areas. All the NPCs ever talk about are Akila, New Atlantis, and Neon. These tiny puny cities.
It doesn't feel like the evacuation of Earth was a success. It feels like it was a catastrophe, and all that remains are scattered remnants playing civilization.

And yet... The Starfield is actually lively, just not where it should be. There is a scale imbalance, because spread across nearly every world in the settled systems are countless research stations, outposts, deserted or populated, you name it.
Yes, those procedually-generated buildings that spawn nearly everywhere you land in the settled systems.
Where did these come from? Surely the UC couldn't have built them. Manning just the ones that I have come across in my playthrough would empty New Atlantis 10 times over!

Bethesda built their open-world game style upon Fallout and Elder Scrolls. For both it makes sense that the worlds are sparely populated. One being post-apocalyptic wasteland, and the other a medieval society.
But now they have built something in a completely different realm. But they way in which Bethesda built the scale at which the game is presented remains the same.
So why did they go with this approach? I don't know. Maybe they just like making "small" worlds and didn't want to fit the new universe. Maybe the idea of 'climbing any mountain you can see' is a very hard rule and they didn't want to limit player movement in metropolises, that would undoubtedly be unfeasible to make fully traversable.

But lets pretend they actually tried. And perhaps it can be done without really changing how the game is designed or played.

So you can do it better huh?

A Microsoft executive plays the game as it's nearing launch. He feels there is something missing with the scale of the Starfield universe.
So he does the only rational thing he can think of and storms into the street and picks the first rando he can find, puts the Bethesda crown upon his head, and orders him to fix Starfield's problem of scale.
The exec is later found to be mentally ill and fired, but it does not matter for I am now king of Bethesda and my words are design directives.

Tell, don't show

The simple solution that requires no real work but some change in lore. New Atlantis is no longer a capital, just a administrative and diplomatic outpost. Akila is now just a small border city. The real population centers are now on entirely different worlds. Inaccessible to the player.
Why can't players go there? Well it shouldn't take much suspension of disbelief to acknowledge that governments might not want any random idiot, in a flying hunk of metal capable of tearing space-time at it seams, to go anywhere near their main population centers without considerable control.
NPCs should no longer talk of sprawling New Atlantis, Neon, or Akila, but rather these other places that you can see on the map but are not allowed to go to.

Show enough

The population planets are now accessible, but restricted in where you can land freely. On the map it should show big cities. And just like how you cannot land in water, you can neither land anywhere in cities or its surroundings.
Just like with New Atlantis and Akila, you can land at a designated spot. The difference is when you look into the horizon, because rather than a procedurally generated landscape you will instead see a sprawling metropolis that tells you "Yes here! Here are all the people!".
The other change would be that, unlike the landscape, if you try to go beyond the player-area of the city you will hit a wall. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
New Atlantis and Akila can stay, but like the other solution they would change status.

All in all the scale issue is no big problem and the game is fine as it is. This was just something that has been on mind for some time and I wanted to put it to writing. So do you agree that Starfield has a scale problem? If yes, how would you fix it? Or maybe I missed some crucial info-dump and the entire premise of this writing is wrong?

I've been playing through Remnant 2 and having a great time with it. I think they've hit on a great mix of combat and challenge. Plus I was pleasantly surprised to find that the writing, especially for the lore, was quite engaging (the intro doesn't set a high bar tbh). Still in progress for the game, so no spoilers please, but what do you think?

I'm a little over halfway through and I really have to force myself to keep playing it. Some of it is really cool and a lot of it drives me crazy. Sorry to rant a bit but a lot of the discourse online is extremely positive and I just wanted to let this out.

• So many cutscenes. They're pretty good cutscenes. The acting is largely very good, most characters are really enjoyable (although maybe one day FF will realize that antagonists can be multifaceted and not just generic evil badman). But so, so many hours of cutscene -- run over there -- cutscene -- go to the one map location that's unlocked -- cutscene.
• So much time wasting slow running around. Sometimes the maps are designed like a (linear) maze for apparent reason except to make it take longer to get somewhere. I see a quest marker and I just immediately "ugh" at how long it's going to take me to plod over there.
• And as a corollary to the above, exploration sucks. I learned very early on that there's no reason not to beeline to the next goal, so it makes the slow running that much worse. Dungeons are basically right out of FF XIV, which means one straight line and a very clear pattern of trash mob, trash mob, boss, rinse, repeat.
• The gear and stats are a non-entity. You go through the story, it more or less hands you periodic levels and gear. It feels like they thought including these things was obligatory, but for what they put in the game, they could have just not bothered.
• Combat is pretty fun! A little repetitive. A little samey. I wish there were more options for using all the skills you get. I have all these things I could unlock, but the very limited set of slots you get make they basically a non-option once you've picked the ones you like. The system just feels kind of half baked.
• And in that same vein, the big quick-time-event boss battles are neat too. I don't love them, because it feels a lot like I'm not playing a game anymore, but they do look pretty fantastic. Some of the latter ones go on for way too long. Just like, I was done with punching this fantastic looking beast 10 minutes ago.
• Maybe I haven't heard enough of it or listened long enough, but the music is disappointing. Which is sad because I love the tracks in XIV from the same composer. So much here is just ambient or otherwise underwhelming. A bunch of critical moments are just remixes on the classic theme, which is nice, but not really selling me on the new score overall.

I'm probably going to stick through to the end (slowly, with many breaks for Dave the Diver), at the very least because it was so expensive. I just wish it were better.

Roguelikes have a special place in my heart. When you know that your character is mortal, the stakes feel so much more real, and your progress feel so much more earned. You can’t second-guess the level design, because random, and sometimes things are simply not unfair, like when you get transformed into a cute mushroom, while your otherwise generic foe get transformed into a god. I consider unfairness, uncertaincy and chaos to be core gameplay components.

Here’s some roguelikes I liked, in no particular order:

Inscryption
Sort of like Slay the Spire with retro aestetics combined with the gritty feel of the SAW franchise. The most atmospheric and foreboding deckbuilder I've ever played. It is sort of a meta-game where you play a retro computer game in which you play a tabletop roleplaying game with a deranged dungeonmaster.

Noita
Looks like a rather generic pixelart side-view dungeoncrawl, but beneath the humble surface lurks Finnish folklore, a revolutionary physics engine and an insanely versatile magic system, likely the best in any game. The game is vast, both in sense of game world but also the numbers of monsters, spells, perks and secrets. I consider this the best roguelike, full stop.

Don't Starve
Craft to survive in an unforgiving wilderness, battling wildlife, hunger cold and insanity. Having to constantly collect resources makes this game a bit on the grindy side, but the hand-drawn artwork and a rich world to explore and unlock makes this stay fresh.

Jupiter Hell
This, the successor to DRL (Doom Roguelike), is the only classic roguelike I could ever get into. The top-notch visuals makes me literally forget that I'm playing a grid-based turn-based rogue-clone. Still, the game is rather lacking in variation, and there's no lore or story choices. While I think this is by design, the DOOM roots and whatnot, I'm missing the sense of exploration and wonder found in other roguelikes. But even with that, the game is cool and ever so dark, and there's quite a lot of depth despite the simple controls.

FTL
Simplistic and neat pixelart space exploration game. The meat of the game is space combat in real time with pause, between which you plan your route on a node-based overworld and make various choices. The game, while cozy, is quite intense. You're trying to escape a vastly superior fleet while fighting off incoming attacks and trying to not run out of fuel while hopefully improving your ship to survive as the stakes rises. Every choice you make feels like a life or death decision. The fights offers a lot of different tactics. There's various ships to unlock by completing various missions. The one downside is that you have seen all the different encounters way before you have everything unlocked, but the mod FTL Multiverse adds a lot of new content.

Into the Breach
Simple tactical turnbased on 8x8 fields, by the folks behind FTL. The main gimmick is that you can see how the enemies are going to attack in their turn, and try to counter it. This works surprisingly well and offers a lot of depth.

Depth of Extinction
Underwater turnbased tactical. The game feels like watching a cheap action movie from the eighties. Sometimes the missions can feel a bit samey, and the underwater setting could be more in forefront but this doesn't stop the game from being quite a lot of fun. I'm hardly an expert here, but I've heard people who prides themselves of their expertice at turn-based tactical gaming giving this one a lot of praise.

Retromancer
Arena-shooter with a very stylish retro aestetics which doesn't confuse you in the fast-paced chaos. This, combined with a RPG fantasy theme really make this stand out from the other twin-stick offerings. This is a game I consider a spiritual successor to the original twin stick shooter, Robotron 2084. Of course, you need to play the Hunter, the other characters doesn't have the Robotron-trademark mashine gun fire. There's a dash function which is quite handy when you're about to be cornered. There is not really any character building, although by scoring enough points you can unlock various pickups. I guess it is designed for local multiplayer (there's four characters to choose from) but I haven't tried this. Plays excellent with controller.

The Wrath's Den
This is basically Dungeonkeeper, but simplified into a turnbased pixelart game with keyboard controls. You use space to switch between minions, arrow keys to move them, X to do various actions. Besides the random room choices, everything follow simple strict mechanics, which sometimes requires a bit of observation to grasp. The one major downside is that you cannot save your game. Much suck! But other than that, this humble little game is quite easy to fall in love with.

... and I think I'm going to be very hooked.

Spoilers for being 4ish hours into early access..

And I'm fine with that. I'm trying to lean into the emergent story telling of the game and accept my choice as they roll and as they come.

I want to hear your thoughts on early access. Is it what you thought the game would be? For cRPG veterans, is it going to live up to meet your expectations for what one should be? Care to share your outcomes for the situation I engaged with (spoilered of course for players who want to go in completely fresh)? I've not played 5e, what do you think of the adaptation? And any other thoughts you have in that old noggin?

to clarify the "new-ish to cRPG's", I've played the opening hours to a handful of them including Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Mechajammer, Disco Elysium and Encased. I liked them all, but I have trouble committing although I did complete Disco Elysium and LOVE and ADORE it. I will return one day including games like that Fallout 1/2, Planescape: Torment, and others on my list.

Love and candy to you all

Hey everyone. I just beat FFXVI and wanted to share my thoughts in case anyone was thinking of getting the game, or if anyone wants to have a good discussion about the game. I tried to make it as spoiler-free as possible, but please do be advised that this could end up accidentally spoiling certain story elements.

Please note, these are just my opinions. I haven't really played any other FF games, so I'm only comparing this one on it's own merits. Please, if you disagree with something, don't lash out at me. I'm just a dude posting this for good fun and have 0 accolades on why I'm qualified to review anything lol

Also, if you're reading this and have a gaming recommendation for me, I am 100% open to it. I've been looking for some new games to play, so if you think of one I might enjoy while reading this, please let me know.

Pros:

• Graphics: This game looks amazing. There were times where I would just walk through locations and really appreciate how everything looked. I don’t do this often in video games, so it’s nice to see a world that felt genuinely awesome to appreciate and admire. You can tell a lot of work went into building these towns/locations, aside from some of the later areas.


• Combat: The combat in this game is great, addicting fun. I know this is a point of contention for fans of previous FF games and how this is a definite departure from the turn-based style, but some of the best moments I had were chaining combos and getting staggers quick. Towards the end of the game, I was able to bring down some of the mini-bosses extremely quickly and it never got old to pull off. I see people saying things like “You just press square the entire time and win” which I don’t agree with at all. If that’s how one chooses to play the game, then you’re actively not engaging with the combat mechanics and that’s on you. The combat can be complex with different abilities interacting with each other to obtain massive damage, that's what I like in a game.

• Story: The story of this game is phenomenal and I was engaged most of the way through. I’ll have some of my thoughts on story-beats below because there were times where this game dragged on, but the overall concept of a nation at war with each other and essentially starting your own faction from the ground-up is a lot of fun. About 50% of the way through, you’ll unlock a mechanic that allows you to see how all the factions have been interacting with each other, what wars were started and why those wars were happening throughout the entirety of timeline of the game. I spent a solid hour reading everything in these menus because I was intrigued by the complexity of everything and how it all tied into other events, and how sometimes your main characters crew were beyond detached from what was going on in the main world to achieve an ultimate goal. It’s really awesome to see what other antagonist are doing despite your current story beat being involved with something else at that moment, and I wish more games would incorporate this because it really works to make it feel like the game doesn’t revolve around you but that you are apart of an overall story.

Cons:


• Eikon battles: For those not in the know, you’ll occasionally transform into a giant beast (Eikon) named Ifrit and take on other giant beasts (Eikons) throughout the story. At first, these were really fun to play and were truly spectacular to watch but as the story goes on, the fights get less and less engaging. In these parts of the game, you really can just press square and win. Aside from dodging, there is practically no complexity or strategy to these fights. There really isn’t strategy with the main combat either but at least with the main combat, you can pull off insane combos. As Ifrit though? Forget about it. The best combo you can do is ‘Square, Square, Square, Square, Triangle’. You do get 2 abilities as the story goes on, but they’re really nothing special. I actually started to play these section how I play Diablo; outheal the damage. I just used the one combo and healed 2-3 times per fight, while closing the distance as much as possible. I guess this is a valid strategy but I can’t imagine this is how the devs wanted these parts to play out.


• Quicktime events: I think QTE’s should stay in the 360/PS3 generation. I haven’t seen a current Gen game utilize QTE’s, let alone utilize them as many times as FFXVI did and it’s these dated mechanics that are definitely contributing to others saying the game feels outdated. There are multiple times where you’ll go up to a door click ‘X’ and it will be like ‘Now hold R2’. This happens a lot in the game. It happens so often that I’m not convinced at all that it has anything to do with enhancing the gameplay and was made simply to show off the Dualsense controls because, whilst I don’t like the QTE, the Dualsense will give this haptic feedback during these parts. I can’t really explain it, but it does occasionally work well enough to be immersive. The other QTE events are during Eikon battles, and they’re literally just ‘Press X’ and ‘Press R2’ in an extremely generous amount of time. There’s also another QTE even where you just mash square endlessly until you win, which reminds me of mini games in Mario Party 1… on the Nintendo 64 nearly 30 years ago. It’s just an outdated design IMO and I would have rather just watched cutscenes than occasionally press a button. I will say though, there was one QTE which I laughed at. There’s a scene where the MC is coming to grips with an important story-beat and the QTE literally says “Press L3 & R3 to accept the truth”. This gave me giant “Press F for respects” vibes, and I don’t know whether they meant for this to be hilarious but it was. This is the only QTE event I thought was good.


• 70% fun, 30% drag: I found the first 70% of this game to be an insanely good experience. Truly next-gen and one of the best action games I have played. The story was engaging, the combat was really fun and the character/world building peaks about here. Afterwards though, not so much. It goes from being a story about conflict between nations but once that resolves, it’s a story about killing God. From here, I really couldn’t care less about the happenings. The people you’re built to dislike from the beginning have resolved story arcs, they introduce new antagonists that aren’t super interesting and it’s just an overall slog the last 30%. Also, that’s a specific percentage, but when I found myself wanting the story to wrap up, it was right at the 70% mark. From what I’ve read/watched about the FF series, it seems like a few of the games have this inevitable drop-off and can get pretty convoluted, but what I can say is… that first 70% was some of the best gaming I’ve had in a while. The last 30%, not so much.
 The ending of the game was great though and I hope that we get a continuance of this story later on.

Random Thoughts:


• Side-quests: I’ve seen people saying the side-quests are generic MMO like side-quests and I flat out disagree. First off, I think the only reason anyone is making the MMO comparison is because the same team that made FFXIV (an MMO) created this game, so it’s low hanging fruit and easy to criticize without putting in any effort. The side quests are not any different from any other RPG game I’ve played. Most side quests in most RPGS boil down to “Talk to this person, go kill this thing, come back and get a reward”. I have played very few RPG’s that didn’t have these as a majority of their side quests. Even something as recently as Diablo 4 has primarily only these types of side quests. I don’t understand why people give FFXVI so much flack, but I just don’t agree. The side quests are more about world-building and getting to know what your average person existing in this world deals with. You’ll learn backstory about your companions you wouldn’t know otherwise, get various upgrades/mementos and really get to know the world you are playing the game in. I’m not saying that some of these side quests aren’t just “Go talk to this person, then talk to this person and win”, because there are some that are really that simple, and if that’s not your thing then that’s okay, but I seriously don’t understand why people are giving this game flack for doing the same things that every RPG has done before. Just seems unfair IMO.


• RPG Mechanics: This game should have either added more RPG mechanics, or leaned into the action style and got rid of them entirely. There is no point in leveling up in this game. You don’t get rewarded for leveling up. It happens automatically and you don’t get to distribute any skill-points or anything like that. You literally don’t get anything but new weapon unlocks and an increasing number. I have never played a more shallow RPG. You get Ability Points which can increase your Eikon powers, but somewhere down the line, you just start stockpiling these because you have nowhere to spend them. Sure, you can unlock more abilities and increase those powers, but why would you do that? This game has obvious skills that are significantly stronger than other skills, so why would you use those other skills? I’m sure if I experimented around, I can find some great ways the skills I never used can interact with each other, but why would I when the ones I use now are already doing massive damage? IMO, they should have just leaned into the action gameplay and did away with the RPG mechanics. I know this is FF and FF is an RPG series, but the RPG mechanics are insultingly bad in this game and I can see why FF take offense to it. I do, and I’ve never extensively played any of the others. They could have at least added damage modifiers, resistances, etc that you can spend Ability Points on. By the end of the game, I had 8000 unspent Ability Points because there was just nowhere to spend them once you've got your play style.

Overall, I'd give the first 70% a 9/10 and the last 30% a 7.5/10.

In general, I found a lot of real gems this year! The indie scene is thriving like never before, and smaller teams are being enabled by the likes of Unreal Engine to create really beautiful games on a budget. So I had a lot of free time today and yesterday, and decided to go through my discovery queue and check out a few demos. That quickly ballooned into sitting down and playing right through over a dozen demos, two of which (The Lies of P and Wizard with a Gun) I didn't get far enough into to give any coherent thoughts on. How many demos did you check out? Are there any games you're looking forward to on that basis?

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood: 5/5
From Deconstructeam, a Valencian studio with a strong emphasis on narrative, choice, and empowering the player to create their own art, this demo was one of the big winners for me. Gameplay revolves around conversations, VN style, but those conversations often happen in the context of you performing, essentially, tarot readings where the cards are all designed by you. I had a lovely, relaxing time making my own cards, and the challenge of interpreting them to the people around me in a way that felt… true, I guess, was memorable. There is an impressive level of responsiveness to your choices on display here, both on a micro level and, it seems, on a macro level, so I have to think that the game will be pretty replayable. My one gripe was that the dialogue felt a bit stiff and unnatural at times. The game isn’t voice-acted, and the lack of rhythm or cadence in a lot of conversations kept them from flowing well. But that said, even if individual lines of dialogue fell a bit short, placed in context, the conversations felt meaningful, engrossing, and interesting. I will be buying this on release.

Death Must Die: 4/5
I’m a sucker for the “Survivors” genre. My first experience with it preceded Vampire Survivors, the little $3 game that swept the world last year and popularized the new gameplay style; I started with the mobile game that inspired VS: Magic Survival. I had tens of hours in that game. And each subsequent entry into the genre; VS, HoloCure, 20 Minutes Til Dawn, etc., etc. have only worn me out more. These games are all the same: more enemies fill the screen; you get more autofire weapons to deal with them and dodge around to avoid contact damage. Fun for half an hour, but don’t really leave you wanting more. Death Must Die is different. Isometric rather than top-down, the combat here is all manual. You click to fire off an attack that needs to be well aimed; enemies don’t deal contact damage but instead have telegraphed attacks that you have to dodge. It feels very ARPG, actually; a bit Diablo. And the level-up system, which sees you selecting boons from different gods, is clearly inspired by Hades and offers considerably more interesting choices (so far, at least) than the usual Survivors game. Feels a lot more skill based, and a bit more build-craft-y, than usual. And I even caught a whiff of a story, though how well it’ll be executed remains to be seen. I look forward to the full release. Just wish there were more defensive options – maybe a parry?

El Paso, Elsewhere: 4/5
This is cute. A Max Payne-style third person shooter that’s well written in a surreal, noir sort of way; corny enough to be delightful; dark enough to maintain the tension. Visually, it’s a low res, low poly callback to the PS1 era. The gameplay is pretty tough; I didn’t finish the demo, but I imagine it would be a lot of fun to master. I’m keeping my eye on this one, even if it’s not my usual type of game. A special callout: there are biblically accurate angel enemies in this game, which makes me a very happy woman.

Escape from Mystwood Mansion: 3/5
I like escape rooms, and this demo is just a well-constructed escape room – actually, it skews very closely to the types of puzzles and mechanics I’ve come to expect from physical escape rooms. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing; I do wish the game used its medium to get a little more wild with it. But the puzzles were generally pretty well constructed and offered a few fun “aha!” moments when I solved them, and I didn’t need to look at a walkthrough or lean on hints to get through. That said, the hints that I did use were pretty lackluster, and in one case, actually wrong, so that system needs some revision. Some of the sound design got a bit grating, too. I don’t know. Were this a co-op experience I’d probably like it a bit more. The appeal of an escape room is the excitement of solving it with a friend, and there are certainly enough self-contained puzzle sequences here to support that. But no; Mystwood Mansion is a solo experience, and I’m not sure if it’ll be that fun to solve multiple predictable escape rooms alone, staring at a computer screen.

The Invincible: 3/5
I am of two minds about The Invincible. This game is an atompunk sci-fi walking sim adapted from a novel (my roommate tells me) by Stanislaw Lem, and so, suitably, what we have in this demo is a slice of high-concept sci-fi steeped in personal stakes. I have a hard time thinking of anything bad to say about this game. It looks good, runs well, has an interesting story that left me wanting more. And yet, one day after playing it, I just do not want to pick the game up again. I suppose part of it was the pace. Some of the best walking sims – What Remains of Edith Finch – tell incredible stories in the space of two hours. Meanwhile this demo was 40 minutes long and felt like only a small piece of some grand, sprawling story. Environments are huge and your walking speed is pretty slow, so there’s a lot of time between set pieces where your character is just having headaches or struggling to breathe, which really wore me down. I can’t imagine playing this game for 10 hours; 5 might be pushing it. It’s not super tempting when I could just read the book.

Loodlenaut: 2/5
Oh boy, Loodlenaut. Where to begin. Okay, so, I actually like this game. It’s pretty, and relaxing; an ocean exploration game where your job is to clean up trash, rescue wildlife, and climb the tech tree. I have played through the entire demo, done everything there is to do, which took about an hour. And I will absolutely not be playing the full game. If you’ve played Powerwash Simulator, you know how satisfying it can be to get rid of muck and watch a meter climb up to 100% clean, and Loodlenaut scratches a similar itch. The problem here is that the game feels so clunky and limited that the frustration often outweighs the satisfaction. For example, you have a cleaning gun that picks up trash, destroys goop, and breaks boxes. But you don’t aim the gun, the game does, and it’s not really based on where you're facing or what you're closest to so much as it is on the game’s capricious moods. Say you’re trying to pick up a glass bottle, but there’s a crate nearby that you can’t break yet because you don’t have the right upgrade. Well, Loodlenaut will snap the gun to the crate and repeatedly try to break it, until you wiggle around enough to get it to change its mind and pick up the bottle. Wielding the gun is a constant frustration, as is sluggishly moving through the ocean. Your swim speed is slow, and your boost recharges slowly, so going back and forth between central base and the area you’re cleaning – something you have to do pretty frequently – takes what feels like an eternity until you sink lots of resources into infrastructure. None of this is a bad idea – incentivising players to craft boost rings to improve traversal is a good idea; auto-targeting is more comfortable than aiming on a controller – it’s just these systems are poorly implemented, which leads to frustration.

Luna Abyss: 5/5
Luna Abyss is a fucking wild demo. I downloaded it because the game’s description used they/them pronouns for its protagonist. I had no idea what I was getting into. So, okay, the best comparison I have for this game is to Returnal. Like that game, Luna Abyss is a high-production value 3D shooter where hitting your shots is easy, and the difficulty comes from avoiding the attacks of bullet-hell style enemies. And like Returnal, it has a strange, unsettling atmosphere, tight movement, and punchy, satisfying guns. Of course, Luna Abyss isn’t a roguelike, and it appears much more straightforward with its story beats so far. I don’t know, I’m having a hard time capturing what makes this game so great. Let’s start with the world, which is bleak and dark and oppressive. You run through cavernous metal structures, all black and grey, lit in harsh red. Enormous metal pipes twist and curl and embrace each other like enormous, mechanical intestines, and you run across them to get to your next objective. This place was not designed for you, and you feel that so clearly as you traverse it. You jump off the pipes and enter into combat, where a generous aim assist ensures that all your shots will hit. But there are a couple of enemy types to prioritize. You fire your shieldbreaker at a flying enemy, killing it, and time slows to a crawl, increasing the impact of the shot and giving you a tiny moment of respite to see what bullets you’ll have to dodge and decide what enemy you should prioritize next. A miniboss spawns in, grinning facelessly, and releases a flower of projectiles. You sprint and jump and dodge and you keep firing until she’s dead. The room is clear, and the demo is over, and your screen is awash with the bright, striking red of the UI. “Thanks for playing,” it says. I felt like I should be thanking it, instead.
It’s impossible to say, at this juncture, whether the game will be good. The crumbs of story were certainly engrossing; the combat fun; the world, striking. At the very least, Luna Abyss looks like it will be one of the most interesting and unique games of the year, whenever it comes out. I can’t wait.

Sea of Stars: 3/5
This one is alright. The world is beautiful, the music peppy, the character designs good. I just honestly have not played enough turn-based isometric RPGs to compare it to anything. I did have two big disappointments: I thought the writing was a little… on-the-nose, I guess? Characters just stated their objectives and everything was pretty surface-level. Dialogue wasn’t attacking or defending, only conveying information. And while the combat was fun and had a challenging timing element, it ended with a boss who I spent like ten minutes fighting for a single attempt, used all my items, did everything I could, and still lost to in dramatic fashion with no indication I had done any real damage. My suspicion is that the boss is simply meant to be an organic end to the demo, a scripted loss, but I don’t know; if not, it probably indicates that this type of game isn’t for me, since I found it to be quite a slog.

Stray Gods: 2/5
I really wanted to like Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical. It is, essentially, a choice-based VN in the style of a broadway musical about ancient Greek gods struggling to live in modern society. A tantalizing premise, if a bit theatre-kid-y. But my degree is literally in theatre criticism, so I have a lot of tolerance for the genre’s usual excesses. I can’t think of another musical video game, but Stray Gods’ demo did not convince me that the idea could work. The performances aren’t the problem here; Laura Bailey is a charismatic lead with pipes good enough to carry the show, and the supporting cast of big names (Troy Baker, Felicia Day, Khary Paton) are no slouches either. But so much about this game is just not working for me. Let’s start with the sound design. This is one of those games where it feels like all the actors are recording in totally separate rooms. There’s a lot of dead air, not a lot of dynamism or one person bouncing off the other during conversation. It robs scenes of a lot of momentum and impact. And when I say “dead air,” I mean dead air. Bafflingly, the game seemingly has no room noise, no background audio, so when people aren’t talking, or music isn’t playing, everything is completely, uncannily silent. It’s genuinely weird.
The musical numbers alleviate this weirdness by filling the soundscape but do little else to pull me in. We get to see four songs in the demo; two from the opening act, two picked from later in the game. All of these songs are very similar – fugues or duets, where one character has one perspective and another character (or chorus) has another perspective, and their conflict is expressed and then resolved through song. Which is a fine structure for a song in a musical, don’t get me wrong, but it is not a fine structure for every song. Even our main character Grace’s “I Want” song, the song that establishes her, her desires, and internal landscape and should absolutely be a solo, is a duet with a woman she’s just met. It does not work. And when the game has you making dialog choices during songs, it robs them of a natural arc; there’s no organic progression from the characters’ starting points to their ending points. Some part of me hopes that this game will be good, but I’m not optimistic. Stray Gods is no Hadestown.

Vampire Hunters: 3/5
In the Death Must Die blurb, I praised that game for refining the “Survivors” genre by making tweaks that allow for more skill and expression. But fuck that. Vampire Hunters is a braver game than Death Must Die will ever be, because it dares to ask, “What if Vampire Survivors was a boomer shooter where all your guns were on screen at the same time?” The result is absolutely wild; by the end of a run, more screen space is devoted to your guns than the entire rest of the game. It feels pretty weird to play, too; all of your guns have different ammo counts and may or may not be automatic, but all fire with the same button, so it can be tough to manage all of their separate ammo pools. And XP drops have a tiny pickup radius, so you really have to move to get them all. The neatest trick the game pulls is that it increases enemy spawn rate when you sprint, so moving at a high speed carries a lot of risk. But apart from that, this game is maybe too audacious to be enjoyable.

Viewfinder: 4/5
I am not a frequent puzzle game player, but I, like most every PC gamer, have a soft spot for the kind of reality-warping sci-fi-y puzzle genre originated by Portal and carried forward by the likes of Superliminal and, now, Viewfinder. First: this game is a technical marvel. You are able to, in essence, carry around entire environments, often with a wildly different art style from the rest of the game, and place them seamlessly and instantaneously in the world. I played this at 1440p, >100 FPS with nary a stutter on my midrange system. The ability to place photos and enter them is genuinely incredible on all levels other than technical, too; it feels magical, like stepping into a painting that you yourself made. My only question, one that the demo did not answer, is whether Viewfinder will be able to construct interesting puzzles out of this mechanic. This was something that I think Superliminal often failed to do, too; when the central mechanic of your puzzles is so unique and novel and powerful, how can you limit it in such a way that players actually have to think and put in effort to solve problems? For me, at least, every puzzle in Viewfinder was solved pretty much instantly, with no “aha!” moments, and that does worry me a bit.

Suddenly, inventory mostly works. NPCs sit on chairs (!!!) but also move and fight worth a damn. There's less lag. The game hasn't crashed for me 2 days in a row! I've run more missions than I ever have!

It can't last, right? I just jinxed it?

I recently felt an itch for a big expansive RPG and decided to play through AC:O for a second time. The game is really big, was a timesink the first time around (like 80 hrs) and is bogged down by a lot of resource sinks and differing systems all trying to get your attention. But I'm a sucker for the Greek Myths and ancient Greece, so this game is perfect for me; so I gave it another go.

So NG+ on AC:O is your typical affair: You begin a new game, but you keep your experience, all your items, and also crucially, all your invested resources. AC:O has an extremely tiring resource sink in the form of the Adrestia, your ship. You can upgrade the hull, the ramming damage, the throwing spears, the arrows, the fire to light your arrows, and the ability of your crew to brace against enemy ranged attacks, the ramming speed, and I think I'm even forgetting a few. Doing this all on your original run is an extreme timesink, as the resources required to get a single one of those things up a level scales incredibly fast. Even worse, the items required to do so are all fairly common (wood, iron, and the like) except for one, which are ancient tablets, of which there is only a set amount in the world, at various locations you need to loot. I went the distance on my first run, and upgraded my ship fully. And it remained upgraded! This means that one vast system in the game is now basically gone. It has made ship combat very easy, but then that never was the highlight of the game anyway, so I don't mind. On top of that, all rewards are scaled up in NG+, meaning that you begin to immediately drown in money and resources, and with the biggest resource sink gone, you can focus on building your equipment exactly the way you want to.

A second one is experience. Now, when AC:O came out the first time, lots of players complained that the amount of experience you gain is abysmal, pointing to the overly convenient ingame shop selling a permanent XP and money boost for like 10 bucks. And I can absolutely see their point. To progress in any form in AC:O in the normal game, you pretty much need to do every "proper" side-quest (as in the ones with a plot, not the automatically generated ones you find on message boards and the like, only the ones marked on the map with the golden exclamation mark), and then the main-quests of an area. If you do that, you'll be just about the minimum level to do the main quests. So for the people who are here for the scenery and a main story, they got fucked hard, or had to pay up again.

Another incredibly annoying thing about vanilla AC:O is that like many open-world games, the world is divided into large regions and islands. Every region had a minimum level recommendation that might as well have been a requirement, as fighting someone just 3 levels above you bordered suicide, as you could die in sometimes 2 hits, and did a fraction of their health in damage even with your most powerful abilities. This means that on your original run, the world is not open at all, but you have to progress in the way that developers want you to. You start in Kephalonia, and can't leave until you unlock the ship. Your first quest leads you to Megaris, but you'll immediately notice that the level requirement for the region is too high. Conveniently, along the way is a different area which actually fits your requirement, so you have to stop there, and do every quest there before you can progress in the main story line.

NG+ fixes that entirely. Completely. Whatever level you are, every region in the game is now set to your level. Which means that you can follow the main quest line along without any problems at all and actually do the fun thing where you travel the open seas to sail to a random island and do the quests there. You know, open-world stuff! I vividly remember on my first play-through how sad I felt that I couldn't actually use my ship to sail around and explore, because the game forced me to do each region in a specific order, and "enjoy" my time there before moving me along at the pace of the main story line. I couldn't even stealth my way through it (in an ASSASSIN'S CREED game) because Odyssey has this really fucked up mechanic where stealth kills stop becoming instant kills if the target is too high of a level above you. Seriously. But NG+ fixes this, because you immediately get access to the crutch ability that the devs implemented to fix this issue and because most enemies you encounter are going to be around your level no matter where you are.

Since now everything is just scaled to your level, the world immediately opens up after you leave the tutorial area and you can do pretty much whatever you want. I didn't hunt down the Cult of Kosmos, a gameplay system where you discover clues about members of a secret dangerous cult hunting your family, have to piece those clues together (or collect enough where the game is just willing to locate them for you), and then go to a place to assassinate the person, which gives you another clue, and so on. Killing all cult members is optional, but does influence the main story-line, as they serve as the main antagonists. I didn't complete this objective on my first play-through, because some of them are specifically level-gated, as in the person you have to kill is just set to have level 59, which is post-endgame content, meaning you either have to commit to a worse ending of the main plot, or stall the final mission, ruining the pacing even more, to go on a world-spanning quest of hunting down every member.

Playing on NG+ has significantly increased my enjoyment of the game, as I feel like I can just go everywhere and do thing as I want to, not as the developers intended to. Do you know how great it is to actually see a place on the horizon and just, I don't know, go there? You know, the main attraction of the open-world genre? And not be greeted by an enemy town guard 10 levels above you decimates you in 2 hits while you'd be whaling against him with your best weapons for a solid 15 minutes before he goes down. It's great. I'd honestly urge it to even new-comers who like RPG or like the setting but don't like the grindy messy bits to just download a full save of the original game and start a new game + on it. The start will be a bit intimating since you'll have all abilities, but you can just reset the skill tree for spare change and re-level the way you want to. The game is better off not having the grinding for better ship parts in the game and you being able to go wherever you want.

It's far from perfect, but I really think it just turns into into a better experience. I'm fine with not really levelling my character, because 1 out of 3 skill trees is entirely useless and the other two only contain a couple of abilities which are any good, so putting your points into prestige skills that just percentage increase your damage or resistance or whatever is honestly good enough. It's not interesting, but the world and characters are plenty interesting enough for me.

I received my Steam Deck on June 6th and have used it literally every day since then. Here are some assorted thoughts that might be of value to people either waiting on theirs or on the fence about ordering:

The Good

• I had no idea until I got it that there's an official Deck test game: Aperture Desk Job. It's essentially a cute test/tutorial for the Deck's controls, set in the Portal universe. Takes about half an hour, but it's a fun onboarding for the device.
• On the past two Saturdays, I have woken up and played Vampire Survivors with one hand while I held my morning coffee in the other. This is the way.
• The control remapping options are absolutely incredible. It is a very robust system. Even simple fixes (like putting A on a back paddle so I can play Vampire Survivors one-handed) can make a world of difference.
• I haven't run many heavy games on it, but I started up Bugsnax, and it was keeping a solid 60 FPS and looked great.
• Emulation on the device is a dream. I haven't done anything past OG PlayStation games yet, but the power of the device, the robust control customization, and the ease of installing emulators (adding Flatpaks in desktop mode) make this absolutely ideal for revisiting older consoles. I've spent probably 80% of my time on the device in PSOne games.
• Battery life is fine, but I don't really use it. I bought a long power cord and spend most of the time with it plugged in on my couch since it has passthrough. I thought the cord sticking out the top of the device would bother me, but it hasn't really been an issue.
• Game selection is increasing steadily (1700+ verified games currently). If you're buying it to play specific games you might be disappointed, as there's still a lot that doesn't work. If you're buying it for games in general though, there is plenty to keep you occupied.
• The grips are MUCH more comfortable for bigger hands than standard Switch joycons. Those would always cramp my hands, but the Deck feels natural and comfortable.
• The middle of the device gets warm to the touch during gameplay, especially on more demanding stuff, but the grips remain cool and you won't feel the heat at all unless you specifically move your hands to the back middle of the device.

The Bad

• The paddles on the back are a little awkward, and I accidentally click them more than I like. In most games they're not mapped to anything so it's fine, but in emulators I use them for save states. I had to set them to respond to long presses only so my accidental clicks didn't mess things up.
• The software is... still getting there. I get navigation issues on store and profile pages frequently, along with frequent UI lag. It's a bit unpolished at the moment.
• Don't know if it's specific to my hardware or a software bug, but sometimes it won't log me in to my Friends list and the only fix is a reboot.
• I wish the control sticks had deeper indents for your thumbs. They're pretty flat, and my thumbs tend to slip off on stick-focused games (most noticeable on my right (aiming) thumb during 20 Minutes Till Dawn).
• Bluetooth headphones have to be manually reconnected in the Settings menu each time. No idea why this is, but it's a bit of an inconvenience.
• Mid-game suspending is still clunky. I don't really do it, as I don't trust that it'll save like it should. It also still counts playtime while suspended but seems to have a rollback feature? I put the device to sleep with a game open that I'd played for 20 minutes and came back to it saying I'd played it for 3 hours. The playtime ended up dropping back down to 20 minutes, but only after I restarted the device.

The Ugly

• There isn't any ugly. I absolutely love this device. Despite my nitpicks above, I think it's nothing short of splendid. I'm more excited about this than I've been about anything in videogaming in a long time.

If anyone has any questions, ask away! Also if any other people here have their Steam Decks and want to chime in with their experiences (@Autoxidation), go for it!

So I just upgraded to an M1 Mac Mini. I was a little iffy on it, part of me wanted to build a PC just to play games but I really like MacOS and I mostly play on PS5 and the Switch with the PC only being for indie titles and stuff that only works with a keyboard and mouse like RTS, 4x, or city builders. I just don't play PC games enough to prioritize gaming as a use case in buying a computer, but I also really like RTS and city builder games.

I figured WINE and Parallels would meet most of my gaming needs but my forays into WINE have been frustrating and buggy, and this reddit thread about what works on Parallels is, frankly, just kind of sad to look at. What's worse, apparently the new Age of Empires has some kind of pathfinding instruction set that ONLY works with x86 architecture. So it won't work under any kind of virtualization or emulation.

Enter Cloud gaming. It seems the big contenders right now are ShadowPC, GeForce Now, and Paperspace. Has anyone tried these? When I last costed these out Shadow was only around $15-$20 a month which was almost a no-brainer. But it seems to have gone up to $30 a month now, which gets costly enough to where it almost seems like I'd rather get a Steam Deck. Paperspace is like $10 per month plus another ~$1 per hour of play, which would probably end up cheapest for how little I play. But how it is in terms of configuration and latency I have no idea.

Thanks to all who posted to or read last month's trial run of this topic. Let's try another month!

This thread is for when you're done with a game and you want to give your finalized overview of it. Did you enjoy it? What did it do well? What were some of its frustrations? Would you recommend it to others? That sort of thing.

For ease of readability, please bold the title for the game you're reviewing.

Also, please mark all spoilers as well using the following formatting:

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

I really enjoy reading through the weekly gaming threads where people talk about what they're currently playing. Those often give really interesting in-the-moment commentary, and I was thinking it might be nice to have a spot for more formalized "I'm finished with a game" thoughts and reflections.

This thread is for when you're done with a game and you want to give your finalized overview of it. Did you enjoy it? What did it do well? What were some of its frustrations? Would you recommend it to others? That sort of thing.

For ease of readability, please bold the title for the game you're reviewing.

If this is something the community likes, I'm thinking it could be a recurring monthly thing. Consider this month's post a trial run to see whether this is a concept worth continuing.