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Star Fox 64 As fun as I remember, also, I'm way better at it now than when I originally played it aeons ago lol, took me about an afternoon to get both endings. Grade: A+

I agree with both points but I can still be underwhelmed by it.

I think the Wii U debacle made them leery of coming up with anything too clever

It's fine, but I would have preferred Super Nintendo Switch.

I just think Switch 2 is a lame-ass name.

Hard to form many opinions from the scant information but I like the look of it. The only thing putting me off buying it at launch is if it's LCD as I might then be tempted to wait for the OLED version as I almost certainly wouldn't buy both. Hopefully they would have a lite and premium model at launch though I wouldn't place any bets on that.

I'm still plugging away at Metaphor ReFantazio, near the end of September.

Marvel Rivals is a much better game than I gave it credit for. I completely wrote it off as an Overwatch clone when I saw the trailer, and to an extent it kind of is, but what I had forgotten is that when it's done well the Overwatch genre is actually pretty fun. Rivals is not only more accessible to the point where even total amateurs will be able to find at least one character they can play well, but it doesn't have a lot of the bullshit that made me give up Overwatch in the first place. NO LOOT BOXES for one thing. New characters are given out for free. In fact, the only paid items are all cosmetic and the battle passes give out premium currency. Monetization aside, I think I just like playing games like this in third person more than first person. I've been using a controller to play on PC due to wrist pain and I'm still racking up 10+ kill streaks because there are only a handful of characters where you really need the precision of a mouse. This game feels more like it's about how you position yourself and how you deploy your abilities than it is about who can line up headshots better (with some exceptions like Hawkeye, of course). I like it a lot.

I've been using the same stock Dell keyboard for like a decade now lol It's a case of where it does everything it needs to do so I never saw the need to replace it.

Oh hey that's the same keyboard I have, I really like it.

I upgraded pretty much everything else about my PC. Might as well finally do something about that stock wired keyboard. Already got a new mouse a while back that I'm happy with.

Hey Amazon, not every product video needs royalty free music blasting at full volume.

My cheap ones had a lot of sound leakage too, the Shokz seem better, the material they're made of is less rigid so I think it that helps because the body of the headphones isn't vibrating as much.

Just looking back on my watched Anime this year. Which I pretty much all watched on Netflix and dubbed. Probably the overall winner is Delicious in Dungeon, which was my watch after Blue-Eye Samurai. Has been a delight in having the combo of followed SunWong Cho (ProZD) for years so cool to have the sort of "side bits" on Twitter. I then (mid-way cos this was just 4 episodes and Delicious in Dungeon was weekly releases) did Pokemon Concierge Not quite anime (though Netflix seem to feel that way...). Was just a delight. Really the only sucky thing was just having 4 episodes. Then to pivot once again in tone Probably one of the better Terminator things by virtue of trying something a bit new with the concept (especially being set outside of US and the Connors). I like the cute house robot things (and I imagine there's a bit more of a point there given Japan seems to be looking at carehome bots for elderly population). Next up was Dan Da Dan. It's very weird. Certainly a "don't watch if you parents can pop in the room" type (especially given lots of talk about missing weiners and balls). The "occult versus sci-fi" aspect is kinda cool (though as it currently stands the team by virtue of their make-up seem more pro-occult which I think could be better to balance maybe). And then finally Arcane (only just finished last night, held off watching it due to the mid-series break) I'll be honest I wasn't super keen on the ending, maybe need to do a full binge of S1 and S2. Mainly just didn't get the Ambessa bits Oh and I also binged Ouran midway in the year, but I've seen it before. It's fun and goofy.

Oh and yeah I much prefer 27 inches. It's a good monitor size too.

I currently wield some cheap bone conduction headphones (not $10 cheap, but not the £100+ that Shokz go for) also for experimenting. they're quite good for work and for popping out into town. Nice to have something on in the background like a podcast while not being totally oblivious (we have a lot of ND students with full over-ear headphones and while I get it, I do think we're gonna need a compromise at some point). They can be quite leaky though on sound. While back had a ping on Teams from a colleague of "we can all hear your music btw". You do have to ramp them up past the "this will fuck your ears" warning when out and about, I think mainly down to the fit. And tbh I'm not sure that will be alleviated with Shokz stuff as it all seems quite immovable. On audio front, I have, with Christmas pennies, bought myself a pair of these I've actually got them for replacing a pair of HyperX headphones I've had for many years, and I do really love them. The only major hiccup was they were wired. Which wasn't an issue with gaming as PS5 has port on the controller, but was an issue with a cat... (and no one sells like headphone cable that's terminated at one end, or 3.5mm ports that weren't sold in bulk so I could jerry rig a replaceable cable). From a tech standpoint really like these. They're my first ever noise cancelling headphone. I've not had a chance to fully test that aspect but will be trying it at work next week. Also good for workness is the "Ambeint Aware" mode which just funnels through external sound. I've actually had a play with that and it's kinda uncanny to have the PS5 playing, and then also sound from youtube as if I've plugged the headphones straight into my laptop. On the "plugging straight in" it has a cable to plug straight into stuff (you can see the hole on the image) if it's supported. Only hiccup is it's 2.5mm on the headphone end so that'll be a pain to replace. But it's nifty it works without any power being on the headphones just acts like a pair of old fashioned wired headphones. The multi-point thing I'm still working on. I originally hooked these up to my phone and my Google TV was also like "oh you have these headphones, want to use them?" so that was neat. Downside being as it was tied to both my TV and my phone, if my phone had a sound-enabled app (which is 95% of them) then that would pause my TV to take control of my headphones even if no sound was actually playing. I've since removed from my phone and just hooked straight into my TV as a whole. I remember years ago having a cheap Bluetooth keyboard that had a physical switch for different devices and I feel that's still the way to go for "multi-point". Non-tech wise - One thing I loved with my HyperX was the fit. They're the most comfortable headphones I've ever worn, and that's great for longer playing sessions (or late night TV/movies). I did have a junk of time looking around for similar and these are over-ear but I do have to make a bit of an effort to make sure my ears are tucked inside. I do understand part of that is for the noise cancelling to work, get a nice seal on my head, but my ears are a bit sore when I do take them off after a long session. Also I was annoyed with having to shuffle games around on my Steamdeck (and especially with not being able to grab Baldurs Gate without having to clear a ton of stuff first) so I also got myself a 1tb SSD for the deck. The iFixit partnership was great in having a guide to follow along (though it gets light on the software side and the official Valve instructions for re-installing SteamOS are a bit "draw the rest of the owl"). Also more space meant I could properly flex Heroic Launcher too - got a ton of freebies from Epic and Amazon to play about with and they're not as easy to move over to the MicroSD.

Not a wrap up, just a belated "Game I beat in 2024". Machinika Museum I actually got this back in May when they were doing a giveaway, so better late than never. It's basically "The Room" (if you've played that series) but a bit sci-fi rather than cosmic fantasy (admittedly the gif looks like an elder scroll). I think it was originally designed for phones so it works really well with the touch screen on the steamdeck (which is kind of rare for games to work with the touchscreen as a "touch screen" and not just for like typing on a keyboard or picking objects in some menus). Only major hiccup was no obvious method for "back/zoom out" so did have to cludgily use the B. Was about the right length. I spent about 4hrs playing it, and the sequel could be cool but not currently £12 worth of cool. (£12 got me Midnight Suns). Puzzles were pretty logicial, no moon logic (just aside from "why are military researchers putting puzzles on their crates locks"). You get stumped but not frustratingly so.

Well yeah, but there are always folks out there who will swear blind that can perceive a 0.00001Hz difference, so I'm holding space for them.

Until Then is officially the first addition to my backlog in 2025!

Got this with Amazon points. It shows a Switch here but it also works with PCs with the flip of...um, a switch. I've been getting back into fighting games recently, particularly Guilty Gear, but playing them with an Xbox style controller is just too cumbersome. I have an old SNES style controller too but it's just not quite doing it for me so this is where it's at as far as I'm concerned. I like that it has both wireless and wired options, and if I feel like swapping out the stick or face buttons at any point I can mod it fairly easily. Haven't used it too much yet but I've been doing fairly well with Elphelt and Slayer so far which is enough for me to give this stick a thumbs up. I've bought so much 8bitdo stuff that I probably sound like a shill at this point but their controllers have been even better and more reliable for me than the official ones in some cases. In fact, one of them had the sticks wear down after using it for years so you know what I did? Bought replacement sticks for $10 and fixed it myself. WHAT A NOVEL CONCEPT.

TIL there was DLC for Origins. *Edit - Wait, never mind, I was thinking of Mirage, I knew about Origins.

Assassin's Creed Origins So, I actually beat the main game years ago but I was underleveled for the DLC (and stubbornly refused to use the level boost), so I just got frustrated with it and stopped. But now a combination of factors made me return to it. Ubisoft finally added Steam achievements support to AC Valhalla, so I finally bought it and Odyssey. Then there's AC Shadows that's looking really good and making me want to catch up with the series. And finally, that one area in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle reminded me of how much I love Egypt as a video game setting, so it made me want to fire up AC Origins again. Anyway, so I picked up right where I had left off: working on completing the base game's map until I was high level enough to tackle the DLC. I had been working on it on and off since October, and now, after having almost doubled my initial playtime, I'm finally done. Goddamn, this game is so needlessly massive. I wasn't kidding about my playtime. The main game took me about 50 hours to beat. My current playtime according to Steam is 94 hours. And over half of that extra 44 hours was spent just running around the base game's map and clearing out all those question marks. Both DLCs probably took me less than 20 hours combined. I could've probably done it a little faster because early on I was also doing all the minor side-quests on the map but at some point I found out they weren't actually required for anything, so I stopped. They were by far the most time-consuming thing and kinda sucked anyway. The DLCs were alright. The first one, The Hidden Ones, is basically more of the same. Kill some dudes to draw out your real target, etc. The second one, Curse of the Pharaohs, leaned more heavily into fantasy and was surprisingly meaty. I really enjoyed that one. By the time I reached it, I was ready for the game to be over but it never really overstayed its welcome despite the amount of content there is to get through. I still cleared all the question marks in every single area even though they weren't required for achievement purposes. So yeah, feels good to have finally completed this one. Now one of my gaming goals for 2025 is to do the same for Odyssey and Valhalla.

BINDING OF ISAAC HAS ONLINE NOW BINDING OF ISAAC HAS ONLINE NOW