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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.

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.

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

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.