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So I can commute to my new job that starts Monday.

Khajiit has power, if you have coin.

I'm a friggin dumbass. I got my new 165hz monitor out of the box and hooked it up with the HDMI cable and tried playing some Killing Floor 2 with it. My first impression was "Whoa! This is so smooth!" Oh but wait. The variable framerate isn't turned on in the game settings. Okay so I turned it on. "Whoa! This is so smooth!" Oh but wait, I looked at the monitor manual and it says you need to use the DisplayPort cable to get the full refresh rate. Oops. So I unhook the HDMI and hook up the DisplayPort cable and try the game again. "Whoa! This is so smooth!" Oh but wait. The monitor's hardware menu says it's only putting out 60hz. I forgot to change my windows display settings to allow for higher refresh rates. So I changed the control panel options to raise it to 165hz and checked the monitor's on-screen menu. Now it says 165hz. Is it okay to think it's smooth now?

Also also... a wedding ring...

Bought a house. Been a super smooth process to do what with the world shutting down and bank changing interest rates twice during the process.

I was gonna save up for this but I got some unexpected money for christmas, so I decided to pull the trigger early. It was tempting to wait a few months to see what the RTX 3000 cards are like but if the 2060 is any indication then they'll likely be well outside my price range anyway. This is more of a stopgap that I'm hoping will get me through at least the cross-gen phase of the next console cycle. Beyond that, I'll likely need to upgrade my CPU as well, which means an entirely new build. I may upgrade to a fancy ray-tracing card then but until then, this should let me play things at a respectable framerate again. Plus, I really wanted the upgrade before Cyberpunk comes out, just in case. I have a feeling my GTX 960 just isn't going to cut it... It's gonna be really nice to finally play Monster Hunter World at 60fps (or at least, reasonably close to it) when I jump back in with Iceborne. But I'll be tossing a coin to my Witcher, first. Definitely wanna get Witcher 3 out of the way before Cyberpunk. This card should easily max it out and maintain a locked 60fps but I think I may even be able to leave Hairworks on!

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild BotW was obviously a great game, but even beyond that, it really encapsulated a lot of the changes gaming went through this decade, and it managed to do it without losing the magic of the series (*cough*Assassin's Creed*cough*). It took a series that had been largely the same formula since Ocarina of Time*, smashed it to bits, and rebuilt it from the ground up, while still feeling like a continuation of what came before. Where previous Zeldas were divided into the overworld and dungeons, with progress gated by specific items, and puzzles that cannot be completed without them, BotW goes full open-world, with system-driven gameplay. I don't know of anything more 2010's than open-world, system-driven. You get every ability/item within the first couple hours of the game, and if you want you can completely ignore everything and run straight to the final boss (not that it's easy, but it's possible). On the flip-side of that, the game is very good at sign-posting where to go next, without railroading you into it. My problem with lots of open-world games is that they're too open, they feel too aimless, and I lose interest without a clear mid-term goal. BotW always has that mid-term goal, which allows you to screw around to your heart's content, but then as soon as you get tired of it and want to progress the narrative it's fairly clear where to go next. And it accomplishes this without cluttering the map with icons. The only icons on your map are the one quest marker (which you can determine which quest is tracked, or turn off completely) and ones you place there yourself. This means you don't just play the minimap, you actually look at the world and figure things out from there, which sounds like it could get frustrating, but the world is so well designed that you rarely lose your direction if you want to find it. The Hyrule of BotW feels huge, and open, and empty, without being desolate. It's post-apocalyptic, but it's a green post-apocalypse. There are a just few small settlements, that truly feel like remnants of a collapsed civilization, clinging to life in the wilderness. The emptiness makes it the most real-seeming "wasteland" I've yet played in. It's not Rapture, where the lore says there's a semi-functioning society still, but the world looks completely destroyed with only crazed psychopaths in sight. Nor is it the densely-populated wasteland of Fallout, which has too much civilization for how disorganized the lore says it is, but simultaneously too many hordes of bandits and monsters right next to the settlements. Each village in BotW feels isolated from the rest, but also like it could be reasonably self-sufficient, and the monster camps are close enough to be threatening without being so close as to make you wonder how the town is still around at all. And on a more minor note, the towns feel like actual towns, unlike the "towns" in Fallout that consist of two houses and five people, with one quarter-acre farm. In short, Breath of the Wild exemplifies the trends of the decade, while also doing them better than any other game I've played. Honorable Mention: Prey, for similar reasons to Zelda. Talos has all the charm of Rapture, without the ludo-narrative dissonance of there supposedly being a functioning society still around somewhere, and the systems-based approach to problem solving is a joy.

Got it as a gift for helping my aunt and grandparents with some issues they were having with their phones, tablets, tvs and other assorted electronics.

Not sure I can embed but worth a watch. Never has a series of sweet adverts had such a gripping tale.

I blame parenthood and the ebay $250 deal. Going to get Zelda and Mario Odyssey after it arrives. Edit: Also got Surviving Mars, which is neat so far.

RIP money.

The dock on the bottom

Good luck with the tutorial.

Press X or Dad

That's Daniuel thank you very much.

@FLD I bet you were happy when you got it home and lo and behold on your bookshelf was a space waiting for it, a perfect fit.

Someone on Twitter pointed out that between the BGE2 announcement and now Sony announced and released TLG.

I REGRET NOTHING!