Mister Jack

Okay forget what I said before. I told a friend of mine about the one I had bought and he directed me to this 27 inch monitor that has the same resolution and HDR and all that other stuff for basically the same sale price. Only trade-off is it's 144hz instead of 165, but I think the tradeoff of getting an extra 3 inches on the screen is more than worth it. This was right down the street at my local Best Buy so I canceled the other one and now I've already got this bad boy bought and hooked up.

I honestly wasn't planning to upgrade my monitor until next year but this was on a Christmas sale plus there was a 30 dollar coupon so I'm getting a $260 monitor for $189. That's just too good an offer to pass up.

My old chair was getting uncomfortable but fortunately I had an extended warranty on it. Since there's a Christmas sale going on I got this upgrade, normally $380, basically for free minus the cost of a new warranty.

Fuck it, the Trump tariffs are about to make PC parts stupidly unaffordable again, so I'm just gonna go for broke and be set for the next five years minimum.

I downloaded the game pass version and it was a box to check or uncheck when I did it.

Really appreciate that Indiana Jones makes the 4K textures an optional download. I really wish more games would separate things you don't need like language packs and 4K textures.

Time to join the 32GB master race.

I've been super into VR this year. Next to my PC it's easily my most played platform these days. I bought the Serious Sam VR bundle in the steam autumn sale because it was extremely cheap and boy, lemme tell ya, Serious Sam is a much better game in VR. It's definitely old, and you can tell it was originally made for Vive controllers without joysticks, but it works fine with modern VR controllers like the Oculus Touch so it's not really a problem after a few tweaks. More importantly, playing it this way ends up giving you several improvements, some of which might not have even been intentional. 1) You can dual wield any gun as soon as you pick it up. You can also use a different gun in each hand. It opens up some new strategies. 2) Since you can free aim in any direction crowds are much less tedious to deal with than in the flat version so you're not just hitting S on the keyboard while holding down M1 the whole time. You can also shoot enemy projectiles out of the air much more easily, especially if you're dual wielding a pistol or assault rifle in one hand specifically for that purpose while using your other hand to deal damage. 3) Enemy health is NOT adjusted to take dual wielding into account, so everything dies faster. It really doesn't make the game too easy because you still have dozens and dozens of them coming at you in every wave. It just means battles don't overstay their welcome anymore. 4) Since you can free aim that means you can sweep the flamethrower back and forth in front of you to make a giant fiery wall of death instead of just aiming it in a straight line. 5) The sniper rifle is used by actually looking through the scope, so you can maintain situational awareness around yourself while sniping rather than having a big black circle blinding your peripheral vision. 6) The revolvers and the shotgun can fire as fast as you can pull the trigger, so if you're quick these basic weapons become absolute death dealers. Not bad for 2.99

If you own a Quest headset Meta is giving out three free months of Quest+ right now, which is basically Game Pass for VR headsets. It includes two new free games every month as well as a rotating catalog of games to download. Great way to try some of those titles that looked neat but you didn't want to pay full price for them.

For me this has been the year of VR.

Synapse This game might be a roguelike, but it's still a pure power fantasy. It takes a little while to really build up enough permanent upgrades to reach your full potential, but compared to other roguelikes I beat this one completely in just three days of play. I'm not really complaining though because the telekinetic powers are cool as hell. It's hardly the first game to have them or even the first VR game, but something about just looking at someone and flinging them away like trash thanks to the eye tracking hits different compared to merely putting an aiming reticle over them. It sounds like a minor thing but it changes the whole feel of the game. Plus, there's no meter or cooldown or anything like that on your powers. You can pick people up and fling them around as much as you want. Your only real restriction is you can't pick up heavies and you can only hold one object or person at a time. I've cleared entire levels without firing a single shot from my gun, instead just tossing people off of cliffs or into lava or into their own grenades or into each other. Of course, this does make it one of the easier roguelikes out there. You'll still spend plenty of time dying but like I said, once you've bought enough upgrades you are close to unstoppable. It's a pretty satisfying payoff in the endgame. The story isn't very compelling and there isn't much in the way of enemy types or weapon variety, but the moment to moment combat was just so fun that it made up for those other weaknesses in my book. If you happen to own a PSVR2 then you might as well play it if you haven't already, considering it's one of the platform's few exclusives.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9CWQJH5?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

I like the PSVR2 I bought but those shitty little earbuds just had to go. I don't like using earbuds when I'm going to be having to constantly turn my head because they'll either slip out or shift around and become uncomfortable. I don't want to have to awkwardly wear normal headphones over the headset either. These just clip directly onto the headset and then you can flip them down over your ears. Way more comfortable and better sound to boot.