TheMightyEthan

I wonder if there's something wrong with your particular deck's wifi? Mine is crazy fast, it might be the fastest device I have.

So here's my best guess at what's going on in Signalis:

So, because I'm insane, I decided to get a 4070 Ti, though my brother in law is going to buy my 3080 from me, which will cover most of the cost. So I'm upgrading for just a couple hundred dollars.

Somerville I actually liked this game, not sure why it was panned so bad. It's from a new studio started by one of the creators of Limbo and Inside, and while it's not quite as good as those games, it's close. Certainly captures the same feel. The main change is that it's "3D", although really it plays more like 2.5D, you tend to be moving in one direction and have a small amount of cross-wise freedom, but it's limited enough that I think it could easily be converted into a fully 2.5D game like Inside without really losing anything. The powers you have are cool, and really the worst thing I can say about it is a couple of the puzzles were kind of obtuse, but that's to be expected in a puzzle game. Basically, if you liked Playdead's games I'd say give this one a try. Grade: B+

I already had a USB-C hub with HDMI for use with my Switch when I take it to other places, so we could play Mario Kart or whatever, so I've used that a few times. Mostly I've used it when I need to do stuff in desktop mode, but also broke it out at my sister's house on New Year's to play Jackbox.

Yeah, I really loved the art style a lot.

Signalis This game is basically Dead Space x Dino Crisis, with a 32-bit aesthetic. The plot was weird and confusing and I barely understand what happened, and I loved every second of it. Grade: A+

Yeah, I'm noticing the same thing with my 3080, and it's rather upsetting. I'm probably going to end up getting 40-series card, which makes me a sad panda. Apparently with the Witcher specifically though, it's actually a CPU bottlenecking issue, not GPU. I believe Plague Tale is actually better balanced in that regard, so it may hold up better. With G-sync I'm fine all the way down to about 50-fps, it's below that that things start feeling rough to me (though apparently even with a 4090 and 12900k The Witcher 3 update will be in the 30's-40's in the major cities unless you turn on DLSS3...)

I'm still waiting for the ray tracing patch before playing Plague Tale.

Ooh, what's Heaven's Vault? Banner looks intersting.

First of the year! I was hoping I'd beat Signalis and get to name the thread.

"Kinda okay" is a good description of how I felt about that game. I've been playing Signalis, and holy shit is this game good. It's like Dino Crisis x Dead Space, done in a 32-bit game style, and I love it. Someone had suggested it to me at Halloween, but for whatever reason the visual style didn't appeal to me, but that's because I was obviously suffering from a massive psychotic episode, because this game is gorgeous. The gameplay itself may not be for everyone, it's third-person fixed camera, survival horror, find the keys to unlock the doors type experience, but it's really clicking with me, and I definitely recommend checking it out if it sounds even remotely interesting to you. And it's on Game Pass!

My list: Scarlet Nexus Quantum Break Chorus Psychonauts 2 Pokemon Legends: Arceus Horizon Forbidden West The Forgotten City Carrion Death's Door Cyberpunk 2077 Elden Ring Tunic Returnal: Ascension Bridge Constructor: Portal Triangle Strategy The Gunk Unpacking Ghostwire: Tokyo Assassin's Creed: Valhalla: Wrath of the Druids Assassin's Creed: Valhalla: Siege of Paris Tales from the Borderlands Sifu Assassin's Creed: Valhalla Assassin's Creed: Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok Hades Prey: Mooncrash Deliver Us the Moon Lego Builder's Journey Hardspace: Shipbreaker Far: Lone Sails Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels As Dusk Falls Exapunks TIS-100 Shenzhen I/O The Looker Jurassic World Evolution 2 Jurassic World Evolution 2: Dominion Biosyn Death Stranding PC Escape Academy Deathloop Tinykin The Spectrum Retreat Escape Academy: Escape from Anti-Escape Island God of War: Ragnarok Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope The Outer Worlds: Peril on Gorgon The Outer Worlds: Murder on Eridanos Weirdly exactly the same number as last year. But wait! There's stats! Playstation saw a massive decrease in the proportion of my gaming spent there. In 2021 a whopping 92% of the games I beat I played on Playstation, accounting for 88% of my gaming hours. In 2022 it was just 23% and 32%, respectively, even losing the top spot to PC (though just barely). The biggest and most obvious explanation for that is that I got an Xbox (increased from 0% in both categories last year to 25% of the games and 23% of the hours this year) and a built a new PC (up from 4% to 44% in games and 7% to 33% in hours), both with Game Pass. But even that doesn't account for all of it, because Switch saw a rise from 4% of games and 5% of hours last year to 8% of games and 12% of hours this year. Not a huge bump, but it did go up. (Here's a link to my post from last year for comparisons.) In terms of the amount of time spent with each game, Horizon: Forbidden West takes the top spot, with 69 (nice) hours, and Elden Ring right on its heels with 68 hours. On average I spent 22.6 hours with each Playstation game, 22.5 on Switch, 15 on Xbox and 12 on PC. I think Xbox and PC's averages were both dragged down by Game Pass encouraging me to play more little indie games, since I don't have to buy them individually. So that's my year in gaming. I'm honestly surprised how well balanced I was between the platforms. I'll be interested to see what next year's looks like, and if I get an even bigger skew towards PC now that I have a Steam Deck.

Good shout out for As Dusk Falls.

As a follow-up to that, I got it working and running Game Pass games natively, without cloud streaming. It's pretty cool. My one tip to add is that I couldn't figure out how to configure SWICD at first, and it was sending both button presses and keyboard inputs simultaneously, so that was a problem, but the trick is just that by default it launches minimized to the tray, and was hidden in the little up arrow. Once I went in there and configured it everything worked great.

I would also like to add these two guides for creating a bootable Windows SD card: https://wagnerstechtalk.com/sd-windows/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-install-windows-steam-deck/#dt-heading-boot-from-a-microsd-card-or-usb-drive Lets you effectively dual-boot (because actual dual-booting currently isn't supported), without having to split your internal drive and without having to nuke your Steam OS installation. Also SWICD, here: https://github.com/mKenfenheuer/steam-deck-windows-usermode-driver/wiki/Installation, which lets Windows recognize the Steam Deck controls as a 360 controller so you don't have to launch your Windows games through Steam.

I started Metal: Hellsinger last night, played the first two levels and really enjoyed it. I never got on much with the modern Dooms, and this is a similar feel but is really clicking with me. It just feels so good to be doing everything to the beat, and the music is great. It starts out with just a beat, but as you build your multiplier it layers on more and more of the track. It's so hype when you hit a 16x multiplier and the vocals kick in, up there with the Persona 5 music when you're doing you're final thieving run on a dungeon. It does have weird performance characteristics on PC. Adjusting the graphics settings doesn't seem to affect framerate at all, resolution is the only thing that seemed to matter. On the main menu (which has a 3D scene in the background) at 4k ultra I got 84 fps, and at 4k low I got 85 fps. Turning it down to 1440p got me to locked 120, but again other settings had no effect. It's not a major problem, I can play at 1440p, it's just weird.

Also got an SD card, planning to put Windows on it for the Steam Deck so I can play Game Pass games too.

Ordered the 512GB Steam Deck. They're still saying 1-2 weeks, so fingers crossed that holds and there isn't a massive post-Christmas slowdown. Especially since it's looking like I'm going to have to go on a work trip starting on the 17th, and I'd really like to have this for that. I'm also planning to get an SD card and dual-boot Windows so I can play Game Pass games and stuff on it.

I shelved that game after a couple hours. The combat was barely passable, and the humor was just mildly amusing. My main reaction to the jokes was "I understood that reference," which isn't exactly high praise. So scores in the 60's seem about right to me.

GOTY: Horizon: Forbidden West I loved Zero Dawn, and this is basically just a refinement of that. The world is just so cool, exploring the lore is so cool, I love the story, everything about it is great to me. I can't wait for the DLC. Very few things could have topped this for me, and since there's no Zelda this year it clinches it. Runner-Up: Elden Ring The fact that this is even on my list at all is really quite an accomplishment. I have previously tried and bounced off of Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, and Sekiro, so I was convinced From games just aren't for me. The only reason I even tried it is because everyone was hyping it up so much, and boy am I glad I did. I think the factor that finally made it click for me is that the ability to go wherever you want means you don't have to just keep beating your head against a wall if you encounter a part that's too hard, you can just go somewhere else for a while and come back when you're stronger. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that was the biggest thing, and boy am I glad they did it. This game is great. Honorable Mention: Sifu This is another game that kind of came out of nowhere for me. Normally I'd say I'm not a fan of "hard" games, but Elden Ring and this one would seem to question that. The combat in this just feels so good, and I loved learning the levels and strategizing how to go about it to keep your age down going into the next level. I can't wait to see what they do next.

That looks cool, kinda wish they'd kept the 65 million years ago thing a secret though, could have been a cool reveal, like the Matrix.

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope This game could have been great if it hadn't spent so much time shooting itself in the foot. I loved the first one, so this was a major disappointment, made all the more frustrating because the actually battle system is improved from the original. The problem is the stupid open areas they made for each world, where you have to do boring, tedious puzzles to advance to get to the next battles. It was okay for the first world, by the second world it was starting to drag a bit, and by the third world I was completely over it. By the fifth world I was legit hate playing the game. Then, the sixth and final world does away with all that and it's glorious and just makes me even more frustrated with the rest of the shit I had to put up with to get there. The battle system is great though, it's similar to the first but refined, and the grid system is removed, instead allowing your characters to run around freely within a certain distance of their starting position until they fire their weapon, which locks them down. It feels great to play, and I wish the rest of the game didn't ruin it. Grade: C+

God of War: Ragnarok So, you may have heard, this game is pretty good. I had a good time throughout, I never felt like it dragged, it had the perfect balance of giving me side stuff to do when I wanted and not gating the main story so I could always progress if I wanted that instead. The combat was really fun too, especially the new weapon. You definitely feel the limitations of the different realms, they're open-ish but still feel pretty restricted, in a way that feels more like a PS360 era game than a modern one, but once you get used to it it doesn't detract from the experience. The story is also really compelling for the first 95%. I did think the very end fell a little flat, I was hoping for more spectacle in the last confrontation than what we got, which left me a little down on it when the credits rolled, but the epilogue pulled me back in and the really-actually-the-final-end part was about as perfect as it could have been. Since finishing it I've been wrapping up the remaining content, working towards the plat, and I've cycled from love to hate and back again about three times. Basically there keeps being more to do than what I realized, and I keep getting irritated with it for that, but then I get back in the groove of actually playing, and it just feels so good that I can't stay mad at it. It also keeps dropping little extra lore tidbits that are just amazing, even in the post-game, which definitely helps lessen the feeling of grind. Grade: A