TheMightyEthan

Well lucky for you the reviews are super positive.

My headphones died, so I'm upgrading. Arctis Nova Pro.

1000xResist This is a weird but cool game, that I can't really explain at all without spoiling. It's heavily story-driven, and the story and characters are all great, but unfortunately the gameplay doesn't work very well. It's not that it's bad per se, it's just that it's basically all walking around and talking to people, and it really slows the game down in a way that it does not benefit from. I think it would be a lot better if instead of having full navigable 3D environments it just had the interface of P3P or Citizen Sleeper. That said, it's weird and cool and definitely worth playing. Grade: I don't even know how to rate this, the story and characters are A+ but the actual game part is a C- The Case of the Golden Idol This is a mystery game with the interface of a point and click adventure. Basically you click around to look at all these clues and have to put together what's happening in each scene. The puzzles are well constructed, everything you need is there, and it doesn't hold your hand. I did think some of the later puzzles got to be a bit too complicated though, and there's not really a good in-game notes system or anything to keep track of your clues with, so it gets a bit unwieldy. Very good overall though. Grade: B+ Still Wakes the Deep This is a sci-fi horror walking sim thing set on a North Sea oil rig in the 70's. There's no actual combat, but there are enemies that you have to avoid/run away from, and they can and will kill you if they catch you. It's pretty neat, very atmospheric, and has a real sense of place. It's fairly short too, only about 5 hours, so it doesn't overstay its welcome. It does have some fiddly controls that can be annoying, but overall it's pretty good. Grade: B

*Maybe* this will be my last purchase from the Steam sale?

Finally Metaphor went on sale.

Dragon Age: Veilguard This game is very good. It's not what I wanted it to be, but once I let go of that and judged it for what it actually is, I really like it. At its core it feels like a Mass Effect game dressed as Dragon Age, but it's very good at being that. I think it's taken a little too much influence from Marvel movies, especially in the writing, but overall the characters are interesting, I like hanging out with most of them, the factions are cool, the locations are good, the core conflict is compelling, it's very well put together. And, to my utter surprise, they manage to address big lore questions without any apparent retcons, everything fits with what came before. It's really amazing how well this turned out, all things considered. I definitely recommend it to any fans of the series unless the change to full on action really really turns you off. I also recommend it to fans of action RPGs in general, though the story may not hit as hard if you aren't familiar with the previous games. Grade: A

1000xResist, The Case of the Golden Idol, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, and Still Wakes the Deep. A gaming podcast I listen to called MinnMax does a GOTY discussion every year called the Two Tens (like the "two n's" in MinnMax) where they all sit down and hash out their collective GOTY list live on air. It's a lot of fun, and this week they talked about their "gaming homework", or games that they all wanted to finish, or at least put a good dent in, before the discussion. These games (along with a whole bunch of others) were all on the list, and they're ones I'd wanted to play anyway, so I figured I'd give them a shot now so that when they're all talking about them I'll have a better idea what they're talking about. I definitely have enough time for this, yep, no question...

Need something to play on my PS5 Pro and this is the only game I can find with a good Pro update that I haven't already played

I bet VR will really work well with the diorama effect, it did in Humanity.

Was going to wait to get one of these until either Ghost of Tsushima 2 or Death Stranding 2 came out, but then Trump won and his tariffs are expected to make electronics increase in price by like 40%, so I figured I'd snag one now while I can get one for MSRP.

Preordered all of these a few weeks ago.

Well as of this past Friday we made it through our 7 day trial period and we are keeping it. We really like it, there's a couple small little niggles (like the trunk light is on the side instead of the top, so if something is on that side it blocks the light from the whole trunk, little stuff like that) but overall it's really great.

Alan Wake 2: The Lake House This DLC is great. You're playing an FBC agent investigating an FBC facility that they've lost contact with, so it's basically a little mini-episode of Control, but with the Alan Wake 2 mechanics, just a flashlight and guns, no super powers or anything. The narrative is spot-on, as is the encounter design and everything, except for the final boss (which I feel like is a problem Remedy often has). I can't say much more without spoiling stuff, but if you like Control and Alan Wake then this is definitely for you. Grade: A

Yeah, visiting my wife's family in South Dakota is the only trip we make with any kind of frequency where it'll be annoying, having to charge would add an hour and a half or so to the already 7 hour long trip. But that's a trip we make like once every other year, so we didn't think it was worth basing our car decision on that. Everywhere else we ever go we should be able to cover in a single charge (or with only a few minutes' charging during bathroom breaks), and we aren't getting rid of our good gas car yet so we'll still have that option if we want it.

Jelly that it's MQ3 exclusive.

Hehe, "Tew 2" sounds like "tutu"

No, we were only getting a car at all because we wanted electric. I had been looking into it and there are enough chargers around that even in Kansas it's very feasible now. It has a ~250 mile range, so like driving to visit my wife's family in South Dakota would take more planning than it would with a gas car to make sure we're recharging where we need to, but other than that it's far enough to easily go anywhere we might want to without risking being caught somewhere without a charger. We also have a whole home solar power system, so we'll be able to charge it off 100% clean power when we're at home, so I am very much looking forward to having a car that I don't have to feel guilty about driving.

2023 Chevy Bolt. The picture isn't the exact one I bought, but the same year and color. Get to pick it up next weekend.

I'm holding off until I find out how the PC version runs.

Black Myth Wukong I really liked this game. It's kind of a soulslite (rather than soulslike). The combat feels a lot like a souls game, there are shrines that function as bonfires, and normal enemies respawn when you use them. It's missing an actual souls mechanic though, you keep everything when you die, which changes the risk-reward dynamic of exploration. It also doesn't have the shortcut-heavy level design, which makes more of a difference than I would have expected. Overall it's very well done, the world is cool, the game is gorgeous, it's great. However, there are a few weird decisions that drag it down. There are entire really basic mechanics (such as upgrading your armor) that are easily missed entirely. There's no map. The entire structure of the last chapter is... a choice. Ultimately it was fun throughout, a few frustrating bosses aside, and it ended strong, so I'm happy with it. Grade: B+ It would have been at least an A-, possibly an A, if not for those weird choices dragging it down. Hopefully they do another game and improve upon that stuff.

Astro Bot This game was cool, lots of great level design, varied mechanics, most of it pretty easy but with some real kick-your-ass challenge levels to change things up. My only complaints are really small things, like I wish it had a big bad with personality, like a Bowser or whatever, and I wish each nebula had some kind of overarching theme, but none of it really detracts from the experience. It's just a great platformer with lots of love for Playstation's history and a real sense of joy and whimsy. Grade: A

New mobo and ram arrived this morning, I got them installed and after it initially failing to post (because of course) it's working now! And I'm getting the performance I would expect.

I ordered that CPU like a week before hearing about all the issues, and I specifically chose it because I didn't want to have to replace my mobo too... *Edit - As for the 4090, I have no justification besides the fact that several games came out recently that I've been very frustrated with the performance of my old card, and I got tired of waiting for the 50 series to be announced (it'll be next week now that I actually bought one). I am at least confident that once this PC is *working* I shouldn't have any trouble running games at least until the PS6 comes out.

I have been on quite the adventure the last few days. It all started off, as you may recall, with me getting a Core i9 14900k in May. That led to me being dissatisfied with my GPU performance, which ultimately resulted in me breaking down and buying this: RTX 4090 ftw! I had carefully measured to make sure it would fit in my case, so I was very excited when it arrived and ready to install it immediately and start gaming. It did not fit in my case. So! One 2.5 hour round trip to Wichita later and I have this baby: Corsair 5000D RGB mid tower. Plenty of space, has the nice panel in the back to hide all the power cables, really a nice upgrade that was a long time coming, my old case was like 15+ years old. Anyway the new case can let you control the front fan colors with the temperatures of your system components. Neat! So I started setting that up and uh oh, turns out my CPU is regularly getting up to 100C during regular gameplay. Guess my CPU fan isn't cutting it. No problem, I can solve that! Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360mm water cooler! Hooray! That'll keep my CPU nice and chilled out. The water cooler arrived this morning, I installed it before work (didn't have to be in until 10:45 today), went to check how my CPU temps were doing and... it won't post. Go to work pissed, because by that time was out of time. Came home, did extensive testing, and determined that the entire B memory channel on my mobo was dead. Slots A1 & A2 both work, but putting anything in either B1 or B2 causes it to fail to post. As you are no doubt aware, the PC can only access one RAM stick per channel at any given time, so while putting sticks in A1 & A2 gives you the same total capacity as A1 & B1, it effectively cuts the speed in half. This is unacceptable. Which brings us to my most recent purchase, made only minutes ago: New motherboard and 32GB of DDR5 RAM, set to arrive Sunday. So anyway, basically I wanted a new CPU and have ended up replacing every single part in my PC except for the power supply and one fan (the rear exhaust). To close, I'll leave you with a comic:

I broke down.