LadyCrimson

Can you give me an idea how far into the main questline that might be? eg, pretty early, 1/4, 1/2. 3/4 etc Story wise I never made it farther than the, uh - trying to avoid spoilers just in case - the start of that mission with Jackie. Which I know isn't that far. I spent most of my 25-30 hrs. just farting around, as usual.

I know zero about that, re: spinal degeneration potentials, I'll ask hubby if he's looked into it. The doc spent like 45 minutes with hubby outlining the conditions and possibilities but probably if it's not done/covered by the hospital he wouldn't mention it. He did mention the spinal fusion but heavily did not recommend it - I wouldn't either, to me that sounds like a last resort type of thing. Hubby's mobile enough for day to day, so if pain can be managed life could be "all right" overall. But all those car/handy man tools/supplies etc. are probably going to be dumped.

No Man's Sky - I do have some minor irritations. --the KB/M keybinds are often terrible, imo. Yes you can remap them but still terrible. As in, awkward at times. --For some reason when in the Galaxy warping ship map I cannot path a route with the KB/M. But the controller works for that just fine, so I keep switching back and forth. On the flip side, there was one function that didn't seem to work using the controller, even tho game was telling me to press this - when I did, it didn't work. Which is why I used the KB/M. --the Technology additives for some stuff, like more suit poison resistance, that needs to recharge with batteries - the battery lasts like 3-5 minutes in use, which it often is in use constantly if the planet atmosphere is of that hazard or something. It's ridiculous, why even bother. --I like exploring planets, resource gathering, treasure hunting, randomness. Although I could see it becoming repetitive after a while, like most such. --I love the visual look/style, the animals, all of that. --the language/word learning is kinda neat. --hate the space flying/travel re: control, I'm going to avoid that as much as possible. --I have zero curiosity re: the main quest/mystery and all the mumbo jumbo they're tossing around. Edit: not an issue for me at all, just saying it's not that type of game.

You could just get a 2TB to put the O/S and a few or several certain games on and still use HDD for less demanding games and anything else you want. 2TB Samsung EVO sata's these days are $130, US$, like this one. https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-Inch-Internal-MZ-77E2T0B-AM/dp/B08QB93S6R Which would be perfectly fine for gaming. Obviously prices are going to vary a bit depending on exact model/brands but overall it's pretty cheap these days. But that's what I still have/do - 1tb nvme for o/s programs, 2tb sata for games, and two 4tb HDD for storage and other.

Since I don't have it installed on an HDD, I can't really say. I think I noticed save loading times felt a tad longer even on my SSD, then before, but that could be faulty memory. I've seen Steam-forum posts saying it runs just fine on their HDD's, just the load times got even longer. EDIT: That's for the base game tho. The new DLC might be different.

When I tried to Play, the launcher was a tiny black square, and would crash/not launch. Pondering this, I remembered another game has a similar issue recently and the solution was ... to click on the game's .exe Properties/Compatibility, and make sure the "Run as Admin" box is not checked. For whatever reasons some games/coding sometimes don't like that now. Anyway ... the 2080ti/9900k 4k performance wasn't far from what I expected/not that different. eg, at Native, 50-60 if no RT, falling to 30-40 if I turned the RT-water reflections on (not the sun and other one). If I used DLSS-Quality, bump the range up by another 8-10 or so. And it all certainly has a bit more visual polish, imo. Not mega-improved, but it's noticeable. I do think the base DLSS 3.5 (no frame gen etc. for me) looks a lot better than 2+ it had on release, cleaner, at least on-screen (screenshots still have that softer look, ofc). Those RT reflections are even prettier then before. I didn't notice any major artifacting but one, I don't have the extra RTX settings and two, I didn't run around that long. Note: the game, for me, installed the base nvngx_dlss.dll as version 3.1.1. So I manually replaced it with the 3.5 one. The dlssd.dll and dlssdg.dll's are the ones that are 3.5 on install, which I don't need since I can't use that tech.

^ I've seen others (in comments) discussing re: ghosting. Seems a little dependent on settings, where some might work better for some or the opposite for whatever reasons - frame generation on/off (if you can do that), that ray reconstruction on/off etc. I was considering reinstalling the game and finally trying it again, with years of updates, but the graphic stuff means little to me since I still have a 20xx. But I'll probably get curious if it all means better or worse performance on the (now) middling side.

Hubby had his round with the back specialist. In colloquial terms, "You're boned." ... pun not intended. In some cases there is apparently no more cartilage, so it's essentially bone rubbing bone when he moves no matter what. There is no fixing that. Meaning even if it feels somewhat better at times, he can't/shouldn't do anything re: excess movement stress/wear even at small levels, like he was hoping (example: light gardening/handy man-ing). Pain management is about it. So next week they're going to try a short term local anesthetic (not steroids) in the area, as a test to see if it helps with pain. If it does, the steroid injections might work/help. If it doesn't, no point in the steroids. Anyway, I think hubby is - understandably - pretty down. Not just about pain/discomfort but the "even if it feels better, shouldn't/can't do anything" because there's a pretty high danger of it becoming even still worse. Thus I'll continue to be the strong person re:shopping/lifting/moving and whatever else. I also have a great talent for writing checks to get others to do things for us.

No Man's Sky ...go into a cave, expecting a not too large area (all the others I'd found weren't huge). Saw minerals I wanted. Kept going forward to mine them and it turns out this cave was ginormous, seemingly never-ending caverns and twists, as if it maybe continued under half the planet's crust. Long time later I ran out of bag space with maxed 9999 stacks and tried to make my way back out. There's no mini-map in the game. It's dark. I thought I'd kept to a fairly straight path, not taking side turns and I tried to backtrack. But ... I got lost. I wandered and wandered, realized I hadn't been this way or that way yet from unmined thingies. The compass markers of the surface did not help much since I hadn't taken note of what and where before going in. ...after 20 minutes of ever increasingly desperate wandering, I finally remembered something - I took the terrain shaping tool out and blasted a tunnel upwards out to the sky. I think that's the worst that I've ever been "lost" in a game, ever. And it was glorious.

No fancy ship or base, no pet/mount and I haven't spent time trying to get extra kewl or original images yet. But here's some scenes/bits that I liked.

Trying to speed the gamestages up, so now I've built my first tiny hut-base in No Man's Sky. And the tutorial keeps going for more basics. Which led me to start reading wiki's (apparently I'm not too far from the tutorial end I guess). I'm not sure I like the sound of all the long-activity/routes for having more than a single base-storage chest, increased suit inventory slots, base-building skills/crafting much beyond super basic. For me, sounds like days and days before I'd get anywhere near it so I could think mostly about "sandboxing" vs. questing. Can those of you who've played this game tell me if it's as involved/long as it sounds, or if maybe one storage box per base claim enough - so I could just skip it all? I wasn't planning on making giant/artistic bases or anything so I could probably skip/avoid all that line. Gotta have more suit inventory tho....

No Man's Sky: Bought a Site map at some small ship base, like a treasure map I guess. Made a destination marker. "Travel time: TWENTY HOURS?" .... got in my ship and hit the takeoff/fly button for the 1st time to check. "Two hours?" ... "Is that in real time?" Apparently, no it isn't. But it was still maybe 15-20 minutes of pressing W+Shift (boost speed). During that flight - the first time I'd used the spaceship - I remembered why I don't tend to play spaceship games. Controlling movement/pitch/direction of ships with their windshield PoV is something I never "get good" with. At most I may get to a point where instead of a fall-down drunk seeming driver, I'm only a fairly tipsy driver. I don't get motion sickness or anything, but it's very annoying, lol.

"I got this." "Maybe I don't got this." Darnit. ...just rookie careless mistakes. Yes, that's it.

No Man's Sky - well I'm up to 3.5 hours now. I got the ship repaired - slowly, with a lot of exploring/messing around inbetween the brief mission prompts - and it's telling me to fly it, but I think I'm going to continue messing around on what I assume is the random starter planet. Gathering materials until I can't carry anymore, and I still have to ID a couple animals for the planet I think. That part I like a lot at least - the wandering/identifying/mining, occasionally finding lost container loot or buildings - it suits my chill vibe brain. But I know I have to get off the rock at some point to open gameplay up. Later, later, I'm busy. I like that you can customize difficulty settings beyond the 3 presets - so I have a mixture of some easy and some Normal settings. I want a first-try that's casual and pretty low stress but not entirely devoid of surprises. Anyway, at least the planet exploration seems to suit me.

An endless jetpack/flying cheat is fun.

No Man's Sky - "last played - two years ago" - "Playtime - 16 minutes." Don't even recall if I had any reason for such a short trial phase. ---an hour of install and feature fiddling later--- Oh yeah, I remember now. It uses Vulkan I guess, which seemingly means many 3rd party screenshot programs don't work. At least mine doesn't. Steam Overlay ss feature supposedly does, but I don't use/refuse to use that. Although weirdly, I can record video of the game w/my program and grab pic frames that way but more PITA. I have no idea why video recording works but a screenshot does not. Different hooks? And now I also remember that the start/tutorial stuff kinda bored/annoyed me with all the radiation and other survival hazards, starting menus/info navigation that felt a bit over-load-y. eg, I was too lazy to learn to play. So that plus no screenshots, plus I'm never sure if I really like outer-space settings - and I probably just never turned it back on. I'll give it a fair shake this time.

During a slight fit of irritation re: Steam's search results (I already use the ignore-10-user-tags ability), I clicked ignore-title on over 1600 games and DLC's. I suppose it's slightly better. Losing battle tho. Sadly, ignored titles seem to still appear sometimes in the "Category" (RPG, Action etc) browsing pages vs. an actual typed-in search or the "Top Upcoming"/Top Sellers links. Call of Duty sure has a lot of DLC's.

Placid Plastic Duck Simulator - the exciting life of a floating pool duck!

GoG is great for many things but they don't have all the games I'm periodically interested in. You can, with SP, often (not 100%) avoid it on Steam by putting everything on "don't update until I launch", copy the entire install folder and anything in the appdata folders elsewhere, update, delete the install folder and copy the previous install folder back. But yeah, it's more of a PITA. Especially if you have to resort to that Steam depot stuff.

So it's been a little bit, has anyone's opinion on this game altered significantly, either way? Such as, better or worse after a fair more hours spent, re: engagement etc.

I have zero knowledge of Apple phones, but you can open up the "dev mode" on Android phones and tablets for a ton more settings. Most of which are too techy for me to bother with. I mostly use it to make the devices/screen not shut down/off from lack of touch-input while plugged in. I might've turned off some of the more battery-hungry graphic features and the like too, I forget tho. That said, it's not like PC-level control or anything remotely like that. Edit: this was tablets/phones up to 2-3 years ago. I have no idea if you can still do it or if they blocked it on super recent devices. EditEdit: looking at the phone, I also turned off auto apply updates when phone restarts, forced it to always use mobile service even if detecting wi-fi, some other UI stuff.

^ In terms of online, I'd guess all my PoE characters have lost their names so if I logged in I'd have to pick new names. And be forced to respec their passive trees. Not that that is a big deal. I keep telling myself I'm going to open that game one day and clear house/start completely over maybe, but then I think about the billions of stuffed storage tabs and I go "nah. Is there a "delete all" for storage tabs?

I think the cpu bottleneck may be worse for many. It's tougher to upgrade the cpu (mobo compatibility being what it is these days) vs. slapping a new gpu in hoping you can brute force some performance benefit. What these games seem to be doing at the moment is increasing cpu demand by a lot as well as gpu. But yeah...it's been 4.5 years for me and not looking forward to building a new rig. It's one of those periods where even if you have a lot of spare cash, it's hard to say what will be the most future-resistant. Trying hard to wait at least another couple years.

These days, it bothers me with offline games too. Half the time feels like one has to wait 5 years after release before a game is truly "done" and you can play without some big skill, items, area/design, enemy, etc. suddenly occurring.

TLDW - "Rate the game 8 or above to trigger confirmation bias admiration." Best quoted user comment: "Your critizizing the game, this is not a proper review"