Humanoid

Adding dedicated stealth gameplay to Outer Worlds would probably double my enjoyment of it. Without that fallback, it leaned too heavily into the shooter genre, which I do not play.

I want three of them! But realistically I'll probably have to settle for one to start with, and progressively replace my other two monitors as OLED pricing drops.

That one RGB-less Noctua fan sitting right in the middle of the RGB extravaganza must be feeling very confused.

At least the art, unlike RGB bling, doesn't increase the system power consumption. Even if it is only by a couple of watts.

I looked up that Hyte case and uhh...

I hit the level cap of 12 in both the original campaign and the Lost Valley DLC, and I played a Ranger in the latter. That said, it only happened in the final (major) dungeon in Lost Valley, even with the high rate of random encounters in that DLC (easily grindable for those so inclined). I picked the Marksman subclass, which in hindsight is one of the weaker ones. As you mention, they do get the option of using their bonus action to take a third shot per turn, which must target the same enemy as your prior regular shot. However this is not as useful as it seems, because not only do you get it so late in the game, your bonus action up to that point in the game will typically be used to apply Hunter's Mark. Therefore any damage applied by that shot is offset by the loss of damage from not having applied the mark to the target. It also means you do eat up ammo 50% faster. I now think the Hunter sub-class is therefore the better pick. You don't get a third attack (the multishot from volley doesn't count) but take Colossus Slayer at level 3, which adds 1d8 damage to any attack against an already-damaged enemy. That means by the time you get your second attack at level 5 you'll be operating at almost peak efficiency, so the Hunter is strong for most of the game. (As an alternative to Colossus Slayer you can take Horde Breaker which does give you an extra attack when you deal a killing blow, once per turn, but I suspect this is the weaker option)

PCI-SIG should just adopt UK power plugs to hook up video cards, the 4090 is certainly big enough to fit four of these things side by side. Voilà, new 12-pin standard.

Glad it's done and out of the way, and likewise with that Civ6 filler pack. Time for a new Pirates! or Covert Action.

The original delivery was from California wasn't it? So regardless of origin, that's where they work now. Anyway, I may have played NV for a few hundred hours (which is nothing compared to some of you here I'm sure) but only ever finished it once. I think it was the NCR ending but my memory is foggy. I've also only ever played one DLC, being Honest Hearts, so there's still so much content both in terms of base game and DLC for me to do. Meanwhile, I played Fallout 3 for maybe 10-20 hours. I can't tell you much about it other than it was aggressively and pervasively green. I don't think the game ever gave me a sense of place, just generic green ruins all the way to the horizon. Not that I know much about DC, I know there's the White House and, uhhhh, that obelisk thing? I don't remember encountering either of them.

I installed it on GOG as well to get a fresh new install instead of my Steam one which I don't even know will run. Too lazy to research what fixes and mods to install yet, but no plans to play it this year anyhow. But yeah, never felt there were many grey solutions to problems other than simply ignoring the entry on your quest log. I suppose it makes sense in that it would always be, at the earliest, the third solution to be implemented for any given quest, and therefore the first on the chopping block when it comes to designing those quests. Still don't get why they cut the easiest way to go grey though: the ability to leave and just go home to California.

There's also a very rigid order in which to tackle the various areas around the first town in order to get a remotely balanced experience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for level scaling or anything like that, but the way power scales with level means that at the early stages of the game, you can't really punch above your weight.

Hell being just an eternal traffic jam, sounds about right.

Just finished up today.

Firstly I'd try any Windows keys you already happen to have lying around, old keys down to Windows 7 will work to activate current Windows. Otherwise, yeah, maybe look into educational discounts next, technically this can even be the preferable option as I believe the version provided is more akin to the Pro version of Windows. Otherwise as mentioned, unlike with Win7, you can use an unactivated copy indefinitely, with the tradeoff of having a watermark and not being able to change the default wallpaper. In the end, Microsoft would prefer people to use their software to maintain market position, and as such even a non-paying customer is better to them than one who runs Linux or MacOS. Grey market keys are "risky" in that depending on the legality of the source, they may be revoked, maybe a month after activating, maybe years after. And the resellers typically won't be open about how their keys were sourced, so it's typically impractical to be picky. However plenty of people reason that even if the key is revoked every now and then, at $10-20 a pop it may end up cheaper even in the long run.

Yeah, though to be fair US sales tax varies by state. Also I believe that Microcenter is the place to go in the US for best pricing, but they're mostly retail as opposed to online so it's down to luck on whether anyone has a Microcenter near them. Wouldn't be surprised if the above prices were far from the best.

That iBuyPower system is like buying a 5-to-7 year old upper-midrange machine today, realistically, never mind that the parts themselves are two generations old at this point. Actually it'd perform almost the same as my old 6700K + 290X system from circa 2015 that I just retired. I'd be aiming a bit higher, especially since you'll have no upgrade path with this and have a stated desire for it to last five years. I'd aim for something like this as a baseline of a value build: CPU: Ryzen 5600 (non-X) or Intel i5 12400F Motherboard: B550 for AMD and B660 for Intel RAM: 2x8GB DDR4 3200MHz CL16 (or 3600MHz CL18, almost identical performance) Video: RX 6600 Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD or some kind PSU: 550-650W is more than plenty Case to taste Tossed together a sample PCPartPicker list using only Amazon and Newegg parts because I don't know other US stores. Tried to choose parts that are from brands with wide distribution and which should be available at most stores though. PCPartPicker Part List CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($138.99 @ Newegg) Motherboard: MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($119.99 @ Amazon) Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($50.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Western Digital Blue SN570 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($79.14 @ Amazon) Video Card: Asus DUAL Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card ($209.99 @ Newegg) Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case ($97.49 @ Amazon) Power Supply: Phanteks AMP 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ Newegg) Total: $766.58 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-10-28 22:32 EDT-0400 Case is a bit overkill and oversized, because the microATX case market is pretty boring. Swap in a Cooler Master NR400 or Silverstone PS15 if you want to cut back there. A third-party CPU cooler is optional but grabbing a budget one like a Deepcool Gammaxx 400 or GTE is a good idea.

On my second attempt to play Persona 5 on my PS4 (a year or two back) I quit during the first dungeon because I was done playing for the night and couldn't find anywhere I was allowed to save. Looks like that hasn't changed with Royale, but hopefully being on PC it's less inconvenient, not least because I can actually stand to game for extended sessions on PC, as opposed to an hour or so when console gaming. I assume the game is not meaningfully moddable in this regard but when I do get around to starting again I'll have a look if there are any meaningful mods at all. Talking about Stardew Valley made me research that huge fan-made expansion a bit. Not going to commit to it just yet, but impressive that it seems to have its own comprehensive wiki just like the base game. Also for some reason I decided to spend a night playing Ultima 8 with the ScummVM integration of things like selectable high resolutions, object highlights and even a minimap! I always found wandering around Tenebrae to be cozy. Got up to the sorcery bit and stopped because I can't be bothered with the outright hassle that demonic rituals are. I thought the dark side's main attraction was its cozy convenience, dammit!

New gameplay innovation: a swamp that blows!

Stardew Valley is anything but cozy when you're sprinting across town to try to beat the clock. Sure, sometimes failing to do so might mean waiting until the next day. But it could also mean waiting to the next *year*. ETS2 is cozier now that I have €30M so when a stupid car rams me coming out of a toll gate, I don't get angry at unjustly being fined €400. Instead, I will gladly rack up another few sets of €400 fines to make sure the lesson sinks in. EDIT: To be fair, the AI mostly behaves reasonably outside toll booths and double-lane roundabouts. Maybe the devs just made a mistake and put the American AI into the European version of the game.

Yep, just finished up tonight's session, reloaded a previous autosave to ignore the main Forge leader and just did a sidequest for his underling instead, that was no problem at all. The plan for now will be to do Rebellion quests, until (assuming my expectations are correct) I take one that destroys my Forge reputation. Then who knows with the other two factions.

I came to the series late, played ME2 first and did so as Female Shepard simply because that's what I always do on the first run of any RPG. Nothing to do with the reputation of the voicework and I'm not sure I was aware of the Male Shep voice memes at the time. I then played ME1 as Male Shep to mix things up. Eventually I did export him to ME2 and played the game again, though I can't recall whether I actually ever finished that run. I either exported my original Shep or recreated her from scratch in ME3 (can't remember if I'd still have had the saves), but I rage quit that game very early on (I believe it was when the second dream sequence occurred) and have not returned to the series since. I don't remember anything notable whatsoever about Ms Grey's performance in Saints' Row 3. I would have used the default female voice there, pretty sure. Like ME3, SR4 is a game I'd like to forget.

No, nothing to do with the dictator faction, that was out the window many hours ago. To be specific my case was:

A couple of weeks ago I said here that Solasta Lost Valley was better than the original campaign. I'm not so sure about that anymore. Seems the deeper into I get into it, the more the seams appear, and the cut corners become more evident. Asset reuse increases a fair bit, and perhaps most importantly, their attempt at creating competing factions to choose between is their writing team biting off more than they can chew. No, no one should expect to be able to please all factions at the same time, reputation points ought to behave in a sensible way. But I expect better than to simply talk to a questgiver for one faction and having that immediately tank your reputation with another faction *which isn't even hostile to the first faction*. Looking into it a bit deeper and it appears this was done because eventually that other faction would have sent you to the same place to do something for them. They presumably wanted to make the quests mutually exclusive and did so in the clumsiest fashion possible. It's like, I dunno, Mr House who you've barely spoken to getting angry because you accepted a quest from the NCR to clear a Legion camp, because later in the script the game requires you to clear that camp on behalf of Mr House. And you haven't even done it, you've only accepted the quest. And you've only accepted the quest because in Solasta, talking to someone automatically accepts their quest. *facepalm*

Oh hey, just looked her up and she was in the Wing Commander TV series, how about that?