Humanoid

Ideally you'd use a Wii Fit board to sense which direction you intend to roll in.

Yeah, it's about the same difference here. However, that's offset by the fact that a quality B550 motherboard for the Ryzen is cheaper than the cheapest decent B660 board for the Intel right now by about the same gap. Indeed it's a net saving if you're happy with a fairly basic B550 board, which is easier to get away with because the more efficient Ryzen chip doesn't need nearly as robust a power delivery system as Intel CPUs do, though obviously you'd also be sacrificing things like onboard audio, 2.5Gbit Ethernet, ax WiFi and would probably need to settle for a microATX board (but then the affordable B660 boards are microATX too). So what I've generally found with pricing here is that like-for-like, the final pricing ends up about the same, with the Ryzen holding a slight performance advantage, trading off against future upgradability and more PCI-E lanes for things like the PCI-E 5.0 slot for the video card (not that any such video cards exist yet), and running multiple PCI-E 4.0 SSDs (whereas you can only run one such SSD on B550). EDIT: To give an example, the MSI B550M Pro-VDH is a very good lower-midrange board, and it'll happily run any Ryzen CPU around, even the top-of-the-range models. For about $120 here, it comes with basic ac WiFi, basic onboard sound, Gigabit Ethernet, and a USB-C header but no rear-USB-C port. By contrast, the cheapest decent B660 board is probably the Gigabyte B660M DS3H. For about $190 here it has no WiFi (but an ax version is available for $30 more), mystery-meat onboard sound (they refuse to say what it is), 2.5Gbit Ethernet, a rear USB-C port but no header for the front. Its PCI-E x16 slot is also only certified for version 4.0, unlike on the mid-range B660 boards. Now buying an cheaper Intel board isn't inherently a terrible thing. However there is an issue in that while it will no doubt run something like an 12400 with no problems, I would not necessarily trust it with an i7 or above, and who knows if the 13th gen CPUs releasing at the end of the year will be even thirstier. Therefore going with a cheap board sort of undermines the upgradability argument of going with Intel in the first place, and so I would tend to recommend spending more on something like an Asus TUF which is around $240. As you can see, to get the full benefits of the Intel platform you do end up spending quite a bit more despite the cheaper (and slower) CPU.

Locally the 5600X has been dropping in price such that it edges out the 12400F once total platform costs are added up, but that will change as decent B660 boards drop in price (and they also offer an upgrade path to 13th gen). Both very much viable so I would spec something up with both options and compare side-by-side. It may also be worth waiting for the imminent Zen 3D release (late this month?) to see how much improvement it offers. A little update for me as I opportunistically replaced my i3-4130 in the HTPC with an i5-11400. I had some spare DDR4 lying around because of an Amazon shipping error, so I picked up the CPU bundled with a B560M Mortar for $314 AUD which is outrageously cheap. Could easily retain everything else ...except the SATA cables. Stupid side-facing SATA ports butting up against an internal plate in the case meant I had to buy two 270-degree (a.k.a. left-angle) SATA cables for $8 each which stings.

My understanding is that the F2P restrictions aren't as horrific as they used to be, but looking them up, they still seem rather annoying. I mean things like a low number of hotbars, no bank access, being restricted to one tradeskill, inability to trade or send mail (particularly relevant for co-op I imagine). I would say that if the game manages to grab you enough to commit beyond a day or two, then getting at least preferred status is something you'd probably want. I would say give it a go for about 10 levels (which gets you off tutorial planet and into the main "city") and if you're continuing past that, upgrade. Now, the cost to upgrade to preferred status and lift the worst of the restrictions is small, you just have to buy something, anything. But a common recommendation is that instead of paying for a microtransaction, it's better to subscribe for a single month instead, which unlocks all current expansions for you, permanently and therefore is technically much better value. The counter-argument of course is that you might get bored of the game and never even make it to that expansion content. That was my experience in a co-op run with my sister actually. The 1-50 content was good - and yes, you do roll for who wins dialogue - but we found the first expansion content so limited that we quit at the end of it. The reason for this is fairly obvious, in that up to level 50, every class has their own story tailored to them alone so it feels both personal and coherent. After that, the content is the same for all classes with little more than lip-service paid to your class, and the storytelling therefore become very generic. I'm not sure I can comment much on the actual gameplay because I understand some systems have been significantly overhauled since I last played 5+ years ago. Since then they've killed the Aussie servers and I'm not going to go back to cross-Pacific pings ever again, so I won't be back. But from what I remember it just feels like a clunkier but workable version of WoW. The limited UI customisation tends to become the primary challenge, as you can probably imagine what playing WoW without mods is like - keeping track of things like cooldowns and DoT durations is a royal pain. I remember my critique at the time of its launch, that it wants to have the mechanical complexity of WoW, but provides you none of the tools to manage that complexity by banning mods. That said, they've at least improved on the amount of in-game customisation allowed since then. Besides that, it just feels a bit "off" too, in that your actions lack the oomph or immediacy of WoW, partly the fault of the somewhat wishy-washy animations.

If you remove the concept of levels altogether, to save on costs and development time, all enemies will be perfectly level-scaled at all times. So it could happen that way.

Yeah, it's not the most common choice, especially in D&D, but I always, always play a thief/rogue-type character in my first playthrough of any game.

MotB was unplayable because every single enemy in the tutorial dungeon was immune to sneak attacks.

The human noble origin definitely amplified this feeling for me. I tend to think that the origins were mistakes in general. You can't just funnel six entirely different prologue stories, each barely the length of a tutorial, and expect a smooth and believable transition into a one-size-fitz-hall story. The wildly disparate situations and motivations of each origin end up being left more or less unaddressed and handwaved away for most of the main story.

Just launched the game with the new content for the first time. Being able to have sleepovers is cute, but boy does Judy need to buy a new bed.

DA:O is an odd one for me. It kind of put me offside straight away because I resented being conscripted into the Grey Wardens and spent the first part of the game pointlessly trying to rail against it, but of course you have no recourse. After that initial resentment faded, I was able to reasonably enjoy the game for a while, but with steadily waning interest, up until one day I just couldn't be bothered firing it up again. Yes, I got through the Deep Roads. No, I didn't actually mind The Fade. I don't recall where I actually got up to, except that I know I never got to settle any of my personal feuds. And I've never really been able to enjoy that style of vaguely-tactical RPG experience ever again. If I want to manage a squad, I'll go play something like XCOM, thank you very much. I did not play DA2 and only tried DA3 through the tutorial. My opinions on Mass Effect are simpler. ME2 turned out okay because I played it first but the writing would have pissed me off a lot more had I played it in order. ME1 is fine as a standalone experience and I don't even hate the gameplay other than the inventory management. ME3 sucked and I ragequit less than a quarter of the way through it. ME4 doesn't exist.

Depends, did they accidentally cut the tables into hexagon shapes too?

Can't say I've ever used the Bethesda launcher so I know nothing about it. I used the UPlay client once, back when Might and Magic 10 released. That was... *checks release date* holy hell, 8 years ago.

The 980 sits between the 3GB 1060 and the 6GB 1060 so you're actually above the minimum specs and you'll be fine there. You'll be fine RAM-wise too, the requirements are for total system RAM, not free RAM. The average gaming machine built today even in the $1500-2000ish range still only goes with 16GB. Besides, upgrading now would be very questionable because the current generation is the last one that will use DDR4.

Ended up blasting through Privateer in one day, though I'm thinking the next time I do so I might just cheat my way through the Delta Prime exploratory section. Haven't decided whether I'll go on to Righteous Fire straight away, or maybe try out the new and improved Cyberpunk.

I resubscribed to FF14 for a month, messed around updating my hotkeys and fixing my inventory for a few hours. Almost a week since then, I've actually played the game for maybe an hour, so I'm thinking I probably made a mistake coming back. Still, I got to transfer my character over to the new Oceanic servers and I have 1/20th the ping I had before so if nothing else it satisfies my curiosity on how well the game plays with the right infrastructure in place. In hindsight the experiment was probably doomed from the start because I never could stand the story being essentially being forcibly told at me when I had lost interest some 40 levels ago. Besides that, nothing really happening. AoE2's recent patches have messed up my mods and I can't fix them. I still can't get ETS2's force feedback on my Logitech wheel to work satisfactorily and I'm not yet ready to implement the supposed solution of buying a Thrustmaster wheel. So after all that, I'm thinking I may just start a new game of Privateer this week.

I have the sincerely held opinion that, up to this point in the Switch's lifetime, the Wii U has still been the better console for me. In most regards they have pretty comparable first-party titles, except that Nintendo Land crushes 1-2 Switch, so that's the tiebreaker.

I had a Wii U, it was stolen. So then I got another one. That probably makes it worse. EDIT: Actually I misremembered. I didn't need to buy another one. I had previously bought a Deluxe one for my sister, but due to a shipping mixup they sent her two of them. My Basic one was stolen, but we had a backup all along.

I remember trying the first Hyrule Fire Emblem Warriors when it came out on Wii U* Switch and more or less having a small mental breakdown where I couldn't stop laughing because of how hilariously...nothing everything about it felt. It was a real "am I even alive right now" kind of surrealist/existential experience. Based on the evidence, I do not believe that the Dynasty Warriors games were made for me, and I think that is okay. *Yes, I am one of the ten people in the entire world that own a Wii U, so you can laugh at me for that one.

Destiny 33⅓: The Final Destiny

Two Point Campus is a day one Game Pass title, 17th of May, noice. Getting it for "free" certainly softens the blow of their somewhat questionable DLC approach.

Stalling on D:OS halfway through the first act when I first tried it playing "normally" - i.e. single-player with a full party - then coming back a year or two later in co-op Lone Wolf mode (one character each) and absolutely adoring it was the affirmation that my CRPG tastes had completely flipped. It was a slow process that probably started with DA1 but which now I fully embrace. Never played any variant of Pathfinder and don't plan to unless they add co-op or design a solo adventure.

Despite at that point already knowing that that style of game was no longer to my tastes, I did give PoE a good honest go. Not on launch, where I got bogged down before even getting to the big city, but a few years later where I managed to will myself to the point I unlocked the stronghold. However that slowed the game down even more and I just stopped playing not long afterwards. Now, I believe I did this at some point after PoE2 launched, but before it gained the turn-based mode, or at the latest while it was still in the experimental build. I did play PoE2 when it launched too, in two phases, one where I tried to play normally for the first starter island, then I threw my hands up, set it to story difficulty, and tackled some stuff in the big city. Turns out in story mode you still die quite a lot if you try to let the party AI resolve combat while wearing starting gear. So that too, was the end of that. I have no strong opinion on the writing in either game.

Spycraft and Alpha Protocol? Interstate '76 and Forza Horizon? Monster Truck Madness and Shamu's Deep Sea Adventure?

Ironically in the non-sanitised version there's no violence, just two men and the woman having peaceful relations.

Plus more time wasted on the boring, boring superhero genre.