Humanoid

The original never required submission to the ratings board in the first place. They don't rate every single title that's only available digitally on PC.

I made a few posts about it when I tried it last year.

A not-uncommon opinion is that BG3 is a case of Larian ruining a D&D game. But I'm more inclined to say that BG3 is a case of D&D ruining a Larian game. Okay, maybe "ruining" is too strong a word. I don't dislike the game as such. Perhaps it's good that Larian are held back from some of their most lavish immersion-breaking tendencies. But many times it does really feel like the D&D licence is a strait-jacket that stifles the overall design direction - many D&D tropes are after all immutable and sacrosanct and I would not expect and subversion of these to be allowed by the terms of the licence. Furthermore, I did find that the worst parts of my experience tended to come whenever it tried to lean really hard into rolling that ol' d20 for outcomes. Now, there's a good counter-argument that "failure is interesting", and in principle I agree. But practically speaking, having checks structured in the way that they are increases the number of potential outcomes by 50% (and that's assuming a single roll situation, many times the game demands multiple consecutive rolls for success), and the extra writing and scripting required quickly explodes to levels unmanageable by any game developer if they want to keep all the branches interesting and unique. The reality then becomes that the "failure" state simply becomes the mindless fallback of hostilities breaking out. It's like games where failing a pickpocket attempt similarly turns an entire town hostile, it's not a useful or interesting turn of events and just leads to save-scumming.

Aren't those synonyms?

I think the Greeks used the cubit in those days. One cubit is the length of a forearm. So a 3.5 cubit floppy disk would have a diameter of a little over 1.6m. That converts, surprisingly, to 5.25 feet. Can't be a coincidence, surely.

And the patch is just a config file, heh. I assume that's the one that fixed the issue of various key commands being bound by default to the numpad, making the game literally unplayable on any system without one (like most laptops) since you'd need the numpad to access the menu in order to remap the keys off the numpad. It really was a crappy PC port, and it coloured my opinion of the game, and indeed series, for years to come. To this day I've only seriously played 7 and 14.

That's the smallest German age rating label I've ever seen.

Yes it was spoilerman. Loaded up the manual save closest to when I had the fight, which is level 23, so let's say that whole quest gave me a level, so 22. I do tend to float both my attribute and perk points though, so it can be a little misleading. So I have 12 in Tech and Cool, and 9 in Int - also 3 in Body and 5 in Reflexes, both untouched since the game began. I started by grabbing all the non-combat perks in the Stealth tree, then the non-combat ones in Breach Protocol. I'd sort of exhausted both, so then I started putting them into Crafting, despite me crafting exactly zero items so far. So that last bit is kinda my fault I guess? In the end while looking through my stuff, I randomly tried Cripple Movement for the first time and to my surprise, it worked on him and indeed completely stunned him. This let me wail on him with a random purple stick I had in my bags for 40% of his life. Then I repeated the trick. Then just spammed healing potions for the rest (because I have no RAM regen). Awful, awful fight but at least it's over and there were no more bosses afterwards, except presumably one that's being telegraphed hard for the endgame. Thankfully an upgraded Cyberdeck with much more RAM was the actual only piece of gear I've bought throughout the course of the game, because if I had stuck with the starting one, I'd have been completely screwed - the repeated times I tried to shoot him only got him down to barely 90%.

Got to the point of no return, 42 hours in. Not going to finish just yet, but fairly happy with that. Biggest complaint so far is the one forced (I think) boss fight I had to endure, pretty awful when I have exactly zero combat perks, ugh.

I have several games in my backlog, SEVERAL! In all seriousness, I tend to discard games from the backlog pretty quick because it becomes apparent pretty quickly which games I own that I never intend to play. In my younger days it'd be a big list because the threshold of a game being good enough for me to play would be much lower, but as I get older and pickier, there are only a few games released each year that I could ever see myself playing. I also am much quicker to dismiss games because being wasteful with money is nowhere as big a deal to me these days compared to being wasteful with time. For example, I bought Breath of the Wild, played it less than an hour, and am confident I will never play it again whereas someone else might instead place a game played under a similar situation into their backlog. The first 2021 release that I know I'll be playing is It Takes Two, releasing late next month. That's one game that'll immediately be added to the "played" list, and in the meantime, 2021 has seen zero games added to the backlog. Meanwhile, the backlog has now actually shrunk because I've decommissioned my PS4 Pro (I have a Series X now), and with it any chance of playing any nominal backlog games I own on it (which I would say are Persona 5 and Horizon Zero Dawn). So what's on my backlog at the moment? The Outer Worlds, definitely, though the backlog status is questionable even then because I'm waiting for the complete expansions to be released. I'm considering playing Greedfall on Game Pass, and I'm also thinking of going back to Dishonored 2. That's three. Umm, can I retract my statement about having several titles on it? At a push I suppose I could add MS Flight Sim and Wasteland 3, but I'd be fully comfortable if I never ended up playing them either. To be fair there are some special cases like Hitman 2 being "removed" pending a purchase of Hitman 3 and the associated mission import. I've also pretty much removed any RTwP game from the list, which took care of PoE1 and Tyranny, unless by some miracle they get retrofitted with Deadfire's turn-based mechanics.

To mirror the authentic Bloodlines(TM) experience, Obsidian will develop the first two acts, and Bethesda will develop the final two acts.

The Two Point Hospital cycle has become pretty depressing. The base game was a solid release with a few glaring inconveniences that have mostly been addressed through patches and is strongly recommended. The DLC, on the other hand, is extremely cynical in that each and every one of them is essentially identical but reskinned: three maps, some [new disease], and [new disease treatment room]. It's sad, when they started out there was grand talk about creating a new world of "Two Point" management sims. Yet not even a peep of anything but this endless rehashed DLC. I'd say it's about on the level of Sims Stuff Packs, though that might be a bit generous.

Sounds like the type of game I'd love to play co-op. Alas. Then again Parkitect got it as an update, so hopefully it's well received enough to make co-op builders increasingly more of a thing.

I thought that 1/3 at the end there meant that the new release date was the 1st of March. I suck at Twitter. That said, I've been playing the game in earnest, finally. Only just past the big FUBAR and into the open world content proper for the first time. No technical issues really. Playing a pure stealth character more or less and not sure how I feel about it. Part of it is because I'm already stealth-inclined generally, but the other was that I ended up deciding that the gamepad was better for the game generally but at the same time it necessitated making shooting not the major focus of gameplay. Both the stealth mechanics and level design in that context aren't quite as good as games dedicated to the mechanics, but that's understandable given that it's trying to be many things at the same time. Takedowns are clumsier than they need to be, requiring two commands instead of one striking me as particularly silly (grab first then decide on lethal vs non-lethal). I've long thought that Dishonored, even the first one, already solved the most elegant way to takedown and grab but for some reason it hasn't been shamelessly copied, with both Mankind Divided and now this regressing to jankier implementations. That said, I'm letting myself be immersed, walking around at a moderate pace, following the walk lights, etc. I find myself reluctant to drive because of a lack of parking spots means I can't elegantly leave the car anywhere. Even when I'm in a place with parking spots, I find the game doesn't actually let me use them, which is irritating. Seriously, there's like an invisible wall in front of the parking spot itself. Whyyyyyy?

I bought the USB version of a CH F-16 Fighterstick purely to play Privateer so hey. Design as old as the game itself. Sure, without the nostalgia factor there are probably better buys out there. No twist axis back then, definitely, though I dunno how common it is on modern sticks. Meanwhile I've had a Cougar HOTAS for 20 years but have barely used it - too complex for the games I play - obviously it's waiting for Star Citizen.

For motherboards, B550 offers all most people need. You'd need to run multiple PCI-E 4.0 SSDs to even start getting benefit from an X570 board. Since I was shopping not so long ago, these are my recommendations, so the notes are clearly biased towards the things I find important. Note I've excluded boards with the potentially faulty Intel I225-V LAN chip because even though more recently manufactured boards may have the fixed chip, I wouldn't want to gamble on it. P.S. Bolded the options I liked best. Budget: Asrock B550M Pro4 (no USB-C front-panel header, also lacks BIOS Flashback, so you'll likely need to either borrow a CPU in order to update, or get the store to do it.) Budget with Wi-Fi: MSI B550M Pro-VDH WiFi (oddly it has a USB-C header for the front panel, but no rear USB-C port) Mid-range options: Asrock B550 Steel Legend - probably the cheapest, still gives up Flashback though. Asus TUF Gaming B550 Plus - lacks a USB-C header. Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro V2 - note the V1 lacks a USB-C header. MSI B550 Tomahawk - feature-complete but does tend to cost a bit more than the competitors above. Mid-range options with WiFi: Asus TUF Gaming B550 Plus WiFi - again lacks a USB-C header Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro ax - make sure it's not the superseded Pro ac which has slower WiFi and lacks front-panel USB-C. MSI B550 Gaming Edge WiFi - I went for this personally, but probably would have picked the Gigabyte if it was available at the time. The Gigabyte has more USB ports and better onboard audio. MicroATX mid-range: Asrock B550M Steel Legend - unlike the full sized version, lacks USB-C header Asus TUF Gaming B550M Plus (WiFi version also available) - just like the full-sized it lacks a USB-C header Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro-P - it's weird, they released this improved P version but still chose not to put a USB-C header on it. MSI B550M Mortar (WiFi version also available) - seem the most feature-complete mATX boards either way. If you want X570 anyway: MSI X570 Tomahawk WiFi - relatively small premium for a fully-featured X570 board compared to competitors.

Not sure if that's a PC or a a part of your truck engine.

I'm fine without the butt shots as long as they don't then shift the camera to her uncanny valley face. 😕

Time for us to have "motherGPUs" which bolt onto the case, then the CPU and other functions can live on a daughterboard that plugs into the GPU.

Turns out the solution to this was to set my central monitor in Radeon Software to "Preferred Display". Don't know what that has to do with anything but all is fine now. This was after updating to the 1.40 Open Beta that was released today, but the patch by itself didn't fix anything. There's also an annoying bug in the beta where headlights and dashboard illumination are borked. Oh, and framerate report - there were actually some annoying slowdowns at max everything, but bumping AA down a notch from Ultra to High fixed that.

It'll be on EA Play basic in a year or so. Now whether they'll finally enable EA Play on Game Pass PC in a year remains to be seen...

So then, the first game I christened the new PC with was Age of Empires 2, a game I first played on a Pentium 3. Obviously that didn't let the system stretch its legs, so I tried some other things. Euro Truck Sim 2 in Eyefinity mode unfortunately exhibited some graphical corruption, so that put the kibosh on that plan. This got me a bit worried, but no such symptoms appear in single-display mode, or when I fired up the Hitman 2 benchmark, so I'm putting it down to a possible driver issue - if it persists once the Iberia expansion releases I'll be pretty annoyed though. Anyway, to ensure things were truly working properly, I finally fired up the big one, Cyberpunk 2077. It's been a long wait, I know. I chose not to continue with the character I had created previously because I didn't like the idea of having a boss, so I started as a Nomad this time. I've only gotten up to the timeskip in the prologue but the game looks good, and performs well at maximum non-RT settings. I didn't run any metrics, no frame-rate counter or anything, but judging from eye I think I've landed on the right amount of power for the system because I don't see any reason to reduce any settings at all. EDIT: I also freaked out a bit as The Witcher 3, which had just installed, failed to launch. Then Rogue Legacy also failed when I tried it to see if Galaxy was working properly. Turns out both needed to be repaired, odd.

Time for an update, it's been over five years since the last one. Core: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Noctua U14S MSI B550 Gaming Edge Wifi 4x8GB Crucial Ballistix 3600MT/s CL16 Sapphire RX 6800 Nitro+ Fractal Design Define 7 White, no window 750W Bitfenix Whisper M Storage: 1TB WD Black SN750 2TB Crucial MX500 960GB Sandisk Ultra II 256GB Crucial m4 Pioneer BDC-207DBK Blu-ray combo Peripherals: Topping VX1 DAC/amp Monitor Audio Bronze 2 bookshelf speakers Philips Fidelio X2 headphones Logitech MX Master mouse Das Keyboard 4 Ultimate, Cherry MX Brown keys Tai Hao Miami keycaps 27" Asus MG279Q 27" Dell U2715H 27" Dell U2711 (dying, replacement order for a Dell S2721DS on the way) CH Products F-16 Fighterstick USB Thrustmaster HOTAS Cougar XBox 360 Wireless controller for PC Logitech G920 Driving Force wheel

The card arrived, so the build is now properly functional. Still have to move the old SSDs and optical drive over, but it's effectively done, having slowly accumulated these parts since October. God, modern video cards dwarf absolutely everything. Makes this full-sized ATX board look like microATX, and the case interior looks tiny. All including the RGB is completely irrelevant though, because... Yes it's staying in the dining room for now while I install Windows, make sure everything works correctly, and transfer the old bits.

It's a gaming card with a green PCB, imagine that!