Keyrock

Well $#!+, I have a Gigabyte mobo. I guess the Ruskies have all my data now. None of it is worth anything because I'm just some schlub, but they have it, so yeah.

Nintendo is living proof of this. Every year or two they release one of the most strikingly beautiful games when compared to its contemporaries and it runs like a champ and it does all this on wildly underpowered hardware? How do they manage this miracle? Black magic? Divine intervention? No. Stylized graphics and strong aesthetic. Look at Wind Waker, that game STILL looks amazing and it's a freakin' Wii game.

System Shock (2023) - It's a very faithful remake of one of the most important games in vidya game history. There are some quality of life improvements, though you're still going to be playing inventory Tetris, and the visuals are vastly improved, I mean, of course they are, the original is 29 years old. But yeah, the game looks great, it's got a pixelated art style, but not 8-bit pixels, or even 16-bit pixels, much much higher definition that, and the game makes fantastic use of light and color, it's wonderfully vibrant. At its core, it hasn't been changed much. It's still brutally unforgiving and Citadel Station is a maze of corridors to travel through, as it should be. You're going to get killed, numerous times, there is a rogue AI trying to murder you, after all. I very much appreciate how you can set different difficulties for each facet of gameplay. I kept all of the settings on normal difficulty except I cranked puzzle difficulty up to hard, since puzzles are my jam. I see that you are still receiving transmissions from Earth. We'll have no more of that Anyway, you sh... *static*

Insect, cease your meddling. My experiment must continue. Neil Breen Simulator 2072

I'm predicting Nugs in 5. I don't think Miami has the firepower to beat Denver, plus they're worn down from a grueling series while the Nugs will be rested. I don't think they can handle Jokic, that dude is on some next level ****.

Welcome to my death machine, interloper. I'm glad to hear that the remake is really faithful to the original. The last thing I wanted was for Nightdive to streamline Citadel Station and make it easier to traverse. I'm glad they kept it labyrinthine.

That's gracious of them, but I've got extensive hands-on experience with petting the monkey.

Alone in the Dark Prologue

I played the Alone in the Dark Prologue. It's a free demo, and a rather short one at that, it's like 10 minutes or so. It ran fine, for the most part. There was 1 brief moment where the framerate tanked HARD for a couple seconds, otherwise it ran well enough. Impressive array of graphical options for a demo, though no FOV slider, hopefully they add that for the full game. The demo appears to be locked to 60 FPS, hopefully that changes for the full game. There is an option to turn VSync on and off and another option to set the FPS cap (up to 144) or unlock it, but nothing I did could get the framerate above 60.

I'm looking forward to the future where there are consumer available 4K-capable APUs, iGPUs, whatever you want to call them, and I can be done with discrete GPUs altogether. I'll be quite happy if I never buy a discrete GPU ever again.

I agree, this is all your fault.

Holy ****! The finish to game 6 was crazy. That was as buzzer beater as buzzer beater gets. Dust off your stumping shoes @Bartimaeus, you've got some serious stumping to do to prevent the first 0-3 comeback in NBA history... Ugh, I just realized, we're going to get bombarded with comparisons to the 2004 Sawx for the next couple days. *sigh* Note to self: Avoid sports media like the plague for a few days.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) - It was a rather enjoyable adventure movie. It would have benefited from Jeremy Irons voraciously devouring the scenery, but beyond that, I have no complaints. Good looking movie, well cast, well acted, and, most importantly, fun. My favorite part was the comically obese dragon, that was awesome. I had a giant goofy smile on my face for that entire scene. There will certainly be a sequel, because standalone movies are no longer a thing, not for big budget movies, anyway, but the DDCU (Dungeons & Dragons Cinematic Universe) is off to a good start. Thumbs up. Watch the movie if you haven't already.

Another great thing about beef stew, and this is true for a lot of soups, it's even better today, after it sat in the fridge overnight.

This looks like my jam: It's currently in early access. Once fully released, I may scoop this up.

Given the quality of PC ports lately, just get it on PC is dubious advice, unfortunately.

Beef stew is super easy. I brown the beef in a skillet, drain most of the grease, then the beef, potatoes, carrots, celery, water, and spices go into a crock pot (these days I use a pressure cooker in slow cooker mode, same difference). Then I Ron Popeil set it and forget it (I'm really dating myself with that reference) and roughly 4 hours later I have a big ol' pot of delicious. The only extra step is adding some corn starch or flour with roughly 30 minutes to go to thicken. I usually go with corn starch but I ran out and had to resort to flour this time around. Even if I forgot the thickening step, my pressure cooker goes into keep warm mode automatically when the cooking time finishes, I could always add the corn starch or flour slurry then and just leave it on keep warm for a half hour. It's pretty fool proof, even if I left the house and the stew sat there for an extra hour or three in keep warm mode, great. It's almost impossible to screw up.

Sometimes I just want comfort food and it doesn't get much more comforting than beef stew. Easy and inexpensive to make and delicious, who could ask for anything more?

I agree, I think Gollum is a way more interesting character than any member of the fellowship. If done right, a Gollum game could be a great stealth game. @Hawke64I believe you're thinking of Styx.

@Bartimaeusmay need to do some more stumping because the eastern conference finals just got spicy.

Twisted Metal: Evil Sunz Edition?

I loved the original. I 100%-ed the game and its Road To Gehenna expansion. There were a few star puzzles that took me hours to figure out. Good stuff. I'm super excited for this sequel or prequel, or whatever it is. On the other end of the spectrum... Not gonna lie, this looks so jank that I'm morbidly curious to play it. A Barad-dur life sim? I kinda want to play that. Not for $60, though.

Praise the Omnissiah, more Boltgun screenies:

Published by Epic. Well, I guess I'll have to wait an extra year to play it. No big deal, plenty of other games while I wait for it to hit Steam.