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Hmmmm yeah I’m torn on this one. Id put stray into a category where visuals are actually important and I much prefer to play it at 4k than on my Steam Deck. Normally Im 100% gameplay over everything.
But it doesn’t look awful they did a great job working with switch hardware.
Overall I’m happy more people get to play Stray, its the first game my non gaming girlfriend saw videos of and wanted me to buy it for her. And like a lot of people, she probably wouldn’t even notice if it was running at 1440 vs 720.
Orange kitty go purrrr
Elden Ring FINALLY clicked for me. I bought it on launch (not very patient of me, and I recognized it as a “great” game but for a variety of reasons just wasn’t for me. Im replaying it like a lot of people have been and I actually specced my person correctly and its a lot more fun now. Maybe I can experiment with other eventually but a balanced build has been so nice.
SKALD is also high on my list.
So my sticks still work, but I’ve worn down the rubber on two of the left joysticks so much its crumbling apart. Purchased in 2021 and was my main driver until that happened about 6 months ago, so a fair bit of use. Used that opportunity to try out the PS5 controller and the new Xbox series ones.
And I mean… they’re good?
The resistive triggers were cool and the touchpad is really customizeable. Xbox controller stays solid but boring.
Switch Pro controller feels great but weird to be playing PC games with. Nothing WRONG with it, just feels mentally disconnecting for some reason lol.
Idk. For me the Pro 2 and the wireless SNES sized 8bitdo controllers are perfectly comfy. Have an ultimate in its way to me now actually.
Edit all of my controllers are non hall effect
Im an avid twitch user. Please put down the pitchforks you may have from the title. This is her whole schtick (morgpie), finding creative ways around the censorship. Yes she does sex work, but she’s also a great streamer in her own right and is actually playing the games on screen. She constatly holds a chat of like 4k people and streams for HOURS. You can only horny watch for so long, at a certain point people are staying because they just enjoy her personality and stories.
Like this is fucking hilarious. Subjectively ofc, but If my owlverweight man ass were to do the same thing, everyone would just be laughing at me.
I could be wrong, but I believe WMR requires the WMR Portal app and the WMR For Steam VR (from steam) to function properly. I think there has been SOME progress made with unofficial support, mainly driven by the Linux crowd where they dont work at all, but not anything resembling a functional replacement.
A major option for PC VR are Windows Mixed Reality headsets. They are all wired with inside out tracking. Microsoft recently announced WMR is going to be depreciated, and the next version of Windows won’t have WMR available. This means sooner than later, all of us with WMR will need to “upgrade”. And by upgrading, it means looking into either the aging Index, older Vives, a Meta Quest headset (which has its own compatibility quirks), or a bigscreen beyond.
PSVR2 is the logical upgrade path for those of us without base station tracking and don’t mind the cord.
Okay. I use AI for hobbies, like art and getting D&D campaign ideas, so I was waiiting to see what the S24 could bring. Being able to do it locally on my phone would be amazing instead of zipping it off to DALLE or whatever.
I will almost assuredly not be paying for something that should be able to run on the locally on the hardware.
I could be misinformed but that was the whole selling point of Snapdragon 8 gen 3 was its on board NPU, no?
I fucked myself over playing this in early access. I spent 10-15 hours in EA, so when I booted up the full release, even though I did dump another 20 hours in, I feel like I’ve had my fill. Fights start to become a slog for me personally as team size grew, things would just take forEVER. Cool power fantasy to feel like I have a small army at my disposal though.
OG MW is still peak. The way the game comes together is better than the sum of its parts.
BUT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT Unbound.
I played though half of Heat around two years ago. And Ill say it suprised me how nice the driving and the world looked gorgeous, but I didn’t get far. This was a great attempt at modernizing the franchise, and I think it set the groundwork well for…
Fast forward to 2024 and Im playing Unbound and loving it. The map is large, expansive, and fun to explore. I legit was able to start mapping it in my head the same way I would with MW. They have such a big range of cars from classic to modern. Alebit the body kit and overall customization is slightly lacking, there’s enough variety that I find myself shopping for new rides because I want to.
And Unbound is dripping with that ASAP ROCKY, manga ass, trippy trap style that permiated the culture a few years back. The neon and drift visual effects I fuck with heavy, because it actually leans into that fun arcadey humor. The characters are cell shaded just like the overlaying style graphics, and I think it juxtaposes the photorealistic vibe if the cars and world well.
The open World Map is much improved too. Its literred with collectables, art to collect, mini world events (speed traps are BACK, along with hot lap and drift challenges). I don’t think its as good as Rockford, but its good in its own right.
Im a little torn on how the game progression is set up. Essentially, the player gets a “week” to run races and escape from cops to earn as much cash as possible, upgrading your ride along the way, coalescing in a more important qualifier or story race on Saturday. The player can choose to participate in as many races during a day/night as they want before turning in all that cash at a Safe House, proceeding to the next day/night phase. Rinse and repeat. The player will have had to level up a car to a certain class of car (Classes are split into B, A, A+ S, S+), and the races a player can choose to take part in will fall into one of these categories. So its highly advised and even required to have a full stable of cars, not just get locked into one. For that I appriciate it, but this leads me to my next point…
The cop chases. Ugh. Early game they’re fun and add a lot to the tension, especially when you have a shitbox for a car. But they feel less integrated into story mode than before, as you don’t ever HAVE to really deal with the police in a mission sense. They exist and will always be there to pester you but that’s just it - theyre more of a pest than fun. I could go deeper, but constant high level cop chases make me not want to keep playing some days.
The story is take it or leave it. Pretty run of the mill, but it didn’t actively make me hate it either, so I would says that pretty fucking solid. You can completely ignore it, but its juuuust campy enough I’ve stayed involved.
Probably going to beat it this weekend, but overall, my thoughts are that I’m excited for the next one. Heat and Unbound FEEL like the first two in a mid-franchise trilogy, kind of like Resident evil 7 & 8, and I’m totally ready for the next one.