160GB array was faulty; turns-out my ~15-year-old spinning drives are dying 🤷 Got two 250GB drives going reliably, and I was really impressed with how everything just worked. The only out-of-the ordinary thing was switching-over to the non-HWE kernel... And then I tried to play some Steam games and the system crawled (reproducibly) to the point that I was opening a new terminal and killing processes just to get the mouse to respond. Did some digging, and seems likely it's related to the proprietary NVIDIA video driver; so now I don't really care about combing logs and troubleshooting that because that's not the point of this build. Maybe one day, but then maybe I'll take the time to get fakeRAID and 340.108 going on Arch :p
I need a new project. Was thinking of a K6-2-based Windows 2000 build that features an AWE64 Gold because I said it was a decent MIDI synth in an audio gear group on Facebook and they deleted my post... So now I have to prove them wrong and make some music on it.
Finally played Pony Island, and it was good. Stuck on a part in Inscyption - not because I don't know what to do, but because getting to that part feels a little too random after, especially since it slows-down progress significantly after such a fast-paced first few sections. thankfully, the gameplay is still satisfying.
Finally got to:
Picked-up:
I started with Debian in the '90s, then Slackware, then Ubuntu, then PC-BSD, then CentOS for work, then Xubuntu, then Manjaro, then EndeavourOS. Now I'm trying to find the best balance for my old Q9450 + 8800 GTS, and it looked like Ubuntu was the way: Out-of-the-box NVIDIA fakeRAID support, native kernel support for NVIDIA's proprietary video drivers, and an LTS branch... But then 20.04.3 went to a newer kernel and the video drivers broke - there're patches for that, but I was kinda hoping for something that would just work. Tried 18.04 for fun, but it didn't entirely like the fakeRAID setup and now I'm thinking Ubuntu 20.04 on 5.4 looks like the safest bet to keep that late-2000s hardware relevant until 2030 - if I'm reading this chart correctly.
System is:
PS5 games on sale for $40~$60 CDN, and I haven't bought any. Did get Gravity Rush 2 and Fist of the North Star though... Did I miss anything?
Notice a theme?
Missed Echo when it was released, got it on Steam recently, and very impressed so far. A little rough around the edges - audio mix made it kinda tricky to catch some of the dialogue so I turned-on the subtitles and caught a spelling mistake, lost dialogue altogether during one session, got an Unreal Engine crash message early on, there's some weird LOD pop-in, shadows projecting onto thin air, incomplete reflections (and if ever there was a game begging for raytracing...), no ripples in the water - yet I'm invested nonetheless. Such a cool premise and overall slick presentation, genuinely engaging and innovative gameplay mechanics; unless the infodumps get too convoluted or the difficulty spikes, I feel like I'm going to enjoy this one through to the end.
Went back to Prey: Mooncrash before trying Deathloop, and it's good. Didn't like how you unlock the security guard, but otherwise really impressive system overall. I still don't really like roguelikes though.
Got a PS5 Console for $93 CDN... $400 in points at the retailer, $100 in promotional points for spending $400 in points, and $37 in points toward future purchases. Never had a PS4, but since God of War, (maybe) Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection are out for or coming to PC, here's what I'm looking to pick-up:
In-place Windows 11 upgrade on the X570 desktop: Fast, simple, slick... Actually kicked it off by accident. Ryzen TPM enabled, no VBS.
Clean installation on Surface Book: Disabled Secure Boot to boot from USB and bypass unsupported CPU warning, had to side-load Surface NVMe drivers, language bar acted all kinds of weird... Wiped and re-installed again, and everything was great.
Clean installation on 2014 X1 Carbon: Enabled Intel TPM 2.0 over discrete TPM 1.2. Worked fine after a bunch of manual driver updates, but couldn't get the Adaptive Keyboard working properly... Back to Windows 10.
Psychonauts 2 is perfect. The final act of the game felt a little chaotic/contrived/rushed, but also still worked and left openings for all kinds of side-stories, DLC, spin-offs, sequels - phrasing this as such to minimise spoilers, but I can't wait to play as Lili tracking-down brains, or Bob and Helmut recovering bodies, or Lucrecia working for the government... Also, the Bob's Bottles level really got to me; didn't expect things to get that heavy. Couldn't be happier, and it was kinda cool to see my name in the credits.
DOOM Eternal The Ancient Gods - Part One is too difficult at normal difficulty levels. For the first time in my life, I'm tempted to turn the difficulty down; and I'm not happy about it. I'm not sure if the issue is that the game's systems are so incredibly balanced that there's no longer any room for error or if the balance is so far off that it's just not as fun as the main game, but I'm teetering on just not even finishing it despite being at the final Slayer Gate and almost done.
Quake Remastered is fantastic and the new episode is seriously impressive.
The Bethesda-sanctioned DOOM and DOOM II add-ons are really fun - I'd completely missed BTSX!
Went back and played-through Need for Speed (2015) and Payback - both totally solid.
Finally got into Super Mario Galaxy and... Yeah, I dunno. It's really good, but I had way more fun with Odyssey, Bowser's Fury (which was awesome btw), Sunshine, 64... Maybe I should've played it sooner?
Hadn't been all that focused on any particular game the past few months until I finally got around to Super Mario Odyssey, and then binged that one hard; 363 Moons in 48 hours, and still going. Not sure how I feel about the boss rush post-game content, but I'm gonna try to get to 500. Overall though? Killer app, masterpiece, instant classic, etc... You get the idea.
Took a break from Metro Exodus after completing the main game and The Two Colonels DLC; will get back to Sam's Story, but went back to Deus Ex: Human Revolution for a change of pace. After many false-starts over the years, I finally wrapped it up and it holds-up. Not bothering with The Director's Cut, and the DLC is fine; but I jumped straight into Mankind Divided before finishing The Missing Link and wow... Just, wow. Cannot believe I slept on that one for almost five years - it's one of the best games of the decade! Ploughed through that, started Breach and Jensen's Stories... So pretty, too! Maxed-out everything at 1080p except MSAA - 60FPS at 4x though. Then I guess it's back to The Missing Link, and then Sam's Story... But I also bought Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War because it was on-sale for $50 CDN and it's technically a new single-player Raven game!
Otherwise, I finally got around to testing my Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, and it works great... So now the question is do I try to get $200 out of that one or my complete Sound Blaster 16? Partial to the OPL3 on the 16, but there're so many more features on the AWE :\
Also, got $700 for my old 3930K+1070 PC... Dropped the price to $800 (seemed fair since you can find comparable new pre-builts for ~$1100) and I got tonnes of interest, but the vast majority was miners offering under $400 just for the video card.
New computer is awesome; very quiet (better airflow in this case, Noctua fans), very fast (the 3070 is no longer bottlenecked!), and the build was mostly uneventful. The amount of pressure required to install AMD's Wraith Stealth is kind of terrifying, needed a BIOS update to get the DOCP setting on my RAM to work, and I accidentally removed my digital Windows license from my Microsoft account but was able to get it back by reviving the old motherboard and logging-in there with my Microsoft account... Microsoft support had told me I was out of luck, but I sure showed them 😅 Kept the PSU and three hard drives from the previous build, replaced the failing 1TB HDD from 2010 with a 2015 one I found in my parts bin, and since my VR headset works with the onboard controller on the new motherboard, the Renesas D720201 PCIe card I picked-up for the old one went to my brother's Z68 build so he could finally hook-up the front USB 3.0 ports on his Meshify C. Also, the power and drive LEDs don't seem to work on this case... Meh.
Speaking of hard drives, I re-installed Anthem... But on the SATA SSD, so still not sure if PCIe Gen4 would help those load-times. Still fun to jump back into though; hit level 30, started playing the unlocked difficulty levels... Not really worth it; "Hard" seems to be the most casual fun that still yields decent rewards, in terms of currency anyway.
Tried Metro Exodus again, and it doesn't stutter anymore... Still kinda buggy in terms of mission completion conditions and lighting, but I wonder if the sudden performance issues were somehow related to the failing drive :\
Old computer is listed on Kijiji for $1000 CDN OBO; final specs are:
Unrelated, but one friend who was looking for a 2060 SUPER or better for Premiere finally gave-up and settled for a 1660 SUPER... Except he couldn't find one of those either. I found two profiteers for him - a 3070 for ~$1000 CDN or a 1660 SUPER for $450 CDN - he went with the latter, and he's happy.
Started noticing more hard drive noises than usual from my desktop... While the drives were idle. Found a SMART warning on one of my 1TB spinning drives; backed-up the data, pulled the drive, checked the date code... August 2010! Nice :)
Started Below and got back into Knights And Bikes... Both are so great, visually; both have really interesting (albeit very different) narratives... And both have kinda tedious core gameplay loops :(
Found all the things in-stock at MSRP or on-sale...
Final build:
Horizon Zero Dawn is really impressive, and I really like it... But after Breath of the Wild, it feels kinda janky; facial animations, falling and climbing mechanics and animations, targeting enemies, superfluous voiceover and dialogue, muddled HUD that gets lost in the background, unreasonably dark areas... I even kinda miss the stamina meter. I know it's not the same game, but it's hard to not draw comparisons and really only serves to remind me of what a stellar achievement BotW is.
Metro Exodus is just plain broken though; played on the highest settings without issue for a while, and then one day, after loading a saved game, it just started stuttering. Latest drivers, verified the installation, tried safe mode, etc... Still stuttering. Hesitant to re-download it because it's so big. Disappointed.
Duck Season, however, was frigging rad. Going for the seventh ending and then all the extras that unlocks now. Actually got goosebumps, and even yelped out loud more than once... I'm sure I looked like a fool, but it was worth it!
Oh! Finally went through Prey: Typhon Hunter's TranStar VR campaign; good stuff in there!
Finding a Ryzen 5 5600X has proven to be silly, more than anything else. Plenty of local shipments, and the profiteers aren't too bad, but we're in a province-wide lockdown and stores aren't accepting any kinds of online ordering or reservations, aren't answering their phones, and are encouraging customers to just show-up and try their luck... While there are reports of police pulling people over and issuing fines for unnecessary travel. Yeesh.
Finished-up with some games...
Control: AWE was good. Nice cliffhanger. RTX is pretty :)
Ion Fury put up a good challenge toward the end, but final boss was frustrating; won't be getting the DLC
Streets of Rage 4 was solid, but I still prefer the old ones. Felt great, music was alright, the final boss was maybe kind of a little too hard, will replay to unlock characters one day.
THPS1+2 was so nice; went through all the stages - didn't 100% it, but will come back to it for fun.
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut has aged surprisingly well, though I don't really feel the need to finish it? Gonna give 2 an honest try as well, in anticipation of the RTX update to The Witcher 3.
3070 overclocks nicely to ~1865MHz from the 1755MHz factory OC. Next step is a case with better airflow, then I think an 5600X+X570+16GB of 3600MHz CL16 DDR4 RAM, then a PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe SSD.
Finished BotW, and it was great. The second DLC pack though? Can't access any of the new story content without going through four camps+shrines where one hit kills us? Sure, but it seems odd that the trial to learn the new melee weapon (to the point that they remove all others) can also be won by wearing Majora's mask, picking enemies off with old ranged-weapons, and save-scumming. It's not impossible to do it properly - I got through all four with minimal out-loud swearing - but it's a noticeable spike in difficulty with an odd workaround, and I saw a number of parents complaining online that they had to pass it for their kids. Such a bizarre choice, to wall-off the main attraction of the $30 DLC while the hardcore options are available right away in what is ostensibly a family game.
