Radeon RX 6650 XT is $330 right now... That means I could build:
...For just under $900; tempting as a Linux box.
Otherwise, finished Samus Returns; do recommend.
New build for a friend:
...More RGB than I usually work with (three case fans, RAM, GPU, motherboard, power button) but I got to slap a big ol' brown-on-brown Noctua fan in the middle of it, so I'm good :) Very quiet, too. Didn't go all-out, but it leaves them a nice upgrade path. 12GB 3080s and 3080 Ti cards are either impossible to find around here or horribly overpriced. Considered a 4080, but ended-up saving $600 by going with the 10GB 3080 OC which is already overkill for their use cases. They'll also be putting a few spinning drives in there, and an optical drive - yes, that case has a 5.25" bay!
Anyway, fun stuff:
Early Black Friday deals:
Been playing:
Kind of cheesed that the $80 PC version of Persona 5 Royal was announced within six months of me picking-up the PS4 version at full price... Also that Ys IX is still generally $60~80 after three years. Kinda want to just get both on Switch, but also not ready to sacrifice that much performance and visual quality :\
Played through A Short Hike, and it's perfect. Wrapped-up Prodeus and the post-early-access levels disappointed. Finished Knights and Bikes and it was fine... I just wish I enjoyed it more.
Kirby and The Forgotten Land's post-game stuff is nice (finished in Wild Mode without any support items), but the secret ending boss feels like we're getting into Soulsborne territory... In a Kirby game. Stop with the genre homogenisation, please. Moved-on to Age of Calamity; not a big fan of musou games, but I'm trying for this one.
Took me over ten years, but I finally played through Fez and it was fantastic. I followed its development closely, I couldn't wait to play it, and when it was eventually released on XBLA I got through the first few screens before just kinda letting it sit. I remember feeling overwhelmed by it back then (I had also stalled on Deus Ex: Human Revolution) so maybe it was just bad timing for me, but I'm glad I got back into it. Breezed-through in three hours to finish the game with 27 cubes and 7 anti-cubes, then started a New Game +... I never start a new game +.
Noticed the clamshell case for my copy of ARMS was different than the rest of my Switch games; looks like I got a UAE copy. Nice thing is that it's still a USA card, so I tracked-down a Canadian case and insert on eBay. Also grabbed Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Yoshi's Crafted World on the most recent Switch sale.
Beyond that, my Pixel 7 is really nice. The lemongrass phone goes really well with the dark green Ringke Onyx I got for $15 CDN on Amazon; the official lemongrass case was sold-out for pre-order and during the first week I had the phone. Now to decide what to do with the $100 Google Store credit... Buds? Probably Buds.
Finally got a chance to play P.T. on an old PS4, and really enjoyed it. Solved a few loops by accident, missed a few moments because I was looking in the wrong direction, couldn't trigger the second giggle (didn't have a mic connected, so...?), and looked-up the ending on YouTube. Death Stranding is cool, but what I didn't realise is how influential this teaser has been on the genre in years since.
My Pixel 3 has started to chip around the USB port, the power button has started to malfunction and call 911 (I've since disabled that "feature"), Google isn't providing any more system updates, etc... Two friends' Pixel 6 phones had heat issues - nothing show-stopping, but enough that I didn't pull the trigger on a $100-off sale; I hear Android 13 helps a lot with that though. Then the 7 was announced, plus a $100 Google Store credit, and I accidentally knocked my caseless Pixel 3 off a counter and the back glass shattered; it's alright now, back in its case, but there should be a 7 in the mail for me soon.
Found a copy of Kirby: Planet Robobot - really does seem to be going for nearly $80 CDN everywhere these days.
Prodeus is out, the vkquake-rt mod looks really good (would love to see it support Arcane Dimensions), still chipping-away at Cyberpunk, and it feels like I'm forgetting something again...
Found Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia for DS for $20 each. Really good games trying new things while staying true to the franchise - but not sure how I feel about the shift in tone of the first one, the length of the second one, or the structure of the third one. Almost got the good endings in all of them, but the bosses just started to feel a little Soulsborne-y toward the end of each and I'm kinda ready to give up and move over to Samus Returns.
Did give-up on trying to find Dark Chambers (7800) and Line of Fire (SMS) in the wild, and just grabbed them off eBay. The former is pretty cool and the latter completes my SegaScope 3-D library.
Got good deals on Arms and Shin Megami Tensei V for Switch. Also ordered a refurbished first-party Joy-Con Grip directly from Nintendo because they don't seem to exist otherwise.
Replaced the hard drive in my Core 2 Quad; nothing much to back-up on there. Still really happy with that computer and EndeavourOS.
Oh, and Voxel DOOM is fantastic.
Not done Sonic Forces yet, but it's fine... I guess.
Injustice 2 is way better than Injustice.
Got a white OLED Switch as a gift; pretty sweet. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is lovely.
Got free passes to a local video game convention; saw a bunch of games I already own going for thousands of dollars more than I paid for them, but nothing I actually wanted... Or at least I wasn't gonna pay $600 for a better copy of Earthworm Jim Special Edition.
The SIO2SD thing for the 800XL is really cool. Played Elektra Glide, Pastfinder, The Pharaoh's Curse, Rescue on Fractalus, and Zybex - all totally rad; absolutely gives the C64 a run for its money.
My Core 2 Quad EndeavourOS PC died during an OS update... Looks like it was the hard drive physically failing.
Had to oil the fans on two of the i7 3820s I gave away, and replace one CPU - luckily had a matching spare.
So Sonic Forces is ridiculous, Colors Ultimate is still kinda broken, Origins is apparently disappointing, and Frontiers looks weird... I really thought Colors, Generations, Lost World and Mania were great overall steps in the right direction; sad to see the franchise go off the rails yet again.
Resident Evil 7 maybe should've wrapped-up after chapter 4... But then I guess it wouldn't honour the series' tradition of jumping the shark after nailing a strong and unique opening. Also, the RTX update looks awful and it seems to break (or at least reduce the quality of) HDR. Meh. I'll play 8 whenever it's $20.
Finished Echo and it didn't trigger the endgame achievement, so that sucks and I'm not doing it again; still a gorgeous audiovisual experience though, intriguing narrative, and intense gameplay... Just a little a rough around the edges. Seriously underappreciated.
Diablo Immortal is fine. Don't spend money on it, and do play it on mobile.
Also, finally tried Antstream - free tier is decent, challenges are interesting, video quality is kinda bad, selection is alright but nothing spectacular.
Found one of these for $35 CAD at a thrift store - missing the lumbar pillow and there's some wear, but MSRP is ~$585 CAD and the cheapest one in my area is an open-box discount for $405... I'll make do :)
Also found an Atari 800 XL for $170 CAD on eBay. Was sold as-is, looked kinda grimy, and it powered-on - but was otherwise untested... Judging by the photos, was an NTSC model and came with a good PSU variant. Figured it was worth the risk given current prices; great-looking paperweight at worst. Turns-out it looks way better in person and works flawlessly - seller also threw-in a peripheral cable! Something was rattling around inside - turned-out to be a loose screw, washer, and grounding wire; easy fix. So now I'm looking for cartridges and probably one of these.
Sonic Lost World falls apart about halfway through; still looks great, genuinely catchy music, writing holds-up... But the world/level/boss design and mechanics just get messier as you progress. Still don't hate it though.
Injustice is kinda boring.
SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy is not as awful as I expected it to be.
Diablo Immortal feels crowded - in terms of world, quests, players, field of view... It's a decent time-sink, but it's nothing special.
Death Stranding is waaay more engaging than I expected. Kinda glad I took so long to get to it, too - looks incredible at 240Hz in HDR.
Found another DX-NRUTER in a bag of old stuff at my parents' house. Dunno if I should leave it stock or put DD-WRT on it... I've read that Wi-Fi encryption and MAC filtering don't work on it when it's a repeater because of the Broadcom drivers. Bleh.
Got both EA3500 routers working as secure repeaters by following this guide.
Don't understand the hate for Sonic Lost World; did it just release too closely to Super Mario Galaxy? I think it's one of the best-looking and best-written Sonic games; the Genesis games are still the pinnacle for me, Adventure/Heroes haven't aged well, 2006 is broken in so many ways, Secret Rings/Black Knight were surprisingly good, Unleashed is fine albeit ridiculous, Colors is totally solid, Generations was a revelation, and Lost World is genuinely innovative. Oh, and Team Sonic Racing is kind of a slog.
Revisiting Injustice 1 & 2 after MK11; decent.
DD-WRT totally unlocks 1300Mbps Wi-Fi on the EA6300V1. Neat.
DIR-859 doesn't compare to the Archer A7 in the larger/obstructed space.
Dusted-off the DX-NRUTER - had forgotten that I broke the Wi-Fi radio when I last flashed it with DD-WRT. Looks like it only works with dd-wrt.v24-13577_NEWD-2_std-nokaid.bin from 2010. Tried a number of DD-WRT releases with no luck - none of the dd-wrt.v24_ releases support the radio, and all of the dd-wrt.v24-48884_NEWD-2_K2.6_ releases bricked it - thank goodness for TFTP. Decided to give it a shot as a repeater, and it worked fine until I enabled any Wi-Fi security on the repeater... I think I'm just over it now.
I had way more fun with Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate than I expected to after XL. The story mode still doesn't compare to 2011's and Kronika is uninspiring, but the new Krypt is a major upgrade over XL's and the character customisation is unreasonably deep. Had way more fun grinding towers to unlock more of the Krypt so I could further customise my characters... Until the grind got ridiculous; I need something like 7500 souls to progress now, and that just turned me right off the whole endeavour. Finding Reptile was a really nice nod to the 1995 movie though :) Reinstalled XL afterward, avoiding the story mode, and really appreciated the towers and the Krypt a lot more this time.
DD-WRT on the EA6300V1 because OpenWrt suggests that they're effectively a non-option and I can't find any info on how Tomato compares to the closed-source aspects of DD-WRT. It's been years since I've really messed around with any of them, and I'm not quite up-to-speed on all of this - so I went with what seemed like the safest bet. Ended-up following this guide, but with the latest DD-WRT as the final step - pretty convoluted, but it worked! I couldn't get 5GHz speeds over 400Mbps at first, but it just turned-out that DD-WRT's "Auto" channel setting is maybe not good. Did a site survey, moved things over to a less-crowded part of the spectrum, and now everything looks happy. Next test is with the Archer T9E to see if an EA6300V1 really can reach AC1600 speeds.
Checked-out another thrift store today, found a Sony BDP-S1700, a DIR-868L, another DIR-822, and an Acer tower with a Core 2 Quad, 3GB of RAM, and a GTX 650... The tower was the most expensive item at $15 CDN. Neat projects, but I left them for someone else.
Archer A7
EA6400
Two more:
D-Link DIR-859: AC1750, Gigabit Ethernet, no USB ($7)
Linksys EA6400: AC1600, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 ($7)
...Replaced my EA6300 with the EA6400 because why not, and gonna keep the DIR-859 as a backup. Giving away the EA6300, DIR-822, two EA3500s, and a Dynex DX-NRUTER.
Oh! Turns-out the EA6300 I've had for almost a decade is an EA6300V1, which is an EA6400 with EA6300 firmware. Huh.
Pretty-much wrapped-up Forza Horizon 4 and Mortal Kombat 11 - completing a few odds-and-ends in each (LEGO® Speed Champions and the new Krypt are really fun) but the big takeaway is that I am now officially spoiled by pseudo-HDR and VRR up to 240Hz.
Also tried Sonic Lost World again - on Windows this time, and it's kinda pretty good.
One dead pixel and one dead green subpixel on the AW2721D; Dell won't authorise an exchange for less than six, but at least they're not really noticeable... Let's see if any more crop-up over the next three years. The bleed from the local dimming zones is, however, quite noticeable unless you tweak application brightness along with the display's "Dark Stabilizer" and "Variable Backlight" settings. Despite all of that though, it's a very impressive monitor for the price. I've put a Dell U2311H next to it, and it's night-and-day.
The AC1750 Archer A7 and the AC1900 Archer T9E occasionally reach transfer speeds in excess of 1Gbps, but much more consistently achieve speeds only nominally better than AC1200 despite being less than ten feet away from each other in the same room. Oh well.
Finally, can confirm that the BDP-S560 only does photos over DLNA. It's not like I was really gonna use it for anything other than playing old Blu-ray discs - nor did I expect it to be able to decode any modern video formats - but it would've been a cool feature!
Went back to the thrift store for fun, and this time I snagged a TP-Link Archer A7 AC1750 router for $7! Found-out when I got home that it had OpenWrt installed and an admin password had been set :\ Took me a minute to figure-out that I had to press the the "WPS/Wi-Fi On/Off" button to get it to boot into failsafe mode, but then it was simple enough to SSH in and soft-reset it. Next I was hoping to get it back to stock (I may have bricked it once or twice in the process) and TP-Link's vaguely-documented TFTP recovery solution is a nice feature - though that took a few tries before I figured-out that the Ethernet controller on my Lenovo just didn't seem to be compatible, and then that the Ethernet on my desktop was too slow to transfer a 16MB firmware file within the set window before the router would just continue to boot normally. Luckily, my partner's HP laptop worked great! Unfortunately, none of the TP-Link firmware files took, so it's currently on the latest OpenWrt release.
Now I'm comparing the three 802.11ac routers I have, trying to decide which should go where...
TP-Link Archer A7: AC1750, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0
Linksys EA6300: AC1200, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0
D-Link DIR-822: AC1200, 10/100 Ethernet, no USB
...But since I'm almost never transferring anything over my local networks, I'm not serving any kind of NAS, and my Internet connection will always be the bottleneck, I don't really see any real advantage to any of them anywhere. Maybe the Archer A7 goes wherever the Archer T9E goes? Whichever has the best DLNA implementation goes wherever the Blu-ray player goes?
AW2721D went on-sale for 37%-off in Canada today and Dell's offering an additional 10% off monitors, so $792 instead of $1400. Nice.
Gave-up on Shadow of Mordor since it was never gonna run great on this GPU and my setup isn't officially supported anyway. The latest update to Inscryption looks for Inscryption.x86 but the included file is Inscryption.x86_64 - copying and renaming works. Borderlands 2 was next (never quite finished all of the DLC) and it worked flawlessly.
Unrelated, but recently helped a pal with their rural Internet access - fiber is coming and they're just out of range for LTE, so he's stuck on 10Mbps down/1Mbps up/700ms satellite in the meantime... Oof. They are on a waitlist for Starlink as well, which I learned has less latency because low-orbit satellites. Huh.
What I want: A sub-$1000, 27~32", QHD+, DisplayHDR 600, adaptive-sync, 120Hz+ monitor.
What I can find: A sub-$1000 (in the US), 27", QHD+, DisplayHDR 600, adaptive-sync, 120Hz+ monitor - that costs $1400 in Canada, with the stupidest design ever or a reasonably-priced one with a much more subtle design that only comes curved.
Everything else remotely comparable is $1000...
Bought the Best of Boomer Shooters Bundle. Hedon is clearly made with love and runs well on Linux, but it's kinda rough. Project Warlock is great. DUSK is really good. Amid Evil feels way more grounded and focused than the trailers suggested, but is ultimately getting kinda boring as I progress. Ion Fury is good. Haven't gotten to Dread Templar, HROT, or Hellbound. Haven't used the ULTRAKILL coupon, but did use the Prodeus one and it absolutely lived-up to the hype; stellar game, and I can't wait for more.
Thrift store finds:
So the final build is:
Rad isn't fun. It looks great, combat feels alright, it's all random enough to keep exploration interesting, and the mutation mechanic is neat... But the first two worlds just aren't engaging enough after a while to justify the grind and the game is surprisingly unoptimised on PC. It feels like the initial character-building would've been considerably more enjoyable if more was carried-over between runs, but instead I just got bored after a few days of repetition and the whole game felt like more and more of a slog with each death. I only paid ~$7 for it and it was fun for a few hours, but I honestly just gave-up and uninstalled it... And then re-installed it because it got under my skin and I still want to see more. Looking through old reviews and Double Fine's Discord, I see I'm not alone in my experience :\
...Finished Mooncrash.
Got to try a bunch of Switch games:
The more I think about it, the more the Core 2 Quad Linux system makes more sense with the Radeon HD 5850 and maybe a cheap SSD since the proprietary NVIDIA drivers don't seem to work so great with the old 8800 GTS and then fakeRAID support is the only limiting factor. For the Core 2 Duo, I still have a Radeon HD 3870 - and then the GTS can go into another Core 2 Duo E6750 system I have lying around that also needs a PSU.
Anyway, The Super NES Classic Edition is kinda perfect. First thing I did was unlock Star Fox 2, then played through Super Metroid (still holds-up), and now it's on to Mario RPG - which objectvely looks best with the CRT filter. After that, I'm not sure... Likely Star Fox 2 and then either Final Fantasy III or EarthBound. Loved Yoshi's Island, but no rush to play it again.
Speaking of Nintendo, I finally finished Luigi's Mansion 3. Flawless art direction, oozing with character, technically impressive, genuinely intuitive treasure hunts, engaging and rewarding exploration, repetitive combat, and bafflingly boring/frustrating boss design; can't decide if the Gold Bones are an acknowledgement of that or not. Ultimately really liked it, but probably won't ever revisit it in earnest.
Also went back to Mooncrash; I think I may forego the all-five-in-one-run just because it feels arbitrary when so many of the crucial conditions are random; the further I got, the more exploration and experimentation felt discouraged - hazards, power outages, control modules, simulation corruption, etc... It all makes for an impressively-designed challenge, but also feels uncomfortably like a Souls-like speedrun.
Finished Metroid Dread with 100% of the items. Last boss was tough - took me longer than I would've liked to get the patterns down, but was worth it to see the ending. Went back and played Zero Mission immediately after, and had a great time; kind of upset with myself for waiting all these years.
Tracked-down a brand new Super NES Classic on Kijiji for $120 CDN; stoked for that :)
Ended-up building this:
Got the Zelda Game & Watch for Christmas, which is awesome (so many secret things!) and includes Link's Awakening, which is also awesome. Been reliving some great 1993 memories with that, while also playing the Switch remake - I think I prefer the original, but the countless quality-of-life upgrades, the expanded fishing game, claw game, and seashell search, as well as the dungeon builder are all really nice additions. Might dig-out my copy of DX and play that next, for research :)
Started Cyberpunk 2077, and it's honestly really good so far. Still overly-ambitious and pretty buggy, still full of questionable design decisions and a script in need of another round of edits, but ultimately a very impressive mash-up of Deus Ex and GTA. I'm in Act 2, and I'm hooked. Worth noting that playing on a PCIe 4.0 NVMe really makes the experience more enjoyable - long load times would've had me giving-up on it pretty early on.
Started Metroid Dread on a whim and immediately got sucked-in - and after a few days of on-and-off play, I think I've nearly finished it. Really slick, love all the little cutscenes, great traversal... Those unforgiving (optional) QTEs though, and those boss fights - didn't expect that in a Nintendo game; I have a feeling a lot of casual players aren't going to finish this one.
Otherwise, I added a Freeload cartridge to my Commodore 128, and I think I'm done with old computer projects for a while. The Commodore is better-than-new with Freeload and the SD2IEC carts; the DOS, 98SE, and XP computers are all done; the Core 2 Quad Linux project is done but underperforms thanks to NVIDIA's drivers and really only exists because I don't have any more Windows licenses; the unnecessary CrossFire Pro build is effectively just a second Windows desktop at this point; and the ridiculous AWE64-centric, SCSI-based MIDI workstation serves its purpose.
So now what? Hunt-down cache for the 486? Find two more matching video cards for the triple-SLI motherboard in the Linux computer and find a Windows License for it?
I'd really like to start using EndeavourOS as a daily option, but I just don't have the hardware for it - my 2nd-gen X1 Carbon's Adaptive Keyboard, detaching the base of my Surface Book, video games games on my 3070, the 2xFirePro V8800s in CrossFire Pro on my i7 950, fakeRAID on my Core 2 Quad... All of them just work better in Windows. From the parts I do have, I'm thinking maybe:
Decent deals in the Epic Holiday Sale + endless coupons:
