XP on an XP

Built the XP computer; haven't installed Windows yet. Put it all in a nice, compact Antec mid-tower with a 480W Antec PSU. Speaking of cases, I found-out that the case I put the Pentium II in is apparently pretty sought-after, so that's kinda neat.

Between stalling on DOOM VFR and waiting for "DOOM Eternal – The Ancient Gods, Part One", I idly played through the first three episodes of the original DOOM in Chocolate DOOM, and then revisited Heretic and Hexen when I finished configuring the DOS computer; and realised I never played Deathknights of the Dark Citadel, so I grabbed the latest GZDOOM and it turns-out that game if frickin' difficult! Finished a playthrough as the cleric though, and it was kinda great; like, actual puzzle solving and not just a key/fake-wall hunt. Well-into episode two of Heretic now, and likely going through Hexen again as well; and then Hexen II and Portal of Praevus on the 98 SE computer before finally getting back to Heretic II; I never finished the former two, and loved the latter back when it was first released :)

Otherwise, Need for Speed: The Run was on-sale for $10, so I ploughed throw that pretty quickly. It's kinda rough in every possible way, but still enjoyable. Cool cars, nice-enough graphics, and some truly stand-out moments (the controlled avalanche race, the tractor traffic, and the subway tunnels) couldn't save driving mechanics that are somehow simultaneously 'realistically' clunky and unbelievably ridiculous, an unpolished rewind system that would drop me into inescapable crashes, awful cutscenes, and painful dialogue though.

Control: AWE is out, I've started it, it's surreal, and I'm in; let's go...

Second Edition

Wrapped-up the DOS build and got going with the Windows 98 SE build - the latter looks like this:

• 300MHz Pentium II
• Intel AL440LX
• 192MB SDRAM
• 128MB AGP Radeon 8500
• 16MB PCI Voodoo Banshee
• Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum EX
• 6.4GB HDD
• DVD-ROM

There're some bottlenecks and concessions in there - e.g. AGP 4X card on an AGP 2X board, 66MHz FSB - but aside from Windows 98 being painfully slow and unsupportive until you get all your drivers installed, it went pretty smoothly. I could've built it around a 500Mhz K6-2 or a Socket A platform, but this PII still holds its own and has a special place in my heart :) Opted for no NIC since that thing really shouldn't be going online anyway, the second GPU is just for Glide support, I don't think I ever had the breakout box for the Audigy... Both this and the DOS computer are being built from whatever I've kept over the past 30 years; not investing any money in these projects.

Getting back to the DOS computer, I replaced the SB16-controlled CD-ROM with a regular IDE DVD-ROM and it works just fine (can read data DVDs in DOS!), set-up a three-button Logitech serial mouse (had to replace the ball), and installed Windows 3.1; with the mach32 and SB16 drivers installed and configured, it looks and sounds great - 1024x768, 65K colours, video playback acceleration, a decent audio editing suite! Also tracked-down a copy of UNARJ and installed some more games I had on old floppies. All of the new drivers ate-up a little too much RAM, but EMM386 cleared that up. Speaking of RAM, I wouldn't mind upgrading it to 64MB and adding a secondary cache (it supports up to 256KB), but there's no real need so I think this one's done.

Next up is the Windows XP computer - Currently looking like:

• Athlon XP 3200+
• DFI NFII Ultra Infinity
• 2GB DDR400 (dual channel)
• 512MB Radeon X1950 Pro
• Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

...Really just need to decide on a PSU and a case. Also have an Athlon 64 3500+, but that 3200+ is another part I learned a lot on and one was top-of-the line at the time so yeah, nostalgia :)

Getting Ready...

In anticipation of the AWE DLC for Control, I played through The Foundation DLC, both DLCs for Alan Wake, and Alan Wake's American Nightmare... All four experiences are worth it for their contributions to the narrative; The Signal's kind of a mess in terms of gameplay, but The Writer feels more balanced; American Nightmare handles traditional action better than its predecessor, but in doing so kinda misses the point of the original game. Regardless, excited for AWE!

Also decided to revisit Far Cry with all the sales on 5 and New Dawn alongside the announcement of 6. So Blood Dragon kinda sucks; it felt stilted and boring, was only barely funny, and I'm glad it was only four hours long. Far Cry: Primal, however, is right up my alley; very much enjoying that one. I think 4 did the spiritual journey missions better, but Primal feels like the better overall game.

Oh, also finally tried Steep a little while ago; not what I expected, but really interesting. Will get back to it.

Finally, my brother got that Mario Lego set for me, and it actually kinda works! Bluetooth functionality alongside the app is slick, and gameplay can get surprisingly challenging as a sort of score-attack experience. Doubt I'll be getting the expansion sets, but this is a really neat experiment.

Recent Recommendations

Friends asking for build recommendations lately, so...

Budget gaming for ~$800 CDN:

• Ryzen 3 3100 
• Gigabyte B550M DS3H
• 2 x 8 GB DDR4-3200
• ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB M.2 NVME SSD
• 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM HDD
• GTX 1650 SUPER
• be quiet! System Power U9 400W

Budget VM server for ~$575 CDN:

• Ryzen 5 2600
• ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0
• 2 x 16 GB DDR4-3200
• ADATA Ultimate SU800 256 GB 2.5" SSD
• be quiet! System Power U9 400W

...I figure they can do whatever they want for cases, and I imagine the VM host is gonna have an interesting storage setup regardless of what they start with.

27 Years Young

Got bored and dug-out my old Digital Equipment Corporation DECpc LPx:

• Intel 486DX2-66
• 16MB of RAM
• 2MB ATi Graphics Ultra Pro (VLB)
• Sound Blaster 16
• 365MB HDD

Went for a clean installation of MS-DOS 6.22 and a copy of PKZIP, and I've just sort of been installing old games and playing with drivers... And it's been kind of wonderful. All of it was much simpler than I remember things being back then, but I guess I did end-up making a career of it since. I have 250MB and 1.3GB HDDs to test-out in there as well, but no rush. Had to replace the 3.5" FDD (it wasn't reading disks), and I disconnected the 5.25" FDD to connect the CD-ROM drive that came with the SB16; it detects properly, but doesn't spin :( Getting things from the Internet onto floppies has been a bit of an adventure, but well worth it in these mostly-housebound times :)

Also, Ion Fury is really good.

That's better...

Okay, so DOOM Eternal gets much better as you level-up and the story fleshes-out, which makes it feel like maybe id left some kind of NewGame+ mode enabled :\ The punishing aspects of the gameplay feel much more balanced once you finish the Super Gore Nest, the ridiculous aspects of the presentation start to feel a lot more like the 2016 game as you make your way through the ARC complex, and the story makes a whole hell of a lot more sense by the time you start Mars Core. I'm not quite finished the campaign yet, but I'm really quite happy with it now.

Finished Resident Evil 4; 80% hit ratio, 961 enemies killed, 0 deaths, 13:35'07" clear time; still don't like it. Tried the Resident Evil 2 R.P.D. Demo... Meh. Started Resident Evil 7, and... Wow! About an hour-and-a-half in, and it's phenomenal! Please don't blow it, Capcom... Please?

You've already hurt me plenty... Please stop.

DOOM Eternal on sale for $34 CDN - no-brainer. Bought it... Wait, what the hell!? Why am I playing a twitchy score-attack masocore precision splatformer Souls game with a techno soundtrack? Why are there Saturday-morning-cartoon sound effects? Why am I running my assault from a space castle with a 486 and a record player? Why is the in-game newsradio referring to me as "The Doomguy"? Way to jump the shark, id... It's not exactly bad; I seem to get each encounter by the second try, but this rollercoaster of a difficulty curve really (ironically?) breaks the flow of the whole experience. I feel like the 2016 game got it right by keeping Arcade Mode separate from the main campaign; they've bled together a little too much in Eternal :\

Also, Resident Evil 4 isn't fun. The narrative is bad, the dialogue is bad, the acting is bad, the dynamic difficulty is insulting, the checkpoints are often pretty close to save-points anyway... I mean, I get it; this game revitalised not only the franchise, but also the survival-horror genre - and even kicked-off the renaissance of the over-the-shoulder third-person shooter. That's all cool, but I couldn't get into it back when it was first released, and after giving it an honest shot now, it just feels silly and clunky and somehow like even more of a slog than the original Resident Evil - despite being significantly streamlined and way more forgiving. There're some really intense moments when everything locks-in and it's a lot of fun, and there're also a few set-pieces that are absolutely wonderful in their silliness... But everything in between is just kind of annoying. This game was only marginally better than its forerunners, and was so quickly surpassed that it feels like even more of a curiosity than the first Resident Evil. I think it's okay to revere and even love this game, but stop holding it up as some timeless masterpiece best-game-ever thing... It's barely in the top five of 2005.

Not as bad as I'd feared...

So it looks like they finally listened to the fans, and Need for Speed Heat turned-out kinda great. 60FPS, pretty stable, offline play, and the story and characters were suitably ridiculous while still being fun. I even gave the Forza Horizon 4 demo a shot before making my decision to go with Heat, but the NFS games are still just more exciting. I got what I wanted out of it in ~45 hours by starting with the '65 Mustang, upgrading to an Exige, and then pretty much winning everything with that until I could max-out an F40. From there, I settled on a garage with a '65 Mustang, a '71 GT R, an '87 GNX, an '04 STi, a '13 Z06, and the aforementioned F40. Otherwise, the drift events didn't feel great, escaping pursuits became a bit of a chore, the High Heat races were super-intense, and the black market campaign was genuinely challenging. Well-worth the $40 I paid on Origin for the Standard Edition... Even though the Deluxe Edition was released on Steam for $35 not long after :\

Anyway, moving on, Control was fantastic; I think it's the first time I've made an effort to actually consume every bit of material in a game since I played a BioShock title - I even avoided using fast-travel for the most part because I didn't want to miss a single thing. Yeah, it's gorgeous and visceral wish-fulfillment to take charge of the situation, fly around, and blast enemies in creative ways; but it's also such a rich and intriguing world to read about, and I still want more - cannot wait for the next DLC. Quantum Break was good, but this feels like a return-to-form for Remedy.

For a change of pace after that, I revisited Resident Evil HD Remaster. Full disclosure: The only RE game I'd ever completed was Resident Evil 2: Platinum on Windows 9x, and I loved it. I played Nemesis and Code Veronica on Dreamcast, and 4 on PS2... And I never finished any of them. They were interesting and exciting, but the commitment required by the limited saves and ammo just put such a barrier in place for me that I never really sat down and dedicated even a weekend to getting into them. I remember when the first game arrived on PS1, I was floored and wanted to play it so bad but didn't have a PS1... Then I found-out about the PC port; but I'd understood that it required a 3dfx card, and all I had was an ATi RAGE Pro. It wasn't until years later that I learned there was Direct3D support :\ In the meantime, I got a Saturn and almost picked-up the Director's Cut, but it was still pretty expensive and I balked at the price. I finally picked-up the GameCube remake, but again neglected to dedicate the time to getting into it... And did the same when the HD Remaster was first released. This time, however, I told myself I was going to get past my personal hang-ups (and this whole pandemic has been keeping us at home more than usual, so that helped) and here we are: I got the best ending with Jill in about nine hours, but I don't think I'll be checking-out Chris' campaign or any of the other modes. It hasn't aged all that well since 2002; I can see how incredible it really was in 1996, as well as how slick it would've been to revisit six years later... 19 years later though? Oof. It's mostly the loading screens and the sharks that hold it back - but aside from its significance as an influential touchstone and as a time-capsule, it's more akin to the original Need for Speed showing us where we came from rather than standing-up as a timeless classic.

Next-up for me is either gonna be Dead Space 2, Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition, or Resident Evil VII - though I'm kinda holding-out for that that last one to support VR on PC :\

Which one's the Neediest?

Levelling all the way up and assaulting Merv Tower in River City Ransom: Underground only to get one-hit knocked-out by the jet with no checkpoint kinda ground the game to a halt for me. Will get back to it, but... Ugh.

On that note, Alice: Madness Returns is such a slog... There're moments of brilliance in the visuals, gameplay, and narrative, but it all just feels so unnecessarily padded-out.

RetroPie was released for Raspberry Pi 4 though, so that seemed like a good excuse to jump into Bare Knuckle III on Genesis Plus GX; I own Streets of Rage 3, and it's just kinda awful... The Japaense release is so, SO much better! What were you thinking, SOA :(

Anyway, then the Epic Games Store coupon sale hit, and I snagged Control (haven't tried it yet), Tetris Effect (finished it on Beginner in VR), and Metro Exodus - Gold Edition... Considering Trackmania Turbo next. Tetris Effect is a really, really good Tetris game - Tetsuya Mizuguchi's trademark design and the addition of the Zone mechanic... Not the revelation I was led to believe, but probably the best Tetris game I've played since Tetris DS.

Also, with the bigger SSD, I decided to bring back some casual racing games - namely Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed Rivals. This led me down an NFS rabbit-hole to figure-out which NFS game really is the best to focus on today... Here's how I like to break it down:

The original series; none have aged particularly well, but they were all great upon release:

• The Need for Speed (1994)
• Need for Speed II (1997)
• Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (1998)
• Need for Speed: High Stakes (1999)
• Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed (2000)
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (2002)

Underground kinda totally re-invented things, and this seems to be the nostalgia that most people cling to:

• Need for Speed: Underground (2003)
• Need for Speed: Underground 2 (2004)
• Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)
• Need for Speed: Carbon (2006)
• Need for Speed: Undercover (2008)

Somewhere in there, they kicked-off this track-day approach, and it was solid:

• Need for Speed: ProStreet (2007)
• Need for Speed: Shift (2009)
• Shift 2: Unleashed (2011)

Then Criterion handled this transitional era that really seems to have divided the fanbase, and it's also where I stopped playing:

• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010)
• Need for Speed: The Run (2011)
• Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012)
• Need for Speed Rivals (2013)

...Not really touching V-Rally and Nitro, or the online, portable, and mobile releases, but they're generally fine.

Some context and thoughts then: I didn't spend much time with Carbon, haven't played Undercover, didn't get very deep into ProStreet or Shift, didn't touch The Run even though its approach is intriguing, I hear the 2015 reboot and Payback are a love-or-hate proposition among fans, and Heat is supposedly a welcome return to form.

Personally, I loved the 3DO and DOS versions of the first-ever game when they were released, thought Underground was a revelation, and played the hell out of Most Wanted (2005)... And I don't really want to revisit any of them.

Hot Pursuit (2010) feels like the best version of the original 3DO/DOS game out there, and I suspect that's why it's so revered among die-hard fans. Most Wanted (2012) was fine, but just kinda felt like Burnout to me.

...And that's where Rivals comes into focus; it's Criterion handing-off the franchise to Ghost, everyone getting familiar with the eighth generation of video game consoles, and just kinda laying-down a foundation. I can't personally say if the three subsequent games did well on top of that foundation - the reviews and videos don't suggest any great advancements - but I also don't really care because I'm still having a great time with Rivals.

I've read complaints about a lack of content and direction, but it's a well thought-out and varied sandbox with a clever and minimal narrative... It's all a little melodramatic, but don't forget that this is a Need for Speed game ;) Other complaints include how buggy it is - I've gotten caught in the geometry once, and been stuck between menus twice, but it never really bothered me; I just restarted the game and jumped right back in. Even when my session inexplicably migrates hosts mid-event, it does a solid job of picking-up right where we left-off. The sillier complaints I read were that cops were too aggressive and people hated losing unbanked SpeedPoints when busted... I assume these people don't actually like video games. I, for one, love the excitement and challenge that tangible penalties bring. There isn't a huge amount of content, no, and I don't care for the online aspects of it; but I also don't plan on playing this forever - it's already been out for seven years and three more games in the series have been released.

Rivals looks better than everything before it, and just about as good as anything since; it has a satisfying damage model, a gorgeous weather system, and a great day/night cycle. As for controls, Raycevick put it best when describing what stood-out about Most Wanted (2005): "The feeling of being in total control... But just barely." - I feel that in Rivals as well; it drives like a Need for Speed game should.

Expandability

I bought an M-Audio FireWire Solo with an employee discount back in... 2006, maybe? Earlier? Anyway, it did the trick but driver support was always kinda hit-and-miss. I ended-up trading it years later; to a friend who was going to use it to extend his existing interface, so no drivers required. In return, I got a TASCAM US-122MKII - not really an upgrade or a downgrade at the end of the day, but its drivers still worked so I was happy. It started randomly making some really weird noises lately though, so I figured I'd just bite the bullet and buy something proper instead of wondering if it was physically failing, its Windows 8 drivers just didn't work well with newer versions of Windows 10, or something else was up... 14 years or so is a good return on my initial investment, right? So my new Audient iD14 arrived last week (found a 5% discount code and free shipping), and it's very nice. My not-great M-Audio AV42 monitors, my also-not-great Hosa Pro HPR-X2 speaker cables, and my interesting-but-not-great M-Audio Nova mic are not doing the iD14 any favours; but it's really helping them out and is a great centrepiece to build around in the future.

I also opted for a 512GB ADATA SU800 to replace my 128GB OCZ Vertex 4 'cause it was under $100 CDN and shipped for free. Windows 10 2004 went on there, along with all of the games that were installed on my spinning drives - Anthem is ever-so-slightly better now :)

Not quite last though, yeah?

Wrapped-up Metro: Last Light, and really happy with it... Got the bad endings in each of the first two games, likely won't be playing Redux any time soon, waiting for a sale on Exodus, and very curious about ARKTIKA.1 - which reminds me, I'd forgotten all about Obduction, and so I've added that to my wishlist.

Moved-on to Alice: Madness Returns, and it's pretty rough. Very high-concept; a study in style over substance - as seen in the awful jumping mechanics, repetitive and drawn-out combat, inconsistent storytelling, some downright ugly levels, and inexplicably bad performance despite being capped at 30fps. It's still interesting enough to keep me coming back and progressing in small doses, but also had me looking for something else to break-up the monotony. Then Streets of Rage 4 was released, and I remembered that I'd never finished River City Ransom: Underground... Which it turns-out is more akin to Alice than I remembered - I get that they're going for oldschool-inspired design, but the difficulty seems to spike pretty suddenly when you reach level 10, and figuring-out what you're supposed to do (and when) is a little obtuse. Ultimately having fun with both, but yeah, plenty of unnecessary frustrations.

WMRkitka tho?

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was fine - good, even. It mostly just kinda made me want to finally bite the bullet and buy a PS4 for Uncharted 4 and The Lost Legacy though... Or at least renewed my interest in PlayStation Now :) Anyway, I played through the Definitive Edition, so it was long and some of the DLC tombs - while often breathtaking in terms of both graphics and gameplay - felt pretty stilted in a lot of their jumping, climbing, and puzzle mechanics. Had plenty of fun though, and it was well worth the ~$27 CDN I paid for it.

Bought the new release of DOOM 64 because I never completed my N64 copy and I played the hell out of DOOM 64 EX, so ~$6 to support Sam Villarreal and get a few new levels was a no-brainer.

Next was revisiting the original release of Metro 2033... Way jankier than I remembered, but still playable enough. Finished-up the final half of the game that I'd put on hold a few years ago, then jumped right in to Last Light. What a difference! Burning through it over the past few days, almost done, and tempted to get Metro 2033: Redux... But likely gonna get to Exodus first.

Masterclass

Finished Dishonored 2, Clean Hands as Emily, and wow. The Dunwall levels are kinda meh, but those bookends remind us how this sequel is a leap forward for the series without forgetting its roots. Exploring Karnca is gorgeous but also more of the same, then the Addermire Institute is a great kind of creepy with a fun little twist, and THEN we get to Jindosh's house and holy shit - steampunk Portal(!) is just the best thing ever, especially given how many ways you can approach that level... The genre just peaked right there. The Conservatory was fun to look at, but I wanted it to go further with how it explored the concept of the Void; and then the Dust District introduced some very nifty mechanics in terms of both how the dust storms affect the core gameplay and how there're so many different solutions for getting past the factions - I especially liked the word puzzle that was solvable in real life with actual logic :) A Crack in the Slab threw another curveball that was one of the best implementations of time-travel/light-and-dark world mechanics I can recall... Ever. The Grand Palace sported some pretty great architecture but kinda disappointed after the previous missions, and then we're back to Dunwall. Good ride. AAA game right there. Good story, and whatever bugs and design issues that were present at launch aren't present anymore - quick load times, quicksaves, new game+, stable... Looking forward to Death of the Outsider, but taking a break first.

Up next is finishing DOOM VFR and then Duck Season in VR; Shadow of the Tomb Raider otherwise. Also grabbed Destiny 2 since it's gone free-to-play and I still find myself hopping back into Anthem... So far, I don't really see the unique appeal of this core gameplay loop, but I've only just begun.

Anyway, the expensive and kinda ridiculous Zalman CNPS12X that's been cooling the CPU in my main desktop was contracting in the cold Canadian winter, the centre fan was starting to make contact with the fins, and the result was a sort-of loud grinding/clicking noise... It's fine, but it was also getting kind of really annoying waiting for my computer to literally warm-up enough for the fins to pull away from the fan. Since there's no obvious way to disassemble and re-seat the centre fan, I said fuck it and bought an Intel BXTS13A - the stock, first-party cooler for the 3930K that was *not* included in the original SKU, and cheekily sports a blue LED :) It was around $35, brand new on Amazon Prime - no more grinding, so much easier to work with, and cools just about as well as Zalman's metal softball without being significantly louder next to all the other fans in my case. Only thing left to maybe do with this computer is get an M.2 PCIe 3 adapter and an 500GB NVMe drive - then I think it's finally done, because bottlenecks :(

"Support"

So I bought Anthem for like, $10 - wanted to see what all the fuss was about since the trailers looked so incredibly rad, but the press seemed to be so very bad. I'm not really one for any kind of multiplayer, but figured the sale price was worth it just to check things out.

First takeaway: Flying around the tutorial level was worth the money all on it's own! The trailers did not lie! BioWare really made the experience of jumping off a mountain, free-falling for a few seconds before firing your jetpack to fly through a canyon, and then diving underwater to explore a network of sunken tunnels leading to ancient ruins - all over the course of ten seconds - so viscerally satisfying that it was worth building a game around. As much as I prefer a story-driven single-player campaign with a big helping of world exploration, it turns-out that Anthem's third-person four-player online raid shooter is also an impressively well-written and well-acted story-driven campaign that takes place over a reasonably large map and can be played almost entirely solo! 25~30 hours later and I'm sitting at level 20 after having saved the world (after completing a bunch of side-quests) and I only had to tackle one multiplayer Stronghold and one quick multiplayer Freeplay session to advance the story. It was kind of annoying that the game kept encouraging me to play with other people, but it was only a mild inconvenience. I also tried a Cataclysm and a Storm Gate just to see what I was missing, and they were fine; still not into multiplayer though.

I hear the game was buggy at launch, the loot was terrible, and the load-times were excruciating - but that all seems to have been remedied at this point. I only experienced two crashes and didn't lose anything; loot kept me consistently competitive and I even ended-up with a couple of Masterwork and Legendary weapons that made life much easier; and load-times were long but bearable from my spinning HDD - felt about the same as DOOM (2016). I did consider buying a bigger SSD for Anthem, just to see how much it would help load-times though; performance too, since streaming the world seemed to have my frame-rates dipping from 60FPS down to 45FPS... But then I kinda finished the game and moved-on to others. I would come back for some more world-building though! Also, did Fort Tarsis remind anyone else of Deus Ex: Invisible War? I actually liked Invisible War... Maybe I'm broken.

Before moving-on to the other games I've been playing, I'd like to talk about my recent EA support experience. For context, I created a Hotmail address in the '90s with a stupid username because I was a teenager, and I still have it. I graduated to a non-Hotmail address maybe a few years later, and used that one to create my Steam and Origin accounts - the latter also with a silly username. I've been pretty settled on Gmail for a while now, but I keep the other ones going for back-ups, old accounts, and the like.

Anyway, I decided that with Anthem being multiplayer and all, I wanted to change that silly Origin username. My Origin account was hacked and sold a few years ago - I don't think two-factor authentication was an option when I signed-up, and I neglected to enable it after EA recovered my account... My bad. Trying to edit any account details, however, sent a verification e-mail to my old e-mail address, which it turns-out had been deleted due to inactivity and the provider was unable to recover the address - it looks like they no longer offer the domain I was using... Cool. Again, my bad. So I contacted EA and asked them to change the e-mail address associated with my account to my Gmail address. They said they couldn't because an account already existed for that e-mail address. Turns-out I created a separate Origin account for an XBOX 360 game some 15 years ago. Third strike against me; way to go, me. For convenience, I asked them to change it to my Hotmail address so that I could just verify the codes and clear-up all the confusion myself, but it turns-out someone else had associated that Hotmail address with a PSN account that isn't mine. Great. The best part about all of this is that the EA support chat was only working in Internet Explorer. Not sure what that was about, but it works in Chrome now even though I changed nothing on my end.

Regardless, I reclaimed both the Gmail- and Hotmail-associated Origin accounts by using the verification codes - proving that they work with these addresses - and had EA change the main account over to my old University alumni e-mail address for the time being... But the alumni address wasn't receiving the verification codes either. Neither the university's nor the alumni office's support team could help me. It's hosted by Gmail. EA told me to take it up with Gmail. Finally, after nearly four weeks of e-mails directing me to chats and chats directing me to e-mails that were not monitored (EA support actually sent me an e-mail saying nobody was checking the address I was directed to), one support technician offering to make the changes for me instead of fixing the verification issue, and EA asking me for even more e-mail addresses (five over four providers isn't enough!?), I got my main Gmail address associated with my main Origin account. The process up to this point was so ridiculous... And it's still not receiving the verification codes; the same address that was receiving them when it was associated with my other Origin account. It really looks like the primary e-mail address field of the Origin account is the problem, but EA refuses to acknowledge that. Coool! Anyway, we added the alumni address as the secondary address and it's suddenly receiving the verification codes it couldn't before! Still can't enable two-factor authentication because it only e-mails the primary e-mail address, but at least I can change my settings all by myself again!

*phew*

I finally got around to Quantum Break, and it's pretty and well-made and fun and the story's cool and one scene toward the end kind of almost ruins all of it and the interactive movie thing was alright even thought didn't really elevate the experience. By the time the game was over, I was satisfied but just didn't feel as engaged as I did with Max Payne or Alan Wake.

Wolfenstein II was fun, but I lost interest once I finished the main campaign; no huntung for collectibles, no Uberkommandant missions, no secret ending, no DLC... Maybe one day, but yeah, I think I might be over that franchise. The story was pretty fucking insane though, and it kinda worked. Still, not touching Youngblood or Cyberpilot any time soon.

Starting Dishonored 2; immediately more engaging, though going for a no-kill run right off the bat does have me save-scumming a little ;)

Also, GTX card prices seem to have dropped and a 1660 Super is hanging-around $380 CDN after taxes... So I'm still pretty happy with my $260 1070 :)

Sweet Spot

Got to play around with two GTX 970s in SLI, and it got me refocused on upgrading my GTX 780. Long story short, I ended-up getting a used MSI GTX 1070 GAMING X for $260 CDN.

The new video card requires the MSI Gaming App to take full advantage of its advertised cooling, RGB, and overclocking controls; but that app hasn't worked properly since Windows 10 1809 - and MSI has no intention of updating it, according to their forum moderator. I can recreate the OC and cooling settings better in MSI Afterburner though, so we're good there.

Anyway, $260... That's ~$230 + tax here in Ontario. The 1070 is a few years old now, so anything cheaper on the used market is even older and pretty firmly in the bad-long-term-investment category. The 780 I replaced is going for $150~$200, the newer 970 performs about the same and is going for about the same, and even when either's paired in SLI neither matches the 1070 - so they're out. The 980 Ti is around the same price as the 1070 but performance looks comparable, so I'm not seeing any reason to go back another generation. The next step up in the used market is the 1070 Ti, and it's going for anywhere from $60 to $240 more than the 1070... For a ~25% performance increase it's not bad, but not a great deal; especially since the 1070 still really holds its own with today's games as well as VR, and won't be having any issues with 1080p for years to come. Don't hesitate to grab a 1070 Ti if you find one closer to $300, but it's all extra at that point.

So what about comparably-priced new video cards? GTX 1650 SUPER or Radeon RX 570... Everything there is either a budget part or already old, and all are significantly slower than the used 1070.

Comparably-performing new video cards? GTX 1660 Ti or Radeon 5600 XT for $450 after tax... Good cards, but they're not going to age well for the $190 price premium.

Marginal upgrade on new cards? RTX 2060 for $565 after tax... That's an additional $300 to add low-end RTX support and lose 2GB of VRAM!? I'm not sold, and now that we're well over twice the price of the 1070, I think I'm done.

So it looks like spending under $300 CDN for a 1070 is the way to go if you're upgrading from the low-end (or from 2013, like I was) and want to save at least a few hundred dollars.

It's a flower.

Pi Stuff:

Started tinkering with a 4GB Class 4 microSD card I had lying around... Upgrading to a $4 16GB Class 10 card from the dollar store was a good idea; a 64GB Kingston Canvas React for $16 seems to be the sweet-spot though.

RetroPie isn't out for the Raspberry Pi 4 yet, so I've been playing around with Raspbian Lite, Xfce 4, and RetroArch in the meantime. Pretty decent results, but not exactly comprehensive and not quite full-speed... Switching to Lakka seems to have fixed the performance issues though! I think I'm ready to actually build the PortaPi :)

VR Stuff:

Psychonauts and Moss are the best. The Lab's hilarious and has so much to explore. DOOM is slick and intense. Prey's pretty interesting. All four Serious Sam games work better than expected. The Talos Principle is a great fit for VR. Cloudlands is the best minigolf title I've found so far. SEGA Mega Drive & Genesis Classics' VR mode is a silly-but-welcome addition. Have yet to try Hellblade. Mountain and Q.U.B.E. only support Oculus DK1 despite having the VR tag in Steam, and Transmissions: Element 120 doesn't seem to support VR at all - despite the same tag :\ Dream Golf VR was challenging, but not in a good way. Premium Bowling was decidedly not premium. Rec Room was terrifying in all the wrong ways.

Lots to cover.

While SEGA Heroes seems to've mostly supplanted Marvel Puzzle Quest on my phone, I think I'll be going back to MPQ after I max-out my Shinobi team; got the rest of the Chaos emeralds in Sonic Mania; finished Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and it was really fun; bought and finished Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom and while it didn't feel quite as slick as the Dragon's Trap remake, it's a fantastic Wonder Boy game; Cult of the Death God and Terrormania for RAGE 2 were solid and well-made and on-sale and not as great as Rise of the Ghosts but still worth my time; not really interested in GTA IV or V, so I started Return of the Obra Dinn and Quantum Break and they're both really interesting, but then...

My partner got me a 1GB Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and a slick Retro Built Games Porta Pi Arcade: Vertical, and then the Microsoft Store dropped the price of the Samsung HMD Odyssey+ to $299 CDN... So now I'm building an arcade cabinet, brushing-up on my Python, and figuring-out how to get a Windows Mixed Reality headset running on my ASMedia USB 3.0 controller and my 3GB GTX 780 - Spoiler: Windows Mixed Reality doesn't like ASMedia USB 3.0 controllers, so I tracked-down a PCIe USB 3 controller card with a Renesas D720201 chipset, and everything seems happy. Also, the 780 handles DOOM VFR just fine; requires a 1070, minimum, eh? :) Prolly gonna need to upgrade for Alyx though.

P.S. Moss is magical and Rhombus of Ruin is fantastic... And works just fine on WMR.

Yes, Wonder Girl.

RAGE 2 was great, Rise of the Ghosts was great, and Terromania looks really cool... But I'm holding-of for a bit 'cause that's a lot of consecutive time in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Grabbed Mad Max 'cause I figured it'd be really similar - and it is - and it's way better than expected, but also holding-off on that for the same reason. Got back into Wonder Girl: The Dragon's Trap and Sonic Mania for a chance of pace, finished both though I didn't really explore The Unknown in the former and I'm still short two chaos emeralds in the latter. I loved them both very much. Started Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, but three 2D platformers in a row was a lot too; so I finally Grabbed Grand Theft Auto IV and V... Do not like how IV started, but it's getting better. V is incredibly slick (and a 90GB download!), but I'm gonna give IV a bit more time before I really dig-in.

Otherwise, Marvel Puzzle Quest has a taken a bit of a back-seat to SEGA Heroes... Wasn't sure anything'd ever significantly cut into my minor MPQ obsession.

So Much Data!

My ISP unexpectedly upgraded my account to allow unlimited data, so I re-installed RAGE... 60FPS w/max settings@1080p and Smart VSync, and yet it's kinda hard to go back to after putting 15-or-so hours into RAGE 2. It's still gorgeous and the gunplay is as good as ever, but everything feels kinda small - even more so than it did in 2011. The corridors feel cramped and the wasteland feels truncated. I thought I kinda missed it as I was playing RAGE 2, but now I know better.

I've also been tweaking RAGE 2 as I've played, and it seems to average ~35FPS w/max settings@1080p in Soft VSync Mode and no resolution scaling; I'm pretty happy with that. It does dip into the high-20s when certain effects get a little out of hand, but the only real performance gains I see come from either dropping to 720p or essentially knocking presets down to Low. Anyway, I love it; I haven't been this into a game in a long time, and that's what I'd really missed :) The Rise of the Ghosts DLC launched today and it's downloading (18GB... yeesh) while I'm at work and I'm pretty happy than I spent the extra $10 for the Deluxe Edition during that sale.

Been meaning to chainsword some Orks...

Rage 2 is a fantastic sandbox to play in; it's mindless, gorgeous, and satisfying... And taking-up a huge chunk of my free time... And is the first game to actually push my 780, though it still runs really well at 1080p on the highest settings; just gotta use soft v-sync and resolution scaling.

Took a quick look at video card upgrades, and the 2060 Super seems to be the sweet spot ~$500 CDN, but I can't justify it when the 780's still doing just fine.

Tested Crysis 2 on the CrossFire Pro system; could only get 1.0 to run on Windows 10 without trying too hard, but it was playable on ultra settings. Also tried Far Cry 2 which ran flawlessly at the highest settings. Gonna try Space Marine next. Just kinda looking at games I already own that have official CrossFire profiles :)

♪ Here comes the rage again ♫

RAGE 2 Deluxe Edition is on sale for $35 so I'm playing that next, almost done Gears of War 4 (which was on sale for $13; a little repetitive and contrived by the end, but I haven't lost interested like I did with Judgement), DOOM 64 EX was magical, DOOM 4 Vanilla looks really neat, Wonder Boy The Dragon's Trap is delightful but the difficulty curve seems to spike about midway through and I've kinda stalled on it, and Knights and Bikes is finally out and adorable!

⍥⃝⃝

So I didn't know that DOOM64 EX and PowerSlave EX existed until just now because I don't know why and I'm happy I found them and I'm thankful for Samuel Villarreal.

Totes Profesh

The CrossFire Pro cable arrived from China... Or Germany? The shipping labels were weird. Anyway, it works! The two cards together average 60FPS in FurMark - without MSAA at 1680x1050 - and hit temperatures over 90°C... 😅

Nah, eh?

Galaxy A5 took a decent spill onto a metal manhole cover... Repair costs vs. replacement costs didn't feel so good, so I took another look at the Pixel 3a for $549... And then Google dropped the price of the Pixel 3 from $999 to $599... And then I remembered that I had $285 in gift cards and rewards points, so looking at it as buying a ~$300 Pixel 3 vs. repairing a Galaxy A5 made the choice a little easier :)

A5's still a great phone, and unbeatable for the price, but I am pretty glad to be free of the Samsung ecosystem.

Best of 2010

Came into a bunch of spare parts, and here's what I threw together:

• Core i7 930
• ASUS P6X58D Premium
• 6x2GB PC3-10666 (triple-channel)
• 2x ATi FirePro 3D V8800
• 500GB 7200RPM SATA HDD
• Plextor PX-880SA 24x DVD+/-RW
• Antec TP-650
• A Lian Li brushed-aluminum mid-tower... Can't recall the model.

Had to order a CrossFire Pro bridge from China, and that might not arrive 'til October... But still pretty neat :)

Drop-Top

Scored a free Certified Refurbished Surface Book (i5, 8GB DDR3, 128GB SSD) with a docking station! That's ~$1500, after taxes! Got one of these for it, too - for 30%-off! Good times.

So the Surface Book is just... Wonderful :) I mean, I still love my 1440p touchscreen X1 Carbon, but this convertible is so nice! Tablet mode in Windows 10 (1903) is slick, the dual-battery configuration is really clever, the 3000x2000 screen is still gorgeous... I think this is my favourite laptop design out there. I've worked with one before but it'd been abused, and even demoing them in the store with all the security alarms attached just doesn't do the device justice. I still think they're awfully pricey and I've never been able to justify the cost of even a tablet for myself, but I am not upset about this at all.

Otherwise, John Romero released SIGIL and it's pretty good, Senua's Sacrifice is incredible, and I'm trying 2013's Rise of The Triad again with a little more patience this time.

Happy Mother's Day!

Built my mom a new computer out of spare parts:

• i5-2500
• ASUS P8Z68V-LX
• 4x2GB PC3-10666
• Radeon HD 5450
• 64GB SSD
• Corsair TX650
• Windows 10 Pro x64

Coincidence

Home PC: i7-3930K on an ASUS P9X79 with 32GB of PC3-12800 RAM in quad-channel and a GTX 780.

Work PC: i7-3820 on an ASUS P9X79 with 32GB of PC3-10600 in quad-channel and a FirePro V8800.

Feels Wrong

Started a new job that requires more time with Linux than I've been used to in recent years, so to get back into the groove I'm installing Debian 9 on Hyper-V... Not sure how I feel about that.

Lost my A5, someone seems to have found it, and then they turned it off immediately... Which sucks 'cause it's encrypted and FRP-locked. So enjoy your brick while I spend $450 I didn't want to spend! At least the first one was essentially free :\

My Marvel Puzzle Quest account disappeared with my old phone, which was weird 'cause I'd backed it up. Thankfully D3 Go! was able to restore it without issue, so that was pretty sweet. Thanks, D3 Go!

...And finally, I caught a Killer Instinct sale! Got the Definitive Edition on Windows 10 for ~$12! That game is still so much fun :)

Make it Stinky!

Finished Quake II: Ground Zero. The ending was silly. The rest was ambitious and mostly successful, but Xatrix made the overall-better Mission Pack - it was just a tighter package that was more fun to play. Ground Zero looked better, felt more organic, and was a bigger undertaking, but it all felt so cumbersome by the end and then just sputtered-out.

Played a few minutes Unreal 'cause it's free on GOG.com right now... S'alright... Which is kinda sad 'cause it absolutely blew my mind when it first came out.

While on GOG.com, I also grabbed American McGee's Grimm 'cause I keep meaning to finally play past the first episode, and yeah... It's simple and kinda fun, I guess. The gameplay's not exactly challenging, the story's pretty juvenile, and the exploration is rudimentary... The presentation is the highlight, but I dunno if it's enough to keep me going.

Don't call it a reboot...

Wrapped-up Strider (2014), and I loved it. A little on the easy side, but I think that's also why it worked so well; all that fast-paced badassery I mentioned in the previous post. So which Metroid clone should I tackle next? Headlander? Ori? Momodora? Outland? ITSP? Other M? I've fallen behind :(

Otherwise, it occurred to me that I can now run higan comfortably, plus the added hard drive space coupled with the ability to download Windows Store purchases to any drive meant it was time to grab Forza 6: Apex, Halo 5: Forge, Killer Instinct, and Phantom Dust again :)

Strider returns! ...No, no that one.

So what've I been doing with my "new" X-Series i7? Playing Strider (2014) and wondering why I let it sit for so long :\ Seriously, this is a unique take on the Metroid formula with all kinds of fast-paced badassery through a sweet eastern-European setting that's just way too much fun. I got it when it was released, played through the first few areas, put it on hold for something else, and then it sat for four years... My bad.

Cheap Upgrade!

Local guy posted an ad selling a computer for $250... It was an i7-3930K cooled by a Zalman CNPS12X on an ASUS P9X79 with 4x4GB of PC3-12800 RAM in quad-channel, a Cooler Master G750M, and a Plextor PX-L890SA, all in an iStarUSA D-400 rackmount case... Yeah, for $250.

It also included a passively-cooled 1GB Gigabyte Radeon 5450, two 7200RPM hard drives (500GB and 1TB), PCIe FireWire 800 and 802.11n cards, and a Windows 7 Pro license, but those are less exciting.

Parting that stuff out on eBay adds-up to around $1000 right now; the case alone is selling for almost $250, and that motherboard is averaging over $300... Like, holy shit.

I don't have a rack system, so I moved just about everything into one of my Lian Li cases added my SSD and GTX 780; left-out the 5450, PCIe cards, and the 500GB HDD, and then... Yeah, at worst it's a cheap upgrade, and at best I'm gonna make money on this :)

Finally found a good use for crates in an FPS...

The Reckoning looks bland throughout; like, so very, very brown... And yet it's a tight single-player campaign with a solid climax! The crate-jumping puzzles especially stand-out as a neat sort of minigame throughout, too... Weird. Ground Zero makes way better use of colour and the level design is labyrinthine in a good way, but the new weapons're kinda meh and the wall-mounted lasers're waaay too powerful. The whole thing feels a bit like a slog next to the Reckoning, but I'm still glad I went back and played through both.

Otherwise, I'm getting in the core of Ys VIII, ReCore: Definitive Edition is up next, and I've been spending way too much time fixing people's failing computers this past week like something cosmic :\

Rogue-like :)

Dissolution of Eternity was probably the better experience over Scourge of Armagon, but both felt kinda sloppy next to Dimension of the Past... It was much more cohesive and coherent; like MachineGames made the most of the original games' limitations whereas Hipnotic and Rogue might've aimed a little too high... I get that they were learning though; Hipnotic went on to do some really cool stuff with id Tech 2 and 3, as well as Source. Rogue, however, brings me to my next point: I'm currently getting into the Quake II mission packs using the quake2xp mod. Curious to see what Rogue's Ground Zero is like and if it lives-up to what they did with Strife, but so far Xatrix's The Reckoning is pretty neat; got a bit of a Half-Life feel to it, structure-wise (big levels broken-up in to smaller sections), and the puzzles're pretty clever... The graphics're blaaannnd though, even with the graphics mod.

Talk to people about it.

So Night in the Woods was everything I'd hoped for. Veered toward a cliché or two as major plot points, but then veered right off-path in the best way possible. First time in a long time I immediately jumped-into another playthrough to see what I had missed - you can't help but miss stuff because of the choices presented. It's just... Special. Play it. Savour it. Talk to people about it.

Wrapped-up Scourge of Armagon; was decent fun! Just over halfway through Dissolution of Eternity now... Feels slicker. Prolly gonna tackle the Quake II mission packs next, though I have been tempted to go hunt-down the rest of the secrets in Titanfall 2.

Still plugging-away at Ys VIII before bed, and the new translation really does help. Still grinding at Marvel Puzzle Quest on my commutes, too... Still fun.

Streamlined, I guess?

Burned-through Titanfall 2's single-player campaign in about five hours, and it was even better than I'd heard! Some truly inventive mechanics and setpieces in there, but so much of it only ever appeared once. Similarly, there were the beginnings of some great worldbuilding and character development, but there was absolutely zero padding so everything was over so quickly that it didn't really have time to coalesce. Thankfully, it was all so good that suspending my disbelief and enjoying those five hours immensely was no challenge at all. Might go back and look for the rest of the collectibles... Might even dive into multiplayer for a little bit. Regardless, well worth the $13 :)

Anyway, Night in the Woods is next; wanna cleanse the palate a bit more before tackling Arkham Episodes.

My bad!

Figured-out why I couldn't log-in to Origin after resetting my password, and did it in time to get-in on the Titanfall 2 sale! I'd mismanaged my password manager; was totally my fault. Crisis averted, I purchased and downloaded the Standard Edition of the game, tweaked the recommended video settings 'cause they were insultingly low, and promptly watched the video freeze randomly during gameplay... Though the audio and the rest of the PC kept on working just fine. My own troubleshooting proved useless, the suggestions on support forums were worse, and in the end I was able to play the game smoothly at 1080p with absolutely all video setting maxed-out... As long as ambient occlusion is turned off. Cool game! The first one was kinda disappointing 'cause even though it was awesome and I experienced some downright magical moments with it, the multiplayer-only design resulted in me missing content and experiencing things in weird orders. I was there for the world, not the grind :(

Also, re: Arkham Knight, while I finished all of Most Wanted (save for The Riddler) and Season of Infamy, I completely forgot about Arkham Episodes; so far, I'm almost done A Matter of Family, and it's pretty neat.

My credentials have expired!?

I think I'm done with Arkham Knight. Super-slick, suitably epic, and some killer moments; but also just felt kinda stale well before I was finished - à la Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Too much to do, all padded-out... Like, I spent a solid 30 hours with the game and the DLC and completed all but the final few missions and I'm not unhappy about it, but I doubt I'll ever be going back to it. Asylum was something special with a stupid ending, City was ridiculous but fun, Origins was a cool story but all kinds of bland, and Knight is really well-made but ultimately kinda forgettable. Huh.

...Now to see why I can no longer log-in to my Origin account before the $13 Titanfall 2 sale ends.

Twice

Two more freezes. Dang.

Do I wait-out 1709, hope it stabilises like 1703 did, and cross my fingers this doesn't happen with every new version? Go back to 1609 because LTS? Give-up altogether and stay officially-supported with 7? Just build a whole new desktop?

Argh.

Also bought a bunch of LED light bulbs for my place... Non-dimmable, non-RGB, non-programmable, non-WiFi-enabled LED bulbs, but still :) 60W 5000K for the bathroom and a combination of 60W and 40W 2700K for the living room. Was not feeling the one 60W 3000K bulb I got though. I have no idea why I'm documenting this.

"They like to roll the dice"

Some recent update to Windows 10 1703 seemed to fix the stability issues I was experiencing, so I was confident about performing a clean installation of 1709 on my officially-unsupported-since-Windows-7 X58-based desktop... Three hard freezes in the first six hours, and I'm feeling kind of annoyed. Granted, the first one happened before applying a few remaining Windows updates, and the latter two happened while updating the still-buggy Street Fighter V, so... We'll see. Still can't justify a new build.

Also, Cuphead is a masterpiece, and I recently got to meet some of the artists and see a bunch of the original sketches and models and everything was awesome :)

Making chemicals at the chemical plant, of all places...

Arkham Origins was weak. Nice graphics, but so bland; solid gameplay, but woefully repetitive; cool story, but weak dialogue; and it goes on like that throughout... Glad I finished it, but not interested in 100%.

Jumped right in to Arkham Knight though, and wow! So slick! Great production value, though the dialogue's still a little weird at times and the Riddler stuff is kind of awkward, but yeah, just... Wow.

...All over again.

Wrapped-up Final DOOM, forgot to mention Master Levels for DOOM II in my last post, but yeah, I went and blew through those as well... Some cool setpieces, but not quite up to Final DOOM standards. Moved-on to Quake Epsilon and DOPA, remembered that I'd never finished either of the Quake Mission Packs, and so I'm onto those now. Didn't realise the first one was made by what would eventually become the studio responsible for the SiN series, and that the second one was made by the studio responsible for Strife! This's been a lot of consecutive id FPSes though, so I re-installed Arkham Origins (never finished it; about halfway through now), and of course I'm still plugging away at Ys VIII on my Vita... Also considering ordering the Asia-exclusive physical release of Ys Origin for Vita.

Speaking of Arkham Origins, I'm having way more fun with it now that I've taken some time away from the series, but it's still just not as polished as its two predecessors. The intro missions were all so drab, Electrocutioner was pretty forgettable, Deathstroke was kinda frustrating, Copperhead felt like a budget Scarecrow, the Mad Hatter mission was really cool but anti-climactic, the Deadshot mission can become tediously unfair, and the collectibles... Oh god, so many collectibles. Still looking forward to getting into Arkham Knight, but may just take a little more time before then.

Funny thing though; I went through my old posts, and it looks like the last time I was playing Arkham Origins, I was also playing Ys (Memories of Celceta) on Vita and Quake Epsilon :)

Day One

Got the Galaxy A5, updated it to Android 7.0, switched over to the Google Now Launcher, disabled every Samsung app I could (though I'm stuck with the phone and the camera), and it's solid... Especially since I got it for free; $200 promo discount, $180 in credit, and $120 saved over two years because my new plan is $5 cheaper per month. The camera's alright, but does some weird image processing that doesn't look as good as what the Android 7.1.1 Google Camera did on the Nexus 5X. The screen displays some very rich colours, but seems kinda dark... I'm sure I'll get used to it though. Everything else feels nice except for the physical home button/fingerprint scanner; I really wish the bottom buttons were more like the Nexus line and that the fingerprint scanner was on the back of the phone. It's a clear step up from everything cheaper, but I still think I'd rather have a OnePlus or an Essential... They weren't, however, available for $500 off.

Anyway, I've almost finished Final DOOM. Wrapped-up Evilution and felt pretty good about myself, then started The Plutonia Experiment and immediately realised that I had accomplished nothing. I'm on the final level now though, and it's been fantastic throughout; real challenge without necessitating savescumming or mind-numbing repetition. I still think the first three episodes of the original DOOM are the only collection of levels that really works cohesively in that engine, and I avoided Final DOOM back in the day because it was fan-made, but there is some truly inspired level design in there that holds-up incredibly well today. This also means I'll've completed The Ultimate DOOM, DOOM II + No Rest for the Living, DOOM 3 + Resurrection of Evil and The Lost Mission, and DOOM (2016), which really only leaves DOOM (2016)'s Arcade Mode... Which is punishing even at lower difficulty levels... Wheee!

Episode VIII

Bought Ys VIII on Vita and it's great, so far. The localisation of the script though... Like, hire me, and I'll fix that shit real quick. Wasn't thrilled about the deserted island setting either, but it's developing into something interesting and I love the emphasis on exploration. Still need to get to Ys Origin (would love to get a physical copy for Vita, but Steam'll do for now) and the Aeon Genesis translation of Ys V in Higan.

Otherwise, looking to pick-up a Samsung Galaxy A5 'cause everything else is either too expensive and overkill, or weirdly-configured - I'm looking at you, Xperia XA1 and LG Q6. Now watch Google bring back the Nexus line the second I buy an A5 :\

Tacos!

Clearing-out old stuff...

Trading a broken (bad CPU) and mostly bare (no RAM or HDD) 2004 Power Mac and two "working" 2005 iMac G5s with the owner of a local gourmet taco joint for some gourmet tacos. Keeping my dual-1GHz Quicksilver Power Mac and 1.2Ghz iMac G4 though.

Still trying to figure-out how I'm gonna get rid of 24 Dell Latitude 2100 netbooks... Hrm.

Also snagged an NEC NP-M260W projector with a fresh lamp for free 'cause someone was throwing them away! Those things went for $1150 a few years ago, and the lamps are still $350! It's kinda nice, getting a 120" WXGA display for free :)

Still doing the math...

In addition to I-War, I also snagged complete copies of Iron Soldier 2 CD (the '97 black disc) and Zero 5, and I'm pretty stoked about it even if it did cost me a few hundred bucks.... It was my birthday and I treated myself :p Also found a complete copy of Atari Karts (I only have a loose copy), but they wanted $150 just for the box... Couldn't do it. Did a little more searching, and I could complete my copy of Ultra Vortek and add new copies of Phase Zero, Protector SE, and Skyhammer... But they'd all be coming from the US, so shipping, currency, exchange, and duties would put the total up around $550 and that's just not gonna happen.

Otherwise, Quake II on N64 with an Expansion Pak, Rumble Pak, and Controller Pak is pretty sweet, Street Fighter V's Fight Money system is kind of annoying, and Severed on Vita is fantastic.

Meh-cksell? Sorry, that was bad... I tried :(

Wrapping-up my time with Mortal Kombat XL, and I just don't really care. Solid fighter, countless ways to play, very satisfying, totally pretty, and I'm walking away feeling kinda... Meh. Mortal Kombat (2011) was fantastic - especially the way it updated the classic with a novel single-player experience - and XL comes from the same mold; it's just too bad that nobody seems to have gotten it right since... Injustice, Mortal Kombat XL, and Street Fighter V have all had ridiculously convoluted and overwrought single-player experiences that are nowhere near the revelation that was 2011's Mortal Kombat title. Myabe Injustice 2 is as good as I've heard, but I'm not hopeful.

Anyway, Hyper Light Drifter was awesome.

The True Pacifist ending of Undertale was incredible, and the Neutral ending was pretty cool, too.

...And I bought Quake 2 for N64 'cause it's not so much a port as a re-imagining, and has sweet multiplayer.

Also bought a sealed copy of I-War for Jaguar because it's an interesting game, I wanted it for my collection, and I've yet to come across an opened or loose copy. Yes, I'm totally gonna open it.

Not HD

New Pro Tools build for a friend:

• Core i7-7700
• ASUS PRIME B250M-A
• 2x16GB 2400MHz DDR4
• Samsung 960 EVO 500GB M.2
• 4TB SATA HDD
• Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-Bit

...Plus a decent PSU, a basic dual-monitor PCIe video card, and a DVD burner for ~$1700+tax.

Also, Shadow Warrior 2 was weak... Like, I played it all the way through and finished most of the DLC; the sheer amount of weapons is really impressive, the graphics are gorgeous all the way through, and the gameplay is pretty viscerally satisfying... But I can't stress just how disappointing the writing is, especially after its immediate predecessor knocked it out of the park.

Anyway, I'm almost done a pacifist run-through of Undertale and is's absolutely transcendent. This is genre-redefining stuff, but we already knew that.

And a buddy gifted me a copy of Hyper Light Drifter, and while I'm just getting started, I mean... Wow... Like, already... Wow. I'm in.

Oh! The Flame in The Flood! I want to like it! I really do, but I just... I just don't think I'm enjoying myself :(

I thought I wanted some Wang, but...

Two hours in, and Shadow Warrior 2 is so disappointing... Like, the first one (1997) is a product of its time and hasn't aged well in terms of its racism and misogyny, but the 2013 reboot was a surprisingly huge step forward in every aspect of its design, presentation, and maturity. Given the brilliant 2016 reboot of DOOM, I was stoked to get into yet another modern update to the oldschool FPS genre and instead I found a hub-world, what appear to be side-missions, and loot-based gem powerups in a game with atrociously tone-deaf writing!? All of the sympathetic character development from the 2013 game seems to have been forgotten, many of the scene transitions up to this point have been shockingly abrupt, the drastic aesthetic changes haven't been adequately explained, the new one-liners fall flat, and even the fortune cookies are pretentious literary quotes instead of irreverent jokes. It all kinda sucks so far; I hope things get better as I play, but I've got this sinking feeling... The linear levels feel a little too focused on showing-off the gorgeous visuals now, and exploring for secrets seems to have suffered for it. As for the gem system, I get that it allows for more robust leveling options, but I'm already spending too much time in that menu; I thought the limited skill trees of the previous game were just right, and all the extra customisation feels unnecessary in this franchise. I guess I'm just seeing a series of disappointing design decisions that make me wonder if Ubisoft secretly took over for this sequel, and I haven't been too pleased with their cookie cutter approach for a few years now.

Otherwise, I got back into Borderlands in a big way, wrapping-up The Pre-Sequel and all of the DLC for the original; taking a break before digging-in to the DLC for Borderlands 2.

Owlboy was fantastic.

Giving Shovel Knight another try soon, I think.

Still can't get back into Kentucky Route Zero or Undertale for some reason, even though I do love them both.

Figures

So MPQ nerfed Old Man Logan since my last post, saying over 10% of all battles won include an Old Man Logan on the player’s team. I mean, it's not like Wolverine's one of the most popular characters ever, Old Man Logan is one of the most revered graphic novels ever, the Logan movie just kicked ass at the boxoffice, and as the oldest five-star cover, chances're good that players will have more of them than others... I get their rationale and I'm not against the changes, but I just thought the logic was kinda questionable, y'know? :)

Anyway, I was updating my Battle.net account info, and decide to re-install Diablo III to see what's changed over the past few years... And now I'm right back at it and this Paragon business with my barbarian; thinking demon hunter next.

I dunno, man...

Stalled on Darksiders, haven't touched any consoles or handhelds, saw some movies, recorded some podcasts about them, spent some time in a recording studio with a band, built some computery things at work, met over dinner and drinks to sign-on to prototype two coding projects for a non-profit and they totally expensed my bill which was pretty tite of them to do, and so whatever, here's a post about Marvel Puzzle Quest.

I'm pretty sure I'm playing the game pretty incorrectly most of the time. I buy nothing with real money, I rarely use health packs, I immediately maxed-out three one-star covers (Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Juggernaut) and traded every other cover I got in exchange for Iso-8, which I then traded for tokens in hopes of getting three-star covers so that I could skip the mostly-lame two-star covers because slots are limited and I earned a couple of three- and four-star covers very early on and I didn't want to waste them and shutup okay!? While it took a while, I've now championed my favourite three-star covers, dumped a bunch of four-star covers because I don't like them, and have a handful of five-star covers that're actually useful. Also, I beat a level 222 Punisher MAX with a level 106 Howard the Duck in the latest Deadpool Daily - Crash of the Titans event because fuck yeah, I did!

Current three-star champions: Black Widow, Cyclops, Daredevil, Deadpool, Doctor Doom, Doctor Strange, The Hulk, Ms. Marvel, Mystique, Thanos, and Wolverine... And I'm two covers away from championing Iron Man.

Current four-star covers I'm building-up: Well, there're 33 of 'em, so let's stick to my favourites...

• Hulkbuster, Miles Morales, Moon Knight, Spider-Gwen, and X-23 because they're just badass.
• The X-Force guys - Wolverine and Deadpool - because of their team-up effect; it's kinda like the four-star Power Man and Iron Fist, but without the lingering taste of the latter's shitty Netflix series.
• War Machine because he fucks with those goddamned invisibility tiles.
• All the rad 'n powerful covers like Nick Fury, Punisher MAX, Red Hulk, etc...
• It's the game-breaking covers that I like best though; three-star Deadpool and Doctor Strange kinda fit into this category as well, but I'm really talking about covers like Captain Marvel, Carnage, Ghost Rider, and Gwenpool. Those four are great examples of how to shake things up and change the game. Captain Marvel eliminates how long I have to wait to kick your ass, Carnage literally takes over the board and creates carnage, Ghost Rider throws your damage right back at you, and Gwenpool lets me wipe-out whichever tiles I choose! These covers encourage us to develop all-new strategies, and I just think that's neat :)

Current five-star covers: Logan (one of each; already super-powerful), Black Bolt (one yellow; pretty useful), Black Panther (one yellow, pretty useful), Phoenix (one green; pretty useful), Silver Surfer (one blue; really only useful as a tank), and Captain America (one blue, so pretty meh).

Now, I didn't like this game at first, and I've said as much on this blog... I loved the first Puzzle Quest, enjoyed the sequel, didn't get into Galactrix, just discovered the first game's expansion while researching for this post(!), initially had more fun with Adventure Time Puzzle Quest than Marvel Puzzle Quest (that was silly of me), and haven't touched Puzzle Quest - Magic: The Gathering... Or the card-based Magic: The Gathering, for that matter. Basically, I played the first game on PSP (AND ONLY FOUND-OUT ABOUT ITS EXPANSION NOW!?), the sequel on my phone, and then everything else just felt disappointing... For years... And that was probably largely due to what I was saying up top about how I was playing Marvel Puzzle Quest all wrong. Well, I'm glad I stuck it out because this shit is for real, and I still really only play on the subway, and yeah, I think this is the longest I've ever stuck with any game. Look, I know this post fell-apart around the midpoint and maybe I'll come back to it but for now I'm gonna go make lasagna and then eat that lasagna because I took the day off work and slept-in and so it's lunch time for me now even though it's 3:30pm here.

Gears of Zelda

Got kinda bored of Mortal Kombat XL's campaign, haven't gotten into the latest act of Kentucky Route Zero yet, and stalled on Undertale... So I started Gears of Zelda. Upon downloading Darksiders from Steam (which I purchased forever ago), getting through the intro, and then taking a little break, I noticed that I'd also received the Warmastered Edition for free somewhere along the way... Sweet! Download twice as much this time and install and play all over again. Wheee! Actually though, really good game! Ridiculous, but not in a bad way; takes itself seriously without feeling completely lame.

Unrelated, but got a free 32GB Nexus 5X, so Rayman: Fiesta Run, Rayman; Adventures, and Triple Town got reinstalled. Also got to the point in Marvel Puzzle Quest where I'm earning a Legendary token every few days, so that's fun.

And I finished ReCore. Nowhere near as bad as the reviews said. Great little world to explore, wonderful art direction, creative combat, solid platforming... Yeah, it feels rushed; and yeah, the second-last boss and the tower are really weird; but the rest is aces, and I really hope we get a full-fledged sequel.

Fighting

So it took a year-and-a-half, but NetherRealm finally fixed the Windows port of Mortal Kombat X, released the XL update, and dropped the price to $17 CDN! After a 35GB download, a tutorial, and a wander around The Krypt, I'm a little overwhelmed... Like, the I'm-never-gonna-put-in-the-time-necessary-to-get-good-at-this kind of overwhelmed.

Maybe I should just go back to Street Fighter V... Except it's too hard to earn anything in-game, and I'm cheap. I guess there's always Killer Instinct; that's pretty badass and I don't feel like I'm terrible at it :)

Also, 18-hours into ReCore, and...  The concept's great but the story's paper-thin; the audio logs're just plain silly, and not in a good way; Unity's a little buggy with this one, but it's nothing show-stopping; there're a few holes in the geometry and a missing sound effect or two... And yet I'm still having fun exploring and grinding and unlocking cool shit. Well worth the $25 I paid for it, even if it does fall apart by the end :p

Push

So...

• ABZÛ is a solid Journey knock-off.
• Rise of the Tomb Raider was great fun; a fantastic balance of open-world playground and story-driven single-player... The dialogue sucks though, and really hurt the actors as well as the story... And the story's already kinda weak as it is.
• INSIDE is like Limbo, but better. The secret ending is pretty cool, but I think I like the normal one better.
• The Witness is a goddamned masterpiece of design. Holy fucking shithelldamnfart. Game of the Year alongside DOOM, for me. I haven't felt that way in... I dunno... It's insane how powerful that experience was. Played-through to the "endgame" with zero hints. Took me about 20 hours to power-up all 11 lasers, unlock and watch three films (with two more left unlocked and one left unlocated), countless audio logs, and a smattering of glyphs, and then I just kinda went for the ending... And now I'm wishing I'd spent more time with it. I will revisit it soon.
• ReCore just feels great, even if the whole experience seems a little anemic. I'm about halfway through, and still enjoying it quite a bit.
• As for Marvel Puzzle Quest, I've started championing three-star characters, and am showing no signs of slowing-down. Well done, Demiurge!
• Picked-up Mortal Kombat XL on sale on Steam; 35GB download though... Yeesh!

Moving on, the only reason for me to pick-up an XBOX One at this point is Crimson Dragon and Halo 5 single-player, right? Everything else (Forza, Gears of War, Halo 5: Forge, Killer Instinct, ReCore) are on Windows 10 now, right? Huh.

Was considering a PS4 Slim + Uncharted 4 + WATCH_DOGS2 bundle, but then I read that The Last Guardian runs better on PS4 Pro, so now I'm waiting for a PS4 Pro price drop... Which is fine 'cause I already have too much to play anyway.

Black Cyber... Whatever, I don't care.

Steam Sale:

• ABZÛ
• Grow Up
• INSIDE
• Oxenfree
• The Witness

Windows Store Sale:

• ReCore

Haven't touched the Steam games 'cause Rise of the Tomb Raider is way bigger than I expected; 20 hours into a vaguely-completionist run, and I'm maybe halfway through; that's a solid value!

ReCore though... I'm only an hour or so in, but it looks great (That's Unity!? Holy crap!), has really fun and simple twitch gameplay that also rewards skill, and... That's about it, so far. Everything else is just kinda there, and I'm pretty much just dreading the padding and weak final leg I keep reading about; afraid this is gonna be another RAGE :(

Oof

Marvel Puzzle Quest is still dominating, but I did finally wrap-up Cordy 2 and scope-out Angry Birds POP! The former just didn't grab me like the first one did, and the latter is a really well-made Puzzle Bobble clone, but the free-to-play mechanics get in the way of fully enjoying the experience.

Remember Me was my main jam otherwise, and about halfway through it all felt kinda bleh; cool aesthetic, high production values, good performances of awkward dialogue, interesting world, intriguing combat system, and all of it together just didn't quite coalesce into what it should've been. I'll finish it, but it's feeling awfully repetitive.

...And then Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration, Headlander, and Titanfall 2 went on sale. I picked-up the first two (and Tomb of the Lost Adventurer for the 2013 Tomb Raider 'cause it was, like, $0.80... And still not really worth it), and while I've yet to dig into Headlander, RotTR is just great; much more cohesively realised than Remember Me, albeit still kinda ham-fisted at times (especially with the dialogue) and contrived at others (too many nits to pick here) - but raiding those gorgeous tombs is a hell of a lot of fun. Passed on Titanfall 2 because it was still over $50 CDN after the exchange rate, plus I've yet to see everything in the first one.

Curse?

Okay, so not quite rock-solid at 9-9-9-24; overnight stress-test froze. Might've just been Windows acting-up though, so hopefully this clean installation of 1607 solves the problem.

C2Q also froze overnight; will focus on that once I get the i7 stable, but both sets of RAM (at this point) seem to be really particular about which slots they're in.

Jinx

Got a Corsair CX500 for $25-off for my old C2D (its PSU went to the C2Q); the 3x2GB sticks of 2000MHz DDR3 run flawlessly in the C2Q at 1333Mhz as long as they're in slots 2, 3 and 4 and not in slot 1; the 12GB of 1600MHz DDR3 I got for the i7 were unreliable, but the timings were slow anyway (11-11-11-30), so I set them to 9-9-9-24 at 1333Mhz, and they're now rock solid while still achieving the same latency.

Hey, not too rough...

Got every single-player achievement in DOOM aside from the Ultra-Nightmare one because apparently I suck at video games.

Windows 10 is still randomly freezing on my i7 desktop since the Anniversary Update... Clean install soon, I guess.

Put together a new spare-parts build: Core 2 Quad Q9450 on an EVGA 132-CK-NF79 with 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM (dual channel), a 320MB 550MHz GeForce 8800 GTS, and a 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 running 64-bit Windows 7 Professional... It randomly BSODs; isolated the RAM as the cause; now to find-out if it's the RAM itself or the motherboard. Current plan: Test the 6GB of RAM from the i7 on the C2Q, and buy 12GB of new RAM for the i7 if it fixes the problem.

Just Do It

Haven't really felt like writing lately, but just to keep things up-to-date: DOOM is fantastic, I loved every minute of it, and I can't wait for more. Firewatch is great. Undertale and Kentucky Route Zero Act IV are what's happening right now. Stalled on Pokémon Go around level 13. Still working on my three-star guys in Marvel Puzzle Quest. But yeah, DOOM; play it.

They got the subway stops right!

Installed SOMA late last night. Finished SOMA early this morning. Only games I can recall ploughing-through like that are Psychonauts, Portal, Portal 2, and BioShock Infinite.

SOMA's incredible. The premise, the narrative, the presentation, the engine, most of the voice acting, the survey - seriously, the survey... They even set it in Toronto! I'm from Toronto! Basically, everything's dope... Except the monster/stealth stuff transplanted from Amnesia; that was stupid. Didn't ruin the game or anything, but there must've been a better way :\ Oh, and the protagonist's a fool, but then that's alright because I'm not sure we're supposed to relate to him anyway.

Game over, man? Game over, man.

Finally got into Alien: Isolation and ploughed right through it. I know I've said it before, but I'll do it again with a little more authority: It's an amazing game, incredibly well-designed, stunning to look at, and downright unnerving in some of the most ingenious ways. My only complaint is the time wasted replaying failed sections... But such is the nature of what seems to be a predominantly unscripted experience. I should probably complain that I was able to stockpile so much inventory by the end that I felt a little overpowered, but honestly, after the brutality leading-up to the final few levels, it was kinda nice to just kick some ass :) Buy this game on any platform if you haven't already.

Installed Aliens: Colonial Marines immediately after... Mostly to see if, even after the dust had settled, it's as bad as everyone said it was... It was. I got 20 minutes in before I promptly deleted it from my PC. Ergh.

Still grinding-away at Marvel Puzzle Quest... Cordy 2 when I need a break from that.

Dark Souls and Deadpool were put on hold, but not for long.

Looking to pick-up Severed for Vita and Forza 6 for Windows 10.

Prepare to... Oh, wait, this isn't so bad!

I suspect I may be too neurotic to enjoy Alien: Isolation. It's a fantastic concept, masterfully executed, gorgeously presented, and I just keep walking away from it... Possibly because I keep reloading saves/dying/whatever and it just kinda breaks the flow and asks for a little too much suspension of disbelief. So what'd I do? I finally installed Dark Souls.

I remember King's Field, I own Demon's Souls, Bloodborne's prolly gonna be my first PS4 game if I ever buy a PS4... But I hadn't sat-down with the Dark Souls series at all until just the other day... And it's pretty solid so far, and somehow holding my attention better than Isolation :( Perhaps it's because I also finally installed Deadpool, and it's way better than I'd heard! Was expecting a cheap DMC knock-off, but nope! Quality production value abound with this one; great to drop-in for 30 minutes at a time; solid relief from the frustration of the two aforementioned titles.

Also, Injustice was good, but nothing special; Killer Instinct kinda rules, but I've only tried the free parts on Windows 10 so far.

Cry farther, boy!

Wrapped-up Far Cry 4... Pretty satisfied.

The original Far Cry was a delightful breath of fresh air in the FPS genre, being all kinds of fun and ridiculous and pretty. The console-based spinoffs were lacking, but whatever; they don't matter in the long run. Crysis felt like more of an evolution of Far Cry (which makes sense, given the developer) whereas Far Cry 2 was a friggin' revelation in terms of design. The thing is, Far Cry 2 may have been a little too real with its malaria and endless enemies... As I recall, it was tryingly difficult, which was kinda sad 'cause it was such an amazing achievement. Far Cry 3 found the necessary balance to really open things up to the general public and Far Cry 4 was more of the same, but in a completely different locale; and I'm fine with that. The story was solid, the characters were over-the-top and entertaining, the choices were challenging (albeit myopic), the world was vibrant, exploration felt rewarding, and the Shangri-La missions were actually fantastic (which makes Far Cry Primal even more intriguing to me)... The best part? You could just kill all the main players after the credits roll... No! Wait! The best part is actually when "Jaan Pehechan Ho" starts playing during a particularly intense firefight :) Oh, and the DLC was fine, but kinda meh.

Aaanyway, wrapping-up Never Alone, lost interest in Hotline Miami 2, had a brief dalliance with Strife: Veteran Edition, and now I'm thinking it's time to suck it up and get back to Alien: Isolation.

Also, my Origin account was hacked. Got everything back, but lost all of my "on the house" titles :(

A cable car fell on him... After he fell out of that same cable car.

Wrapped-up The Old Blood; good times, albeit silly; the injuries BJ sustains in the cinematics are a little over-the-top. Burned through Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist - which was fun - then revisited The Stanley Parable -which is still brilliant; I guess The Beginner's Guide is up next, but not before Grow Home 'cause I mean how fucking charming is that game!? :)

Black Friday

Just kinda wandered around downtown last Friday, and ended-up getting a New 3DS XL for $30-off plus a 32GB microSD for $20. The system transfer from my 3DS XL took forever, and I'll see how much I can get for the old one sans-power-adapter... But yeah, pretty happy about the new hardware!

Otherwise, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is my current jam; needed me some mindless, popcorn, narrative-driven FPS goodness.

...And again, and again...

Marvel Puzzle Quest's reward structure feels too spare, while Adventure Time Puzzle Quest just seems to keep losing everything from treasure to crafted items... I'm balming sync issues? Still, they're both mostly enjoyable and make a decent time-killing tandem.

Alien: Isolation keeps losing me, so it went back on the backburner while I gave Arkham Origins another go. Can't quite put my finger on it, but Origins just doesn't feel right... It all just feels so shallow now; no amazing setpieces like the previous entries in the series.

Speaking of Arkham, I guess PS4 is now definitively the best platform for Arkham Knight... So there's that.

Anyway, Hotline Miami 2 is still brilliant gameplay, but not as groundbreakingly brilliant of a package as the first one; feels more scattered while still kinda samey; different kind of impact.

Finally, Fallout: Haven't tried 4 yet, but went back and revisited 1,2, and 3... And then considered getting back to Borderlands because the dialogue was starting to grate on me... And then realised that all I really wanted to do was play RAGE again... And again...

The Quest continues...

Giving the Adventure Time and Marvel Puzzle Quests another chance, alternating between the two whilst waiting for parties to heal... Adventure Time is still iffy, but neither's bad; I just really wish I could play offline :(

So... Far.

Windows 10 on the desktop? Solid. Windows 10 on a touchscreen laptop? Needs work; specifically, in tablet mode. Like, the design is sound, but it just doesn't quite work yet... Windows get lost to everything but the Task Manager, some apps have constant title bars that simply aren't there in desktop mode, and Solitaire is buggy as all hell. I really like tablet mode, but man, I wish it wasn't such an afterthought :(

Finally...?

Got Windows 10 installed on the X1 Carbon; had to perform a clean installation of 8.1, then upgrade to 10 :\ Tablet mode is kind of interesting... I guess it's nice to be up-to-date.

So anyway...

I now have three amiibo: Toad because extra puzzles in Treasure Tracker, Green Yarn Yoshi because Yoshi's Woolly World bundle, and 30th Anniversary Mario - Classic Color because I found one in the wild and it looks really cool :)

Desert Golfing is rad.

Bloody Roar Extreme because why not?

Wario: Master of Disguise isn't as bad as I'd heard.

Yoshi Touch & Go is disappointing.

The Nexus 5X is too expensive next to the Moto X Play.

My ThinkPad X1 Carbon won't upgrade to Windows 10, and its display is ghosting... Thank goodness for warranties.

Uhm... What else... Ooh! Bought a Casio DG-10! :D

Tennis

Testing Windows 10 for deployment at work... It's kinda meh. I think I like 8.1 better. I mean, it's fine; it's pretty, yeah, but the windowed apps launched from the Start menu? Just not really feeling it yet. The new settings interface? Cool, but the Control Panel's still the place to be. No more Charms bar? Okay, that's totally sweet :) In terms of capitulation, I feel bad for Microsoft's unified cross-platform vision. As a production OS, however, 10's pretty solid so far.

Poo Brain

Why is Adventure Time Puzzle Quest so bad? Imprecise controls, server issues resulting in lost resources, arbitrary waiting periods, etc... It's almost pretty fun, but I just keep giving up :(

Double (Fine) Catching-Up

Sat down with Act 2 of Broken Age... Was alright; a few puzzles were pretty ridiculous and the ending was whack (à la RAGE). Not even mad; just a little underwhelmed.

Into Costume Quest 2 now; buggy, but still pretty fun so far.

Think I might try The Walking Dead again after this... Either that, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness Four, or Ys Origin.

Blowing-off some Steam...

I didn't buy anything during the latest Steam/GOG/Humble sales.

Almost worth it...

Finally found a Toad amiibo! Accessing extra content in Treasure Tracker should not have been that difficult :(

Also, found complete copies of Missile Command 3D and Ruiner Pinball for Jaguar!

Freedom Wars hasn't quite been doing it for me; such a slow start.

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is pretty... And kinda fun... And awfully simplistic so far :(

Honestly, I haven't been playing or shopping much lately.

Kinda not.

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse was great. Finished Killzone: Mercenary; it's gorgeous and also really fun and you should play it. Went back to Demon Gaze; too much mindless grind so far, but otherwise really cool. Hopped over to Freedom Wars... So weird; will report back.

P.S. Kirby's Dream Land 2 is kinda not a lot of fun.

What next?

Almost done Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, and it's just plain delightful; familiar but innovative, improving on many aspects of the series, and generally being the best Metroid-Light it can be. Looking forward to Half-Genie Hero, but kinda wishing it was portable.

Also, this guy at a flea market asked me for $80 for complete copies of Brain Dead 13 (v1.1) and Star Control II for 3DO because he had no idea... That's, like, $250 worth of stuff on a good day, but they weren't mint... I gave him $100.

Took me long enough...

Finished Risky's Revenge, and it was near-perfection. Every issue from the first game was addressed in the second. I found a couple of enemy designs to be problematic (the mermaids and skeletons slowed everything down to the point that it was better to just avoid them) and some of the fetch quests and story twists toward the end felt like filler (e.g. A coffee run!?), but it was still a good time. Just getting into Pirate's Curse now; so pretty!

This bodes well...

So I'm almost done Shantae, and it's great as long as I can play it on my 3DS and totally cheat by exploiting emulator savestates :\ Seriously, it's an incredible technical achievement with so much character... But so very, very broken from a design standpoint. It's like Metroid-light made stupidfrustratinghard to offset the lightness of the Metroidness.

I also got a little impatient and jumped-ahead to Risky's Revenge and Pirate's Curse to see what's up, and they seem to've fixed everything! Stoked.

Just terrible.

I picked-up a complete copy of Cave Story 3D because Cave Story is awesome and Cave Story 3D is kinda rare and sought-after. I'd heard mixed things about the 3DS remake, and... Well, they were being generous. That remake is offensive. I absolutely adore the original, and I guess 3D has some cool packaging, but yeah... No.

Convolution

Current plan:

1. Buy a New 3DS XL and a 32GB microSD card.
2. Transfer the contents of the 32GB SD card in my current 3DS XL to the New 3DS XL.
3. Put the 32GB SD card in my Wii U.
4. Transfer everything from my Wii to my Wii U.
5. Sell my 3DS XL with the originally-included 4GB SD card.
6. Use my Wii as a GameCube because cheap 480p.

Bouillabaisse

The nearly-five-year-old 64GB OCZ Vertex SSD in that Core i5 2500K system I mentioned a few posts back up-and-died yesterday; replaced it with a 128GB Samsung 840 EVO for $83... Amazing how prices have dropped.

Anyway, Shantae's labyrinths kick ass, but it's overworld seriously sucks; currently most excited about finding more baby warp squids so I can minimise dealing with that shit. I really hope the next two games have addressed this, 'cause they all look really pretty!

Also, Club Nintendo closeout! Gotta recommend Donkey Kong (Game Boy), EarthBound, Link's Awakening DX, Super Metroid and Yoshi's Island as must-play classics if you don't already have them. So far I've snagged Doc Louis's Punch-Out, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, and Minis on the Move with just over 500 coins left to blow.

Brutal!

Started playing the original Shantae in earnest and the difficulty curve is friggin' upside-down! The audiovisual design is absolutely gorgeous and the Metroid-style gameplay is solid, but the combat mechanics are problematic, to say the least... Can't wait to level-up some so I can actually enjoy what's on offer here and move-on in the series.

No, wait... Argh.

Azure Striker Gunvolt was totally my jam until it hit me with a mandatory boss-rush level... I hate that shit!

At least Super Mario 3D World and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker are downright delightful.

Wheee!

...But you know what is awesome on 3DS? Azure Striker Gunvolt! First Mega Man-style game I've been able to really get into since Rockman & Forte.

Argh.

Remember how I said Sonic Lost World on 3DS was swell? It's not. I was wrong. It blows. Hard. Like Sonic Adventure, certain styles of levels are fun... The other 75% of the game is painful.

You're kidding, right!?

Thought I was almost done Bravely Default, but it turns out I hafta play through it again... Not just a "new game+" kind of thing, but I actually hafta go redo a whole bunch of stuff; so I check an FAQ to see what other crap is in there, AND I HAFTA DO IT THREE MORE TIMES AFTER THAT!? FIVE FUCKING TIMES TO FINISH THE GAME! One of the most fun grinds I've experienced in years just stopped being fun, friends.

Anyway, Sonic Lost World on 3DS is pretty swell, Skullgirls is sweet (though not as polished as I expected), Shovel Knight is blowing me away (and I never really even liked Mega Man), and Super Time Force Ultra is kinda ridiculous.

Progress

Wrapped-up Legend of Grimrock II; game of the year, right there. Almost done with Bravely Default. Slogging through Metro 2033. Started Alien: Isolation; surprisingly rough around the edges (occasionally awful animation and scripting), but otherwise stunning in its presentation; into it.

Found a great deal on a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon - Core i5-4300U, 4GB 1600MHz DDR3, 128GB SSD, 14.0" 1440p IPS multi-touch screen, and 64-bit Windows 8.1 Pro for $999; down from $1739... Mentioned it to my brother, an then my mom bought it for me... Holy crap.

Vaguely

Bought LEGO City Undercover and Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker for Wii U, and Freedom Wars for Vita... Haven't had the time to play any of them, or Alien: Isolation, yet :( Finished Crysis 3; it was okay. Metro 2033 got really boring by the time I reached the Nazis; hasn't gotten better. Legend of Grimrock II and Bravely Default are still awesome.

I'm really not enjoying Symantec Backup Exec 2014.

Recently swapped a bunch of parts from various computers to assemble the following three:

• Core i5 2500K
• Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 rev2.0
• 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 (dual channel)
• 1GB Radeon HD 5850
• 64GB OCZ Vertex SSD
• 1TB Seagate 7200RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s HDD
• 64-Bit Windows 7 Ultimate

----------

• Core 2 Duo E6750
• ASUS P5K-E/WiFi-AP
• 4GB 800MHz DDR2 (dual channel)
• 320MB 550MHz GeForce 8800 GTS
• 160GB + 3x320GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s HDDs
• 32-bit Windows Vista Business

----------

• Core 2 Duo E6750
• ASUS P5K
• 4GB 800MHz DDR2 (dual channel)
• 512MB Radeon HD 3870
• 250GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s HDD
• 32-bit Windows Vista Business

...And now I feel vaguely productive.

Deal or No Deal?

$330 for ~$550 worth of stuff (XBOX One, Assassin's Creed Black Flag and Unity, and a $50 gift card or another game) would be very tempting if I actually wanted either of those games on that platform... The PS4 deals are even less tempting :\

I did snag Alien: Isolation plus all seven pieces of DLC for $55 at the humble Store though, which is MUCH better than the $100, store-specific pre-order bullshit they tried at launch.

Finally moving forward with Crysis 3 and Metro 2033 again after getting snagged on some particularly tricky save-points... Bravely Default is still awesome, and Legend of Grimrock II is getting tougher... Or maybe I'm just not doing it right.

Also...

...I bought Bayonetta 2 the day it was released and nearly a week later, a boxed Dreamcast broadband adapter... And if I'm not playing Legend of Grimrock II at home, I'm playing Bravely Default on the go.

Can't Stop

Seriously, I can't stop playing Legend of Grimrock II. Everything else is on hold when I'm at home. It's a really, really good game.

Savings!

So I bought a brand-new, $560 MSRP, factory-overclocked (1006/1059MHz, up from 863/900MHz) GeForce GTX 780 for $340, and it included $150 of free games - Three Splinter Cell games (Double Agent, Conviction, and Blacklist) and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. I literally just saved $370, or ~52%, off retail.

Spendin' Money

I want to buy Bayonetta 2 and Hyrule Warriors, mostly because I want to support the Wii U... The thing is, they're both selling at a premium price ($65 here in Canada) and I don't actually enjoy those styles of action game. For example, while I haven't finished any of them, I've played every Devil May Cry game, and they're just so silly, thumb-cramp-inducing, and drawn-out in their combat. DmC was probably my favourite, and I quickly sold my copies of the first three... That's probably blasphemy... Also, Otogi was cool... Ninja Gaiden kinda blows... God of War is more my pace when it comes to that genre ;) Same goes for the whole Dynasty Warriors/N3/whatever style; I always got too bored before too long to bother sticking around.

D'ah well.

Have I ever mentioned that I loved S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, bugs 'n all? Did I mention that Clear Sky almost turned me off the whole genre completely and I'm afraid to touch Call of Pripyat? Or how I initially thought Metro 2033 was much more similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. than it actually is? No? Huh. Well... Yeah. Finally got around to Metro (not Redux), and it's kinda exactly what I've been itching for. Despite being really rough around the edges, it's still just a fun, atmospheric, story-driven FPS that's neither too easy nor too unforgiving. I'm kinda upset that I waited so long to play it, but also really looking forward to Last Light all of a sudden :)

Ooh! Also! GeForce 780s've been slashed to, like, $300! Video card upgrade time! I'm looking at the ZOTAC GeForce GTX 780 AMP! Edition 'cause it's regularly, like, $560. I'm still really happy with my Radeon HD 5850, but I've got a good home for that one, too.

No, I don't gotta...

I played the first Pokémon game when it was released, and I found it to be simplistic, but solid. I didn't really play another title in the series until X/Y... Which are kinda awful. I was expecting them to be slick, streamlined, and kinda perfect by now; instead I found a confused mess of a game designed to literally waste time. I get it; you gotta keep those kids occupied, so make the messages, menus, and prompts as slow and convoluted as possible; but man, when there's like 750 monsters to catch and a number of incredibly deep subsystems to manage, it all just feels to brutally inefficient.

Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS is pretty cool though, I guess.

Paradise?

Why didn't anyone tell me Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) was so much fun!? I'd played every Need for Speed (and Burnout) game except for this one, and I'm not sure why I held-off on it. I guess I did keep hearing it was pretty flawed, multiplayer-focused, and simply not as good as Most Wanted (2010)... But none of that takes away from how much fun it is! Yeah, the controls're too floaty, the rubber-band gameplay makes races mostly pointless, the HUD map is almost useless, the DLC isn't worth $30~$45, and the soundtrack is godawful more often than not; but it's still a hell of a lot of fun, so I highly recommend it.

Aliens: Infestation on DS is a solid Metroid clone, by the way.

Aliens vs. Predator (2010) kinda sucks :(

I think I'm gonna give Titanfall another go once I wrap-up Crysis 3... Even though Crysis 3 is still kinda of a slog.