moomeemo

Picked-up Need for Speed Unbound on sale, and it gets worse the more I play it... What initially seemed like a questionable incremental update to Heat ended-up feeling more and more like a truly odd step backward for the series. The driving feels really good, but I'm not a huge fan of the stylised presentation; Rydell's dialogue is kinda funny, but I'm not into the story whatsoever; the inability to sell or transfer parts is infuriating, but upgrades and customisations are still satisfying when you can afford them again; the cop chases are mercifully easier to escape, but the means of escape rarely make sense; the progression system is so broken that it's actually possible to go back a day if you find yourself running out of money or retries at the end of the week, but it does break-up gameplay and heat levels nicely... Oh, and speaking of retries, YOU SHOULD NOT LIMIT RETRIES WHEN THE PHYSICS AND AI ARE SO RANDOM. Aside from that, I've had cops spot me through walls, the camera get stuck in other cars, brutal performance dips and crashes when changing graphics settings, etc... Also, they changed the Ultra preset in the latest patch and it affected performance on my setup; only found out what was happening after checking patch notes; that's not fun. Anyway, I'm ~25 hours in, and I'm just kinda done with it; it'd like to explore the rest, but it barely feels worth it.

Also got Tears of the Kingdom; Amazon pre-order took longer to arrive than if I'd just ordered it on release day. Awesome. Anyway, huge game with so many awe-inspiring moments in just the first few hours, really stoked to get further into it... And also incredibly angry at how Ultrahand somehow makes the whole experience feel janky, how easy it is to fuck-up and get stuck early on only to have to die or reload to try again, how ridiculous Fuse makes some weapons look, and how baffling some of the default control scheme changes from Breath of the Wild are; short-press to engage power, long-press to select? What was wrong with the old way? I could go on, but at the end of the day - unlike Unbound - I'm actually going to tough this one out.

Would love to get games like Diablo 4, Final Fantasy XVI, Jedi: Survivor, Redfall (just to see), Street Fighter 6, System Shock, etc... Might even treat myself to Boltgun and Dredge; but I still need to play Death Stranding, Disco Elysium, Far Cry 5, God of War, GTA IV & V, Guardians of the Galaxy, Horizon Zero Dawn, Red Dead Redemption I & II, Sifu, Obduction, Outer Wilds, The Outer Worlds, A Plague Tale... Ergh.

Finally got direct fiber (50Mbps up/down) to my parents' house for $20-less per month that what they were paying for 6Mbps DSL. Also more than tripled the connection speed at my place for an extra $9 a month after all the recent CRTC crap ruined the good deal I had with my ISP. Found a DIR-867 (AC1750 MU-MIMO) for $3.50 CDN, so that replaced my EA6400... Pretty happy with how that all turned-out.

From last time, the Vertex 2 seems to be holding-up, Golf Story got ridiculously difficult toward the end so I walked away from it, and wrapping-up gigs and side jobs in Cyberpunk is still fun in small doses.

13 Years

My 13-year-old 64GB OCZ Vertex 2 may finally be experiencing some issues; it's the system drive in my FirePro V8800 CrossFire Pro setup, and just kinda disappeared the other day... Showed-up again later, so I dunno, maybe motherboard? Tests came back clean though, sticking with it, did a fresh installation of Windows 10 22H2 (the last Windows 10!), see how long that lasts.

Been picking away at Golf Story (gets pretty frustrating by the end), Flynn: Son of Crimson, and Cyberpunk; revisited Arcane Dimensions; messing around with Half-Life 1: Ray Traced; oh, and MyHouse is absolutely incredible!

Mostly busy with work though - building Horizon clusters, render farms full of 4xGPU nodes, dedicated fibre running across the city, migrating from CentOS to Ubuntu, etc...

Bad Latin

Finally, after tens of hours spread over multiple years, I finished Ys VIII. It's good, the last chapter is genuinely interesting, the Origin of Life battle looks absolutely stunning on the Vita's OLED display, and I didn't really enjoy myself very much at all on my way there. It all felt so rambling; a scattered collection of boring chores strewn about a fake open world... This whole series is pretty linear, and all VIII did was spread things out. You should probably still play it though.

Started IX on PC immediately after and I dunno how much the 1440p VRR display helped after all the slowdown on the Vita, but I was immediately engaged. It's very much an Ys game - full of questionable translations, convoluted backstories, and a structure almost identical to VIII's - and this time I loved it. Everything was smaller, more focused and streamlined, and just made no bones about being a pretty linear action-RPG. My love for the series is rekindled, I'm stoked for X, and I may even try to get into Origin again.

Also restarted Panzer Dragoon Saga; finished the first disc, and it's still weird how it remixed the RPG formula of the time. I really like it, but it's difficult to focus on how the battle system seems to be the real star here while I'm oddly warping between towns, camps, and arenas...

Also wrapped-up Mario Tennis Aces - solid game.

Otherwise, Diablo II Resurrected and Metroid Prime Remastered are incredible.

Return to the Return of...

Loved Deathloop; felt less like a roguelike than Mooncrash - way more streamlined, and I enjoyed it more for it. Had a great time just exploring. Highly recommend.

Guardians of the Galaxy was next, and I stalled on that pretty quickly. I think it was that they wanted me to explore the area, scan everything in a specific scanning visor view, and have a target-practice competition with Rocket at the same time - and there didn't seem to be any way to really balance it all. It's slick though, and I'll come back to it.

Was working through Mario Tennis Aces, but some of the challenges got a little too specific and I found myself getting distracted...

...Mostly by finally getting back to Ys VIII; Chapter 6 really brings the rest of the game together, but I'm still feeling pretty disappointed by the feel of this entry overall. It's a good game though, and absolutely sprawling in every sense.

Also restarted Return of the Obra Dinn after only getting about an hour in the first time - and finished it in a day. Lives-up to the hype, but I did rely on process-of-elimination guesses confirmed by the game's "scoring" system rather than actual evidence.

Grabbed Flynn: Son of Crimson on sale thanks to a recommendation from Penny Arcade, and it's good! Nothing earth-shattering, but really solid.

Steam's SNK publisher sale got me the Samurai Shodown Kiwami Pack and KoF XV + Team Pass 1 & 2 + Classic Leona & Garou: MotW Terry for ~$50; that should be fun.

Cadence of Hyrule isn't doing it for me; FAST RMX is slick, but not grabbing me quite like its inspirations; Golf Story is weird and rough-around-the-edges, and I dig it; Good Job! is a lot of fun; excited to pick-up a physical copy of Metroid Prime Remastered; and glad that a new generation is going to get a chance to play Ghost Trick!

...And finally, found a Netgear R6300v2 for $4 and couldn't pass it up; going to a friend.

Uncharted: Eerie Indiana

Finally played Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy - ridiculous, contrived, repetitive, formulaic... Loved all of it. I needed some good ol' linear action after playing through so many mixed-genre games lately; was considering getting to Guardians of the Galaxy or God of War next, but opted for Deathloop instead Not sure what I think of it so far, but I'm barely an hour in. Also been poking-around Down in Bermuda with my partner; it's cute.

Also ended-up getting Ys IX from the Epic Games Store because it was ~$40 on-sale plus a coupon. Eh.

Got a Satiator for Christmas; very cool, and Panzer Dragoon Saga can stay in its case now :)

Oh, and apparently I'm a Contributor on PriceCharting; that's real swell!

Good Deal

Radeon RX 6650 XT is $330 right now... That means I could build:

• Ryzen 5 5600
• B550 motherboard
  
• 16GB DDR4 3600MHz
• Radeon RX 6650 XT
• 500GB NVMe SSD
  
• 500W PSU
  

...For just under $900; tempting as a Linux box.

Otherwise, finished Samus Returns; do recommend.

$3000 (CDN, after tax)

New build for a friend:

• Ryzen 7 7700X
• Noctua NH-D9L
• ASUS TUF GAMING X670E-PLUS WIFI
• Corsair Vengeance RGB 2x16GB DDR5 5600MT/s C36 
  
• ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 V2 OC
  
• 1TB WD_BLACK SN850X
• ASUS ROG STRIX 850G
  
• Fractal Design Pop Air RGB (Black)

...More RGB than I usually work with (three case fans, RAM, GPU, motherboard, power button) but I got to slap a big ol' brown-on-brown Noctua fan in the middle of it, so I'm good :) Very quiet, too. Didn't go all-out, but it leaves them a nice upgrade path. 12GB 3080s and 3080 Ti cards are either impossible to find around here or horribly overpriced. Considered a 4080, but ended-up saving $600 by going with the 10GB 3080 OC which is already overkill for their use cases. They'll also be putting a few spinning drives in there, and an optical drive - yes, that case has a 5.25" bay!

Anyway, fun stuff:

• Forgot that the 7700X has an integrated GPU; took me a second to figure-out what that thing was in the Device Manager.
• So much RGB software; iCue + Aura plugin for iCue + Armory Crate
• Getting the thing to POST at all with that RAM; BIOS FlashBack to latest revision, boot with single module to complete the update, set EXPO, add second module. While I was figuring that out, I found reports people saying DDR5 memory training can take up to 30 minutes!? Thankfully wasn't that.
  

Early

Early Black Friday deals:

• DEATHLOOP - $26 CDN
  
• DualSense - $65 CDN
• Using it on PC w/DS4Windows for unsupported games
  
• FMR Audio RNC1773 - $160 CDN
• Grey, AC, used; MSRP is $270
• Not actually Black Friday, but a great deal!
• Pixel Buds A-Series - FREE
• $40-off + $100 Google Store credit
• Rez Infinite - $10 CDN
  
• WarioWare: Get It Together! - $51 CDN
• Isn't included in the image for the latest Switch deals list, but is listed in the fine print; could've saved $6 :/

Been playing:

• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (honestly getting kinda boring, but I'm still into it)
  
• Injustice 2 (pretty, but really just trying to get through it at this point)
  
• Kirby: Planet Robobot  (pretty good)
  
• Metroid: Samus Returns (very good)
  
• Yoshi's Crafted World (great entry in the console series; plenty to do)

Kind of cheesed that the $80 PC version of Persona 5 Royal was announced within six months of me picking-up the PS4 version at full price... Also that Ys IX is still generally $60~80 after three years. Kinda want to just get both on Switch, but also not ready to sacrifice that much performance and visual quality :\

...And Sweet.

Played through A Short Hike, and it's perfect. Wrapped-up Prodeus and the post-early-access levels disappointed. Finished Knights and Bikes and it was fine... I just wish I enjoyed it more.

Kirby and The Forgotten Land's post-game stuff is nice (finished in Wild Mode without any support items), but the secret ending boss feels like we're getting into Soulsborne territory... In a Kirby game. Stop with the genre homogenisation, please. Moved-on to Age of Calamity; not a big fan of musou games, but I'm trying for this one.

Nice Hat

Took me over ten years, but I finally played through Fez and it was fantastic. I followed its development closely, I couldn't wait to play it, and when it was eventually released on XBLA I got through the first few screens before just kinda letting it sit. I remember feeling overwhelmed by it back then (I had also stalled on Deus Ex: Human Revolution) so maybe it was just bad timing for me, but I'm glad I got back into it. Breezed-through in three hours to finish the game with 27 cubes and 7 anti-cubes, then started a New Game +... I never start a new game +.

Noticed the clamshell case for my copy of ARMS was different than the rest of my Switch games; looks like I got a UAE copy. Nice thing is that it's still a USA card, so I tracked-down a Canadian case and insert on eBay. Also grabbed Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Yoshi's Crafted World on the most recent Switch sale.

Beyond that, my Pixel 7 is really nice. The lemongrass phone goes really well with the dark green Ringke Onyx I got for $15 CDN on Amazon; the official lemongrass case was sold-out for pre-order and during the first week I had the phone. Now to decide what to do with the $100 Google Store credit... Buds? Probably Buds.

Pretty Terrifying

Finally got a chance to play P.T. on an old PS4, and really enjoyed it. Solved a few loops by accident, missed a few moments because I was looking in the wrong direction, couldn't trigger the second giggle (didn't have a mic connected, so...?), and looked-up the ending on YouTube. Death Stranding is cool, but what I didn't realise is how influential this teaser has been on the genre in years since.

My Pixel 3 has started to chip around the USB port, the power button has started to malfunction and call 911 (I've since disabled that "feature"), Google isn't providing any more system updates, etc... Two friends' Pixel 6 phones had heat issues - nothing show-stopping, but enough that I didn't pull the trigger on a $100-off sale; I hear Android 13 helps a lot with that though. Then the 7 was announced, plus a $100 Google Store credit, and I accidentally knocked my caseless Pixel 3 off a counter and the back glass shattered; it's alright now, back in its case, but there should be a 7 in the mail for me soon.

Found a copy of Kirby: Planet Robobot - really does seem to be going for nearly $80 CDN everywhere these days.

Prodeus is out, the vkquake-rt mod looks really good (would love to see it support Arcane Dimensions), still chipping-away at Cyberpunk, and it feels like I'm forgetting something again...

Marching Cubes

Found Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia for DS for $20 each. Really good games trying new things while staying true to the franchise - but not sure how I feel about the shift in tone of the first one, the length of the second one, or the structure of the third one. Almost got the good endings in all of them, but the bosses just started to feel a little Soulsborne-y toward the end of each and I'm kinda ready to give up and move over to Samus Returns.

Did give-up on trying to find Dark Chambers (7800) and Line of Fire (SMS) in the wild, and just grabbed them off eBay. The former is pretty cool and the latter completes my SegaScope 3-D library.

Got good deals on Arms and Shin Megami Tensei V for Switch. Also ordered a refurbished first-party Joy-Con Grip directly from Nintendo because they don't seem to exist otherwise.

Replaced the hard drive in my Core 2 Quad; nothing much to back-up on there. Still really happy with that computer and EndeavourOS.

Oh, and Voxel DOOM is fantastic.

Lemmesee...

Not done Sonic Forces yet, but it's fine... I guess.

Injustice 2 is way better than Injustice.

Got a white OLED Switch as a gift; pretty sweet. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is lovely.

Got free passes to a local video game convention; saw a bunch of games I already own going for thousands of dollars more than I paid for them, but nothing I actually wanted... Or at least I wasn't gonna pay $600 for a better copy of Earthworm Jim Special Edition.

The SIO2SD thing for the 800XL is really cool. Played Elektra Glide, Pastfinder, The Pharaoh's Curse, Rescue on Fractalus, and Zybex - all totally rad; absolutely gives the C64 a run for its money.

My Core 2 Quad EndeavourOS PC died during an OS update... Looks like it was the hard drive physically failing.

Had to oil the fans on two of the i7 3820s I gave away, and replace one CPU - luckily had a matching spare.

Not Quite Hot Takes

So Sonic Forces is ridiculous, Colors Ultimate is still kinda broken, Origins is apparently disappointing, and Frontiers looks weird... I really thought Colors, Generations, Lost World and Mania were great overall steps in the right direction; sad to see the franchise go off the rails yet again.

Resident Evil 7 maybe should've wrapped-up after chapter 4... But then I guess it wouldn't honour the series' tradition of jumping the shark after nailing a strong and unique opening. Also, the RTX update looks awful and it seems to break (or at least reduce the quality of) HDR. Meh. I'll play 8 whenever it's $20.

Finished Echo and it didn't trigger the endgame achievement, so that sucks and I'm not doing it again; still a gorgeous audiovisual experience though, intriguing narrative, and intense gameplay... Just a little a rough around the edges. Seriously underappreciated.

Diablo Immortal is fine. Don't spend money on it, and do play it on mobile.

Also, finally tried Antstream - free tier is decent, challenges are interesting, video quality is kinda bad, selection is alright but nothing spectacular.

Unnecessary

Found one of these for $35 CAD at a thrift store - missing the lumbar pillow and there's some wear, but MSRP is ~$585 CAD and the cheapest one in my area is an open-box discount for $405... I'll make do :)

Also found an Atari 800 XL for $170 CAD on eBay. Was sold as-is, looked kinda grimy, and it powered-on - but was otherwise untested... Judging by the photos, was an NTSC model and came with a good PSU variant. Figured it was worth the risk given current prices; great-looking paperweight at worst. Turns-out it looks way better in person and works flawlessly - seller also threw-in a peripheral cable! Something was rattling around inside - turned-out to be a loose screw, washer, and grounding wire; easy fix. So now I'm looking for cartridges and probably one of these.

Still chipping away...

Sonic Lost World falls apart about halfway through; still looks great, genuinely catchy music, writing holds-up... But the world/level/boss design and mechanics just get messier as you progress. Still don't hate it though.

Injustice is kinda boring.

SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy is not as awful as I expected it to be.

Diablo Immortal feels crowded - in terms of world, quests, players, field of view... It's a decent time-sink, but it's nothing special.

Death Stranding is waaay more engaging than I expected. Kinda glad I took so long to get to it, too - looks incredible at 240Hz in HDR.

Another One

Found another DX-NRUTER in a bag of old stuff at my parents' house. Dunno if I should leave it stock or put DD-WRT on it... I've read that Wi-Fi encryption and MAC filtering don't work on it when it's a repeater because of the Broadcom drivers. Bleh.

Got both EA3500 routers working as secure repeaters by following this guide.

Don't understand the hate for Sonic Lost World; did it just release too closely to Super Mario Galaxy? I think it's one of the best-looking and best-written Sonic games; the Genesis games are still the pinnacle for me, Adventure/Heroes haven't aged well, 2006 is broken in so many ways, Secret Rings/Black Knight were surprisingly good, Unleashed is fine albeit ridiculous, Colors is totally solid, Generations was a revelation, and Lost World is genuinely innovative. Oh, and Team Sonic Racing is kind of a slog.

Revisiting Injustice 1 & 2 after MK11; decent.

Trivial

DD-WRT totally unlocks 1300Mbps Wi-Fi on the EA6300V1. Neat.

DIR-859 doesn't compare to the Archer A7 in the larger/obstructed space.

Dusted-off the DX-NRUTER - had forgotten that I broke the Wi-Fi radio when I last flashed it with DD-WRT. Looks like it only works with dd-wrt.v24-13577_NEWD-2_std-nokaid.bin from 2010. Tried a number of DD-WRT releases with no luck - none of the dd-wrt.v24_ releases support the radio, and all of the dd-wrt.v24-48884_NEWD-2_K2.6_ releases bricked it - thank goodness for TFTP. Decided to give it a shot as a repeater, and it worked fine until I enabled any Wi-Fi security on the repeater... I think I'm just over it now.

I had way more fun with Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate than I expected to after XL. The story mode still doesn't compare to 2011's and Kronika is uninspiring, but the new Krypt is a major upgrade over XL's and the character customisation is unreasonably deep. Had way more fun grinding towers to unlock more of the Krypt so I could further customise my characters... Until the grind got ridiculous; I need something like 7500 souls to progress now, and that just turned me right off the whole endeavour. Finding Reptile was a really nice nod to the 1995 movie though :) Reinstalled XL afterward, avoiding the story mode, and really appreciated the towers and the Krypt a lot more this time.

Got a little scared for a minute there...

DD-WRT on the EA6300V1 because OpenWrt suggests that they're effectively a non-option and I can't find any info on how Tomato compares to the closed-source aspects of DD-WRT. It's been years since I've really messed around with any of them, and I'm not quite up-to-speed on all of this - so I went with what seemed like the safest bet. Ended-up following this guide, but with the latest DD-WRT as the final step - pretty convoluted, but it worked! I couldn't get 5GHz speeds over 400Mbps at first, but it just turned-out that DD-WRT's "Auto" channel setting is maybe not good. Did a site survey, moved things over to a less-crowded part of the spectrum, and now everything looks happy. Next test is with the Archer T9E to see if an EA6300V1 really can reach AC1600 speeds.

Checked-out another thrift store today, found a Sony BDP-S1700, a DIR-868L, another DIR-822, and an Acer tower with a Core 2 Quad, 3GB of RAM, and a GTX 650... The tower was the most expensive item at $15 CDN. Neat projects, but I left them for someone else.

Because I'm bored...

Archer A7

• AC1750
• 3 x 5 dBi
• 28 dBm
• USB 2.0
• Single-Core

DIR-859

• AC1750
• 3 x 2 dBi
• 20 dBm
• No USB
• Single-Core

 EA6400

• AC1600
• 2 x 4 dBi + 3 x 5 dBi (internal)
• 24 dBm
• USB 3.0
• Dual-Core

Unless I'm misunderstanding how my devices are reporting link speeds, I don't think I have anything that really takes advantage of the 300~450Mbps or 1300Mbps Wi-Fi speeds.

Found-out that while USB 3.0 seems to make a significant difference in NAS performance, the only stock options are SMB 1.0 or FTP - neither of which is particularly secure.

I have no idea if the dual-core BCM4708 in the EA6400 performs any better than the single-core QCA9563 in the other two.

I'm not super-familiar with antennas, but it looks like the DIR-859 would be best for an open area with no obstructions, the EA6400 is more directional but also has more antennas and beamforming, and the Archer A7 is a bit of a brute-force approach.

So of the two places I'm deploying to, I think it makes sense to have the Archer A7 in the larger home with the most obstructions, and then the EA6400 in the smaller open area where more devices will be accessing it at once.

Finally, install DD-WRT on the EA6300V1 (no OpenWrt because Broadcom, apparently) to effectively make it another EA6400, and there's my backup. Test the DIR-859 in the larger/obstructed space for science before giving it away, and... Yeah, that's the ticket!