What are you playing on your computer?

Oooh, that actually sounds interesting! After I replay Witcher III (and actually finish it this time) I want to read some more of the books.

I got that on sale on ps4 at the tail end of May but just not got around to playing it yet.

I thought it was set even before Witcher 1, I have had my eye on it but just waiting for a sale and when I've not a got a lot to play.

I'm playing FM19 again due to Xbox Achievements

You might be right. I just know it's based a time span outside of my knowledge. The only real beef I have with the game is that the map doesn't have any text on it. So, characters will say - oh this is in Ratsburg - but you can't just see a Ratsburg on the map, nor is there a symbol for it. This isn't a problem when you're going through the story until you reach the end of a chapter. At that point the game says, "Yo you've found X/10 chests, X/3 unique cards found" etc. And it's like the game is letting you know you missed a load of stuff, but you going back is a bit disorientating.

That said, there is an upgrade you can build for your warcamp that marks locations on the map. I feel like it just means loot by this, but maybe once I buy that upgrade it'll help me out.

Drunkalilly wrote:

Oooh, that actually sounds interesting! After I replay Witcher III (and actually finish it this time) I want to read some more of the books.

I feel like it will run just fine on your laptop whenever you get it back so feel free to access it via Steamshare. The game sometimes runs slow when the AI is having a think about what card to play next, but otherwise I think it should run on well on most devices. You move around the map by doing a point and click, but I'm sure you could plug in a ps4 pad and it'd take to it just fine.

I haven't yet but going to play the KFC dating sim

Digimon Cyber Sleuth.

A little over 8 hours into it and it's seeming like the Digimon title I've always wanted, and its gone places I didn't expect. There's a sidequest where you meet a straight-up non-binary person and they criticise how the game's online world funnels them into choosing either boy or girl. Also the casual gay representation/acknowledgement, not making it out like it's a joke or some kink - a pleasant surprise from a Japanese anime-tropey game (although of course, not the only one of its kind).

Moving on though, as while all that's nice, what I mainly like about the game is how functional it is as a game while having the Digimon trappings. I know Digimon World has its fans but I really didn't find it fun training them (crappy training and battle mechanics) only to have them die after some time because of some mistakes I didn't foresee. And even if I raised them well they wouldn't live for that long anyway. That's the formula for World and games later on in the series which ape its style. The games that aren't World-style generally aren't great either.

Here they swap that out for admittedly standard JRPG turn-based mechanics and level-up structure but it's not bad at all. It's really satisfying collecting the Digimon and then evolving them, with multiple routes that are mapped out with listed requirements. As well as the human characters, the digimon look great and all the cool ones are here from the shows you watched way back when (as well as the others probably). This game isn't exactly graphically impressive for the PS4 which is what it was made for, but the aesthetic is nice and you can crank it all the way up to 4K here and it looks rather good.

I've tempered my enthusiasm a bit though, as I'm not sure how I'll feel about this game in the long haul. Have been enjoying the look of the game, as well as the music and generally the story and writing, but did feel that so far I've been retreading the same ground a lot and a fair bit of it did just seem like busywork. Getting the sense that the rest of the game may be a bit like that as well. But I've not begun to tire of the gameplay, and story developments/sidequests are keeping me interested, so we'll see.

Cyber Sleuth is great, but Hard mode is super imbalanced and it killed my playthrough when I refused to drop the difficulty down after hitting a brick wall of a boss. Don't repeat my mistakes!

I started off on Normal but it did seem a tad easy so I switched to Hard and it does make the boss battles a good amount engaging. It's nice that you can toggle the difficulty and that Hard is incentivised by giving your more/better rewards, but yeah I'm okay with lowering it if I have to.

I just ordered a new laptop this evening, which should come Thursday morning. It's nothing special was £600 and got a 1050 in it.

Good job to as my current has suddenly started turning itself off, it knows.

From my research I could still play something like Red Dead Redemption 2 on Medium 1080p 30fps but that sort of game I'd still play on a PlayStation or Xbox as I often just buy, finish, sell which isn't much a thing on PC.

I am interested in the new X-Com, Gears Tactics, Football Manager 20, Disco Elysium, Valorant etc which I should have no issues running along with some older stuff on GOG

That if anyone has any recommendations but should have enough to play as Xbox PC Game Pass has like 200 games on it along if I pick anything up of STEAM/Epic

Cvilization

Have been replaying the Sonic Adventure games. Mainly SA2 and have been enjoying it more. I'm not sure if I can be bothered to do all the stories again in SA1. Also River City Girls which I had zero interest in when I saw its announcement - normally don't care for the genre - but I've been enjoying it a lot.

So looking at what I've got access to which is actually a lot but I've downloaded

Stories Untold via Epic, I must have redeemed it when it was free and I really should have been adding free games to my library that I liked the look of
I Love You, Colonel Sanders!
Civilization V
XCOM: Chimera Squad
Gears Tactics
Football Manager 20

A few others as well but for easy Xbox Achievements, I was tempted to download something like Gears 5 to see what the laptop could do but it's rather big and take a while that I've not for now.

I'm trying to get into the Valorant BETA that I've just left a twitch window open watching a stream.

masofdas wrote:

Civilization V

It was nice knowing you Mas.

Just one more turn....

I finished XCOM Chimera Squad a few hours ago. Good 7/10 sort of game which goes on for a bit too long, has a weak story and voice acting, and also too many bugs. None of the bug will end the world - they mostly just make the cosmetics go a little funny or crash the game to desktop - but it might be worth waiting for a patch. Game loads fast if you use an SSD though so it's not too difficult to soldier through.

Been playing some Gears Tactics, almost done Chapter 1, I'm on the last mission before the boss and it's really good.

I also downloaded Gears 5 as the sort of test what the laptop can do.

Set the game to the recommend by the game and played the first sort of training area the framerate wasn't good and things like Del's hair looked like the textures hadn't loaded which I know unreal engine is known for texture pop in, I don't think it was that think it was more the laptop.

I had a mess around and the game had set me to 900p 60fps High textures, I changed it to 30fps which might sound muh but that's what the Xbox version is running part from One X also changed to medium textures, doing this the game put itself to 1080p for some reason.

Then when I went back into the game Del's hair was now intact and played great & even looked it, I don't know what texture settings are used on the Xbox One but it didn't look that much worse. Now I did play on a One X on a 49" TV where the laptop is 17" which is going to help as well, I feel maybe if I plugged the laptop into the TV then maybe I really start to notice the issues.

I doubt I'll play main AAA games on the laptop like Gears 5 but it's good to know I can if something does come out only PC or might be better on PC as I'm thinking I might play Minecraft Dungeons on PC instead of Xbox now due to it being a diablo-like that clicking on enemies might just work better.

I think the constant tinkering with graphics settings is what put me off gaming through Steam. The cheap deals were great and all, but I was having a lot of hassle as my laptop moved towards the end of its lifespan.

It's not my idea of fun but all the Xbox stuff seems to be well tuned or been simple to tweak in ways I understand, maybe I could go more in depth but this sort of stuff is why I'll still but both a PS5 and Series X instead of using that £1000+ to buy a great gaming rig as even though they now will have settings it's a simple as do I want it in 4K or 60fps that simple.

From what I've heard you don't really need to spend over a grand for a decent to good PC set up & there's a lot of traps folk fall into with how stuff is advertised as well.

Super Mario 64: Windows Edition.

The_Jaster wrote:

From what I've heard you don't really need to spend over a grand for a decent to good PC set up & there's a lot of traps folk fall into with how stuff is advertised as well.

Sure but I would want one that could do similar to the Series X if I was going to, also I'd still miss the PlayStation exclusives if I spent the money on a rig instead.

It really depends what you're looking for. To play games at medium-low settings you don't need to spend too much more than you would for a console, especially if you're playing at 1080p. There's always plenty of videos about getting computers with comparable quality to the contemporary consoles for reasonable prices.

It's going up to 4k which will break the bank, things have changed since I looked all this up I'm sure entry level 4k graphics cards will cost you in the region of £550-600, and you'll also need a big chassis to house that motherfucker in [unless you're going to shell out silly money for a laptop], and you'll need to make sure your other components are pretty nifty too to ensure that the rest of your system doesn't hold back that graphics card. So you're looking at very close to £1,000 at least, and that's before you've bought a 4k monitor.

But 4k pc gaming is a bit overkill really. Unless you're hooking it up to a tv and playing from the couch, you're not really going to benefit all that much from those extra pixels because of your position relative to the screen. I mean, it is better, there is still a difference, but I'm not sure I could say there's one that's worth it.

Dunno how much minimum requirements will shift in the future. I would hazard a guess at the "not too much region" because buying a high spec machine is expensive, but so is buying all the accessories you need to make the most out of it. The high-end graphics cards are increasing in price at a rate higher than their relative performance gains comparative to the graphics cards of yesteryear. Although pc gamers are often stereotyped as power hungry dungeon dwellers, most are more interested in bang for buck so I feel like the market pressure would dictate developers cater to as broad of a spectrum of machines as possible. My monster machine from 6 years ago can still run almost anything, but there are some modern titles that it doesn't meet the minimum requirements for so the power creep is still real.

Maybe the more powerful consoles will shift things faster, or maybe 4k screens will become more abundant in the near future. There's also set to be more competition for nvidia, who've monopolised high-end graphics cards in recent years too so it's tough to say. Unfortunately the real problem with pc gaming, as always, is that it takes effort to work out what the best option is for your needs and budget. Worse, sometimes it's better value to spend more because that ensures more tomorrows before the next spend. You just don't have this hassle with anything else in this hobby other than... mobile gaming???

JayMoyles wrote:

I think the constant tinkering with graphics settings is what put me off gaming through Steam. The cheap deals were great and all, but I was having a lot of hassle as my laptop moved towards the end of its lifespan.

This can definitely be annoying and a real problem. It sucks when you can't just jump into a game. In my experience it's usually easy enough to just use whatever stock profiles the developers have put in - high/low etc, and most games auto-detect your settings accurately.

Still, XCOM Chimera Squad didn't detect my graphics card by default, so I had to manually add the game to my nvidia control panel - which is something that a lot of people won't know how to do because why would you? Then the auto-detection picked settings that meant the laptop would run at 90 degrees. This is not ideal because a) it makes the keyboard get really hot, and b) running things at that heat over time will wear out the machine faster. Once I messed around with things I got that down by 30 degrees! This has got me checking my temps way more now though, which is not fun!

But usually the auto-detect function does a pretty good job of matching up the settings nicely.

Anyway, I'm playing Banner Saga 2 on my computer. I lost my save file for part 1 so had to dust that off again over the past few days, but I've really enjoyed going back to it. Beautiful artwork.

Yep why I went for the new laptop as cheap and does what I want from it as like I said played Gears 5 basically the same as a base Xbox One, if I wanted to play a game like that but will be more FM20 and the like which aren't on console.

Just as you point out if I was going the whole hog with 4K, Ray Tracing etc the graphics card alone is going to be what the Series X will likely cost, and I'd sooner buy the two consoles have them plugged into the TV and just go for the same cost it would seem.

From what Muss has said it looks like it could be possible to find a middle ground and have both but if that's what you are after then fair enough.

Well I've got the laptop now anyway which is more convenient for me especially as mine died but did look as I know I'll be getting one if not both new consoles and the specs, games etc on them seem better for the money.

Not played much more of Gears Tactics since last post as FM20 is what has mainly distracted me whilst playing on PC, just a tad annoying my 3 season save where I'm now at Everton won't load that I've started again at Dortmund.

Did get some Valorant in and I can see why it's been so successful but you can't at the moment (I don't even know if it will come) use a controller, I know I'm playing a PC only (again might just be at the moment) FPS that should be obvious that can't use a controller, I was just hoping I could.

As I've not used M+K for a shooter or any game really for years and then it's just moving backwards & forwards on DOOM, I'm finding it really hard to adjust and not the mouse aiming bit but going to all the different buttons to use my power ups etc and move at the same time.

Have played another Riot game and that's Legends of Runeterra which I'm really enjoying but can see one issue with the game as it doesn't have booster card packs or as it's a game guess loot boxes with new cards in, instead to get new cards you just buy them that I can see a real life Kaiba just buying a Blue Eyes White Dragon and having the best deck.