Bjomesphat

Been off the grid for quite awhile. Preparing for a new baby, arrival of a new baby, surviving a new baby. But things are finally settling down now and it's time for a new build to prepare for the onslaught of 2023. I've literally been using the same parts since 2013 (aside from some GPU upgrades), so I've slowly been gathering together parts as I see deals popup. There was a recent Microcenter deal on a CPU/mobo combo for a i7-12700k that I couldn't pass up (even as tempting as 13th gen is), and now I'm at the last piece of the puzzle, the graphics card. The RTX 4000 series is out of my league in pretty much all areas, so I'm hoping to get a 3080ti or at the very least a 3080 at no higher than MSRP, but is that even going to be possible? I haven't been following the stock situation too closely, but I thought with the crypto crash there would be an abundance of these available, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Any suggestions? Are we expecting more stock in the new year at reasonable prices? I'm pretty firm on not overspending on inflated prices, so I don't mind waiting.

Sonic Colors is the best 3D Sonic. Mania is still the better game though.

In-game time for me at 100% was 11 hours. I think actual time is probably 13. I definitely took my time though and immediately started hard. Which has actually been.... hard. That first boss you fight, you really need to be on your game. Very little room for mistakes.

Well, I got my N64 controller at least. Not doing the upgraded membership anytime soon though.

Anyone watch the direct? I expect to see you all next month!

Woah, I figured it was just a community project that barely broke even from ad revenue. That's insane. Just goes to show that even bastions of far left progressives will crumble at the smell of capitalism.

There’s actually an easier way to do this. Instead of using the fan to gain speed, go into the elevator room on the left to build up your boost. Now, you can still do what you did, but the easier way is just to stay in a morphball, go against the wall of the destructible blocks, and do a diagonal shinespark in ball form.

Having just played Samus Returns, it's close to Dread, but Dread is pure butter. I think Dread is just filled with so many tiny animations and subtleties that really add to the overall feeling of movement. There's really nothing else that feels quite like it. As for the cutscenes, pretty sure most games drop cutscenes down to 24 or 30 fps. You can argue cinematic or not, but low frame rates are still the standard for telling stories across visual mediums.

You don't often hear Nintendo outright deny a rumor or even address it. Obviously they don't want to compromise the OLED release, but is there really any doubt there isn't/wasn't a 4K Switch?

The Retrobit Tribute 64 controller is pretty good. The stick sensitivity is way off though, so it really only works well for certain games. If you're playing in Retroarch, you're better off just using any standard modern controller though.

Good luck getting an N64 controller. The NES/SNES controllers have plenty of competent knock-offs, but there are zero quality N64 replicas. These are going to go like crazy and probably from people that have no intention of using the service, like me.

@GameDadGrant Spiderman is actually a cool idea. They love Spiderman, even though they've never seen it. Can you play and explore the city without fighting anything?

They actually liked watching me play Sekiro, but everytime they would come in the room while I was play, I would have to avoid fighting anything and just run around and grapple everywhere.

The Lego games are probably good choices. Minecraft dungeons seems pretty cool. Though I guess I'm looking for games I'd enjoy too. Right now, they're not asking for games or even know about games outside of what I've shown them, and we only let them play once or twice on the weekends. I'll let them discover Roblox and Minecraft on their own through school and friends.

I've got twin 4 year old boys. I think they're pretty good at games considering their age, but they're still working on their fine motor skills and reaction time. We have a blast with games like 3D Mario World. They get to run around and jump on things while I push forward and make progress so we can all get through the level. Unfortunately, most of the stages past like world 3 they end up going in a bubble for a lot of the time because it's just too challenging. We also play a lot of Mario Kart 8, which has auto steering and driving. They loved watching me play Breath of the Wild, so I let them try the Link's Awakening remake. They mostly just like wandering around and attacking enemies with the sword, but that's pretty much the extent of what they can do. They also like 2D Mario and Sonic, even though their skills don't get them very far. However, they've really taken to Paper Mario Origami King. Obviously the combat system is way too challenging for them and it's not like they can read yet, but the exploration and discovery is really fun for them. They absolutely love exploring the entire world, visiting all of the different locations, towns, and dungeons, finding hidden secrets, playing the mini games, etc. And I realized that this is actually a pretty cool game for them because there's very few stakes, and you can't really lose if you're just passively exploring. If they run into an enemy, they either run away or hand me the controller to beat it. So with that type of game in mind, can you think of other games in the same vein? Something with lots of variety and charm. Plenty of exploration and secrets to find. But very few stakes or consequences. They recognize their own limits, so they get frustrated when something is too difficult, so it's nice to have a game that they can just relax and explore.

I really want a pick up and play game right now while waiting for Dread. I'm so torn because I have a ton of backlog games and I really don't need to spend $40, but it looks so fun!

If they do release N64 controllers, I might get them just to harvest parts.

"Are you sure you want to quit? Any unsaved progress will not be saved." Welp, since there's no physical save option, I guess I'll just assume the game autosaved and I'll restart at this checkpoint after quitting. What's so hard about telling you the last time your game saved when quitting out?

Hopefully the DS games are shortly after.

The first half of this season was definitely hit or miss. I wouldn't say it was bad, just kind of meandering along, but it's definitely picked up after the Christmas episode. I read somewhere that the writers planed for another 10 episode season, but Apple increased it to 12 so they had to fit in 2 filler episodes. Clearly the Christmas episode was one of those (and a welcomed one).

But wait, isn't summer relative? I look forward to our end of summer Southern Hemisphere bump in February.

After I saw those Deathloop reviews I thought to myself, maybe I'll put my name in the running since there's a few days of summer left. So wait, are there a few days of summer left or is summer over?

As long as you've been using the scan pulse regularly you'll be fine. I was also clearing out as much as I could in each area before moving on, so it really only took an extra hour of clean up at the end to get 100%.

Prey is awesome, don't care for Dishonored. This seems really cool though and at the very least it's inventive and hasn't really been done before. I don't play too many AAA games, but I think this will go on my list.