#PC exclusives i can understand because some games have required the use of almost the entire keyboard

[transgenderballofanxiety]

i think it's safe to say that i'm thoroughly dissapointed by that Xbox thing the other day

[crowsent]

a fuckton of things i want in da4

a few words censored bc tumblr will swallow this in the void if i dont. long ass fuck list ahead

a romanceable dwarf

more romanceable elves/qunari

more elf/qunari/dwarf companions

consistent writing for once

more nb representation

good hair. please just give me good hair options. give me long hair. give me luxurious flowing locks. give me braids. give me good fucking hair options

let me shittalk the chantry

dalish elf npcs that impact the plot in unique ways

dalish elf companions that are proud of being dalish

if it is set in tevinter maybe uh. maybe address the issue of systemic oppression (and slavery) of elves???????

a return of the friendship/rivalry system in da2 but improved. maybe instead of a friendship rivalry sliding scale its friendship/rivalry/animosity sliding scale. bc rivalry is more like. two people pushing each other to be better than they were before. friendly competition. hes an idiot but hes my idiot kind of deal. animosity would be just regular disapproval. i liked the crisis cutscenes in dai so high animosity would be the same as low approval and might make the companion leave still, but theres more variety with high approval. high approval “friendship” would be the “were best friends and we share many opinions and agree on almost everything” while high approval “rivalry” being “we disagree on almost everything but goddamn it youre my friend and ill follow you into the fade if i have to” so you can have a high approval with someone instead of being a kissass

actions and choices having consequences again

multiple endings again (epilogue slideshows dont count)

dialogue wheels with descriptions that match what you actually say

characters from rivain, antiva, anderfels, etc

gifts. bring back the gifts. i want to give my companions gifts

maybe. maybe a focus of non-andrastian religion for once?

let me shittalk the chantry

i know its a stretch, but maybe. diverse skin colours. please?

nd characters that are written respectfully and treated w dignity

please bring back the talent wheel from dao and da2

more bi romance options

more wlw romance options

more mlm romance options

ace romance options

nb romance options

background romances

let me shittalk the chantry

far fetched but maybe a polycule?

i lowkey LOVED the fast-paced feel of da2s combat so maybe bring that back in some form? maybe improved to mesh with the tactics of dai to give players absolute freedom of playstyle whether they want to be like me and rush into every encounter or play more strategically

companions with unique companion abilities

would be nice to explore cities

would be nice if the open world were a little smaller so it doesnt feel empty all the gd time

more mage spells. mages felt like just another class of fighter to me in dai. they dont really have any awe-inducing wow factor like in dao or even da2. if the narrative wants me to believe that mages are powerful and dangerous and that it takes multiple templars to hunt down an apostate, maybe show that? give me strong mages

remove the jump ability. its pointless

a narrative that addresses the oppression that the chantry and templars perpetuated please

bring back the attributes

make the choices in dai matter. mages governing themselves? i wanna see that

let me shittalk the chantry

please bring back the healing magic for fucks sakes

multi-class system between rogues and warriors?

multiple specialisations that feel like specialisations and not just skill tree+

player-only skill trees

hardening

companion quests that affect their abilities and further dialogue

actual morally grey choices instead of this stupid mage freedom vs templar oppression narrative that is in no way morally grey but is presented as such and thus leaves the conflicts and narratives set up by dao and da2 to be fucking meaningless

bring back the tactics

would be nice to have an origins-esque prologue again. maybe one that would determine future events in game just to give your character better narrative cohesion with the plot

an approval/disapproval system but for companions with other companions. bringing certain companions together may bring them closer or make them pissed off with each other which affects banter maybe quests maybe combat

give me a fucking mabari bioware. give me back my fucking mabari

day/night cycle

a nightmare mode where you have to finish the main quest on a time limit. it is absurd that dai expects me to believe that i have all this time to do wartable missions that can take literal real life DAYS to finish and still thwart corypheus’ plans in time. bullshit

that said. no more wartable missions. waiting for a countdown to finish isnt very fun

let me shittalk the chantry

kal-sharok. ive been hearing about it since dao let me fucking see kal-sharok

dwarven politics

politics in general. my fav dao quest was the succession crisis plotline in orzammar/the landsmeet and wewh in dai

npcs i can talk to. even with generic dialogue like in dao. makes the world more alive

using the environment to your advantage. far fetched but i would love to be able to pull down boulders if were in the mountains or freeze water to get to places as a mage

home base customisation but the customisation choices you make actually. mean something. and do something. or at the very least give more companion dialogue/banter/approval change

laconic and ergonomic codexes. like. sorted by what kind of codex it is, etc etc but then you just get a brief summary of the codex and the option to read more about it so i dont spend eternity scrolling through cards looking for a specific codex entry. cool aesthetic dont get me wrong but real irritating to deal with. also. maybe. the pc making comments about the codex if you do read more about it? like a dalish elf saying “they got it all wrong” when reading a codex about dalish elves written by a human??? that would a) give character to the pc b) incentivise people to actually read the codex to see what was so wrong about it c) summarise the codex for people who want to learn the lore but dont want to spent the entire game reading text

maybe have the merchants in your home base close to crafting stations so you dont have to take a fucking hike if you miscounted the amount of elfroot you need?

let me shittalk the chantry

avvar companion maybe??? interesting lore right there

bring back stat requirements for weapons and remove the class restriction for most shit. obviously a dagger would be better for a rogue than a longsword and a mage would do better with a staff than a sword and shield but its not about efficiency. its about the roleplay. its about the options. give me the option to make a mage with wildly inappropriate stat distribution

bring back sustained mode abilities

traps. bring back traps. bring back the option to stealth into an area, trap the fuck out of it, and go from there

have the three available classes in kind of a rock paper scissors scenario. warriors do real well against rogues who do real well against mages who do real well against warriors. so you can plan your party depending on who/what youll face AND how much their approval will change during the quest you take them on

let me shittalk the chantry

actually resolve the plot points introduced in dai

a more threatening villain. the inquisitor thwarted every attempt made by corypheus in dai. he was not threatening at all

queer characters. background, companions, etc. queer characters

mounts were meh in dai. maybe. make them faster? or less cumbersome? or have your companions on mounts too so theres still banter?

i liked the armour tinting. let me have armour tinting from the beginning

i would really like mages to move and attack at the same time bc lowkey standing in one spot is uhhhhhhh kinda boring

let me check companions friendship/rivalry levels

would be nice if the narrative acknowledged that elves suffered greatly at the hands of the chantry and stopped victim-blaming them

more taverns. specifically like tapsters in dao where theres a dwarf just reciting something in a language i cant understand and if you look its a ballad/poet about dwarven culture and that was a real nice touch let me have that

dalish elf clan. dalish elf clan that does not get murdered please and thank you

meaningful quests. more cinematic dialogue

make found gear / quest reward gear more valuable than crafted gear

game modifiers like in dai were real nice. i want more

let me shittalk the chantry

quests that can be resolved in multiple ways. like connors fate in dao. and for those ways to impact further quests

companions with varying moral alignments

companions that are mutually exclusive (like alistair and loghain) but are both good companions so itd really make you think

a pc that IS NOT a “chosen one” vanilla da2 is my fav dragon age game for one reason and one reason only and that is because hawke is just some random refugee who escaped lothering. no chosen one magic at all. just an ordinary person who is a real good fighter. and that appealed to me more than this “you are the only one who can do it” narrative

let me meet more elvhen gods

if the setting is in tevinter, GIVE ME FUCKING ARCHITECTURE. give me the high spires, the archways, the buttresses, give me statues lining city gates and magic infused into the buildings. tevinter is a land ruled by MAGES give me magical architecture. give me floating buildings. give me fire floating as orbs above the streets like lamps. GIVE ME ARCHITECTURE

SHALE

let me shittalk the chantry

PIERCINGS GIVE ME FUCKING PIERCINGS BIOWARE

more main quests, longer main quests

if it is set in tevinter maybe. maybe address the fact that tevinter has been at war with the qunari for a while? on and off war is still war. and maybe give us the option to influence the outcome of that war?

more voice options. instead of just american voice or british voice, do the thing in dao again where there are multiple voices of different tones to further cement the pcs personality

more armour designs

biased but uh. can. can taliesen jaffe va a character?

i already said qunari companions but specifically saarebas companions

blood magic

FINISHING MOVE ANIMATIONS

please do not let it be as long as inquisition. inquisition was a SLOG in later playthroughs

body sliders. what if i want a tall but lanky qunari? what if i want a buff as shit elf? body sliders

more eye options

let me call out companions

btw bioware. if you really wanted cullen to be a good guy. maybe handle his fucking redemption arc a little better instead of retconning all the terrible and creepy shit hes done in the past k thx

can female walk/run animations not have. so much swaying hips? no one moves like that

personality dialogue that affects future dialogue like in da2 but meshed with the wider range of emotions introduced by dai

keep the race/s*x lock on romance candidates like in dai. keep the fact that some characters can only be romanced by certain races or s*xes

nb and genderqueer options for the pc

cutscenes of companions interacting

ngl i lowkey liked the random encounters of dao so maybe bring that back

my fav quest in dao is the landsmeet / orzammar succession crisis questline but you know whats my second favourite? the rescue mission if the warden gets captured and you have to play as your party members. give me that again

more creepy/dark shit. dai was too lighthearted for me esp after da2 and dao

let me shittalk the chantry

broodmothers. in hd.

red lyrium broodmothers. in hd

companions with different backgrounds. different faiths. different statuses. different families. etc

maybe make the pcs appearance make an impact on the story? like how bull says he likes redheads, but even if you are a redhead, he says nothing about it????? maybe keep track of which slider the player picks so that can affect the story?

i love my inquisitors but maybe. dont. bring the inquisitor in as anything more than an advisor/npc in this game? let me fall in love with a new pc???

if theres gonna be a homebase like skyhold where youre not in armor. maybe give us better clothing?

a kind of gear skin mechanic similar to ac:odyssey where you can change how the gear looks but keep the stats. so you can equip that higher level armour and keep the look and aesthetic of your old armour and you unlock the skins/looks of the armours you discover/make so you can be both powerful AND aesthetic

i enjoyed the nobility/underworld/arcane/etc knowledge in dai unlocking more dialogue options so maybe keep/expand on that but make it more accessible by side missions or companions or something that isnt the abysmal perk system in dai

let me shittalk the chantry

customisable walking animations. does the pc walk straightbacked? slouched? with a swagger? please

since there will undoubtedly be an obligatory fade sequence, maybe have an option for nightmare demons that ARENT spiders. thank you

slap on subtitles and conlang some languages. i want to hear elvish. i want to hear tevene. give me the languages

more dragons. esp if they look vastly different

more bard songs

i am completely biased here, but i would like to hear laura bailey as a va for a character. preferably a voice option for the pc

hey maybe have the true ending actually included in the base game and not in a dlc (tresppasser cough cough)

better val royeaux

please remove the had to do it to em idle animation tis distracting

on that note, more idle animations. maybe some unique to companions?

very trivial but. unique stair climbing/descending animation

bring back talking to companions on the road. maybe with some dialogue that can only be said on the road???

if banter is interrupted, make like rdr2 and pick up where the banter left off

more vallaslin designs please?

if theres another formal scene like dai maybe. give us. decent clothing. or better yet, decen clothing OPTIONS. i wanna decide how i look in a ball full of haughty orlesians

mage vs templar conflict resolved and addressed please. it is NOT resolved in dai. what we got was sequel bait and a slideshow. resolve it please

let me shittalk the chantry

a pro-mage anti-circle circle mage companion like anders

religious person who doesnt victim-blame elves in the codex or in game or anywhere please

characters more like leliana who question the chantry and acknowledge its corruption and greed

unapologetically sapphic companion

idc if its tevinter i dont want to fucking see queer people being disrespected

a true tal-vashoth companion, one who escaped from the qun

have quest decisions affect whether or not a companion will turn hostile to you or not

if IF solas will be redeemed, please do the redemption arc right

more horn options for qunari

an apostate mage who doesnt use me for their personal agenda whilst hiding something from me (morrigan, anders, solas) thanks

i really dig the whole “leader of an army” thing dai was trying to go for. but you didnt actually. lead. anything. would be nice to have that option. command soldiers. send them places that affect further quests. would even use the wartable for its intended purpose. planning wars. battles. like. you get sent word that there are bandits harassing villagers. you can set up an ambush with your soldiers or confront them headon, and theres a new mini-location on the map like the manor you meet vivienne in where you can go deal with the bandits and depending on your choices, there are actually soldiers with you in a field, or traps in a narrow pass, or even in a city. id rather the wartable shit dont return but if they have to, at least this way youre not just waiting real life time for a bunch of text to appear

i am real fucking excited for the possibility that da4 companions can just fucking die on you. good shit. give me that angst

missions that certain companions would refuse to go with you to. you know. so you actually have to use other members of your party instead of the same 3 (three) people all the goddamn time

disabled characters (i want a character who suffers from the same chronic bad leg disease as i do is that too much to ask)

kinda touched on by the da2 combat point but let me do close combat damage with the staff

no multiplayer. and if there is a multiplayer, dont tie it with achievements

let me fucking explore weisshaupt

(i dont think solas will be the endgame villain of da and i dont think da4 will be the last da game but still) again. for emphasis. resolve the plot points dai brought up

full-body scars and tattoo options

companions and npcs changing their opinions about things over time. eg: a pro-circle mage wanting instead for circles to be abolished after a specific side mission or a main quest decision etc

keep the multiple companion quests. and maybe change what kinds of companion quests are available further down depending on choices made in previous companion quests

please for fucks sake give us more characters of colour

let me shittalk the chantry

[withteeths]

Maybe Steamrolling Games is Bad Actually

Videogames are unique in that they are inextricably tied to corporatism and have been since birth (this is an oversimplification but roll with it). This means that to an extent most companies even since the ’80s have never really cared about proper preservation or easy access to their titles. Nintendo carts were originally manufactured to have their battery die in 3 years so you would have to buy a new one (this failed, but it’s why you still see a lot of dead carts floating around). I think there's a nostalgia issue within the gaming fandom regarding "oh x was great back then" but a lot of the time, games manufacturers have been historically shitty and anti-consumer and it’s just that they now have the tools to execute it much more effectively. Regarding obtrusive DRM, that’s an issue PC games have had since their zenith, where if you lost your original copy of a manual or a small plastic key you could never play a game again because the codes were individualized for each copy and support would refuse to give you a new one. Even back in the arcades, there were particularly batshit examples like the CPS board, which I shit you not was built to explode a battery pack filled with corrosive acid if it detected you were attempting to repair or modify it. There’s a lot to say about the current state of games but what I would likely illustrate is that 2/3 major consoles are racing to decide who will be obsolete first. Games consoles are reaching a point where they are trying to emulate PCs with more restrictions and DRM. We're already seeing interest in steam spike again and it’s likely that eventually, we will see almost a crash for consoles where no one can justify the price for games they can play on a PC rig. The only solution I see there would be a merger between the two consoles which feels inevitable. 

That being said as interest in the PC space increases again so does attempts at entering the bubble. We have Epic, Origin, Microsoft, Indiegala, Itchio, and Steam all vying for attention, requiring accounts, and offering exclusives to justify the use of their storefront over others. Some people think this is a good thing because it's breaking up Steam's monopoly but it literally is not, if you ever really wanna hear me rant ask me about Leftist obsession with itch being some sort of ethical steam, which it is provably not. In the end, the real sort of saviour figures that work to preserve games are random ass people on the internet. I know people who automatically assume that at the end of the day, companies care about games preservation too, and they usually have a three-pronged argument that cites a) Steam’s ability to allow the redownloading of delisted games, b) retro companies periodically rereleasing titles for modern consoles in compilations, and c) companies doing limited reruns of a game that fans request. All three of these examples are basically an incredibly effective use of diversionary tactics, but most of the time when someone cites these I just assume it’s a misunderstanding and not outright malicious intent because a lot of the time companies will attempt to actively implant these ideas to build brand loyalty.

My main dissertation is usually that Steam is incredibly selective with what titles you can redownload, and most importantly, corporate benevolence is more-so a band-aid on a gaping wound! There’s no contingency for when Steam might migrate to a new service, go belly up, or become obsolete when a new OS is created. That means thousands, tens of thousands of dollars worth of games are just gone, permanently, along with fan mods, DLC, and content. It’s a terrifying thought that not many people bring up when discussing the problems with game storefronts that focus so much on providing a cloud and have DRM attached to every purchase. In a way, Steam preceded the trend of not allowing consumers to actually own the things they purchased, and they’ve avoided criticism by strategic use of silence and creating the illusion of a company being made by the consumers they’re attempting to serve. At the end of the day, Steam is a business, and if you ever lose access to your Steam account, or they decide to up and leave one day, you will not be able to play almost all of those games, even if you have them installed on a hard drive, because if you’re online, they connect with a server to ensure your steam account has the ability to play them. When it comes to other arguments like the limited rereleases or use of compilations to preserve arcade titles, I usually just beg people to look at community-driven options that have existed for years. The Scott Pilgrim game is a big source of contention, but I would point out that for years now, it was playable, for free, with all the DLC, on PCs. Preservationists didn’t wait for the gods of Universal and O’Malley to rerelease it for 30 bucks or save up to snatch the fucking ridiculous 200$ limited edition with shitty paper cut-outs, they straight up just did the work to make the game free and available. RCPS3 has (with a contemporary build) been able to run the game pretty flawlessly for years now, in fact, it was how I played through a majority of the game in high school on my shitty brick of a laptop. If you look further out than this one example then it gets even better, MAME and other emulation backends have been able to play obscure, unfinished, and homebrew titles with 100% accuracy, on almost any setup, for free, for decades! I found out about many of these options back in 2015 or so, certainly late to the curve, but I never really questioned as to why emulation, games preservation, and some key titles being available on PC remained some sort of arcane, unknown knowledge to most people interested in games. In the end, the answer was a highly effective propaganda campaign that combined with strategic use of DMCA takedowns has resulted in the concept of communal games-preservation and emulation becoming some sort of debate, where people will wholeheartedly side with corporations in some sort of quest for preserving things the “ethical and correct way,” which is code for preservation on the condition that it remains profitable for the IP owners.

 I think the best way to illustrate this would be with the community built around the preservation of an infamous PS4 title, PT. The story of its inevitable delisting from the storefront and the messy breakup between Kojima and Konami is well known, so I won’t regurgitate it, look it up at your own leisure. What is significant here is corporate reactions to attempts at preserving the game, which can basically be boiled down to Konami acting with borderline rabid fervour to prevent redownload, redistribution, or recreation of a seven-year-old demo, released for free download. Mentions of solutions to redownload the game have been taken down, fan-made recreations for PC, and archival servers that store a copy of the game for future preservation or emulation. Usually when this is brought up a debate occurs citing that technically speaking, Konami has a right to do this whenever they want, for whatever piece of media they believe infringes on their copyright. On one hand, yes this argument is factually correct considering the current state of copyright and ownership of media, but on the other hand, what compels someone to step into the ring for a multi-million dollar company with the primary argument being “well actually, people SHOULDN’T be able to play this specific video game until it benefits the shareholders”? In my opinion, it’s some sort of corporatized symbiosis where players believe that, if you cull the bad actors and play by the rules of the company, you may be able to eventually play the game a couple of years down the line. Sure, this has happened in the past with a few isolated cases, but it can’t be stressed enough that this is a genuinely dangerous and reductive position for people to take regarding games preservation.

 I have two colleagues, Mariken and Fotocopiadora, who released a short interactive title called Videopulp (playable here: https://fotocopiadora.itch.io/videopulp). It’s a dramatic reimagining of a real historical event, wherein a promotional event was held in 1994 at Lelystad to destroy bootleg carts by a figure in a Mario costume. This perhaps best encapsulates something I am pleading with younger generations to understand, as an archivist, art historian, and creator: corporations are not your friends, and they never will be. With the rise of online circles of leftism, this concept is starting to gain traction but is starting to be polluted with concepts of fandom and tribalism. This has lead to arguments that while *most* corporations are bad how could you say that about Nintendo? Or Valve? Mario is so innocent and characters like Wheatley are beloved by all! I feel some people don’t realize that they can enjoy a select title or character without enlisting in a corporate faction in the battle for “best company” or “best videogame”. It leads to a parasocial kinship with a nonexistent figure that was hand-crafted to ensure consumer loyalty to a certain brand. It’s depressing, terrifying, and should stand as a disquieting example of how the grip of capitalism on works of art has permanently distorted how we think and engage with media today. So, what’s the solution? As always I can never really provide something concrete that’ll act as a cure-all, only things that people in games need to work towards. Bring up conversations about games preservation, create archives for your own work, support archivists and boost their work whenever a new discovery is created, and try to promote optimism and solidarity in your hobbyist communities. I’ve noticed a lot of futility being intertwined with the future of AAA gaming, use of online storefronts, and the inability to own pieces of media anymore, and I feel this should be pushed back against, even in a minute way. Open-source programmes still exist that allow you to hold on to what you have purchased, offline and ad-free options exist for games launchers, e-readers, and media players. The future isn’t bright, but it is not a place without hope, and as long as people continue to enter communities with passion and ingenuity, I think we have a chance at stopping the events at Lelystad, 1994 from happening again. 

[lacquerware]

2020 Recap - My Year in Gaming

2020. What a year for video games. I had big plans for last year, but in the end I did very little besides play video games, and I don’t think I’m alone there since we were all stuck at home looking for a way out of reality. I wanted to do a year-end recap as I’ve done sporadically in past years, but this one will be different than the typical “Games of the Year” format because despite all the games I played in 2020, almost none of them came out in 2020, and some of the things that defined my year in gaming weren't even games. 

Resident Evil 3 Remake (PS4)

RE3 was one of the only games I played in 2020 that didn’t coincide with the deadly pandemic's spread across the US. RE3 is, of course, a game about the spread of a deadly virus in Anytown, USA. It was an appetizer, I guess. 

When the Resident Evil 2 remake dropped in 2019, there were some things I loved about it, and a few things that felt like steps back from the original. I feel much the same about RE3. I had also theorized that a Resident Evil 3 remake would be better off as RE2 DLC than as a separate full-length game, and considering how short RE3 turned out, with some of the best sections of hte original cut entirely (namely, the clock tower), I stand by my theory. 

Oh well, at least Jill gets this rad gun, which for the time being is the closest thing to a new Lost Planet we can hope for anytime soon.

Sekiro (PS4)

Sekiro is the first video game I ever Platinumed. This is partly because conquering the base game was such a spartan exercise that going the extra mile to get the Platinum didn’t seem so bad, but it’s also surely a result of the pandemic. I needed a project and a big win. Who didn't? 

I wrote at length about why I like Sekiro more than every other modern FromSoft game, and also about the game’s cherry-on-top moment that reminded me of blowing up Hitler’s face in Bionic Commando. Please read them!

Death Stranding (PS4)

Release date notwithstanding, this was obviously the Game of 2020. I wrote about it here, here, and here. This game bears the distinction of being the second one I ever Platinumed. It took 150 hours. Only then did I learn I had a hoverboard.

Streets of Rage 4 (PS4)

This is the only 2020 game I played for more than a few hours. In fact, I cleared the entire game at least five times. I still don’t think it captures the gritty aesthetic of the prior Streets of Rages (nor even tries to), but this is probably the best-feeling bup I've played. Huge bonus points for finally bringing back Adam, but in the end I found it hard not to pick Blaze every time.

Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch)

What impressed me about this sequel from Inti Creates was that it wasn’t just more of the same, even though that would've been fine. BMZ2 builds on its already excellent predecessor with a catchy new format where players can freely cruise the cosmos and stages take the varied form of planets—some big and sprawling, others short and sweet. Hopping at will from planet to planet without ever knowing what experiences and treasure each one held felt like system jumping in No Man’s Sky and island hopping in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, both of which felt like opening presents.

Dragon Force (Saturn)

Charming, satisfying, and addictive as a bag of chips. Unlike a bag of chips, when it’s over, you can do it all again. And again. And it’ll be different each time! This might be the first strategy game I've truly loved. Better late than never.

The PC Engine Mini

The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 Mini seems a particularly justifiable mini-console for people outside Japan because so many missed these consoles entirely, the games are hard to obtain, and the lineup includes titles spanning the entire convoluted Turbo/PC Engine ecosystem—the TurboGrafx-CD/CD-ROM², Super CD-ROM², Arcade CD-ROM² and SuperGrafx, in addition to plain, old standard HuCard games. I myself didn’t know the first thing about these systems before. It’s like reliving the nineties again for the first time. 

Most of the titles included are simple action games that don't require a command of Japanese, but make no mistake: being able to understand Snatcher and TokiMemo does make me feel like an elite special person worth more than many of you. 

(Side note: From a gender representation perspective, the difference between Snatcher and Death Stranding is stark. Virtually every interaction with every woman or girl in Snatcher is decorated with ways to sexually harass her. Guess someone finally had a conversation with our favorite auteur.)

A Gaming PC

I’d threatened to transition to PC gaming for years after beholding the framerate difference between the console and PC versions of DmC in 2012, and last July I finally took the leap, buying an ASUS “Republic of Gamers” (ugh) laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU. It seems like consoles are getting more PC-like all the time, especially with all these half-step iterations that splinter performance and sometimes even the feature set (à la the New 3DS and Switch Lite), so with the impending new generation seemed like a fine time to change course.

In the half-year since, I’ve barely played a single PC game more recent than 2013, but just replaying PS3-era games at high settings has been like rediscovering them for the first time. 

I also finally experienced keyboard-and-mouse shooting and understand now why PC gamers think they're better than everyone else. Max Payne is a completely different game with a mouse. Are all shooters like this??

The USPS

Early in the year, I rediscovered my childhood game shop, Starland, which is now  an online hub known as eStarland.com with a brick-and-mortar showroom. To my delight, it has become one of the best and most modestly priced sources for import Saturn games in the country, and I scored Shining Force III’s second and third episodes, long missing from my collection, for a mere ten bucks each!  

In June, I treated myself to a trio of Saturn imports from eStarland: the tactics-meets-dating-sim mashup Sakura Taisen 2, the nicely presented RTS space opera Quo Vadis 2, and beloved gothic dungeon crawler Baroque. Miraculously, this haul amounted to just around thirty dollars total. Less miraculously, they never arrived. This was the second time I’d had something lost in the mail in my entire life, and also the second time that month. Something was wrong with the USPS, and it wasn’t just COVID pains. We would soon learn Trump had been actively working to sabotage one of the nation’s oldest and most reliable institutions in a plot to compromise the upcoming presidential election.

Frankly it’s a miracle there’s still such a thing as “delivery” at all, and a few missing video games is the last of my worries considering what caused it, but nevertheless this was an experience in my gaming life that could not have happened any other year. I won’t forget it.

*By the way, USPS reimbursed me for the insured value of the missing order, which was fifty bucks. So I actually profited a little off the experience.

Mega Everdrive Pro

I love collecting for the Genesis and Mega Drive, but I will not pay hundreds of dollars for a video game that retailed for about sixty.  The publishers never asked for that, and the developers won’t see a (ragna)cent of the money. I'm also far less inclined to start collecting for Sega CD, since the hardware is notoriously breakable, the cases are huge and also breakable, and the library just isn't that good. 

Still, I'd been increasingly curious about the add-on as an interesting piece of Sega history, so when I learned Ukranian mad scientist KRIKzz had released a new Mega Everdrive that doubled as a Sega CD FPGA, I finally took the plunge into the world of flash carts. This has proven a great way to play some of the Mega Drive’s big-ticket rarities I will never buy—namely shmups like Advanced Busterhawk Gley Lancer and Eliminate Down—as well as try out prospective additions to the collection. I never would have discovered the phenomenal marvel of engineering and synth composition that is Star Cruiser without this thing, but now that I have, it’s high on the shopping list.

The Mega Everdrive Pro is functionally nearly identical to TerraOnion’s “Mega SD” cartridge, but slightly less expensive, comes in a “normal” cartridge shell instead of the larger Virtua Racing-style one, and supports a single hardworking dude in Ukraine rather than a company with reportedly iffy customer service.

Twitch

Getting a PC also resolved issues that had long prevented me from achieving a real streaming setup, and much of my gaming life in 2020 was about ramping up my streaming efforts. I even made Affiliate in about a month. Streaming has been a great creative outlet and distraction, as well as a way to connect with other people during the COVID depression and structure my gaming time. Find me every Monday through Thursday 8-11pm Eastern at twitch.tv/lacquerware.  

Metroid: Other M (Dolphin)

PC ownership also gave me access to the versatile Dolphin emulator, liberating a handful of great Wii exclusives from their disposable battery-powered prison. 

One of the Wii games I fired up on Dolphin was Metroid: Other M, a game I’d always wanted to try but had been dissuaded by years of bad publicity and the fact that I never had any goddamn batteries. I know I should temper what I’m about to say by acknowledging that I was playing at 1080p/60fps on a PS4 controller so my experience was automatically a vast improvement over that of all Wii players, but I’m increasingly confident Metroid: Other M was the most fun I’ve ever had playing a Metroid game. I haven’t decided yet if I’m willing to die on this hill, but I will just say that if you like the Metroidvania genre in general and aren’t particularly attached to the Metroid series’ story or its habit of making you wander aimlessly for hours, there’s a very high chance you will enjoy Other M—especially if you play it on Dolphin.

Don't Starve Together (PC)

Don't Starve is the only game my friend Jason plays, so last year I tried to get into it with him. I respect this game's singular devotion to the concept of survival, but make no mistake: every session of Don't Starve ends with you starving to death. Or freezing. Or getting stomped by a giant deity of the forest. The entire game is staving off death until it inevitably comes. Even when death comes, you can revive infinitely (in whatever mode we were playing), which means even death is not an end goal. There is no end goal. You don't even have the leeway to "play" and create your own meaning as you do in similarly zen  games like Dead Rising. 

Don't Starve is a game for people for whom hard work is the ultimate reward in and of itself. Don't Starve told me something about Jason. 

G-Darius (PS1)

In the early fall, Sony announced they were dropping PS3, PSP, and Vita support from the browser and mobile versions of their PSN Store, and since the PS3 version of the store app runs like a solar-powered parking meter in Seattle, I decided this was my last chance to stock up on Japanese PSN gems. 

Among my final haul, the PS1 port of G-Darius proved an instant favorite. Take down the usual cast of mechanized fish in a vibrant, chunky, low-poly style that perfectly inhabits the constraints of the original PlayStation hardware. I believe this is the first Darius game that lets you get into giant beam duels with the bosses, which is quite definitely one of the coolest things a video game has ever let you do. The PS1 port is also surprisingly feature-rich, including some easier difficulty levels that present an actually surmountable challenge for non-savants.

This one’s coming to the upcoming Darius Cozmic Revelation collection on Switch alongside DARIUSBURST, a good-ass romp in its own right.

Red Entertainment

In my effort to shine a tiny spotlight on some of the unsung Interesting Games of gaming, I found myself drawn again and again to the work of Red Entertainment. First there were cavechild headbutt simulator Bonk’s Adventure and twin shmups Gates of Thunder and Lords of Thunder on the PC Engine Mini. Then I streamed full playthroughs of the PS2’s best samurai-era, off-brand 3D Castlevania, Blood Will Tell and the Trigun-adjacent stand-‘n-gun, Gungrave: Overdose. Then I was dazzled by Bonk’s Adventure’s futuristic spin-off cute-‘em-up, Air Zonk, which was also sneakily tucked away on my PC Engine Mini in the “TurboGrafx-16” section. It turned out all these games were made by the same miracle developer responsible for Bujingai, the stylish PS2 wushu game starring Gackt and a household name here at the Lacquerware estate. How prolific can one team be???

Month of Cyberpunk

In November, I started toying with the idea of themed months on my Twitch channel with “Cyberpunk month.” It was supposed to be a build-up to Cyberpunk 2077’s highly anticipated November release, but holy shit that didn’t happen, did it? Still, I always find myself gravitating toward this genre in November, I guess because I associate November with gloom (even though this year it was sunny almost every day). A month is a long time to adhere to a single theme, but cyberpunk is such a well-served niche in gaming that I could easily start an all-cyberpunk Twitch channel. The fact that we’re so spoiled with choice makes Cyberpunk 2077’s terrible launch all the more embarrassing. Here are just some of the games I played (and streamed!) in November:

Ghostrunner Shadowrun (Genesis) RUINER Remember Me Transistor Rise of the Dragon (Sega CD) Shadowrun (Mega CD) Cyber Doll (Saturn) Binary Domain Shadowrun Returns Blade Runner (PC) Deus Ex: Human Revolution Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Observer

Shadowrun on the Genesis gets my top pick, but the two most recent Deus Ex games are great alternatives for those looking for something in the vein of 2077 that isn’t infested with termites.

Lost Planet 2

Every year. I played through it twice in 2020.

Dead Rising 4

I slept on this one too long. While it's a far cry from the original game, it's easily the most fun I've had with a Christmas game since Christmas NiGHTS. This is the game a lot of people thought they were getting when they bought the original Dead Rising with their new Xbox 360--goofy, indulgent, and pressure-free.

Devil May Cry 5: Vergil (PS4)

Vergil dropped for last-gen consoles in December and breathed a whole lot of life into a game that was already at the head of its class.

Nioh 2

I’ve only played a few hours of Nioh 2 because I promised my friend I’d co-op it with him and wouldn’t play ahead. But he’s a grad student with two small children. Nevertheless, Nioh 2 is my Game of 2020.

And that's it! Guess I'll spend 2021 playing games that came out last year, and maybe eventually getting vaccinated? Please? 

[brourquhart5-blog]

Learn to get Fortnite V Bucks?

The greeting card contains codes for a pair quantity associated with V-Bucks. A good few of nowadays will probably earn a person a little free V-Bucks, as well as a wide range of them far too. If you want to easily broaden your integrity inform you to make use of Fortnite hack. We may probably account for every Fortnite content material inventor for the total web, but here's a listing of 15 common streamers and also esports athletes most down and dirty followers possess tried connected with. This is the latest kind of the free hack Aimbot for Fortnite Battle Royale.

fortnite v bucks And begin Fortnite V Bucks!

In case you understand my write-up beneath you'll observe that We've a finishing money down for Vbucks and other hobbies as well as a bill money stack that will I'm not really prepared plunge in for this skin that was made public throughout game tv screen with a selling price I thought being affordable. Definitely not completely Side Pursuits earn an individual V-Bucks, but people that carry out can earn people up to 150 V-Bucks. A lot like Day-to-day Problems, if you can't conclude the journey with the day, after that an additional is going to be increased the following day people log here using the optimum sum involving 3 Everyday Missions. A good idea to rapidly achieve amounts would be to exercise Fortnite hack. Bar like lots of modern day games, Fortnite provides gamblers the option to acquire machines with Money not necessarily directly, although with V-bucks, the popular game currency participants can chat for money. Anybody manipulating the Fortnite Aimbot has the benefit of as a possible unstoppable lord from the game. Help save the globe could possibly potentially bring you far more V-Bucks than that will in the very long pull, but you'll ought to benefit the item.

The reason why Generally Fortnite V Bucks Crash?

Squad awake and compete to be the past a single position with Battle Royale, or perhaps consumption your imagination to make your current aspiration Fortnite throughout Creative. Fortnite V Bucks Glitch Pc free allowance, steep and also reasonably priced along with renovation strength is easy. That focuses on which it refers to the cheat codes also the videotape the twosome make of them participating in the game while practicing the codes since derivative jobs in which violate it is copyright. You should, merely take advantage of this V-Buck Generator double daily so as to guarantee others besides manage to get thier free VBucks as well as to help keep the loophole undetected. Fortnite hack is an excellent solution to show nicely in addition to nicely. For persons, this means the introduction associated with newborn skins, fresh shows up, plus fresh pieces. The solution becomes Fortnite V-Bucks, a exclusive currency with you can get a gorgeous number of vibrant plastics in exchange for really money. The option becomes that will anyone enable the asset of personal above inside the game, before get hold of a Battle Pass. The hack permits malicious acting professional to gather the SSO expressions of clients exactly who press within the exclusively created hyperlink and then wide open way in a victim's Fortnite account. It's around anti cheat suppliers to safeguard games since people that search for to rupture them wide open. He worked out carve a cheat for that game sometimes, which in turn would potentially. Fair apply the V-Bucks Generator. This kind of uses to free V-Bucks participants say acquired also. Even so, simply because Sony kept PS4 persons since plot in about Alter or maybe Xbox whenever they ever before authenticated his or her account owing to it is PSN logic, which required there were a portion involving Fortnite participants exactly who might have had about valuables. While the tender of an free Battle Pass would be the almost all well known addition into today's patch observes, Epic Games state additionally produce some very much needed to have adjusts to the game. The very first method to earn V-Bucks becomes before logging in to Save the earth method each day. Different conns include things like offer gain access to to additional people's Fortnite relations, and offer you V-Bucks without cost - although really demanding for this.

The most significant Stretch out Inside Fortnite Free Vbucks!

Become second cautious in any deliver like that while simply no genuine strategy to earn free V-Bucks beyond the game or maybe due to glitches exists. Below is usually a board mentioning entire detailed information about day-to-day pursuits along with how to accomplish day-to-day quests one at a time with the amount connected with v bucks you will get with achieving all every day search through the particular class. The bonus V-Bucks code can occur by the Xbox concept center in 2 7 days connected with purchase. People ought to stay clear of these V-Bucks generators, simply because will frequently look for your account facts. In addition, you can easily return V-Buck acquire, meaning once a person push several real money straight into Fortnite that stays in which it's going to keep on being.

[nuke1991-blog]

Best Facts Concerning Android Apps Exposed

Dirty Facts Concerning Android Apps Exposed Also should an individual is offline, you are still able to pay with Bluetooth. Any type of customer could sign up for a completely totally free specific account on Box. The application allows customers take a look at present activity and also get updates from particular hosts as well as the succeeding service web pages. Its paid version also has features like advanced accident detection software and enhance testing and also procedure of the apps. While crossbreed applications are made with the aid of countless application frameworks. Infection removal software program can be extremely pricey because the majority of antivirus programs around require a monthly or annual registration fee which can be rather significant. Furthermore, it introduces a host of customisation integrated with a huge range of levels, ensuring that a person does not find the game repetitive after lengthy hrs of play. It could be a bit old. 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If you are not at your computer system the Ebay.com application will promptly notify you when you made a sale. With time, the application has actually undertaken different design cycles as well as prototyping versions to supply the best possible assistance. Action of applications are generated and released daily. With utilizing cloud storage, you no have to do away with the details in your hard disk. Users can easily make charge card payments, send out, demand and also get e-transfers, as well as down payment money easily. While hybrid apps are made with the help of countless app structures. In some cases useful mobile applications will simply increase the integrity of your cell phone and occasionally they simply make it feasible for you to pass some time whilst waiting for an appointment. Utilizing the mobile PayPal website can be challenging free unlocked games apps for Pc by many mobile phones but the PayPal app makes it uncomplicated to do all your PayPal associated things without requiring to combat with the PayPal website. A teaser internet site makes it feasible to observe the passion of people on the initiation of the most essential app. If you are not at your computer system the Ebay.com application will promptly inform you when you made a sale.

[batteriestore]

Genesis Thor 420 RGB Low-Profile Mechanical Keyboard Review: Low profile, small setbacks, good value

Genesis is a smaller name in the gaming peripheral world, but the brand is steadily gaining popularity, particularly in the e-Sports community. The Polish-based company makes and sells all sorts of peripherals, including keyboards, mice, headphones, microphones, PC cases, and more, which are specifically targeted at value-oriented customers.

Genesis sent me the Thor 420 RGB low-profile mechanical keyboard, and I've been using it almost exclusively for the better part of three months. As a primer, I have experience with both membrane and full-sized mechanical keyboards; my daily driver is a standard Logitech K120 membrane keyboard, but I've also spent substantial time using a Razer Blackwidow (w/ Razer's Green switches, equivalent to Cherry MX Blue switches) and Corsair K70 (Cherry MX Red switches).

Depending on the retailer and region, the Genesis Thor 420 RGB ranges in price from €60-80 (US$70-95) at the time of publication.

Design

The Thor 420 RGB is a beautiful piece of kit. The aluminum keyboard deck sits atop a low-profile black plastic base. The keyboard is 418 mm long, making it a hair shorter than most other standard keyboards. It still takes up a fair amount of desk space.

As a low-profile keyboard, the Thor 420 RGB is fairly short at 24 mm. The keys sit flush with each other rather than in tiered rows (more on this in a bit), giving the keyboard a sleek aesthetic. The keys themselves are elevated above the keyboard deck and the transparent casings of the switches are exposed, allowing the RGB lighting to shine around each key rather than just through. The overall effect is rather pleasing.

The keys use a chiclet design like many laptops rather than the traditional beveled design used in most mechanical keyboards. Because of this, the keys sit flush in a plane. While this helps keep the height down, it can make key recognition difficult, especially for touch typists. There is little tactile indication as to where one key ends and another begins, and it can be difficult to know over which row fingers lie.

Another issue is the size of the individual keys. The letter keys on the Thor 420 RGB measure 15 mm2; most beveled keyboard keys (like those on the Logitech K120) measure 18-20 mm2. Some mechanical keyboards have slightly larger keys. While a difference of 3 mm on each dimension doesn't look large on paper, it alters the typing experience substantially. Coupled with the lack of a tactile boundary between keys, the small size requires major readjustment.

During my first month with the Thor 420 RGB, I found myself constantly mistyping keys. I commonly hit multiple keys simultaneously or typed in the wrong row. After sticking with the keyboard and adjusting my typing style to the Thor 420 RGB, I've come to like it, primarily because of the tactile bump of the switches and the speed with which I can type. It takes some adjustment, but I've found myself typing faster on the Thor 420 RGB and quite enjoying the experience.

Overall, the design is beautiful but different from most other mechanical keyboards. The keys and their flat aesthetic will take some time getting used to. Even experienced typists will need time to readjust to the Thor 420 RGB. After adjustment, the keyboard feels great and can improve both the typing and gaming experience.

Specifications

The Thor 420 RGB uses low-profile mechanical blue switches. Genesis says the travel distance is 1.2 mm and that actuation force is a mere 45 grams. Response time is rated at 1 ms.

When using the keyboard, I noticed that the switches trigger very easily and have a light tactile bump that is perceptible but not distracting. The Content Slim Blue switches are very loud and sound like a machine gun during writing sessions. As such, office workers may want to look for something with quieter keys (MX Brown equivalents).

While gaming, the keyboard feels very responsive. The bump is more noticeable, as keys are not pressed in such rapid succession. It's miles better than my membrane keyboard; I don't second guess whether or not I've pressed a key.

The Thor 420 RGB, as its name implies, uses RGB backlighting. Each key has its own backlight, rather than the zone lighting used in cheap RGB keyboards. As such, every key can light up in one of several colors. I noticed it lacks the color variety of top-end RGB keyboards, but there are at least nine distinct colors. Using the software, users can set key backlights to any of the 16.7 million colors in the sRGB spectrum, though the keyboard admittedly makes it a bit hard to discern between these.

Additionally, the Thor 420 RGB comes with 19 backlight modes programmed into the keyboard itself. These can be toggled in software, but a nice feature is that there are hotkeys for cycling both RGB modes and colors on the keyboard. Because of this, the Thor 420 RGB is essentially plug-and-play, which is nice. The software is available if you want it, but the keyboard does not rely on it. The Thor 420 RGB also doesn't automatically install a software suite, which gives the users the choice as to whether or not they want to use Genesis' software (more on that below).

Most of the backlight modes will be familiar to users of RGB keyboards. It has the typical static color, color sweeps, and waterfall modes. There is quite a bit of variety, including a "raceway" mode (which lights up a trail of keys in a spiral pattern around the board) and two "explosion" modes (which launch colors in an outward circular pattern when a key is pressed). Most of the RGB modes are fun to explore, and there's enough variety here to match most people's preferences. There are also some preset modes for games like Call of Duty and League of Legends that only light up specific hotkeys.

The Thor 420 RGB also features n-key rollover, which allows the keyboard to register all keys pressed simultaneously without limit. In my testing, this is indeed the case; the Thor 420 RGB registered every single key when I mashed the entire keyboard in testing software. There is also no ghosting. The switches are rated for 50 million clicks, so the keyboard should last a while under heavy use.

Performance

As mentioned, the Thor 420 RGB has a fairly low actuation force of 45 grams and a shallow travel distance of 1.2 mm. For a mechanical keyboard, these numbers are on the low side of things. The result is that the Thor 420 RGB feels snappy but can be a bit "trigger-happy." The keys don't take much to fire off, which is a godsend when fast reflexes are needed and a nuisance when they aren't.

Typing and gaming on the Thor 420 RGB is a dream compared to my old Logitech K120 membrane keyboard. The K120 feels muddy and sluggish in comparison. Even other mechanical keyboards, like the Razer Blackwidow, don't feel quite as balanced; the Razer, for instance, feels cumbersome and heavy compared to the lighter switches and lower travel distance of the Thor 420 RGB.

That said, the Thor 420 RGB takes some getting used to, especially for typing. I found myself having to readjust my style to use a lighter touch. Otherwise, keys would press down too easily. I tend to rest my fingers on my keyboard during breaks in typing. That works fine on the other keyboards I've used that require more force to push a key down, but I found myself triggering keys by mistake.

After about a month of use, though, I found that I like the lower force needed for the Thor 420 RGB. I also found that my typing speed increased slightly from roughly 95 WPM to a solid 98 (100 on a good day). However, I tended to make a few more mistakes, mostly due to the smaller key size (see the section above for details).

Software

Genesis provides a software app for each of its peripherals. These can be downloaded at Genesis' website (genesis-zone.com) and appear to be customized in certain ways for each device.

Unfortunately for the Thor 420 RGB, the dedicated app is barebones. The only features available during our testing period (in version 1.2) are creating, importing, and exporting profiles and changing the backlight modes. Considering the illumination animations can be changed on the keyboard itself, there is very little use for the backlight mode. However, this setting does allow users to customize the backlight for each key and save this lighting to a particular profile. One of the five profiles can be automatically set when a related program is launched. This can be used to light up specific keys with preset colors when specific games are launched, which may be a nice quality-of-life feature for some.

The software does little else. As mentioned, it is a courtesy that Genesis doesn't automatically install this app when the keyboard is plugged in (unlike some other manufacturers). If users want to fully customize the coloration of their keyboard and switch to specific patterns when an app or game is launched, the app is a great tool. For all others who are happy with the presets installed to the keyboard itself, the app is unnecessary.

I would like to see the ability to set macros or rebind the keyboard via software in a future update. There are other keyboards around this price point that have this feature, and lots of gamers would surely appreciate the ability to tie macro setups to profiles. Hopefully, Genesis will enable this at a later date.

Verdict

Genesis hits a lot of high notes with the Thor 420 RGB low-profile mechanical keyboard. The peripheral is solidly built and looks gorgeous. Its RGB backlight is bright and reasonably colorful, and the per-key lighting is a nice bonus. Also, the fact that its backlight animations and presets can be controlled directly from the keyboard rather than through software is a major plus in my book.

However, I have some minor quibbles. For one, the key size is small. I understand that one of the main selling points of the Thor 420 RGB is its low profile and relatively compact design, but the small keys took a long time to adjust to. While my typing speed increased during my time with the keyboard, the number of mistakes I made (and still make) while typing also increased. I make fewer mistakes now than I did during the first two weeks of my review, but it is still a bit frustrating.

Lastly, the minimalist software feels incomplete. Genesis advertises the keyboard with a macro assignment feature, but the software doesn't provide one. If Genesis has some other version of the app hiding somewhere and I find it, I will update this review. As it stands in September 2020, the software is only good for setting up a customized backlight pattern. That's nice, but this keyboard should be able to do much more.

For the price (~€80/$93), there's a lot to like with the Genesis Thor 420 RGB. There are plenty of cheaper RGB mechanical keyboards out there, but those don't have the clean aesthetic and solid durability that the Thor 420 RGB has. This is a keyboard that easily hangs with the big players in the RGB mechanical keyboard world (and even outpaces a few in some areas).

[dailytechnologynews]

Downsizing from ITX to ATX...wait...what?! | My Cerberus X impressions (warning, LONG)

Case Photo

Product Configuration Page

NOTE - While his post has been essentially cross-posted, for /r/hardware I have adjusted the focus to be more on the case itself, and less on the "look at my PC build" aspects, in order to be more in line with the subreddit and rules. IF the mods still feel that this isn't quite right for this sub, I understand, and thank you for what you guys do :)

Contents:

Introduction

Purpose and Problems

Configuration and Results

Imperfections

Regrets?

Conclusion

What's Next?

Introduction

I recently switched from the NZXT H200i (mini-ITX, ~26L) to the Cerberus X (E-ATX, ~19L). After a few weeks of usage and testing I wanted to go ahead and give my thought process and results.

Purpose and Problems

I had been attempting to downsize my PC case while maintaining adequate thermals. More importantly, I wanted lower noise output as the case was going to be right next to my head.

I started with the NZXT H200i, which I bought at launch in December 2017. But that brought with it some unforeseen problems. The EVGA G2 PSU that I was using completely covered the bottom intake, while completely choking off the GPU from air. Temps were higher than expected and I tried several workarounds. If your PSU completely closes off the bottom intake, you're going to have a bad time. The GPU and PSU trap air between them, causing the GPU to cook itself. You need negative pressure and an open bottom filter to get that air out of there. And even then, the thermals/noise become only adequate. I wanted my PC to be as quiet as possible, and when a case is 2 feet from your head, you are going to hear fan noise.

To clarify, this is what I mean by fan noise. I've heard people tell me that the Noctua NF-A12x25 is silent up to ~1,500 RPM. Some claim it's quiet at up to 2,000 RPM. It's not. At least not when 2 feet from your head. I have to run mine at around 900 RPM for effectively total silence. So clearly, I have a more stringent definition of silence for my specific use case, so now you should have an idea of what I was going for.

The MSI GTX 1070 Ti Titanium that I was using, and it was running at 77-82° in World of Warcraft at up to 2,100 RPM on the stock fan curve. It ran cooler and quieter in other games, but still warmer/louder than I would like. There's something about WoW that pushes cards to a higher power draw despite not being a modern looker. Since this was my worse case scenario and the game that I play the most, it's what I'm using to measure temps with. Also, my case is above the forced air vent in my office, which is bi-directional. So in the summer it's fine with A/C blowing at it. In the winter? With heat blowing at it, it's a problem.

Enter the Cerberus X, manufactured and distributed in North America by Sliger. I had a few criteria for a replacement to the H200i, and they were:

Able to accommodate a wide range of parts, not too many compromises

White

Opaque panel so I didn't have to color-coordinate the interior

Ability to allow for good airflow without the need for liquid cooling

A small footprint so that it could remain on my desk

Support for ATX motherboards for the next round of upgrades

The Cerberus X appeared to be the solution to my problems.

Configuration and Results

I knew that I wanted to do air cooling exclusively, with a tower-style cooler. I opted to maintain my Cryorig H7 (which does fit, if you remove the included side bracket). This meant a few things. First, I'd need an SFX or SFX-L PSU, so I opted for the Corsair SF450 Platinum (I did try it in the H200i for about a week, and it didn't make an impact, surprisingly).

Then, I needed to come up with the case fans and layout. I opted for four Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM fans. I used two for the intake at the bottom, one as a front/bottom intake, and the last one to replace the stock fan on the H7. You can see the layout HERE. I apologize for the lack of cable management. The idea behind this fan layout is positive pressure (all 3 case fans pulling air in) plus convection cooling (heat rises), forcing most of the warm air either out the top vent or forced out the rear by the CPU cooler.

Finally, I needed to swap the GPU. The MSI GTX 1070 Ti Titanium was 140mm tall, but with the power connectors, it went past the 154mm allowed for the side panel. So I got the MSI RTX 2060 Gaming Z. This would be a sufficient side grade as GPU performance wasn't an issue for me. The rest of the system specs:

Intel Core i7-7700k

EVGA Z270 Stinger ITX motherboard

G-Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3000 CL 15

Samsung 960 Evo 1TB NVME

And that's literally it aside from the aforementioned PSU and GPU. I really could have gone with a smaller case, but I'll be switching to an ATX platform later this year or early next. Just getting ready.

First I ran the system with the MSI Titanium. I wanted to see if it cooled down. This was more like an open-air test bench as the side panel could not be put on. Temps dropped from a peak of 82° to 67°. Fan RPM plummeted. It was quiet. Mission accomplished. Time to put in the 2060, put on the side panel, and see how bad it gets.

The new card? 63° under full, sustained loads. I can get it to spike to 65° if the home heating is going full blast, but the card quickly knocks it back to 63°. Fan RPM is typically around or under 1,200 RPM, with an occasional push to near 1,300. It's quiet. In fact, it has one minor issue. For lighter gaming loads the temps will on rare occasion drop into the low 50s and the fans will eventually cut off, so you can hear them spin back up briefly when the temp surpasses 60°. But it's a short burst and not very loud.

My next concern was CPU temps. The setup that I have greatly favors the GPU. Using an extremely conservative fan curve on the Cryorig H7, gaming temps tend to be in the 50s (I can get into the 60s in Forza Horizon 3 and Rise of the Tomb Raider). This is a few degrees warmer than the H200, but nothing to complain about. Using Handbrake, my most demanding CPU task, it fluctuates between 67° and 70° C. That's with the Noctua NF-A12x25 attached to the H7 running at only 1,335 RPM. This thing is silent! (CPU is not delidded, but I'm also running at stock speeds).

Imperfections

No case is perfect, so here I'm going to mention ALL of the flaws of the Cerberus X.

First, it's not a mass-produced case. As such, the price is higher than what a similar mass-produced case would potentially cost. However, there's no mass-produced competition so while the price is high, we can't say it's a poor value for what it gives.

Next is the overall design. It is not filtered (though you can order compatible filters), so dust will be a concern. I'm going to watch this and see how bad it gets, and if necessary, I'll move to the filters down the road.

Another issue with the design is that there is almost zero thought given to cable management. Basically, everything was put into making this as compact as possible while housing larger parts with fewer compromises. Yes, you can use an ATX mobo, an ATX PSU, a 280mm AIO, and a fairly large GPU. But there's no room between the rear-side panel and the mobo tray. Absolutely none. So you'll need to get creative with the cable management. No big deal for me (as you saw from the mess in the interior photo), but those who opt for the windowed panel will take issue with this to some degree.

While the case supports E-ATX, ATX, and ITX, there's no standoff holes pre-drilled for MicroATX. So keep that in mind if buying this case over the non-X version, which supports both MicroATX and ITX.

Finally, the top vent/panel. In white, I can see what look like black dots along the top, because the paint job is less than perfect. Basically in many of the holes, at the edge of where the hole meets the top, there's a small chip in the paint. This is in the majority of the holes and from where I sit it's quite obvious, and you can see it HERE (zoom in if needed), though it's more pronounced in person. I suspect this will be an issue with the white and red versions, but fine for the black and grey. I'm ok with it, but if you're OCD, get the black-top option for your white or red case.

In summary, the flaws are price, lack of included filtering, lack of included cable management options, lack of MicroATX support, and chips in the top white (and likely red as well) panel.

Conclusion

I outlined above what I was aiming for in a case. The Cerberus X met or exceeded every requirement. The flaws that it has either don't impact me, or can be mitigated through reasonable measures (separate filters, black top). Every time I purchase a product there's some form of compromise that I have to make. Not this time. After 4 cases in 3 years, I think I've finally found the successor to my Lian-Li K10B, which I used for 7 years (May 2008 - August 2015).

I highly recommend the Cerberus X for users who want an ATX tower that is extremely compact, won't make you compromise on every piece of hardware like an ITX chassis would, and offers solid thermals. Oh, and...so long as you can fit it within your budget ($235 - $360, depending on configuration).

[metalgearkong]

Resident Evil 2 (PS4/Xbox One/PC) - Review

Developed by Capcom, released January 25th, 2019

The Resident Evil series was first to put the “survival horror” genre on the map. The very first game released in 1996, surviving the zombie filled Spencer Mansion, immediately became a revolutionary and iconic experience in the video game industry. Resident Evil 2 in 1998 was a well received sequel that further popularized the series and the genre. With the series changing and evolving over the generations, it took a more action-oriented tone. Resident Evil 6 was the peak of the over the top action phase the franchise transformed into, and the worst reviewed in the main series to date. Fans became extremely vocal and specific about how Resident Evil, their beloved video game series, had become unidentifiable, and needed to change. Capcom heard player feedback, and course corrected strongly with the extremely subdued, suspenseful, disturbing, immersive Resident Evil 7, which fans any myself adored.

Resident Evil 2 2019 continues Capcom’s streak of making games that returns the series to its roots. Remakes and re-released have been big business for this current generation of gaming, but I was skeptical about how faithful the Resident Evil 2 remake would be. Unless you’ve been boarded up in R.P.D. for the past few weeks, you may have heard how outstanding Resident Evil 2 turned out. From the graphics to the faithfully recreated maps, puzzles, retained difficulty, and modernization of the gameplay, Resident Evil 2 yet again is a smash hit. Not only is this already a contender for the best game of 2019, this may be my very favorite incarnation of a Resident Evil game of all time. While its level of commitment to the original does inherit some of the 1998′s imperfections, Resident Evil 2 stands as an industry standard on how to remake or re-imagine an old classic.

We chose to play as either Clair Redfield or Leon S. Kennedy, both with similar campaigns which overlap briefly on occasion. Whether you pick one protagonist over the other, the game is largely the same. Something I was worried about was the 3rd person camera angle, and the ability to shoot and move at the same time. Hearing about these features conjured bad memories of the action-heavy Resident Evil 6, notorious for being too fast paced and completely lacking in horror and suspense. Resident Evil 2 may have similar gameplay, but major tweaks keep this game from making the player feel too empowered. Any movement whatsoever while aiming greatly drops your firearm’s accuracy, so holding still while shooting is basically the only way to do it. The camera follows the protagonist closely, and nearly every room and corridor of R.P.D. is shrouded in darkness, barely illuminated by emergency lights and the beam of your flashlight. Somehow Resident Evil 2 has the best gameplay of the series, while still retaining nearly every shred of suspense from the original games. It’s the best of both worlds and I’m honestly shocked how well Capcom pulled it off.

The game begins with extremely limited inventory space, but can be grown over time by finding hip pouches. This is crucial as you’ll want to carry as many items with you as possible each time you navigate the halls and corners of the dark police station. There’s nothing more frustrating (in a good way) than finding an item and not being able to bring it with you because your inventory is already full. This retains gameplay from the old games that makes the series just as much of a strategy game as it is an action game. Resident Evil 2 retains the universal item boxes as well, usually found in save rooms safe from monsters. One of my favorite parts about this remake are key features that make the game less of a chore to play without sacrificing the atmosphere or suspense. For example, your map has always been your best friend in a survival horror game, and in Resident Evil 2, the game will indicate which rooms have had all of its items collected or not, and will label items on the map if you came across it, but didn’t pick it up yet. This is incredibly helpful for finding all the items in the game but also gives substantial peace of mind as you look at your map always wondering if you’ve truly found everything that can be found in any given room or hallway. It completely eliminates the “backtracking out of desperation.”

Saving is much more convenient as well, as in any difficulty short of the hardest, saving can be done as many times as you’d like. I do miss the Ink Ribbons from the past, as it added yet another layer of strategy to the original games, but I will take this level of convenience over having to suffer through the hardest mode in the game (when its already difficult enough). Ammunition is still very limited, and even simple zombies can take anywhere from 3-6 head shots before they are truly defeated. Zombies lumber around and moan more organically than ever before, and even with the added mobility of the characters, the small rooms still mean you’ll be grappled and bitten by a zombie more often than you’d think or care to admit. It makes all those “how did they not see it coming?” moments in zombie movies or TV shows much more understandable when you have to experience it for yourself. Most of the times zombies will even get back up after being defeated, requiring another 3-6 head shots to permanently kill them.

A great new twist are how we use knives and grenades. If you are carrying one of these items, you can trade using that item when being hurt instead of taking the damage. It’s like a safety net to keep you from damage if you foolishly get to close to a zombie, licker, or zombie dog, and I love the new way these items are used. The biggest and baddest enemy of them all is Mr. X, an Umbrella B.O.W. as persistent as a S.O.B. This does lead to a slightly negative aspect of the game I have, as he can follow you into almost every room except save rooms, meaning you have to run around losing him if he’s in an area you need to focus on (i.e. solve a puzzle or collect items). The sound design is fantastic as you can hear him through the R.P.D. stomping on the wooden and tile floors. Capcom wisely changed the sound of his footsteps if Mr. X enters the same room you are in, queuing you into getting the F out of there. He can make the second half of exploring R.P.D. a bit more tedious than it needs to be, which is why I find him almost as annoying as I do terrifying.

Claire and Leon’s campaigns do slightly differ, but not as much as some people may make you think. While you do explore the same levels, fight the same bosses, and solve most of the same puzzles, items are in slightly different places, and certain areas of the game are only seen by one character or the other. Each campaign also has a guest hero, who we get to play as in exclusive sections unique to each campaign. For example, Claire has a small scenario playing as a little girl escaping a creepy orphanage, and Leon has Ada Wong also running from Mr. X in the sewers. But, I do recommend beating both campaigns as this is how you get to see the true ending of the game. Plus, the game is so damn fun and well made, its easily worth two plays anyway.

Nearly every aspect of Resident Evil 2 is executed perfectly. From the graphics to the lighting, to the difficulty, to the strategy aspects, nearly every part of the game is a major win. Capcom did the world right with a reimagining that not only is great as a stand alone game, but is also a faithful and compelling recreation of the 1998 classic. Game studios across the world should take note on how to do survival horror well, including how to properly pay homage to a series fan favorite. Resident Evil 2 does become annoying with one or two puzzle areas, and Mr. X isn’t always a warm welcome, but with how intelligently the vast majority of the game was pulled off, it’s easy for the imperfections to sink below how awesome the rest of the game is. I can’t wait to see what Capcom does next for their Resident Evil series, whether it be a remake of Resident Evil 3, or make an entirely new entry with a Resident Evil 8. Both are exciting prospects, and I have confidence they will do it right.

9/10

[navigatorvega]

My thoughts on the 999 port in The Nonary Games. Warning that because this is a port of my favorite game in one of, if not my most, favorite franchises in fiction, I will be going into detail so it will be long. VERY long. (Spoilers below)

So last night I finished up yet another playthrough of 999, this time in the new TNG port. To get to the end quick, I’ll say that it is excellent and no doubt will be the way I play the game from now on. 

The dub is excellent, with the returning voices being much better than previously. While not necessarily bad, I will say that Wendee Lee’s VLR Clover and Rena Strober’s ZTD Akane were the weakest in their respective first games so their improvement is especially noticeable and appreciated. As for Evan Smith as Junpei, my god. He did a good job in ZTD, but I was very concerned with how he would handle 999 Junpei just because of how different the portrayal needs to be. It would seem that those fears were unfounded however, as he is easily, easily the standout of the cast. Every layer of Junpei is perfect and there’s nary a line that is done below excellence. As for the new cast, they’re very well done. Richard Epcar’s Ace is great, though some of his lines near the end seem to be straining his throat (though considering he’s in his 60s that’s not surprising) and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed that he wasn’t voiced by Michael McConnohie, whom I’ve always imagined his voice sounding like (and as that’s not exactly a fair judgement, I won’t fault it for that, just something I needed to say). However, I will say that the weakest of the cast is Snake’s voice actor (who to my knowledge is still unknown). His portrayal is flat and while not robotic, sounds very emotionless. However, he does have his moments, most notably in the Safe (or as it’s now known, the Zero Lost) ending (Side note: I will still call it the Safe ending from now on. Call me a nostalgia whore, but it just sounds so much better to me than Zero Lost and has less syllables to boot); in it you can truly feel Snake’s absolute rage and despair at his sister’s death and it is most definitely a dub saver to have Snake’s most defining moment in the original game to be done so well. As for the others, they all range from good to excellent, so I won’t say much about them here. 

One big flaw with the dub though is the flashback scenes: You see, instead of getting other voice actors and actresses with more experience playing children, they had all of the voice actors retain their characters and just try to make their voices sound higher and it does not work at all. Akane sounds almost no different and the guys in the cast just sound like they’re trying too hard to be kids. This is especially notable with Junpei’s scene in the end credits where he sounds far too deep to be playing a twelve year old and it is sadly Evan Smith’s biggest blemish with the character. As for how the Japanese handled it, I won’t know until I play through the game in Japanese in the future.

But even if you don’t like the English voice cast and don’t want to listen to the Japanese, there is still hope as, much like previously, you can turn off the voices independently of the music and sfx, giving it a feeling more like the original game (though, sadly, the nostalgic beeps from the DS version are nowhere to be found and it’s highly unlikely to receive any patches or dlc to fix that...). I did try this out and the effect still works rather well as the game’s sound arrangement hasn’t been altered too much, so it retains the feeling of playing the original.

Now then, onto the second biggest change of the port: the flowchart. This was by far my biggest reason for buying the game (besides me being Zero Escape trash of course). Though I was curious how it would be handled; the original game was built in such a way that a branching chart would make no sense, but the one it has doesn’t appear to work either. However, they found an excellent solution using two things: one is a line that highlights where your path has been up to that point. By simply jumping to a point, the line will adjust itself to a new pathway. If you jump forward, the line moves from where it last was, meanwhile if you jump backward, the line gets erased so that it’s clear what path you’re on. And, if you skip past a set of doors it will automatically assume that you took the door that would lead to the Safe ending, which makes sense given that the only requirement in this port to reach that ending is to go through the correct doors (no more having to remember to look at the safe after you’ve completed the puzzle, but before leaving). The second thing is having keys and locks attached to various paths, allowing you and the game to both keep track of what you’ve done thus far to ensure what specific ending you’re getting. My big issue with the lock and key system though, is that they’re color coded, which while useful, is very spoilerific for the first time player (more on that in a bit). Overall, this is the best addition to the game that drastically reduces tedium, though at the cost of making the game the most remarkably short in the trilogy.

Now, onto the most interesting change of them all: the Novel and Adventure modes. Now, as we all know, the original 999 was made for the DS, which had two screens. It was one of the few games on the system to take advantage of that for more than just touch screen gimmicks. The big twist in the end is that Akane is who we’ve been controlling as she’s accessing the morphogenetic field to contact Junpei 9 years in the future. This was cleverly hidden by making it appear that dialogue took place on the top screen, while the narration took place on the bottom screen; in actuality, it was really that the present (or Akane’s future if you prefer) took place in the top screen, while the past (or Akane’s present) took place on the bottom screen and she simply was describing in detail what she saw, rather than being a simple narrator. This was an unrivaled twist that made 999′s story stick out as one of the most unique stories of the decade. The only problem? It relied on two screens to work. TNG is for the PS4, the Vita, and PCs, all of which only have one screen. This posed a hurdle, for obvious reasons, and was one of the biggest concerns among fans as to how this port would work. The solution the devs came up with? There are two modes of play. By pressing a button, the player can switch between two viewpoints:

Adventure - Dialogue exclusively, with new text to have the characters describe what they’re doing, as well as Junpei’s inner thoughts newly added to take over for narration. Told entirely with text boxes.

Novel - The original text from the DS version (though with the new Adventure mode dialogue being put among it now), shown as a slight change to the borders of the screen, with the text placed freely in front of character’s faces.

Now, the problem with this system is that the twist relies on the swapping between Akane’s “narration” and the spoken dialogue. They tried to remedy this by forcing the player to experience certain moments in one particular mode, however, this really isn’t done as often as necessary. Indeed, I’d say this is the weakest change, as the player is not going to want to play in Adventure mode; even with the changes to accommodate no narration, it can still be easy for a player to not understand what just happened on-screen, as since it’s a visual novel all characters are shown in mostly static portraits, rather than full animation. However, if one plays exclusively in Novel mode, a few problems arise:

1 - The text covers up characters, giving it the appearance that they are eating the text at times. This is especially bad during certain CGs, since the character(s)’ faces are usually so high up that the text covers up their eyes and mouths the moment anything is said or narrated.

2 - Adventure mode is the default. After something, like say, a puzzle room happens, the text will switch back from Novel to Adventure. This is problematic since, if you’re somewhat forgetful like me, you can accidentally skip large amounts of narration, forcing you to go back and reread what was said, which can really take you out of the scene. It would be nice if there was an option to set which mode you want as default, but such a thing doesn’t exist, so this gripe goes unanswered.

3 - The purpose of the two screens was to make the player switch back and forth between Junpei and Akane without revealing that they were doing so until the time was right. However, if you spend time exclusively in one mode, you are only viewing it from one perspective, getting rid of the original feel of the narrative. Meanwhile, if you swap between the two frequently, the tedium and constant need to do so, not only makes the narrative harder to get into, but it also draws attention to itself, when the original intent that made the twist work was the subtly of it. Either way, the story suffers for it.

Now, this isn’t a complete issue; as long as you play in Novel mode and make sure you switch back immediately after a puzzle room, you still experience the story for the most part as it was meant to be. I just feel that it could have been done better. 

If they wanted to keep the system, they really should have made the required Novel sections far more frequent, as you can skip large portions of the game that are aided immensely by it. I however think it would have been done better had they done it like this: Have text boxes represent Junpei’s time, and then have the screen gray out and have narration/Akane’s POV appear similar to Sigma’s thoughts in VLR, without any need for swapping modes. This would retain the original intent of the dual screen twist, while making it unobtrusive and allowing the player to still get the full experience. As I said, the system still works, but it could have been done much better with some slight tweaking.

One last, minor gripe: the last puzzle changed. It’s no longer upside-down sudoku (for obvious reasons) and is instead some weird mix and match thing that involves switching between two modes. Obviously the point to it was to mimic the effect of the upside-down sudoku using the games new mode swap system. But, much like the two modes in the main game, it’s pointless to switch to one of the modes, since the other has all of the information and doesn’t do anything other than make the interface slightly awkward. Additionally, the games explanation for it is so convoluted that the only thing confusing about it is figuring out what Junpei’s trying to say; the solution itself is laughably easy. Like I said, minor complaint there.

All in all, I think that this is the best way to play 999....if you’ve played the original already. As mentioned earlier, the flowchart spoils a lot with the way the lock and key system works, outright telling you where you have to go and unlocking where the keys to reach a certain ending are after reaching the final door that would lead to the ending rather than giving them all at once after you’ve gone through all of the doors. This on top of the mode swapping drawing so much attention to itself and Adventure mode not being all that clear if you don’t know what’s supposed to go on in each scene make it so that I think the people who will get the most out of it are people who’ve have already played the original version of the game and who just want to replay it with less tedium. In this way, the original game is still very much a must own for newbies, whereas TNG is a must own for fans of the series who just want to re-experience the magic.

If I sounded negative, please forgive me; as I said, I love this port and it will likely be the way I replay the game from now on unless I’m feeling very nostalgic and want to pick up my DS again. It’s just that as this is my favorite entry in the series, it is very special to me, so even the slightest problems bother me immensely. If you haven’t already, please pick it up and give it a try; what bothered me may not be a problem for you, so don’t let my opinions influence yours. It is very much worth your time and money if you are a fan (or even if you’re not; if you read this then the spoilers really shouldn’t be an issue for you lol).

[heuschkelkei]

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[cheatgamesonlineblog]

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Basketball Stars Hack Cheat - Basketball Stars Gold and Cash

Basketball Stars Hack Mod – Cheat Basketball Stars Gold and Cash

You should know that this new Basketball Stars Hack Cheat is ready for you and you will manage to have an improved game time if you decide to take full use of it. In this guide I am going to offer you an insight over this game and after that I will jump into how this Basketball Stars Cheat works. I hope you will start using this tool right away.

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Without them you won’t have much success. You will be confronted with a lot waiting time. For many gamer this is very annoying and unnecessary. Therefore some of us came together and started to develop a Basketball Stars hack apk, which can generate free Gold and Cash on every Android and iOS smartphone and tablet. Right now it works perfectly well on every platform. Only a working internet connection is required to run the hack. The whole process only takes around a minute, but the effect is tremendous. It saves you so much money and time. While everyone else is taking a huge effort in order to get Gold and Cash, you will get them all for free. We strongly advise against spending your hard-earned money on Gold and Cash. Why pay more when there are hacks and cheats to get you all the Gold and Cash you want (for free)! Want more Gold and Cash on Basketball Stars? But you don’t want to spend your real money on the game all the time? We’ll show you how to get all the in-game currencies for free with our mod.

Who We Are? Our team of software developers has finally reverse engineered the most sought-after Basketball Stars cheats. They have decided to give them out to the public. Many months have been spent trying to debug a way to get free Gold and Cash, and it is now complete. Here is basically a glitch that works on current devices running iOS and Android operating systems. As of today, there has been 0 known bans, due to our extraordinary anti-ban technology. You do not need a rooted device or APK to run this, as everything is running through our servers.

Why are the Gold and Cash so important in Basketball Stars?

With them you will simply have much more fun in the game. You can get unlock all game items. Unfortunately, this games are like “Pay To Win”. This means your chances of winning are much higher if you are willing to spend money. That’s why we developed a Basketball Stars Hack that you can use anytime, anywhere. The hack gives you the unique opportunity to get all the items and expensive in-game Gold and Cash in the game for free. All you have to do is click on the button below and you’re ready to go. Choose for yourself how many free Gold and Cash you would like to get. Within a few minutes you will get them. In our tutorial we explained how easy it works.

Features of the Basketball Stars Hack Online Tool:

– Get free unlimited Gold and Cash – Works on Android and iOS,Windows Devices. – No Download or Jailbreak necessary – No risk of being banned in the game – Use it anytime and anywhere – We update the hack almost daily

A few words about Basketball Stars Hack and what are the steps you have to make: 1. Click On “Access Hack Here” button below! 2. Write your username or gamestore email and choose platform you are using at the moment iOS or Android,Windows. In some cases you can use even fb if you are connected that way. Also, if you have username (player918310) you can type that username if you didn’t change it before. 3. When you put your game information click Continue and wait a second, you will be connected to Basketball Stars server. It will connect you to the apache server instantly because it works with algorithm of the last generation. 4. After you are connected to Basketball Stars Hack port, you have to choose amount of Gold and Cash you want to generate and wait to be generated! 5. Now, you have to confirm that you are human and you are not here to abuse this Basketball Stars Trick, that means you have to complete an offer from the list.That is all, run your game and have fun! The tutorial above however shows you how to get Unlimited Gold and Cash by using Basketball Stars Cheat. This Basketball Stars hack is brand new and works extremely well — no crashes and errors. It has never been so easy before, simply follow the instructions and step by step you will finish the generation process. You would be getting your free Resources. Approximately it takes a few minutes, so I can bet that it’s at least 100 times easier than playing this game for a really long time and collecting Gold and Cash. Should I use this Basketball Stars Mod? Well, if you want to become the best player in your favorite game and get unlimited Gold and Cash? I think your answer will be YES! It would be nice not to spam We recommend to all players to use this cheat Basketball Stars cleverly, that means, two or three times a day maximum. Thank you for understanding! On Cheatsonlinegames.com we also have other Cheats for you where you can also find premium cheats. If you’re looking for normal tips and tricks for the games, you can check out our website. Even more useful tips and tricks!

[waynekelton]

GWENT Tips - How to get started on mobile

It’s already past its one-year anniversary on PC and has been through significant changes but Gwent is finally here on mobile. It is such a timely and refreshing CCG and, sure, it’s a beloved IP and has an incredible amount of visual effects and polish. It’s pretty and feature-rich upon launch, what with resounding audio effects, detailed orchestral scoring and flashy premium card animations.

Gwent is a powerhouse because in its innermost guts, the game’s structure is radically different from the competition. It isn’t a battle per se but rather a power struggle between two players to keep a higher total across three rounds. Card advantage is incredibly important, and the drawing and hand management mechanics almost minimize the RNG of top-decking entirely. It has a massive cardpool with tantalizing synergies across the various factions. In this guide we’ll be covering basic play, deckbuilding strategies, its currency system, and lastly some best practices to outmanoeuvre the game’s monetisation scheme.

GWENT Mobile Tips

How do I play Gwent?

What are the microtransactions like?

What are my progression rewards?

How do the different factions work?

What is a Gwentsday?

How does the Arena work, and why should I bother?

What are the optional cosmetics like?

Tell me about seasonal play and limited formats.

How should I spend my time in-game to maximise my rewards?

What makes Gwent different from the competition?

What’s the big fuss about Thronebreaker and where is it?

GWENT Android version?

How do I play GWENT?

GWENT is available as a free-to-play game on iOS and Android (and PC).

A match of Gwent is a best-of-three rounds. The active player plays one card from their hand per turn and resolves its effect, then passes play to their opponent. Most cards are units which add their power to its owner’s total. To win a round, simply have the greatest power total when your opponent passes. To enliven things, Gwent’s draw structure is rather unique: 10 cards for each player to start, then three additional draws at the start of the second and third rounds. There are mulligans for each round, so decks are very consistent.

What are GWENT's micro-transactions like?

Relatively tasteful and par for the course. There are introductory specials which are the absolute best bang for your buck, but beside the cash shop Ore is used to craft ‘kegs’ which are card packs. Scraps are for creating specific cards and are gained normally but also by ‘milling’ or converting unwanted cards. Lastly, meteorites are purely cosmetic and makes a given card ‘premium’ by adding an animation to it. Because kegs made through in-game currency are locked to a specific set, your best bet to get specific cards through crafting. The meta has been pretty unpredictable so far in this past year, so don’t spend too quickly.

GWENT progression rewards

Each match won gives ore. Each level gives reward keys, which are used in the reward book to unlock skins and oodles of in-game currency. In the beginning, the game treats you to a sweet honeymoon phase, showering you with keys which jump-start whichever dream deck you aim for. The biggest one is hitting level 60, thereafter barrels will always contain an extra rare. This is just one of many ways Gwent rewards experience over expense. (Time over cash). It has a rush of freebies which should be spent advisedly.

GWENT Factions

Each faction has an exclusive pool of cards and leader abilities, as well as a few key mechanics that cement their unique identity. The Northern Realms are all about a generalist approach, with about equal options for buffing friendlies and debuffing the opposition, with some utility thrown in. The Scoia’Tael are the non-human sentients, representing the mystical races like elves and dwarves along with some more exotic denizens.

They have special bonuses for diverse unit sub-types and a heavy reliance on their unique Trap cards, setting up giant reactions to enemy moves. The Skellige are the ghoulish and morbid faction, with plenty of self-sacrifice and graveyard interactions. Death is just another resource to them, and their decks tend to be strongest at the finish line. Monsters are dynamic, swelling their ranks and devouring each other. They have the biggest creatures and the largest swarms.

What is a Gwentsday?

Every Wednesday is Gwentsday and has bonus experience for every match. The game is always doing timed promotions like this, either for different factions or else to promote a new set or season start. Basically just either follow them on social media or simply peruse the landing page in-game for a notice about any time-sensitive bonuses.

How does the Arena work, and why should I bother?

The arena is Gwent’s draft format wherein you build a deck by selecting cards one at a time from a batch of offerings. The resulting deck, which is assembled without respect to provision costs, is used until you lose three matches or win nine. At the end of the run, you get a payout depending on how well you did. The cost of entry is a little higher than the price of a keg, but a keg is also part of the guaranteed reward bundle for participating, so the Arena is worthwhile if you like the creativity and flexibility required by the draft format.

It takes a lot of experience and familiarity with the entire card pool to draft quickly and confidently.

GWENT deckbuilding tips

First, consider your starting faction and leader ability. These should be selected based on the cards already unlocked and personal playstyle preferences. Each deck must have at least twenty-five cards, twenty-three units and be under the provision limit. Stronger or more distinctive cards have higher provision costs, as displayed in the bottom right. The deck editor has robust filters for sorting which cards you want. Use the search function to hone in on specific keywords and synergies you want, and craft a few clutch additions, and you’ll have a custom deck in no time.

What are the optional cosmetics like?

There are leader skins, which alter your commander’s outfit and appearance. Premium card versions display a short looping animation, really makes the cards pop and come alive. Player avatar icons are unlocked either through the reward book or else exclusively through achievements. There are also avatar borders, card backs and battleground skins as well. Please note that most if not all of these are unlocked through consistent play and doled as rewards for highly specific achievements. Animated cards are premium and can be purchased at-will, but the more prestigious cosmetics simply depend on long-term investment, though a few glamorous ones are also sold directly for pure cash.

GWENT seasonal play and limited formats

Each month has its own special format with a unique twist on the default rules. The current season, for example, gives every unit Resilience and keeps it around from round-to-round unless destroyed. Simple to read and understand the change, but it has massive implications for deckbuilding. Each season has its own unique reward and title unlocks, so going deep into a given season is much better than splitting your time evenly throughout the year. The rule shifts in this optional formal create a side meta which is never the same twice.

How should I spend my time in-game to maximize my rewards?

Login and do your daily quests. Also, plot a direct course between your existing collection and the next card or two you want. This means researching deck archetypes and making a budget to streamline the path between your current setup and the next best thing. Have a decent deck for each of the factions, but be as specific and focused as possible.

For the most bang for your buck, simply imitate the leaders or a specific synergy. Invest in some high quality neutral cards, like the Witchers, who are all conditionally strong and can be slotted into a variety of decks.

GWENT vs. Hearthstone vs. everyone else

Theme, progression and gameplay. For any Reiner Knizia fans out there, Gwent owes a good bit of its heart to Blue Moon. Even though a single match of Gwent doesn’t take more turns than Hearthstone, it feels so much more tense because of the structure. Every single card matters immensely. Card advantage is king, and efficiency is the dominant paradigm. Deckbuilding is incredibly intense, and matches often come down to a single decision.

Progression is generous, with the game offering in-game currency for daily logins, for played matches, level-ups and achievements. It has more systems in place to unlock cards for free than almost any other game out there, except for perhaps Eternal. Lastly, for anyone with a bit of familiarity or fondness for the Witcher books or games, this game is full of flavor text and allusions. All of the major characters are cards and their characters have been well-translated into in game effects.

What’s the big fuss about Thronebreaker and where is it?

Thronebreaker is Gwent’s standalone single-player expansion. It has matches spanning a pretty long campaign with cel-shaded graphics and voice acting as well as an original storyline with some choose-your-own adventure flavor. It came out a little over a year ago and is a premium companion game to Gwent, though it serves as a robust introduction. It’s still worth recommending for PC users but has no sign of making the leap to mobile anytime soon.

Do you have any tips of your own, or further question about GWENT? Let us know in the comments!

GWENT Tips - How to get started on mobile published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[entergamingxp]

Could the next-gen Switch use Nvidia DLSS AI upscaling? • Eurogamer.net

That rumour didn’t last long. Stories last week suggested that the long awaited Switch Pro would arrive in 2020, with Nintendo bringing the fight to the next-gen Microsoft and Sony console launches. It all sounded rather unlikely and Nintendo was quick to dismiss the story. The current Switch range continues to sell relentlessly and there’s no substantial commercial reason for Nintendo to release a more powerful model quite yet – nor to go head-to-head with PS5 and Series X with what would almost certainly be less capable hardware. However, the firm’s partnership with Nvidia is likely to continue and three years on from the Switch’s release, plans must surely be afoot for a next-gen system. On top of that, looking at how Nvidia’s tech is evolving presents some mouthwatering opportunities for a new, more powerful Nintendo console hybrid.

Expectations should be tempered if the plan is to produce a more powerful console and nothing more. Fundamentally, compute power in a mobile device is limited by the need to accommodate a relatively small processor running at relatively minimal clock speeds. If we get anything close to the kind of performance we’ve enjoyed from PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, we should consider that a minor miracle for a system derived from a processor designed primarily for mobile gaming. However, with that said, a new Switch based on more recent Nvidia technology opens the door to the firm’s impressive AI upscaling techniques – and I decided to put them to the test in scenarios designed to more accurately represent Switch-level gaming.

I attacked this challenge on two fronts. First of all, AI upscaling technology is already available in a Tegra X1-based product – the newly revised Switch Android TV, a tubular revamp of the powerful streamer that Nvidia continues to support and upgrade. AI upscaling is exclusive to the new versions of the Shield, and works on any video content running on the machine – the only limitation being that anything above 30fps content is not supported. And this led me to wonder: what if I fed the Shield with Switch capture? How would that look?

I also thought about approaching this from the opposite direction. We’ve been quietly but cautiously excited by the DLSS AI upscaling tech found in recent games – it’s a vastly improved proposition over some already impressive implementations in key PC games. As we’ve already showcased, Wolfenstein Youngblood performs brilliantly under DLSS and in some scenarios, the upscaled version looks cleaner than the native presentation. So what if we dropped resolution to the Switch version’s max 720p and used DLSS performance mode on the lowest settings? How would this compare with the Switch version?

Our video breakdown in testing out AI upscaling of various flavours. Can machine learning work effectively in improving next-gen Switch visuals?

The reason I’m excited about DLSS is remarkably straightforward. We want to push visual features to the next level with technologies like real-time ray tracing, but we don’t want to lose too much performance for the privilege. Fundamentally, why use GPU resources to paint every single pixel when AI upscaling can ‘infer’ a lot of those pixels instead? Wolfenstein Youngblood and other freshly baked DLSS titles are showing some remarkably impressive results and the tech has a lot of potential. If the performance uptick is substantial and the quality is there, it could also be deployed in a mobile device where compute resources are extremely limited.

Instead of using DLSS to mitigate a performance loss from high-end features like ray tracing, instead we’d be using it purely to improve image quality – and it’s no secret that Switch’s most ambitious games do tend to be rather blurry, a factor of the low resolutions required in many cases. Even first-party Nintendo titles are affected here – Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Odyssey use dynamic resolution scaling and often reside in 720p territory. Meanwhile, the UE4-powered Yoshi’s Crafted World can even hit a minimum of 576p in docked mode. In the age of the 4K TV, docked play can look a little lacklustre in some cases.

The first order of business was to check out the new Shield’s AI upscaling technology. As far as we know, the latest Tegra X1 doesn’t feature the tensor cores designed for accelerated deep learning functions, so the process would likely be running on the X1’s standard CUDA cores instead – which lie dormant otherwise during video playback. Full-fat DLSS reconstructs images based on a training algorithm derived from super-sampled images taken from each supported game. I’d imagine that Shield’s AI upscaling is something very different – and this is borne out by the results I received.

If I had to guess, I’d suggest that the Shield AI upscaling blows up and attempts to intelligently sharpen the image, letting that extra ‘detail’ bleed out onto a 4K canvas. You may see from the Doom 3 and Dragon Quest Builders 2 images below (upscaled from native 1080p) that there is more detail resolved – but at the same time, I achieved very similar results from a Photoshop upscale and sharpen filter. I also tested the scaler by comparing the original Switch capture to the Shield’s output, downscaled back to 1080p. Here, the differences were very difficult to notice. If there were any improvements they disappeared in the double-scaling process (1080p to 4K back down to 1080p again).

There is value to the Shield’s AI upscaler (a quick google reveals that some people are genuinely amazed by the results) but it’s clearly not designed to process game footage. Jaggies become jaggier when upscaled and sharpened to 4K, while there simply isn’t enough core detail at low resolution games to deliver any kind of meaningful improvement. I don’t think there is much relation to Nvidia’s PC-based DLSS here as while quality varies on its older implementations, it always adds extra detail – something that isn’t happening with the Shield’s algorithm. There can be some big differences in TV and movie content, but I do feel that the sharpening halo artefacts are just too strong, even on the lowest setting.

However, I am excited about the potential for Nvidia’s DLSS technology in a future mobile platform because the results from my testing with Wolfenstein Youngblood are quite remarkable. Previously, we’ve run the game maxed at high resolutions and found that without ray tracing features enabled, a 260/$299 RTX 2060 can run the game at DLSS 4K at 70 to 90 frames per second. The visual quality is just superb too to the point where I think that if DLSS is an option to you on this title, you’d be nuts not to use it.

But what happens when you run Youngblood at 720p on the lowest settings in DLSS performance mode? In effect, what if we try to make the PC version run as close to Switch settings as possible? This is a fascinating test because in this scenario, the PC version is rendering a framebuffer that’s just 640×360 in size – a 50 per cent resolution scale and well into the kind of pixel-count ballpark employed by the Switch version. I’ll let the screenshots directly below tell the story, but it’s fascinating to see how well the DLSS version retains detail and easily outstrips the image quality delivered by the Switch version. DLSS upscaling isn’t just about getting more from higher-end hardware – it could play an important role on a mobile chipset too.

By switching things up to 1080p DLSS and engaging medium settings, the GPU load obviously increases, but I thought it would be fascinating to see how a native 540p image with AI upscaling compares to the PlayStation 4 version. While 60fps might not be achievable on a prospective Switch Pro at these settings, the increase in resolution and a bump to console equivalent medium settings should be. The results are even more impressive, in my opinion, and further cements my opinion that incorporating hardware-accelerated deep learning features into a next-gen Switch could yield real benefits.

Nintendo itself has categorically ruled out a Switch Pro for a 2020 release and our understanding is that there are no references to any kind of hardware upgrade within current revisions of the Switch firmware – which is how we discovered the existence of the latest models based on the ‘Mariko’ Tegra X1. The Korean report on the new model talked about a processor using Nvidia’s Volta technology – which would likely feature deep learning accelerated support. The firm already produces the ‘Xavier‘ Tegra processor, but with a 350mm2 die size at 12nm, it’s almost as large as the chip in Xbox One X and entirely unsuitable for a handheld.

With that in mind, it looks like it’s the end of the line for ‘off the shelf’ Tegra parts making their way across to Switch, with future processors likely to be custom in nature and probably using a 7nm process technology – factors that make a Switch Pro more viable for 2021 (or perhaps even later). And even then, there may be other approaches Nintendo may prefer to take instead of creating new silicon. The new Mariko-based Tegra X1 in the new Switch models could potentially deliver around 60 to 70 per cent more performance on both CPU and GPU – Nintendo chose enhanced battery life and new form factors over performance upgrades with the new Switch and Switch Lite. Boosting clocks to max (or near to it) may not be ideal for a handheld, but it’s certainly an interesting prospect for a Switch micro-console, perhaps.

In the here and now though, DLSS results on Wolfenstein Youngblood have proven rather impressive. For PC users who may have overlooked DLSS after some not-so-favourable press, I’d strongly recommend checking it out if you have the means. I was concerned that the results in Wolfenstein Youngblood may be a one-off, but having also sampled the same new revision of DLSS in Deliver Us The Moon, image quality is still extremely impressive – even at the lowest quality/highest performance setting (there are some sample captures in the embedded video above). We’ll be following the progress of AI upscaling with much interest – it’s clearly paying dividends in the PC space and could prove to be a key technology for the next generation of console gaming.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/could-the-next-gen-switch-use-nvidia-dlss-ai-upscaling-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=could-the-next-gen-switch-use-nvidia-dlss-ai-upscaling-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[babs572gamings-blog]

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Gaming Grabs The High Score On Twitter

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Ask yourself why you happen to be considering starting a gaming weblog or youtube channel? If it is mainly because you consider you have what it takes to be the next PewDiePie or DanTDM (or TheTechieGuy ), then you happen to be not alone. On the other hand, your primary explanation should really be that you have an overwhelming really like for gaming. It does not hurt to have a excellent voice and some thing to contribute to the gaming network. (Of course, the perks ain't terrible when they commence rolling in, either).

The gaming business saw a number of thrilling developments in 2016 touching on distinct elements of the sector. Gaming technologies is creating in really thrilling approaches. The extended promised revolution of virtual and augmented reality moved closer to realization. The mania around Pokémon GO with its mass market appeal and utilization of mobile phones introduced untold millions to the possible of augmented reality. With its launch in India and South Asia it has grow to be the poster kid for the potential of mobile games offered its advanced technologies and the enormous international smartphone penetration.

Typically used to refer to games that are produced by key studios with a substantial budget, requiring a high sales volume and substantial application expansions to keep profitability. Like hollywood, these games have a tendency to rely on fairly low-risk sequels over larger-risk artistic projects, so count on to see your operate all more than billboards and Television advertisements. You'll be focused mostly on Pc, Playstation and Xbox gaming for AAA titles.

We use our GeForce Experience servers to decide the very best excellent settings based on the user's CPU and GPU, and target higher frame prices than 'normal' optimal settings to make certain the lowest latency gaming knowledge. These settings are automatically applied when the game is launched so gamers do not have to be concerned about configuring these settings themselves.