rampantjesus

they put a damn seal in the game

I've had my hands on the Steam Deck for a few months now, and figured I'd post my brief opinion on it, and would be very interested in hearing some other thoughts on it. I purchased it primarily for my wife who has a back disease that makes long periods of sitting at a computer chair not very viable. Because she doesn't play anything super demanding, the Deck has been working great. It's great to use on the couch or while laying in bed. It's also basically a portable computer. Plug in a USB-C dongle and you can connect a mouse and keyboard, as well as plug in an HDMI cable to hook up to a TV. You can connect whatever bluetooth controller you want to it as Steam will recognize it, and BAM, you're using it like a console. Some games run really well, but others might need some graphical tweaks. Luckily, my wife and I hardly play anything that's come out in the last few years. You're also not restricted to Steam, you can download and run whatever game you want if it's compatible. If it's NOT compatible, it might be with a few tweaks you make to your system. That's the beauty of Linux, you can really do whatever you want with the thing. Where the Deck really shines is with emulation. EmuDeck is an all-in-one type program that downloads, installs, and manages whatever emulator you want. You just need to provide the ROMs and maybe some BIOS files for whichever system you're playing, and you're good to go. It even has a built-in manager that will detect the games you have in your folder, and create shortcuts on Steam for them. It'll even tell your friend what game you're playing. Honestly I think the thing is FANTASTIC considering the price. The cheapest version runs for $399, with only 64GB of internal storage. That kind of sucks, but you can pick up a MicroSD card for an extra $50 to significantly expand that storage. $399 is not a small sum, but when you remember that the Switch launched at $299, that extra $100 really goes a long way. Hell, you can even emulate the Switch on the Deck. I wanted to know what you guys thought about it, if you have it, and what direction you think Valve will be moving forward with it.

glad you were able to get that compression stuff sorted out, seemed like it was driving you mad. good video!

3839 at this rate, it'll only take us a couple hundred more years, keep it up!

Hey Ross. I know a lot of these aren't exactly obscure games, but I really feel as though the soundtracks to these are sort of underappreciated. I have a bias towards soundtracks that are symphonic/orchestral, so that's what all of these are. All of them are at least a couple of hours long, perfect for some background noise while studying or working on something at the computer. They all feel like they're trying to bring you to another world. I'll post links for each game's "best" (my favorite, or the one I think captures the mood the best) track, and for the full OST. I will also try to describe the mood of each. Hope you enjoy! Battletech One of my favorite Sci-Fi OST's. Lots of strings. It encapsulates the feeling of the game very well: a feudal humanity fighting over the remains of a dead empire using giant robots that have been passed down in their families for generations, and that we have lost the technology to produce. A weirdly specific mood to be sure, but trust me. Some good battle music in there too. Battletech OST Pillars of Eternity II A very solid fantasy soundtrack. Inspiring and optimistic. I liked the first game's music, but this one just feels so much more inspired. Good variety of tracks, from combat to ambient. The plot is that you're chasing a physical manifestation of a rogue god across fantasy Indonesia during the fantasy Colonial Era. Pretty unique. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire OST Team Fortress 2 Man, oh man. If you haven't heard TF2's soundtrack, you're doing yourself a disservice. I never sat down and listened to the entire thing until a couple of years ago. Again, a good variety of tracks, but all trying to hit a 60's kind of sound. Some orchestral, some jazz, some spooky tunes, but nothing feels out of place. Team Fortress 2 OST The Witcher 3 Yeah, the Witcher 3, one of the most popular games ever. I know. I normally wouldn't recommend something this well-known, but the soundtrack is so good I feel like it could be its own standalone thing and get by just fine on its own merit. Some of the best ambient symphonic music I've ever heard. It does such a good job of transporting you into that game world that I can't not rave about it. The expansion music holds up great too. Witcher 3 OST Kingdom Come: Deliverance Not fantasy, just medieval! Considering the size of the studio, the game has no business having such a well-made sountrack. It almost has the pacing of a movie. Kingdom Come: Deliverance OST Halo 3: ODST Another absolute banger by Marty O'Donnell. Dude composed the scores for the Halo trilogy, and this game. It's very sad and melancholy for Sci-Fi. The game follows the perspective of a Marine who, during an orbital drop into an ongoing battle, gets separated from the rest of his squad. He wakes up several hours later to find that his side lost, and that the rest of his squad is probably dead and the city's population has been eradicated. Pretty brutal and bleak, but damn is the music good. Halo 3: ODST OST

Decided to play it this week after playing through the tutorial and stopping when it released. Game is a solid 8/10. If it were judged solely by gameplay alone it would be like a 6/10, but the setting and story really bumps it up in to the "Good" area. Definitely not games as a service!

I got an email last night that read as follows : What this means is that, for old Bioware games you own, DLC is free after October. It's not exactly huge news, but I thought it was pretty interesting that if you held off on getting DLC back in the day, you will now be able to get it for free. And that, if you actually paid money for Bioware Points (a currency), that currency will be worth nothing in a few months. I'm always happy to see weird industry trends die off years later. It really goes to show that they were never a sustainable thing in the first place. Here's an article with some more information.

If I understand it correctly, I think Kenshi's storytelling and worldbuilding method is pretty similar. The bigger picture of the world can certainly only be derived by taking in other context clues scattered throughout. It's one of my favorite storytelling methods, it leaves it up to the player to figure it out on their own.

That's pretty cool, I'm interested to see how they would actually go about achieving this.

The Iron Bomber's broken-ass hitbox registration just got fixed yesterday, surprisingly enough. Patch notes.

ross is a strong caveman

So, while searching through the forums, I noticed that the last major discussions regarding this game were back in 2011/2012. Well, a decade later and the game has come quite a long way. I've only started playing over this last year, but long-time fans keep telling me how surprised they are with how much more content has been added, and how different the game looks and plays. For those who don't know, Project Zomboid is, in my opinion, one of the best zombie survival games on the market right now. It's in an "incomplete" state still, but it really doesn't incomplete to me. The game takes place in 1993 in the area surrounding Fort Knox in Kentucky (now including Louisville). You begin the game on Day 3 of the apocalypse. Townsfolk complained about a noxious smell in the air a couple of weeks ago. After all phone lines were taken down for "maintenance", a military blockade was put in place. Over the next couple of weeks, your character can catch several radio and television broadcasts (while the power is still on) that detail the spread of the pandemic out of the initial infection area, slowly consuming the entire world. Your only objective is to survive. It's up to you to decide how exactly to go about it. Really, once you learn the basic mechanics of the game, you're only limited by your imagination. You can hole up in your house, gathering tools and supplies from the surrounding neighborhood. You can decide to bug-out, find some camping supplies and live in the woods, only returning to towns for absolute necessities. You can go full sicko mode, looting gun stores and reclaiming huge swathes of territory. Probably the best feature of the game is the fully customizable sandbox. You can tweak this game to play out exactly how you want it to. Here's a full list of all the settings that can be adjusted each playthrough. The game received a fresh injection of interest six months ago with the release of a stable multiplayer build and a whole host of new features. It sold like crazy, doing numbers somewhere around 23x their normal sales numbers, and sat at #4 on Steam for about a month. It got covered by people on YouTube and other sites, which brought even more attention. So, the developers are now sitting on a nice pile of cash and charging forward to finish up features for what they would consider a "finished" game. They're also one of the only development studios I've seen that has both detailed several features that they do or do not want to see in the final product. I think right now, they're actively working on adding animals. That will include domestication and all that. If I remember correctly, NPCs will follow shortly after. So yeah, if you haven't had a chance to look at this game since 2012, I'd say it's definitely worth your time. Although not the price of a sandwich, you can pick it up on sale until July 7th for the price of a large Big Mac meal plus tax ($13.39). If you're ok with it, I've also seen it for as low as $6.40 on some key reseller websites.

I've been playing the hell out of Battlefield 1 recently, and if anyone wants to add me to play either that of Battlefield 4, let me know! Origin ID: rampantjesus

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198059675816 I play a lot of stuff. I have a lot of multiplayer stuff, but not a lot of people to play them with. Hit me up.

I agree, a lot of the songs get repetitive, I just hope they fix the weird sound issue with More Where That Came From with the original songs playing WAY louder than the others. Otherwise, it's got a ton of songs that are fantastic. MWTCF for F03 and New Vegas worked really well, but to be fair, were made with the GECK. While I don't exactly have a 75 or 150 mod long list, I found a few good ones that I would classify as not quite "essential", but something close to it. 1) Expanded Shipments As the name implies, it basically just expands the amount of materials available for purchase in bulk from vendors around the Commonwealth. Stuff is hard to come by in bulk, and when a vendor finally has something, they may only have one shipment's worth. http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2847/? 2) Craftable Armor Size Gives you the opportunity to make light, sturdy and heavy variations of all of the armor components in the game (Leather, Metal, Raider, Synth, Combat). It requires that your character have the Armorer perk rank 3 for heavy upgrades. It's cool, and allows you to make light leather armor for a stealthy-looking character, or heavy combat armor for someone who's supposed to look like a football player. http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4550/? 3) Armorsmith Extended Enables you to wear armor on any piece of clothing. Also adds a TON of new craftable clothing and armor, even some for Dogmeat. 4) Brighter Settlement Lights It gets pretty dark at night in your settlements. DARK. This gives you the option to change the brightness of lights at your settlement with the initial install. Very useful. http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2494/? 5) Improved Map with Visible Roads Makes the map look not as... dull? Brightens roads, looks nicer overall. Not really necessary, just nice to have. I know the photo makes it look black and white, but that's just an option. http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1215/? 6) Configurable New Dialog Isn't it nice to know what your character is going to say before they say it? Yeah. It is. http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/619/? 7) Time on Loading Screens If you're anything like me, you've lost a lot of time to this game. You might be playing late one night, and finally glance over at the clock to find out that it is 5 a.m. and you have class in 3 hours. This displays the current real-world time according to your computer on the loading screens as well as the Pip-Boy if you like. http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/2605/? I'm loving the hell out of this game, my favorite series and favorite game so far. I've sunk about 208 hours in since launch according to Steam, and have only beaten the main story once. I still have... 3 (maybe) endings of the 4 (I think). I expect to be playing this for still a while yet, and after I've knocked out those main story endings, I plan on installing some really crazy shit, like gameplay overhaul mods and stuff like that.

Well Ross, my story isn't as mind-blowing as some of the others here, but I thought you might like it anyway. This happened in a game called Elite: Dangerous (big space mmo thing). A Federation battlecruiser called the FNS Nevermore was docked outside of a very large spaceport. A player flying by the cruiser got too close, and the ship began to fire at him. However, many of the rounds went right past the player, and directly into the spaceport, which immediately returned fire. Keep in mind, these are probably the only two things in the entire game you should probably not shoot, and here they are shooting at each other. The developers were able to step in before the battlecruiser was destroyed, and had about 20% hull integrity. Rather than simply dub this event a bug and more on, the devs actually turned it into a canonical event. As a result of this misfire incident, players were asked to bring raw materials for the repairs of the station. Also, relations between the faction in control of the station and the Federation severely decreased. PC Gamer even wrote a wee article about it here: http://www.pcgamer.com/elite-dangerous-bug-turned-into-community-event/ And here's a little gallery of the "fight" (the AI isn't the best lol) http://imgur.com/gl7bZKR,myhnQUk,SR9NAoH,wraxwwr,4MJ64wQ,KZNMDVc,XHBSnP0,9pJMfvD,mADEzSV,A1e9wwk,uiHugiu#1 Take it easy man, and happy birthday.