I’ve been playing Kirby and the Forgotten Land.
It’s a great intro to 3D for Kirby. As it’s not hard at all, it’s very relaxing to play, though you can make it a little harder.
I’m also looking forward to Splatoon 3 in September.
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I looked at Genshin Impact a while ago but didn’t download - thanks for the heads-up.
I pay for Apple Arcade so I just play different games every two weeks. Very little grabs me enough to play all the way through and that’s been the same for many years on other platforms. Some of the games eat your battery life but others by the same makers run cool - mini-motorways and Mini-Metro are two examples. Motorways runs the iPad almost red hot after 10 minutes.
Most fun I ever had gaming really is when I taught drawing on a games and multimedia degree - every end of term, the IT guys would hook up a local area network in one room and we would all play DOOM for an afternoon. Everyone on the same hardware, in the same room and passing insults and prowess on to each other.
I wasn’t the worst but nowhere near the best but I had fun. Massive online games just don’t hold the same attraction to me - there’s no camaraderie or fun there to be had. (for me)
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I miss being a university student.
LAN parties were immensely fun. There was at the very least one person free to play with in person 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% you were also in a panic dizzy trying to meet a deadline so that didn’t matter.
Passing around games on flash drives that were very legitimate copies. We liked the original Halo, with some very odd mods. DOOM of course. Unreal Tournament too. And I wasn’t really into those games but the camaraderie made it. Endless supplies of cheap booze from the student union bar downstairs. Runs to the supermarket to get booze and snacks. The tangle of wires and extension cords that were definitely not a fire hazard…
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Do they still happen these days? The insults and banter when people are in the same room leave a very different impression to the insults and banter when someone across the world that you’ve never met does it to you.
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I think this belongs here! One of my first threads here at the new place was searching for something with less fan noise on the rare occassion I do game. My poor Surfacebook just fires up full force as soon as I open Civ 6. My wonderfully fanless Surface Pro X can run Civ 6, but not nearly as well. It’s jumpy enough to be annoying.
My fanless solution: Samsung’s Tab s8+! Yes, Civ 6 on Android is every bit as full featured as the windows version, and runs as fast on the 8+ as it does on my surfacebook. (Faster acutually since the movement animations play out differently and I don’t have to wait around watching all the other players units move.)
I haven’t found a good Sims replacement though. The mobile versions of the Sims games are awful when you’re used to the wide open world building of the PC game. It’s slower enough on the Pro X that I still rather listen to the fan run on the surfacebook to play.
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Look at Moonlight to stream games to your tablet.
I’ve got a 3080 gaming rig purposely built to stream games off of , and play off my laptops and tablets.
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https://twitter.com/BenjaminLesueur/status/1518242388837388288?s=20&t=Bv3sQBbrtqsRNUkb6L4CjQ
That’s presumably one very small x86 system with decent performance.
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’ ETAPrime had few more shots of it:
Two comparison in particular show just how small it is, vs. the Steam Deck (@3:41)
And it’s reportedly running full x86!
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I’m interested in it itself, but also the insides.
If we as consumers could get some of those parts…
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More on the upcoming AYA NEO.
It will have an AMD 6800U. Won’t be out till the end of the year. I will likely be tempted.
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Saw this pop up. Definitely interested, although I doubt we’ll ever get a keyboard folio/screen cover even though Onexplayer make (a bad) one.
I’ve been slowly collecting Stellaris DLCs for the past year as they went on sale on Steam, never actually playing beyond booting it up and looking around for five minutes. I was afraid I’d get sucked down the rabbit hole as with most “one more turn!” 4X games (yes, this one is RTS with pausing but same idea). My first space strategy game was Reach for the Stars (1983; C64) and many others since have eaten hundreds of hours.
Anyway, I finally got around to playing and it’s easily the best of its breed by far. I’m hooked. 
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I have been waiting on a Cities: Skylines deal. It has arrived:
There are several tiers, from $1 for the base game alone to $20 (or more if you want) for base game + 9 expansions + 21 add-ons ($275 retail). Activation codes redeemable on either Steam or Epic Games Store.
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Grabbed myself a Onexplayer mini for £800. I liked the OneXplayer, but found the button placement a bit annoying. Hopefully the mini will feel better (I did grab a Steam deck, to have a look, but sold as I’d prefer to get my cash back and buy once they hit £350/450)
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Been waiting on a miniPC with a Ryzen 7 6800U but it looks like those are not going to get any priority. Maybe next year. So, second choice, something cheap with an Intel i7 1165G7 Xe Graphics 96EU which I know can run everything I currently play, mainly Skyrim (32-bit) with 200-300 mods. That is, if the OEM didn’t gimp the iGPU as some of them did. My Yoga 9i was top of the charts for that iGPU for most games and my SLS also did fine with the dGPU off so something of similar capability would be good.
Even on AliExpress a miniPC with that chip, barebones, is over $400. I searched on Ebay for “1165G7” and found a Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15, 1080P OLED, 16GB RAM, 256GB+512GB SSDs, nothing wrong functionally but some ugly cosmetic damage to the bezel (warping and glue exposed). You’d get the wrong kind of looks at Starbucks, for sure. But only $399… so tempting. And its 1165G7 tests out even better than my previous Yoga 9 14 ITL 4K for games:
So I bought it. That takes care of the Windows games that my Apple ecosystem omits. I’ve been itching for some Skyrim replay. 
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I need to play Skyrim. It came out when my kids were young and I didn’t have time back then…
Do I need to pay $40 to get the remastered? Can I do the same thing with a few mods? Which would you recommend?
Skyrim LE (Legendary Edition, 32-bit original version) tends to crash a lot unless you mod it with fixes. Which is a pain to learn how to do properly. Skyrim SE (Special Edition, 64-bit) fixes most of that and looks better out of the box, no mods. You’d be fine with just the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch (USSEP) and SSE Engine Fixes, both found here:
Skyrim AE (Anniversary Edition) is the newest and I don’t know what issues it has, if any, and if the community has put out fixes.
I use the LE edition because ever since Bethesda started the paid Creation Club DLC mods Skyrim SE has its version # changed every month or so and that breaks a good number of community-built mods. Then we have to wait for all of them to update to be compatible before our ongoing games can be played without issues. It’s infuriating. LE is rock stable and doesn’t get its mods broken. Of course, there are ways to avoid the Bethesda updates but it’s a pain and LE is just as good, I think, once properly modded.
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TL;DR start with SE if you don’t intend to go all-in on modding. LE if you’re willing to spend a lot of time learning mods. I can’t recommend either way for AE since I have no personal experience with it.
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P.S. - I also get much better frame rates with LE. It’s less taxing on the iGPU than the newer versions.
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Thank you!!! On it!
I recommend getting the 2 expansions Dawnguard and Dragonborn, those are higher quality imo than the base game. Iirc Dawnguard is recommended from lvl ~5-15 and Dragonborn from lvl ~20.
ah Painkiller, good memories. Hellbound sounds fun too, thanks for the tip.
I recently played the co op campaign of Red Alert 3, that was more fun than I thought it would be. Now I am playing Age of Wonders 3 (both on surface go 2, if you have the expansions this game is ridiculous comprehensive in a good way). Next on the list: XCOM 2 (not sure if the Go can handle that 
), RA 3 Uprising and the newest Age of Empires 2 / 3 (that one will be a good stress test as well).
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They’re integrated into LE, SE and AE, not separate. I’ve played them all for so many years that I forgot that they were originally separate purchases for the first version in 2011. In 2013 they bundled them into LE.
Just noticed that you can’t buy the LE version on Steam anymore.
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