Ah okay, I did not really bother looking at what each version has included since there are so many versions of Skyrim. I think I have Skyrim Special Edition and some mods installed (with Vortex I believe), no issues but I play Skyrim every few years and not really in-between.
2 Likes
While the new ‘Definitive Editions’ of Age of Empires II and III do look better, they are absolute resource pigs for what they are. Big total sizes and also not the easiest to run. They also have gameplay changes. This is most noticeable for III, as they effectively make Home Cities pointless.
The ‘HD Editions’ are mostly just higher quality textures and fixes to make them run on modern computers. There are no gameplay changes. Unfortunately, they almost never go on sale and are quite pricey for such old games. I don’t think there are any reliable fixes other than them for the original games though.
1 Like
That is good to know regarding Aoe3, the original still looks decent anyway. I already played the definitive version of Aoe1 (was 5-10 bucks in sale) which played well, so Aoe2 should run I think (probably can cook some eggs on the Surface Go’s screen in the meantime). Also have the previous Aoe2 HD (Forgotten) but that one is unplayable on the a 10" screen because of the tiny UI.
Yeah, the only real problem with AoE II DE is that is so big in size for what it is. The gameplay changes are minimal (like all siege weapons being able to destroy trees).
AoE III DE is even more bloated (50GB!) and the making the Home Cities pretty much useless, while making getting into the game much quicker, really takes away too much. The system requirements are also far too high for what it is.
Due to unmoderated user tagging, you get some rather… unhelpful recommendations on Steam:
I suppose there are some unique individuals who find Elden Ring (and Dark Souls, et al) relaxing, but come on!
4 Likes
Games in general are quite bloated these days, one of the reasons why the MicroSD port must stay (granted the loading times are longer but I can live with that). At least Valve (and to a degree Surface clones) realize that.
1 Like
A couple of new lovely 00s translucent 8BitDo Pro 2 colours available, with a small discount.
1 Like
I got the Galaxy Book Pro 15 Friday and after a day and a half I was successfully playing Skyrim LE last evening. It appears that the previous owner suffered the screen crack issue, replaced it themselves, and did a poor job of gluing the bezel plastic edging strip(s) back on. Ugly, messy, but does not affect any functionality.
They also lost the rubber feet on the bottom when they added a 2280 256GB SSD to the 2230 512GB SSD that came with it (must have been a spare laying around, otherwise why such a small one?). Some minor bending of the flimsy bottom cover due to poor skills and/or impatience… like it was a review unit returned by LTT or something. 
Anyway, seeing how it was treated prompted me to thoroughly wipe both SSDs and do a fresh Win11 install from flash drive. That was the half day. The next day was spent installing and configuring Skyrim with ~300 mods, ENBoost Speedhack, and other tweaks. Par for the course; I have done this many times before.
All’s well that ends well. It plays nicely hooked up to my 24” monitor via its HDMI port, lid closed, and didn’t get too warm. $400 was worth it for the kind of gaming I do. 
3 Likes
Managed to snag a Special Edition of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but wasn’t willing to wait for the physical delivery, so purchased a digital copy which I’ve been playing since the release on the 29th of July.
It’s a lot of fun, and also thought-provoking, sufficiently so that I couldn’t help but wonder what books and philosophical research provided the underpinnings and inspiration (yes, Louis L’amour’s Education of a Wandering Man is one of my favourite books, and I’m muchly looking forward to reading Holly Ordway’s Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages), so I made a list on Goodreads:
2 Likes
If you don’t mind gaming while wearing a scuba mask, I highly recommend the VR version and running a bunch of mods for improving how everything looks. Even though the graphics are not up to current games, the world is amazingly immersive in VR.
4 Likes
That sounds really cool, but I don’t think I can do it. No VR…
My Galaxy Book Pro 15 partially bit the dust. A couple weeks ago the screen did this:
Later the same day it went permanently dark. And instead of returning it I accepted a substantial partial refund and used it like a flat NUC with my 24” monitor. Over time this has become unsatisfactory. I’m not convinced running it closed doesn’t reduce performance, too, since it has noticeably worse framerates in Skyrim than my SLS did, same iGPU. Anyway, I’m not out much money so no need to cry.
However, a Slickdeals listed bargain caught my eye…
https://tinyurl.com/23vucrew
… and adding an ID.me discount (military in my case, but student works too) it came out to $772.79 plus tax, free shipping but I expedited for $15.
Ryzen 7 6800u 16GB RAM 512GB SSD 1920x1200 (Freesync? One Youtuber said so) display. MSRP is $1649 though that’s Lenovo overprice-then-offer-discounts-pricing.
The YT guy who mentions it has Freesync:
Not much of a difference in price from the coming 6800u handhelds so I couldn’t resist. We’ll see how it goes. eGPU possible if my future allows one.
3 Likes
And yes, I know I stated in this topic or elsewhere, in reference to the $800-ish & more handhelds, that it wasn’t worth that kind of money for the handful of Windows games I can’t play on a Mac that I would like to play. This is TPCR where we have the right, nay the obligation, to change our minds whenever the geek lust strikes. :vb-agree:
4 Likes
I came across this interesting test of the Ryzen 7 6800u , Windows 11, where Best Performance vs Best Efficiency settings are compared for gaming.
There are of course exceptions, but most games are GPU limited (e.g. CPU at 50%-60% while GPU at 100%). Apparently using Windows’ Best Power Efficiency limits only the CPU, giving more power headroom for the iGPU. Hmm.
3 Likes
1 Like
The drama continues. In typical Lenovo style the ship date on the Thinkbook 13s slipped from 4-7 days to August 31. Reading comments from others who ordered it looked likely to slip well into September. They must have sold out of available stock and are awaiting more. Cancellation submitted. I might not be in this location (or state) by the time it arrives.
In the meantime I have gone through PortingKit installation on half a dozen games I would like to play, none of which I’d consider successful. PortingKit is a free version of CrossOver using Codeweavers’ contributions to Wine. Anyway, even the direct help from two of the people involved with it couldn’t get Witcher 3 to be playable. Fix one thing, something else breaks. Even though they claim everyone else has gotten playable results. Maybe I’m cursed?
So… I’m now considering going all-in on a more robust Ryzen 7 6000 series light gaming laptop. One that’s actually currently shipping. 
2 Likes
After getting into chat with Lenovo yesterday about the ship date change and concluding that I would cancel the Thinkbook 13S, since I had a rep right there I asked him to give me a quotes on whatever systems with the new Ryzen 7 in the 6000 series that were actually available to ship right away and for which I could get a decent discount. One of the two he came up with was the Slim 7 Pro X. It’s now on its way and we’ll see how it goes—it will certainly cover my light gaming needs with the 35w 6800HS APU and still be reasonably low power if I keep the RTX 3050 turned off unless needed.
2 Likes
Another bonkers example from the amusing Steam recommendations file:
Stray, the game on my wishlist, is similar only in having a certain amount of verticality. The kitty can jump up on things, you know, like a cat. 
3 Likes
Oh yeah…patience does occasionally pay off.
2 Likes
Yeah, I wishlist anything that looks interesting and consider buying only when it goes on sale like that. Congrats on an excellent deal!
Coincidentally, I just installed Skyrim SE on my new laptop because the Ryzen 7 6800 HS, or rather the 680M iGPU, doesn’t seem to like the old 32-bit Skyrim. Random hard crashes no matter what I’ve tried, though it was reduced when I switched to wired headphones. So BT might be part of it, or just Realtek drivers? Skyrim LE was notoriously touchy about that. Maybe I shouldn’t blame the new AMD tech, but most of the time it was an AMD Adrenaline drivers popup wanting a bug report after the crashes.
Anyway, the 680M runs Skyrim SE quite well, 1600x1000 55-60 fps at High settings with most things like shadows and decals turned down from high to medium, but keeping the view distances. With ~150 mods, including Noble Skyrim textures and JK’s Skyrim beautification/city clutter. Not bad for an iGPU!
4 Likes