Video Games

[Kryptonic]

Also…. Been binging the Spider-Man games on ps5 since I have a decent tv now and hadn’t played them. I highly recommend them. The first one is so good. The second one (miles morales) seems more like DLC than a full game. Spider-Man 2 (which is the 3rd) is really deep and feels like the first two mashed together… in a good way.

[Mori Chu]

I love playing indie games on my Steam Deck. I have been playing through The Plucky Squire and Dadish with my kids. I also just bought a few others on sale such as Ion Fury, Jet Lancer, High Hell, Jelly Car Worlds, and a few others. You'll love your Deck. Personally I almost never dock mine. I know it can be played that way just fine, but to me its real strength is as a portable handheld, playing indie games in a comfy chair or couch.

[Superbone]

I never undock my Switch. Playing classic Nintendo games on my comfy couch and big screen TV. I really need to get back to Tears of the Kingdom but I want to finish Astro Bot first.

[AmareIsGod]

Its one of those shows I want to go back and finish but usually squirrel out to something else.

Yeah. I LOVE videogames too! I ordered (shipping today!) a Steam Deck OLED. Very excited for it to arrive!

LUCKY! What are you planning to play on it?

I LOVE indie games. That's what I mostly play these days. I will also sprinkle in Hitman: World of Assassination (just got back into this, so good!) and Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, Resident Evil Village, Returnal and a couple other bigger name games. See how Cyberpunk does at a few different settings. I've got the gaming PC though for most AAA games (3440x1440, 34" curved ultrawide OLED with G-Sync and 175hz, 4080 Super, 12700k, 32gb DDR5 RAM). Been playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024 (while 2024 continues to iron out some gnarly bugs) in wireless VR with the HOTAS!

Current indies I've been hooked on:
- Pizza Tower
- The Rogue Prince of Persia
- Balatro
- Dead Cells
- Wizard of Legend II
- Risk of Rain Returns
- Windblown
- Deep Rock Galactic Survivor
- Hades 2
- Curse of the Dead Gods
- Phantom Abyss
- Slay the Spire
- Enter the Gungeon
- Vampire Survivors

Sick list and setup! My monitor is the Alienware with same specs and my second monitor is a 27” LG 144hz gsync and my pc is pretty similar too…. 4090, 12900k raptor lake, 64gb ram, 4tb ssd. At some point I want a good vr system but waiting for it to come down in price some.

New Indiana jones game drops in a couple of days that’ll require that beefy system

Hell yeah! I have a 2nd 27" IPS 144hz, LG as well. I rock it in portrait orientation next to the ultrawide. We probably have the same Alienware ultrawide then (aw3423dw). You've got a slick setup! I've got about 6tb SSD between 3 different SSD drives.

New Indiana Jones looks awesome. If it gets good feedback, I'll be all over it. I also need to finally play Helldivers. I notice folks posting playing it on Steam Deck too.

Edit: sounds amazing (Indy).
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/12/ ... ndy-movie/

[TOO]

Marvel Rivals is super fun if you like the team hero genre.

[SunsShine]

I have invested way too much money into gaming this year lol. I picked up a Steam Deck and hundreds of games through the various sales. It’s just such an amazing way to play current and retro titles. I also recently got the platinum trophy for Astro Bot. What a great game.

[Kryptonic]

I've been meaning to checkout Helldivers 2!

Ugh... don't feel compelled to rush. They still need to iron out server issues... If you don't have a lot of time to play, it can be irritating to finally get to play and the server crashes, you game crashes or you can't login to servers. The good news is, they're very proactive in making fixes.

Also, avoid Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League until you can pick it up for $20 or less. I feel that's an adequate value for that game. It's not exactly horrible but it's gameplay loop is super repetitive and the endgame grind is just more of that.

Suicide squad kill the justice league for free is worth it and a pretty good time.

[Kryptonic]

Marvel Rivals is super fun if you like the team hero genre.

Still digging it?

[TOO]

Marvel Rivals is super fun if you like the team hero genre.

Still digging it?

Yep. About the only thing I play these days, which isn't saying much lol.

[AmareIsGod]

Well, the Steam Deck gets played daily. I absolutely can't recommend it enough! Even my 5 year old daughter loves sitting on the couch with me and leaning against me, watching me play handheld. She even enjoys playing some games, including the ones you all suggested.

I love being able to find games from a decade ago and buy them for $.99 cents on Steam Deck. You can't do that on console. I just got Alice: Madness Returns, an awesome platformer for $1 and plays and looks great on Steam Deck (2011 release).

[Kryptonic]

I hear ya too…. I’ve been catching up on my backlog of ps5 games since getting a new tv (basically feels like I have a ps5 pro now lol). Can’t recommend the Spider-Man games enough. Great games.

AIG…. If my wife didn’t just get me a new iPad Air for Xmas I was gonna go for a ROG Ally. So I’ve been loading up games through the cloud on it with ps, Microsoft and steam and been pleasantly surprised on how good that plays now. Very little lag and enhoyable to play.

[AmareIsGod]

I hear ya too…. I’ve been catching up on my backlog of ps5 games since getting a new tv (basically feels like I have a ps5 pro now lol). Can’t recommend the Spider-Man games enough. Great games.

AIG…. If my wife didn’t just get me a new iPad Air for Xmas I was gonna go for a ROG Ally. So I’ve been loading up games through the cloud on it with ps, Microsoft and steam and been pleasantly surprised on how good that plays now. Very little lag and enhoyable to play.

Playing cloud based is great if you have great internet and experience very low latency. Also saves battery on handheld devices since you don't need to use the GPU etc.

ROG Ally and Ally X are great! I almost got the Ally X. But I had the previous Steam Deck (non OLED 1st Gen) that I sold several months after owning. My daughter was younger and for whatever reason I was experiencing gamer guilt or something and felt bad when I would use the Deck. I realized a couple months ago that it was foolish of me to have that guilt because my wife really didn't care as long as I wasn't using it and neglecting responsibilities.

Fast forward. Played my friends Ally X recently. Beefy performance. I just wasn't a fan of the Windows OS on a mobile device (there are ways to circumvent this with other launchers that mirror Steam OS and Steam is about to make their OS available to more devices). But most importantly, I much prefer the handheld ergonomics on the Deck. The Ally X kind of made my hands uncomfortable after about 15 minutes and I knew I'd get fatigue if I played any decent lengths. Opted for the OLED Deck (the 1gb model is about $300 less than the Ally X). I also really love OLED displays and HDR, which the Ally and Ally X don't have. But the Ally X has higher frame rates and higher resolution due to better hardware.

I've played the OLED Deck more in a month than I did my entire 7 months of ownership of the non-OLED gen1 back in the day.

[Superbone]

I don't game as much as you guys so I already have a huge backlog on the PS5 alone. I loved GTA V but never finished it. Just got back into it recently. Unfortunately, I lost almost all of my progress due to a confusing autosave message and overwrote it very close to the beginning in Franklin's crib. I was at least 60/70 percent in with all three characters. Oh, well, it's still an amazing game all these years later and I want to beat it before GTA 6 releases who knows when. I finally just got to Michael again.

[Mori Chu]

Indie game recommendation: Chants of Sennaar.

Got this one from a friend for xmas and LOVED it. It's a graphical adventure game (somewhat a spiritual successor to the 90s games like Monkey Island and King's Quest, though you can play it entirely with a joystick if desired) whose main mechanic and story progression revolve around discovering and deciphering symbols that represent words in various fictional in-game languages. Like, you start the game, you wake up and you're some guy in a red robe. You don't know who you are or why you're there. You walk into an area and see some signage in a language you don't speak or read. Based on context you can sort of guess what the symbols mean ("open door" or "use lever" or whatever) and as you go through the game, you make notes and guesses and eventually translate these languages to where you can talk to people from these different races and groups and kingdoms. You use this knowledge to progress in the game and uncover a deeper story about who all these people are and what they're doing. Really super cool puzzley game, low stress, just about the right level of difficulty for me (didn't have to Google any solutions but did get mildly stuck a few times before finding a next step). Took me about 12-14 hours to 100% the game; really really fun and innovative game. Scratched a similar itch that I enjoyed in playing games like Fez and Tunic (two masterpieces) that have in-game languages and symbols to translate, too.

[Mori Chu]

LMAO, this actually works. The entire PC game of DOOM, embedded within a .pdf document:

https://doompdf.pages.dev/doom.pdf

[Kryptonic]

LMAO, this actually works. The entire PC game of DOOM, embedded within a .pdf document:

https://doompdf.pages.dev/doom.pdf

That’s hilarious, and crazy.

[Kryptonic]

Been enjoying this little gem… it’s on all platforms. Seems to fill that dopamine rush

[Mori Chu]

I like Brotato, but my old eyes have trouble sometimes identifying what's a bullet/enemy so I take accidental deaths. Somehow Vampire Survivors works for my eyes and I usually know what's trying to hit and kill me, but in Brotato I suddenly die and don't know why. But Brotato has much better enemy variety and AI/logic than Vampire Survivors, which is just "walk directly toward the player and waddle around" for all enemy types.

[Kryptonic]

I can see that…. They’re very comparable and VS is definitely better.

[Mori Chu]

My wife got me "Mario & Luigi: Brothership" for Switch for xmas. Been playing it a few hours. It's a fun cute easy little RPG. I think so far I prefer Mario Party on the Switch, but they're both nice simple RPGs that I can play with my wife.