OT: Video Games V

[Cush]

Decided to give Bannerlord a go. Never played the original(s), but with everything being delayed, why not?

 

[ovikovy817]

The last of us
Uncharted 1 + 2 + 3

finished.

Next one, I think GTA 4 or 5

 

[g00n]

Finished Borderlands 3. It was OK. Takes forever when you have maybe an hour a day to go through it and you do all the fetchy side quests.

Back to the pile of shame.

 

[Raikkonen]

Totally forgot to Escape from Tarkov. Like it so much.

 

[Devil Dancer]

Look what I found in The Division 2:

 

[CapitalsCupReality]

Lol what the......

 

[AlexBrovechkin8]

Look what I found in The Division 2:

I have an Ovi bobblehead on my backpack in TD2. Will try to login and take a picture later.

 

[Drake1588]

New gaming rig is done, with the RGB set to display Caps colors at the moment.

 

[usiel]

New gaming rig is done, with the RGB set to display Caps colors at the moment.

View attachment 342735 View attachment 342736

Hell man that is some pro wiring there. Looks fantastic overall.

 

[Drake1588]

Thanks. I'm actually nerdly proud of my cable management in the back, even though it has a solid aluminum panel that no one will ever see. Lots of Velcro straps and zip ties.

Thoughts on PC building after a long hiatus (I bought my last rig from a builder several years ago; built about 20 PCs before that and just built two new PCs this month). Cases have improved in a lot of ways, regressed in others. I built my last two personal builds in Cooler Master HAF X cases. That's stock with a 200mm front fan intake, and a 200mm side panel ducted fan intake, blowing air right over the GPU/CPU area of the motherboard. Modern cases are strikingly beautiful and streamlined with the full tempered glass side panels, but that doesn't do jack for cooling.

Full length shrouds for the PSU are a godsend for cable management even if you do it sloppily, but I would almost prefer bottom-mounted intakes blowing air, unobstructed, straight up to the top of the case. It might preserve a high airflow design if tempered glass is here to stay.

Full front panels are stupid, glass or otherwise. Everyone should want to get a case with mesh.

Cases with optical drive bays are very hard to find nowadays. Chop 60 percent or more of cases right off your list, if that is a requirement for you. That's unfortunate. l like this Phanteks Pro M, which has an optical bay that you can remove (which most buyers of it will do). Good compromise.

RGB is an expensive luxury, but very pretty. It also adds a huge rat's nest of cabling to manage at the back of the case. Fortunately, most cases give you lots of room to do it, away from the proper side you'll be viewing, but still. I have seven Corsair LL120 fans in there, four in a push pull configuration in the front on either side of the AIO radiator, as intakes, and three as top and rear exhausts. It creates positive pressure, which should discourage dust formation.

Each fan has a PWM fan cable and a RGB cable, for 14 new cables to string properly around back. I ended up using a Corsair Commander Pro fan controller. The PWM plugs from each of five fans plug into it, and it plugs into the USB 2.0 header and needs a SATA power cable. Then each of the five fans' RGB plugs plug into a RGB hub, which itself then plugs into the first lighting port on the controller. Yikes, that's a lot of cables to manage. The AIO controls fan speed and RGB for the two fans it uses, so that's on a separate node. Once it's done, it makes sense, but the learning curve there is significant.

It's all a totally new level of PITA for case builders... but it is pretty. Unnecessary, but pretty. Should I have gone with plain fans, an air cooler and a 2080 Ti instead of liquid cooling, plenty of RGB fans, and a 2080 Super OC? Still not sure.

So far, it runs very cool. It's giving me temps of 35-40 degrees on the CPU and about 60-65 on the GPU at heavy gaming load in benchmarks. Most games a couple of years old give about 150 FPS, and newer games 60+ FPS, and I think that's all you really need on bleeding edge titles. I haven't started any overclocking yet and have plenty of temperature margin to do so.

I'm gaming at 1440p at 144Hz. The new rig has a 9700K cooled by a Corsair H100i RGB Platinum SE AIO liquid cooler, nVidia RTX 2080 OC Super with a Windforce triple fan cooler, a Sound Blaster Zx, 32GB of 3200 DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe for the boot drive. An 8TB Seagate NAS HDD and a 6TB WD Black HDD for storage. I grabbed some cable extensions from AsiaHorse, and it makes a nice visual difference. Very clean. Went with white themed parts on a case with a white interior, for everything except the Gigabyte Aorus z390 Pro motherboard, which is neutral black and which has its own RGB lighting accents. The white parts and surfaces in the interior reflect color from the fans nicely. I tend to set it to cool white lighting. Teal looks good too.

 

[CapitalsCupReality]

Pretty tight looking!

 

[HTFN]

Yeah that is... exemplary.

Have two Fantasy Draft teams, wondering which of them seems preferable to others. Generally stop drafting somewhere around round 12-15, lose faith in my ability to weigh potential vs. pick value.

First one picked early, was:

Buchnevich - MacKinnon - Arvidsson
Forsberg - Bergeron - Silfverberg
Tanev - Coleman - Pitlick
Rask - Fortin - Panik

Skjei - Jones
Boychuk - Montour
Nemeth - Persson

Mrazek
Shesterkin

Second picked around 25, was:

Drouin - Stamkos - Arvidsson
Palat - Couturier - Gurianov
Perreault - Carter - Eller
Wood - Simon - Nichushkin (or Okposo)

Giordano - Hamilton
McDonagh - Boychuk
Sekera - Fleury

Grubauer
DeSmith

Some notes: Team A's fourth line was designed to be C. Wilson - Rask - Panik but the game chemistry really loves Fortin there and he isn't bad, so I let it slide. Same goes for things like Eller on RW in Team B, just works best for line chemistry.

 

[Devil Dancer]

I got NHL 20 for a sports/hockey fix. Did a fantasy draft and picked Ovie with the 27th overall pick. I wasn't planning to take him, but he was by far the BPA at that spot.

Ovie is a goddamn beast in that game. So that's nice.

 

[HTFN]

I got NHL 20 for a sports/hockey fix. Did a fantasy draft and picked Ovie with the 27th overall pick. I wasn't planning to take him, but he was by far the BPA at that spot.

Ovie is a goddamn beast in that game. So that's nice.

I don't know how it happened, pick order or trade or what, but in the MacKinnon draft of mine Ovechkin and Crosby both wound up in Anaheim and they're just a nightmare. I'm an Eastern Conference team (I don't even want to say, because it's not Washington, helps me be dispassionate and buy in somehow) so I haven't had to deal with it yet but they're just riding each other neck and neck up the leaderboards so I'm sure they've probably been involved in 90% of the other's scoring.

 

[Cush]

I still have to finish Odyssey

 

[g00n]

I still have to finish Odyssey

I haven't finished Origins. Not sure I will. It didn't grab me like it should have.

 

[sycamore]

All AC Games = same game, different dressing.

 

[AlexBrovechkin8]

All AC Games = same game, different dressing.

Odyssey is the first one I've played since AC2 and it is definitely not the same game as that one. I actually didn't like Odyssey at first because of how different it was but now I'm really enjoying it. It's so big and so long I worry I'll lose interest before I finish, and I worry that it's one of those games that's impossible to actually finish to 100% since there are so many side missions unrelated to the main journey that probably will never be looked at, but I'll give it a go and I'll likely pick up Valhalla as well.

 

[sycamore]

Odyssey is the first one I've played since AC2 and it is definitely not the same game as that one. I actually didn't like Odyssey at first because of how different it was but now I'm really enjoying it. It's so big and so long I worry I'll lose interest before I finish, and I worry that it's one of those games that's impossible to actually finish to 100% since there are so many side missions unrelated to the main journey that probably will never be looked at, but I'll give it a go and I'll likely pick up Valhalla as well.

I enjoyed the skill system in Odyssey quite a bit. OTOH the story is weak and the open world is really not that interesting. Replay value is meh, other than the kick butt skill system.

No, the definitive AC game is #4, Black Flag. Do yourself a favor and play that one. The story is TREMENDOUS -- you'll find yourself completely engrossed. Plus the naval warfare in that one is an absolute blast. Only problem is it never got a proper remaster for the PS4, so while it plays on the PS4, it looks like a PS3 game. Still utterly worth your time if you haven't played it.

 

[AlexBrovechkin8]

I enjoyed the skill system in Odyssey quite a bit. OTOH the story is weak and the open world is really not that interesting. Replay value is meh, other than the kick butt skill system.

No, the definitive AC game is #4, Black Flag. Do yourself a favor and play that one. The story is TREMENDOUS -- you'll find yourself completely engrossed. Plus the naval warfare in that one is an absolute blast. Only problem is it never got a proper remaster for the PS4, so while it plays on the PS4, it looks like a PS3 game. Still utterly worth your time if you haven't played it.

The story is pretty drawn out, this is true. And one thing I hate about massive open world games is how long it takes to get places. I stopped playing Red Dead Redemption 2 because I felt like 90% of my time was spent traveling just to get to places I could do stuff.

I actually really dislike the naval warfare in Odyssey. I find it cumbersome and hard to control and mainly just a nuisance as I try to travel to different land masses. It's better in Black Flag? Love the stealth and hand-to-hand combat in Odyssey, though.

 

[sycamore]

I actually really dislike the naval warfare in Odyssey. I find it cumbersome and hard to control and mainly just a nuisance as I try to travel to different land masses. It's better in Black Flag? Love the stealth and hand-to-hand combat in Odyssey, though.

The Naval Warfare in Odyssey is a bare bone version of the one in Black Flag. I'm not even sure why they included in Odyssey, it adds nothing to the game. In Black Flag it is awesome. It is also paramount to the story -- you HAVE to build up a powerful frigate or you won't get through the game.

You''ll take on the Spanish Armada, the British Royal Navy (complete with massive Man 'O War ships), huge, well defended Fortresses...its just amazing. Can't recommend Black Flag enough, clearly the best AC game ever released.

 

[Marshall]

Decided to give Bannerlord a go. Never played the original(s), but with everything being delayed, why not?

I'm similar - just to try something new.

The mods community is amazing, no doubt. Feels like the kind of game that's going to hit its stride in 6 months or so, when the community really starts banging out content.

 

[itsjustsurvival]

My brother never played any of the Dark Souls/Demon's Souls games besides DS3 and Bloodborne. So we picked up Dark Souls 1-3 on Steam and are playing through them.

It's been fun going back through them. One of my favorite franchises.

 

[AlexBrovechkin8]

The Naval Warfare in Odyssey is a bare bone version of the one in Black Flag. I'm not even sure why they included in Odyssey, it adds nothing to the game. In Black Flag it is awesome. It is also paramount to the story -- you HAVE to build up a powerful frigate or you won't get through the game.

You''ll take on the Spanish Armada, the British Royal Navy (complete with massive Man 'O War ships), huge, well defended Fortresses...its just amazing. Can't recommend Black Flag enough, clearly the best AC game ever released.

Picked up Black Flag on the PS Store this morning for $8.99... figured why not at that price.

The more I play Odyssey the more I enjoy it. I figured out the naval warfare scheme so I'm enjoying that aspect more as well. Haven't spent this much time on a non-sports game in a while but I'm at Level 37 and I want the game to end soon, which I don't see happening considering

The one thing about Ubisoft games I really can't stand, and this goes for The Division and The Division 2 as well, is how frustrating and time consuming the inventory and loadout processes are. It doesn't make any sense to me that a normal Level 29 helmet can have better stats than a rare Level 37 helmet, and I really dislike having to constantly engrave or upgrade equipment. You pick up new gear so quickly but it takes so much time to perfect your build. I also don't get how the Legendary equipment isn't a clear tier or two above the other equipment. It's no where near as frustrating in the AC games as it is in The Division games but I feel like with every Ubisoft game I get to a point where I have to spend just as much time getting ready to play as I do actually playing the game so I lose interest.

I also don't like how hard it is to find certain resources compared to others. You need rare tablets to upgrade your ship and I have literally thousands of gems or stones or other items but only a few tablets so I can't do upgrades. Blacksmiths will sell you hundreds of pieces of other resources but only two tablets or something. They need to level it out or make it clear where you can farm or earn those resources.

 

[Cush]

GTA V Premium Edition is free on the Epic Games Store through May 21st. Feel like I'm one of the few people who hasn't played it.