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Thought the first episode was not great. Episodes 2 & 3 were much better. I hope it stays that way.

The whole mandalorian religion story line is testing my patience, lol. But looks like that might be resolved this season. 

I know this is awhile later, but how did the last 2 episodes go in your mind?  Awesome still?

I think the penultimate episode was one of the best episodes in the season, along with episode 3. The last episode was pretty good in my opinion. I'm trying not to reveal much for you since the show is still a bit fresh.

I give this show a 9 out of 10.

Not sure how many of you are watching this but I am and I have to say it is a phenomenal piece of television. It takes the game source material and expands it the right way. There's only two episodes left to air but if they stick the landing as they have been all season then I see this as going down as one of the all time great TV series.

This is how people must've felt when Game of Thrones was going on those first few seasons. It genuinely feels like an event every episode. Pop some popcorn, turn off the lights and raise the volume on the home theater system type of TV.

This hopefully shows production companies that you can make actual good cinema out of video game properties. It's a little bittersweet for me. This is how I wished the Resident Evil franchise was treated for the get-go, rather than the ultra cheesy crap we've gotten over the years. But we ended up with this show so I'll take it.

Happy belated Birthday!

That's a great haul there!

I completely forgot about Metroid Prime Remastered.  Crap... did they launch a steel book?    I couldn't find anything physical release wise for Metroid Prime Remastered... IE any in stock. 

This physical release has been a big sore spot with gamers since last week. Nintendo either intentionally limited the release (to force people to buy digital) or underestimated the demand as there are currently no news on whether they will ship more. The prices on Ebay are starting to rise as they are going for nearly double the price right now.

WOOT WOOOOTTTT  That's awesome lol.  Congratulations, @CreepinDeth  How are you liking it so far?

It's pretty cool! Although, I mostly just installed PS4 games, lol. I let my wife take it over and play Horizon: Zero Dawn since I'm currently going through Resident Evil Remakes 1, 2 & 3 in preparation for 4 next month.

I did set up her Steam Deck to stream the PS5 with Chiaki while I played on the TV with the Series X. The local streaming is so good. The input lag is so minuscule it's practically indistinguishable.

The keyboard is still pretty buggy unfortunately. I don't have any recommendations beyond resetting your Steam Deck (there's a way to reset while not losing your installed games I believe, if you're up for it and don't want to wait for an update.)

As for the screen resolution, that's something new that I haven't heard of. Maybe something triggered the zoom feature? Is the entire screen small but there's a certain part that is zoomed in? Is this just in Gaming Mode? Does it also happen in Desktop Mode?

I would also contact Valve. They may have a solution that doesn't require resetting your Deck.

Happy Birthday!!

I'm still not getting alerts for new topics that have been created or activity on threads I've replied in unless I'm specifically tagged.

Although I just found a new checkbox in the "Look & Layout" section of my profile. I checked off, "Show most recent posts at the top in topic view" to see if that helps.

EDIT: That did not work. It just made each thread descending order instead of ascending.


It all used to be in a clickable button at the top right where the "Alerts" button used to be.


UPDATE: I just saw a setting that maybe might help? I set it to give me alerts of replies and moderation. Also, something I never noticed before was on the top right of each individual board is a button for alerts. I went ahead and told it to give me alerts when something happens in that specific board.

Had the day off and decided to walk into my local Target to see if they had any copies of Metroid Prime Remastered. They did not. 

BUT...

They had 3 God of War Ragnarok PS5 Bundles!

Guessed who walked out with one?!

I'm now a member of the PS5 owner's club. Suck it, Scalpers!! 

Well, if you all do end up doing them again, I wouldn't mind popping in for one or two. If you'd have me. 

Schedule some events for World 9-3 podcasts too, while you're at it. 

Whoa, that's quite a nostalgia trip you just gave me there. You all still doing those?

I have a premium bundle that I got for free because I have a Youtube music subscription. Tried it out for a bit. The streaming itself was not bad but the pricing model on games sucked.

Publishers still charged $60 for triple A titles. That to me is absolutely insane. Had they topped out at $40, I think it would've been a bit more successful. The subscription model they had was decent but you didn't always get the games you're looking for and I don't think it contained new releases.

Oh well, I got a free controller and Chromecast Ultra that I use regularly now. The controller feels quite nice and worked well with the Steam Deck.

I need to check Amazon Luna and a few others.  Not sure what's happening anymore on those fronts.

Amazon had huge layoffs earlier this year. I would not be surprised if Luna goes away as well.

That was a really good sketch. Although, it would've been cooler if they had it in the desert sort of Mad Max style.

@BLUEVOODU - I misspoke. You're right, it's not alerts but in the previous version there was a button on the top right of the page that let me see all the new topics and unread replies. I've looked but can't seem to find a similar way to see those.

Update: I just checked off the "Follow topics I create or reply to." Hopefully that helps. But if that does work, it still doesn't solve being able to see new topics I don't create or reply to like in the old version of the forum.

@CreepinDeth — I thought the consoles behind the registers were all pre-buys waiting for people to pick them up?  They weren't available to buy. At least they were. 

So those are technically available now?

My Best Buy has them in the cages. Those should be for sale. The others tend to have a red sticker on them for pickup. I'm pretty certain the ones in the cages are up for grabs but I could be wrong.

I've noticed since the forum upgrade that I no longer get alerts on the site when there are new threads or new replies. The only time I seem to get notified is when someone tags me.

I seem to have all of the boxes checked off in my account.

Anybody else get the same?

It is very interesting that you still don't see either on a shelf.  I've never seen that before... 2 years after a launch.  I still don't see OLED Switches in Best Buys... but last time I checked, everything was sold out after the Holidays.

I saw both a Series X and S at my local Target this past weekend. I was surprised. No PS5s though.

Best Buy seems to have the consoles behind the registers these days. I see a bunch of OLED Switches back there almost all the time at the one I go to. Speaking of Best Buy, I can buy a PS5 right now from them through their website. If I want the God of War bundle, I can get it right now at my local BB. If I just want the console, then I can pay in advance and they give me a date on when to pick up or I can get it delivered.

Nature is healing.

@CreepinDeth --> I have to check into PPSSPP --> I've kept my Deck stock so far.  Same thing for me... trying to keep it Vanilla.  Curious though, why is PPSSPP your (or maybe your) preferred way to play?

I like playing at higher resolutions than the PSP can output. Seeing these games on a bigger screen at higher resolutions made me appreciate the amount of details PSP developers crammed into such tiny games that you can't really see on the smaller screens. Daxter, The 3rd Birthday, GTA Liberty City Stores (just to name a few) look awesome.

I also like having a full-size thumbstick as opposed to the nub that comes with the PSP. It's way more comfortable for me. I can also use the back paddles as L and R instead of the top L1/R1 buttons.

I can hold way more games in my SD Card than I can on a standard PSP with their overpriced memory cards, and as much as I like UMDs, I don't have to swap them out whenever I switch games.

It's not perfect as there can be some bugs here and there. Not all games are emulated 100% so you might get some weird hiccups on occasion on certain games but it's not enough for me to not use it.

Happy New Year!

2022 did fly by fast. Hopefully everyone has a prosperous 2023. 

Necro bump!

Recently updated to the Pixel 7 Pro. I'm loving this phone so far. Really solid and the camera is amazing. I'm glad I held off on the Pixel 6 since it wasn't exactly issue free. The 7 Pro seems to have rectified the issues it had.

@CreepinDeth the dream basher!

somehow I figured as much, really just hoping for different!

maybe I'll age out by the time this stuff goes completely digital, although no real sign of growing up yet, and that should have happened 20 years ago!

Bashing dreams is what I do best, lol. 

As a collector, I'm saddened by the inevitable digital marketplace as I love collecting physical copies and consoles. But also, knowing that there will be an actual end to physical collecting is kind of cathartic. I don't know if I'll have the money and the time to acquire physical copies of all the games I want to have in my collection, especially any new games. Emulation has also been more of a way I play retro games these days. It's easier to buy a large hard drive to fill with games than shelf space. As I've gotten older, I just want to play rather than admire the box.

I'm personally loving this machine every day. A while ago I set it up to stream Xbox Game Pass games. It's not the main way I play games but when I'm in the living room and my wife wants to watch something and I want to play an Xbox game, then I just fire the streaming app up. The router is in the living room so the image quality looks great. Just a tiny bit of input lag that I can detect but not much.

I also installed PPSSPP and can play emulated PSP games. It's the perfect handheld for this and wish I tried this earlier. I was mainly just wanting to keep my system fairly vanilla with only some minor tweaks but it was so easy to setup that this might be my preferred way to play games now.

Email received. 

[Steam page: Vampire Survivors]

New game that I fell in love with and is great on Steam Deck. Vampire Survivors!

It's less than $5 right now on sale and I've already put in nearly 20 hours. It hooked me right away. If it wasn't for A Plague Tale: Requiem, this would've been my game of the year.

Steam page: Vampire Survivors


Another game that I've been hooked on is OlliOlli. It's a side-scrolling skating game that is very easy to play but difficult to master. Beating the challenges for each level is really satisfying.

Steam page: OlliOlli

I want xbox, Sony, Nintendo etc. to stay physical.

Unfortunately, that's a losing battle. Already saw reports on how digital sales made up 72% of the sales this year across all platforms. I'll see if I can find the article.  Here's an aricle - Over 70% of all game sales in 2022 were digital downloads

When it comes specifically to console gaming, around 72% of all game sales were digital downloads, with only the remained 28% accounting for physical releases. This continues a trend we have witnessed for many years now, with each consecutive year seeing more and more customers opting for digital game purchases over boxed copies. Again, this figure does not include Nintendo Switch software, which represents perhaps the last real bastion of high-street retail gaming purchases.

Either way, Nintendo is already going more digital. The fact that they sell physical boxes with no carts in them is telling. Microsoft is the most to go digital with how they handle backwards compatibility, Game Pass Ultimate and with the Series S having no disc drive. Sony making a revised, single SKU PS5 that is digital only unless you buy the Blu-ray drive attachment and pushing their own PS+ subscriptions to compete with Game Pass Ultimate means the writing is on the wall for them as well.

Buy all the physical copies that you can because it's not going to last.

Oh and the Series S is not a failure at all. It has sold a lot because it's a cheap entry point to the Xbox ecosystem and when you couple that with Game Pass Ultimate, there's no need for a drive. Microsoft has made it very easy to forget about discs. Both the S and X are fairly easy to find these days but the S being cheaper means it's in more households. It also makes having another Xbox in another room trivial. I plan on getting one for that reason myself. The X in my living room and the S in my office.

Did they make the games compatible via disc as well so you could just pop in your old game and play it on your new console?

Yes! You can pop in a disc that is backwards compatible and it will automatically download the digital version. You can only play with the disc inserted.

Almost any game from the X360/PS3 era. They usually run great and generally have good controller support since they're the first to have xinput implemented, which just works with the Steam Deck. Some you do have to tweak a bit (like with Bioshock 1 you have to use mouse controls to set up controller support in the menu.)

They tend to run at 60FPS with every setting maxed out.

Xbox One/PS4 era titles are good too but you generally have to drop some settings and might want to lock them at 30FPS to get good battery life.

Additional functions  that will be there, you will now be able to insert images directly in posts. 

Spoiler: ShowHide

The one thing that Switch OLED does not have on the Steam Deck is the ability to lock in different refresh rates. If I had to choose between the two screens, that's what I would pick.

OR are you saying... don't play it because there will be lament in regard to the Steam Deck screen?

@BLUEVOODU - This is what I'm saying.