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I think the steam sale really fell off when they stopped offering the limited time deals during the sale. I get it though, they ran some loss leaders or stuff at near loss to sway the public to their format, now that digital has a bigger portion of the market share and steam is a household name in the gaming space, they can afford to be greedier.

Despite all that I usually find something during these sales.

The price of entry is too steep for me on the older Pokemon stuff. I wasn't interested in it when it first came out and really never jumped in until X and Y. I've been collecting them when I can find them and they're not a fortune (so far only found Pokemon Emerald and the Colosseum bonus disk). I've played most since xy and really enjoyed Arceus the most so far.

Simple... Games like Faxanadu can be completed with a simple map, Metroid gets pretty insane. You've either got a great memory and sense of direction or you really put in some time, either way very admirable.

Still haven't finished it, I actually forgot to go back to it. I got wrapped up in a big change at work.

the new expansion looks like it may drag me back in

Games we've seen at every other steam sale are on sale once again yet somehow, I managed to spend money...

There is a featured Deep Discount where you can get some bangers for 2 to 4 dollars, but the vast majority will likely be stuff you've already purchased. I didn't have civ 6, Shadow of War, total war shogun 2, or disco elysium so I picked them up for a few bucks each. I also found a few more retro inspired games as well that I picked up. Below are some of the bigger ones I could remember. Games like battlefield and Ghost Recon had a few tittles and I couldn't remember which specific games were available, so I listed several more generic.

Frost Punk
Battlefield
Ghost Recon
Boarderlands
Witcher 3
Jurassica Park
CIV 6
Celeste
Batman
Assetto Corsa
Disco Elysium
Total War Shogun 2
Shadow of War
and a few more

Acolyte... lots of hate out there for this one but I've found it watchable. Bottom tier Star Wars certainly, but watchable. If Disney was going to do a show from the High Republic Era, they should have gone Yoda.

maybe it's my sense of direction but I stayed lost without a detailed map

I've loved and hated Metroid since I first played it. Great game play, cool theme, sick music and 0 hand holding. I've probably picked it up and put it down a dozen times since I was in grade school, never to beat it. I've tried it with friends, with Nintendo Power, with a game genie, and with all the help I stayed lost. Game FAQs got me close to finishing it in college but that stupid password system and having to start over eventually caused me to put it down.

Its been at least 20 years since I've touched the game but I'm trying again. The save state feature is making things much easier. I'm not stopping and restarting when something goes wrong so the frustration of getting knocked in the lava or getting ganged up on by a bunch of enemies is still there but being able to continue without having to kill myself and starting back at the beginning of the region will keep me from shelving the game until it's an antique.

Great game, easily top 5 NES games, top 3 if you could switch between ice beam and wave beam without having to go back and pick the other up. My only grip so far and honestly a rapid-fire controller really negates the need for the wave beam. 

bad batch is great too.

The Resident just hit Netflix. I'm usually not a preechy Dr. drama fan but this one works for me. New Amsterdam is probably the only other recent one that I've put much time in. Nothing before or after has been able to touch House though.

29.99 on amazon right meow!

I've tried tons of different Linux distros on old, outdated stuff with some success. The tinkering required to get everything working as advertised can be extensive and for me usually becomes the reason the piece goes back into the junk pile. It's awesome to see some of that old tech back up and rolling.

Did you give up or did life get in the way?

X-men 97 has gone a long way in repairing some of my confidence in Disney's ability to progress beloved IPs. Going back and watching the 90s x-men series was great fun, except for the last little bit, the animation really fell off a cliff. Yay for budget cutting!

I leaned hard into Diablo 4 early and have a several leveled characters, but I've not been able to jump back in. The end game got really repetitive, and the first two seasons did little to impress.

Is anyone still playing this, and if so how's the end game now? I'd love to jump in again if there's reason.

I ended up putting the 5800x in my computer and giving my 3000 series to the daughter. Even with the bios update I couldn't get it to work on her board. There were some posts online where some people were able to get it to work on the asrock board and others couldn't. I'm guessing Creepin is on to something, and this specific board may have been an earlier run, where the newer revisions were capable, and the older ones couldn't do it. Complete speculation, not worth spending any more time on it!

It seems like small gains at best. I don't notice a difference in the daily operation. I can play the newest Warhammer and Starfield now without turning the graphics down to toaster but it feels like AM4 is getting log in the tooth.

Thanks guys!

No spoils this year and work got in the way of any real revelry. I did spend the day before pre-hangover / post dehydration drinking and playing a ton of online sports games with some friends I went to UNCA with. It was reminiscent. Work wasn't horrible either, I got to talk to the guitarist and bassist from First to Eleven in the hotel lobby at 2am. They'd just played in Charlotte and were on the way to Iowa. 

Either I've been really lucky in the past or I've just ran across a really odd board.

The whole fam (there's three of us) got computers either bought or built around the same time, almost exclusively using AMD. All are socket AM4. I've upgraded processors two or three times now and it's just been take old one out, put new one in, bios figures it out and computer is running...

This most recent Christmas project didn't follow suit.

my daughter's mobo is an asrock a320M/ac. It came with a Ryzen 3 and it's been fine until recently. I found a ryzen 7 5800x on sale for a reasonable price and gave it to her for Christmas. I put it, and this sweet noctuna cooler on her pc and went to fire it up... lights and fans all good, no hdd, video card, or cpu. Cables good, everything seated properly, eggnog still nonalcoholic, no joy!

After trying everything imaginable I went to ASRocks website. Vermeer cores only work with bios p7.20. well f it all i didn't update the bios because the last several iterations said not recommended if system is running stable. Simple fix, put old processor in, update bios, swap out... The old processor is still stuck to the stock cooler and I cannot get it off! already bent a few pins trying to pry it. may have to get the hair dryer out, this thing is glued.

TLDR - I thought AM4 CPUs worked in all AM4 motherboards. Guess that statement comes with a * now. Will be playing with a heat gun and something to straighten pins tomorrow...

its amazing how long a game can stay in the backlog.

Really odd delivery window on this one, December 5th - January 14th!

I finally watched the series, and it's held me better than most of the more recent Star Wars offerings.

 Shoe-horning social issues into their IPs seems to be Disney's main focus, for better or worse. As a lover of rock / metal, comic books, video games, and a bunch of nerdy stuff, I'm not turned off by social / political messaging in the media I consume, it just can't be forced (expect more), or a hinderance to the media itself. Ahsoka has achieved this better than most of Disney's recent offerings. It's probably the most girl-power Star Wars yet but the cast makes sense. Disney didn't just pick out every female Star Wars character and toss them together with no real reason for those characters ever to share space (get it, space). This cast has a reason to be together and it works, nothing feels forced (last one, I swear). What I can't understand, and Creepin alluded to it when he mentioned Ahsoka being stoic, is where's the emotion.

This thing between Ahsoka and Sabine didn't generate the tension I feel it should have, Syndulla felt the same no matter the situation, and Sabine while being a little more dynamic still seemed to fall flat when compared to the situations she found herself in during the series. Heck, every Mandalorian in the Mandalorian series seemed to portray a better sense of emotion despite quite often hidden behind armor.

Detractors hating because of the girl-bossin' aren't looking at it very fairly. If anything, that got tuned down a little. Ahsoka isn't a force monster like Rey. She doesn't win every fight, neither did Sabine. The other side complained because it wasn't girl-power enough. 40 years, 11 movies and a half dozen or so series and this is the first with a predominately female cast. "But sadly, Ahsoka wasn't exactly passing the Bechdel Test." (https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/ahsoka-female-characters-star-wars)

The show was good, definitely worth a watch. The period between the Clone Wars and the Force Awakens has tons of storytelling avenues I want to go down. The events in Ahsoka were in my mind huge. The series didn't adequately portray the emotion and gravitas these events merit. I can't decide if I blame that on the writing or the acting.

The ps1 Raystorm was pretty awesome. It doesn't seem to believe in defense of any sort. There's no roll, your ship is slow and projectiles are hard to dodge. The bosses have a lot of targetable areas but only one actually kills it. If you spend time taking out one of its nonvital areas, you die. First shot needs to go straight for the heart.

I've got the ps1 game and it's great, I'd pick this up.

I looked at it... Never heard of any of those games!

There's a game called Wolflame that I immediately read as Wolf LAME, not a lot of confidence inspired.

I may still buy it, shooters seem to be more likely to increase in value that some of the other games out there

The neo arcade one gave me the impression of an off-brand R-Type. Nothing stood out, but I played it because I too enjoy shooters. I'm not crazy about bullet hell shooters so games like R-type are more my speed. Andro Dunos 2 looks like it's much better than the original and made it to my wish list but for some reason hasn't hit the cart yet.

RIP

I'll never mature enough to stop appreciating the earlier works of Kevin Smith!

Rule of thumb:

If it's a first party Nintendo game and I want it It'll never go on sale UNLESS I buy it, then it'll go on sale just after. If I don't buy it, it becomes insanely difficult to find and costs more than retail OR just never goes on sale.

case in point - https://www.amazon.com/Advance-Wars-Re-Boot-Camp-Nintendo-Switch/dp/B097B186JF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3GQU5SJL08JGX&keywords=advance%2Bwars%2Bswitch&qid=1685775911&sprefix=advance%2Bwars%2B%2Caps%2C97&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.18ed3cb5-28d5-4975-8bc7-93deae8f9840&th=1

5 bucks cheaper already, and i bought day one,

https://www.amazon.com/Advance-Wars-Days-Ruin-Nintendo-DS/dp/B0012NWBH4 - only Advance Wars game slept on and it's worth more now than during the release.

bio-what? At this point it's all but forgotten!

I really dig Advance Wars,and am so happy I get to play it on new hardware. I just beat the first Advance War's campaign and have gone back to 100% complete the first campaign. I really wish Dual Strike was included but I'm happy with the purchase, probably more so than normal.

Bestbuy mysteriously cancelled my order. I was stoked to get this game over the weekend and it was just silently cancelled. I didn't receive an email, it just stopped showing up in my pending orders. "Advance Wars" didn't even show up when I typed it in searching through my orders. Had I not remembered ordering it at the same time I ordered a Series S I never would have found the cancellation.

I just reordered on best buy's site as there's nothing local to pick up, so maybe next weekend.

 

Thanks for the wellwishes!

The only thing game wise I really got was Faxanadu for the NES. Its one of about 50 or so NES games I've sorely missed and am passively working to bring back into the collection.