Poopfeast420

I was close to the end last week, but I've finally finished Pillars of Eternity. It only took 8 years. I'll not start with the expansions right away, but to do them I'll have to load a save before the final dungeon, which kinda sucks.

I'm also taking a break from Quake 2 currently, although not by choice. It's because of a bug halfway through the second mission pack, Ground Zero, where my game would crash consistently. Maybe restarting the level could help, but I'll just wait. An internet comment I read mentioned that the devs are aware, and it'll get fixed in a patch, hopefully that'll happen soon.

Next, I finished two more games, first Shadowrun Returns. It wasn't that good. I'm not a big fan of tactical turn-based RPGs, and this game didn't help. As for the story, it's like they got two completely separate scripts and stuck them together. After like two thirds or something, the game takes a sharp turn and goes completely off the rails. The first part was really clichéd and predictable, but I still enjoyed it, and I wish it could have ended there. The "class" I chose also sucked, I guess, a melee hacker (or Decker in this universe). The hacking is 90% useless in the game, and melee feels like it's just massively disadvantaged, compared to ranged attacks. The game is also a bit buggy at times and the UI can be really clunky. I don't think I'll play the other two games in this trilogy unless I get really into TRPGs in the future.

The final game I finished was Katana Zero, which was a bit mediocre, with some bright spots. It's an action side-scroller where you need to kill every enemy in a room, without getting hit, to move forward. Dying resets the current room, and you have to start from the beginning, à la Super Meat Boy. However, there was a bit too much randomness in enemy placement and movement, to really get that perfect run done. The story could be interesting, but I didn't like the way it was told at all, however I did like the dialog system. When talking to someone you get a timed response, which you can hit, while the other is still talking, interrupting them, or wait for them to finish and choose from a few options. I really liked that. The game also looks great and has very good music. It's pretty short, I clocked out after less than four hours, but you're supposed to play through it at least twice I guess, because of the story. I didn't care for the basic gameplay enough, so I'm fine with just my single run.

I'm probably not the right person to ask these things.

The game doesn't have official controller support, according to the Steam Store page, so you'd have to map controller buttons to KBM. There's a guide on Steam, so I guess you can play it that way, but I don't know how good it is.

As for the rules, I've only barely scratched the surface for anything D&D related, so I can't really know or compare. To me, it's complicated, but it offers more information about everything. Keywords in tooltips are highlighted, so you can either click or mouse over, for further explanation about something. There's a log, that can show rolls, but I've barely used it. RTwP with often 10+ characters in a fight, there is just so much spam. The basics for 5e from BG3 felt extremely easy to understand, even for me. Just like BGEE, I'm going through PoE basically higher number better (ignoring that THAC0 stuff in BGEE), and it's working, although with lots of save scumming.

I finished Quake 2: The Reckoning, the first expansion pack for Quake 2, and started with the second one, Ground Zero. Just like the expansions for Quake 1, it's pretty much just more Quake. A few new or changed enemies, some new weapons, and I was blasting my way through the Strogg. Just like the base game, I played on Hard, and it's not really that difficult, much easier than Quake 1. The biggest difference is that you get tons of ammo in Quake 2, so you're never completely running out.

In Pillars of Eternity, I'm almost done with the second Act, so hopefully I can finish the game in the next couple of days. I don't think I'll immediately go into the White March expansion. I got about 100h combined with this and Baldurs Gate 1, these last few weeks, so I want a break from RTwP games. Like I mentioned last week, everything feels much smoother here than Baldurs Gate was, so I'm enjoying it a lot more. The AI pathing is still complete trash though.

Hardware Unboxed Starfield CPU Benchmark

In Starfield the 13900K is 20% better than the best AMD offering, the 7800X3D. Even the 13600K is better than any AMD CPU. A 13100 is on the same level as the 5800X3D. I wouldn't call that just a slight advantage.

It's only this game right now, that's why I'm saying something might be up.

That doesn't explain the CPUs though, since with those, AMD is much worse than Intel, so it's not just a simple "game is optimized for AMD."

An opinion is always subjective, the opposite of objective. Reviews are also always subjective. There is no such thing as an objective review. This also means it can't be unbiased, because a reviewers' opinion will of course always be influenced by their experiences and stuff going on in their lives or the world.

unbiased, [...] objective opinion piece

I don't think you know what those words mean.

I haven't played the game, only been watching a streamer play it, but I think arguments like "it's boring on purpose" are dumb.

Trying to convey the vastness of space and how small you are seems also somewhat undermined, if you're just constantly fast traveling everywhere, and it seems like you're made out to be the most important person in the universe, since everyone is screwed without you, but that's just most games.

Some coop games, like Battleblock Theater or Magicka, were definitely the most funny for me, with all the dumb stuff you can do, fuck with your friends, etc. but those depend on the people you play with. With friends, every game can become super funny though, even more serious stuff.

As for single player, the ones I remember the most were Donut County and maybe the Frog Detective games, those had some really funny moments and writing.

With resolution scaling it doesn't matter if you're using AMD or Nvidia, it's doing the same thing and looks the same on both vendors.

If your GPU supports it (RTX cards), you can mod DLSS into the game and then get (supposedly) better image quality, on the same level of scaling as the non-modded FSR2, or potentially lowering the scaling even more, for better performance, while still getting a comparable image as a higher FSR2 preset.

That's exactly what I have, but I play on 3840x1600, 24:10 Ultrawide.

I don't remember BG3 giving me any problems, even in Act 3, before the last patch, that supposedly addresses some performance problems. I loaded up a save just now and get ~50fps running around in the Lower City (very short test, only like two minutes). That's with most settings maxed and DLSS Quality.

Depending on the area, I'd probably get similar numbers in Starfield (according to the benchmarks I've seen), but for me, it's a difference playing an FPS or isometric RPG.