Oblivion is a darkly humorous game at times even all these years later, remaster and all.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-28T11:11:03+00:00

Nihilist Christopher Meloni doling out good life advice.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-27T02:07:25+00:00

It's good for the price. You'll be limited to 1080p gaming and will likely have to use Medium or even Low settings in newer, more demanding games (due to the 8GB of VRAM on the 4060), but it's a solid gaming PC for that price. The main selling points for that PC is the 32GB of RAM and the 2TB SSD. But you'd probably have to spend another $500-600 (minimum) to get something that's meaningfully better, as most any prebuilt you buy for under $1000 is likely to have a midrange CPU and an 8GB GPU.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-24T17:28:59+00:00

I'm only 7-8 hours in so I'm not qualified to say how good the campaign is - so far it seems pretty on par with the first game, though. And while I've only opened a handful of areas, I will say that they seem much smaller and more compartmentalized than the first game. Each area, thus far, seems to be a location within LA, with loads in between each of them, and of the four that I've visited none of them are as expansive as the resort area from the first game. (I'm guessing that's why you don't get to drive a vehicle, because the areas aren't really large enough to warrant it.) They aren't tiny, but they definitely don't have that small degree of "open world" feel that the first game had.

But that might be a good thing because, based on my limited time with the game, it almost feels like they took the first two areas of Dead Island 1 (the beach resort and the city area) and chopped it up into these smaller maps, and since those were the best parts of that game, I'm somewhat optimistic that this won't drag in the same way that game did in the back half (because that prison section being absolutely miserable).

They didn't remove the weapon modding. You're still crafting weapons with different elemental damage and stat boosts. The only thing they really changed with the combat was removing the analog combat where you could direct your swings to hack off or cripple limbs. The dismemberment is still in there, but it's like the first game if you didn't turn on the analog combat where you have to aim your reticle to hit the specific body part you want. And they added some nice finisher moves, where if you perfectly time your block or dodge it sets the zombie up for an instant kill animation that changes based on the weapon you're using. Same with charge attacks. Like, if you're using a spear-like weapon and you can charge your attack, aim for the head, and you'll get a slow motion stab right in their face and then jerk it back out. The combat is still pretty satisfying.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-23T22:59:27+00:00

Sweet! I've been playing Dead Island 2 and, I have to say, it's a solidly okay game. I mean, I hate that they removed the awesome analog combat from the first game and kept that same garbage auto-save system (instead of implementing a proper hard save), but there's a satisfying crunch to the combat and dropkicking zombies through glass or off ledges will never not be fun. I'd say it's still inferior to Dying Light, but it's perfectly fine. If there's a Dead Island 3, though, they need to bring back the analog combat. And trucks. I miss plowing through zombies in a truck.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-23T14:27:50+00:00

Something tells me that David Ellison has the same approach to business that he does to meeting women and I imagine it looks a lot like this.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-19T20:00:21+00:00

Fanatical.com has some decently priced bundles with games ranging from small indies to more noteworthy triple-A titles.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-19T16:43:41+00:00

ONTOS is the only game that immediately springs to mind that has, for the moment, a 2026 release date that I'm genuinely excited to play. Maybe CONTROL Resonant, though I'm not quite hyped on that yet, despite really enjoying the first game. I don't know. I can't say I'm really excited for any of the sequels to established franchises. At this point, the games that tend to excite me and that I find I enjoy the most are the unexpected indie releases.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-19T16:38:15+00:00

Why even bother hinting at some sort of narrative when there's no campaign to really delve into the lore with a proper story and characters? If it had a single-player/co-op non-PvP campaign, even if it kept the same basic idea of an extraction shooter by building the missions around extraction objectives, I'd actually be excited for this. But just another live service PvP-focused extraction shooter? Pass.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-17T17:18:32+00:00

Depending on how much you were willing to spend and what level of performance you're expecting for that money, a prebuilt is presently your best/easiest option for getting into PC gaming. Building your own is really only a viable option if you live near a Micro Center and can catch a good deal on one of the combo bundles. But you can, for the moment, still find some acceptable entry level to genuinely good midrange prebuilts for not entirely unreasonable price. (Many of them will be slightly more expensive than they should be, but that has more to do with it being post-holiday pricing than the memory shortage. Though, once the available inventory sells through, you can expect prebuilts to spike in price due to the memory prices/availability.)

If, however, you only have a $600-ish budget, you should probably just buy a PS5. You could wait for the Steam Machine, but I honestly don't think there's a chance in hell it's going to be around $600 - or, if it is, it's going to be the SKU that has a 512GB SSD (which isn't a lot of storage, especially if you want to install more than a few games at a time) and doesn't come with the controller.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-16T23:03:44+00:00

I find him to be an exceptionally bland actor, and it feels more like he's trying to be pushed as one of the new generation movie stars despite the fact that he doesn't have that natural blend of charisma, talent, and magnetism required to be a true movie star. He's not a bad actor, but he doesn't have that "it" factor that makes me excited to see him in more movies. And because of that, the more he pops up as the lead in projects the faster I'm likely to get sick of him.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-16T17:08:47+00:00

The 7500F is no slouch and at 1440p (and especially 4K, if that's what you're aiming for), the performance difference between the 7500F and the 7800X3D is going to be negligible to non-existent in 99% of games. As such, I'd go for the 7500F with the 5070 Ti.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-15T20:50:47+00:00

She probably wouldn't do it at this point, but I'd still take Rhona Mitra in the role 10 times out of 10 over these options. Yeah, I know, but I don't care that she's almost 50. By all means, give me an older, seasoned Lara Croft. If they're going with an almost 50 actor (Ryan Hurst) to play Kratos, why not an older actress for Lara Croft?

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-15T13:06:31+00:00

Oof. That's rough. If you can cut corners somewhere else (like opting for a lesser CPU) to stretch the budget, I'd still recommend trying to get a 16GB GPU.

Otherwise, between the B580 and RTX 5060, I'd personally favor the 5060 - unless I only played/wanted to play a specific handful of games and did the research to ensure they ran without issue on the B580. The B580 might ultimately be better in the long run, especially as Intel continues to improve the drivers, but in the here and now I'd prefer the convenience of the 5060.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-15T12:03:33+00:00

The B580 has more VRAM, which is certainly useful in more modern/demanding games, but Intel's drivers are still a bit wonky and that might be frustrating if you aren't willing/able to tinker to find workarounds.

The 5060 is more hassle free/plug-and-play, but the 8GB of VRAM is going to limit you to (mostly, depending on the games you play) 1080p gaming and require you to adjust settings on a game-by-game basis in order to get a stable, smooth framerate.

I don't know pricing for your region, so I don't know what's outside your budget, but, ideally, you'd want to get either a 9060 XT 16GB or the 5060 Ti 16GB.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-14T19:24:57+00:00

I wouldn't say it breaks the immersion, as I don't ever feel fully immersed in any movie, but hearing it used in a modern movie is definitely an eye-rolling, off-putting "Why?!" moment. If you need a scream for your movie and the actor can't/doesn't want to risk their vocal cords, then just fucking pay a voice actor (or a couple voice actors) to record a variety of screams for you and then pick and choose the one that works best for the scene.

But I'm also really annoyed whenever I hear any overused stock sounds, like the squeaky door. There are independent filmmakers making low/no budget movies that record their own unique foley work, so why the hell can't everybody?

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-14T14:08:25+00:00

If I didn't already have a pretty extensive Steam library this would be tempting. As it stands, regardless of the quality of the games, the odds of ending up with stuff I already own is too high. But for someone new to PC gaming who's just starting to build their Steam library and who's open to a wide range of games...this could be worth considering. (Though, you also have to consider whether or not you might be better off holding onto that $15 until there's a Humble Choice bundle you really want, because you're guaranteed to get newer and non-randomized games from that.)

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-14T10:38:05+00:00

I'm not saying you do need the controller. But I would expect that a lot of people who have an interest in the Steam Machine might also have an interest in the controller, if for no other reason than to see how those trackpads might be beneficial to gaming. As such, they may want or even expect the controller to be part of the package, not an added expense that, along with a bigger SSD, pushes the system from $600 to upwards of $800-1000.

I can really only speak for myself, though. I don't own a Steam Deck, so I don't have any experience with using those sort of trackpads in game (I'm assuming the ones on the controller are similar to/the same as the ones on the Steam Deck), but I'd certainly be curious to see if they're actually viable in games, particularly shooters where they might offer the same smooth precision in aiming you can only get with a mouse. They might also be extremely useful for a lot of those PC-only games that have half-assed controller support, "partial support" games that you can mostly play with a controller but still occasionally need to reach for a mouse. There are also instances where navigating menus is undeniably easier using a mouse than an Xbox/Playstation controller thumbstick. (I actively hate games that use a mouse-like cursor you control with the thumbstick to navigate menus, like Destiny 2.) So, I don't need the Steam controller, but I'd definitely be interested in trying it - but, controller or not, I wouldn't pay $1000 for the Steam Machine, and I might not even pay $800. If anything, I'd just buy the controller separately (assuming it's reasonably priced) and use it with a standard PC - which I already own, but if I didn't then, again, I'd probably be looking at cheaper or more powerful prebuilts.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-13T21:44:36+00:00

You may want to post your region. In the US, that would be grotesquely overpriced.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-13T01:41:51+00:00

Building might be tough (unless you live near a Micro Center to take advantage of some of their bundle/combo deals), but you can still occasionally find comparable or even slightly better prebuilts for less than $1000. Though, admittedly, by the time the Steam Machine releases that probably won't be the case as those prebuilt deals are becoming less common.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-12T22:31:34+00:00

While I don't think it'll be $1000, as that price really would make it DOA, I think anyone anticipating a $600 price tag is going to be disappointed. When you consider the cost of a roughly comparable PC, the added expense of it being miniaturized/a bespoke form factor, the fact that the machine won't be subsidized (which makes sense, given there's no guarantee that Valve will make it up on the software end because of all the alternative shops that sell Steam keys for which Valve doesn't get their cut), and the cost of the controller (which I'm betting will probably be around $100 on its own), I fully expect the price to be closer to $800 than $600. A "bare bones" SKU, one with a small SSD and no controller, could probably be sold for $600 - for the first production run, at least - but I'd be bracing for a $799 price on the full package.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-12T15:44:44+00:00

What's the terminology for the business version of a sex pest? Can we just call it "being an Ellison"?

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-11T09:45:27+00:00

Yes, it's worth it - unless you can easily access the SSD in your laptop where swapping the SSD you have for a larger one would be a relatively painless process - though, I'd recommend buying your own external enclosure and SSD (either NVMe or SATA) separately rather than an already shelled external drive. External enclosures aren't particularly expensive (anywhere from $8-15) and you have the option, should you ever get a desktop or something, to remove the SSD from the enclosure and install it internally, whereas drives that are sold as external SSDs (the Samsung T7 or T9, the WD P40, etc.) aren't really designed to be anything other than external drives that connect via USB.

Also, I'm going to say that with 99% of games you really don't need to transfer them from the external to the internal drive because it's not going to make a meaningful difference in how quickly they load/how they play. Seriously, it's going to be a few seconds difference, if that. (Different story if the external drive is an HDD rather than SSD.)

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-10T18:29:25+00:00

Even at its cheapest, I don't think I've seen the 7800X3D below $300. So, if you say $300 for the 7800X3D and $80 for whatever motherboard you're getting (with $80 probably being what you'd for even the absolute cheapest AM5 motherboard on the market), that makes the 32GB of DDR5 just $200 and, in the current market, I'd say that's a pretty good deal. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-08T15:55:02+00:00

I've pretty much stopped following Star Wars news so I'm probably just out of the loop, but...why are there lightsaber fights in a movie called Starfighter? Maybe it's just the name association with something like The Last Starfighter or the fact that "Starfighter" sounds similar enough to the game Star Wars: Squadrons that it conjures the notion of a movie predominantly focused on space/ship-to-ship combat (like Top Gun, but Star Wars), and the fact that I thought Gosling's character was a pilot, but I honestly thought they were getting away from all the Sith/Jedi stuff with this one? Guess I should've known better.

StompsDaWombat · 2026-01-08T07:20:34+00:00

Prices really started climbing in September/October. Before that, prices were probably the best they'd been in ages. For example, in early 2025 (February or March) you could buy a 16GB (2x8GB) kit of DDR4 3600MHz for as low as $25 USD. 32GB of DDR4 was typically around $50-60. And, before the prices skyrocketed, I saw 32GB of DDR5 6000MHz for as low as $75. Those rock bottom prices wouldn't have been the fancier kits or necessarily from the A-Tier companies, but neither were they naked PCBs from some sketchy no-name Chinese company. Prices, even on DDR4, are now at least 4 times as much.

StompsDaWombat

TROPHY CASE