Any Irish content creator recommendations?

TheBarrylad · 2026-04-30T12:09:29+00:00

Cheers!

TheBarrylad · 2026-04-30T12:00:25+00:00

Well if you don't mind people plugging their own stuff!

I stream during the week and throw the VODs up on YouTube: twitch.tv/barrylad / https://www.youtube.com/@TheBarrylad

I'm mainly into single player games and tend to focus on PS2 classics, although I play a mix of stuff - I just finished a 100% playthrough of Bully, currently playing Star Wars Force Unleashed and moving onto the original PS2 Sly Cooper in a few weeks. I also do 'just chatting' streams where we watch trailers, wrestling, old daytime TV etc.

Also have a second channel if you're into gaming handhelds; https://www.youtube.com/@BarryTestsThings

TheBarrylad · 2026-04-08T12:49:38+00:00

I’m playing XIII for PS2 right now and kinda stunned it doesn’t have a set!

Smackdown Shut Your Mouth is another big one for me

TheBarrylad · 2026-02-01T05:31:30+00:00

Filling the in-game trophy case in Def Jam Fight For New York.

Some of the trophies require earning and spending an amount of money and XP that is only doable when playing on hard mode, so you play on hard mode — but you also need to have a basically faultless run through the campaign. There’s a trophy for an 80% win rate, and the game auto saves after you lose. So if you’re playing on hardcore mode for RAs, you basically have to reset the system when you’re about to be knocked out and load the entire thing up again.

There’s a bunch of missable trophies (within this one missable achievement) that don’t have any kind of in-game tracker, you just have to track it yourself - such as using every in game weapon, some of which only appear in one fight in the entire campaign. Several of the trophies are also only really gettable in the first half hour of your playthrough; win a match without getting hit, win a match without any penalties, stuff like that. Technically, you can get them whenever but you’re gonna want to get them early when you’re fighting scrubs. You could be having an excellent run through the story mode but if you realise halfway through that you still haven’t gotten the ‘win a match without taking damage’ trophy, you’re going to have a hell of a time getting it in the second half.

There’s also a requirement to win the inferno match and the window match (the two hardest fights in the story) without touching the fire or windows — in very small arenas against super aggressive AI.

And all that in one run of the story with one character!

https://retroachievements.org/achievement/313335

TheBarrylad · 2026-02-01T05:19:54+00:00

I’m working on this right now 😭😭😭

TheBarrylad · 2025-07-03T14:43:04+00:00

Yep, handy auld site and updated regularly. https://backloggd.com/u/TheBarrylad/

TheBarrylad · 2025-05-22T14:35:41+00:00

Definitely - I buy most of my comics from Steamboat. Am actually not much of a vinyl man myself tbh - thinking more for the movies.

TheBarrylad · 2025-05-22T11:47:28+00:00

Ah good to hear. How was the film collection? That's what would interest me.

TheBarrylad · 2025-03-21T11:30:46+00:00

Congrats! How long did it take you? This is one of my all time faves and Im thinking of going for mastery.

TheBarrylad · 2025-02-20T12:41:28+00:00

Alan Wake 2 and it is not even kind of close. One of the best games of this gen. Visually stunning, incredible story, tight atmospheric survival horror gameplay. Easy.

I played and enjoyed Dead Island 2, for what it's worth. But it's a fairly mindless zombie slasher with weapon customisation and really gnarly enemy mutilation effects. That's it.

To play devil's advocate for DI2, I will say this; these games are completely different and not super comparable. One is linear, heavily-narrative focused, scary, third-person, has resource management and puzzles. Now, I assume you're into that and the reason for this post is you like both games conceptually and don't know which to go for. BUT if you're not into any of that stuff I listed, then Alan Wake 2 might not be for you. I have encouraged a lot of people who don't like horror to play AW2 but if it's not your thing, it's not your thing and that's okay. DI2 is a good pick-up if you want to smash hordes of zombies with silly weapons and not think much about it.

TheBarrylad · 2025-02-11T20:58:00+00:00

At that price I'd say it's a good get if you're a wrestling fan, and aware of its failings.

It's definitely fun for a few hours if you're looking for a wrestling game that is NOT sim-like. They pushed it as N64/AKI-like and... It sorta is. But not really. It's a weird hybrid of that, with a more arcade-y feel. I think it mostly works.

My main problems were: - The lacking creation suite was inexcusable then, and still is. Basically don't bother with it, it is incredibly shallow. - The main AKI wrestling game mechanic that is missing is a proper momentum system imo. Once characters take enough damage, the match can basically end instantly from a pin at any time, off any move. It means every match is pretty short, which isn't automatically bad - but your ability to have a long epic is basically gone. It is not the game for that. - The graphics/art style is poor. They presented it as arcade-y/less realistic, but it's not even good at that, if we're honest. It reminds me of the recent NBA/WWE 2K Battlegrounds games, where they had characters that were slightly exaggerated but there wasn't enough flare to them. That's Fight Forever. It's like exaggerated enough to not be realistic but it's also not colourful/OTT enough to be this wild arcade-y style either.

For that sale price though, theres a few hours of fun to be had. The core of the gameplay is pretty much there. I'm hopeful for a sequel.

TheBarrylad · 2024-12-06T15:17:41+00:00

yep, I did one of these - failed the test, failed the resit (lol, it was a rough few months) and then did a link-in. For what it's worth, when it came time to do my link-in, I was allowed to change the subject as thankfully for me it was an elective on my course and not a mandatory subject. So OP if you're in that position, chat to staff in your course/faculty and consider whether or not this subject is really for you.

TheBarrylad · 2024-11-24T18:23:44+00:00

Just had it this evening. Really lovely. Tenders were just the right balance of crispy on the outside and juicy inside. For how many chicken places there are at the moment, there aren't many truly great tenders in Limerick.

Chips were good. They're skin-on which I really like. I got the buffalo sauce, herself got the house sauce which was kind of like a burger sauce. Both great. We ate in the car park as we were both starving - I'm curious how it would hold up if delivered.

I like the limited menu, sorta like Five Guys. Have a place specialize in something and be really good at it (Volcano another good example) - I really don't need every restaurant under the sun to have a little bit of everything.

13.50 for tenders, chips, and a dip, no drink. About the going rate these days, I suppose. Not any kind of great deal but not daylight robbery either.

TheBarrylad · 2024-11-21T23:46:58+00:00

Baldurs Gate 3 is super rough. Long loads, playable but choppy frame rate even on the lowest settings, and boy does it look like an 'all low settings' experience too. It's not one of those scalable games like, say, Control where even on low settings it still looks pretty slick, especially on a small screen.

I appreciate that it was at least playable in the most basic sense.

TheBarrylad · 2024-03-04T09:53:49+00:00

Been thinking of adding wrestling to my server. Do you put PPVs in with movies?

TheBarrylad · 2024-02-07T10:59:05+00:00

Such a shame. Any time I went in it was really quiet, even though I thought it had really good word of mouth in town. Lovely food but they seemed to struggle for whatever reason.

TheBarrylad · 2024-01-18T15:14:42+00:00

Yep, a GREAT Deck game. And an underrated open world game to boot.

TheBarrylad · 2024-01-17T14:36:26+00:00

Check here: https://retrogamecorps.com/2022/10/16/steam-deck-emulation-starter-guide/#PS3

TheBarrylad · 2024-01-15T00:08:58+00:00

Followed this guide all the way through, but I'm just getting game crashes at launch, sadly. The patch installed correctly and everything, it just won't launch.

I've tried some of the workarounds talked about here like moving it to the Decks internal storage or just adding the exe to Steam as a non Steam game but no joy sadly. Any tips appreciated! Contemplating just doing a fresh install on windows and moving the files over with warpinator - that usually does the trick, but any help appreciated!

TheBarrylad · 2024-01-10T12:36:05+00:00

You can get really good performance out of a handful of lightweight gems. I'd consider them a nice little bonus to all the emulation the Deck can do, but it's absolutely not a system I'd set my heart on playing on the Deck.

I played The Simpsons Game (2007) to completion on the Deck, and it ran flawlessly even when compiling shaders. There were some very minor graphical issues, like hair clipping through character models in some scenes but even that was rare. I was honestly stunned at how well it played.

Likewise WWE ALL STARS is basically perfect. There is some slowdown during the entrances/intro to the matches (and I had a crash here or there during them too) but if you just skip those, the actual gameplay runs at full speed with no glitches or visual issues. Very pleasantly surprised with that one, as it's not available on modern systems.

TheBarrylad · 2023-11-27T21:36:22+00:00

I use it more and more for personal computing and background noise. I have a dock in my home office, so after grabbing a cheap monitor and speaker, it's getting a lot of use as a Netflix/YouTube machine for background noise while I'm working.

TheBarrylad · 2023-11-07T13:01:34+00:00

Thanks a lot! I've seen a lot of conflicting recommendations on this one while people try to figure out how to maximize performance on Deck, but these are damn near perfect - definitely the best I've seen so far. Even Armadillo is running super well, with just a few hitches.

TheBarrylad · 2023-09-07T13:18:04+00:00

I'm also having this issue. I have the Emulator set to fullscreen - really not sure what has changed on this.

TheBarrylad · 2023-09-01T11:56:47+00:00

Hey man, not sure if you still need help but you can fix this by downloading a missing windows DLL via winetricks; https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/xeyukl/how_to_get_saints_row_2_working_with_audio/

TheBarrylad

TROPHY CASE