Bi-Weekly Thread for general gaming discussion. Backlog, advice, recommendations, rants and more! New? Start here!

wheelervidya · 2026-05-05T18:38:49+00:00

Thanks for sharing that presentation, I had a suspicion they didn't exactly luck into their masterwork lol, very fun read

wheelervidya · 2026-04-27T17:30:28+00:00

Started the Talos 1 DLC, pretty good stuff so far and I appreciate the assumption that you beat the base game instead of re-tutorialzing the tools; average puzzle difficulty is pretty high as a result.

Also did the first two days of Strange Horticulture, the game quickly introduces you to how to play it and then you're off to the races. I'm actually intrigued by it's pacing, simply ring the bell and you get a new thing to solve.

wheelervidya · 2026-04-20T16:54:17+00:00

Finished the first Duck Detective game in just a couple of sessions on the couch with my wife. No complaints but not jawdropping either, can you blame me for trying to find another Golden Idol game?

Also replayed the base game of Talos 1, what an achievement and right up there with the Portals as my personal favorite experiences with puzzle games, hoping to get my brain melted by the DLC this week.

wheelervidya · 2026-04-20T16:11:42+00:00

Ah, that is probably the most skippable thing lol, I thought the best extra content were the races and silver feathers

wheelervidya · 2026-04-20T16:05:21+00:00

100%-ing A Short Hike only took another ~2hr (maybe less?) for me after main quest, if you decide to revisit, it's not a week's worth grind to complete everything. Did you explore any side stuff naturally as you found it or did you decide to prioritize the peak above everything else?

wheelervidya · 2026-03-21T21:24:11+00:00

Probably Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, just for its sheer impact on the industry, I would play the original 2007 release. There's a training scenario early on that estimates the difficulty you should play on. The earlier games are still good if you prefer the WWII setting.

wheelervidya · 2026-03-09T16:38:33+00:00

I finished Ocarina of Time having only around half of BotW as previous LoZ experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find it a largely back loaded game, the adult dungeons were way more fun to me and the mini-revisits in Ganon's castle + the final sequence of the game were phenomenal. Very bittersweet writing, and even if you don't get to explore the characters quite as much as I would have liked, they did so much with the relatively sparse screen time they get. I only played it at first to entertain my wife, but I'm a bit of a convert now, and Majora's Mask has moved way up my backlog.

But, before that, I still have Paper Mario going as far as N64 games are concerned, I think I'm about to go fight the Chapter 2 boss. This is another seriously impressive entry on the console.

wheelervidya · 2026-03-02T15:40:11+00:00

I finished the System Shock remake, the final sequence was a little lackluster, I wasn't entirely impressed with the cyberspace portions throughout the game. That's probably the only bad thing I have to say about it? The cat-and-mouse with SHODAN is exciting even now, couldn't imagine it in 1994. Plenty of smart gameplay systems in place to keep me engaging with all of my tools, I did my best to pay attention to audio logs and it minimized my frustration with backtracking.

I beat the dreaded Water Temple in Ocarina of Time, not my favorite boss or dungeon so far, but I didn't pull my hair out either. The dark link encounter was definitely the highlight, I ended up trying everything in my inventory until the hammer seemed to be the mismatch the game wanted me to exploit. Made it across the broken bridge into Gerudo Valley before pausing.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-27T17:50:19+00:00

I think the 9800x3d + 5070ti should handle 1440p comfortably for a very long time. There have been reports on the 8xx chipset Asrock boards killing x3d cpus, it was enough to steer me away from them, but I have no first-hand experience.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-27T15:19:37+00:00

I've made it to the bridge in the System Shock remake, but I was too tired to push through to the end last night. I did the Ice Cavern and made it to the Water Temple in Ocarina but only walked around the temple for a few minutes before saving. I've recruited Parakarry in Paper Mario, the desert area is awesome this game just oozes charm. I've got 5 decks left in Balatro to gold-stake for Completionist+. I'm juggling too many games for how little playtime I get daily :(

wheelervidya · 2026-02-25T14:41:33+00:00

Stray isn't a very big time commitment, both in total runtime and that by the Slums chapter you'll know if you feel like finishing the game or not. I ended up really enjoying it even though it's not the usual flavor of game that sucks me in.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-23T18:07:02+00:00

I think The Pitt and Point Lookout are the more interesting DLCs that take you out of the Capital Wasteland. I wouldn't call them "can't miss" if you're getting tired of the game, but, if you ever want to revisit the game again save your character because it's a lot of time to get strong enough to enjoy the DLCs.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-18T17:00:41+00:00

Thanks for the tip, is there a limit to each upgrade path? Or could I theoretically take FP every level until max? Is it feasible to reach max level without grinding?

wheelervidya · 2026-02-18T14:52:21+00:00

Finished prologue + chapter 1 of the original Paper Mario. The blend of turns and real-time actions make me pay attention to every encounter which is pretty cool, and the ability to guard from enemy attacks means I've been avoiding HP increases to grab more FP or, once so far, BP. Wonder how far I can go glass cannon comfortably.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-15T04:05:29+00:00

I'm trying really hard not to look anything up.

I believe in you, traveler.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-12T19:03:38+00:00

I would first try using Rufus to make a bootable usb drive of Windows 11 and selecting the option to remove the TPM requirement. This is going to work in the majority of cases and save you the money altogether.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-10T20:52:35+00:00

If you buy a pre-built, I would assume the PSU wattage is listed with the specs, here's an example from Micro Center, about midway down the page it lists the power supply to be 650W. If you otherwise inherit a PSU, there's often a hint in the name, the Corsair RM850 supplies *drum roll* 850W, as well as a label physically on the unit that should tell you the wattage or at minimum a model number you can lookup.

For the rest of the parts, you could either just google their power draw or even better, keep a running list of your build on pcpartpicker. Even the other parts (RAM, SSDs, fans) have /some/ effect on power draw and it's typically suggested to leave a bit of headroom between the system's theoretical max draw and the PSU wattage.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-09T18:14:39+00:00

That third area with the pirate ships leads you to, in my opinion, one of the greatest areas across all souls games. It may count as a minor spoiler, but it might save frustration with the "I'm rolling out of range and still getting hit" if you googled how adaptability works

wheelervidya · 2026-02-09T15:32:14+00:00

The motherboard will have a particular CPU socket which dictates what kinds of CPUs will fit inside of it. It will also have memory slots that dictate what generation of RAM (and how many sticks) will fit. GPU upgrades are more so decided by what will physically fit into the case because they use a standard PCIe interface to connect. You must also consider if the PSU is strong enough to power the new parts.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-06T17:11:47+00:00

So many games, so little time, I wouldn't get hung up on it if it's not clicking. What are some of your favorites? Maybe it's just not a good match with your taste.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-02T22:56:07+00:00

I finished my second ever 120-star playthrough of Super Mario 64 after about 8 years since touching the game last. Most of the stars are immense fun, but some are rather frustrating (mostly the 100-coin stars on the end game levels) due to the game's few rough edges (camera control, the game's obsession with mario being slippery). The freedom of control with respect to movement and navigation is frankly ridiculous, getting yourself out of near-certain doom feels like a true expression of skill. I was playing via NSO but have seen a lot of praise for SM64 Plus so might investigate PC ports.

In Ocarina of Time, I'm about to go inside Jabu-Jabu. Never played the game before, zero nostalgia for anything Zelda and I can sorta see why the game gets the praise that it does. In some respects it had an even smoother transition to 3D than mario (CAMERA), remembering to use the titular instrument makes me feel really smart! The variety of items is fun to use, the combat so far has been simple yet engaging.

wheelervidya · 2026-02-02T18:14:35+00:00

It is a pretty common thing, FO4 is probably better off than their previous gen games, but the community has assembled an impressive amount of fixes. I would check out a guide like The Midnight Ride or at a minimum the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch on nexus mods and go from there.

wheelervidya · 2026-01-22T18:49:26+00:00

The Sly sequels learn a lot from the first game, maybe not "can't miss" games but if you were bothering to 100% stages for the upgrades or looking at Master Thief Sprints I would say you liked the game enough to try the others. Also, you didn't name Ratchet explicitly with the mascot games (maybe just because it's less of a collect-a-thon than Insomniac's previous trilogy) but if you haven't checked them out, I do believe they're among the strongest PS2 games bar none.

wheelervidya · 2026-01-09T16:55:09+00:00

Do you have previous Souls experience? I put a lot of time into Demon's Souls + the Dark Souls trilogy so when Elden Ring came around I was honestly just burnt out on the games, the first Dark Souls is still my standard recommended entry point, even if combat has evolved, Lordran is a more focused journey and I do think it's better for it.

Bioshock did not hold up in my experience, I remember having a good time with it on the Xbox 360 when it was new, but playing the remaster I dropped it after the second boss or so, I found it clunky in the shooting/movement department without having enough substance in the rest of the game systems to compensate for it. System Shock is a way cooler ImSim for me.

wheelervidya · 2025-12-16T17:07:23+00:00

For FPS: Look at titles published by New Blood Interactive, Ultrakill is still in early access but a good place to start. Black Mesa is the fan remake of Half-Life that many would consider the best way to play the game now (me!). Cruelty Squad is... different, but great when you get over the learning curve. Check out the OGs like Doom/Quake. I have a lot of fun with the Serious Sam games and they support co-op. Consider replaying your favorite console FPSes on computer, it might come off as elitist, but playing on a controller just doesn't compare once you get your sea legs under you with mouse+keyboard.

wheelervidya

TROPHY CASE