Video Games

I took your advice and re-started - it made a big difference, the story makes a little more sense now, and I understand how to balance out the party. I think part of what I found difficult was that my Tav build was basically the same as Astarion and there was quite a bit of redundancy. It's a lot easier now and I've got a lot further. I still find the combat wheels awkward but I'm getting the hang of it. Thanks for the advice!

Cross posting this from the Television thread but the new Fallout series is fantastic. Incredibly faithful to the world. Obsidian-esque dialog rather than the more vanilla Bethesda. It’s so good. I’m so happy.

Excited but no spoilers!

I have had serious anxiety about this and no desire to watch at all but reviews are positive and I don't know what to do.

Like... Is it TV good or just good for a videogame adaption?

Ep1 at least is good TV 👌

Apparently the Series X / PS5 update to fallout four is coming later this month.

Na dawg - its like good TV, period. They really did a good job. I'm a harsh critic at the best of times. You'd be doing yourself a disservice by not watching it. Look at my avatar! Gonna have to trust me on this one. Think the glowing reviews speak for themselves.

I’m deep in a fallout 4 survival play through ahead of the London release in a few weeks - will see if I can get my partner more interested in the show than she is in my settlements…

Fallout proggy had got me excited to play the FO4 next-gen update until I found out what a damp squib it looks to be.

Anyway, got bored of BG3 (or possibly overwhelmed) and went back to play Shogun 2 for the last few weeks. Great game.

Love fallout. Very much hyped for the series and glad to hear good reviews.

Hoping to finish 3 body problem first in amongst new baby duties though. The little lad is making our series binge-ing rather less efficient these days.

Finally got my Anbernic working, it's great. Playing Super Mario World on such a tiny machine is super fun.

Which one did you go for? I've been on the fence about getting one as there seems to be a lack of 4:3 options that are powerful enough to run PS2 games (though the RG405M does look to be decent enough at it). The vast majority of the stuff I'd be playing is PS1/Dreamcast so I might just go for something like the Retroid Pocket 2S and deal without PS2 games.

Bought CP2077 on a special.

Also lost Internet for a week due to a faulty socket. Was forced back to offline games so went to Days gone. Only started and dropped it in 2021 (as per my last save 😂). Quite enjoying it at the moment!

Balatro.

BALATRO!

I really enjoyed it, got heavily into completing it before Christmas - it's definitely worth springing for the big dlc as well, really enjoyable story behind it.

Yeah, I’ve been a bit absorbed with it t the last week or two. Lucked out with my first really solid build yesterday. Joker for 50% chance a heart gives a x2 mult, then a joker that doubles probabilities, so 100% chance. Then one to copy the leftmost joker, then one to copy the joker to the right. Then one to retrigger all cards on the final round. So every heart doubled the mult four times each.
Ended up with hands scoring about 4e14 on ante 14/15, then it scaled too fast

Fun number generator though

Yeah. Getting good jokers early makes a huge difference. Early one I made it pretty easily to the Purple Boss Blind with some amazing early Jokers and then was just got dealt absolute garbage. Exploring the extra cards right now - learning how to build things out in a balanced way.

I just worked out that you can rearrange the order of the Jokers. That changes the order of operations on how they are applied. Mind blown.

why is NUMBER GOES UP so addictive

Phew!

I've been feeling guilty for weeks about your Anbernic purchase.

why is NUMBER GOES UP so addictive

I do believe you have answered your own question.

if you're hoping to beat gold stake the beta in testing makes it much harder so might be one to unlock before the new version drops.

I got the RG35XX H, it's very neat, super pocket sized. I need to get rid of most of the preloaded games, most are garbage, I'll put together my dream retro gaming collection.

@skydancer It was just a faulty memory card but Anbernic sent me a replacement motherboard as well! Don't feel bad. 🙃

Took the plunge on the Retroid Pocket 2S. Seems to be a similar form factor to the RG35XX H. Now gotta get to building up the little ROM collection. Feels a little superfluous given I've got a Switch for a bunch of the (S)NES/N64 stuff, a Vita for the old PS1 stuff and a modded PSP for odds & ends. But it'll be nice to just have it all on one little device!

Hoping I can use it as a more powerful version of my GameShell and use it for some game dev to indoctrinate my daughter into some programming!

You were right - it really hits the spot.

It is very good, agreed. Feels like they sank some massive cash in to it which strikes me as a remarkable gamble. Looks like it could pay off.

@Vesalius

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi6RK7PCUlM

ARGHHHH!!! JESUS CHRIST BE PRAISED