wchigo

@efesell: that is good news and the part I was worried about most. Being based in Asia, I pretty much am never able to catch any streams live of the people I follow (GB, EZA, etc.), so I only have the option of VODs after the fact. Glad to hear the vids should be available on YT (I just woke up and haven’t had a chance to sub to the Patreon or listen to ep 0 myself yet).

I was gonna try and hop on the MH zeitgeist and go back and play World on PS4, but when my Pro started spinning up like it was about to take off and fly to the moon, I decided to give the Rise demo a shot. Like what I played so I paid the entry fee.

Only put a couple hours in so far (just bought it over the weekend), so still trying to get the hang of things but would be interested in occasionally teaming up, especially for the rampages.

Friend code is SW-2290-7491-4439.

Haha, ooh boy... I read through your reviews of those two games and woof. I'm surprised Fast & Furious Crossroads wasn't one of your reviews, though maybe the price on that hasn't dropped low enough yet...

Well it works out most of the time I guess? But sometimes I think I'll really jive with a game and it will end up not doing a thing for me (like The Witness) or I'll struggle to really sink my teeth into it (like NieR:Automata). Other times I'll like what I've seen but just end up falling off for one reason or another (like with Xenoblade Chronicles 2)...

Actually, I guess a slight correction on my part is necessary. I did own a Sega Game Gear and I remember loving that thing, but I also remember just playing a shitload of Columns on it and not much else. I've played bits of Sonic and some other franchises like Golden Axe and Pit Fighter on the Genesis because my cousins owned one, but I never had a Genesis/Saturn/Dreamcast myself.

I'm actually watching the archived video of Jeff playing through Balan right now and just oof... absolutely nothing about that game looks enticing. But yeah, for your sake I hope the game gets a price drop soon, so you can satisfy your curiosity. ;D

I couldn’t be less interested, but then again I don’t have much nostalgia for Sega’s catalogue cause I never owned any of their consoles, and as such had very little experience with Yuji Naka. All I know at first glance was that I was pretty off-put by the characters, and from what I’ve seen the gameplay just looks downright coma inducing.

That being said, more power to ya for knowing what you want and sticking to your guns. I think the only legitimately bad games I’ve purposely gone after were for the purposes of trophy hunting, otherwise they were simply more divisive games ala FF XIII.

Hey there, I recently went down a tech rabbit hole researching stuff like monitors, motherboards, GPUs and computer cases to prepare for my recent build, and monitors was likely one of the areas that I spent the most time looking at.

Ultrawide compatibility with games has improved a lot from my understanding, and 21:9 gaming is actually pretty good right now, it can be a disadvantage in more competitive games as you have to pay attention to a lot more in your peripheral vision, especially if you're gonna go for something even wider than 21:9.

• I suppose it depends on the size and features you're looking for, but one that is supposedly quite good is the Viewsonic VX2758-2KP-MHD (absolutely terrible name though). It's a great value option around $299 right now (according to Amazon) if you're looking for a 1440p 144hz monitor that has reasonable good performance. A few of the higher end 1440p 144hz options that are great are the LG 27GL850, Dell S2721DGF (which also uses the same LG panel) and the MSI MAG274QRF-QD which are all more around the $450-500 range depending on if there's a sale going on. I personally went with the Dell S2721DGF myself for the slightly better performance vs the LG.
• Different strokes for different folks. You of course have the panel types of TN, IPS and VA, where IPS are probably the most prevalent now especially for 1440p 144-165hz monitors, whereas ultrawides are currently more in the domain of VA, though you'll find some IPS displays in there too, usually from LG (which also cost a fortune!) Then you have things like GtG (Grey to Grey) response times, colour gamut, refresh rates, resolution, some people won't buy a panel that doesn't have a USB hub built-in for example. So this part is really up to you. I'd say a good baseline is a good IPS or VA panel with decent to good GtG response time, then choose your resolution (1080p, 1440p or Ultrawide) and then probably 144hz which has kind of become the standard now.
• You'll get more pixels from an Ultrawide, but from my research some content creators aren't a fan of less vertical real estate because of the way the sizing works. There was one monitor (I forget the name) that was 21:10 and the guy using it was in love because he had some more vertical space to work with, which was great when trying to encode videos as he had more space to see the preview. So I guess you win some and you lose some?
• Nah, ignore those folks. Anyone pitching a 4K monitor likely won't be keeping your budget in mind anyways.

If you have the time, try looking up some stuff on Youtube. Hardware Unboxed was a great source and pretty much how I eventually settled on the Dell unit for my monitor of choice, as they do pretty in-depth reviews and kind of cover the full spectrum of 1080p all the way up to 4K, and will even review budget models. I'd say check them out if you're interested to learn a bit more and maybe you'll find the monitor for you from something they've covered.

Oh, and it seems like a wild @rorie has appeared, lured out by the siren's call that is monitors. ;)

Edit: Forgot to even cover g-sync and freesync... So if you're planning to go with a high refresh rate monitor, I'd highly recommend getting a monitor that works with these features. It's gonna make a ton of difference unless you are willing to play with settings so that you can always hit 120/144 fps in every game you play, otherwise things are gonna feel off. Of course if your game can't hit those marks you could also turn on v-sync and change your monitor's settings to 60hz, but who wants to do things manually these days?! It's so much easier and satisfying to turn on adaptive sync options like a g-sync, set your monitor to 120/144hz and know that everything will just work without you having to spend hours tinkering to get everything just right.

I'm somewhere between the "Somewhat" and "Not at all" options on the poll, any eventually went with the latter. I have my PS4 Pro and likely won't be selling that, and I totally skipped XBOX for this generation because they didn't really have any exclusives that I had to have, and all third-party titles play just fine on my PS4 Pro that I don't feel the need to have an XBOX One X as well.

Also, I feel like I've kind of come to terms with my gaming habits recently, and that is that I rarely go back and play games I've already beat. There's a few exceptions, like Dark Souls or Bloodborne or Ocarina of Time, that I've played over and over again, but that's a real small portion of my overall gaming library. As such, back compat isn't really that important to me, though a PS5 would serve me much better in that regards versus a Series X. And honestly based on launch and launch window games, I'm in the PS5 camp anyways, though I probably won't be getting one at launch since I can't pre-order one where I am, and I'm not desperate enough to get scalped.

tl;dr - My current gen library is not a factor at all, would have eventually bought a PS5 even if it couldn't play a single PS4 game.

PSN username is wchigo.

Man, this game is hard. It's probably some amount of rust and re-adjustment, but I beat Yama several times in OG Spelunky and could pretty reliably make it to the caves pretty much every run. However, Spelunky 2 is handing me my own butt a whole helluva lot, in the first world no less!

Honestly, this doesn’t move the needle at all for me. I don’t care about any of the IPs that were shown in the XBOX + Bethesda banner, but I’d be a fool to say this isn’t a blockbuster move.

I do wonder if this actually means the games will go platform exclusive or not though. I mean, while it would be a coup for Microsoft, I could see a lot of people getting upset at being forced to buy a specific console to play games that were, in the past, platform agnostic. Yes, the circumstances are different, but humans are not ones governed by logic or reason.

I imagine a lot of the bigger titles (TES, Fallout, DOOM, Wolfenstein) may stay multi-platform, while some “smaller” stuff like Dishonored and The Evil Within go XBOX & PC only. Yeah, Microsoft may “miss out” on sales of their box, but they still get profits from sales of the games on Sony and Nintendo consoles too, which could likely balance things out in the end.

Yes. According to the article on Ars Technica, Microsoft is actually purchasing the parent company, ZeniMax Media, and not just Bethesda.

Edit: Here’s a link to the Ars Technica story. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/microsoft-purchases-bethesda-softworks-in-industry-changing-acquisition/

I only played a couple hours last night, and it's taking some time to get my Spelunky legs back. I'm like Rorie where I played a ton on Vita, to the point where I beat Yama and I even got the Speedlunky trophy.

That being said, for as close as the game is to Spelunky 1, there's enough subtle changes that make it play pretty differently from 2. I'm definitely struggling the most with the roly poly enemies, to the point where I'm trying to avoid them entirely as much as possible. There definitely seem to be more "dead end" areas where you get to them and need to bomb/rope your way out than in the first game as well, which doesn't bother me too much since I try to scout out ahead of time, but was fairly noticeable during Brad's stream and even on Patrick's videos.

So far I think I've only gotten to maybe 2-2? Had an early run where I got a jetpack out of a present and was pretty hyped, then died in a stupid way (Spelunky's m.o.). Looking forward to putting more time in and getting further into the game.

Really? Wow, I had literally no idea. I knew of the DLC that continued on from that cliffhanger ending, but that was about it.