Another year is drawing to a close for me and I figured I should write about the year I had in gaming in 2018. I have made a surprising amount of purchases this year in terms of Games, gaming systems, and Audio Video equipment this year and I want to go over the more interesting of this in this here blog. As far as the games go I will only go into the ones that I played a good amount of and not the ones I have barley played or ones I have not played at all yet.

New AV Equipment

This year I most certainty spent to much money upgrading my entertainment center and game capture setup. On the upside I also feel like I got what I paid for with said purchases. I just want to highlight the big things I got this year.

4K LG OLED TV: OLED55C7P

I already cover my new LG when I got it but long story short it is an awesome TV. It has really good HDR support and has really good picture quality. Every single game I have played and movie I have watched on it since getting it looks better from being on this screen, not just the 4K and HDR stuff. Whats more its input lag is much lower than my previous Samsung Plasma TV. Getting this TV did cause me to not stream due to incompatibilities with my Elgato HD60 pro (because it did not pass through let alone record 4K or HDR signals) until I made another purchase to deal with that problem.

AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K Capture Card: GC573

Like I previously stated my old capture card was not going to work with the 4K and HDR Signal that was being sent from my Xbox One X to my new TV. This made it so that if I wanted to use the new stuff that I could not stream or record. I knew that Elgato released a 4K catpure card but that it did not do HDR at all ( it has since been updated to pass it through though). I looked into splitters and down scalers to allow me to play in 4K and HDR but record and stream in standard HD but it seemed like a road to no-wheres-ville. The AVerMedia 4K Live gamer not only offered 4K HDR pass through but record and stream and was $100 cheaper on top of that. Needless to say I grabbed that shortly after it was available. Aside from some HDR blue line problems (cause by the Systems more than the card) it has been mostly easy to use.

Denon Surround Sound Receiver: AVR X3400H

Thanks to an episode of My life in Gaming I learned of a Surround Sound receiver that worked as a splitter ans switch box that also worked well with a certain upscaler I was interested in. This offered me the promise of not having to swap HDMI cables when I wanted to stream and record, that everything that was plugged into the receiver also went to both the TV and the capture card and could be switched between with a couple of button presses. The fact that I had been in the market for a new reciever for years made this an easy purchase as my old Pioneer did not even have HDMI support and was $200 when I got it back in 2006 and I used a $100 rebate (the point is it was cheap). This new Denon is future proofed (for the moment) with all of the different HDR formats, Dolby Atmos, and many more things supported. The fact that it also sounds good and is easy to setup and use puts it over the top for me. For $500 it was a very good purchase for me this year.

Open Source Scan Converter: O.S.S.C. 1.6

I had been using my cheap RGB SCART to HDMI upscaler since I got it in 2015. While it was and immediate improvement over simply plugging my Sega Genesis into the TV via composite cable, it did not take long to see the weaknesses of is scaling. The old scaler stretched the image, introduced ghosting to moving sprites, and had noticeable input lag. The XRGB Mini Framemeister was too expensive and its days of support were numbered. The Open Source Scan Converter was something I knew about but it did not have HDMI output back then. the 1.6 update of the O.S.S.C. added HDMI and made it viable for my setup. I also knew that it output strange resolutions that do not work well with most TVs or my Elgato Capture Card. Thanks to the previously mentioned My Life in Gaming episode, I learned that the O.S.S.C. worked well with my new TV, Capture Card and Denon receiver. The O.S.S.C. supports RGB Scart, Component and VGA inputs. It does not support Composite or S-Video , even with and adapter. I did have to buy a generic remote for it and it does show some flaws in some game systems more (the Jail bars on my Model 1 High Definition Graphics Sega Genesis) but it is so much better than my old upscaler that it is not even close to being funny. The improvement form the old upscaler to this is almost as big as moving from composite to the old upscaler. It (O.S.S.C.) also does its magic with no added input lag and does not stretch the image.

Systems I Bought

I have made a few Video Game System Purchases this year. My entertainment center has expanded to a small shelve that sits next to the TV to make room for the new additions to my setup.

Dreamcast

I have a thing where I want all of my systems to be black (I see a red Wii and I want it painted black) and one system that always bothered me with its color scheme was the Sega Dreamcast. To my knowledge it is the only Sega system release in the US that wasn't black. I knew about the Black Sega Sports version bout the orange Sega Sports logo always put me off of trying to get that version. This year I changed my mind about it and after looking for months I found one in good shape at a pawn shop for cheap and I grabbed it. I do not have much of a game collection for it yet ( id did come with Power Stone though) certainty nowhere near what I had for it back in the day. I am going to try to steer clear of burned games as I understand they are more likely to wear the systems laser more quickly. Dreamcast games have been difficult to come by lately so things could get difficult.

Playstation 4 Pro

Back when I got my TV I wrote in my blog that I want to eventually get a PS4 Pro and In November I did just that. I got a used PS4 Pro with a copy of Horizon Zero Dawn Complete for $335. It wasn't the best deal I could have gotten but it was the one I did get. I have been buying up the PS4 exclusive games that I have been interested in and I have gotten most of them ( I still need to get Spider-man and Tetris Effect) I have not played the games for this system much since I got it but I will be doing plenty of that this winter.

Playstation 2

Continuing my Nostalgia for the 6th generation of consoles I purchased a PS2 slim. I had a PS2 fat back in the day with plenty of games for it. PS2 games are cheap now a days (with some exceptions) and I have enjoyed revisiting some of them and playing ones I did not back in the day. I also made sure to get the 7001 model which still has the on board PS1 CPU and have been using this to play some PS1 games as well. Some of the games I had back in the day (looking at you GTA) I bought for the OG Xbox in the past few years and I would prefer to play them there (well, on the Xbox 360 anyway)

Notable games I bought and played

2018 was a year in which I bough a lot of games but did not play a lot of them. It is more than a little dumb but it is what I did. I wanted to just go over some of the memorable games I played a good amount of that I bought this year.

• Lumines HD: I never played the original release of Lumines (never having a PSP) but I did have the Vita game and I enjoyed it immensely. When I heard that a HD update was coming out for new systems and it supported 4K on the Xbox one X I knew I had to get it and it is awesome. Now I remember why I spent so much time playing Lumines on the Vita, because Lumines is simply awesome and it is even better in 4K.
• Forza Horizon 3: One of the games I have been meaning to get since getting an Xbox One X is play ground games Forza Horizon 3 but I wanted to wait for it to go on sale. When I saw I used copy for $26 I bough it. 2 Months later I bought the full package in an Xbox Live sale for about $40 with all of the D.L.C. and expansions and sold my used copy for $20. Forza Horizon 3 is by far the best driving game I have ever bought or played it is just that simple. It looks simply gorgeous and drives like a dream. I know that Forza Horizon 4 came out this year and I'm sure I will get it eventually but the color palate of being in Australia being so much brighter that what one normally associates with jolly old England that it will take a while before Forza Horizon 3 gets old for me.
• Megaman 11: I was very disappointed with the way Might Number 9 turned out but when I heard of Megaman 11, I was ready to believe again and that belief was rewarded with what my be my game of the year for 2018. Megaman 11 has a hard start with its difficulty but when I learned how to buy upgrades, E tanks and extra lives it became much more enjoyable. The visuals are exactly what I wanted from a modern 2D Megaman game and it even supports 4K. The controls are tight and the gear system the game introduces is actually good. Aside from the bouncy level (which is too long and annoying) I think the levels and bosses are great. Megaman 11 is simply a must buy for 2D Megaman game fans.
• Army Men: RTS (PS2): Yeah, I bought a console RTS and that makes me a moron, I get it. This is a game that I bought when it came out and I enjoyed it then, and I enjoyed when I bought and played through to ends credits again this year. I wanted this game back in the day because all of the other Army Men games did it wrong. None of them were the RTS that I had in my mind when I played with the actual Army Men figures. I did not imagine a 3rd person shooter or a helicopter game. Army Men RTS is a basic game with not much dept but it does a good job with what it has to offer. It does the level lord thing of tiny characters in real world environments. It has a basic but effective visual style, simple controls and it is fun to play.
• Dog's Life (PS2): This is a game I remember being featured in a Giant Bomb video and it looked fun. After watching that video again this year I seeked it out at my local used game store and bought it. It is a simple 3D over-world style adventure game that mostly involves fetch quest (get it?) and it is just goofy fun with plenty of charm. You play a dog trying to rescue his love interest from dog nappers and goes though several different environments in that search. I have not finished this game but I can tell that I will because I just enjoy it.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 4: I hardly played the online of Black Ops 1, I did not play the online of Black Ops 2, and I did not play Black Ops 3 at all. I mostly been getting the later Call of Duties for their story mode. It does not make sense that I would get Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 with those facts established but that is exactly what I did. I have enjoyed my time with Black Ops 4, just sticking with regular multiplayer (Black Out scares me). It did not take me long to adjust to the healing not being automatic anymore and I did quickly settle on my hero of choice (prophet). I am not good at this game and it is taking me a long time to get the guns that I want to put on my custom classes but Black Ops 4 is an enjoyable one of those games. I got it new on a black Friday sale for $38 for the Xbox One (where it's 4K and HDR on the Xbox One X).

Summery

This year has been an odd year for me in gaming. 2018 has seen me spend more money on games, game systems, and AV equipment and not much time playing the things that I get. I can't really say that I haven't had the time to play them I just haven't played them. This is something I look to rectify for next year. I am happy with the purchases I have made and the games I have played this year. I just have to get ready for what should be an awesome year in gaming in 2019.