Play Warfare Bin (PWBE 23 Dec 2024)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

All the news sources I go to are making note of the fact that we're
three years into war on three different continents, while also observing
that war never really let up for the last hundred years or so. One of my
neighbours, who is devout and elderly, assumes that all this conflict
will outlive him. One of my coworkers, who is young and inexperienced,
expresses hope that everything can be settled in his lifetime. I'm
sitting here in the middle wondering if it's selfish to just tune out
and play games instead.

Play:
--=--

Undernauts Labyrinth of Yomi (PS5) - Few things as funny as a PS5 game
that's not more than 6 GB. This is a delightful Wizardry clone with just
enough character to evoke the era of the series from the PS2 forward,
full of NPC interaction and conflict driven by dialogue choices. It's
set in the modern world with almost no explanation as to why it's
necessary for office workers and accountants to go about swinging swords
and wearing armour, and I am here for it. Best purchase of the whole
year for me.

Art of Rally (PS5) - Also picked this up for cheap, the big collector's
edition with all of the stickers and the papercraft car and the sew-on
firesuit patches for $20 down from $100-ish. The game is nice and
relaxing, with a 'just eff about' mode that lets you drive the car
around what look like regional rally stages without the pressure of
having to keep time or stick to a course. I haven't played the proper
game yet, partly because I'm a bit worried about spoiling that pleasant
vibe with something that requires more skill or more patience.

Raspberry Pi 500 (Pi) - As with the previous iterations of the hardware,
the main issue with this latest board is just plain I/O. It's much
better at running Linux and playing videos and shooting great big
packets down a network pipe, but it's when it tries to do more than two
of those things at once that it runs into trouble. This is especially
true when it's running something like LibreElec, where the whole point
is to minimise all other functionality behind just doing media, and
still it struggles when you're trying to move files around.

Want:
--=--

UFO 50 - On a disc. Doesn't have to be on console, but given that PC
games don't get physical releases anymore I guess that's where it has to
be. I think it was tone-deaf Philippe Tremblay at Ubisoft who said that
gamers have to be comfortable not owning the games? That's just fine
Phil, as long as you get comfortable with me not buying from you.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

-KKC, who has a pile of other games to play too.

[Russell Marks]

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
All the news sources I go to are making note of the fact that we're
three years into war on three different continents, while also observing
that war never really let up for the last hundred years or so. One of my
neighbours, who is devout and elderly, assumes that all this conflict
will outlive him. One of my coworkers, who is young and inexperienced,
expresses hope that everything can be settled in his lifetime. I'm
sitting here in the middle wondering if it's selfish to just tune out
and play games instead.

I think a little escapism is understandable so long as you don't do
anything too on-the-nose like, say, playing shooters which trivialise
the horrors of armed conflict while you rack up an absurd body count.
Just Cause 2 (PC) - I've had this for a while now, so I thought I'd
finally give it a shot. Under Wine alone, the overall process size of
this 32-bit game quickly hits 4GB (!) and it falls over. But with
DXVK, it "only" reaches 3.5GB or so, and seems stable (aside from
sometimes attracting debugger attention on exiting, curiously).
Anyway, the joys of PC gaming on Linux aside, it's still a good enough
game that I replayed it to the basic finish. That whole grappling-hook
idea never gets old somehow. It's a fairly grindy game though, with
baddies getting spawned behind you constantly which is as stupid as it
ever was, and the story... isn't what you'd call a classic narrative
exactly.

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
Raspberry Pi 500 (Pi) - As with the previous iterations of the hardware,
the main issue with this latest board is just plain I/O.

That's a shame. I think the M.2 HAT+ was meant to help with this on
the Pi 5 - though it might not be suitable for a Pi 500 aesthetically,
if nothing else. :-) I also remember something about a fairly recent
microSD-related software update supporting faster operations on only a
certain type of card (the Pi crowd having started selling suitable
cards IIRC), which primarily seems to give faster read speeds on them.
The ancient Star Trek FPS I will shortly be buying (yes, that one) to
not be as tricky to run with Wine as it sounds like it might be. The
theoretical backup plan is to try running it using software rendering
on ye olde Windows in QEMU - so obviously, the actual backup plan is
to just hope really hard that I don't end up needing to try the
theoretical one.
Having to (re-)memorise the Dreamcast^WXbox ABXY button positions for
the (ironically enough) QTE-ish button sequences in JC2, due to the
way Wine understandably pretends the controller is an Xbox 360 pad.
Not easy, as any mention of a Y button seems to get my brain stuck in
SNES mode somehow.

-Rus.

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On 23 Dec 2024 at 17:42:58 GMT, "Kendrick Kerwin Chua"

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
Raspberry Pi 500 (Pi) - As with the previous iterations of the hardware,
the main issue with this latest board is just plain I/O. It's much
better at running Linux and playing videos and shooting great big
packets down a network pipe, but it's when it tries to do more than two
of those things at once that it runs into trouble. This is especially
true when it's running something like LibreElec, where the whole point
is to minimise all other functionality behind just doing media, and
still it struggles when you're trying to move files around.

That's likely due to running off an SD, they have awful controllers
unless you buy SSD class ones at double the price of normal ones.

Such a shame they bolloxed it by not including the nvme slot.

Cheers - Jaimie