ChrisBardon

I started this as well, and I'm only maybe 90 mins in. I started out with the motion controls, but ended up switching for the pro controller and am liking that a lot better. The accuracy on the right stick seems to be enough (for now), and other than forgetting that you have to hold LB to move the camera, it's been pretty straightforward. The motion controls are mostly functional, but seemed to take much bigger motions than a small flick for things like the spin attack. It's also nice to have those be all relative motion instead of absolute (no sensor bar/pointer anymore). Game itself is slow to get going though, which I'd forgotten. I played this one once 10 years ago, so it's almost new except for for vague themes that I remembered (like that black monster, the bird stuff, and the motion controls). See how well the rest of it ages. You can definitely see some BOTW DNA in here though.

So the Assassin's creed saga continues. They just sent an update on the shipping situation, and I think it's a sign of things to come with a bunch of other projects. Full update is here (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/135116486/assassins-creed-brotherhood-of-venice/posts/3229512, but here's what they had to say about the shipping costs: End result is around 13% on top of what I already paid for the "send me everything because I'm a crazy person" pledge, which worked out to just under 40 bucks. They also seem to be going about as far as possible, offering full refunds if people want them, warehousing games, and facilitating transfers between backers who want out. This situation really sucks, and I've heard similar rumblings on the Frosthaven and Dark Tower kickstarter updates, so hopefully this shipping situation gets sorted out sometime soon.

I'm still on the fence, but I put down the deposit just in case. I can bail if reviews are really negative, but if it turns out to be awesome, then it'll probably also be impossible to get one. For me it's a combination of wanting to mess with a wacky new gadget, and having something my wife can use to play civ on the couch. I'd probably also get all the emulators on there, and could even see using it docked for PC indie stuff. I don't have a viable gaming PC anymore, since my laptop is starting to show its age, and this could fit the bill. I'll probably still keep AAA stuff to the Xbox, but if I can get PC gamepass running on this thing, along with steam and retroarch, then it's not a bad toy.

Having the m2 slot in all models is interesting. Assuming it's straightforward to open up, the SSD should be upgradeable, so you could probably put in a 2tb one. Unless the SSD is soldered to the board of course, but I can't imagine they'd go that far...

And complete. Even though I don't think I'm very good at the game, I managed to finish it on Hurt me Plenty without going for the armor upgrade that it offers if you die enough. Last couple bosses were tough, but I managed to scrape by the final one by making very judicious use of the crucible, BFG, and chaingun. Again, I actually thought the platforming and exploration were a fun addition to the game, but I did feel like there was almost two too many systems in place. I got the hang of the health/ammo/armor loop (armor being much more important than I thought originally), but kept forgetting about things like grenades and switching weapon mods (and especially mixing up which dpad direction switched those). I also ended up hitting things with blood punch when I wanted to go for a glory kill quite often. I appreciate the number of options the game gives you, and I suppose it's good that more than one are viable and that you don't have to engage with everything in there to make it through the game, but there was a lot to juggle in Eternal. I'd really like to see another stab at a game like this from that team though. The whole thing was like a playable Nine Inch Nails album. I don't think it'd have to be another Doom either, just something with a similar energy. No matter how terrible you are at the game, Doom Eternal makes you feel like a badass just about the entire time, and I can't think of many other games that keep up that pace.

So Gadget lust won.... See if anyone actually gets one of these in 2021. Seems more likely that it'll be 2022 sometime.

Given the peripheral support, I'm sure someone will come up with a mod that bolts an nvme USB SSD onto the back of it.

The $5 deposit and requirement that you've made a purchase on steam before 2021 is also brilliant. I kind of want to get one, but then again, I don't need a new handheld (not traveling much), so it would probably stay docked most of the time, and I don't get the impression that it'll be a powerhouse docked PC either. Then again, it's a new gadget, and it'd be a neat thing to add to the collection of weird PCs that I have. Something I do have to wonder though-how are most PC games at UI scaling these days? Something that's readable on a 23" monitor might be tiny on a 7" handheld. I was thinking of trying to play something like Civ or Xcom on this, and the trackpads (plus touchscreen) would probably be fine from a control standpoint, but I'm not sure about text etc.

True, it'll be interesting to see how fast someone has windows 10/steam up on it, and what the benchmarks look like for a windows vs linux loadout. Nice to see that standard docks will work as well-I wonder if it'd work on the one I use for my laptop? This also looks like it could be a killer emulation machine.

That...looks interesting. With the dock in there, that becomes a pretty neat option for a small gaming PC, and if it's capable, then it could be a winner. I did see mention of other stores being available on there-I wonder whether MS will get into that mix and be able to offer PC Gamepass on it? That would definitely change the economics of a device like this.

I forgot the one other thing I wish you could change about that game. If you have an extra life stashed, it gets used automatically. It'd be nice if you had a choice whether to use it or not-I ran into something last night where I got caught in a bad encounter, and blew through three of them, so now I've lost whatever I managed to build up. Not the end of the world, but if I'd had the choice I probably would have opted to reload and retry knowing what I know now about how things will play out.

I'm only maybe half way through, but I actually kind of like the platforming. The mobility breaks things up, and it works surprisingly well. It'd be nice if it was a little easier/faster to swap weapons, but otherwise it's probably one of the most intense games I've played in a while. I'm also really getting a quake 3 feel from it-probably the jump pads, speed, and I'm pretty sure the armor pickup sound is the same as in Quake as well. Ray tracing also looks neat, so nice to see something taking advantage of the tech. I've also found that there are just certain weapons/mods that I'm not using very often, but I did just unlock the mastery level for the Super Shotgun that sets enemies on fire last night. I do really appreciate that there are reasons to use most of the weapons though, and the relatively small ammo pool does mean you have to keep switching.

Wasn't part of the Bloomberg report that the SOC was being updated because the current version was EOL, and that it would actually be cheaper to go with the newer version, or am I just making that up?

Black Widow was a really fun movie, and glad to have the Premier Access option to watch at home. Even without the pandemic, it's half the price of taking the family to the theater, so right away it's appreciated. I did chuckle at the Windows Phone in there though. Good attention to detail given the cross-promotion they were doing in the Marvel stuff at the time

Very nice-the first one was a great VR game. Hopefully it makes it to Quest at some point.