2023 Recap

Sorry for the lack of a consistent blog, but I have been playing some games this year.  Well, mainly one game, Rocket League, but I did manage to play 201 games overall.   

Completed Games in 2023

• High On Life
• Fun game and a decent shooter.  
• Luckily the comedy never got old. 
•  Calisto Protocol
• So much hype, but the game was just ok.  
• Tons of technical issues at launch.
• The game looked amazing, but the combat was disappointing. Dodge, dodge, Swing.  
• Hogwarts Legacy
• My real surprise this year and probably the game I enjoyed the most. 
• Exploring Hogwarts was amazing, so many secrets and references to find.  
• I enjoyed the combat as well, but it did get a bit repetitive towards the end.  
•  The Last of Us PC
• Third time completing the game was just as fun as the other two.  
• Like all PC games this year it had some technical issues at launch that took a couple of months to sort out.
• Resident Evil 4 Remake
• Amazing game that really felt like a new game.  
• I need to finish the DLC.  
• Diablo 4
• The campaign was great, but lost interest once it was completed.
• The end game just wasn't satisfying to me. 
• Bramble the Mountain King
• If you liked Limbo or Little Nightmares then you definitely need to play this.  
• Spider-man 2
• The traversal and combat were amazing, but the story wasn't that great.  
• Some of the missions were just silly.  
• Alan Wake 2
• Another amazing game by Remedy.  
• The graphics and the atmosphere really stood out.  
• The combat was tough even on normal.  
• The story was a bit convoluted and nonsensical at times.  
• There are a bunch of jump scares throughout the game that I really didn't care for.  
• Sad to hear of the death of the voice of Max Payne and Alex Casey, James McCaffrey. 

Honorable Mentions

• Baldur's Gate 3
• Played through the first chapter then somehow got sidetracked.  
• I was really waiting on some patches to flesh out the 3rd chapter and fix some performance issues.  
• Star Wars:  Jedi Survivor
• Game is awesome but performance issues killed all the excitement.
• They have released 7 patches, but the game still suffers from stuttering issues.
• I restarted the game a month ago and  I'm about 2 missions from completing the campaign
• Meta Quest 3
• Awesome VR Headset.
• Asgards Wrath 2 is amazing. 
• Gotham Knights
• Just kidding........

Meta Quest 3

• Comfort
• My biggest gripe with the Quest 2 was the comfort. I could only play about 45 minutes before my face would get irritated and that was with trying multiple types of straps.
• The strap that comes with the Q3 is better than the previous Q2 one but I still found that it was not that comfortable.
• I installed the Elite Strap with Battery and I was able to play for 3-4 hours continuously without any irritation to my skin or leaving any red marks on my face.
• You can angle the headset away from your face so that it doesn't touch at all, but that allows more light to come in from the bottom of the headset which can be a bit distracting.
• Passthrough/Mixed Reality
• The Q3 has full color Passthrough so now you can see your outside surroundings much better. It is grainy depending on how much light your room has, but being able to walk around your room to find something without taking off the headset is really nice.
• Instead of using a home room or space I just enable passthrough so all the UI is just floating in my room.
• MR is a big feature that Meta is pushing and I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
• The pack in game, First Encounters, is really cool. You map your room and then aliens will start breaking through the walls and ceiling and you can see the alien world through the holes they create.
• Performance
• The lenses are awesome. The sweet spot is huge so I never found that I had to adjust my headset to get a clear view like I had to do with the Quest 2.
• Everything is just sharp. I find watching movies in the headset is now enjoyable, 3D movies especially.
• All games get a 30% resolution bump which make a huge difference. RE 4 looks amazing now and Beat Saber feels like a whole new game.
• The only downside is the black levels since it's LED and not OLED so it's more of a dark grey than true black. There are no god rays or bloom from white text so that is nice.
• The speakers are so much better than the Q2. The speakers feel more spatial and they can get really loud with decent bass so I didn't find I needed to wear headphones.
• Controllers
• The controllers work great and I haven't had any tracking issues.
• They do tend to get a bit sweaty so I need to get some type of grip for them.
• They still take a AA battery and the battery is great.
• PCVR
• For PC VR games I'm using Virtual Desktop and that has been flawless.
• I have a 4090 and Wifi 6E so I'm able to stream games using the AV1 codec(10 bit) and the games look amazing. There is a bit more latency, but I haven't noticed any impact in any game.
• Overall
• This is my 6th VR headset and by far it's the best and most comfortable I've ever used.
• If you have a Quest 2 and use it regularly, I would definitely consider upgrading to a Quest 3.

Starfield

Starfield

• General 
• It's a Bethesda game so if you enjoy their games then you will probably like this one, but it depends on your expectations.  
• It's more like Mass Effect than No Man's Sky or Elite Dangerous.  It's an RPG in space and not a space exploration game.  You won't be flying your ship around the galaxy and see a cool planet in the distance, fly to it, then land to explore. 
• Space exploration is menu based where you have a star map and you select the galaxy then the planet you want to explore.  You will be placed outside the planet in your ship and you can fly around that immediate area, but that's about it.  The game will sometimes spawn enemy ships that you can shoot or other spacecraft you can interact with, but actually flying around in your ship is very limited.  Landing or taking off from a planet is shown in a cutscene.    
• The character creator is pretty good and there are a lot of settings to tweak.  When selecting traits you are able to remove them later in the game, but not add them so make sure you like your choices. I restarted after 10 hours because I didn't like my original traits.  
  
• The game starts a bit slow and there are a lot of systems to learn, but like other Bethesda games you can just take off in a direction and go find your own fun and the main story will be there when you want to start it.  
• There are a lot of loading screens, luckily on PC the loading times are fast, but it does take you a bit out of the experience since there are so many.

• Graphics/Performance
• Some of the landscapes are stunning. Watching the sunrise over a mountain can be awesome.  
• The game can also look awful, especially random AI characters. Never stare one in the eyes. 
• If you take photos using the photo mode then those pics will show in the loading screens which is a nice touch. 
• Performance has been great, but I do have a beefy computer.  The game does like newer faster CPUs with all the simulation that's going on so be aware if you have an older CPU as you may have to lower the settings quite a bit.
• The game's lighting is a little on the bright side with no brightness or gamma settings and no HDR on PC.   
• I have had some small bugs, but no crashes or mission breaking ones yet.   
• Ground Combat
• The gunplay feels great and using your boost pack with low gravity to fly around the battlefield could make for some exciting battles.  
• Unfortunately the enemy AI I've encountered is awful.  This happened in my first real fight in the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hphl7V4BZs&ab_channel=AshCountach
• I was able to try a couple of Combat AI mods and they've worked pretty well.  Last night I stormed a base and had an epic battle so modders should be able to create better mods when the full creation kit is released.  
• There are a lot of weapons in the game and all of them can be modded.  The only gripe I have is that there are about 8 different ammo types to keep track of so you will run out of ammo and have to switch guns which was probably their intention.  
  
• If you want to try a stealthy approach for a mission I would suggest not using a companion or speaking to them and have them wait outside as almost anytime I've tried sneaking my companion has alerted the enemies before I was ready.  Also if you want to sneak or use your boost pack you have to put a skill point into them first.  
• Ship Combat
• I've only done minimal ship combat, but the AI seems fine.  You have to manage power to all of your ships systems which adds some strategy other than just holding fire.
• I would suggest doing the UAC intro mission early in your playthrough as that lets you access a ship battle simulator.  You can use that anytime to level up your piloting skills instead of in real combat.  
• Ship building requires a ton of resources so I haven't touched that yet.  You can upgrade ships though which is not that expensive.  
  
• Planet Exploration
• There are 1000 planets to explore but most of them are barren.  They procedurally generate content on the planets  so you will have something to do like exploring caves or attacking pirate hideouts, but with so many planets they reuse assets so doing those will eventually get boring.  
• You can scan resources, animals, and plants.  If you can scan everything on a planet you get money and experience. I spent an hour last night scanning one planet.  
• There is encumbrance so if you try and pick up everything you will be overweight quickly and that prevents you from fast travelling.  Also you lose oxygen while running while encumbered so try not to be a packrat. 
• If you find a resource you need you can set up an outpost to extract that resource.  It takes a lot of material to build an outpost so I haven't done much with this yet.  
• Mods
  
• I can't play a Bethesda game without mods so here are a couple of QOL mods that really improve the game
• Quicker Menu Loads
• You are in menus a lot and for some reason there is a slight delay when you open each menu.  
• This removes the delay so opening menus is instant.  Also if you want to fully exit out of a menu you have to hold the B button and this reduces that time as well.  
• Star UI
• The UI is pretty terrible and basically shows you one inventory item at a time.  
• This mod changes that to show multiple items like in a spreadsheet so you can see more stats. 

Dave the Diver, Armored Core VI

 Dave the Diver(PC)

• I'm trying to finish Baldur's Gate 3 before Starfield comes out, but I tried Dave the Diver and got addicted.  
• It's a fairly casual game where during the day you dive into the ocean and gather fish, other aquatic animals, and restaurant condiments. At night you serve them in your Sushi bar. 
• At least it starts out that way.   Each half hour or so they introduce a new mechanic or a new way to interact with the game that even after 12 hours I'm still encountering something new to do.   
• I won't go into details since discovery is a big part of the game, but the latest thing it's added has given me Stardew Valley vibes.  
• The game is perfect on the steam deck. 

Armored Core VI(PC)

• A third person action MECH game from the developers of the Dark Souls games and it does share the difficulty of those games.
• I've never played an Armored Core game before so I thought the best time to try one would be a week before Starfield comes out and I have 3 other games I want to finish.  
• I've only put in about 2 hours, but I have earned my gamer card since I can at least say that I've beaten the Tutorial boss although it did take me 10 tries. 
• Customization of your mech is half of the game so there are a ton of options of how to build/paint your mech to fit your game play style.  One of the nice things is that you can sell back items purchased from the store for the same price you bought them so no punishment for trying new parts or builds.  You can even upload your own images to put on your Mechs. 
• The story is delivered by codecs so it's usually just a voice talking to you giving you mission briefs. You will be making choices that will affect which missions you can go on so you won't see everything in one playthrough.  From what I've read one playthrough is around 16-20 hours.  
• The combat is pretty hectic and a lot to keep track of from your booster and weapon cooldowns, to the whole 3D space you can be attacked from.  Luckily the boss fights have checkpoints, so unless you need to buy something from the store, you don't have to restart the whole mission if you get in a tough fight.
•  There is a multiplayer arena where you can test out your best builds against others.  You can also upload/download builds for specific campaign missions if you find one giving you issues.  

Starfield

• If you buy the premium edition, the game will be playable next Thursday night at 7pm Central. From some leaks it appears the game may be the most polished Bethesda title.  

Baldur's Gate 3, Benq 4550i 4k Projector

Baldur's Gate 3

• ​It's awesome, go buy it.

• I took the day off when it came out, which is usually never a good thing to do because most games have bugs or issues at launch.  The 120 gig game took about 30 minutes to download and I had no bugs or any other issues.  Good job Larian.  

• T​he game does a good job of explaining everything so if you aren't familiar with D&D you don't have to be.  It's a very accessible game and a good starting game if you've never played a CRPG before.   ​It has a story mode if you just want to experience the story​ without the combat being difficult.  

• ​The story has been ​interesting so far and there are a ton of difficult choices to make that can alter your story dramatically.  You can save scum your way through the game to always get the best outcome but what is the fun in that?   

• The combat is turn based and on the normal difficulty setting I've had to try some battles multiple times, but nothing has been frustrating. It's easy to switch out your companions so you can try a different strategy.  Also any companion not in your party still levels up so every character is around the same level.  

• ​I'm playing with a controller and they've done a great job making that control scheme work on a game like this.  It's a totally different UI than the Keyboard\Mouse setup and you can switch between them at any time. 

• The only gripe I have is that everything is voiced except for the main character, but some may like that as it could add to the roleplaying aspect.  

• The game is in the top 10 of Steam concurrent player list with over 800k users and it releases on the PS5 in September so it seems to be a massive success and I'm happy for the developer.  

​Benq 4550i 4K projector

• I accidentally bought this projector about a month ago.  I was browsing the Benq site and was curious if they charged sales tax so I went through the process and was thinking I'd get to the payment  confirmation page and exit out.  The payment confirmation page turned out to be a purchase confirmation page and the Benq site doesn't allow you to cancel your order.  

• My older projector, Sony 40es, is a 1080p projector and the input lag was a bit high at around 30ms so I never really used it much for gaming.  So far with the Benq I haven't turned on my TV in two weeks.

• The Benq uses an LED light that is rated for 20,000 to 30,000 hours so no need to worry about replacing lamps every year. It's also a very bright projector so it does HDR content reasonably well.  

• It is factory calibrated and the colors are very accurate and I could tell immediately in movies as the skin tone was so much better than my Sony.  

• It can only do 4K/60, but that's fine for me and the input lag is not noticeable so FPS games feel great.   

• It also has 3D support which is still a top feature for me.  Fury Road in 3D is awesome. 

• The only negative is that the fan could be a bit quieter.  It's not that loud, but when there is a quiet scene in a movie you can hear it running. 

• The ultimate viewing experience is still my OLED TV with true blacks, but I've been having a blast playing Baldur's Gate 3 on a 132 inch screen. 

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