What are you playing? (games)

[m-Kresol]

Im building this for James at the moment, lord knows he deserves it after the sh!t he's been through last few months.  (He's doing well, life has returned to normal, he's walking and nearly able to run).

That's great news! glad to hear James is doing well. Also, your arcade controller looks awesome. He'll be thrilled to have it.

[juansolo]

New gaming related build: Neo Geo arcade stick.

Cool John, never would have thought of using a hammond enclosure, whats the size?  Is that a Seimitsu joystick?

Im building this for James at the moment, lord knows he deserves it after the sh!t he's been through last few months.  (He's doing well, life has returned to normal, he's walking and nearly able to run).  I will post some more photos when its finished, still have to install the plexiglass, paint it and controller board.

That's a 1550GBK (black) enclosure. I've built 4 sticks in these and it's just the right size without being too big. The stick is a Seimitsu LS-40 Arcade Joystick, which is just bloody lovely. I've tended to use cheaper arcade parts in the past, this is by far the best stick I've ever used. Buttons are Seimitsu PS-14-DN 24mm Screw In Arcade Button. 30mm buttons take up a bit too much space in the 1550G so I've switched to these. Not quite as clicky as the big ones, but still very, very nice buttons and more suited to this enclosure.

[juansolo]

I've also finally joined the Xbone party... I picked up an Xbox One S a couple of days ago. Mainly to play Forza games, though the Forza 7 game it came with I've instantly put up for sale as games built around micro-transactions and loot crates rub me so far the wrong way that I find it offensive. It's a full priced racing game, not a gambling sim or a Free To Play game that has them in there to fund it. Still, I've got Forza Horzon 3 with it that I'm playing at the moment, and a friend is sending me Forza 6 to play for the running around in circles thing.

I am fairly disappointed with the sheer lack of platform exclusives on it. It's really barren. I think I'll be buying all of about 8 games for it. Everything on it seems to be a 3rd party port. Which doesn't bode well for it's future... Then again, that must be what people want as lack of 3rd party support on a platform rich with quality 1st party titles killed the Wii U. Doesn't worry me, I've bought consoles in the past just to play one or two games. I've only got two games for the Atari Jaguar for example. It's all you need.

Otherwise, I get a UHD player out of it, which is a nice bit of future proofing.

[chromesphere]

Cool John, great / simple idea for an enclosure!  Are you connecting it to your PC (neo geo roms?) or the neo geo console?  How are you do that (pc) without a controller board?

I've got a JLF in James arcade stick and OBSN-30's for the buttons, in hindsight with his little fingers I could have probably just used 24's, but I guess these controllers last forever so its future proof. 

Making the enclosure out of wood and by hand is a lot of work.  I've done this once before and it was quicker, I didn't have to plan, but still a lot of work.  He's very good with his belongings though and I know he will look after it.  Just waiting on the plexiglass and the controller board to show up now.  The controller board is one of those cheap "zero delay" pcb's you get on ebay.  We are playing a bit of ps3 together and this pcb is supposed to work with the ps3 as well as pc.  Also, there is an adapter I saw on ebay for $10 that can make ps3 controllers work on the switch, might work might not, worth a go.

I'll post some final photos when its done.

[madbean]

Just replayed "The Talos Principle". Probably my favorite behind Half-Life, Elder Scrolls and Fallout series. It's so relaxing and fun. The DLC is a bit more frustrating but still rewarding.

[juansolo]

Cool John, great / simple idea for an enclosure!  Are you connecting it to your PC (neo geo roms?) or the neo geo console?  How are you do that (pc) without a controller board?

I've got a JLF in James arcade stick and OBSN-30's for the buttons, in hindsight with his little fingers I could have probably just used 24's, but I guess these controllers last forever so its future proof. 

Making the enclosure out of wood and by hand is a lot of work.  I've done this once before and it was quicker, I didn't have to plan, but still a lot of work.  He's very good with his belongings though and I know he will look after it.  Just waiting on the plexiglass and the controller board to show up now.  The controller board is one of those cheap "zero delay" pcb's you get on ebay.  We are playing a bit of ps3 together and this pcb is supposed to work with the ps3 as well as pc.  Also, there is an adapter I saw on ebay for $10 that can make ps3 controllers work on the switch, might work might not, worth a go.

I'll post some final photos when its done.

It's going straight into a Neo Geo CDZ so no need for a controller board. The first stick I made is my emulator stick. I'd do it with the new bits if I was doing it again now. http://juansolo.co.uk/geekery/picade.html

That uses a Raphnet USB game 12 board to talk USB to the Pi/PC. As I say I'd use the smaller buttons doing it again and have two rows of 4 buttons on top as it's lacking a couple to use as collar buttons on PSX emulation. I'll do it at some point and sell this one likely.

[juansolo]

Also I had a bit of a rant on Facebook about the Gran Turismo Sport Demo...

Oh my god I'd forgotten how utterly, utterly tedious the licenses are in Gran Turismo. JFC every single game... WHY, just WHY!! It's the seventh f**king game. I know how to drive in a straight line and stop again. I've had six whole games practice at it. JUST LET ME PLAY FFS.

Crashing twice now and the server being out of action isn't exactly inspiring me with confidence right now...

There are 50 of them FIFTY. But that's not all, noooo. You've got to at least do 25 of the bastards before you can do anything useful in the game as far as I can tell... It also takes forever between each one loading and selecting for a grand total of a few seconds driving in a straight line over and over again. I'm losing patience rapidly here. Those loot crates are starting to look appealing in Forza 7 suddenly.

Oh and now the server is down all I can't actually play it. Because single player games now need to be connected to the internet, because reasons.

I really, really hate modern gaming sometimes. It's enough to already make me not want to bother with this one. I suppose it was nice to get a demo of it though to find that out.

Yep bored now. Bollocks to this one. Project Cars 2 it is.

--

Ok that was a few posts, but I think it carried my rage/disappointment well enough... But am I done... I don't think so!

--

Modern AAA games have become the cess-pit of the gaming industry. It's all become about maximising the monetisation of the games to milk the consumer just that bit more. So in has crept loot crate/boxes, a real-world gambling system from free to play games in $60 titles. Just because you haven't paid enough for them.

Firstly there's the ethical question and indeed legality in putting fruit machine mechanics into games aimed at under 18's... This is basically grooming them for future gambling addiction. Nice. Next is the insidiousness of how they're implemented to get you to buy them.

So you take a game and you make it grindy. Excessively so, so you buy a loot crate for the chance to make the grind easier. Yes really. Shadow of War 2, the whole end game sequence you *can* play, but it's so stupidly grindy to make you just pony up for the crates to ease the pain. To the point that the endgame is essentially locked behind a pay wall. This is a single player game FFS!

The multi-player games tend to contain pay to win mechanics. Getting your arse kicked? Well you'll have to buy some crates then to get some of those sweet, sweet items that are being used on you to even the odds!

Even buying the crates is optimised to get more cash from you. You have to buy in game credits, which inevitably are available in packs that are just not quite enough to afford a crate. So a crate might be 600cr, but you can only buy in game credits at 500cr, 1000cr, 5000cr etc. So you have to buy more than you need.

I find the whole thing abhorrent. I will not support this sort of thing and the single only thing the publishers understand is not making money. This has been proved to work. People finally had enough of AAA games being unfinished games filled with bugs that might get fixed if you're lucky with Andromeda. Bioware kinda got the wrong idea about that and thought that it was Mass Effect's fault rather than themselves for being greedy bastards. But still, it bit them hard. We need to do the same with these current practices or honestly, see the end of the video game market.

Now it's not all bad, there are shining lights of goodness in this murky industry. Divinity Original Sin 2 manages to be a game without any of that nonsense. It's reasonably priced, not plagued by game breaking DRM, no micro-transactions, it's complete, it's not a buggy mess, it doesn't have season passes. It doesn't have game hobbling mechanics in there purely to bleed you of more cash. I beg people to support games makers like this, who are in it to make the best games they possibly can for our enjoyment. Which is what this is supposed to be about.

[flanagan0718]

"The Last Of Us (remastered)" was on sale on the PSN for $10 recently. Because I Love this game and have played through it 3 times already...I bought it again. Working on another play through of that.

[cresconio]

Currently playing factorio with a friend, quite a cool logistics management system (sounds more dull than it actually is)

[selfdestroyer]

I finally bit the bullet and built a gaming PC. I have been eyeing parts for the past month and finally got a budget together and pulled the trigger.

Processor: i7 7700K
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix Z270I (I went with micro ATX since I wanted a smaller case)
RAM: 16GB DDR4
GPU: GeForce GTX 1080 OC 8GB
M2 SSD Drive: WD Black 512GB M.2  (For OS)
SSD Drive: Crucial MX300 525GB SSD SATA (For Games)
Case: Fractal Design Define Nano S

I have not built a PC in YEARS and I was very surprised how easy things have become over the years. This thing fired right up, I was amazed on just how fast the read/write times are on the M2 SSD. I was able to boot Windows 10 Pro in under 4 seconds.. like all the way to an idle desktop.. .just crazy. I popped in the BIOS and there is an easy "check this box to overclock your CPU" and I was able to get my i7 from 4.2ghz to 4.9ghz with no fuss. My temps are around 33c.

Games? Hell yeah. This 1080 just screams at what ever I throw at it. I was playing some older games like Borderlands 2 with all graphic settings set to Ultra and I was getting over 200fps and no screen tearing at all. I then loaded up Battlefield 1 and did then same, Ultra setting and I was amazed how smoother everything was. No hitching, tearing or slowdown.

I think next I will pick up a new monitor. I really want to get a G-Sync 165hz monitor just for this gaming rig. I have been looking at a couple Dell models since I can get a 2k resolution TN monitor with 1ms of lag for under $400. We will see..

Time to play a slew of PC games I missed out on due to my crappy GPU in my laptop.

Also, I have been playing Cuphead like crazy. Great/hard game with some of the best artwork I have seen in years. Its one thing to see the artwork in screenshots, but to see it in motion is out of this world. Great stuff.

Still playing some of Ghost Recon: Wildlands with my buddy on the PS4. He and I don't get to play much together but when we do, we destroy that game. Haha

[Effectsiation]

I've mostly been playing "Playerunknown's Battlegrounds" aka PUBG aka PLUNKBAT. Occasionally I'll play "Friday the 13th The Game" (PC), and even less often, my old favorite, "Don't Starve Together".

[Willybomb]

Anyone looking for an RPG that will kick your arse 9 ways to sunday should check out Divinity: Original Sin.  I haven't had a fight that I've haven't had to reload multiples times due to complete party death since the tutorial cave.

[chromesphere]

Finally finished James Arcade Stick.  Pretty happy with the final result.  James asked for a Q'bert theme.   He's a fan of some of the old game characters from watching that 2015 movie 'pixel' with Adam Sandler.

Sanwa JLF joystick, ridiculously good quality and sanwa OBSN buttons which are very light touch and fast. Tasmanian oak and pine sides with some bamboo pins through the front panels.   Plexiglass top of course.

Some of the things im happy with are the look, much less bulky looking then my arcade stick, using on 12mm wood for the sides instead of 18mm

The controller board is also a better option (a "zero delay" pcb from ebay, pretty cheap, $6 including jumpers shipped) then the ripped wireless keyboard pcb i used in mine which does actually cause delay. 

One thing i'm not happy about is the slight bow in one of the pieces of wood.  I checked the box for square when assembling, but i neglected to check for a bow.  So there's a small gap of about 1 or 2 mm on one side. 

Over all really happy with it.  It can plug into pc for mame or ps3 for mainly fighting games (tekken, mortal combat, street fighter etc).  James and i have a blast playing all the old classic arcade games.  He has a real appreciation for even some of hte older, less graphically stimulating titles (mr do, lady bug, space panic, etc etc)

[mjg]

Looks awesome Paul!

[stringsthings]

Q-bert FTW!!