After a fairly stressful week I needed a bit of escapism, so went hunting through the (really rather awful) Switch eStore. One series of games that has popped up on several recommendation lists is the Steamworld series. I've seen them before, but was never really sure what they were about...and the artwork (in stills) looks a little forced.
During the pandemic as a way to get food without having to go to the supermarket (especially in the early phases when we were seeing panic buying and shortages) I decided to try out one of these meal kit services. For those not aware meal kits are a sort of halfway house between prepared meals and just getting ingredients from the supermarket. They give you a set of pre measured ingredients to the correct portions for specific meals and then you prepare them yourself with varying degrees of effort required.
Like a lot of people, I've spent the last 3 months doing a lot of video calls/presentations/meetings etc. I'm quite lucky that I have a decent setup already (including a HD webcam, a Logitech C920)...however I've found that running OBS alongside multiple apps can give my laptop a hard time. What I'd like to do is run a second machine (I have a spare laptop), and then use that for the video compositing/output, and use my main laptop for doing actual work.
So this seemed an inevitable thing Pax west has canceled the show in september with the way things are going with the current covid 19 nonsense and the general unrest since seattle where Pax West is held has a load of protests and an area where protesters have taken over police station things are currently peaceful but could always turn bad.
Interesting seeing more details on this machine the fact they are making two different versions one with a disc drive one without is interesting I wonder what the price difference will be between these different sku's.
Games wise a lot of stuff and some that will be available on PC also some really weird stuff like Bug snacks (although from the octodad people so maybe thats to be expected)
Some ps5 exclusives or probable exclusives follow ups to the excellent Horizon Zero Dawn and Spiderman
Maneater is a strange game and a bit janky in parts but there is fun to be had.
The simplest explanation is it's a vaguely open world rpg where you play as a shark you eat people fish turtles and other sharks as you eat more you grow from a baby shark to teen then adult then elder and possibly one more stage. As you get bigger you get more powerful and can attack bigger prey move faster jump higher and break various level specific gates to get at new areas.
I built this Lego Tantive IV kit earlier this month. It's one I've been debating getting for a while as I really like this kit with a nice replica of princess leia's ship from new hope both inside and outside with a little room in the middle a cockpit and a little escape pod complete with little r2 and 3po. Figured with the lock down now was the time to get this.
Great fun to build although I had one missing part a triangular bit on one of the sides hopefully lego can replace that at some point.
Got round to editing up some of the video I took when I was out at PAX East in Boston earlier this year. Look at all those people shoulder to shoulder none of that these days.
This was going to be a bit of an amble about how various games have marked key points in my life...a bit of nostalgia brought about by playing the Final Fantasy VII Remake (a mere 21 years after playing the original), however as part of the research for that I came across something really quite fascinating.
I expect we're all finding present times to be weird and unsettling. Generally I have as little to do with the outside as I can in normal times but it's different choosing not to go out to being required to stay inside. The fact that if I run out of something or forget something or just feel like going and getting some product there and then while I could go out for things it feels like an irresponsible and dangerous thing to do so like every one I'm just staying inside limiting my trips to shops as much as I can.