Gaming Consoles & Gear

We will be answering questions for the next hour!

After being primarily a console gamer my entire life, I have finally made the leap and ordered a steam deck. I’m insanely excited and have been reading tons of tips and tricks and recommended plugins and tweaks. But I made the mistake of reading several “hidden gems” lists and “what everyone is playing now” threads and it may have gotten out of hand. Again I’ve never been a PC gamer so my steam library consisted of exactly 0 titles. I now have over 150 games in my wishlist and my steam deck hasn’t even shipped! Indie games to classic AAA games and so much in between and my god the sales! I just want to buy things just for the sake of the deals. But then I will literally need to retire my consoles forever to work through this seemingly endless backlog. Am I doing this right? Is this what being a PC gamer is all about? This is all your fault. I will never forgive your incredible taste in games and solid recommendation skills.

I started HellBlade 2 last night, and while I’m only like maybe 2 hours in, these first few hours have actually managed to make me feel like I’m finally playing a “next gen” game, or the next leap going forward for video games. The only other game that’s made me feel this way was TLOU Part 2. Besides that, nothing since the 360 days have really gave me like an oh shit, this is next level, kind of impact. I guess you can say Red Dead 2’s visuals were pretty great. But even then. Everything in HellBlade 2 just feels, looks, and sounds like the next level, that next technological leap in video games going forward. I also feel like the devs of this game took everything that was good about the first game and elevated it to that next level. The combat is so visceral and intense. My god. When they said they were going for the Battle of the Bastards type intensity from Game of Thrones, I think they nailed it!!

This game really feels next level imo.

This has been keeping me up at night for four years.

Let me set the scene: I go to Gamestop. I say “hello good sir I would like your finest copy of gaming’s darling” (without a word he understood what I was talking about and retrieved a copy of Mario 3D All Stars)

The clerk says “that’ll be $60”. My mouth runs dry. I begin to nervously chuckle only to see the man’s dead expression unchanged. “It’s three games.” I say. His expression remains unchanged. “The MSRP of a single Nintendo Switch game is $60. Are you trying to cut me a bargain?” I accuse, trying not to let the disdain taint my voice.

“Sir, will you please insert your credit card there’s a line beginning to form and it’s Christmas Eve” I barely hear the soulless echo of his voice. This fucking piece of shit is trying to rob an indie developer and get me to be an accomplice. Three repackaged games for the price of one brand new game. Are you kidding me?

I now see TTYD is priced at $60 today and it only makes me feel vindicated in refusing to pay that man his blood money and choosing to buy a $180 copy on ebay. I am an ethical consumer.