Dufniall

Christmas tree and lights are up, nothing too fancy or abundant but it's always nice to decorate a bit! Tried out some recipes this weekend for when (well, at this point more "if" because apparently more Covid measures are being announced tonight) my parents and brother come over. Made an Italian bread soup, which was delicious but not very Christmas. So we'll replace that with a creamy tomato soup. We'll make coq au biere (chicken in dark beer broth) for the meat-eaters, and tried a vegetarian recipe for the vegetarian. We made it before and it was quite okay but it tasted very oriental due to the abundance of coconut milk. So now we made it again but just left out the coconut milk and actually it tastes better like this, and a lot less oriental and more wintery/Christmassy. It's basically a stew with pumpkin, fennel, leek, chanterelles and a bunch of herbs and spices. So that made the cut! Serve both with bread and potatoes. Maybe I'll add one more side dish but I'm not sure what works well with the main courses. Dessert will be a mocha parfait. Made that a while ago, and it was great! So that's dinner. Will need to come up with a couple of lunch dishes as well but that will be a bit simpler. Maybe just a board with different cheeses, meats and some quality bread. And more soup.

Are you looking for a 2.0 or 2.1 set (two speakers or two speakers + subwoofer)? I have the Hercules XPS 2.0 80, they're marketed as DJ monitors but work perfect as PC speaker. They are a bit more "neutral" soundwise because of that. Price was around €100. I picked them because I do a little bit of sound editing/music recording as well besides music/video/gaming audio. Obviously they ripped off KRK with that yellow cone but for the price I paid for them I'm happy with them! As for other brands, we used to sell a lot of Logitech sets in the computer shop I used to work in, but also a lot of Edifier. Both have a lot of options in the range between €30-150 (don't know what your budget exactly is). I was pretty charmed by the build and sound quality of Edifier. Another very good option are the T20 or T40 series II from Creative, sold a lot of these as well and their sound quality was very good as well. Out of these 3 brands I would probably choose Edifier or Creative. Good to consider if you want them to support Bluetooth as well or if they are only for PC. There are quite some models who have Bluetooth options.

This might be good news for @Ike (or other UK folk who still need a Zarude):

I think the most important point you miss here @Aperson is that you say local is with friends and online is with randoms. Like @Glen-i mentions, online can be fun and a whole lot less competitive when you are playing with people you know. The weekly Smash sessions or the N-E Mario Kart league (although the latter I would qualify as pretty competitive but due to the rule set it is leveled out a bit) are a good example, but I've also enjoyed some other online games with N-E people. For the rest I don't have many gaming friends outside of N-Europe, but I know people who frequently get a squad together to play Call of Duty or something similar. That is what I'm missing the most from my online gaming experience; a weekly game with voice chat and banter, especially in the Covid times where I'm not going out much to meet friends (and I'm horrible in keeping contact via Whatsapp or other chat apps). I agree with @Hero-of-Time here that it's baffling that we still can't talk through a Nintendo system. Going back to the people mentioned previously who play CoD, they just talk through the PlayStation without the hassle of extra apps. Take a game like Animal Crossing, I'm typing messages on my bloody phone as communication, while in this day and age I should just be able to plug in a headset into my Switch and shout at the other people to stay the hell off my flowers. I also miss the times of local co-op, for me they died when I left my student apartment. Getting a bunch of people together to play Smash Bros., or Mario Kart, or even a complete band in Guitar Hero, those were the days. And before that it was meeting up with friends after school, all the way back to primary school when we would play the NES or SNES or link up Game Boys with cables. Yeah, that's not coming back. Best I can do now is a very sporadic one or two friends over who still enjoy Mario Kart. I would love to have an online equivalent of that but somehow it's difficult to get that going on the Nintendo platform. For online with randoms, I can definitely enjoy that, but then it's mostly co-op games. Stuff like Starcraft II co-op missions, Paladins vs. bots, or Left4Dead 2 or World War Z which are made for co-op play. Games like Battlefield work as well as there are so many people in one game you will always find someone there who is worse than you and who you can shoot. And if you want to play PvP, yeah you will get slaughtered unless there is some proper matchmaking.

I'm not too fussed about the new character, and I'm still happy with my original roster and haven't picked up the Fighter Passes. Would have loved a more quirky character though. That said, this part had me in stitches:

Me too! Loved Left4Dead 2 and this looks like more of that, with added boss-type creatures. So weird to not just make it Left4Dead 3 and use the name for some guaranteed sales.

I never completed the original game so I can't see if this is a remake or a new game. Great to see Arthur make a return though as Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts is still one of my favourite SNES games. But, I'm also not too excited about the looks. When I first saw it it looked like a cheap 3D render, it took me a while to see they are actually drawn graphics. Hopefully it'll grow on me a bit.

I just keep wondering why there's a guy in medieval armour in the middle of the woods. But true, Left4Dead (2) was an amazing experience and I loved playing it. It did get a new update recently and I was planning to go back, so if you're game we can see if we can get a squad together to try that.

This just keeps looking better and better. After the first trailer I was still a bit sceptical (didn't look like much of a visual upgrade), but now I'm convinced this is going to be awesome and there will be plenty of new after Generations. Still curious how that webslinging mechanism is going to work but it looks to add a lot of speed to the combat. A demo is coming in January.

Going by the comments on the American and European Twitter account, a lot of people are asking for a Fortnite character. Looks like it's a different target audience over there compared to here. Also a couple of shouts for Soma.

Pretty wholesome video from Nintendo:

Okay, just to torture myself I made a list of games I own on PC and are on my to play list. Need to play means it's essential, and want to play games with a lower priority. Finish are games I started and am pretty far in. I know it's probably nothing compared to what others have in their PC backlog, but this is daunting already! And I left out plenty of titles which are good but not as high on my list as these. Need to play Want to play Finish Bioshock Remastered Dragon Ball Xenoverse Brütal Legend Bioshock 2 Remastered Doki Doki Literature Club Jurassic World Evolution Command & Conquer Remastered Fallout: New Vegas Resident Evil 6 Sonic Generations NiGHTS into Dreams Subnautica The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Total War: SHOGUN 2 World War Z Batman Arkham Trilogy Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap Celeste ABZU Inside Blair Witch Sid Meier's Civilization VI Borderlands The Pre-Sequel Assasin's Creed series Borderlands 2 Ghostbusters The Video Game Remastered The Stanley Parable This War of Mine Watch_Dogs Watch_Dogs 2 What Remains of Edith Finch Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair Beyond Good and Evil Far Cry 3 / Blood Dragon Rayman Origins Rayman Legends

Listening to the Kratos in Fortnite bit and yeah: So much for your hardcore PlayStation mascot! Not sure I want Samus in there...

Damn, I remember loving season 1 and that I couldn't wait for season 2. And now season 4 is starting? I never even started season 2. I have a lot of catching up to do!

A new decent set of in-ear headphones/monitor. Best sounding headset I've had so far! Even beats the quality of most of the headphones I've had so pretty happy with them. Now let's hope they last... And some Nintendo Switch black friday haul: Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (physical) Dragon Ball FighterZ OlliOlli Switch Stance Two DLC packs for Pinball FX3

When reading the comments on various websites the general consensus is "I'll wait for a sale". So I think Ubi shot itself in the foot here, by indeed releasing it in an already crammed launch window and by having the reputation of quickly discounting anyway. Definitely want to play this as I think it looks charming and I like the mythology setting. But... I'll wait for a sale

You guys never played Labyrinth as a kid? In Dutch it was called De Betoverde Doolhof (the enchanted maze) and it was pretty awesome.

Finished a couple of books since my last post! First one I completed was The Golden Compass/Northern Lights. I think I saw the film many years ago but nothing stuck, as I concluded when reading the book. It was... okay I guess. Recently I saw a part of a Stephen King documentary and it got me in the mood to read some more of his work. I've read a couple of books from him (Dark Tower part 1, Misery, Lisey's Story, some short novels) and saw plenty of the movie adaptations. But I never read the "classics" such as It, The Shining, Pet Cemetery and Carrie. Started with that last one, and it was enjoyable but definitely not the best I've read. I can see though how this can make a pretty good movie. Next up is Caliban's War (part 2 of the Expanse series by James Corey). It's been a while since I read part 1 though so I'll first look up a small summary haha.

For those interested: If you register on the SEGA 60th Anniversary website (https://www.sega60th.com/) you will get a free copy of NiGHTS on Steam.

Calling @RedShell, Doom Eternal coming to PC Game Pass tomorrow: https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/12/01/doom-eternal-master-level-and-xbox-game-pass/

Nice, I recently finished the W101 Remastered and was already thinking to do a second play-through. Might as well use Wonder-Bayonetta! I'll write up my full thoughts soon, but what a game this is!

Yeah it feels wrong to talk about this stuff knowing how the information came about. Still, I had more fun with Revelations 1+2 than with Resident Evil 5+6, so I'm actually looking forward to it!

I know there is a Steam Link app on the Android store (for streaming your PC to an Android phone or tablet). But I'm not sure if you can then further cast that to a Chromecast. I still have my Steam Link here (and the Steam controller) but haven't even set it up after moving houses. I should go out and get me a couple of black ethernet cables (for aesthetics) so I can hook it up to the livingroom TV.

Damn, the one game I was hoping for isn't on sale (NieR:Automata). May pick up a couple of things but really I shouldn't, my PC backlog is immense already!