Will

Well this race is pretty great. Most surprising turn of events in a long time. Going to be an awesome second half it it.

Sorry to hear it wasn’t the results you were after @MindFreak. Hopefully the condition is as mild as can be and you have a healthy baby. It sounds like you’re doing everything you can to ensure the kids have a good family so that’s much more than many already.

That’s awesome, congratulations! As @Julius says, debt can be a real challenge to overcome and it’s a quite an undertaking when things take a number of years. Next thing is to keep up the healthy financial life and continue to have a good mindset on it all. It’s much nicer when the numbers start getting bigger in the other direction!

Got it! Thanks, I feel like I’ve been learning a lot just looking into all of this stuff. With these new NVIDIA cards when should we expect to see 3rd party cards available? Is there a good reference site to check the differences between cards and pick out the one that’s most suited?

Good point. It seems that it does for graphics cards but not for some other things. Will keep in mind to use this as a starting point but fully check it out before I buy anything. Definitely planning on doing this, seems the motherboard I’ve got down at the moment has some. Totally understand the concept of just having a massive drive to store other stuff on. Not sure I’ll need it but storage is always one of those things I wish I had more of. On the smaller M2 for the OS what is the difference between that and the SSD I have listed? Is it just the case of smaller is cheaper and it’s good to have a ridiculously fast drive for loading times? With rotating games is it just a case of drag and drop the files across or would it need more work? Good to know, I’ve been looking at a lot of videos of H1 builds and it’s right at the top of my wishlist. Will keep an eye out for anything that might improve the form factor. Great to know, I was worried I’d dropped too far from the top end stuff I looked at. A friend recommended an 8 core 16 thread intel CPU might be better for gaming as most stuff is designed to take advantage of the configuration better - any thoughts on that? Ah that’s a shame, will keep an eye on what happens with this. I’m OK to wait a while as I’m thinking I’ll just stick with a PS5 this year and get the PC early next. This 3rd party card stuff... How does it work? Other companies just buy the internals, repackage it and sell it on? What are the advantages and disadvantages of getting something direct vs the 3rd party versions? Do they end up with compatibility issues or are they generally the same thing?

I took it to mean their were 35 transitions for the clock - could be wrong on that though.

I've been watching some YouTube videos and attempting to keep researching this, currently I'm looking at something like this. Two differences would be that I'll go for one of the new 3080 cards because it seems pretty great considering the price POINT. I also think I prefer the NZXT H1 case but it didn't seem to be listed there. What do you guys think? Anything I should reconsider before I continue on this path? I know there are other bits I need but these seemed like the ones I need to get locked down first.

Will be interesting to see how this goes. It’s going to be a lot of “stuff” but the vast majority of the stages at TGS generally don’t have much going on most of the time. Maybe it will do them some good to have to limit their shows to these time slots as opposed to running through the whole four days. I’m kind of sad it’s not happening in person. It’s one trip during the year that I really look forward to. The best thing about TGS is the merchandise hall so I’m definitely disappointed I can’t go and look through that buying crap for a few hours. Maybe that’s a good thing too though thinking about it.

Got my order in. Imagine I will actually play it very little, but I think it’s a really nice thing to have and really not too expensive. Will probably end up being a clock on my work desk.

That’s without tax, so adding that on I’d guess you’re looking at £100 once it get’s to the UK. As above, I think it’s going to be more than that in the UK and it seems a bit much to me. It’s really cool and and I’m sure will be a lot of fun, but I really doubt these cars are made with the quality you’d expect from spending that much money. It’s actually expensive enough that I’m rethinking getting them all together.

Really liked most of what I saw. Few things are a bit odd and would have liked more in the 3D collection but it’s a good showing. Really like the look of the Game & Watch, will be putting in an order for that as soon as it’s available.

Really like the look of this. Assuming Mario and Luigi are separate products I hope they’re able to add more over time and you could have a group of people playing together. I’ll definitely buy everything they do for this.

Is it? I thought Nintendo have always been quite keen on bundling old content like this. I think they would have had to be very strong remasters to justify individual packaged released. I’ll definitely buy this, but I’m a bit upset they didn’t include Galaxy 2. It’s the one 3D Mario game I’ve not managed to play through and was hoping this would be my chance.

Looks really cool. I do get that they want this period to be a special Mario celebration but it seems crazy to limit this so much. Hopefully it does well and we see more stuff like this.

These films that come out years after originals that have already completely closed the story are always a little bit interesting in how they handle things. Overall I quite enjoyed it. Definitely up for more films being launched directly on iTunes too.

On the backwards compatibility, I’ve never really cared and don’t see why it causes people such intense pain. I’m buying a new console to play new games. The chart @Sheikah posted pretty comprehensively shows that it’s just not something people really use. It’s maybe a nice thing for the people that buy in the second wave of machines (not early adopters for new tech, have some older games they want to finish and maybe sell the old console to help pay for the new one) but that’s pretty limited. Given how hard Sony are drumming the importance of the generational leap during this transition I’m not at all surprised it’s only PS4 that is supported. The US pre-order thing is of course a marketing move, but it’s not some horrendous act of the devil. They want to make sure the most vocal and taste-setting people get a console, create a bit of a buzz, and do something special for the most supportive of their fans. I’d imagine this will be one of many ways to get hold of the console, but it sure will make it special to those that get the Sony treatment.

F1 2020 Predictions Game Round 7 Results A boring race at Sap?! Oh dear. Maximum points for this race were: Pole - Hamilton (10) Fastest Lap - Ricciardo (10) 1st - Hamilton (25 + 5) 2nd - Bottas (18 + 5) 3rd - Versappen (15 + 5) 4th - Ricciardo (12 + 5) 5th - Ocon (10 + 5) The results for this round: @BowserBasher - 50 @will' - 50 And the overall standings (previous total in brackets): @will' - 346 (296) @Mandalore - 241 (241) @BowserBasher - 220 (170) @bob - 155 (155) @Nicktendo - 126 (126) @Goron_3 - 75 (75) Italian Grand Prix Predictions: Pole - Hamilton FL - Hamilton 1st - Hamilton 2nd - Bottas 3rd - Verstappen 4th - Albon 5th - Sainz

My. God. For multiple reasons I just cannot get my head around that. As a kid I think we absolutely did some pretty horrible things in the direction of disabled people, we didn’t know any better but for sure my parents gave me a massive smack if ever they caught wind of it. I just cannot fathom why a parent would 1. Put their kid through something that was going to scare them. 2. Film it and put it online. And 3. Show them that it’s OK to ridicule people like that. It just blows my mind people are like that in this day and age. I used to follow Lizzie Velasquez (mentioned in the article) on her various social media outlets before I basically stopped using them. Horrible situation she is in but a really inspiring person with such a positive outlook on things - really worth watching some of her stuff if you ever get the chance.

That sounds glorious. I love it when it starts cooling off from summer but still quite light and the horrible stuff hasn’t started. I’m quite jealous.

For me it all comes down to why I’m failing at something. This is key, if it’s my fault because I’m not up to the task then I won’t get frustrated. If it’s a control issue, camera issue, or just weird game design then it will really irk my and I probably won’t be playing for long. Difficulty curve design is really... difficult. There are cheap ways you can do things as talked about by @Glen-i where things just arbitrarily get harder the better you get, or things that genuinely add to the challenge and introduce new elements to a game that can be very enjoyable. With micro-transactions now a huge thing the design of “frustration” has become a key component of games, especially on mobile. We design everything around gameplay loops that maximize frustration at just the right time to push a purchase, and then allow a player some joyous returns to enforce the idea that spending money in the game was a good thing. It is what it is but the design by analytics to maximize the returns of this loop is not really something that benefits gaming as a medium in my opinion.

That’s a great starting point, still running through ideas that are all over the place - will use this to narrow things down. Will definitely do this! I guess a secondary benefit of going the PC route is it will serve me instead of buying a new XBox for the exclusive content not on PS5. Will definitely build it with this in mind. Love PSVR so if I can have something playing the content I really love in VR it will be a winner.

I’d say I have a fairly similar outlook to @Julius though I’m not super into a lot of things to make reviews something I think about too much. Thinking about it there is one area I do look at reviews, which I’ll come on to. Films I don’t read any reviews prior to seeing a movie. If I’m interested in something new I’m going to go (or in current times, download) and see it regardless of what anyone says, and don’t want somebody else’s thoughts clouding my own. If I’m super interested in something (Star Wars for example) I will actively try to avoid everything related to it in the run up to a new film. For things I’m not too interested in I’ll still avoid reviews just in case I see it in the future. Films that really grab me I will look up reviews afterwards and try to get other opinions on to learn more about what happened or that things mean. I don’t tend to follow movies too closely so generally I just go with the flow. Games As with films, I’ll avoid reviews of anything I intend to play. Where I differ a bit is I’ll try to read up on stuff I’m not too interested in as I want to know what’s going on and keep up to date with everything else in the industry. I generally won’t read up on game specific things after playing, except for sometimes doing a bit of trophy hunting with guides. I read a lot about the business side of things and company perspective articles though. Experiences If I’m going on holiday somewhere, or going to a theme park, or some other activity, I will read everything I can about it before I go. Where are the best places? Where should I eat? What order should I do things in? I’ll try and get as much info as I can and put together a planed schedule so I make the most of the things I do. If I go somewhere a second time, I’ll tend to go with the flow and just casually enjoy my time somewhere. Other things I don’t really have enough interest in to bother with reviews.

Corn dogs are a weird one. I always think they look quite tasty and when I eat one I think it’s a good way to ruin a sausage. Not sure if I’ve just been unlucky or have some genuine dislike for them. It does look like a meal I’d enjoy with a few beers.

That box is very cool, almost makes me want to buy a physical version of the game. Definitely like what I’m seeing with this, will pick it up when it launches.

This is the same for me. I wasn’t even really sure about it up until that gameplay demo. Sure some of it looks a bit tech demo-ish but it’s still doing it in a fun way and I really look forward to playing it. I’ll be picking it up as soon as it launches too.