Gaming on the PC - Destiny, Anthem, Fallout 76 and More

Not too long ago I snagged an Aurora R7 Alienware PC with some nice specs, loaded it up with All The Fun Stuff and have been more or less neglecting consoles ever since. My PS4 is now the place I pretty much engage the PS exclusives (plus Black Ops IIII, which I tolerate because my son loves it), and my Xbox One X is suddenly a legacy device for where I play Halo and Gears of War again (and sundry other favorites of the past).

PC meanwhile: it's where I'm busy engaging with a medley of New and a few Old. For example....Far Cry 5, which I have been enjoying more on PC than I'd expected. Destiny 2 Forsaken...a resoundingly better way to play Destiny 2. It is with just a tiny measure of self-introspection that I concede I own Destiny in all it's versions and content packs on both PC, PS4 and Xbox One. PS4 because it started there for me, Xbox One because that's where my son and I can team up, and now PC because that's the default preferred stomping ground.

Yes, I will feel a bit foolish if they ever get crossplay going for Destiny 2....thank goodness I got the extra copies (for myself, my wife and my kid, sigh) on various and sundry sales...!

Anyway, the New part of the PC universe includes stuff like Metro: Exodus, Anthem, Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey, and The Division 2. Overall there's a deep and compelling satisfaction to powering up the latest and greatest (ymmv) AAA game at maximum graphics and 4K default resolution and enjoying no drop in framerate. Usually, anyway....Anthem runs better in 1080p, for example...but by contrast Division 2 started up that way and is as smooth as you can imagine.

The only problem is....I just keep playing Destiny 2, which I am finally "back in to" after a bit of a hiatus. Destiny 2 came out originally after I had just finished an enormous push to finish all content I reasonably could in Destiny 1, and still play with my son who is currently working through The Tide of Iron (on good school days with homework finished). So the mood for Destiny 2 took longer, but I finally have it, and am eagerly exploring the game in great depth....and my PC account has now surpassed my PS4 explorations. The Destiny universe continues to be my favorite.

It's also a far cry from Anthem, which I am slowly working on but have grave reservations about. More on that in a future post...!

And also....yes, bear with me here....Fallout 76, which is the game everyone loves to hate. I have found it's soothing empty ambience and armies of mutants accompanied by Randos I can Ignore to be a surprisingly fun experience. Maybe not for much longer; it does require more personal dedication to get the most out of, and I've never been much of a crafter or much of a socializer in these games, after all.....but if you're the kind of person who just likes exploring and doesn't mind that the only "live" humans in the game are all a bunch of nutters played by other people then actually yeah, there's something here worth checking out. Just do it on sale, you know?

Reviewing the Alienware Steam Machine i7

My wife picked up a Black Friday special for me (ironic, yes): the Dell-made Alienware Steam Machine i7, which went on sale for $375 at Gamestop. After a harrowing journey in which UPS seemed to lose it, and asserted to us the machine had been stolen, the Steam Machine mysteriously appeared.

This machine is 1/2 the size of an Xbox One
and about 60% the size of the PS4

I can't recommend the Steam Machine as it was intended....which is a Linux-based platform operating on SteamOS... for two reasons: first, it would hang on the intro screen and refuse to boot up properly; this seems to be a common issue that is a real pain for Steam Machine owners, based on my own googling. Second, it didn't really matter, because I had no intention of suffering through the SteamOS environment with the medicore lineup of Linux-compatible titles, so I picked up a copy of Windows 10 and reformatted the system anyway.

Now I have a Windows 10-based Micro PC that is more powerful than my two gaming consoles (PS4 and Xbox One), smokes my old Core i5 in terms of performance, and is half the size of both consoles....it's tiny! It also runs silently....especially compared to my wife's own rig, which is a very expensive Xidax monstrosity she picked up two years ago and which sounds at times like a jet engine taking off.

Anyway....if you've ever seen one of these Steam Machines and wondered what their value was, I just have to say that so far (one week in) it's been an amazing experience, and well worth it once you kill the Linux/SteamOS and boot it over to Windows 10. If you read online most of the advice is about trying to set it up for a dual-boot format, presumably for gamers who have some vested (or technical) interest in keeping the Steam Machine with it's intended OS, but the fact is the thing runs great with Win 10--and as a result dramatically increases the number of games you can actually play on the PC.

Now that I have this machine it really makes my PS4 and Xbox One look kinda....redundant. The Xbox One is now back to the status of "Game Console I own so I can play Halo" and PS4 is the device I play Destiny on. Sony and Microsoft just don't have enough exclusives to make their devices stand out once you have a superior gaming PC....and Microsoft's concerted effort to make all of their first-party titles cross-platform compatible on the Xbox One and the PC means I can now load Horizon 3 and Gears of War 4 on my PC and enjoy them there.

I learned to hate the disc on the right. And the one on the left might 

suck too, but I spent too much time loathing its buddy to notice.

The one downer in this package is the Steam Controller. The Steam Controller is an interesting but failed concept, an effort to make a tactile interface on the controller that reacts to your touch/pressure. It replaced one of two analog sticks with one of these touch-based discs, and the result, while not bad for navigating the cursor without a mouse, is utterly terrible for first and third person shooter experiences. I could see it being potentially useful for RTS type games, or games that don't require lots of precision control over a character, but my efforts to adjust to it so far have been miserable.

My preferred controller remains the one for the PS4, which I am pleased to see is getting a lot more compatibility and support from current game titles, so it runs great on PC with, say, Titanfall 2 and Doom (both of which I grabbed for PC on sale.)

Anyway, if you find a second generation Alienware Steam Machine i7 or a first generation version with Windows already on it, and you happen to like the idea of a micro PC smaller than a console with more power than what the Big Two currently have on offer, then I suggest grabbing one. At the price my wife paid for this one it was a complete steal.

SOLID A! Would have been A+ with Windows 10 pre-installed and a better controller packed in.

(And yes, this is the reason I've been posting less in the last few days....)

UPDATE: You know I was thinking some basic stats might be useful to people. Here's the scoop:

USB Info: There are two front USB 2.0 ports and two rear 3.0 ports. The 3.0 ports really are blazingly fast. I have my SSD externals hooked up to the back, so I have 3TB of active storage on this machine now, and run many games from the externals. 

Drive Support: There is no disc reader/writer, so if you want to be able to play DVDs or Blue Rays you'll need to keep that in mind.

Graphics Card: The on-board graphics card is, to the best of my knowledge, not something you can replace. However for the price I paid I expect to be able to upgrade anyway down the road. 

Also, Bluetooth: this thing connects effortlessly to my bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Adding this device dramatically decreased the number of wires and plug-ins littering my workspace.

Yet Another Summer of Steam Sale Sickness

I like to think of it as "stocking up on entertainment" in case I get laid off, I suppose...but sure enough, the Steam Sale is underway this week and I have indulged mightily. I don't really think of it as "buying games I am going to then play" so much as "buying games I will one day think I might get to play." Either way, I own waaaay too many games on Steam thanks to these stupidly fun sales.

Case in point: a Batman package with Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and Gotham City Imposters. My first thought was, "I can buy Arkham City at last, and all the DLC." When you total up the sales cost it works out to $21 for the game plus all the DLC. But wait! There's a Batman bundle pack for only $25 available, which for $4 more includes the original Arkham Asylum along with Gotham City Imposters and all of the DLC released to date (and there's a lot of it). Sort of hard to resist...I mean, Gotham City Imposters was one of those "Hmmm, sounds fruity" sort of games, but for $4? Sure!*

And so it goes with Steam. So far I've snagged Max Payne 3, all the above mentioned Batman games, Hunted: The Demon's Forge, Star Wars: the Force Unleashed 1 and 2 (I played 1 long ago, but that was before this "Sith Edition" so...yeah), Trine 1 and 2, Bastion, Alan Wake's American Nightmare, some small and poorly received (yet still tempting to me) game called Deep Black: Reloaded, and (last but not least) Ridge Racer: Unbounded, the only Steam sale game I was anticipating, as I love racing games** but hate paying full price for them. So I don't.

I also snagged Spec Ops: The Line at Amazon for $25 so I guess that ought to be included in this list. Oh, and of course Secret World at a discount on Green Man Gaming. Now to find some time play it...

When you count the last two, that totals about $170 in game purchases in the last week. Ugh! I've done worse, though. Remember, I had over 400 games on Steam before this ever started....

When will I find time to play all this stuff? Who knows. I predict the first time many get played will be far in the future, when my son will be playing all these "retro games" on dad's accounts in a decade or so. We shall see...



I grew up with tabletop RPGs side by side with computer gaming. I had an Atari 2600 ordered straight from the Sears catalog. I acquired a TRS 80 (Trash 80) and was programming games in Basic and feed-loading text games from tape casettes. Over the years, tabletop gaming has remained consistent, and while its hard to deny that art and production values have gotten better over time, the overall quality of game system design more or less peaked somewhere in the early 90's and has remained a consistent but subjectively engaging experience....all RPGs are worth playing on their own merits, even if specific tastes may run a certain way. There's really no objectively "better" way to play than another (though one can of course still design a bad RPG).

With computer and console games, the experience is decidedly different. Graphic and interface design is through the roof in terms of performance, value, immersiveness and general satisfaction. The good ol' bad ol' days of PC gaming in the 80's is a thing of the past for all but some GOG releases, and I am happy it remains that way. The industry has created its own problems, of course, with AAA titles costing so much that major studios and publishers can't afford to fail, thus limiting what we see each year in terms of top notch designs, but even so indie and smaller publishers/studios still manage to slide in and fill the void with games that still prove worth playing.

Anyway, I have always found it interesting the extent to which players on both sides of the gaming fence have some crossover (or lack thereof). Likewise, I've also found it interesting just how many people look back on the "good ol' days" of PC gaming or tabletop gaming with a rosy glint in their eye while looking disdainfully upon today's big budget, deluxe graphic-intensive space-marine laden productions. I can say this much: if tabletop gaming had stopped evolving sometime in the mid-80's I do feel I'd likely still be playing those games today (probably still playing Runequest, Dragonquest, DC Heroes and of course AD&D), but if buying old fond-memory games on GOG has taught me one lesson, it is that I can't say the same for PC gaming. If PC games had stagnated in the mid 80's, I'd be done with the medium, completely. On the other hand, that nostalgia vision does seem to be making some much-needed comebacks happen (such as Wasteland II), so I guess some good is coming out of all that "way back when it was better" sense of perspective.




*After first downloading I couldn't figure out how to find any games on Gotham City: Imposters. It seemed to have an active community but there was something wrong with its default pnp protocols, near as I can tell. Very annoying. That said, it finally started working (no idea how or what I did that worked) and this game which was a mere "rider" on another deal turns out to quite possibly be one of my top favorite surprises....seriously fun run'n'gun gameplay with a lot of humor and weirdness.

** I found out I was good at racing games two summers back when I was severely sunburned (couldn't even walk!) and was out of commission for two weeks, right during the Summer Steam Sale. I bought the Flatout Series, then quickly added Fuel, Dirt, Grid and others. It has since become a sickness. My personal all-time favorite game that does not involve space marines, zombies or elves is Burnout: Paradise, a game best described as "A tale of a haunted city terrorized by insanely suicidal cars that have no drivers, because they are all driven by crazed phantoms desperate to crash into just about anything and everything. So hide the children and lock up the cats, Paradise City is on the fast track to hell!"

Westernizing Tera

Hey, I did find something to post about (on top of the non post talking about computer issues)....Tera! This Korean MMO released a year ago but today is being released in the US. There's an entertaining article here talking about things they did to westernize it for the North American audience, and I have to say, I'm glad they did.

Tera is also getting attention for its somewhat over-the-top "stripper mage" and "stripper warrior" gear. I'll be curious to see how ridiculous it gets. Some of the previews however that my wife has seen have her drooling over the hot muscled elf abs so my suspicion is that the old (and usually true) argument in video game depictions of men vs. women, in which women are all hyper-sexualized and men are all focused on power-fantasy portrayals may be blurred a bit here. I've always argued that the best game will be one which allowed everyone to play whatever they feel like--or at least offer equal opportunity to both genders to play the preferred avatar of choice.

In any case, there's a great preview of the game right here which sold me on it. From that video I can tell that there are two important features of the world of Tera that can be determined: pasty technology isn't just an art in Tera, its a science, and apparently the world of Tera saw pandarens and decided to go not one but two better with disturbingly adorable fuzzy murder hobos and bunny girls. Ahhh Korea.

Anyway, I'll let you know what I think once I get some play time in!



I suspect Tera will attract a large ERP crowd...