April 2025 General Game Discussion

[BeardyHat]

After reading your other post, I was going to recommend Slay the Princess. Shouldn't take you too long unless you want to get all the endings. I just got one ending and then read about the rest.

I almost bought Inscription when it was on sale last week. I liked their other game, Pony Island.

MOONRING! That's the RPG I said I was going to recommend to you and @BeardyHat , but then I lost it in Steam.

***

I'm currently obsessed with a strategy game called Mini Motorways.

Moonring looks pretty cool, neat that it's free too. I'll give it a download and someday get around to actually trying it.

My wife has been obsessed with Mini Motorways and Mini Metro for a number of years now. She has like 800-hours between both games, though she does sometime leave it running; but she often plays during tedious meetings she's not necessarily required in.

Sad moment for me last night. Tried playing Oblivion Remastered, the game barely hung onto 40FPS on Low-Medium settings with DLSS set to Balanced. The sewers looked fine and stayed close to 60 on High settings, but as soon as I stepped out into the open world my FPS tanked. I just knew that was going to happen. The game looked like absolute crap. Worse than the original, everything was so muddy and aliased, I just turned it off shortly after I left the sewers. . Looked at GPU’s online and laughed. I was disappointed to say the least.

At least Dying Light 2 runs perfectly on High setting for me, constant 60FPS, and I’m still having fun with it. I was worried Oblivion would make me drop DL2 since I don’t like playing two games that are a commitment at the same time, but I guess I’m glad to know that’s not the case.

Oblivion will be on GP forever so I can always play again if I get a better PC. Honestly at this point, a Xbox is cheaper than a new GPU, and I wouldn’t have to mess with performance issues for a while… do I just ship and join the console players or… no I can’t do that, I must be strong.

I was damn close to buying it the other day, but wasn't too sure how it would actually run on my laptop or Deck for that matter. Plus I figured they hadn't addressed a lot of my issues with Oblivion from back in the day, namely, level scaling (doesn't look like they have. Apparently you still encounter bandits with Glass armor), crap dungeons (haven't heard any mention of changing them, so I'm assuming they're the same) and the tediousness of closing Oblivion gates.

The game looks damn beautiful, but I ultimately decided to heavily mod the original, since I already owned it and I can address a lot of the stuff I don't like about the game. So I spent most of the day yesterday installing a ton of mods and finally started playing it; I am enjoying it, but not sure I'll ultimately stick with it right now. After my 20-hours of Cyberpunk, I still am a little bored of "talky" games, even if Oblivion has less dialogue overall and no real cutscenes to speak of.

Boon is that it barely taxes my laptop and I easily transferred my entire mod list over to my Deck and got it running with minor modifications, so I can switch between the two as I feel. I ended-up playing for about 45 minutes or so this morning after we dropped off the kids at school.

I've had a similar thought on a very cheap gaming laptop for my girlfriend. A few months ago I was finding RTX 4050 laptops for $550, they're all mostly $650-700 now, but at that price point, DLSS would be a huge help. I wonder how a dedicated 5050 Ti would stack up against my 2060.

Alright, gotta do my thing here: Have you checked out used? A 2080 Super, which is pretty much on par with a 3060 Ti can be had for around $250 after tax and shipping on eBay. Could then sell your 2060 and recoup about $80-$90 after taxes, fees and shipping from ebay, so you end-up looking at about a $160 for a pretty damned decent upgrade.

I know not everyone likes used stuff as much as I do, but there's lots of options in that market for fairly reasonable prices. Still higher than they ought to be, but it's an option at any rate.

 

[neogunhero]

Alright, gotta do my thing here: Have you checked out used?

I have looked around on eBay a bit. I saw a video of someone who bought a used enterprise laptop that had an Nvidia Quadro RTX card in it, and he said it's almost exactly on par with a RTX 3060. If you looked up Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 Laptops on eBay, you can find some killer deals under $600. Not the best CPU or SSD capacity, but basically a RTX 3060 with 64GB DDR4 RAM under 600 would be good. I'll need to do more research and see how well they actually game, but the internal hardware is almost unchanged from the gaming variant.

 

[ZedClampet]

I've had a similar thought on a very cheap gaming laptop for my girlfriend. A few months ago I was finding RTX 4050 laptops for $550, they're all mostly $650-700 now, but at that price point, DLSS would be a huge help. I wonder how a dedicated 5050 Ti would stack up against my 2060.

The new DLSS 4 is supposed to be much better than DLSS 3. I can't wait to give it a try. As for how a 5050 ti would compare to a 2060, I have no idea. I guess we'll find out when the details of the 5050 ti are leaked. However, looking at the mobile versions of the 2060 and the 3050 ti, they were about the same. I don't know if we can extrapolate from that or not. Probably not.

I'm really surprised that AAA developers have abandoned making their games playable by the 2060. The 2060, according to what I've read, is essentially equal to the GPU equivalent in the PS5, and all these games will play on the PS5, although maybe that's at 30fps.

 

[ZedClampet]

I have looked around on eBay a bit. I saw a video of someone who bought a used enterprise laptop that had an Nvidia Quadro RTX card in it, and he said it's almost exactly on par with a RTX 3060. If you looked up Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 Laptops on eBay, you can find some killer deals under $600. Not the best CPU or SSD capacity, but basically a RTX 3060 with 64GB DDR4 RAM under 600 would be good. I'll need to do more research and see how well they actually game, but the internal hardware is almost unchanged from the gaming variant.

Yeah, don't get the Quadro for gaming. It will be significantly worse than the 3060.

 

[BeardyHat]

I have looked around on eBay a bit. I saw a video of someone who bought a used enterprise laptop that had an Nvidia Quadro RTX card in it, and he said it's almost exactly on par with a RTX 3060. If you looked up Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 Laptops on eBay, you can find some killer deals under $600. Not the best CPU or SSD capacity, but basically a RTX 3060 with 64GB DDR4 RAM under 600 would be good. I'll need to do more research and see how well they actually game, but the internal hardware is almost unchanged from the gaming variant.

Well saddle-up then, Partner.

Yeah, don't get the Quadro for gaming. It will be significantly worse than the 3060.

Partially true, but Quadro and the RTX Workstation series are different. The Workstation series actually performs generally on par with the regular RTX mobile, the biggest difference being that a Workstation generally doesn't have the same amount of cooling that you might get in a consumer, gaming oriented machine. So in that regard, yes, a regular RTX will outperform a workstation variant just because it's cooled better.

See some benchmarks here as an example (toward the bottom)

Generally they perform fairly similarly when given identical specs (aside from GPU, of course), though again, there are some compromises given the cooling.

That said, there are compromises in consumer grade machines, such as inferior screens, keyboards, trackpads (if you use them), build quality and ease of repairability. As an example, when I was researching machines (used, of course, you know me), similarly priced consumer machines I'd been looking at typically had issues. Cracked hinges, exterior damage, etc, though this was often limited to the Asus (Acer?) Zephyrus machines that I'm attracted to. The workstations, again while less performant, are generally more robust and tended to have less damage on them, as well as be overall cheaper for similar specs. Although, I'll concede the Lenovo Legion series is pretty nice, but even here, you're paying more money for worse specs (Generally I found older varients for around $700-$850 that were sporting the 2xxx-series of GPU's).

At any rate, my new machine is a Thinkpad P1 Gen 4, running the RTX A3000 and I'm finding it's performance quite nice. Of course, it's not going to win awards, but I'm not going to complain with a very nice 4k screen, excellent speakers, 32Gb of RAM, i7-11850H, excellent keyboard, trackpoint, very solid build quality and it's only got 6 screws to open the bottom case with easily swappable internals and it only weighs 4lbs to boot.

It'll play some of my games at 4k (Tempest Rising, Two Point Hospital) High-Very High and maintain a solid 60, but most things I tend to drop down to 1200p and run at Medium or High settings to get between 50-60FPS, this is how I played a whole bunch of Cyberpunk several weeks ago.

Do keep in mind that Zed is partially correct though in that Quadro is less performant than the newer RTX series of workstation cards and with the workstations, I've generally found you need to be more patient in order to find the specs you want. I ended-up waiting several weeks before landing on this particular machine, because many of the Thinkpad P1 series machines have either integrated graphics or are running the A2000, which is equivelant to a 3050 mobile.

At any rate, here are a few suggestions:

Dell XPS 15 - This one has a 3050, but the price looks fairly reasonable. I'm not well versed in Dell, so I don't know if they come with more powerful graphics cards or not.

Thinkpad T15g - These guys are hefty at like 6 and a half pounds, but they can be had with 2080 Super's in them (Max-Q). I looked at this, but they were a little big for me.

Thinkpad X1 Extreme - Gen 4 of these guys can be had with a 3050 all the way up to a 3080. You'll pay a premium for these, as the X1 series is the premium line, so they have excellent speakers, excellent screens, excellent keyboards and excellent glass touchpads.

Thinkpad P1 - Identical to the X1 Extreme without the branding and supporting vPro, again look at Gen 4, you want the A3000 up to the A5000, that'll be roughly equivelent to the 3060 and 3080 respectively. But watch out, these can come with low end Quadro cards too, so you need to check those specs and verify. This is the machine I bought and I love it.

At any rate, I do recommend a workstation. You are making compromises, but you're getting a very solid machine that'll last you until you're ready to sell it on to someone else for cheap.

And as mentioned, there's also the Lenovo Legion Pro line. They seem to have very good build quality and generally just be solid machines in the consumer gaming laptop space.

Edit: I should also report that a 3060 and 64Gb of RAM for under $600 are pretty unlikely. My P1 was $670 and that came with some caveats (screen has a few minor issues), most everything else is around $800+. But I was also exclusively looking at Thinkpads, so your mileage may vary if you look at other brands.

 

[neogunhero]

I'm really surprised that AAA developers have abandoned making their games playable by the 2060. The 2060, according to what I've read, is essentially equal to the GPU equivalent in the PS5, and all these games will play on the PS5, although maybe that's at 30fps.

The 2060 is the 9th most popular GPU according to Steam Hardware Survey. New games not being able to run properly on the top ten most popular cards on Steam is extremely annoying for me. I suppose the main difference is console games get time dedicated to making sure it runs perfectly without issue. They pretty much only have one card to work off of after all.

Generally they perform fairly similarly when given identical specs (aside from GPU, of course), though again, there are some compromises given the cooling.

Some of the RTX 4000 benchmark videos I watched showed the GPU getting close to 100c. Someone in the comments explained that workstation cards are "designed" to handle these high temps better than consumer cards. Not sure how true that is, but very high temps seems to be a common issue amongst these workstation cards, though I'm not sure if it hampers performance the same way consumer cards do.

Edit: I should also report that a 3060 and 64Gb of RAM for under $600 are pretty unlikely. My P1 was $670 and that came with some caveats (screen has a few minor issues), most everything else is around $800+. But I was also exclusively looking at Thinkpads, so your mileage may vary if you look at other brands.

This is the one I was referring to, an MSI laptop. Not the exact same, slightly different, but still, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, RTX 4000 for $500 seems hard to beat. No charger or OS but we're talking about maybe $20 for a charger and installing Windows is nothing to sweat over. Some other laptops I've seen in this space don't have batteries which could be more expensive to find one that fits. CPU is a bit old, but should be good for some light gaming at 1080p.

Actually, just realizing there is a different between the RTX 4000 and A4000. The A4000 is a much better card, quick Google search shows on average 25% faster. Maybe not the best deal after all. Some benchmarks say the 4000 is still fairly close to my 2060 which wouldn't be bad at all for $500, but of course I'd rather spend money on something much better.

This is all window shopping at the end of the day, but I sure am glad to know enterprise workstation laptops at affordable prices exist.

 

[neogunhero]

Totally forgot to mention, Insurgency Sandstorm got a surprise update yesterday after nearly 5 months since the last. They added a brand new map called Forest which is probably my favorite map they've ever put out. It will take a few more times playing it to see how well it is for PVP, but I played a good 3 co-op matches yesterday and had a blast. I love the settings, an abandoned airbase overtaken by nature, with destroyed buildings and debris everywhere. There is a giant destroyed C-130 in the center of the map with one of the flag points inside the body of the plane. Most of their maps are middle east themed, so this is a very nice change of scenery. The only issue I had is that the NPC AI doesn't seem to understand the map correctly just yet, they were one-shotting us from across the map and I had an NPC completely blast me through a metal wall when there was no way he could have known I was hiding there. Fantastic game!

 

[BeardyHat]

The 2060 is the 9th most popular GPU according to Steam Hardware Survey. New games not being able to run properly on the top ten most popular cards on Steam is extremely annoying for me. I suppose the main difference is console games get time dedicated to making sure it runs perfectly without issue. They pretty much only have one card to work off of after all.

Some of the RTX 4000 benchmark videos I watched showed the GPU getting close to 100c. Someone in the comments explained that workstation cards are "designed" to handle these high temps better than consumer cards. Not sure how true that is, but very high temps seems to be a common issue amongst these workstation cards, though I'm not sure if it hampers performance the same way consumer cards do.

This is the one I was referring to, an MSI laptop. Not the exact same, slightly different, but still, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, RTX 4000 for $500 seems hard to beat. No charger or OS but we're talking about maybe $20 for a charger and installing Windows is nothing to sweat over. Some other laptops I've seen in this space don't have batteries which could be more expensive to find one that fits. CPU is a bit old, but should be good for some light gaming at 1080p.

Actually, just realizing there is a different between the RTX 4000 and A4000. The A4000 is a much better card, quick Google search shows on average 25% faster. Maybe not the best deal after all. Some benchmarks say the 4000 is still fairly close to my 2060 which wouldn't be bad at all for $500, but of course I'd rather spend money on something much better.

This is all window shopping at the end of the day, but I sure am glad to know enterprise workstation laptops at affordable prices exist.

Yeah, it definitely gets weird when you start looking at the workstation stuff with all these things having the same or similar names, you really gotta do the research. Notebookcheck is your best friend in this scenario.

As for heat, my A3000 seems to be thermally capped at 87*, though the rest of the system regularly see's in the high-90, up to a capped 100* on occasion. Again, that's the issue with being a workstation and not having similar cooling requirements to a gaming machine, which is likely to see more sustained load. That said, putting the high quality thermal interface material seems to have done something, given my laptop can fairly easily sustain performance in games, though it does get very, very hot.

 

[Pifanjr]

I finished my first run in Inscryption today. Seems like I'll need to do that one or two more times to actually finish the game.

I'm still really enjoying it. It does a good job of introducing new mechanics throughout the game. In the winning run I got a permanent modifier on all my squirrels that added a rabbit to my hand when I played one and I merged together two wolves into one card that could win a match in the first turn if I drew it in my first hand.

 

[Zloth]

What the....!? He got over 30fps using a 3060 at 1440p at ultra. Done. Quit dinking around with the settings and play! Even shooting a bow, enemies don't move all that fast, and most of them are indoors where framerate is higher anyway. If you're using melee or summoning spells, there's no problem at all.

You're not wrong. The cheapest RTX 3060 I can find on Amazon is still $400, that card is 5 years old. One can hope, but it won't do anything to change the fact that PC hardware pricing is absolutely ridiculous. It may be even smarter to just save up for a good prebuilt PC, but at that point I get nervous about cheap motherboard or PSU's being used.

There's the in-between option of custom built. CyberPower and IBuyPower over here in the USA have a pretty big list of parts you can pick from while still being able to get the discount from buying in bulk. Heaven only knows what the tariffs will be like these days, and there might be a wait time of a month or three, but I've had good experiences with those sorts of companies.

 

[ZedClampet]

I'm done reading PCG's terrible reviews. Expedition 33 has over a 90 (can't remember exactly) on metacritic and PCG gives it a 70. After playing it today and reading other reviews, this game is going to be GOTY at many places. Just pathetic.

I'm also going to quit posting over there. I tried to post this comment there and got a message saying it violated their community guidelines. Let me tell you what I'd love to do with their community guidelines, and if one of them wanders over here and bans me, I'll quote Martin Luther King: "Free at last."

 

[Colif]

CyberPower and IBuyPower

just make sure to pick a good PSU and not one of their homebrands

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm done reading PCG's terrible reviews. Expedition 33 has over a 90 (can't remember exactly) on metacritic and PCG gives it a 70. After playing it today and reading other reviews, this game is going to be GOTY at many places. Just pathetic.

I'm also going to quit posting over there. I tried to post this comment there and got a message saying it violated their community guidelines. Let me tell you what I'd love to do with their community guidelines, and if one of them wanders over here and bans me, I'll quote Martin Luther King: "Free at last."

The criticisms in that review about the combat system sound exactly like my feelings on the combat system in Dark Souls, which I'd review very badly but obviously is tremendously popular with a large group of gamers.

 

[ZedClampet]

The criticisms in that review about the combat system sound exactly like my feelings on the combat system in Dark Souls, which I'd review very badly but obviously is tremendously popular with a large group of gamers.

Exactly. A review should be about whether the game is good, not about whether you personally liked it.

 

[Pifanjr]

I thought I was close to finishing Inscryption, but when I thought I had won it threw a bunch more mechanics at me at told me to keep playing.

Exactly. A review should be about whether the game is good, not about whether you personally liked it.

To be fair, it can sometimes be hard to distinguish between bad gameplay and gameplay that you personally just don't enjoy. I think it's impossible to make an objective review of any game, it's always going to be based on a subjective experience by the reviewer.

But I don't really care if a reviewer complains about a game and I don't care about what score they give it, I just need the information about how the game plays so I can form my own opinion.

 

[DXCHASE]

Looks like my weekend is going to be full of Oblivion: Remastered. I will probalby dabble into Expedition 33 to see what its all about. Not a TBC fan at all, but i gave Baldur's Gate 3 a chance so this game deserves one too.

I will also be playing Days Gone's newest DLC which is 10 usd. It only gets you extra "modes" and some QOL updates, but the devs stated that if this does well and that it sees an interest still in Days Gone, it might lead to a sequel, so i ponied up. Im excited to jump back into this game. I think its better than Dying Light 2 personally (not 1, 1 was great).

I might dabble in some Last of Us Part 2 probably before or after watching the latest episode of the HBO series, but thats about it. The Rise of the Ronin has fallen off. I cant seem to get the latest patch to install without losing my game. I def. can finish it without it, but then Oblivion dropped along with Days Gone's new DLC.

I'm done reading PCG's terrible reviews. Expedition 33 has over a 90 (can't remember exactly) on metacritic and PCG gives it a 70. After playing it today and reading other reviews, this game is going to be GOTY at many places. Just pathetic.

I'm also going to quit posting over there. I tried to post this comment there and got a message saying it violated their community guidelines. Let me tell you what I'd love to do with their community guidelines, and if one of them wanders over here and bans me, I'll quote Martin Luther King: "Free at last."

I feel you, so many examples of games they gave mediocre scores too that were def. deserving of higher ratings.

I also understand that some publications need to be critical of the game. No TBC game is ever going to be GOTY for me because of how utterly boring TBC is to me. So its nice to see publications not just go with everyone else and write a glowing review because the game is pretty. BUT i am going to at least try Expedition 33 before i pass judgement on it. I did like the old Dragon Age.

I can barely leave comments on articles too because of the TOS so i agree there too.

 

[BeardyHat]

I'm done reading PCG's terrible reviews. Expedition 33 has over a 90 (can't remember exactly) on metacritic and PCG gives it a 70. After playing it today and reading other reviews, this game is going to be GOTY at many places. Just pathetic.

I'm also going to quit posting over there. I tried to post this comment there and got a message saying it violated their community guidelines. Let me tell you what I'd love to do with their community guidelines, and if one of them wanders over here and bans me, I'll quote Martin Luther King: "Free at last."

Maybe you need to be the other Martin Luther and post your 95 Theses to the forum to begin your own branch of PC Gamer. Those who follow you will still be PC gamers, but called Clampists.

To be fair, it can sometimes be hard to distinguish between bad gameplay and gameplay that you personally just don't enjoy. I think it's impossible to make an objective review of any game, it's always going to be based on a subjective experience by the reviewer.

But I don't really care if a reviewer complains about a game and I don't care about what score they give it, I just need the information about how the game plays so I can form my own opinion.

I'm with Pif on this one. I don't think it's possible for anyone, ever, to be objective. We can play at it, but that's about the best we can do. I think the best thing you can do is read lots of reviews and find a reviewer that generally shares your tastes and then you can pick stuff based on that; for instance, anything Jay from Red Letter Media recommends, I'll watch because I know we have similar taste in weird movies. With this particular review you mention, Zed, you can tell something is off with said reviewer when they say they love to invest and play hundreds of hours of JRPG's, that immediately makes their taste suspicious...

As for games, I also agree with Pif; score isn't important, just describe the game to me and I'll decide if I'm interested in it based off that. I can read lots of mixed or negative opinions and as long as the general negative opinion is, "This game sucks" and not "It's full of bugs and broken mechanics", I'll be interested in checking it out further.

 

[Frindis]

I mostly watch deep dives, history about the game, different types of interviews and the sort from game magazines. Review score I mostly get from a handful YouTubers I have watched over the years that share the same taste as I. If they say the game is good, I KNOW it is good. Anything else I will judge by either the user metacritic score + steam reviews (if no review bombing is going on) and obviously from my own 2 hour test of the game to be 110% sure I like it.

 

[ZedClampet]

No TBC game is ever going to be GOTY for me because of how utterly boring TBC is to me.

Ah, but I don't find this boring at all because you have to dodge, parry and add strength to attacks. It's much better than your traditional JRPG combat, at least for me. The first boss kicked my butt because I showed up with one character having 6 health (out of 156) and the other one having 50, but mostly because I kept mistiming my parries due to clever enemy animations. They all have different attacks and animations, so you have to either have lightning reflexes (not me anymore) or just watch each attack carefully the first time they do them, kind of like Elden Ring, but it's hard to observe an attack when both your characters are near death