July 2025 General Game Discussion Thread

[BeardyHat]

You know, thinking about it a little bit more on the buying mobile versions of games, one thing that grinds my gears and why I've pretty much stopped putting money into Android stuff is the fact that long term support is not guaranteed. I actually have quite a few Games and Applications that are just no longer supported by newer versions of Android; I spent the money on them and yet, I can no longer use them.

Sure there are some PC games that will no longer work on newer hardware, but typically with a bit of legwork, you can get them running via a variety of methods. But Android? My favorite Weather app was removed from the Play Store and I can't get it on my tablet. Carmageddon, which I loved playing on my mobile devices, no longer works on any of my devices, because it's never been updated. I grant that this is a developer issue, but if we're going to be white knighting Stop Killing Games, I feel like there are other things that ought to fall into that category, not just the Games themselves, but Applications as well.

I know this is generally par for the course with the world we live in, but I by and large try to avoid this kind of stuff in my life.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Do you have any experience using remote play for local co-op?

No, but I've always wanted to try that.

 

[neogunhero]

DRAMeXchange - 【Market View】3Q25 NAND Flash Contract Prices Projected to Rise 5–10%; Weak Smartphone Demand Limits eMMC and UFS Growth, Says TrendForce

DRAM, NAND Flash, SSD, Module and Memory card, and provides market research on spot and contract prices, daily news, market views and reports, and monthly datasheets of semiconductor industry.集邦科技

www.dramexchange.com

Shopping for a new SSD has led me to a market trends page stating prices may increase 5-10% for the remainder of the year. Somehow I went down a rabbit hole of reading Kioxia press releases about their latest NAND tech releases, and ended up at that site I linked. All I want is an affordable, durable SSD...

 

[BeardyHat]

DRAMeXchange - 【Market View】3Q25 NAND Flash Contract Prices Projected to Rise 5–10%; Weak Smartphone Demand Limits eMMC and UFS Growth, Says TrendForce

DRAM, NAND Flash, SSD, Module and Memory card, and provides market research on spot and contract prices, daily news, market views and reports, and monthly datasheets of semiconductor industry.集邦科技

www.dramexchange.com

Shopping for a new SSD has led me to a market trends page stating prices may increase 5-10% for the remainder of the year. Somehow I went down a rabbit hole of reading Kioxia press releases about their latest NAND tech releases, and ended up at that site I linked. All I want is an affordable, durable SSD...

I'm not sure what size you're looking at, but I have two of these guys, one in my Steam Deck, the other in my Desktop. My desktop doesn't have the screw hole for the shorter SSD, only fitting 2280s, but with the heat shield for it, it's held in place just fine and caused no issues. It's plenty fast, as well.

Pardon Our Interruption...

They were about $142 out the door when I bought them.

Edit: I also have one of these in my laptop. Very affordable, very fast.

https://a.co/d/0DDopDJ

 

[Pifanjr]

I've played a couple more runs of Noita, but I keep dying to dumb mistakes (mostly hitting myself with my own weapons). I also keep trying to figure out how to kill the guardian that shows up if you damage the Holy Mountain area, but I've only managed to do it once by making a little tunnel it couldn't follow me into and then putting something heavy on the mouse button so it kept shooting at him while I grabbed a drink and a snack.

I made it to the fourth area once more with some great wands, but as soon as I entered I got shot at by two enemies and when I tried to get to cover there were a bunch more enemies coming from the other side. I can't really deal with chaotic moments like that, I need to be able to hide and shoot enemies from around a corner.

 

[neogunhero]

I posted to the Tom's Hardware forums about some questions regarding SSDs. My main issue is my WD Blue SN570, which is my main drive, the download speed slows to a crawl when downloading anything larger than maybe 30GB, or even when transferring large files to that drive. They were all super helpful, and one person suggesting disabling Write Cache when downloading. That fixed my issue! Apparently these particular SN570 drives have a bug causing the cache to fill up quickly, as well as just having a small amount of cache to begin with. It's a strange issue that I've sort of put up with over the past two years I've had this drive, but lately it's becoming a bigger issue. However I have this temporary fix, so I'll hold off on buying a new drive for now.

 

[Zed Clampet]

My Currently Playing: Balatro, Monster Train and Dune Awakening.

Balatro is getting ridiculously hard. I've won a few run in Monster Train and that is getting harder as well.

We've arrived in the PvP zone for Dune Awakening and built a little house. I didn't want to build inside PvP because they reset those areas once a week, so we're going to have to rebuild everything over and over.

 

[neogunhero]

Here’s a pretty nasty story.

I’m currently helping a buddy out by cleaning up his gaming PC. He hasn’t used it in a while, and says it doesn’t show any picture when he plugs it into his monitor. I said that I will look at it and give it a deep clean for him.

I took the PC home and immediately noticed a stench. A smelly computer… that’s a new one for me. I opened the chassis, got an huge waft of the stench, and noticed something was wrong. The fans were all discolored… oh I know what’s going on here.

The inside of the PC was caked on with weed resin. Years of constant weed smoke in his room, built up inside the PC… it was so disgusting. I began to use some isopropyl alcohol wipes for the fins and had to stop. I can’t continue without gloves.

It’s going to be as clean as new when I get it back to him. This is not an acceptable state for a PC

 

[BeardyHat]

Here’s a pretty nasty story.

I’m currently helping a buddy out by cleaning up his gaming PC. He hasn’t used it in a while, and says it doesn’t show any picture when he plugs it into his monitor. I said that I will look at it and give it a deep clean for him.

I took the PC home and immediately noticed a stench. A smelly computer… that’s a new one for me. I opened the chassis, got an huge waft of the stench, and noticed something was wrong. The fans were all discolored… oh I know what’s going on here.

The inside of the PC was caked on with weed resin. Years of constant weed smoke in his room, built up inside the PC… it was so disgusting. I began to use some isopropyl alcohol wipes for the fins and had to stop. I can’t continue without gloves.

It’s going to be as clean as new when I get it back to him. This is not an acceptable state for a PC

Fans are cheap enough, just replace em all and tell him he owes you cause the fans were dying...

Still playing Might & Magic, took a little break to tinker with my new tablet, which is silly given I'm likely to never game on it. Did get my other clue book for it the other day, which is kind of exciting; will definitely be bringing them on our trip next week. No idea if I'll get a chance to play, but at least I'll have my Deck with me.

 

[neogunhero]

Fans are cheap enough, just replace em all and tell him he owes you cause the fans were dying...

Truthfully I don't like the guy THAT much... some alcohol and elbow grease will do the trick. They're all still spinning, so that's also another reason I'd rather not replace them.

I did consider replacing his RAM as the set I have lying around has faster speeds and tighter timings, but I figured I should hold onto it just in case I need it in the future.

 

[neogunhero]

View: https://youtu.be/D1OEZ42yf_4?si=azvaxjK9jLGleDoj

Seen this video a while back, but randomly though about it again today. I have a huge soft spot for strange 2000s PC tech. What made me remember this video was looking at old SilverStone cases from the early 2000s, I would love to get my hands on one and retrofit some modern USB connectors in the front, make a sort of sleeper build.

 

[neogunhero]

View: https://youtu.be/D1OEZ42yf_4?si=azvaxjK9jLGleDoj

Seen this video a while back, but randomly though about it again today. I have a huge soft spot for strange 2000s PC tech. What made me remember this video was looking at old SilverStone cases from the early 2000s, I would love to get my hands on one and retrofit some modern USB connectors in the front, make a sort of sleeper build.

Spoiler: Old PC Cases

Just look at these. They're so aggressively mid-2000s that it hurts to look at, but I absolutely love it. Replace the USB ports with modern 3.0 or higher, maybe try to get a USB-C in there, and you're good to go. As long as you can get decent cable management and thermals, then it would be an awesome project to work on.

Here's a good article with some nice pics, but not that comprehensive:

A brief history of PC case design

From beige towers to mini-ITX power, we look back over the past decade and a half of PC case evolution.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[neogunhero]

Ryzen Master has always given me headaches. The program just refuses to install on my PC correctly. I recently came across an article explaining why Ryzen owners should enable Precision Boost Overdrive via Ryzen Master as it's a single click overclocking tool that can give a small but not insignificant performance boost to your CPU. I decided to give the program another go but still ran into all sorts of issues just trying to install it. Turns out I wasn't the only one, lots of people are having the same issue with it, which is weird since it's just a .exe installer you download off AMD's website. The solution is to run a Installer/Uninstaller troubleshooter from Microsoft's website, which launches a little application on your PC. There it helped to completely remove the program and all remnants of it, which then allowed the original installer to work correctly. Never had to do this for a program before, just kind of odd, plus the issues seem to date back for years, you'd think AMD would fix it.

Anyways, I get into Ryzen Master, enable PBO, Apply+Test, and everything is working good. I did this all within 30 minutes so my testing is not thorough at all, but the temps do seem to be just a little bit higher in game. THPS 3+4 gave me a (rough) average of 50c in game, with PBO it seemed to hover a bit over 55c. Performance needs further testing, but... the game seemed smoother? Less micro-stutters maybe? Could all be entirely placebo, really need to do some benchmarking and write down some numbers.

Even if I don't do any testing, I can rest assured that there is some performance gain. It may be imperceptible in real world usage, but technically speaking, the CPU is running faster than before with a single click of a button, so that's pretty cool.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Had a kind of interesting NPC encounter in Dune Awakening. I was out mining iron when one of the security ships found me. At night it's easy to see where they are scanning because the light shows up well, but it was day, and I didn't even realize I was being scanned.

So the ship sends half-a-dozen fairly strong people (we're in an area of the game we shouldn't have gone to yet). I fire off a couple of shots and then take off running for the house.

LONG STORY SKIPPED

So I was working around the house and all the security people had long since left except for one woman who was standing right in front of the door and still demanding that I come outside in an exaggerated Russian accent. She was talking non-stop and had been talking nonstop for at least 10 minutes, long after the other security people decided to leave. So I go over and open the door and toss a grenade at her and then start shooting her. She immediately turns around and starts running away. That surprised me as no other NPC has done that, and it just seemed funny that she was completely different from the other security NPCs.

 

[Pifanjr]

Yesterday I read up on some tips for Civilizations VI, started a new game and after about 50 turns decided I didn't feel like playing. The game is too slow for me right now.

Today I thought it would be fun if I joined my wife in playing Rimworld, just both have our own game going on next to each other. She recently started trying to make an ice sheet base work, so I decided to try my hand at it as well.

I hadn't even managed to finish installing the new DLC on my PC yet when my wife decided she was going to play WoW, but I still went ahead and made a base on an iceberg. I've read about how bases on ice are incredibly hard, but the new Odyssey mod added a mechanic for fishing, which means I have an unlimited supply of food.

My only problem is that there is no steel on the map and there are no factions to trade with, meaning I'm stuck waiting for random events to give me some steel. Since steel is necessary for pretty much everything, I ended up stuck mostly watching my colonists fish once I ran out of the steel I started with.

Not much more thrilling than Civilization VI, but at least I could share it with my wife.