Live streaming is one of those things that fascinated me, and something I always wanted to try. As I learned OBS (still learning), and acquired gear, I got more excited about streaming. In fact some of the gear I already had. The cameras I’m using are the same cameras I use for my photography, I just bought some cheap HDMI capture cards on Amazon. Building computers is fun and all, but there is a satisfaction that comes with learning a new skill set. I still have much to learn but for a blue collar guy with a regular nine to five I have enough here to share and play my games. OBS is a fun and powerful program to use. Even with my simple take on it, the results are great. The Idea of connecting with people through streaming is very appealing to me. I may be late to the game and a little too old but if I didn’t give it a shot I would have regrets.
Was really stoked to get this new mic. Really liked the aesthetics and it had a great sound quality to match, too. It replaced a side address and xlr to USB combo. I wanted less components on my desk and the XDM fit the bill perfectly. It sounds amazing, and the Rode Unify software does a great job. It’s nice using OBS and having your audio source already mixed. It comes with a heavy duty shock mount that works really well. Although I’m not big on fancy packaging, this was stellar. Rode paid attention to detail on many aspects of this mic and the way it was packaged was one of them. Definitely gave it a high end feel all around. Unfortunately I do not have the luxury of a studio. So the pick up patern for this mic worked really well in my situation. I have to compete with an oil burner and a washing machine. If you are looking for a mic the XDM100 won’t disappoint.
Cyberpunk 2077 review part 3 Edge Runners update. Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in. I was going to make a post on update 1.6, but never got around to it. I was so hyped when I heard Studio Trigger was making Edgerunners. I loved Kill La Kill and was curious what they could do with the Cyberpunk franchise. Up until this point the world of Cyberpunk was missing elements that fleshed it out. As detailed as it is, it is missing certain back story elements that lead the player to infer, correctly or incorrectly the lore of Cyberpunk 2077. Edge Runners which is a stand alone story helps flesh out some of those inferences.
The story of Edge Runners moves very fast. While I loved the show there were plot points that suffered due to pacing. I feel they had to do this out of necessity and doesn’t take away from the fun. I think CDPR was at a cross roads and a lot of their future actions would depend the success of Edge Runners. Because right after Edge Runners exploded, CDPR back tracked on some previous statements. Initially they were like, yeah we’re going to have one expansion but our teams are now going to be focusing on The Witcher 4. Now they are like, just kidding we’re only getting started with Cyberpunk we’re already working on a sequel! We are even making a studio just to work on Cyberpunk! As I stated before, I really like this game. I have a bias because I love the Cyberpunk genre. So while I’m excited, I’m going to remain cautious. While I didn’t have the same launch experience as others did, Cyberpunk as it exists now is vastly different and for the better. The game we have now should have been the launch game. The fact that players are coming out in numbers that mirror the original launch numbers, customers are showing their appreciation and good will. I just hope CDPR doesn’t take that good will for granted or waste the second life Edge runners have granted them.
Now that the hype has died down. I can give my final review of Cyberpunk 2077. I never knew what the original direction of this game was supposed to be. Once I did know, I understood the dismay people had. They were expecting more of an RPG experience and towards the end I must admit, I wanted that too. What we got though wasn’t that bad. Parts of the game are very polished. Such as the main story with Johnny for instance. The side quests were very good too, such as River and the Peralez. The romance stories with Judy and Panam were very good as well. I can not recommend this game enough, especially at the price now you can’t go wrong.
Negatives
I’ll start off with the negatives. They changed this from an RPG to an Action RPG title. Unfortunately the RPG elements leave you with yearning to have more of this game fleshed out. When it was over, I left with the feeling of wanting more dialog options with these amazing characters. Night City is this amazing place at first it seems so full of life. Then you realize it is this empty place, just as empty as most of the buildings there. Even though this is the city where you live, you feel like an outsider. It is full of restaurants, clubs, and random vendors. There should have been more interactions other than just the setting for the mission. Something else which bothered me, after you complete a mission they close that area out and you can not return. I don’t understand that design choice. Here you finally get inside a new interesting place to explore, than they lock you out.
Positives
Now for the Positives. You are to make your name in Night City as a Mercenary. You wind up pairing up with another Merc, Jackie who is looking to make the big time as well. A botched heist along with Jackie’s death, leaves you with the Relic chip in your head. This chip has an engram of Rocker Johnny Silverhand encrypted on it. Now his electronic soul is rewriting yours and will eventually kill you. The open world of Night city is beautiful, it is such a fun world to walk around and explore. You stop and look around and it looks like this real living breathing city. While you are fighting for your life you are also helping others. The premise of the story is great.. It has this spaghetti western type of flair to the story line. While you are arguably an outlaw you are helping people. Helping others durring these side quests makes this game as long as it is. If you don’t do a lot of the side quests. the game won’t last as long. In this game the different factionsare rounded out very well. Arasaka, Maelstrom, Valentinos, Sixth Street Gang, Scavengers, Tyger Claws, and of course, the Aldecaldos, all have their own unique style. The main quest with Johnny, is the most rounded out and polished quest of the game. Followed by Judy’s and Rivers side Quests. Kerry’s side quest with getting the band back together was good, but I wish he was in the story more. Side quests in Cyberpunk can be either hit or miss. Some seemed cookie cutter while others had a lot of heart. Quests with the Brandon the vending machine, Delamain taxi, and the Peralez, stick with you long after the game is over. Combat in the game is fun now. Enemy Ai saw improvement. Plenty of weapons and cybernetic implants to dish out all kinds of damage and fun.
Final Thoughts
I’ll end this by saying, I spent over 500 hours in this game with multiple play throughs. Cyberpunk may not be for everybody. But if you like an engaging story, fun combat in the Cyberpunk setting, I can not recommend this game enough.
Oh Cyberpunk 2077, where do I begin? It is really weird to have a game that on one hand, I really like and the other hand it pisses me off. Bottom line this feels like an unfinished game. Although is runs great on the PC, it’s still borked at times. To compare, a game I love is Satisfactory. Satisfactory is a game that is a work in progress. But somehow they have a way of making that fun, even when they update it and break your saves. Cyberpunk on the other hand has moments that are jaw dropping then you turn a corner and it just breaks your immersion. I wish they would have took the Satisfactory approach. Maybe release a few levels that were polished, then later release more. That being said it is a fun game for me, I have no regrets to my purchase. I was never into the hype for the game, in fact I wasn’t even aware of it. I remember seeing the original teaser trailer. Then at some point Keanu Reeves getting involved, that’s it. So when I got the game I was unaware of what was left out. As weeks went on after release is when I started to see the whole picture. Not only was the game not living up to their hype but CDPR took a black eye when people realized they were just like any other corporation. People had them on this pedestal. When you do that you are just setting yourself up for a fall. My first experience with a game not working was in 1996, “A10 Cuba” a military flight simulator. I put the CD in and nothing happened you couldn’t even install it. You had to download a patch just to get the game on your computer lol. Sad to say broken games began to be more of a thing after that for me. I’m actually more surprised when a game works as it should these days. Keep your expectations low and you’ll never be dissatisfied lol. But when playing Cyberpunk as big as it is, I get this feeling there should be more. There is a shit ton of doors you can’t open, that bothers me. Having these cybernetic implants I can use physical strength to rip open a reinforced metal gate, or use my hacking ability to open an electronic lock to get in. But that is only for very few doors you encounter in this game. A simple door to a bodega or door to an apartment, cant open it. As big as Night city is, there needs to be more access, more places to loot.
There are places in this world that are outright beautiful. The fact they put in an awesome photo mode shows they new they had something special. I love using it. There is certain times of the day where the lighting just makes everything realistic and breathtaking. Which leads me to another point, I don’t care about the main story. This game would have been triple A platinum if they would have kept it a strictly open world exploration game with side missions. I’m just hypothesizing here but I have a feeling this game faced several setbacks that seem obvious. First was the type of game it was supposed to be. I don’t believe Keanu Reeves was always part of the equation. Somewhere, some executive said we need star power. Now this is just speculation, I don’t know this as fact. I’m just trying to make sense of the delays and the product we got verses what was promised. Raytracing I believe was another factor. This technology is relatively new and is in this game. I’m sure it wasn’t part of the original development. They were contacted by Nvidia and they said, “Hey we have this new tech we’re trying to push, here’s some dollars include it please.” Again just speculation, not only added delays but changed the script. It was just another factor in the delay of this game. Still after all that, I do like this game. Not being a shill for CDPR but there is enough good in this game to keep me coming back.
While I’m somewhat content with my Gaming PC, and by somewhat I mean there is always that voice in the back of my head saying what can we improve or change. I hate seeing parts that are perfectly fine just laying around. Like an Intel quad core and GTX 1060 just sitting there along with a plethora of other components, unemployed. I thought it would be fun to put together a spare rig for when friends come over or even my wife to join my daughter and I when we’re plugged into cyber space. The only problem I had was choosing a case. I had several large cases laying around but I wanted to keep it somewhat compact. The motherboard I was going to use was a MATX, and the space where it was going to go wouldn’t have been a good fit for a large case. I also didn’t want to spend a lot. I finally decided on the Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L. I was aware of the short comings but I’m glad I picked this case. It was a lot of fun to build and now I don’t have to have components going to waste. While not a monster it plays games like Overwatch well and is really good for productivity. While my current gaming PC will be in a state of flux until it’s obsolete, I’m happy the way this little guy turned out.
With tech stocks dropping, especially triple A game developers. I wouldn’t want to risk my money as an investor. Companies have gotten too greedy with milking money from people. I’m getting tired of shoddy releases where more thought has gone into the monetization of a game than the game itself. Nobody wants to buy a half baked game let alone support it.
No better time to officially launch a
site than the start of a new year! PC gaming had its ups and downs
this year no doubt. Although I thought it was a great time to build a
new gaming rig for the holidays. For my daughters Christmas present I
built her a budget system based on the AMD platform.
Processor: RYZEN 5 2600
Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F
Video Card: ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 DUAL-GTX1070-O8G 8GB
RAM: 16 GB G.SKILL TridentZ RGB
SSD M2: Samsung 960 EVO 250 GB (For OS)
Hard Drive: WD Black 2TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive
CASE: AZZA Storm Series in White
Earlier in the year built a new rig
based on the Intel platform.
Processor: Intel i7-8700K
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1080 8GB
RAM: 16 GB G.SKILL TridentZ RGB
SSD M2: Samsung 960 EVO 250 GB (For OS)
SSD: Samsum 500gb
Hard Drive: WD Black 2TB Performance Desktop Hard Disk Drive
CASE: Cougar Panzer Evo
Hopefully 2019 will be better for PC gaming, wishing you all well I hope you have a great year!
