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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Perhaps you may or may not enjoy Space Asshole Red Faction: Guerilla. It’s a 2009 game that got a solid enough PC port that may run on weaker systems. There’s a remastered version but if you’re aiming for low-spec the original might be a better bet.

    Anyway, it’s an open world set on Mars and you go around wreaking havoc and blowing up buildings with ahead-of-its-time physics/destruction mechanics. The combat is more like a shooter and you play with lots of explosives. It’s not a huge map by standards today but is a big enough playground to keep one occupied.


  • I think it’s pretty hard to go wrong with any of the 8BitDo stuff and there are so many variations to suit different tastes and hands. I’ve been using an SN30 (modernized SNES style) across PC, Switch, and Deck and it’s the best controller I’ve ever owned. Outlasted my now-drifty Switch Pro controller and two pairs of Nintendo’s inexcusably shitty OEM joycons. Small, light, comfortable, gets good battery life, and connects reliably. Has everything a person needs for modern games, unless you need analog triggers for something.




  • Seconding this, at first I thought it was obtuse and overly difficult. But once you get a feel for how the synergies work it’s amazing. Despite the simple structure it’s a much deeper and more mechanically complex game than Vampire Survivors, and you have a lot more control over your builds.

    On the other hand it’s a positively insidious timewaster. (But isn’t that the point?) I certainly never expected to get 100 hours of fun out of it, but that’s what happened.

    As for FPS, visually simpler stuff is perhaps easier to enjoy on the small screen. I highly recommend Amid Evil if you enjoy classic Quake style shooters. I used it to teach myself how to effectively play shooters with the touchpads, which can be a tough hill to climb but definitely pays off. Don’t be afraid to play with the control settings through Steam; personally I run 175% sensitivity, no accel or haptics, with high friction trackball to help quickly change directions. It took a few hours to figure out what worked but once you get a feel for what’s comfortable for you personally it only takes a couple minutes per game to dial in the control settings.


  • The low quality parts thing can’t be overstated. The original DS was really the last “Nintendium” quality hardware in my book. The DS Lite had a ton of issues people tend to forget about. Extremely flaky shoulder buttons, yellowed screens, and cracked hinges were not a question of if, but when. Mine lasted about 6 months before the R button stopped working reliably. The first generation 3DS was a step back in the right direction, and mine is still going strong, but the circle pad longevity is dubious and the bottom screen plastic scratches if you look at it wrong. Then came the New 3DS, which looked good on paper but the New 3DS LL was a huge disappointment. The backplate cracks around the screws, the hinge has tons of flop in it, and within a year the paint and coating was flaking off of the top shell leaving a ~2cm patch of bare metal. Then came the Switch, with the lowest quality sticks I’ve ever seen. Even my Switch Pro Controller drifts like crazy.

    Knowing Nintendo the Switch 2 will already be obsolete at launch and power users will get better performance emulating the damn thing on modern hardware instead. Fool me twice, I, uh, won’t get fooled again, or something.



  • I haven’t tried it on Deck, but personally I’m a bit skeptical you’d get much tangible benefit over just setting lower package TDP limits as necessary, considering how much of a pain in the ass stable undervolting can be. TDP also has the advantage of per-game settings so you can just crank down undemanding games automatically instead of trying to juggle voltage/stability across the board.