Mama told me not to come.
She said, that ain’t the way to have fun.
I’m more interested in multi-bay enclosures, but as you said, the chipsets tend to be kinda crappy. And that’s what makes me hesitate to use these mini PCs, my use-case is for a NAS, but these enclosures are kind of expensive and seem to have pretty poor components.
So for now, I’m using larger cases to hold the drives. But it takes up a lot of desk space, so these mini PCs are very attractive, if I can get a compact external enclosure to work.
TerraMaster, Orico
I honestly have never used either of these, yet they show up at a lot of retailers.
ASUS is a bit sketchy these days IMO, so I try to avoid them.
I’ve heard good things about Proxmox, but I have no direct experience with it. That would be a separate box that manages the VMs and everything, and it has a remote GUI option (webpage I think?).
If you want something on an existing box, just use KVM directly, or a simple frontend like GNOME boxes. I don’t know about remote configuration, but once it’s set up, do you really need to check in on things remotely? KVM will do hardware acceleration (definitely CPU acceleration, GPU if you configure it properly), and it has no GUI by default.
Yakuza 3 Remastered
I’m about halfway through it, so I probably won’t finish this week, but I’m really enjoying it. I’m hoping to finish it before the new Zelda game releases, which is what I plan to dive into next.
I also plan to play a few indies as well, so please reply with any you think are worth checking out. I have a list, but I’m always up for recs.
The thing is, I don’t know what “well known brands” are in that space. It’s not something I buy frequently.
Next time, check out Level1Techs on YouTube. Wendell reviews a lot of these devices, and he’ll give pretty good feedback on what’s legit and what’s not. Ho has reviewed MinisForum for years and has consistently recommended them. Just be careful, because he also reviews the more sketchy devices and sometimes recommends them (but with caveats), so don’t assume that because it is covered, that it’s legit.
Is there something like this, but only for indies?
Anyone have experience with external HDD enclosures? I currently have two 3.5" HDDs, and I’d like room for two or three more. Reliability is pretty important to me, so something that’ll cut out periodically isn’t going to work.
To be fair, it’s probably the only game I’m going to buy at launch this year.
Sounds just like Dwarf Fortress, which had been ASCII for decades before the Steam version added graphics (you could get icon packs before that point though). And honestly, I love DF and played quite a bit in the ASCII-only mode (I used to SSH into my server and run in actual ASCII mode), because the gameplay was worth it. Now that DF has a proper GUI, I’ll just use that, and I don’t mind that it looks like a game from the 90s.
Idk, I really suck at imagining things like in DF, but I really enjoy the gameplay. I don’t need a good representation of what I’m interacting with, but I do need something.
Exactly. And you can go pretty far with this as well. I really enjoyed Manifold Garden, which has pretty simple graphics, but definitely had a clear art direction and a very interesting 3D world to explore. There are probably more polygons on the face of a MC in a AAA game than in that entire game, yet I felt absolutely immersed while playing it.
Give me more unique experiences, not more GPU clock cycles…
Yup, I honestly avoid the hyper-realistic games anyway. The closest I have gotten recently is the Yakuza series, and even that is very clearly a game, even in their high-quality renders. Gameplay is far more important than graphics quality. I don’t even care at all about RTX, just give me a fun game with an interesting story, and give the art team a lot of leeway on how to represent that.
I almost never buy games day 1 because they’re full of bugs (though they do look pretty), but do you know what game I’m excited to buy day 1? Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. It’s basically the opposite of the big-budget, hyper-realistic games, and I’m all for it. I expect great gameplay and minimal bugs, and I’m willing to pay a premium for that.
I wish the big studios went back to putting fun first, instead of trying to compete on who can run my PC temps the highest.
Where “Reasons” = “Profit,” probably.
Eh, I’ve played plenty of Switch games at ~30 FPS and it’s fine. 40 is much better, and I honestly don’t see a point in 60 on a TV. That said, I don’t tolerate much below 60 on my PC though, and I generally avoid playing more intensive games on my Steam Deck (I prefer to play indies that give 60 FPS). Framerate matters more for me the closer I am to the screen.
Upscaling isn’t that bad. If you target 720p, the Deck should be able to keep up in most games. And if you mostly play casually, it’ll probably work well enough. But it all comes down to the games you play and the performance you expect. 30-40 FPS should be achievable on most games running @ 720p on medium settings.
Or you could build a PC. If you’re intending to play on a TV, this can be under $1k. That’s a little more than a PS5, but you’ll probably make that up in lower game prices before needing an upgrade, at which point an upgrade should be comparable to buying a new console (assuming you’re trying to match consoles, not go for high-end).
Yup, if you want PS5-level performance, you need to build a PC. If you just want to play games, a Steam Deck will do fine.
Yup, the way I see it, you have a few options:
So on this list, 1 and 3 really don’t look that appealing, so why do them? Just do 2 until something takes off, in which case the risk of 3 is already largely solved.
I really miss the Kinect, but I think they expected way too much from it. It was a lot of fun for games like Just Dance and various sports games for casual play, and I probably would’ve bought a new XBox if they continued to support it.
Always online can go die though, screw that. If I get a console, it’s because it’s more convenient than a PC. Give me a unique playing experience in a living room setting and I’ll pick one up.
Yup, started with 0 and working my way through.
Some genres I especially like:
Basically, if it has really good gameplay or story, I’ll probably like it.
It’s probably more interesting to point out what I tend to not like:
But then again, there’s an exception to each of these (e.g. I loved Slay the Spire and Black Mesa). So honestly, I’d probably enjoy anything that really stands out as being unique or interesting.