The Computer/Console Gaming Thread

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Playing through Batman Akrham Knight At the moment and loving every minute of it. The combat is great, although the fighting can be hard and I've died more often in this than previous bat games. However that sweet moment when you manage to take out a group of thugs keeping your combo and using the gadgets to keep them off balance is and awesome feeling!

Also been plugging along on Just Cause 3. Played JC2 and thought it was fun. This has potential, but liberating cities and stuff is a bit confusing. I'm not entirely sure what I am looking for at times, making it a bit less exciting than the way you took down bases in the second one. The explosions though, oh man, they are awesome. Best bit is where you go to blow up something small and it just chains into this massive bunch of stuff just exploding. Wow. All that from one upturned car? BA HA HA HA! There is some weird slow down at times. but I can live with that.

Also played Let it Die, (I think) which was free and seems to be published by gungho, a mainly mobile phone game maker. Meh, not feeling it for this one. Free games that make their money from you buying continues and stuff never inspire confidence. I feel they have less reason to make a balanced game when they want to force you to buy lives or the opportunity to continue where you left off instead of starting again.

[prjkt]

Anyone playing Mario Run?

S'ok. A bit of a fun time waster but I'd hoped for more.

Me too, only played the free levels, but not sure if pay to unlock the rest.

Heh Arkham - that reminds me I need to go back and try to finish Origins, never been able to get past Bane on the hotel balcony. Yet to play Knight.

[1AZRAEL1]

Heh Arkham - that reminds me I need to go back and try to finish Origins, never been able to get past Bane on the hotel balcony. Yet to play Knight.

There's a trick to that fight. I too died a few times beating him. It's a great story, should finish it.

And Knight is a great game too, just not so happy about the heavily used batmobile bits by the end of it. And Tets, make sure you complete everything to unlock the extra ending

[DELTAprime]

Anyone playing Mario Run?

S'ok. A bit of a fun time waster but I'd hoped for more.

I would but Nintendo have said they are not bringing it to Android because of piracy. Yep sounds like typical Nintendo BS, this is the same company that ties your digital purchases to your console instead of your account.

[kup]

Recently through the EB sales, I got myself a Steam Link - These are my views:

Out of the box, it is impressive in a very subdued way ironically enough. It is a very small box (about the size of a portable USB HDD) and with a nice mat surface finish on top and a big rubber foot at the bottom taking up all the bottom surface to ensure stability. The large rubber foot is to keep it from slipping by cable pulling but I think this wouldn't be too much of a problem as for its size, the Steam Link is fairly heavy.

It has 3 USB 3.0 ports, and of course power and HDMI. Certainly the ports you wold expect from any modern console.

Now, here is my experience when I tried this thing using the default settings as per the quick start guide included - I plugged it straight on to the router which the host computer is also directly connected to. Performance was 'adequate' at 1080p in 'Balanced' mode (settings range from fast, balanced and beautiful). I could see the odd jitter every now and then but nothing game breaking. Certainly still 'good'. However this connection was just to test it as the Steam Link was just next to the host PC - The real test would come when I take it down the back into my Collection/Games room.

This is when things at first became a little shaky. Using the same settings, I connected it to my projector at the back. The network was still wired but going through a secondary switch which in turn connects to the main router at the front of my house using an ethernet over powerline adapter. This connection is typically good and fairly stable, able to stream HD video with no issues. However the Steam Link seemed to hate it and everything I streamed through it either crashed or performed horribly. I went into the Steamlink settings and changed it from Balanced to Fast - It was a bit better but still unplayable.

At this point, I was getting disappointed with the steam link as it is advertised as being able to run at 100mbps and my connection was 200mbps and stable within reason. I googled the issue and found little help. Then I finally realised that the Streaming settings had an 'Advance' option. There you are able to set the speed and scaled resolution of the display. I decided to set the resolution to 720p instead of 1080p.

I started running some games, and they worked flawlessly, no tearing or glitches whatsoever. I started with Ducktales remastered to measure input lag and that worked awesomely. I then decided to run Mortal Kombat X, also awesome. Finally I decided to use a heavy hitter, Doom and that worked flawlessly again. I was happy that now I had the Steam Link working effectively although the stream is at 720p.

Now the stream resolution vs the game resolution. Please note that I didn't have to lower the resolution of the game in the host PC to match the stream resolution. The steam link still carries that through but it scales it to a 720p size. I found that to be satisfactory and the screen looks excellent and fluid. I was happy with the results.

Sound...

This was also a bit problematic at first as I had no sound while streaming. I had menu sounds in the Steam Link OS but that's it. The issue was that I have my host PC connected through HDMI to a 7.1 sound receiver. Because I thought I wouldn't need the receiver for streaming, I turned it off and failed to realise that this would also disable sound in windows. The Steam link needs a sound source before streaming whether it is from Line in or HDMI so by Windows not detecting the receiver, it just assumed there was no sound so nothing to stream. I had to turn the receiver on and that enabled sound - At least partially...

I then noticed that I only had sound in Steam Big Picture and the streamed desktop -However I had no sound in game. I was wondering what had happened so I went into Steam Link settings and set the sound to Stereo instead of 5.1 and that resolved the issue. What happened there was that the Steam Link only outputs PCM sound not compressed audio (like Dolby or DTS). Since my games room receiver only works on optical, raw PCM 5.1 was too much for it. This is something to watch out for if you have an older theatre system that is unable to process multi-channel PCM.

After I got those configuration issues sorted, I was able to run the Steam link flawlessly. The rendering is seamless and real time responsive. Very happy with the outcome.

Finally, Steam Link also offers something really awesome. Not only does it have native support for the Steam Controller but it can also support the PS4 and even the Wii U pro controller! That is really awesome as it adds the flexibility for you to choose whatever controller you want just like a PC but with minimal hassle.

Would I recommend the Steam Link? Depends. Like it was with the Steam Controller, this is once again a 'PC Master Race' device which means that you will have to invest time on it and have a technical mind if you wish to make the best out of it or in my case, get it to work properly. Chances are that it will not work properly or not at all out of the box which would already alienate the mainstream gamer.

So in conclusion, I am very happy with the Steam Link and I can see a lot of uses for it, specially down in my games room. Now I can play some newer (and more demanding) social multiplayer games there with visiting friends like Mortal Kombat X. However I if you are the type of gamer who expects things to work right out of the box or does not have technical capability, I would say to stay away. I can already see this division in the Steam boards with people who are very happy with the Steam Link and those who wrote it off as rubbish when it didn't work right away. It was similar to what I saw with the Steam Controller.

As a foot note, I will add also that the Steam Link's biggest flaw may be that it is a bit ahead of its time. The Steam Link demands a lot of Network bandwidth in your home network and I am sure that as time passes, home network speeds would be faster with higher bandwidth on average negating some of the current issues but I don't think we are there yet. Fast network speed would make the Steam Link more accessible to the layman user for sure as less chance of issues so the technology may have more mainstream adoption in the future.

[prjkt]

I've been tempted by the steam link, but my PC is in the same room as my tv, so a 5m HDMI lead has been enough for now.

Definitely good feedback though, my home network is definitely not enough to handle it

[kup]

I've been tempted by the steam link, but my PC is in the same room as my tv, so a 5m HDMI lead has been enough for now.

Definitely good feedback though, my home network is definitely not enough to handle it

Thanks! The Steam Link is cheap enough that is worth buying just to try it out. At worse, you'll have a reliable way to RDP into your main PC from any TV in your house.

==========================

On other news, rumour has it that the 'Custom Nvidia' chip that the Nintendo Switch runs on is actually a Maxwell GPU. Some people are having a meltdown that this isn't good enough and that the Switch like the Wii U before it, would be critically underpowered and alienate the 3P developers. I was also a bit concerned about this so I decided to do some research on the Maxwell range of GPUs.

To get some context, the Maxwell includes graphic cards such as the GTX900 series in which the GTX980ti is from. I think we can all agree that is more than comparable to the PS4 and XBONE and their new re-iterations. I myself own a GTX970 and I have not come across a single new game that I am unable to run at max settings.

Now, that however doesn't mean that the the Switch will be coming with a GTX980. It will actually come with what has only been referred to as a 'Custom Tegra Chip'. This in turn has started the somewhat reasonable rumour that the Switch may indeed have a Maxwell based chip being the Tegra X1. Now, assuming that is the case, the Tegra X1 is still a fairly capable CPU/GPU combo. It is capable of 4k video on the base model. May still be a bit far from the base PS4 and XBONE but nonetheless, a considerable improvement to the Wii U and chances are modern 3P games can be easily ported to it but with more humble resolutions and graphic features (as if you are playing a game on Medium graphics).

However the wild card here is the 'Custom' bit of Nvidia's official response. Yes, it could be Maxwell, yes it is still a Tegra but will it be closer to a higher end GTX900 series card than a run of the mill X1? Time will tell.....

[kurdt_the_goat]

I would but Nintendo have said they are not bringing it to Android because of piracy. Yep sounds like typical Nintendo BS, this is the same company that ties your digital purchases to your console instead of your account.

They never said anything about piracy. Android version is coming sometime in 2017. Most likely Apple simply paid for timed exclusivity, but Nintendo did say since there are fewer iOS devices, it was easier for them to test the game.

On other news, rumour has it that the 'Custom Nvidia' chip that the Nintendo Switch runs on is actually a Maxwell GPU. Some people are having a meltdown that this isn't good enough and that the Switch like the Wii U before it, would be critically underpowered and alienate the 3P developers. I was also a bit concerned about this so I decided to do some research on the Maxwell range of GPUs.

My expectations are firmly in check- all they've shown is a bunch of games that look indiscernible from their Wii U equivalents, and a likely completely bullshot feed of Skyrim.

And today Eurogamer has a report saying the machine isn't using the full spec of the Tegra X1 in either console or docked mode, so they can hit battery and thermal targets.

[kup]

They never said anything about piracy. Android version is coming sometime in 2017. Most likely Apple simply paid for timed exclusivity, but Nintendo did say since there are fewer iOS devices, it was easier for them to test the game.



My expectations are firmly in check- all they've shown is a bunch of games that look indiscernible from their Wii U equivalents, and a likely completely bullshot feed of Skyrim.

And today Eurogamer has a report saying the machine isn't using the full spec of the Tegra X1 in either console or docked mode, so they can hit battery and thermal targets.

Yeah read that. I is starting to seem as if we will get a 3P friendly console that will likely play all the new games as the PS4 and XBONE but at Medium graphics

Not sure that is what people want and the Wii U showed that Nintendo exclusives do keep things going but not enough to succeed.

[kup]

Good news, i managed to get the steam link at 1080p and just as stable as before. All i needed to do is limit the mbps in streaming by a notch. Looks like there is a sweet spot you need to be, any higher and it goes crap but on the spot, it's great.