Category Archives: Rambling

Podcasts Are Still a Thing, Right?

It’s been positively ages since I talked about gaming podcasts (well over 10 years, in fact…) but I’m still an avid listener, and I thought it might be fun to go back and update you all on what I’m currently enjoying, and what’s changed since my last post.

The Roster:

First and foremost, I’m absolutely in love with The Computer Game Show (TCGS). I’m not sure how I found out about them, perhaps a random recommendation on Reddit, but in any case, I started listening in 2018 just before one of their infamous Game of the Year specials. How I managed to come out of the other side of that insanity a fan, I’m not sure, but apparently I was entertained enough. My timing was a bit off, because this was around the time David “The Main One” Turner left the show for a while, leaving the other three to fill in without his huge personality. I don’t think I listened to many of those episodes (sorry guys!) but after I found out he was back I started listening regularly again, and I’ve been listening ever since, including the Patreon episodes, and have even started slowly working through their entire back catalog. Their show, with its hilarious British banter and down to earth gaming commentary, is one of the few things I actively look forward to every week.

Speaking of down to earth gaming commentary, Rebel FM is my other main podcast. I’ve been listening to this one since it launched in 2009 (as mentioned in both of my previous posts on podcasts) and I still enjoy the show quite a bit. It’s been interesting to hear Anthony and Arthur mature over the years, and while I feel like the format is a little less interesting these days, with the mild mannered Matt Chandronait typically filling out the third chair, and practically no guests to speak of any more (never mind any of the crazier ones that used to spice things up) I still enjoy listening to these guys. At this point, having listened so damn long, they practically feel like actual friends of mine.

A very recent addition, Random Access Memories is hosted by British TV personality Iain Lee. I was first introduced to Iain by TCGS, who collaborated with him on the occasional video and had him on as a guest host a few times. When he came out with this new retro gaming orientated show, in which he interviews random social media influencer types about a favorite old game of theirs, I had to listen. The show is quick, and usually barely focuses on the game in question at all, rather it mostly features Iain fanboying out on whoever his guest is, and essentially interviewing them about whatever happens to come up.

Speaking of retro gaming, I really have to credit The Retro Hour for inspiring my personal re-invigoration around all things retro computing and retro gaming. I started listening from the beginning when the show was relatively new, and unfortunately got so far behind that I’m still utterly buried in their backlog. As such, I don’t listen to it often, but every time I do, I really, really enjoy it. The formula is simple – two (sometimes three) British retro enthusiasts chatting about retro computing news, before devoting the rest of the episode to a more formal interview with someone of note from the retro computing scene, oftentimes notable developers from the past, including some very big names. Dan is an excellent interviewer, and while Ravi’s interview skills could use some work (fingers crossed he’s improved in newer episodes) together they have a friendly energy and infectiously genuine interest in the topics.

Notable Mentions:

Around the same time I started listening to TCGS I also started listening to Filthy Casuals – a show hosted by three Australian comedian friends who love gaming. While the show is fairly formulaic, with your stereotypical focus on discussing the week’s gaming news and what they’ve been playing, the chemistry between the three hosts and their hilarious banter really turn this one into something far above average. At some point I had less free time to listen to podcasts and ended up dropping this one from my regular rotation, though I still check it out on occasion.

Cane and Rinse is a great podcast where 4 or 5 out of a huge group of revolving guests focus on a particular, usually older game, discussing their opinions and experiences with it. Given how unscripted it is, they do sometimes miss certain points, but that’s also one of the strengths of the show. It’s well produced, rarely wanders too far off topic, and is always a fun listen. Due to my own “patient gaming” habits, I usually only listen to episodes about games I’ve played and/or are particularly interested in to avoid potential spoilers for older games I might get around to one day. There are other, similar podcasts I’ve listened to here and there, such as Dev Game Club, Finish The Fight, and Watch Out for Fireballs! but this is my favorite of the lot.

Revisiting Some Old Favorites:

I continued to listen to The Comedy Button for quite a few years, but eventually the show started to feel incredibly formulaic. While it was always fun, it felt like a lot of the same stories were referenced, the humor never really evolved, and I just got a bit burnt out on it. The crew called it quits in early 2023, but given the random episode they put out last September, will still occasionally get together for the odd reunion episode here and there.

Gamers With Jobs Conference Call was a regular in my rotation for many years, but not unlike Filth Casuals, I dropped it at a time when I had more podcasts than time to listen to them. Going back to it years later, I discovered that the cast was entirely different, and while I’m sure the show is still enjoyable, it felt like an entirely different show to me and I just couldn’t get into it. Bummer.

I sang a lot of praise for Idle Thumbs in my very first podcast post back in 2009. It became one of my favorite podcasts, and I was bummed out when it ended up 2012… and I was pretty damn happy when it came back in 2013. They kept putting out amazing episodes, even coming out with a completely off-topic spinoff show called Important If True, and eventually an entire podcast network, until they went completely radio silent in 2018. All talented game developers, a few of the regular hosts formed Campo Santo games and put out the fantastic Firewatch (which I played later in 2018, making me miss them that much more!) When Campo Santo got bought by Valve, that was the end of the podcast, sadly. I really miss these guys, and if they started putting out episodes again tomorrow, I’d subscribe without hesitation.

ZOZS!?

Welcome one and all to 2025! I wanted to give a state of the blog (AKA, a state of me) kind of update, as it’s been a while and I’ve had a lot on my mind regarding my gaming and related blog output lately.

First of all, looking back at my meager updates this year, it’s clear that I need to post more. A lot more. While I doubt I’ll ever return to my original plan of multiple updates a week talking in more granular detail about what I’m playing, I’d at least like to post a lot more. Embarrassingly, I’ve actually played several titles which haven’t made it to the blog quite yet. Even my game of year, Helldivers 2, hasn’t shown up yet. Most of those games are longer single players games that I haven’t quite finished yet, though. So, while not really a new one, my first goal is to finish those games and get some thoughts of them posted here. That’ll be my priority in the next couple of months.

Of course, posting a lot more also means playing a lot more. Now, in my defense, of the two big updates I posted in 2024, each covers multiple lengthy games – many of these games I played for tens of hours each, and altogether, I’d guess would be close to 1000 hours. That said, I’m still not satisfied with the amount of games I’ve played. In fact, my backlog has actually grown so large that I had to stop and document it properly, with a massive spreadsheet detailing individual games and priorities, as well as entire series that I want to play through and write about. Seeing it laid out in such a black and white way only reinforces that I need to make more of an effort to do more gaming. So, my second, to play more games in general.

“Expanding My Horizons”

Somewhat coincidentally, I have more motivation to play more. First, I’ve just built myself a new PC, and while I’ve not even migrated to it full time yet, it’s already breathed some life into some of my old favorites and had me planning to make PC gaming more of a priority this year. I’ll likely post a much more detailed article about this build soon – not because there’s anything all that exceptional about it, but I know from past conversations with friends and coworkers, hearing thoughts about how some part decisions, etc. were made can be helpful to others working on new builds. Selfishly, it can also be kind of useful to have my thoughts on my build detailed for future reference.

This might also be my year of the PlayStation. In addition to picking up a PS3 a couple of years ago to assist with replaying the Metal Gear series and some other exclusive titles I missed, as well as diving into PSP emulation with my G Cloud, I just picked up a PlayStation 5. Now, tempting exclusives aside, I had very little interest in a PlayStation 5, but when I saw the 30th Anniversary edition, I kind of fell in love. Unfortunately after months of monitoring retailer sites and eBay, I decided to take the L. You win, scalpers! Still, I’d already sold myself on the idea of getting a PS5, and at around the same time one of my friends ended up picking up a new PlayStation 5 Pro and offered me his old launch PS5. It took a while to get there, but finally resigned to never getting an Anniversary edition, I ended up getting a great deal on his PS5, monstrosity that it is. It should be noted that a lot of PlayStation 5 exclusives have now found their way to PC, but there are still some that haven’t, and a ton of PS4 exclusives (including remasters of older games) that I’d really love to play that haven’t either.

I feel like, between my PC, my Xboxes, and PS3 and PS5, and my G Cloud, there’s not a whole lot I’ll have to skip when attempting to cover game series in the coming years. Speaking of which, I’ve been delaying it for too long, but I’ll be diving into my Metal Gear / Metal Gear Solid retrospective very soon. While I hope to mix it up a bit by playing other games in between Metal Gear titles to avoid burnout, the Metal Gear games will be my next highest priority. I’m really looking forward to diving into the series.

That’s it for now. Happy New Year!

Cloudbursting

I know it’s been ages since I’ve posted. I’ve been in a bit of a limbo when it comes to gaming for a while now, with several games I’ve been working through at a glacial pace that I really want to finish before moving on to anything new, all of which will be covered here once I complete them. For now though, let me tell you about a new toy of mine.

A few months back I got the itch to start looking at handheld PCs. I have a friend with a Legion Go and at least a couple with Steam Decks. In reality, I probably have very little actual use for one, and I have a history of regrettable purchases related to handheld consoles and the like. I simply don’t play them. Still, it was a fun hole to fall into: consuming innumerable videos, Reddit threads, and Steam Community posts on the subject, and spinning off into unexpected areas, like the vast array of cheap yet impressive emulation focused handhelds that have flooded the market in recent years. In the end, despite the numerous advantages of the Windows based handhelds, given the price, my 20 years of investment in Steam as a platform, store, and community, and various other (mostly minor) quality of life things, I was fairly settled on the Steam Deck OLED.

That said, the one thing that kept coming up was the other platform, store, and community I’ve invested heavily in over the years – Xbox. While I consider myself a PC gamer first and foremost, I also do a ton of console gaming as a means to get away from my PC for a while, relaxing on my couch in front of a nice, big TV. I mostly reserve console gaming for single player games, with more traditional PC genres like FPSes and strategy games, and lets not forget MMOs and other online games, being played on PC. That said, when it comes to my (massive) backlog, I intend to play a great deal of those games on Xbox. I already own many of them, for one, but I also somehow still hold the tiniest flickering flame of the once great torch I carried for building up my Xbox achievement score. One obvious solution was streaming from my Xbox to my Steam Deck over my local network. Could it be done? Well, absolutely! There are third party apps that can do it quite well, apparently.

“Playing Halo Infinite on My Stoop”

The more I thought about it, the more this became one of the most likely ways I’d use my Steam Deck and, frankly, it seemed a little overbuilt (and overpriced) for that purpose alone. I’d also read about how Xbox games wouldn’t use the full screen due to the Stream Deck’s odd 1280×800 resolution which got me thinking that the ideal would be a handheld with a 1080p screen so that The Xbox Series X (or PS5, for that matter) could stream to it full screen in their most commonly used resolution.

That’s when I ran into the Logitech G Cloud. Now, I’ve heard of this thing before. I’m sure it was mentioned on at least one of the gaming podcasts I regularly listen to because of their supposed partnership with Microsoft for the G Cloud to be something of an Xbox competitor to Sony’s first party solution to this problem, the PlayStation Portal. I’m not sure that’s quite how it ended up, but the more I learned about it, the more interested I became. Here’s a quick rundown:

Built and supported by Logitech, who are far more experienced with hardware and much more reputable than the majority of players in the space, outside of the major ones like Asus, Lenovo, and Valve, of course. Accordingly, it feels relatively high quality when it comes to build and materials.
The controls are quite good. The layout closely resembles the standard Xbox controller. The analog sticks are decent, the buttons and triggers feel good, it has a subtle but fully functional rumble, etc. Input lag is close to non-existent too. About the only complaints I’ve heard is that the D-pad leaves a bit to be desired, not being great at registering diagonals, and some people hate the deadzones in the analog sticks.
Additionally, the whole thing is very ergonomic. Most every reviewer mentioned how good it feels to hold. It’s also really light, which is an advantage none of the big boys have. You could definitely hold this thing above your head while laying in bed without giving yourself an unplanned arm workout, and that is one of the use cases I had in mind.
Another point of comparison that is often brought up is battery life, and the battery life of the G Cloud, being basically a glorified Android tablet, and one that is mostly streaming rather than running games locally, is stellar.
Being an Android device, it has a lot of flexibility in terms of available apps, customization, etc. Of course, Logitech provides a custom interface which simplifies and consolifies the whole thing somewhat too. One of the most likely use cases for a device like this, outside of streaming, is loading it up with emulators, and there’s quite a few available for Android. This thing might not be the most powerful handheld by any means, but it’s enough to emulate most consoles up to PS2 quite well.
As mentioned, while it’s not OLED, the screen is quite nice. 1080p native, relatively large at 7”, vibrant. It can also get bright enough to allow you to play outside on a sunny day.
The biggest negative is perhaps the price, which is typically $300. Given the price of handhelds, and Sony’s Portal being only $200, I think that’s a little high given its capabilities and intended use. That said, it regularly goes on sale for $250 or less, and finding them used is fairly easy as well.

I’d suggest TechDweeb’s video on the G Cloud for a better summary. The fact that a dude who probably literally owns every handheld available is so enthusiastic about this thing speaks volumes.

So, I got one! Being an iPhone and iPad user for ages now, it was a bit of a mindfuck setting up a new Android device, but beyond that, it was easy to get going. I tested out Microsoft’s Xbox streaming app, which worked fine, though it only runs at 720p. I also tested out Microsoft’s Cloud Gaming app, which worked far better than I’d have expected, despite also having a similar 720p limitation. Now, I honestly don’t have that much interest in cloud streaming, but given how well it works, I could see myself using it if I were on a relaxing vacation where I had a lot of downtime, assuming I had a good WiFi connection and an even better Internet connection, of course.

Finally, I bought myself XBXPlay from the Google Play store which is a third party take on the normal Xbox streaming app, but supports 1080p and has a lot more options for tweaking your experience. It works incredibly well. While it’s a bit of a bummer I had to go to a third party for a superior solution, I have no complaints. I can now play Xbox Series X (and all of the previous Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Xbox games it supports) while my SO is tying our main TV, in my bed when I just need to relax, or outside on my porch on a nice day. With the Xbox’s remote startup and shutdown, I could also open some ports in my firewall and stream remotely too, if I wanted to. Very cool.

Now, I haven’t dabbled with PC streaming at all yet, but in theory I should be able to get similar performance by using Steam Link or perhaps better yet, Moonlight + Sunshine. The truth is that I don’t have the same use-cases for PC streaming. Generally, if I want to play a PC game I just go on my PC, which is rarely tied up. I don’t play a lot of PC games using a controller; if I’m super compelled to use one, I’m probably just going to play the console version of the game. I’m sure one of these days I’ll have some reason to diving into it. I’d imagine getting an MMORPG to work on this thing could be fun, for instance.

“Metal Gear Ac!d, anyone?”

To expand a tiny bit on the subject of it being an Android device, as mentioned, it’s powerful enough for a lot of emulation, but it’s not up to the task of anything super intensive, like more demanding PS2, GameCube, or Vita games and beyond. It’s also not going to be able to smoothly play later, more demanding Android native games. Now, given this thing’s widescreen format combined with its apparently lacking d-pad, I can’t see myself emulating a lot of 8-bit and 16-bit classics on it either, even though it’s otherwise totally up to the task.

There’s a sweet spot that I found incredibly intriguing though – the Sony PlayStation Portable. The PSP had a 16:9 widescreen display and it had an analog stick (the infamous “nub”) as its main input, so it seems like a perfect match for the G Cloud. The G Cloud is also powerful enough to emulate it using the awesome Android PSP emulator, PPSSPP, being able to 4x upscale most games to its 1080p native resolution. I went from not being aware of or all that interested in many PSP games, to spending days on end cramming a 64 GB SD card with almost its entire library of games, and let me tell you, the PSP had a ton of interesting ports and genuine exclusives, especially to someone who has very little experience with the PlayStation ecosystem like me. Now, I honestly don’t know when I’ll actually get around to playing any PSP games, but this does at least mean I’ll be adding Metal Gear Acid and Acid 2, along with MGS: Portable Ops to my upcoming Metal Gear retrospective playthrough.

In conclusion, success! My original Xbox local streaming use-case seems to have been thoroughly satisfied, and the bonus use-case of opening up a whole new world of games with a high quality PSP emulation experience is also a total win. That said, I should mention that there are indeed other competitors in this space (Android handhelds with similar form factors) such as the Ayn Odin and Odin 2, the Anbernic RG556, and the Retroid Pocket RP4. Some of them are much cheaper, and some of them even more expensive, but more powerful. While I’m happy with my G Cloud for now, this is a space I’m going to keep an eye on for the future… you know, unless I just end up buying a Steam Deck. 😉