The Long-Winded and Painful Frustrations of Botclone's Experience with Computer Peripherals

What actually want is something in-between a Lenovo Legion GO and a 2-in-1 tablet/laptop with a ton of I/O

 

I kinda feel self-conscious using a Deck as a laptop though...

    I’ve marked a year since I’ve had my Steam Deck a couple of months ago. In that time, I’ve used it as a:

• Tablet to browse Twitter at night
• Docked to the TV to watch YouTube and Netflix
• Docked to the TV to play music as I sleep and work
• Docked to the TV in the hotel room to watch Youtube and Netflix and play Guts & Blackpowder, on Roblox (BEFORE GRAPEJUICE GOT BLOCKED :< )
• Portable computer for little things at college

    I’ve used it in these ways more than I have used it as an actual portable gaming console. I am improving in that respect now that I have Balatro, but I still kinda want something else out of it. Something that I can use as both a portable gaming console, a laptop, or docked on a TV, all in one. I’m probably looking for something that’s not exactly a Steam Deck though, but I already have a Deck and I’m going to try not to abandon it (or try to spend my precious money on a lot of new things.)

Pictured: me thinking about spending money on a new thing!

    While I was window-shopping on a Discord voice call and posting images in a text channel, a friend introduced me to this keyboard. It seems perfect for my use case; the carrying case eases my concerns about the caps getting pulled out or dust entering the keyboard, and the stand seems like it’d be a good idea. I sold my Killswitch case a while back (as it made the Deck heavy, which was terrible for using it like a tablet at night,) so I don’t have a kickstand anymore. This would fill that role, I think. I’m not sure if it’d be at the right angle to use, and it also doesn't exactly fix the fact that the screen is 7” and sitting thirty inches away from my eyes. More on that later.

    I’m definitely going to get this keyboard; I think it’d be an upgrade and just a better choice over the Logitech K380 I have now. On top of the aforementioned case/stand, it’s rechargeable via USB-C instead of replaceable AAAs. I also assume it’s going to be built better. I’m typing this section of the post away from home on the K380, and even now with a fresh battery it’s glitching out on me. I just don’t know if I want to continue my theme of having yellowing-plastic inspired khaki keyboards, or get one in pink just for the fun of it. My current desktop keyboard is an FC900RBT in “Coral Blue.” I picked it specifically because it sorta looked like the old shitty keyboards I used when I was younger, but with some visual appeal to it. I think it would be cool to maybe do that same thing (and maybe match it with a Lofree Touch mouse (!!!!!), buuuuuut pink would also be cool I think.

    OH YEAH, SIDE TANGENT ON MICE! I recently got a Logitech Pro X Superlight for maaaaaybe playing a few shooters while at hotels or LANs on the Deck. It’s a terrible idea because most of the shooters I play tend to have high graphics requirements, but hey, w/e. My relationship with mice and the Steam Deck is not that great, though.

    I got a Logitech Pebble mouse just to have a mouse for general desktop stuff. It wasn’t really great at gaming, but I never intended for it to be for shooters, so it was fine. Up until it stopped working, that is. Before that, I tried using my Glorious Model D Pro 2 Wireless on it (it lives wired to my desktop,) but for some reason it just wouldn’t perform at the correct DPI. I had it plugged into the same monitor I used for my desktop, played CS2 at the same resolution, had the same sensitivity in both the system settings (for Windows and the Deck’s settings) and in-game, no mouse acceleration. It was just… off. I tried installing PIper and Libratbag (an open-source program and its prerequisite for customizing DPIs on mice,) but my specific mouse wasn’t supported. At that point, I just gave up and used the Pebble for administrative tasks until its demise.

QwQ

    Fast-forward to today. I buy a Logitech Pro X Superlight. I probably shouldn’t’ve, and just got a cheap portable mouse. I finally get home and unbox it. I look at the cable, and notice it is Micro USB. What? Who sells a mouse at that price in 2024 with MicroUSB? I could probably ask someone to re-solder it to a USB-C port, but it’d be more money, and it frustrates me heavily that I paid a bunch of money and didn’t notice the cable used when they were testing it at the store. The entire point of me getting this mouse was that I’d be able to use any of my existing USB-C cables to charge and plug directly into my Steam Deck on the go, and now I’d have to carry a different cable. Which isn’t the end of the world; it’s just annoying.

After venting my frustrations on Twitter and to my bestie on Discord voice call, I download the partner software, I change the DPI on the mouse to be the same as it is on the Glorious mouse. Great! I plug it into the Deck. It’s weirdly slow, odd. I plug it back into my desktop; maybe I have to turn on the on-board memory? Nope, still didn’t work. I figure out I have to both do that and overwrite the profiles. Okay, great, it’s working right now? On the desktop, I still have the same issue where the lowest setting is too slow, and I’m constantly lifting my mouse to move across the screen. It’s still the same setting my Windows desktop is set at. I then load into Counter-Strike 2. The sensitivity seems… fine? Aside from the fact that I was testing it on a really awkward way, and my graphics settings were so low that targets were heavily pixelated, it all seemed similar to how it felt on my desktop. I load into HELLDIVERS 2 later, and it also seems fine. The only things that were off were menus, as it was still using the sensitivity set for the desktop.

I don’t even know anymore. The asynchronous experience between my PC and my Steam Deck is extremely annoying. I honestly probably am going to sell this mouse and buy a decent portable mouse NOT from Logitech just to use for administrative/work/not-shooter games. Mouse sensitivity is also still weird on Game Mode, so that’s another strike against it. It would be nice to use the Deck for both the shooter games I play and as a laptop-ish thing for school/work/whatever, but I don’t think it just has the power to power the games I play satisfactorily, and the mouse inconsistencies are just annoying.

Double gambling!

    Like, the Steam Deck is still an incredible device. I like playing a variety of games, and it lets me do that both in the car/on a train/on a plane, but what I’m asking of it now I think is more fit for something like the Legion Go, ROG Ally X or an actual laptop. Like, what I want is an actual laptop, but the size of the deck display and it not being mounted on a hinge makes it uncomfortable to use. And while I can work around it, it’s just more convenient to have something like a Microsoft Surface or an iPad or some other tablet kinda deal to do work stuff on the go. I also want something that can be used as a LAN party machine, and while PC handhelds are gaining popularity as LAN party PCs because they’re obviously portable, I’ve just found that the Deck either couldn’t run or couldn’t handle the ones that I’ve played at LANs recently (CoD, Singleplayer Tarkov, CS2 at decent settings.) 

    Basically, I want a powerful 2-in-1 laptop. Something with a touchscreen that’s mostly used as an auxiliary input method, and is primarily connected to a keyboard and mouse, or docked to a monitor/TV for travel. Forewarning, we’re in the realm of open and unapologetic window-shopping now.

    I thought (and still do) that the Legion GO would be a good contender for this. I like that I could just remove the controllers and carry it around as a tablet, but I’m not sure how I’d like navigating Windows on a touchscreen again. The Deck’s dual trackpads are just too great for just idly surfing Twitter or typing or watching videos on a screen larger than my phone’s in bed, and I’m not sure if I’d like to go back to a Surface-style on-screen keyboard after experiencing what the Deck does. I also feel like I could just go for a bigger screen, but if I actually had it I don’t think it’d actually matter to me.

Is it window shopping if you're inside the store?

    I went searching for “gaming 2-in-1s” and it turns out that they do exist. There’s a grand total of 1, and it’s the Asus ROG Flow Z13. It fits a lot of my criteria; It’s a tablet PC, it’s got pretty good performance, and it has a touchscreen. The performance seems great for just playing games like HELLDIVERS 2 or No More Room in Hell 2. I also read that it’s got stylus support, so I could legitimately use it to draw on the go (or at least at places not at my home.) But, like, c’mon. It’s near two thousand US dollars. I’m not sure if I’d be able to upgrade the storage to something bigger, I’m not a fan of what my recourse might be if something breaks, I’m really not sure I should be dropping that amount of money on a gaming laptop. I’ve heard the horror stories about them being pushed to their limits and breaking, and while I’m not sure if it’s overblown or not, I don’t think I’d want to risk it.

    I also remember seeing cool-looking builds of Framework laptops built as a tablet. Framework is a company that sells modular laptops, and sells individual parts on their websites. I’ve seen people use the parts to create cool cyberdecks, PCs inside a keyboard, all-in-one PCs. If I ever were to break a part, I could probably not sweat having to look for a replacement part, because Framework sells the parts individually, and their design makes it easy to take apart and put together. The design of the tablet I saw is out there. There’s a full parts list, 3D files for printing and instructions for assembly and everything. I know that the Framework 13 (the model the build bases off of) is capable of playing the games I’d be aiming to play anyway. The build uses an externally connected touchscreen monitor instead of an internally connected touchscreen display, though. I know Framework mainboards’ connectors have the capability of working with touchscreen displays, but the process as I understand it is not as plug-and-play as just plugging in a USB-C into a port. Something with voltages and stuff. I’m not sure I’d want to give up the one out of four USB-C slots, and I’m not sure how durable or how well-finished it’d be if I were to do it myself (or if I would be skilled enough to pull it off.)

   Honestly, I don’t know. I should just maybe get a normal laptop like a MacBook (pfft) or maybe an Android tablet. I know Android’s pretty good in terms of the freedom you get when it comes to mobile operating systems. I think I saw something about a new build of Android getting moveable windows a-la PCs, but I know it has Krita —the art program I use on Windows— and I know it has Firefox with working Firefox plugins. It may be good enough for me.

    Computer peripherals are just annoying. I’ve gone through so many cheap microphones, headsets, keyboards, and mice. I’m annoyed DisplayPort acts like the display has been disconnected when the display has been turned off. I’m annoyed I have to find specific monitors that’re designed to still send signals through the DP cable to prevent this behavior. I’m annoyed that the microphone that I have catches everything in my room, and has its own audio output that restarts every time I plug it in. I’m annoyed that I have too much stuff plugged into my desktop, but not enough USB ports. It’s been a very annoying journey finding each peripheral I use today, and I’m still looking for replacements. I jjust want to find something that’ll perfectly fit my needs and that I won’t need to replace. The Steam Deck’s been the closest, which is why I’m sticking with it. Aaaand also because I bought it on and for my birthday with my own money :>

I wrote everything on this setup! The hardest parts were translating my thoughts onto the document.

now that I mention it, i’ve had a similar experience with airsoft (buying random shit until I find the thing I like or that doesn't break)   are all hobbies like this? god, that sucks.

oh yeah btw, that little bit with me testing the logitech superlight? i tried to install libratbag and piper on my steam deck again, because that mouse is supported by libratbag. it’s why i picked it in the first place –matches or exceeds the dpi of my existing mouse and I can possibly edit the dpi on my deck instead if it acts weird. i had to import someshit i don’t remember anymore bc steamos idt has access to everything normal arch linux does, but after that i install libratbag just fine. i install piper via flatpak on the discover store thing, that goes fine. i open piper… it’s saying that my libratbag version is outdated???? i google, turns out that the AUR or whatever has a dated version of libratbag??? idfk, but the post I read tells me to force downgrade piper to something that’ll accept the version of libratbag and stop it from updating. ok, i do that. now it shows the menu to change the dpi settings. but it doesn’t do anything or change shit. eugh.
like i totally know that steamos is a big part of the steam deck being able to do what it does (not having windows bloat helps massively) but goddamn it is a massive PITA sometimes doing what i want to do. small shit like printing or whatever, which I KNOW isn’t what the deck is for, but cmonnn it’s a small and convenient size

maybe a better idea for a LAN machine/homebrew 2-in-1 laptop would to just be slapping the mainboard of a framework 16 onto the back of a portable monitor. if the monitor can provide power, it might be a good idea. it seems really jank though.
or maybe a framework tablet that just uses the stock display. NO touchscreen, my ass is using keyboard and mouse with it all the time. it’d be incredibly stupid, but no more concerns about losing an input slot or fucking with voltages.

oh and at the time of publishing i did actually place an order for that keyboard. it looks really cool and awesome and i want it

i have an mx anywhere 3s now and it's much more reasonable to use on the go than the superlight (also at the time of publishing

Storage for tools and hobby stuff, & why does IKEA have to discontinue everything cool?!

 I'd rather use my closets for other things. Like clothes!

Cozy?

    When I got a new (from IKEA) table, I also got two Ivar closets (also from IKEA.) I think it’s discontinued now, which is a shame because it looks really cool. The quality of the construction isn’t really that great –what IKEA product is anyway– but it doesn’t really matter to me. It looks cool, and it’s also a convenient place to store my more often-used tools.

They have a way better setup now. This is just the photo I saw in the beginning.

    I initially saw someone do something like this on the r/Airsoft subreddit. They’d also used the Ivar locker to store their airsoft stuff, and they’d stuffed one of the Skadis pegboards behind the shelving. I DMed them about it, and they’d used the feet for it as well as some clamps to secure it to the bottom, and for the top they’d just sandwiched it in between the back of the closet and the modular coat hanger rack that comes with the Ivar locker.

These were the photos /u/Elzziwelzzif sent me

    It was a pretty good set up, and I was inspired. I wanted to do that, but I wanted to fill the entire rear of it with a pegboard. My 100% original idea was to have it sit on the rear end of the closet, and use the pegboard to attach dividing hooks or whatnot so as to more efficiently store handguns, long guns and magazines in their respective shelf. 

    Spoiler alert, the hooks that IKEA sells for the SKADIS are too short –or maybe guns nowadays are too tall– to confidently hold a modern layout rifle stored vertically and parallel to the hook. Like, it does hold it, but I’d rather it be longer and maybe less wobbly. Not my problem right now though, we’ll touch on that later.

    I received my new order for the Skadis pegboards two weeks or so ago (alongside a new desk chair.) I saw on the IKEA website that the width of the pegboards were around 14 inches or so. I measured the void in the rear of the cabinet, it was also 14 inches or so. Seemed alright, and I thought that any difference would be small enough that I could just push it into the void and get it to snug-fit.

    That wasn’t the case though. The difference in width was enough that I couldn’t just push it in, and I didn’t want to file it down on the sides as I’d risk not lining up the pegs from one board to another (like that mattered.) The bigger problem though was that the height of the boards did not easily subdivide the height of the locker. That part I understood getting into it. I figured that just as I did for my table I could simply cut one of the pegboards to fit. Which I did.

Chopped, fridays at 9

    I marked the line with a pink pen on one side and cut from there. I still have those clamps with the rubber teeth from when I cut the table to form-fit around a pillar in the corner of my room, so I just used that to clamp a meter stick to guide the shitty box cutter I used for the pegboard. Relatively clean cuts, it wasn’t very visible from the other side anyway. These pieces went on the bottom. They’re less visible and I have more usable space up top, where I’m more likely using the pegs for things.

    The most complicated part of the whole affair was trying to get that bottom piece attached and then into the position I wanted. I had already attached two pairs of the untarnished pegboards together, using the adapter plate that they sell. That part was easy, because I could just attach them outside of the closet and then place them in the rear.

Attaching that last part was hard because I’d have to:

1. Somehow suspend the untarnished boards up, so I’d have space to slot in the cut piece
2. Somehow hold it in place against the rear of the locker while I’m busy in the bottom
3. Attach the plate to the untarnished board (easy) to the cut board (hard)
4. Push it up (fairly easy) 

 

You can't really see the cracked finish, I promise

    I got lucky on the first part; I bought these hook things with the pegboards under the assumption that I’d need it to act as standoffs, pressing against either the wall or ideally the shelves. Because it was too wide to fit in the void, I didn’t end up using it for that. But since the shelves are not an exact form fit (to aid in the closet’s modular design, being able to place the shelves on any level I wanted,) there was enough space to sandwich the board in-between the shelf and the corner pillars of the closet.

    What I did was place two “hooks” on the left and right side of the board. I placed them in a position in which it’d hold it up sufficiently, but also give some space for it to move upwards. I then placed an additional hook somewhere above that. This was for me to grab on. I held the entire 2 pegboard combo upwards, moved and set the topmost shelf onto its supports –pressing the board against the wall in the process– and then let the board suspend itself using the hooks. It worked pretty well. I had it pinned upwards and against the wall so it wouldn’t fall onto me, but there was still enough play that I could force it upwards when it came to installing the bottom piece. 

LEGO manuals but (also) for (more responsible) adults

    I could not simply connect the cut board and the untarnished board together easily. I had it hanging now, which made it easier. But I couldn’t easily screw in the board to the plate. The way the connecting plate works is that it interfaces with a screw and a nut included with the pegboard. It holds the nut in place on the rear end, which you screw in from the front end. The problem is, the nut doesn’t get held to the plate via friction or anything, it’s just kinda there. Normally, you’d be assembling this before mounting it to your wall or whatever. That way, you could actually reach around and hold both the nut and the screw as you’re screwing it together. I couldn’t do that here.

    I just ended up using electrical tape to hold the nut to the plate. It’s really dumb, and I don’t like it cause I feel like it’s going to attract dust and dirt and it’s going to be nasty when I disassemble the thing in like, never. But whatever, it held it in place, and I got the cut board attached to the untarnished ones. After that, it was simply pushing it into place and removing the hooks I placed to hold it up.

1/2 of Spades

    Finishing this thing actually took longer than it should have, mostly because I lacked a couple of things. The connecting plates that the pegboard comes with states that I should use the hardware (the nut and the screw) that comes with the pegboard. It doesn’t come with any of the screw and nut hardware of its own. The problem though is that 1 pegboard only comes with 2 nuts for 4 screws. It might be because they assume that you’d only be connecting two boards together, and that that amount of nuts would be enough for the two plates to connect two boards? I don’t know, but I only had enough to connect the two pairs of untarnished boards to each other, and just a little bit left over to attach one of the modified boards to one pair. I had to order and wait for IKEA to ship extra nuts over, which thankfully was free.

KnowYourMeme/spiderman_holding_back_a_bus.jpeg

    My only problem now is the pegs/divider thingies for the handguns and long guns. I want to store the long guns vertically so I could use as much space as I can (not like I’m buying a lot of airsoft guns anyway,) but the longest hooks that IKEA sells are too short. They do touch and stop the rifle from falling from side to side, but it’s not long enough to make me confident enough in its ability to stop it from falling. Most of the problem is that the optic and pistol grip I have on there stops it from getting too close to the wall. It kinda sucks, and I’ve just got an elastic band on top of the existing hooks for peace of mind.

    What would really be nice is to have solid wall dividers attached to the boards itself, as opposed to the bent steel rods that IKEA sells. I went on Cults3D to look for custom 3D printed hooks that were longer than normal. While there were a bunch that existed on there, I think they also might have had a problem in which it’d wobble side-to-side. Every single attachment in that style I’ve seen were all flat on one plane. I think the ideal design would be to have wings that would stabilize it against the board when mounted. That’d probably complicate printing since you can’t just print everything flat against the surface, but that’s easily solved by designing it in two pieces. You have the wings as a separate piece and then you have the main hook as its own piece. Then you can have the wings be sandwiched and locked in by the hook.

?Maybe something like this? Too much material, though.

    I’m happy where this thing is at right now, but I really think those dividers would be the last thing I’d need to do. I just am not sure exactly how it should be designed in a way that’s effective at dividing but also is not literally a flat board with hooks attached to it. Would be too much filament, and I don’t own a 3D printer. 

 

 

 

    i think this might or might not be enough space actually for future stuff. like, rifles and handguns probably won't be a huge problem. but if i ever give a shit enough to, like, buy actual kit/vest/helmets or whatever, it might be a space concern. not like i give a shit about buying larp plate carriers or helmets or whatnot anymore tbh; i really don't care about the super sof death trooper aesthetic that much anymore. bigger concern might be machine gun boxes.  the IKEA IVAR seems to be being discontinued across Europe and America, and i think it's starting to be discontinued soon here too. if i ever decide to get one more "locker" for more storage it will probably have to be a different one that doesn't match. oh well.
    also like, i rotated my bed and moved it so it takes less space towards the closets itself. i had the head facing towards the center of the room with the foot right at the A/C because i was tossing and turning in bed and i couldn't sleep bc it was very hot. i moved it with the side facing the AC instead and with a mattress set on its side blocking the cold air from escaping my bed. kind of like a crib LMAO but i do not care it is very cold now. more space for like vr shit too I GUESS, and another closet or other storage thing if I feel it is necessary

    also i hope ppl have noticed me doing a section like this for every post where i post like real not-too-well-formatted twitter type shit where i talk about other stuff relevant to the post that i don't want to write too well. i hope u dont care if i go off-topic for a bit.
    despite this being like, my blog and all and where i probably open up a little more than i do on twit/discord/etc, this is still like kinda too public for me to be super confident in baring my whole soul out to the internet lol. sure, who is going to check some post from a long dead and still decaying website whose format lost its charm 10 or 20 years ago. but i'm like, really paranoid about the silliest things. maybe that's a result of my upbringing, but i don't care too much for self psycho-analysis.
    its like, there's some things i don't think I should confide to some people because i don't think it'd be good for them to hear it. there's some things i don't think i should reveal to others because i know or i think i know what they'd do about it. it's also like mostly early 2000s internet safety teachings (which aren't, like, bad, yknow) coupled with some other stuff
    i have about 1 or 2 posts i want to write and publish. one of them was meant to be the new year's blog post, and it's a little bit of me baring my soul out to people. but i haven't done it, cause i don't know how i'd convey it properly

It's Gaming as We Never Knew It (and I don't know if I Feel Fine?)

 I remember this song's chorus being more somber when I heard it. Then again, I never actually listened to the original.

YUP YUP!

    I didn't play much video games when I was a kid. I had like a PSP for a short time once, which was really cool. So aside from occasionally visiting my neighbor or relatives who always had an Xbox, or playing Flash games on Y3 or Y8 or later Roblox on every computer I could find, I didn't do much aside from watching the TV or sleeping. I didn't really have a reason to get into gaming that hard, and when I did get access to my parents' laptop I was already pretty deep into Roblox.

    Much later, after getting onto Steam through Team Fortress 2 (and mostly playing offline single-player with bots), I was out and about with my family on vacation when I came across a Data Blitz store. It's a local chain of video game stores, and they sold a lot of games. Console games, PC games, et cetera. I loved entering them and just looking at the games, despite not being able to buy them or even run them. But this time was a little different. It was Christmas, I had a bit saved over, I could have gotten something.

this will be team fortress in 2022

 

    I found a copy of Counter Strike: Global Offensive here. It was in a paper sleeve, which I found kinda odd at the time. But I did manage to get it. At this point I'd played a bit of bootleg 1.6 before, and I was excited for this, having seen the trailer and the parody animation (and other CS animations(and other CS-related videos in general)) by Flashdeck. It was a special experience, packing it and hoping it didn't break on the way back, inserting the disc into the laptop and typing in the CD-Key to activate the product onto my Steam account. I think I hold Counter-Strike in a special place in my heart, specifically because it was the first game I ever bought or owned entirely myself.

real

    Five years later, CS:GO suddenly gained popularity among my peers. I was like, "Wow, that's so cool!" I'd get to play the game I liked with my friends. But the game was different. There was a more competitive lean to it. I wasn't playing Demolition on L4D2 map ports, I was playing 5v5 bomb defusal matches wherein I needed to be good at shooting, moving and communicating. All in all, it was a pretty harsh new reality, and I wouldn't really realize what had changed til much, much later.

    I think a majority of gaming as a whole has shifted towards a more competitive atmosphere, where the default expectation of most gamers are to play the game to "get good," and to climb the leaderboards. My gaming experience with Counter-strike as a whole prior to this was the opposite; It was just a chill experience. There was no expectation of me or an expectation I held to myself to win, or to rack as many kills as possible. I was just there for a chill time, shooting enemies and having a mellow experience. It was never an extreme rat race of constant "self-improvement."

    I'm absolutely certain that my approach to CS:GO was similar for a vast majority of FPS players around the 2010s. For the longest time, competitive experiences were never the focus or the default expectation of games. But that's changed. The shift to matchmaking, developer-hosted and controlled servers, et cetera have made past gaming culture the likes found on Source games something of obscurity. I don't think "the old way" will ever return as the dominant culture for video games. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

The opposite of "Suboptimal!"

 

    This year's Call of Duty makes me feel weird. It's very obviously bait, using nostalgia as the hook for hundreds of 25-somethings, some of which cry for "the old CoD to come back." I never owned the original Modern Warfare games -I played some Spec Ops Survival with my relatives- so I don't have the same type of attachment to this franchise as I do them. But I am excited for this game because of the teased campaign and the cooperative Zombies experience.

    The first Call of Duty I bought was 2019, because I was interested in the campaign and it's presentation. I'm under no false impression that it's a "tactical" experience. It's an arcade shooter with a "tactical" presentation, and I love it for that. I learned to like the multiplayer too because of that (and because I'd become disappointed by the direction of Insurgency: Sandstorm.) And these are the same reasons why I liked Modern Warfare 2022. The campaign was a bit "safe" and too afraid to take risks with its characters or plotlines, but the general depiction of the campaign and the multiplayer was still the same thing I liked.

    However, this year's Modern Warfare entry strikes me as odd. It's developed by a different studio than MW2019 and MW2022. Sledgehammer Games' previous entry was Call of Duty Vanguard, and before that Call of Duty WW2. My only exposure with CoD WW2 is some videos I've watched, but it seems like a good depiction of WW2 slapped onto a good arcade experience. Vanguard however lacks the good presentation of WW2. I'm not sure why, whether it was caused by having to integrate Warzone 1's gunsmith system on firearms that never really had such a thing, whether it was due to time and resource constraints because of MW2022 or some sinister third thing, but it feels like little care was taken on that aspect (which Call of Duty has paid attention to for a long time.) And the same thing appears to be happening with this year's game.

    It's all a bunch of little things which individually don't really matter but add up to something. Fake optics that have little distractions from CoD Vanguard return. While an extremely close effort, the Sledgehammer games developers haven't exactly got the style of Hyper, MrBrightside and other IW animators down. The bolt-action AK breaks the weapon "rules" set by MW19 and 2022 by having an extremely fast but relatively small-caliber rifle in the "sniper" section reserved for relatively slow but high caliber rifles rather than in the "marksman" rifle section which fit its criteria better. Rumors and leaks of future updates including sci-fi fictional firearms and even a laser gun. And the sounds in general being kind of anemic or discordant to what's happening compared to the previous games.

 

    I'm aware that some of these changes were to provide a better competitive experience. I'm aware that a lot of people are celebrating this new game because of that. Sure, whatever. I'm not a bad player, but I wouldn't consider myself extremely competitively inclined either. I need more time on the game, but I'm not jiving with the experience thus far. I'm sure some of it is because of the aforementioned presentation issues, but aside from that the gameplay is a bit odd. The time-to-kill feels a bit inconsistent from what I'm used to, because it's heavily reliant on you consistently tracking moving targets on the upper torso to head from either far away than typical of most maps or close up against targets that move a lot faster than what I was used to from even MW19. I'm sure the existence of the Tac-stance (another one of those point-shooting stances) was meant to help players deal with moving targets up close, but no-one is genuinely going to be switching to those modes on the fly like that. It's not smooth. I've had a couple of situations where I went to melee instead of going into tac-stance because I wasn't aiming in, I guess.

    Maybe my opinion will change with time and experience, or changes and adjustments done to the final game. I dunno. We'll see this December. But it's clear that this competitive experience is what the vocal community wants, despite it being little like the original. There's the OG maps I guess (I don't have the attachment to these) 🤷

 

    I think the moment that should have signaled to me about the shift was when I was reminiscing about the early CS:GO having a golden Desert Eagle in a group chat. Only for one of my peers to jab at me, asking why my skill hasn't improved since then. I dunno, maybe things were different then.

 

 

im aware that the call of duty community is extremely vast and several different groups will have different opinions and to attribute the opinions of some to all is a gross oversimplification.

other stuff: now that I'm able to buy more games i've been meaning to buy some more so I can have some experiences that aren't like first person shooters. unfortunately i've been funnelling all my money into airsoft guns i don't bring to games and the steam deck, which i don't take anywhere (yet) lmao. i promise, after I build this upper ill actually buy stuff i can use. and after my helmet. and after more storage for my pc. and-

also re gaming: larp shooters fucking suck. insurgency is not a larp shooter. ground branch doesn't really have any game attached to the sandbox it has. ready or not is ground branch taking the form of the righteous (SWAT4.) i don't know what zero hour is doing (it didn't run that well on my PC). 

there was this one place i distinctly remember from probably like more than a decade ago. it was on the roblox frontpage, it was some social hangout place with a pool and ye olde roblox style PC whose translucent brick would flash colors when you sat infront of it. i remember joining it and walking my character onto the PC just to watch it flash colors (my little guy was playing videogames!!)