Videogame Discussion Thread

Had a bit of a Skyrim relapse, been a while since I've played that one. Damn is it fun with all the mods on the Nexus, I'm using a lot of the most endorsed mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/trendingalltime/

Also very impressed by the Bruma expansion: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/10917?tab=files



It feels very nearly like an official expansion. Right now I'm doing a "battleranger" play-through. Bow and Two-Handed with light armor for max movement speed, not too much sneaking and more going in and wreaking havoc. Basically lob a couple of arrows at the enemies and then switch to two-handed when they get close. I've set it up so that I can switch between Bow and Two-Handed with just a mouse click. So pretty flexible playstyle. Lots of focus on health, speed and stamina. Also staying away form alchemy and smithing while using enchanted gear etc, just makes the game too easy if you know what you're doing.

 

That was always my biggest issue with Skyrim. Enchanting and blacksmithing made any other gear obsolete. If anything I would get more excited for base items with no enchantments so I could use my own. Mods did alot to alleviate this problem, making unique items much more powerful and optionally leveling them up to match your current level.

 

Yes, and it's also completely possible to completely break the vanilla game through a combination of smithing, enchanting and alchemy. In one of my previous playthroughs I made a bow with 10k damage without really relying on any mods. I could one-shot Alduin with that thing and while it's impressive it's not very fun in the long run. If you want to do a real RPG playthrough you pretty much have to set some limits on yourself in terms of enchanting and alchemy.

If you get the very popular Breezehome mod from the Nexus there is a "de-enchanter" in there which allows you to de-enchant items back to their base state and then apply your own enchantments if you want. That's pretty nifty and adds a fair amount of RPG options for people who want a particular piece of gear.

 

Just curious what people think about using “higher quality” dacs for gaming.
Are games(or movies for that matter) not resolving enough to take advantage of say a Gungnir Multibit?

 

Vagrant Story is in my handful of maybe six or seven "desert island" titles. Only thing I can fault it on is menu design (i.e. how tedious it is to swap out and manipulate your equipment... also, possibly the worst storage box implementation ever); outside that, I am unabashedly in love with every aspect of it.

There was at least a week back in college where I'd stay up every night playing and analyzing it because I couldn't put it down, and then drag myself to classes the next day and sleep through all of them. And I do not typically lose sleep to anything that isn't music.

If I look hard enough through old junk tucked away somewhere I might be able to find some of the crazy charts and reference info I scribbled over random sheets of paper... good times.

 

Uh. "It depends".

I wouldn't buy a Gungnir Multibit just for gaming, I think.

Positional audio engines are pretty heavy-handed so they work even with crap systems, so it doesn't really scale awesomely, just like really hard-panned binaural stuff.

Keep in mind they are designed to make it work with the built-in over-ears on 3d headsets, and those aren't exactly PortaPros.

 

Depending on movie or game the audio itself certainly can be. Some BluRays have uncompressed audio streams and even the lossy multichannel formats have very good codecs. Games can use pretty much anything so it's up to developer but high-bitrate lossy is by far the most common. (At least among games I've poked around enough in to be able to tell)

In the end I think the deciding factor will be how much attention you're paying to the audio as opposed to the video or gameplay. There's a lot more stuff you have to pay attention to so you won't be analyzing things like you might when just listening to an album, or even the game/movie's OST for that matter.

Also, in some games, the most important aspects of the audio are more or less soundstage and directionality. The ability to locate something in the game by hearing what direction it's in without having to see it can be a tremendous advantage. This is all highly dependent on the sound mixing of the game of course, but when it comes together it's pretty amazing. Hearing something sneaking up behind you or lining up a blind shot though darkness or cover is an awesome rush.

To that end there are also fairly inexpensive gaming headphone DAC/amps which will take 5.1 Dolby over optical or coax, downmix it, and apply an HRTF to improve the directionality of sounds. These exist because more games have options for multichannel than a proper binaural downmix.

First person shooters benefit the most from that sort of thing since they have the most limited viewpoint and are very competitive.

I'm mostly a PC gamer and mostly play music from my PC so everything goes through the same system regardless but if I wasn't I wouldn't worry about it too much. I'd pick the headphones I like and user whatever DAC was convenient. There's not really time to listen for ultimate resolution when zombies are bashing the door down.

 

In more or less the same words as @maverickronin, I agree.

Categorically, games probably not, movies maybe.

I use headphones, so your mileage on a good speaker setup might vary on this - I have no experience to comment on that.

I definitely notice the presence of bass and directionality, or rather the lack of it relative to my previous setups by comparison. But that's probably less my DAC and more my choice of headphones. Having a good competent chain overall has improved my listening experience across music, games, and movies.

I'd never say that a good sound system would ever take away from your experience (barring situations where you stumble across something as well mastered as Death Magnetic). For games, you'd be hard pressed to say that a DAC improves it in a noticeable way. Unless your DAC in question is incompatible with virtual surround for whatever reason, I don't think that it as an individual component matters significantly (for gaming). Really this is probably one of those areas where you hit the ceiling quite quickly.

While it depends heavily more on each individual game, many are just too damn engaging by nature. Your attention isn't focused enough on the sound alone. Think action/horror type games. You're probably not likely to notice "wow those footsteps sound extra leaf crunchy, and I can really pick out the resonance on the strings" as your internal thought process is probably somewhere closer to "OH GOD WHAT WAS THAT NOISE GOD OH GOD OH G-".

You'd probably have more appreciation for a good sound system overall in games where the music is an actual part of the storytelling narrative itself. Heavy atmospheric storytelling type genres. But a DAC is a very small part of that synergy. If it's already hooked up to your system though, and doesn't break anything, may as well.

For what it's worth, most of the gamer friends I've introduced to 'good' audio setups now use dedicated Amp/DAC setups (Schiit stacks and the likes), and none express any interest in going back to how they used to do things.

 

Thanks guys, just curious to hear people’s opinions. I agree it’s certainly going to vary from game to game.


I’ve almost always used surround sound processing over the 10 years when gaming. Mostly Dolby headphone or SBX. Lately I’ve been using Dolby Atmos Headphone on Xbox. (I belive this is also available thru windows 10).

I think personaly felt Dolby Headphone gave the best directional ques which was great when playing I used to play a lot of COD back in the day. However it sounds rather reverby to me. Creative’s SBX has sounded more immersive and natural to me.

I’m a bit undecided on the Dolby Atmos Headphone. I will say it’s super convenient for a one time 15 dollar fee; the processing is done by the Xbox/pc. No hardware required. It also allows one to output the sound via optical into their own dac.

 

I'm really not a fan of Dolby headphone, it sounds so fake and over processed. I just let the game engine do it's thing and I've never had a problem with directional cues.

 

I think a higher quality DAC like the Gungnir Multibit can be worth it if you listen to music, watch films and game on the same machine. But if you only game and watch movies on it I wouldn't bother.

If all I did was game something like the SoundBlaster ZxR or the Asus Essence STX II would be my end game setup.

The HD800 and soundblaster ZxR is actually an amazing combo for gaming, if not particularity great for music... but for gaming with some bass boost and EQ the directional cues are out of this world.

For a "sensible" combination of gaming and music the Essence STX II + HD650 will take you quite far, a nice and affordable compromise. And if you only game the ZxR + HD800 is a very good for exactly that.

For mostly music and just a little gaming something like the Gungnir Multibit over USB and then a dedicated AMP is going to be hard to beat. But of course also by far the most expensive. An essence STX II card will take most people very far actually.

 

The Bruma expansion is fantastic. The soundtrack is really good too and was actually mostly recorded with a live orchestra. The creators have a link to download it for free.

I love Elianora's house mods, her attention to the little details is amazing. I'm assuming that's the Breezehome mod your talking about.

 

@Mystic

Yes, the Bruma expansion was really well done. None of the mission or quests are that long, not like in the main game. But the entire mod felt very coherent with the lore and tone of the main game. I'm impressed. I tried three other expansion mods as well which expands the borders into Haafstad, nyhus and folkstead I think it was. But those didn't feel anywhere near as finished as Bruma so I stopped playing them.

Yes, I'm using Breezehome as my player home. That's probably my favorite player home apart from needing more mannequins, if it had like 6-8 more working mannequins it'd be perfect.

 

I've been away from the forum for a while. On a bit of a video game binge lately as opposed to audio.

This started off when I noticed someone here mention the Analogue Super NT and I thought…what the hell is that. I've always been a console gamer so it sparked an interests even though I have not bought a new game in probably two years. Thought I was loosing interest in the hobby. So, I did pick up a black Super NT but only a week ago and I no longer have any SNES games so I don't know why I did it…and controversial as it might sound the SNES is definitely nowhere close to my favorite retro console even though I loved it as a kid. It works for Turrican, has great build quality and is packaged like something from Campfire Audio. But back when Melvillian mentioned it I went into research mode.

I bought a RetroUSB AVS and got pretty deep into homebrew NES games. Haunted Halloween 86, Justice Duel, Lizard, and Assimilate so far…Battle Kid 2 on the way and pre ordered Full Quiet and an official from the publisher release of Holy Diver. I'm not really interested in hacks, but these ground up new NES games are really great and made me feel about thirty years younger. Assimilate is one of the funniest games I've played in years. Abductions and anal probes. Haunted Halloween and Lizard really do push what the system can do and would have sold thousands back in the day. Justice Duel is just awesome fun to de-stress after work. I never cared for Joust but this is very fun. So, rebuilding an NES/Famicom library as well. Oh, and I love the AVS. Some people think it looks weird but it looks and feel just like I would imagine an alternate take on the NES could have been back in the 80's.

This got me thinking so I did more research…then dug my Saturn, Dreamcast and Genesis out of storage. I mean heck, I didn't even buy the Genny all that long ago but I didn't think about connectivity at the time. I only have USB inputs on my TV so no real way to use retro consoles, or so I thought. My wife would kill me if I tried to squeeze a CRT into the house. She would literally be less likely to notice a monster tube amp than an old CRT. Now I have an Open Source Scan Converter. They all work now and look as good as I remember back in the day.

…And after hearing about Wipeout in VR…my wife let me buy PS VR tonight on the condition that I buy her a new Switch game. This was my first and only experience with VR and I wasn't really expecting what I got. The last time I had an "Oh Shit" moment like this was the first time I played Halo on the original XBOX damn near 20 years ago.

So, I'm having fun with it again and life is good. If you guys have any questions about the AVS or homebrew NES games I've done a lot of research lately. Sounds crazy but having the physical copy is more satisfying than a download kind of like vinyl.

 

Is that you BIG D???

 

Did you get headache from it? I wanted to throw up.

 

I think it's a matter of getting used to it. I get nausea from FP-anything within minutes now after I started playing only Aeon of Strife Styled Fortress Assault Game Going On Two Sides games.

 

Started playing Skyrim again a month ago, that Bruma expansion sounds like something worth playing before I finish the game. Just to get some of that Oblivion nostalgia.

Cant believe how well the game keeps up specially with all settings maxed out in the game and video card.