In today's overkill digest newsletter, we take a look at Windows, and check out all the new handhelds introduced this week.
Hello, good morning and good day.
Yesterday (or rather this night — yes, again!) I started the first Call of Duty since Black Ops back in 2010. I've always been more of a Battlefield kinda guy when it comes to multiplayer, and how they told stories in their single-player modes. But since Modern Warfare III is currently available for "free" on PC Game Pass, I thought I'd try and check out the campaign mode (I haven't even installed the multiplayer modes, I don't care about them).
I got to say, I've enjoyed my time so far. The campaign is very short compared to your typical single-player FPS and I find the way they try to tell the story a bit difficult to follow, but it's a damn fine shooter. Though, to be honest, I would never have bought the game if it wasn't for Game Pass. But more about that below.
S0 since there's much to talk about in this week's newsletter, so let's get straight to it!
It's slowly getting better
Whenever I review a Windows-based handheld, one thing I always have to mention is how cumbersome it can be to use Microsoft's OS on a form factor that is not really meant to run Windows. (See here, here or here.)
But despite that, I would still opt for Windows every time for my daily driver. One of the major reasons is Game Pass, as mentioned above. It's just way too convenient to get games I wouldn't have tried otherwise. The other major reason is that I own games across all different kinds of launchers like the Epic Games Launcher, EA's Whatever-its-called-now, Ubisoft's UPlay, and more (I'm a sales hunter, so whenever I see a game I want for cheaper elsewhere, I'll go for it).
So it's great to see that Microsoft is working on making Windows on handhelds a better experience. The latest enhancement is the possibility of using a controller to type on the onscreen keyboard:
Kevin Wammer
The feature is currently in testing but you can easily get access by opting into the Windows Insiders Beta channel. And while Microsoft is drip-feeding us these enhancements, things are slowly going in the right direction.
Though, on a related note, features like this are making things a bit more difficult for me. I'm currently planning to transform the AM02 mini PC I reviewed previously into a console for my TV. The obvious choice here is using something like Bazzite since it's the closest to a Steam Deck experience you can currently get.
But what that means is that I would lose access to Game Pass, proper support of Nvidia eGPUs, and would have to deal with making non-Steam games run smoothly on the device (also, apparently I couldn't even use my beloved GeForce Now properly since via Chrome it maxes at 1600p120, and my TV can do 4K120).
Until recently, I was still leaning more towards Bazzite but with enhancements like the one above, maybe I'll just pick Windows regardless? Still a work in progress, but next week is my last at work before a two-week vacation, so enough time to experiment.
If you have any experience with a project like that, hit reply and share it with me, please! Maybe I'm missing something.
In other news
- This might be one of the coolest cases for iPhone I've seen so far: you flip the back part around and thanks to conductive rubber it can function as a physical controller for Delta. It’s made by Bitmo Lab, who by the way is a joint venture in which JSAUX is involved.
- But I still can't take the iPhone as a gaming platform seriously, since we still don't have any cloud-streaming services and if Microsoft is to be believed, it's all Apple's fault.
- On Monday (or Tuesday, depending on your timezone) Retroid will start selling the Pocket 5 and Pocket Mini. Both devices will feature (specs linked) a Snapdragon 865 APU, and come with a 5.5" or 3.7" AMOLED screen respectively. The Pocket 5 will cost $219 at retail, while the Mini comes in at $199 retail. There are early bird prices, depending on how quickly you can buy one when the sale goes live (all the times are listed here). I plan to grab a GameCube-coloured Pocket 5 (and review it on overkill), so I have to wake up Tuesday morning at 2:50AM for the 3AM sale. Yay! :))))))))
- The original devs of Risk of Rain joined Valve.
- Baldur's Gate 3 got a beefy new patch (number 7) this week. It brings new cutscenes and the official modding tools (!!!). And the modding support is rather successful with a million mods installed in under 24 hours. Here is the guide we released previously for the best settings on Steam Deck. (The game is currently 20% off on Steam.)
- If you ever thought there weren't enough SteamOS-like distros on the market, well, rejoice, there is now one more called SteamFork.
- AMD has started teasing the Z2 Extreme, the successor to the chip used in devices like the ROG Ally, Ally X and Lenovo Legion Go. There is barely any information as of yet, only that it might be based on the Strix Point architecture, so a 4nm process with RDNA 3.5 graphics.
- Acer is the next manufacturer to release a handheld, as they introduced the Nitro Blaze 7 (what a name!). The device will feature an AMD Ryzen 8840HS, a 1080p144hz screen and 16 GB of memory. Currently, there is no information as to pricing or release date. But would you look at that, it seems Acer was lazy and didn't build their own device but simply bought the design from a Chinese manufacturer.
- Talking of weird names, meet the worst product name in tech.
- There's a trailer for the Minecraft movie now. I don't know what to say.
- Grid Studio is running a sale for their device frames till September 12th (Thursday). I have two of their products on my walls (PS Vita and original Game Boy) and it might be the nerdiest thing I own (if we don't count my three billion Magic cards).
- We're getting two more DLC updates for Black Myth: Wukong before the release of their next game, Black Myth: Jiang Ziya (more on him).
- We ran this piece a while ago, but recently updated it: here are the best Metroidvania games on Steam Deck.
Ok, we're done. Thanks for reading, and as always, have a great Sunday.
See you!
Kevin