Unsurprisingly, I'm still chugging away at my Satisfactory earth-saving mission. Phase 9 of the project is a real doozy--tons of parts that not only require a lot of advanced manufacturing but also require extremely power hungry processes. My dreams of building a secondary plutonium reactor turned into a necessity due to the increasing power demands. My nuclear reactor zone is a radioactive nightmare--I keep a solid supply of iodine gas filters available.
My Plutonium Reactor and particle accelerator
I've reached a point with Satisfactory where I'm ready to move on to something else, but I just can't give up because I feel like I'm so close to the finish line. I've got another game waiting in the wings (Terra Nil) but know that if I do move on, it's likely that I won't move back any time soon. I'm also extremely excited for the release of Two Point Museum and am hoping to be done by the time it releases on March 4th.
On the hardware front, I've been watching news about the continued fiasco that is the RTX 5000 series launch. The RTX 5070 Ti released earlier this week and it was a similar story as the releases of the 80/90's--low stock and ridiculously high prices. Every big reviewer (your Linus's, Paul's, Gamers Nexus, Jay, etc.) basically said "do not buy this card at the current prices." MSRP was supposed to be $750 but most cards are selling for $1000 or more. NVIDIA has said that stock should increase in the upcoming months and that hopefully prices will drop. March is creeping closer and that also means that AMD will be releasing their 9070 cards which should be interesting. I really want to build a new PC this summer, but I don't want to pay the ridiculous prices that seem to be the standard right now.
I hope everyone is enjoying some gaming this weekend!
Sometimes it's for the best to not be one of the first to be doing/getting something. The whole early 5000 series NVIDIA GPU release seems like a fiasco. Firstly, it was apparently most of a paper release with evidence of extremely meager supplies (so meager that Microcenter located in southern California got something like 67 total 5090's). Your chances of actually obtaining a card were miniscule, but that might not be a bad thing. There have been reports that some cards are having the same problem as the early 4090's--those absolute beastly cards suck up a massive amount of power and have been melting power cables. What a bummer to actually get a card and then have it disintegrate before your eyes! I'm sure those few people who actually experienced this will be getting a replacement...someday when NVIDIA actually starts pumping out GPU's (rumored to be anywhere from March to June). And another piece of bad news is that with the new tariffs on China, those cards are going to cost as much as $400 more.
Personally, I'm pulling for AMD to release their 9000 series cards and for things to go much more smoothly. I'd love to see AMD start grabbing more of the GPU market. The new AMD cards are supposedly going to be released in March. I think a lot of gamers are keeping their fingers crossed given that the 5000 series launch has been so ridiculous.
(If you want to listen/watch and entire podcast about this issue here's a link to Hardware Unboxed discussing this issue--link)
If you want a great breakdown of all the 5000 series woes, JayzTwoCents breaks it down well in this video:
My Satisfactory dreams of saving the human race from vague disaster are slowly materializing. I've reached what appears to be the final phase (9) and am working through unlocking even more complicated machinery. Completing this phase, of course, requires a mindboggling array of fancy items. One of my big goals is to build another nuclear reactor that runs on plutonium rods (plutonium rods are a different fuel source that are built from the waste of uranium reactors--it's a whole other complicated process to piece together). With this extra power I could even further refine my sadly inefficient production lines.
There has always got to be something to look forward to and I'm greatly anticipating the March 4th release of Two Point Museum! I've seen lots of great videos of the different kinds of museums you can build--the stock natural history variety but aquariums and goofier supernatural themed affairs. I'm not going to pre-order or buy the slightly spendier "explorer edition" that offers up a week of early access play and a bunch of mostly cosmetic/bonus items, but I'm very much looking forward to the regular release.
I've also reconsidered my opinion of the "early access" bonus days that some games are offering. It might be a good strategy because it allows developers to have a smaller number of players interacting with the game and discovering issues/bugs before the full release (and then hopefully addressing these issues). I just don't think it's worth paying 1/3 more of the price (although there are some parts of the explorers edition that do seem nice--like an additional museum to run).
Happy post-Valentines day (I'm hoping to grab some cheap candy--ha!) and happy gaming!
I've been writing about news lately because my own gaming has been completely dedicated to one goal--saving humanity from an extremely vaguely described crisis in Satisfactory. (*If you're unfamiliar with this fantastic factory management/open world exploration game you can read my review here) I'm 170 hours in (that should tell you a lot about how efficient my factory building is...) and even though I've had brief moments of wanting to walk away...I just can't do it. I will save humanity!
Currently, I'm sitting at phase 8 of the "project to save humanity." Cobbling together the complicated parts for my project has become a nightmare scenario of trying to manage multiple factory areas that produce a myriad of different items. One area produces plastic, rubber, and aluminum items; another contains multiple coal deposits and was a huge source of power early in the game and has morphed into a secondary production area; a point of major victory was setting up the complicated array of production machinery to produce nuclear power; and my most recent set of buildings utilizes a massive nitrogen gas deposit to produce advanced items like cooling systems. Shuffling needed items between those areas has turned into logistical challenge of tractors hauling items all over the map. Most of my time hasn't been spent exploring but instead is trying to keep everything running smoothly--fueling up my fleet of autonomous tractors, moving needed materials from one location to another, and keeping an eye on power consumption. If you enjoy management games...Satisfactory gives you an insane amount to manage.
My nuclear power production area.
I'm making very slow but steady progress. I'm curious about what the final phase of the project will demand, but I refuse to look up any spoilers. My proudest moment was getting a nuclear power plant up and running--it's no small feat as it requires a ton of production and it felt extremely overwhelming at first. Now that I've managed it, I'm trying to figure out the secondary task of creating plutonium fuel production (you can turn your nuclear waste--a bi-product of uranium fuel power--into plutonium with another complicated set of production buildings). It's looking like this may be a next important step as the power demands (which felt like a non-issue with the massive boost I got from nuclear power) of my base continue to rise.
I can't wait to victoriously post about how I saved humanity. Based on my slow progress...that should happen in another 100 hours or so of playtime. Wish me luck!
The big news in gaming/hardware this week was the release of the RTX 5080. Most of the reviews I saw for this, the semi-latest and greatest of GPUs, were very underwhelming. It sounds like these newest gen cards aren't a huge upgrade over the last gen cards (insert sad trombone noise here)--there are some improvements like smaller size and better cooling, but the performance boost from gen to gen is lackluster at best. If you're interested, here are a couple of good videos explaining the general underwhelmingness of the 5080's:
This Paul's Hardware video also lays out a good comparison of price vs. performance increase from past generations. It's interesting (but unsurprising) to see that as prices have risen, the performance increase has actually gotten worse--basically you're paying more for less...seems to be the general vibe these days.
If you were someone who was hoping to actually pick up a 5080 on release day, well.....lol. In a completely expected fashion, they were sold out almost immediately. NVIDIA of course released a statement along the lines of "oopsies, we didn't realize demand would be so great--we're working hard on restocking." Yeah, I'm sure that wasn't intentional.
I'm hoping to build a new PC and it never feels like it's a good time. These new cards sound like they're going to be difficult to get and the prices of the older gen cards are sort of all over the place. I'm also not 100% sure if I want to go with another NVIDIA GPU or AMD. I'm totally unimpressed by ray tracing, so it's not a big deal to me. I guess I'll just watch and wait to see what the 5070 and new AMD 9000 series cards have to offer. If the 5090 and 5080 are anything to go off of...I'm guessing the 5070 cards will probably be equally underwhelming.
