Looking at a Gaming Laptop

Been looking through ads on FB Marketplace and I’m seeing plenty of gaming laptops available for $500.00 which I’ve set as my ceiling that I’m willing to pay. There’s a lot of good laptops that fit the bill for what I need without having to break the bank to buy it.

What I need is a dedicated graphics card, at least 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD along with at minimum a 1TB HDD; 2TB would be better but well, can’t be too choosy and if I have the extra slot, I can always upgrade later but the SSD is a must for quicker boot times.

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The two main games, I’ll be playing on this machine are Sims 3 and SWTOR - this is the machine that’s going to be my portable gaming PC. Then eventually down the road, I will get a gaming desktop which will be my main at-home machine which will run the other games that I use, such as FSX, DCS World, Two Point Hospital, Cities:Skylines, Star Wars Battlefront and Battlefront 2. And that will have a 1TB SSD and a 4GB HDD drive.

On top of that, the computer will have second 4GB HDD exclusively for my photography, so that I can have my photography easily accessible.

With games taking up more space on the hard drive and competing with the OS and other applications, I want to streamline my games as much as possible so that I’m not constantly using the SSD. The way I want my SSD C-drive to work is essentially to boot the application while I do all my work on D-drive (reading and writing my workflow on D: ) instead of putting extra read/write workload onto the SSD which would shorten the SSD’s life.

This is going to entail a lot of reading up so I don’t cark up the file system on the computer. But looking forward to playing Sims 3 and SWTOR is going to be worth it.

Update September 14, 2022: something MAY be happening tomorrow

Nikkei_Simmer Reviews: iOS games - City Island 4

One of the problems with having no access to a personal PC is the dearth of games to play on a phone. Some may like FPS on iPhone or Android but if I’m playing a FPS, I want a controller in my hand or a keyboard in easy access.

…thus I stick to city-builders and slow sedate games like simulators that allow me to think with whatever “diminished capacity” I have for cognitive processes.

One of these city-builders that I’m looking at a fresh start with is called City Island 4. I haven’t played the three previous games from Sparkling Society Games B.V. so I have absolutely bumsquat to go on in terms of experience with this game. Judging by the rating on the Apple App Store.which is a 4.6 out of a possible 5, evidently it’s rated pretty highly. And there a quite a number of five star reviews in any case which means that customer expectations have been met insofar as “interesting gameplay”.

Now this post will be an ongoing post as I play and review this game as a brand new city builder that if I like it, it’s ease of controls and functional UI, I may even put it on the PC that I replace. But for now, I’m going to take a trial run through it and see if it’s something that I can make a series of reviews about as I set about building this city from the ground up.

We start off on the main island of Pleasant Plains, a nice little wooded island in which to start our city. From here as we build up our city we can expand out to these other islands as we “find”…er…unlock them.

The UI is relatively easy to navigate and simple to get an idea of what you need to do to get into the game quickly. It has a handy tutorial which will guide you through the process of getting acquainted with what you need to do. Watch out for the houses that are built using gold. I wasn’t aware of which one I was selecting (user error) and blew through most of my gold so just be careful of which buildings you select. The firehall requires gold to build and luckily I had enough to build it. I dug myself a hole, but fortunately this is a straight, simple city builder with the player only having to mind the employment level and citizen happiness in the game. Make sure you have enough jobs to go around, decorations to look at and entertainment and your citizens will be blissfully happy nearly all the time.

It is however,really tricky to maintain a completely happy citizenry as certain things are going to end up taking some time to unlock and shifting resources where they can affect the most people is clearly something that will take some fiddling with to get the right balance.

Over all the limitations of the iOS framework does show through in the fact that this is not a full-featured game. It’s for the person who wants that little bit of a kick in the morning to get his brain working after waking up on the bus commute to work or school or just to relax. For those of us who want something more full-featured, stick with PC games (unless like me, you’re on an enforced hiatus from playing due to a broken down computer).

I give it a solid 4 out of 5 for gameplay.

Big Farm: Mobile Harvest “Benny and Tessa”

Since I play on my phone. I play this game called Good Game Big Farm-Mobile Harvest. It’s a farming assets manager type game. This is how I keep my sanity with no PC at this time.

The graphics are simple but the gameplay is immense. And bad decisions can come back to bite you in the ass. The trick is keeping your farmhands happy. Mine were really unhappy and believe me at -277 unhappy, it gets really difficult to get anything done. Now at +86 happiness, the farm’s doing a lot better and the trick is keeping them that way. I’m seriously thinking that every time I place an addition to the farm like a field or an animal building, I’m goin to plonk down a decoration to build up happiness.

…and yeah, I ship these two. #Benny&Tessa

Hey, I feel an affinity towards Benny Buddler, since he’s my “AznBro” and he’s muscular as fuck and Tessa Townsend is blonde and cute.

#BennyismyAZNbro

In the Market

Browsing places like FB Marketplace and Craigslist has given me an appreciation for value-hunting. Being in the market to replace my overheated and now-deceased laptop has me searching for something a little less than retail for a gaming PC with a little more bang for the limited buck.

Frankly, what I’m searching for is a gently used (that might be an oxymoron when it comes to gaming machines) gaming laptop that I’m able to swap out the existing SSD and give it a 1TB SSD, then if it has space enough to do so, add in an HDD for storage. Most of the second-hand gaming laptops are coming in around the 16GB RAM mark which means I’ll be getting more bang than if I went retail and paid close to $2K for a gaming laptop brand new in the box.

Wandering around online has led me to some interesting finds that could help me save money and still be able to play Sims 3 and SWTOR at ultra graphics settings and that’s what I want. Between that and writing my “fanfiction” for JAG and Sims 3 and I’ll be kept occupied for whatever leisure time I have that I’m not devoting to getting my photography freelance business back off the ground.

…and that is another post in itself. I can’t sit happily playing Sims 3 all the time until I’ve turned into mulch. I have to be doing something. Which means going back to what I know best: photography. And if I can manage to get my brain to organize properly and the rest of my body to remain in adequate health, I may be taking the opportunity to go for a week and photograph the Rocky Mountains by taking a nice little drive through the Rockies. At 52, yeah, the time’s ticking, but it’s been something I’ve wanted to do for a while now. My body won’t let me climb mountains to reach a nice secluded spot or wander trails with a grade of 8% or steeper, but the Rockies and Banff, I can do as well as scenics of Vancouver.

The gaming laptop would be a combination gaming PC and video/photo editing tool and if I can manage to get it for a reasonable price, all the better. And it would provide me a base to build up better with a desktop down the road as the (photography) business grows as well as provide me with some power for gaming.