First Impressions Box Set

I've had several days to get used to my new laptop and I'm pleased to say I'm extremely happy with it. It does everything I wanted and more than I expected. I'm still in the process of setting things up exactly as I like them but all the basics are in place and I've had the chance to test how a few things work so I thought I'd do a kind of batch First Impressions post to cover what I've seen and done so far.

If you're not really interested in hearing me go on yet again about how easily impressed I am by a four-year old piece of tech that wasn't very exciting when it was new, then I recommend skipping the first few sections of the post so you can read my first impressions on a couple of games that came out several years ago and that everyone's already played. I'm nothing if not up with the times!

The Laptop Itself

The reconditioned Lenovo T480 looks brand new and functions perfectly. (Crosses fingers and touches wood. Not that I'm superstitious, which is what all superstitious people say after doing something extremely superstitious.) 

The vaunted keyboard is very responsive; firm keys and a good, solid feel. The dedicated function keys threw me for a while but that was a quick and easy fix. 

I've written a couple of blog posts on the laptop and now I'm writing this one. The only issue so far is that it takes me a little longer. If I type at my usual speed, I keep missing the smaller space bar so I have to take it a bit more slowly. It takes even longer if I have to keep going back to fill in all the missing spaces.

I can't say I'm delighted with the placement of the touchpad and the pseudo-mouse buttons. The pad is too big so I keep resting the heel of my hand on it by accident, which causes some odd results and the buttons are too close to the space bar, which ditto. As for the red button between the G and H keys that acts as a mouse if you press it, that's a gimmick I'll never use. I have an actual mouse plugged into the usb port.

Performance is excellent, as is the screen. Obviously there's no problem with all the usual stuff - web-browsing and  watching video and so on - but the T480 also works very well as a gaming machine, thanks to streaming technology. All things considered, I'm extremely pleased with it.

Windows 11

I was curious to see how Win11 differed from Win10. I'm going to have to decide whether to make the effort to upgrade later this year, when Microsoft stops support, so it's very useful to get a hands-on with the replacement well before that happens.

So far I can't see much difference. There's absolutely no learning curve to absorb as there was between, say, Windows 7 and 8. It looks the same and most of the functions are pretty similar, as far as I can see. 

The only negative I've encountered is that you have to set default apps for every single file type individually now, instead of ticking one box for all formats. That's annoying but no big deal.

The only positive that stands out is the screenshot option, which I discovered last night by accident. For all I know, this was in Windows 10 too but if so I never noticed it. Now, pressing Prt Scr brings up a tiny toolbar that lets you take screenshots and video but also allows you to select areas of the screen to save, including freeform shapes. I foresee making considerable use of that feature in future.

Other than that, nothing really feels any different. A few things seem to have been simplified or tidied up is about all. At the moment I think I prefer it and I liked Win10 so I'm happy.

Remote Gaming

Splashtop streaming from my desktop works flawlessly, apart from the spinning PoV in Wuthering Waves I mentioned last time, a problem for which I have yet to find a solution. I played a couple more sessions of Cloudpunk that way and it felt smooth as silk, even though it was being streamed and the laptop is using WiFi. If there's any additional latency as a result it's not apparent to me.

I also tried Amazon's Luna cloud gaming service last night and that was a complete success. I have yet to try GeForce Now but I see no reason why that shouldn't also work perfectly. I envisage making more use of cloud computing now I have the laptop than I found the need for previously. I'm not saying it's the future but it's darn handy.

Native Gaming

I wasn't really planning on doing a lot of gaming directly on the laptop but I figured I'd give it a try just to see how it went. I installed one of the games I bought in the Steam Winter Sale - Divinity: Original Sin - on the new 1TB drive I got to go in the enclosure I already had. I'm going to try and keep the laptop's internal drive as tidy as possible although it's probably a lost cause.

The game played perfectly. The laptop's integrated graphics can handle it easily at high resolution but so they should - the game came out a decade ago. Still, if the machine can comfortably run ten year-old games I'm well set; there must be thousands of games, new to me, that I'd enjoy from that era or earlier.

It did get noticeably hotter running that game locally, so I'd probably prefer to play games remotely whenever possible anyway. The most worrying thing is that I can now play video games in bed. I'm not sure I want to be able to do that. It's one more temptation to resist.

Amazon Luna

This was a bit of a surprise. A pleasant one. I knew Prime members in participating regions, including the UK, got to play several games on Luna for free, with the selection changing every month. I had not realized until I logged in that you can also link your Luna account with your Good Old Games account to get access to a selection of GOG games, which you can then play via Luna as well. 

Those don't rotate every month and you can add plenty more from the GOG store. It's a decent selection - 279 titles, although that's misleading since many are DLC for a much smaller number of core games. Looking through the list, I think it might be all the games Prime has given away through GOG over the past couple of years.

I chose The Outer Worlds, which I got free with Amazon Prime a few months back. It played flawlessly with everything on what looked like the highest settings, which is how Luna defaults. I didn't change anything. I saw no lag whatsoever and the laptop remained cool and quiet throughout. I don't think the fan came on at all.

The addition of games claimed on Prime but registered on my GOG account is something of a game-changer (Golf clap...) for Luna. I was never going to subscribe to the service and the monthly choice bundled there directly with Prime hasn't held much  interest me so far but every month I claim two or three titles through GOG and this makes it considerably more likely I'll actually play some of them.

The Outer Worlds

So much for first impressions of the technology. How about the games? 

I played Outer Worlds for long enough to get to the first settlement. Maybe an hour. It's slick and amusing, which I was expecting and ludicrously violent, which I definitely was not. Enemies literally explode when you kill them, even when you're using a sword. I tried to pick up an item in the ground after I killed a Marauder and it turned out to be the poor guy's foot.

The game opens with a good cinematic before dumping you into character creation. I found it fairly easy to get an appearance I was happy with. There are enough options but not too many.

Once into the game itself, I was a little surprised to find there's no third-person option. Looking this up online, it seems the developer literally ran out of money before one could be added. Whether or not that's true, they haven't added one since so first-person it is. I can deal with that although it's never my preference.

I chose the default difficulty and at the tutorial level combat is easy enough. I went all-in on melee so my tactics consist of sneaking as close as possible then rushing in and swinging wildly. So far it's working but I don't imagine that will last.

There seem to be a lot of fiddly skill upgrades and there doesn't appear to be a way to respec so I imagine I'll gimp my build sooner rather than later but for now I'm just dumping points into melee and charm. I'll lie my way out of anything I can and when that doesn't work I'll cut their heads off.

I like the aesthetic, the dialog is mildly entertaining and slicing people into chunks is a bit of a novelty for me so I'll probably give it a few more sessions. Not sure I'll carry on with it for long though.

Divinity: Original Sin

I like this better than the sequel so far. It was very quick to get into. I picked the first two characters I was offered, tweaked them a little and just got on with it and things seemed to go fine. 

Graphically it looks a little less detailed than I remember D:OS2 but not that much. The dialog seems considerably less... Larien... than usual, which is an improvement. I am not a big fan of the studio's house style. 

I noticed quite a few of the reviews on Steam criticize it for being too light-hearted - "more Terry Pratchet than Terry Goodkind" one of them said. While I agree that Pratchett wannabes can be embarrassing to read, I never remotely rated Goodkind as a prose stylist so if I had to choose... And anyway, this is crisper than that comparison suggests.

The fights, as always, are fun. I did find it funny that in both this game and The Outer Worlds, even in the tutorials I was killing enemies by shooting barrels full of explosives they just happened to be standing next to, but that never gets old, does it? I look forward to throwing oil in all directions and setting it liberally on fire in pretty much every fight, which was my go-to tactic for most of the ninety hours I spent with D:OS2.

I expect to play this one quite a lot until I get really fed up with the repetition but maybe Larien will surprise me and come up with a plot I actually care about this time. We'll see.

Cloudpunk

Not going to say much more about this one other than I love it. It's really excellent. Subtle, intriguing, endearing, satisfying... all the good things you want from a game that's aiming to tell a story worth hearing.

The gameplay consists entirely of fetch quests. I mean that's literally all it is. You get given a location to collect a parcel, you fly your HOVA there, park as near as you can, walk to the location, pick up the package, walk back to your vehicle, get in, fly to the delivery point, get out, hand it over, go back to your car. Then you get in and do it again. And again. And again.

And it's fun. Every time. Each location, each pick-up, each delivery tells a story and they're fascinating stories. And while you're driving you get to talk with Control, who's having problems of his own and with Camus, your AI dog. Camus is going to get a post of his own here one day, I'm telling you now.

Add to that the atmospheric world-building by way of commercials and broadcasts and warnings and the whole city of Nivalis comes alive. I got to the part where you work out how to use the radio last night so I'm hoping for some music as I navigate between the skyscrapers and try to avoid smashing into flying trucks.

I think that's about it for now. Did I play anything else? 

Oh yes, I did a whole chapter of The Black Shores in Wuthering Waves yesterday and it was very good. I still have two more chapters to go before I can start on the latest update. Well, I could start on it right away - it's not locked - but there's a warning that it won't be as good if you haven't done all the parts that come before, so better not.

If only I could figure out how to stop the camera spinning, I'd go do another chapter now. Otherwise, I'm going to have to wait for the weather to get warmer.