Architecture

After a few hours with this, I think I'm actually going to return it. The Rival is just too goddamn big. The palm hump and thumb buttons conspire to contort my hand into a gnarled mess of discomfort. Gonna try the Sensei [RAW] as I initially planned--I hate the feeling and over-designed nature of the Logitech.

I'm pretty sure that my family owned the original Trackman Marble at one point: It's going to take me a while to get used to this mouse, but I think I'm gonna like it. I have learned that I do, in fact, actually need a mouse pad however.

I think the biggest draw is the tactile feedback you get with a mechanical keyboard. They're also built to last. I'm currently typing out this post on a refurbed Dell low profile board I got for $10. Granted, I went out and bought a fancy-ass mouse, but I have a harder time justifying the price difference between a functional and boutique keyboard.

Well, y'all will be happy to know I ended up with a Steelseries Rival instead. This thing feels really, really good. It also glides likes a dream, even on my wood veneer desktop. The thumb button placement and size pretty much sold me on it at the store. I probably looked like a crazy person, gripping mice in a Best Buy for half an hour before they closed.

I've been eyeing the Corsair K70, she's beautiful:

Ol' Trusty has a wonky scroll wheel that mis-registers the direction I'm trying to scroll about 30% of the time. He was a rescue (found him buried in the bottom of a drawer full of old HIDs at a previous job that was going to be tossed), but I think it might be time to take him out back and shoot him. Best Buy currently has the Steelseries Sensei [RAW] on sale for $41, thinking about nabbing that.

Ended up buying some gaming headphones in anticipation of this game. Stupidly debating buying a mouse as well--I'm currently rocking a 3-button Dell mouse that's got to be at least a decade old.

My boss today told me he was going to get Titanfall upon release in lieu of Dark Souls 2. I ended up pre-ordered a copy for both of us because I had a multi-use coupon for $10 off. I think there's an understated elegance to the design of the game. I don't know that I want to get into it a post-mortem until I've played the full release, but I can't fathom it'll be anything less than a goddamn good video game.

I have an Ogre Titan burn card--saving that for the last day of the beta. I think it's considered a rare or "foil" card as the logo in the upper left corner looks shiny and different.

Hauntingly sad game (at least thus far). I still haven't played the interlude, but I hear it's fantastic.

The looseness of the parkour is actually one of the best things about it. The traversal just feels right. I've started to get a hang of scaling buildings and moving across rooftops. I really, really like this game. I think I'm in day one.

Yeah, if you got an Xbox key initially instead of a PC key like I did, the Xbox key should still be good (I gave mine away to someone on another board and he reported it worked). I'm officially out of keys, seems like at least two of them were good, so that's pretty cool. At first I wasn't as impressed with the game as I anticipated, which is weird when I feel like I accurately set my expectations. Maybe it's just the transition back into competitive PC shooters where I'm just rank-and-file where I was better than not on console. There's actually auto-aim applied to the 360 controller in Titanfall that doesn't seem present during kb&m play, which is kind of cool. After a few rounds I'd say I feel like you could be competitive with a controller.

Check PMs.

Glad it worked. I have an Xbox key and another PC key, I think they should work also.

I had that issue last night when Microsoft wasn't spinning up new servers, but it's been fine today.

Anything for plain, simple Garak. Check PMs.

So I might have two working PC beta keys and one working Xbox key, if someone would like to try them. No guarantees they'll work, but I keep getting emails from Respawn with replacement keys. Also, if any of y'all want to try squadding up, my Origin handle is Zapruder.

I quit Assassin's Creed 4 because U-Play ate a fifth of my game data somehow and wanted me to re-download about five gigs' worth of data. Middle fingers to you and your stupid gated middleware, Ubisoft. I'm inches from giving up on Witcher 2. It seems like the kind of game that I'm playing because I'm supposed to like it as opposed to actually enjoying myself when I boot it up.

I wouldn't expect the matches to last very long--this is basically Call of Duty in the near future. It may be running on entirely different tech, but it's readily apparent how much DNA it shares with the Modern Warfare brand. Though I find it funny when people say things like, "well, it looks like Call of Duty except that it has giant robots and jetpacks," as some sort of pejorative. To me, that's a positive.

Howdy y'all.

I got a beta key and will be downloading & installing this later tonight. I'll be playing on PC in case any folks want to squad up and murder things.