On Friday, both Portal and Portal 2 got an update. Both games upgraded to DXVK version 2.0. DXVK 2.0 brought with it memory management improvement, bug fixes, reduced shader compilation stutter, and plenty of other improvements. Portal 2, in addition to getting the DXVK update, also “fixed some controller input bugs.” While it may seem like a small update, now my speculation gears are flowing. Portal with RTX is “coming soon”; sometime this month, but no word on what day.

Leave it up to the keyboard tap dancer Joaquín Ignacio Aramendía (Samsagax) to add fan controller functionality to devices outside of the OneXPlayer Mini. In addition to the Mini, the Mini PRO is now also supported. The AOKZOE has support as well! Both devices are powered by the Ryzen 6800U. Still no news on Intel-based devices. The patch has been submitted for review. In the meantime, if you own either of these devices, you can compile the driver from source.

Well, the day has already come upon us. That is, the 20th anniversary of my favorite game of all time. No, I’m not talking about Smash Brothers, despite my passion for that game. Smash gets a lot of respect in its own ways. But I’m actually referring to Metroid Prime. A game that, as many people can attest to, has helped them to deal with dark or otherwise tough times. The game that helped them to cope with life’s challenges.

This one slipped under the radar, but better to cover it late rather than never, I guess. Wednesday’s update to Proton Experimental enables support for two additional titles: NinNinDays2 and King under the Mountain. Additionally, we got fixes for Halo Infinite, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, Seperra Core, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Sin of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII launcher, and Project CARS 2: Fix Halo Infinite not starting after a recent game update.

The Thelio Major by System76 is their “most powerful gaming system, placing some of the largest GPUs on the market in a machine engineered for quiet, effective cooling.” Today, the case gets a redesign. First, the I/O shield on the back is now removable. This allows the user to replace the motherboard with a different one if they so desire. Though this is for the Major, “other Thelio models” should get this feature as well in the future.

Now that a new Steam Deck client update has reached the stable branch, it has incorporated all the changes from the beta branch since October 18th. This is almost a month’s worth of changes, including quicker startup times if you have a large library of games, reduced size of the Steam client, QR code functionality when logging into your Steam account, gyro enabling for gamepads that don’t support capacitive touch, Nintendo-style button layouts, updated Desktop controller layout, and tons of other features, fixes, and improvements.

UPDATE (12/27/2022): updated Steam Deck guide is available! UPDATE (12/5/2022): video guide is up if you need it! Sonic Frontiers may have an “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating on Steam, but there are quite a few things we can do to make the gameplay experience even better. Such as: disable letterboxing during cutscenes unlocking framerate during cutscenes 4K video playback skipping intro video decreasing graphics quality for getting smoother gameplay on NVIDIA (or other low-end hardware including the Steam Deck) making speed upgrades faster reducing hitstop for more fluent gameplay improved physics for Cyber Space levels removing the cutscene when unlocking a portion of the map increased difficulty changing how Sonic looks and plenty of other enhancements With all these mods you could practically get a fresh new session in after beating the game.

Something interesting that I came across yesterday. YouTuber The Phawx recently posted a video going over the Deck’s TDP. Turns out it’s not completely accurate. By comparing the Deck with the GPD Win Max 2 (prototype), he discovered both devices are in “absolute lockstep” – if the Deck’s TDP is set to 15 watts, for example, it will actually use 28 watts. If it’s set to five watts, it will actually use 12.

Cemu – the Wii U emulator that recently went open-source while at the same time adding support for Linux – recently received a commit to add online features for the Linux version. Going by the pull request, it seems like there was very little back and forth to it. One of the developers commented, “Looks good to me. No regressions encountered while testing on Windows.” As such, the PR has been merged into the main branch and already available for download.

A few weeks ago I had talked about Intel’s Optane SSD (the 905p in particular). It’s a ridiculously fast SSD – perfect for reducing the loading time in your games (twice as fast than traditional PCIe NVMe x4 in some cases). Both the 905p and P1600X are back in stock on Newegg: 905p, 960 GB, $399.99 (these use a U.2 connection, you’ll need to use the included M.2 adapter if your power supply doesn’t have the necessary connector type) If you’re looking for something a little less expensive (P1600X uses M.