Sun, Garden, and The Witcher 3 on remote play!

    Being able to play outside, in the garden, when the sun is high and the temperature is hot, with a frozen beer at my side, always intrigued me.

    First reason is that this way I can enjoy a bit of the "outside" people always talk about, leaving my Hobbit Hole for some time.

    Second reason are my dogs, who can enjoy the garden more than they usually do, while I can still devote myself to my favorite hobby.

    So, during this sunny week end, I brought out the "solution" described in my previous post "PS4 and PlaystationTV marry Power Line Adapters", as shown in the attached photo.

    A very long extension cord provided energy to the whole thing, and the remote play on PS4, through the PlaystationTV, worked perfectly, with only some very minor connection drops.

    Sunlight is a major issue, because it strongly limit visibility. Still, increasing both game and TV brightness, make the game playable. I'll try to find a solution to this, even if I already know there aren't that many: anti-reflection film for PC and other device can perhaps better the experience, so I'll try out one of them.

    The Witcher 3 is a great game for remote play, as it doesn't need an incredible precision in controls: differently from Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, I found the play experience to be almost like I was playing directly on PS4.

    Speaking of this, this title is very attractive, big, and masterfully directed. Still, I must admit it has a bunch of things I strongly dislike:

    - Controls: Let's face it, the "action" side of this game is pretty sick. Controls, movements, attacks and the like are clumsy, woody and inaccurate at best. CD Projekt RED clearly haven't improved this side of their development skill, as both The Witcher 1 and 2 had the same problem!

    - Fast Travel: I think the sign posts system is a bit annoying; being forced to reach one of them to use the fast travel is just a waste of time. The ability to open up world map and directly select a destination sign post would, imho, improve exploration.

    - Food: Food heals so few it hurts, and you're forced to bring tons of them with you, if you want to rely on it. I strongly dislike this (going around with 50 meat chunks, 60 hives etc etc just sound wrong to me). I think it would be better to have the food heal more, perhaps over longer times, in order to limit the carriage. I understand the developers want perhaps to force the player into using alchemy, but still food works bad for my taste.

    - Quick Items Slots: Dunnow if later in the game you gain more, but the two item slot I can use so far is a bit limited. 2 potions or 2 kind of food (or a mix of the two) is not very much. Something like four slot would be probably more enjoyable.

    The game is still a precious gem, and one of the best titles for PS4 so far, but my vote for it is around 8/10, perhaps 8.5/10, mostly because it's pure gameplay aspect is definitely clunky.

PS4 and PlaystationTV marry Power Line Adapters

    This week I decided to buy PlaystationTV, mostly because I was tempted by the possibility to play PSVita titles on the big screen. As soon as the small but powerful console was delivered, I attached it to my 42" plasma, realising that the TV was way too big for the PSVita games, as the graphics really appeared awkward and heavily pixeled.

    Not that great problem, to be honest, as graphics is not the most important part of most the titles I play on the PSVita, but still it was a bit unsatisfying.

    So, in a rush of impulse, I decided to change the initial purpose of the PlaystationTV i buyed, transforming it in a secondary gaming location, basically installed on the bedroom, but easily movable to every place of the house I like.

    Now, the main problem was the router and the Wi-Fi range: my main "gaming" room is located in the basemend (really fresh during the hottest months of the year), with all my books, comics, action figures etc. etc., and with the router too, which is located very near to PS4, PC etc. The signal of my little guy has proved to be pretty strong, even if basement's walls are thick and heavy, but not enough to provide a stable and powerful enough connection for the remote play.

    I considered various solutions for this problem, such as moving the router or buying Range Extenders, but the first did not work very well, and I was not very sure about the latter (i'm pretty new to all this stuff).

     I turned to a local computer shop for an help, and the guy suggested me to try out Power Line Adapter, an ingenious invention that throw your internet signal on the electric wires, allowing it to reach places quite far from the router, as long as the target electric socket is under the same switch of the one where the router's Power Line is attached to. This kind of technology is pretty old, in truth, but today's devices are much more reliable and powerful than the old ones. This is perhaps the best way to extend internet coverage in your house, even if it is not free from issues; the one I was more afraid of was that it's suggested to attach the Power Line adapter directly to an electric socket (i.e.: not to a power strip), in order to avoid interferences from other devices on the same socket: doing this was pretty impossible for me as sockets in the house are all single.

    But the issue proved to be inexistent: after installing the Power Line adapters (an incredibly simple process), I turned up the PlaystationTV, eager to see the results, and they were amazing: remote play work very well with both streaming options set to "High", even if the PS4 is still under Wi-Fi connection. Sure, the game is not as smooth as if it is played on the original console (the gameplay feels somehow "gummy", if you get what I mean), but it still works excellently. I'm trying the remote play with Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, and it's very playable, even if you lack a bit of precision and finesse in controls; with a different genre of game, the results can perhaps be better, as FPSs in general require a greater degree of precisione compared to other kinds.

    To complete my new gaming location, I buyed a relatively economic Telefunken TV: 24" and HD Ready are enough to take advantage of PlaystationTV. I meant to spend even fewer euros on it, but this one was the less expensive I founded at the local store.

    So, in the end, here is what this "whim" costed:
    - PlaystationTV (discounted): €59,99;
    - Controller Dualshock 4 (discounted): €59,99;
    - Telefunken Tv Led 24"' Te24275B31T10E: €168,00;
    - AV500 Nano Powerline Adapter Starter Kit (TL-PA4010KIT): €65,00
    Total: €352,98

    Not an inexpensive solution, but hey, still less than buying another PS4 + another TV!

    Next step will be to try bringing all this outside, in the garden. The sun's reflexes will probably make it impossible to see the TV screen well enough to play, but I want to give it a try, as playing outside, during spring/summer, would be fantastic.

    Oh, ok, I'm an extreme Gamer, I know! As always: good game everyone.

Spigen Nexus 5 Hybrid Back Covers (Part 1 of ... boh??)

    If you are the lucky owner of a Nexus 5 smartphone like me, you are perhaps using a Spigen Nexus 5 Hybrid cover. The feature I like most of this cover (which is overall quite good, even if a bit big in size, vote 7/8) is the possibility to put an image as a cover for the back side of your phone. You just have to find a suitable one, use a template to "build" it in the right way, print it out and cut it.

    I've played quite alot with this, creating some very ugly covers, but today I camed out with a couple of good ones (I think, at least), mostly thanks to the beautiful arts by Ale Giorgini. My favorite is the one on the right, which is Star Wars themed, but the others are cool, too.

    I'm going to share them with you all, along with the template to build your own, as you can see by the picture attached to this post. To gain the printable versions, just right-click on the picture you want to download and choose "Save Picture as...", or whichever option your browser uses for this purpose.

    I suggest to print these pictures on some kind of photo paper, which is more solid and resistant than common paper. You cna easily use a scissor to cut out the longest edges, but you should switch to a cutter when taking care of the camera hole, which don't need to be perfect, as the edges are somehow hidden by the cover borders themself.

Have fun, artists ;) .

The Big Lebowski	Indiana Jones	Spigen Nexus 5 Hybrid Template