Having a subscription to Microsoft’s Game Pass has expanded the number and type of games I play. I try titles from the subscription-based catalog that I probably would not have purchased individually. Banishers Ghosts of New Eden is one of those. I don’t typically enjoy games that feature ghosts as a main story element. This time, the game play video looked interesting and that was enough to convince me to try it.
At its core, Banishers is an adventure RPG based on ghost hunting. It’s set in the sixteen nineties in and around a very haunted colonial North American town. The main characters Antea and Duarte have been summoned to address the situation. They are Banishers, a type of old-school ghost hunter, and their job is to rid the area of supernatural malfeasance.
In part I chose to try Banishers because it looked like a game my spouse would enjoy watching. I was right. From the opening scene, this game is gorgeous. The environments are all so detailed. The weather is almost an NPC by its own right. Much of world is cold, wet, foggy, and just plain dreary. The color scheme and artistic slant lean toward realistic. The costume director deserves an industry award all their own.
I have been impressed by the graphics. I play the game on my PC, Handheld PC, Xbox, and via Game pass streaming to my phone and laptop. It looks and plays great on all of them provided you tune the game for the hardware. In 4K ultra on an OLED screen the scenery is stunning. Remember how you used to stop and stare off the top of hills in The Witcher 3 or Uncharted? You’ll be doing it in this game too.
The world isn’t open, but it’s not on rails either. Traveling, navigating, maneuvering, looting, and unlocking will be familiar to anyone that has played the modern Tomb Raider series. Down to having campfires that you save, upgrade, and fast travel from sprinkled all over the map. The classic adventure game mobility methods are all featured. Rope climbing, mantling, sidling, ducking, jumping, grappling, and eventually fast traveling get you around the game’s world.
After a major event in the game’s early levels, you gain the ability to control both Antea and Duarte. You can swap between them with a button press to take advantage of their unique abilities. The game is played from the 3rd person view for the most part. Your main weapons are a saber (sword not light), a flint lock rifle, punching, and several types of magic attacks. The characters also feature ultimate attacks, linked combo attacks, and charge attacks.
The rifle is powerful when you hit weak spots and ammo is unlimited. Don’t get too excited though. The agonizingly slow reload will keep you from playing the game as a full-on shooter. If you focus resources on rifle related upgrades you can get close to blasting your way through, but not quite. Well play developers, well played.
The combat starts out easy and increases in difficulty as your characters and their gear rank up. There are several types of evil entities to do battle with on your journey. There are also mini bosses and bosses that must be conquered to unlock new map areas. On normal mode, the AI is quite challenging. Expect to die a few times in each new mini-boss area.
Normal mode and above makes the combat feel very souls like. Over ranked baddies with shields and multiple attackers that work together will have you fully engaged to keep up. I also tried a few fights on easy mode. They are still challenging and require strategic decisions, but I cleared areas without dying more often than not.
Frame perfect parries with your saber are the best defensive move in your arsenal. Generic blocking is moderately effective depending on your gear and the attacker. There isn’t any cover, but you can dodge.
Attacks and defensive moves have to be balanced to win against the more powerful enemy encounters. I often find myself backpedaling to shoot, then rushing in close in to do heavy damage with melee attacks. I customized my characters armor, weapons, and abilities to match this strategy. The terrain usually locks you into a fighting arena like God of War.
What makes Banishers so good to watch, and play is the combination of high production value and interesting combat. The theatrics are simply fantastic. The sets, actors, voices, and storytelling are all dazzling. The dialogue sounds like natural conversation from the time and place. Overheard conversations often provide subtle clues. Emotions are well conveyed by seamless in-game cinematic experiences and direct individual dialogue scenes. There are no loading screens.
You’ll meet and work with all types of characters as you progress through the game. The witches are some of my favorites. They are presented as wise naturalists rather than as villainous. Banisher’s story arcs are good at getting you to care about the character’s plights.
Even side quest characters have a tall enough story arch to invoke a mild sense of empathy. I’ve encountered stories based on cannibalism, mariticide and uxoricide, a mass murder caused by moral circumstances and more. I keep playing just to see what happens next, well past my bedtime on several occasions.
Side quests start when you talk to folks in each newly unlocked area to acquire work. If someone hires you, an investigation is started. You’ll be looking for clues and talking to NPCs to figure out who or what is causing the problem.
Some of the so called “haunting cases” are pretty grizzly murder mysteries in which multiple people were murdered. Others are accidents and everyone is innocent. It’s your job to figure out which. Along the way you will collect resources and battle supernatural creatures. Each quest features a moral decision at the end that has an effect on the game’s overall outcome.
I’ve been playing the game for about thirty hours. In that time, I’ve ranked up to a level twelve. I’ve upgraded all of my gear and weapons to mid-level. I have faced most types of enemies and mastered the combat as well as navigation. I’ve gotten a real feel for the game, and I can tell that I will play until I finish it. Banishers Ghosts of New England surprised me. I expected it to be a mediocre adventure game, but it is clearly top shelf.
I have learned so much about the Lenovo Legion Go handheld gaming PC over my time owning and using one. I’ve gone to great lengths to tune mine for everyday couch and mobile gaming. It has all my games installed and ready to go. It’s stable, games and power can be suspended and resumed mid play for convenience. Everything runs screaming fast and looks fantastic. Games and media sound so good, too!
Read on to discover the settings, tweaks, and modifications that I’ve used to get the most out of my Go. You won’t believe the difference these settings can make in your experience. As a bonus, most of them are free and easy.
The first pain point with my precious handheld gaming PC. The speakers are subpar. Left at their default settings, they are high-pitched and struggle with power. Much of the potential volume is lost due to the speaker ports being on the top edge and angled away. Hold your hands up like rabbit ears behind the mesh while watching a video. You’ll be shocked by how much sound the speakers are really pumping out.
If you research the topic of poor sound, you’ll see there are several software workarounds that help considerably. The easy/free method is to use the Realtek Audio Console. Open it from the Start Menu to toggle off a feature called the “Omni Speaker”. Then use the same software to adjust the equalizer frequencies. Find this idea and lots of others at: https://www.reddit.com/r/LegionGo/
I used the equalizer changes above in conjunction with an app I already owned. Dolby Access is a Windows Store App that applies a Dolby Atmos surround sound effect to your PC’s sound system. The Go’s speakers sound so much better with the effect enabled. The dimensional soundscape achieved by applying some cheap software is surprising.
Dolby’s magic app features a gaming performance mode that increases the accuracy of sound location. This is especially important in competitive games. It works well. I don’t fully understand how they trick your hearing so well. Things that are supposed to be behind you, sound like it.
For Dolby Access, or any spatial sound app to be the most effective, disable Window’s sound enhancements. Go to Settings -> System -> Sound and click on the speakers. Advanced -> Audio enhancements toggle off.
If you don’t have or want to purchase Dolby Access, there are some open-source options out there. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve seen FXSound mentioned several times while doing my research. It gets a lot of recommendations and positive reviews and is donation-ware.
Update Everything
The Legion Go is a complex machine. Especially its software layer. The sheer number of places you must check for updates is astonishing. Here’s a rundown of everywhere you need to check. I try to do this at least once a week.
Windows Update
Accessed by going to Settings -> Windows Update
I like to open the advanced options and flip on the toggle to receive updates for all Microsoft products.
Microsoft App (MSIX packages) Updates
Open the Microsoft Store App (shopping bag icon in start menu). Then click on Downloads (menu on left) from there click the Get Updates.
Legion Space
Disks and Drivers. Open Legion Space ->Settings -> Scroll down -> Disks and Drivers -> Check for Updates.
Controller Firmware Updates. Go to Controllers in the menu, scroll the bottom menu left to More. Scroll to the bottom of More page and click the Controller Firmware Update button.
App Updates.
Game Launchers. Steam, Xbox, Ubisoft, and EA Desktop, all have client updates in each app’s settings menu
Game updates. Each game gets its own updates (usually handled by the launchers).
Other software.
Example: The emulator app Dolphin needs updated frequently.
Touch Screen
One quality of life upgrade was realized just by changing my bad habit of touching the screen too much. I had been using the touch screen to enter my PIN and to scroll. This was making my screen filthy. Every time I picked up the little machine to play something, it was covered in fingerprints and smudges.
There were two changes I made to drastically reduce how often I had to clean the screen. First, at the PIN prompt you can usually click the A button to get the on-screen number pad to open. Then you can use the buttons, D-pad, shoulders, and triggers to enter your PIN code just like on an Xbox.
Using the scroll wheel reduces fingerprints. Tapping and holding on the touch pad activates the right-click menu.
Second, the little wheel on the upper rear nook of the right controller is for scrolling. It works better and is more comfortable than touching the screen in most situations. The only trick is to remember that it’s back there.
Floating Keyboard
The OSK (On-Screen Keyboard) is huge the first time you try and enter text with it. It takes up the entire bottom half of the screen. This makes entering information into forms very difficult. The form either gets cut in half or squished to an illegible size when the keyboard opens. It’s a good thing there’s a built-in solution. You can resize and float the OSK in Windows.
Open the keyboard by touching or clicking the icon for it near the clock on your taskbar. Click or tap on the settings gear in the upper left corner of the keyboard’s panel. Then select Keyboard Layout from the menu and click small. Now you can use the little dash at the top of the OSK to drag it out of your way!
The small floating keyboard layout is easy to drag at of your way. Clicking Size and theme in the Keyboard’s settings will let you change its color size, and key size.
Hibernation Is Better
Batteries suck, but we’re stuck with them until some genius invents something else. For some unknown reason, the Go drains its battery in just a few hours of sleep mode. Do yourself a solid and change the power button’s function to hibernate instead of sleep.
There are two benefits hibernation has over sleep mode. The first is that your battery won’t be dead the next time you pick it up. Hibernation uses a lot less power over time than sleeping does.
The hibernation process exports everything in the computer’s memory to a save file on the hard drive. Then it powers down the RAM chips. This reduces power consumption. It also gives us our other benefit.
Go to Settings-> System-> Power & Battery to change what the power button does.
Everything running in RAM is saved to a file. This includes any game that is actively playing or paused when you pressed the power button. The LeGo can stay in hibernation for days with your game perfectly suspended in time.
The process takes a few seconds at most. In my opinion, hibernation makes the device more usable in real life situations. I play on my lunch break at work. Hibernating when my break is over means my battery and game will be ready to resume on the next day. You usually can’t do that with sleep mode.
Controllers and Buttons
The controllers on the Legion Go are a work of art. They are well constructed, feel great, and are tuned for a light touch. They disconnect from the main chassis like the Nintendo Switch’s do.
The placement of the menu and view buttons near the bottom of the left controller is a problem though. Those buttons are used in games heavily and stretching your thumb down to click them gets old. Especially in a game like Destiny 2 where you constantly need access to the character menu and maps.
There is an option to swap their functions with the Legion Space and Quick Control menu buttons. Open Legion Space and go to Controllers, then scroll to More. Scroll down the page and flip the toggle to swap the buttons.
Your thumbs will thank you for flipping this toggle on.
My other tip about the controllers is to take the time and map the back buttons. I tie them to crouch/slide, melee, reload, and jump in almost every FPS game that I play. Back buttons allow you to keep both thumbs on the sticks while performing button actions. This can be a big advantage in some games.
To map them, open Legion Space. Go to Controllers in the top menu then click the Button Mapping button in the list at the bottom. Now click the top View/Edit Layout button. Finally, click the Rear-View choice at the bottom of the screen. Click on each button to pull up the mapping menu for it.
GPU Upscaling
There are lots of tweaks and changes you can make to boost the performance of your Go in various games. One of the most potent is to setup the various upscale options for both on your GO and in your games. The Legion Go supports AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution and their FidelityFX (FSR 3) technologies. Taking advantage of them reduces the load on your GPU which usually translates to an increased frame rate.
AAA titles can run in the 60-110 FPS range with good fidelity once you learn to tune and upscale them. I haven’t written a comprehensive guide to upscale games yet, but the basics are easy. Open the AMD Adrenaline app and turn on the scaling options.
There’s also a switch for RSR in the Legion quick menu.
The details of scaling are a rabbit hole of advanced tweaks and changes. Things like algorithms, game resolution options, post-processing settings, and sharpening effects can alter your experience. YouTube and the sub-Reddit mentioned above are good places to start building knowledge if you want to go deep.
GPU scaling options are dependent on driver and software versions. If you don’t see the options, make sure your software is all updated.
Learning to upscale and tweak your games is probably the most impactful performance boost you can get on this system. If you’re not already familiar with scaling, try using 1600X1200 @ 144Hz as your display resolution. Then run your games at 800X600. If you can’t set the game’s resolution to 800×600, change the resolution scale to 50%. It amounts to the same thing.
If you are less than impressed with AMD’s GPU scaling abilities, there are also other options available. While doing research, I noticed that lots of people are mentioning the Steam App Lossless Scaling as a great alternate. The app is $6.99 in the Steam store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/993090/Lossless_Scaling/
BIOS/UEFI Tweaks
In the Legion Go’s BIOS there are two settings we can adjust that effect game performance. The first is how much of the system’s 16 Gigabytes of RAM is reserved to support the GPU. By default, 3 GB of VRAM is selected but this can slow some games down. I get better performance and game stability with 4 GB assigned to graphics processing. That leaves 12 GB for Windows and your game, which is plenty in most cases.
Shutdown -> Hold Power + Volume Up Overclock the RAMReserve 4GB VRAM
You can also overclock the RAM for an overall performance boost. Increasing the RAM’s speed will cause it to generate more heat. Excessive heat can impact CPU and GPU throttling. Consider the environment you play in.
Before you make either change, verify you are on the newest version of the system firmware. You Boot to the UEFI control screen to make these changes by shutting down first. Then hold down the Power and Volume up buttons at the same time for a few seconds.
Optimize Windows 11 for Gaming
The Legion Go is running Windows 11 Home. The default security posture of Windows 11 is not optimized for gaming. Specifically, memory integrity and the Virtual Machine Platform features of Windows 11 can slow down some games.
I like to PIN my games to Start. Go to Settings -> Personalization -> Start -> and select the option for more PINs if you do too.
Make folders on the Start Menu. Dragging one icon onto another. Drag and drop icons as needed to add. Rename a folder by clicking into it. Right click on folders in the start menu to move them left or right.
Maximize the task bar space. Settings -> Personalization -> Taskbar: Search -> Icon. Disable Task View. Disable Widgets.
On my Legion Go, I disable most of the start-up apps. It helps conserve CPU cycles, RAM, and disk I/O for the games. Go to Settings-> Apps -> Startup. I only leave three apps toggled on. The Radeon Software Startup Task, Realtek HD Audio Universal Service, and the Windows Security notification icon.
SSD Swap
I replaced the factory storage with a much faster and higher-capacity unit from Corsair. The upgrade has had a major impact on daily life with the LeGo. Downloads, and loading times are much faster. I can store my entire active catalog of games. Everything feels snappy. Read I SSD Swapped My Lenovo Legion Go. It Was Worth It for the details and instructions.
Installing faster high high-capacity storage is a great upgrade.
The Legion Go is an excellent gaming computer right out of the box. Tweaks, changes, and upgrades like the ones above help make it even better. I use mine more than any other gaming system and that’s saying something.
Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City seems like it would be a perfect location to hang out in using virtual reality. In-fact, the whole game looks like it would be fantastic in 3D at a realistic scale. I bet the futuristic theme would also lend itself well to the immersive nature of VR.
Luckily, there are few ways to get the PC version of the game to play using main-stream virtual reality headsets. Luke Ross’s REAL VR mod is one popular method. I’ve decided to experiment with the free option from the people that make VORP X.
VORP X is a well-known piece of software that enables many PC games to be played in VR even if they don’t natively support it. If you don’t already know about them, check out their site @:https://www.vorpx.com/. The team at VORP X has made a standalone mod for Cyberpunk 2077 and that is what I’ll be working with throughout this article.
According to everything that I’ve read on the subject, you’ll need a very powerful gaming PC to have a satisfactory play experience using this method. I’m running a 4090, Intel 12700K, 980 Pros, and 32GB of DDR4. The headset I’m using is a Meta Quest 3.
To install the VR mod, download it from the VORP X download page. Then right click on the downloaded file and choose the option to Extract All. Double click on the extracted CyberpunkVR_Setup.exe to start the installation.
You may be prompted that an unknown application is requesting to make changes to your system. This prompt is generated because the alpha code we are downloading from VORP X is not properly signed by a publicly certified certificate.
Proceed at your own risk. If you want to use the VR mod. the only choice is to click yes and/or allow. There can be more than one prompt depending on the security configuration of your gaming PC and network.
After the prompt, you will need to locate the installation files for Cyberpunk 2077. The installer attempts to find them for you and was successful in my case. If it doesn’t locate yours use the “manage files” function of the launcher to see the path.
When you locate the install folder and click ok, there will be a message to tell you that the mod does not support motion controls (it does some now). Select yes, then click the next button. Accept the license agreement and then click Next. Finally click Install.
To play Cyberpunk in VR, put on your headset and enable Oculus Link (Air and Cable link both work). Once you are in the Oculus Desktop environment, show the game library (click the library button on the tool bar) and you should see Cyberpunk 2077 as an available title. Point at it and press A to start the game.
You can use the Quest controllers along with some basic gestures for aiming down site and using your sword, among others, but there really aren’t enough buttons to get the job done. I preferred using my Xbox controller paired to my PC to play. A tutorial explaining the controls is displayed every time you start the game. Press the A button on your controller to skip it.
The world is presented in 3D VR but appears almost like it is on a giant wall-sized curved monitor that you are standing really close to. If you turn your head to quickly, the tracking fails to keep up and you see the edges of the display. Don’t get me wrong the effect is functional and the game plays fine this way, it just isn’t a typical VR AAA experience. What do you expect for free?
I was able to achieve a stable frame rate with good looking graphics running on high with ray tracing disabled. I was averaging right at seventy frames per second with this config, but I expect anyone playing on a system with a less powerful GPU will need to turn down graphics options in the game’s settings menu, first thing. Or risk being made nauseous.
Overall, it was fun to see Night City at scale and in 3D. The people watching in down-town alone is worth the thirty minutes of effort and zero dollars it took to make this work. I don’t think VR will be anyone’s primary play mode just yet, but you can tell the Devs are serious about getting there.
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