You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/retroflag-nes-style-hard-drive-enclosure.1786/

A company known mostly for their range of Raspberry Pi cases, we’ve previously covered Retroflag’s latest and greatest NES-themed design. While the case was nice, and you can find Shaun’s thoughts on it here, one part jumped out to me in particular: the drive enclosure. Where 2.5 inch drive support is a great feature in itself, Retroflag went all out to match the theming, which brings us to where we are today, looking at their standalone NES style hard drive enclosure.

If you did take a moment to read our NESPi 4 review or happen to own one yourself, you’ll know Retroflag aren’t exactly reinventing the wheel here. The NES cartridge enclosures were already included with the NESPi 4 after all. What held this back from a more mainstream use case however is the fact the case simply wraps around the cartridge, preserving the usual SATA interface at the bottom. While this could still have appeal if you wanted to mount them in the glass window of a desktop case, you’d realistically only be using this with the Pi 4 case it came with. All of that is different now though, thanks to the similarly well-themed cartridge case.

Every time I look at the enclosure and the “enclosure enclosure”, I can’t help but smile. Retroflag really did an incredible job in matching the look and feel of a NES cartridge, the only real discrepancy being the smaller form factor as to snugly fit a 7mm 2.5 inch drive and little else. The drive is secured to the back of the cartridge with two screws, with the two halves of the cartridge held together by a further two screws. Needing a screwdriver handy to replace the drive can be a pain for some, and does detract slightly from the overall ease of use. If you’re just going to be putting an SSD or HDD in this and never changing it though, I doubt this will be an issue. Putting the cartridge into its enclosure case is as seamless as putting a NES cartridge into a sleeve, which could open a market for selling the cartridge cases separately to the sleeves for those with a good few drives lying around like myself.

Assessing the performance of a drive enclosure is somewhat difficult, since there’s a myriad of external factors to consider that may make my experience different to yours. For the sake of simplicity, I decided to run the same few basic tests with the same Kingston SSD (SA400S37/240G for those wanting the specific model) and cable in both the Retroflag enclosure and the Stockplop I’d been using previously. You can find the results below, with the Stockplop being tested first, and the Retroflag enclosure second.

From the brief tests above, you can see both enclosures have similar offerings in terms of performance. While it is a little disappointing to see a USB 3.0 Micro B port over a USB C on the more modern Retroflag enclosure, I don’t see it quite as sinful as a standard Micro USB on some of the more premium products we’ve reviewed.

Coming in both gold and grey with a black sleeve to wrap it up, Retroflag’s drive enclosure is something special. Capturing the feel and design of these traditional cartridges, it’s a well-built and affordable option at $20. If you’re needing a new external solution or just somewhere to stow a surplus drive, I can’t recommend it enough.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/monster-hunter-rise.1770/

I love hunting monsters. I want to preface my review with that. Joining the series many moons ago with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on both Wii U and 3DS, I’ve found myself excited for each new release, even going out of my way to play the 3DS games 4G and Double Cross before they hit western shores. It’s a marvellous series of grinding for the sake of grinding, and having a great time doing so with friends. Quite happily, I can say Rise is no different in this department.

The setting of our latest entry to the series is Kamura Village, a traditional Japanese-themed environment. As a recently-qualified hunter, it’s your job to go out on quests and strategically hit things to death with an assortment of fun weapons. The game doesn’t give you much in the way of plot to sink your teeth into. Monsters are getting angrier than usual and attacking the village in what is known as a Rampage. This is the first time it’s happened in 50 years, and you’d better be sure you’re going to find out what’s causing it! After a small bulk of text to introduce you to the village and the various shops you’ll no doubt be frequenting, you’re left to your own devices as to how you want to progress through the game.

As with the majority of previous games, World excluded, quests are split into two categories: Village and Gathering Hub, with quests further split between low and high rank. Typically speaking, village quests are where you’ll find the game’s story. Featuring monsters with weaker attacks and less HP, this is the exclusively single player portion of the game, and the ideal place to start for newcomers or those who want to explore what little narrative there is. Hub on the other hand is where the multiplayer content, and often the bulk of the quests lie. Featuring tougher monsters that are usually balanced to tackle multiple hunters at once, hub quests are where the real challenge and meat of the game can be found. Wanting to experience all that the game has to offer, I decided to start with village.

Village quests are broken down much as they have been in previous games. You have different ranks of difficulty, denoted by stars, with you needing to beat set quests in each rank to progress to the next. Rinse and repeat until you’re playing quests in the highest rank. One of the most significant quality of life changes jumps out to you as soon as you enter the quest menu: key quests are marked. And you don’t need to beat every key quest to progress. What this means for people who perhaps don’t want to meander through every quest is that they can pick and choose the ones that sound best for them. Not having to check a guide online to find out what’s required is a brilliant bonus too.

Looking at the quests themselves, I find myself mixed. As you work through what’s on offer in Kamura Village, you’ll find yourself constantly put against new threats. That’s great. It keeps things fresh. Where my problem lies is in the fact that these new threats are the vast majority of the content; that is to say a quest that requires you to hunt a single monster. I like hunting monsters, but I want more. With Generations Ultimate as its Switch predecessor, I almost feel spoiled for just how much was available to me. There were double monster hunts, hunt-a-thons where you’d be required to hunt at least three, quests based in the arena, standard three, four, five monster quests. More than anything, there were quests, numerically speaking. Looking solely at the low rank village offerings of Generations Ultimate, I could count 189 available quests on my incomplete save file. Village quests here total 53, with more than half of these being a single monster hunt to make said monster available to you. One pleasant surprise to village questing is how it does actually have an impact on your hunter rank now, the number that dictates which quests you can take on in the gathering hub. Traditionally, these are entirely disconnected, requiring you to hunt all the same monsters again. Now though, you’re given special licence quests to complete after achieving so much in the village. These quests are absolutely brilliant fun, and completely stand apart from the rest of the village offerings in the challenge on offer. Beating all three of these quests as they come up will propel you to high rank in the hub, which is especially nice given there’s no high rank village quests.

The gathering hub has similar offerings to that of its village counterparts. Notably here though, is the complete omission of gathering quests. There are absolutely none that can be done in a multiplayer environment, and only a handful of small monster hunts. It may be a game about hunting big monsters, but when there’s content that could so easily be made into quests just sitting there unused and your content offering is so limited, it seems foolish not to use it. Of interest, hub quests dynamically scale in difficulty based on the number of people hunting. This means monsters are perfectly manageable solo, and don’t become too easily overwhelmed should you decide to play with others. In my experience, I found quests lasting between 10 and 15 minutes regardless of whether I was playing solo or with others. Though this is far shorter than I’m used to in other games, often exceeding 30 minutes per quest in older titles, monsters still pack a punch. Even in endgame armour, I found myself feeling vulnerable if I let my guard down, regardless of the monster being fought. The quests that are available, though limited in number, have genuinely provided the most fun I’ve had with the series to date, much of this fun supported by the gameplay of World blended with the new Wirebug mechanic.

This game’s gimmick of sorts, the Wirebug is fantastic, and I’ve only come to enjoy its inclusion more as I’ve spent more time with the game. It’s really one of those additions that are what you make of them, and they have a great deal of useful utility. At a basic level, you can aim in any direction with ZL, and propel yourself using ZR, this consuming one Wirebug charge. Using this, you can get around maps and explore in a way previous games just couldn’t manage. On top of this though you have Wirebug attacks, powerful moves unique to each weapon. I’m really fond of how some of these bring back abilities seen in previous games, with several Hunter Arts from Generations making an appearance in this form. With each weapon also having a degree of customisation in the form of Switch Skills, you can tune your hunting experience to how you want to play in a fun and unique way. With my Dual Blade setup for example, I feel like I’m playing a blend of the adept and aerial styles of Generations, with one Switch Skill allowing me to propel myself into the air, and another allowing me to dodge into an attack to deal damage to a monster. This kind of freedom is welcome, and gives you a number of ways to keep the same weapon fresh.

Rise gives you five areas to hunt in. You have the green area, the desert, the ice place, the volcano, and one kind of unique place, as well as a few special arenas. Of the five core maps available, three are new to the series: Shrine Ruins, Frost Islands, and Lava Caverns. Shrine Ruins ties in well with the larger traditional Japanese theming of the game, littered with abandoned buildings, and a large mountainous area to explore. Of the new maps, it’s by far my favourite, with the other two feeling a little more by the books. The best maps of the game for me however were the two I’ve yet to mention: Sandy Plains and Flooded Forest, both originating in the series’ third generation of games. What they’ve done to these two maps is nothing short of magic, and to see the developers at Capcom try to rationalise the spaghetti of previously-zoned maps is a joy. Though the Flooded Forest is notably less flooded than it was in 3 Ultimate and more swamp-like, there are plenty of key areas you can pick out and say “hey, I remember here!”, and even some that made me go back to 3U and realise I never noticed them. I mean, how many of us really noticed the colossal pyramid in area two? I certainly didn’t.

While I found myself really enjoying the maps available, to my surprise I had the most fun with the new arena. The arena itself isn’t anything out of the ordinary. It’s a big circle with a few new destructible towers you can climb up, and the usual button-operated fence down the middle to split up monsters where you’re fighting more than one. What makes this arena more fun than usual is the fact the dividing fence can be scaled, completely mitigating the frustrating minutes of downtime should you accidentally seal both monsters on the other side of the fence from you. The few quests available in this area stand out to me as my shining moments with the game, and goes onto highlight a change made to monster behaviour in other areas.

Of the abilities the Wirebug grants you, one I neglected to mention earlier was Wyvern Riding. Similar to mounting in previous games, you can ride a monster after inflicting so much damage using Wirebug attacks. While you’re on the monster, you actually have some control and choice in what you’re doing. You can move the monster around, and make it fight other monsters with a combination of strong and weak attacks. On top of this, you can launch the monster you’re riding into a wall, or other monsters, to inflict a fair amount of damage. It’s great to actually do something with a mount, and the game really incentivises it with up to three shiny drops being available per monster when attacking a monster while mounted. These mounts ultimately end in a finisher, which leaves the monster knocked down and vulnerable to more typical abuse from hunters. On paper, this all checks out, but to accommodate for the fact the game wants you to bring monsters together to fight each other, a change was made to how monsters interact with one another, and the group hunting them.

Unlike in previous titles, monsters don’t really gang up on you. After using the finisher to immobilise the monster you’re fighting, your mount just… leaves? In my 120 hours of playing, I haven’t used a single dung bomb, these usually handy for making a monster run away from you. They just aren’t needed. If two large monsters are in the same area, you’ll see either a turf war or a small attack sequence that results in one monster becoming mountable. If you finish or mess up the mount, they’ll just leave the area anyway. Monsters fight other monsters–that’s cool! But losing the pressure of having multiple threats chasing you down is a big loss for me. The only time you run into this now is in the arena, where the fence is used to balance the threat in a closed space admittedly well.

When it comes to an endgame for Rise, there’s only really one option for you: Rampages. The hot new thing to grace the series, a Rampage is ultimately a Monster Hunter-themed tower defence game. You’ll place down turrets and face a few waves of monsters, before eventually slaying the leader of the Rampage to secure the victory. Based on how many objectives you complete during the quest, you’re ranked and given rewards to match. I think they’re great fun, but they rely heavily on you playing with other people to bring out their best. Much like hub quests, difficulty is scaled based on player count. This means you can play this game mode solo should you want to and utilise what automatic turrets are available to their fullest. Where I had the most fun though was basking in the frantic nature of the game mode with friends over an equally-frantic voice chat. You can also be paired up with random people, which has been a far better experience than I would have expected. I do feel matchmaking will drop off after the initial hype of launch dies down though.

What makes Rampages so good for endgame grinding is the rewards you get from completing them. Frankly, you get a lot, and a lot is exactly what you need if you’re wanting the best gear. While crafting armour and weapons relies on you collecting a set list of things from a variety of monsters and gathering points, talismans are different. Talismans are equipment that come with skills, and slots to put skills in for yourself. What makes talismans so powerful is the fact the skills they offer you are random, and some combinations just can’t be found in armour alone. To get talismans, you need to throw your leftover monster parts into the melding pot. With each part being assigned a point value, you need to put in a set amount of points to be awarded a random talisman. Since Rampages offer a lot of parts, as well as tickets that have a high point value, they’re where you’ll be spending most of your time if you want a constant stream of talismans. It can be frustrating. With so many possibilities, getting exactly what you want is incredibly uncommon, creating a somewhat artificial stream of content to support the lacklustre amount of standard quests. It’s fine, but if you don’t enjoy Rampages, you’ll find yourself running out of things to do once the final boss has fallen.

All in all, Monster Hunter Rise has me conflicted. It is without a doubt the peak of the series when it comes to gameplay and overall ease of access. Where it falls short however is in its sheer lack of content at launch. While I have no doubt this will be rectified over time, with the first major update scheduled for later this month, I can’t hide my disappointment in just how little there is to do for somebody like myself who’s already seen and done it all. For now, I’ll keep doing the occasional Rampage with friends and happily replay 3U on the side, waiting eagerly for when that new content drops.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/matias-programmable-ergo-pro-keyboard.1768/

In my time writing for GBAtemp, I’ve reviewed many a keyboard. Big and small, modern and garish, I’ve had a bit of everything. Of those used, I’ve struggled to find a more delightful typing experience than that of the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard. A split ergonomic design, it’s been my go-to for more than a year now. Much to my surprise, it has been dethroned, and by something so unassuming and normal looking–at least as normal as a split keyboard can look anyway. Let me introduce you to the Matias Programmable Ergo Pro.

The Ergo Pro sports a split tenkeyless design, featuring defined arrow keys and navigation buttons. Everything you’d expect from a tenkeyless keyboard is here with no attempt to obscure functionality behind layers as the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard did. This comes with its own set of pros and cons. At a surface level, it makes the keyboard incredibly easy to pick up and use with no real learning curve. And that’s because really there’s nothing to learn. If you’ve used a keyboard before, you’ll find pretty much everything where you’d expect it. The exception here is the quartet of navigation buttons, them now sitting next to the arrow keys in a cluster. I’m quite fond of this location, making them easier to reach and use. Though the Ergo Pro is easier to use out of the box, to say this is better overall would be to entirely overlook the purpose of these layers in other keyboards; they’re designed for ease of use and comfort in the long-term. Once you’ve adjusted to them, you find your hands moving less to reach for keys, and your productivity as a whole increasing. It’s not to say one approach is inherently better than the other, but different people will certainly have their preferences.

As split keyboards go, the options for use are also fairly standard, but still worth mentioning. The Ergo Pro supports three layouts: flat, negative tilt, and tented. This is achieved using three feet on each half that can be folded and unfolded to suit your desired layout. Interestingly, positive tilt just isn’t an option, perhaps because of the negative ergonomic impacts of positive tilt, its only real purpose being to make the lettering on the keys more visible. Thankfully, adjusting to both negative tilt and tented isn’t a difficult process, especially with a keyboard like this. Before going back to my usual tented layout, I did decide to give negative tilt a shot, and was pleasantly surprised by the experience. Tilted will however always be my recommendation where available; it just feels natural. It’s here I’ll also mention you have no option to join the keyboard halves together for a more traditional keyboard. This is an exclusively split keyboard, so just be aware of that before considering a purchase.

Looking to the features of the Ergo Pro, there’s little in the way of bells and whistles. As its programmable title would have you believe, there are a set of keys available to be remapped as you like. These include the twelve function keys, a blank key on the right half of the keyboard, both space keys, and the three (or four if you have a US layout) on the left half that are by default mapped to cut, copy, and paste. These can be remapped without any kind of software or driver by holding down the escape key and the key you’re wanting to remap. After this, you can enter a string of around 60 characters to be saved and reused as you wish. Really I have no complaints about this. It does lack some of the finesse you may find with software-supported macros, such as specified timings, but as a whole it’s a simple function I’m happy to see. A part of me does however wish the three keys dedicated to cut, copy, and paste had a more useful base function. While it’s great to have these keys and to remap them, their base functionality is incredibly redundant, especially on a keyboard trying to emphasise ergonomics. It’s far more straining to have to reach for these keys than it is to just use the standard two-key shortcuts.

The switches under the hood are something somewhat unique to Matias, their own Quiet Click design. Advertised as the world’s quietest mechanical switches, they’re actually a clone of the now-discontinued Alps SKBM Black. Unfortunately having not used those, the best comparison I could make is a similar feel to a brown switch, with a sound profile closer to a membrane keyboard. It’s really quite impressive. I can’t say for sure whether they really are the world’s quietest, but it wouldn’t surprise me. They’re a genuine joy to type on, and I can see them exceling in an office environment, or even for those now working from home and needing to type while on calls to colleagues.

There are however certain eccentricities you may have come to accept as standard missing here. The most notable of these would be a form of backlighting for the keys, though I can somewhat understand the rationale for skipping out on them in this instance. For one they just wouldn’t fit in with the keyboard design, but there is more to it. After a year of using my Ultimate Hacking Keyboard, I can certainly understand why any split keyboard would skip out on backlighting. To be blunt, you’re not supposed to be looking at the keys, and with this keyboard in my opinion targeting the office audience more than gaming, it’s expecting you to be in a well-lit environment anyway. The only out of the ordinary feature you can expect to find on this keyboard is the fact that there’s three USB 2.0 ports built into the right half. I don’t personally use them since my laptop struggles to give the keyboard enough power to get any usable performance out of them, but it’s an interesting addition if nothing else.

From a design standpoint, it’s something that you’d expect to see in an office too. It’s plain with a black plastic body, and an unassuming wrist rest. Nothing about it particularly screams premium, and this does extend to its choice of ports. The right half connects to the PC via micro USB, and the keyboard halves are joined using a 3.5mm cable, similar to what a pair of earphones relies on. Contrary to how it looks though, the keyboard feels sturdy, the gel wrist rest is one of the comfiest I’ve had the pleasure of using, and Matias even go out of their way to provide several cables of differing lengths for different use cases. On the surface, it’s such an easy keyboard to overlook, but it shines in its performance and usability. There’s even different models for PC and Mac, as well as a UK variant for PC that I always appreciate, as well as the US model available for both PC and Mac.

The Ergo Pro is a bit of a hard sell and I understand that, especially at its £220 price point. It’s nothing to look at, and it lacks the flair to show off as a desk centrepiece. Having said that, it stands above every other keyboard I’ve reviewed in terms of usability and comfort. I genuinely look forward to eventually finding a keyboard to dethrone this, because it’ll really have to be something extraordinary.