Those of us old enough to have played Halo: Combat Evolved when it was first around (I think we're boomers now?) will have probably done so with the most legendary of all Xbox controllers.

The Duke.

The absolute goliath of a controller that back then, in my teenage hands, felt like a dinner plate. But what a thing. Hefty, sturdy, a real piece of equipment. I adapted pretty quickly, having been used to the equally sizable Dreamcast controller, and have many fond memories of one of Xbox's most iconic franchises.

I hadn't even thought of digging out my Hyperkin Duke for Halo: Campaign Evolved until I came across a thread on Reddit simply calling it a "nostalgia rush."

It just feels right.

The only trouble is that if you don't already have one of Hyperkin's remade controllers, they're not as plentiful as they once were.

Right now you can only buy the white Xbox 20th anniversary edition, with the original black and the crystal green ones no longer in stock (unless you hunt a used one down.)

The Hyperkin Duke is a perfect recreation of the original, except you can use it on modern Xbox consoles and your PC. The icing on the cake is the OLED panel in the giant center button that shows the OG Xbox boot-up screen when the controller is connected.

As my colleague, Jez Corden, wrote when first trying it out, this controller is built for nostalgia. Playing backwards compatible games with it just feels right. Halo: Campaign Evolved may be shiny and new, but it's as classic an Xbox game as you can get.

After all, the original incarnation of the game was the console seller back then. I'm not a massive Halo fan these days, but the original is the game that got me to buy an Xbox. The first time I played it at a friend's house with a Duke, all of my next paycheck from my part-time job was used to buy a console and a copy of Halo.

I haven't played Campaign Evolved yet, but suddenly I have the urge to dig out my green Duke from the box of many things in the attic and get to it. Better still, I guess, now we're also getting original Xbox backwards compatible games on PC, too.

Oh, and if the Duke is a little too big, you can still buy the smaller Duchess from Hyperkin, too. Same nostalgia, smaller size.

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Earlier this week, my colleague, Alex Cope, wrote a piece detailing how a surprise game had turned around his growing ill feelings towards gaming. It resonated with me because it mirrors a lot of the same feelings I've been having myself.

There's a huge selection of great games out there, don't get me wrong, but the whole state of the industry weighs heavy. Not to mention I'm really burned out on live service gaming and the constant grift.

Thanks to another of my colleagues, Ben Wilson, I finally opened up a couple of games I've had sitting in my Steam backlog for actual years: American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2.

I. Am. Hooked.

I've always known how popular these games are, but I finally get it. You're given an enormous sandbox to play in, and you can make of it what you wish. Play the game, make your own game, change it with add-ons, or play with others on community servers.

These are old games but still get new content regularly and, at some point, will finally arrive on console, too. If you look at them and think it might be a tedious gameplay loop, you couldn't be more wrong.

For me, it's all about the drive

You can pretty much make of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator what you want. There's no campaign to speak of, and from the off you're able to drive anywhere on any of the maps you own.

For me, it's the driving that's completely sucked me in. I could easily be making money faster, buying more trucks, hiring more drivers, and building my own virtual empire, but I'm not really driven that way.

It's all about the road trips. Leveling up to open up bigger, more valuable cargo earns more monetary reward, but it also opens up longer drives. It's one of the most relaxing video games I've ever played.

Sure, AI traffic at times acts dumb and produces a bit of the old virtual road rage, but mostly it's me, my trailer, and the open road. Stick on some music from the selection of in-game but still real-world radio stations, settle in, and admire the surroundings.

It can be challenging, too. Navigating tight roads gets the brain matter working, and I'm still not very good at reversing a trailer, but it also never feels frustrating. There's a real sense of satisfaction when you do it right and don't crash into everything around you.

Hours just fly past. Thinking, "Oh, I'll just jump on and do a few short deliveries," suddenly becomes driving across the entire map. I don't even have all the DLCs for either of the games, but without consciously thinking about it, I'm accepting a 1,000-mile+ drive from New Mexico up to Oregon.

I've spent more time in American Truck Simulator than I have in Euro Truck Simulator 2 purely because I think the drives are better. I've seen plenty of real-life Europe in my years on the planet, and it's nice, but it's not quite the same as some of the spectacular scenery in the U.S.

It feels more like a real road adventure to me.

Both games have limitless potential for customization

Besides the quantity of official DLCs, both American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 have quite ridiculous mod support. Both from the Steam Workshop and external sources.

I've barely scratched the surface of this yet, but it's mindboggling how far you can go. You can add real-life companies to replace the standard, fake ones. You can download new vehicles, including those not officially in the game. There are graphics mods, physics mods, weather mods, mods to customize your trucks, and mods to change the traffic.

If you can think of it, there's probably already a mod for it.

There are also ways to play with others. Inside the game, there are convoys that you can join in with, but there are also external options, with the most well-known being TruckersMP.

This is a mod that allows you to drive on dedicated servers alongside other real people rather than AI traffic, and there's a whole community built around it. I haven't yet dipped a toe in the multiplayer waters, so I can't speak with any authority, but the option is there.

Ultimately, you can make the experience your own. If you want to go down the hyper-realism route, you can. If you're happy just trucking by yourself using the official content, you can do that too. Or any step in between.

Both Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator play great on handhelds

Most of my time trucking so far has actually been spent on my Steam Deck, feet up on the sofa. One day I'm going to get more serious with a wheel and probably a button box, but it's perfectly enjoyable with a controller and a handheld.

Both games actually have a native Linux version you can enjoy on the Steam Deck, and both are still being kept up to date with the Windows equivalent. I've been playing it through Proton instead, and I do think it's a little better overall. But you don't have to. They're as pick-up-and-play as it can be on SteamOS.

There are limitations, and frame rate will drop in some of the newer DLCs and the bigger cities, but overall, it's superb. I'm not even playing on the lowest settings, either. Some are set to low, but most are on medium, and it's working just fine. It looks good enough to still feel impressive on those long drives through the countryside.

Both are perfect games to play on a handheld, and for me at least, I get added relaxation from moving away from my gaming PC. The one I spend all day in front of while I'm working. These two truck sims plus the Steam Deck are a perfect antidote.

Mostly, I'm wondering why I waited so long. I said the same about Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, too.

I've always loved games where you can explore, and what's better than a huge open map to drive across as you please?

If you've ever been even curious, I definitely recommend checking out at least one of them. The base games are cheap, and while there's a lot of DLC map add-ons, there's enough road in each of the base maps to help you get a feel for it.

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Technology rarely stands still, and having a job like this means seeing newer, better, faster hardware on a regular basis. But through all of the upgrades I've made in the last decade, there's one piece of tech that has been with me throughout and won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

Many years ago, I bought a monitor to pair with my gaming PC of the time. You can read about it in my Dell S2417DG review, which I had to double-check the date on. I've had this monitor for 9 years now.

It's not the only PC monitor I've used in that time, of course. I've paired it with various other secondaries, and I've moved it off to use with another PC while I review other monitors.

But almost a decade after cracking open the box, it's still here. It's my primary display for work and for PC gaming, and unlike every other piece of tech I've got itchy feet over upgrading through the years, I've got no plans to get rid of the Dell S2417DG. It's still plenty good enough, even for gaming when refresh rates have gone through the roof. I absolutely adore it.

What makes the Dell S2417DG so good

When I originally bought and subsequently reviewed the Dell S2417DG, I was looking for three things in particular.

• 1440p
• High refresh rate
• NVIDIA G-Sync support

At a then-list price of $430, compared to a lot of the competition, the S2417DG represented phenomenal value. The key specs that drew me to this specific model are highlighted in the table below.

When I bought it, I'd just secured an NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti, the beast of its time, and my previous primary monitor didn't have a refresh rate or resolution high enough to allow me to stretch its legs.

Fast forward 9 years and I'm still happy gaming at 1440p and still happy at 165Hz. Could I do 4K? Sure, I'm fortunate to be running an RTX 5090 these days. Could I do more frames? Absolutely.

I've tested laptops and monitors with higher resolution and/or refresh rates far in excess of 165Hz and never once felt I needed more in my own setup. Playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at 240Hz rather than 165Hz is not going to suddenly change the game for me. It certainly won't help a gamer in his forties be any better at it.

For day-to-day use, I've long felt 120Hz is the sweet spot. I only really use 165Hz because this monitor has a factory overclock, so why not?

But it has everything I need. The color isn't the absolute greatest, but 98% sRGB is fine for my needs since I don't do any serious color accuracy work, and games still look great.

Even with an older DisplayPort standard, I haven't yet been held back, and the 1ms response has since been beaten by newer monitors, but again, it was more than enough back then for me, and it's still the same today.

In years past, I also made use of the USB 3.0 hub built into the monitor. Nowadays my desktop PC has enough USB ports that are faster than this that I don't need to. But in the early days it was extremely useful.

Only one area this monitor has started to underperform

Over the lifespan of this monitor, I've also used it hooked up to my Xbox console. It's only here, now, that it's starting to show its age.

The HDMI 1.4 port on the Dell S2417DG is hard-capped at 60Hz, even though it will still support the 1440p native resolution. Even dropping to 1080p, that 60Hz cap applies on this monitor.

It's not a total dealbreaker, since 60Hz has been fine on console for long enough, but with an Xbox Series X I'm not able to make full use of the 120Hz capabilities in supported games using this monitor anymore.

As such, the Xbox Series X has been hooked up to a more modern 1080p monitor with a newer spec HDMI connection. I'll take frame rate over resolution any day.

I don't see the point in 'upgrading' to a newer monitor

Are there better monitors out there? Of course there are. There are plenty with 4K displays, OLED, faster refresh rates, and larger panels.

But I've long felt 1440p is the sweet spot for gaming. I don't have the space for large displays, and having tested higher refresh rate panels, I don't actually feel like I'd be getting anything beneficial.

Call of Duty is the only 'competitive' game I play, and I've got enough FPS to be comfortable in that. Looking at what's out there right now at prices I'd be comfortable paying, I feel like any new monitor would be a sidegrade, less so than an upgrade.

Would I be better off with more up-to-date ports? Most likely I would, but I've been fine for 9 years now without feeling like I'm held back. The old warhorse is still pulling along as well as it ever did.

I'm also a big believer in not adding to e-waste. I could sell this on to someone else, but it works well enough still, so what's the point in that? Times are hard, everything is more expensive than ever before, and you never know when you'll need to cash in a kidney to buy another stick of RAM or an SSD.

I truly can't think of another piece of tech I still own and have used for as long as this monitor consistently. I'm just praying that writing about it doesn't hex the whole thing and I wake up tomorrow and it decides it's had enough...

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We're headed towards an all-digital future, and there's nothing we can do about it. We've only ourselves to blame, really. As more of us moved away from buying physical music, movies, and video games, it's given the platform holders the fuel they need to do away with it entirely.

PlayStation has already pulled the trigger, confirming that from 2028 there will be no new physical console games released. The next Xbox, Project Helix, is going to be some kind of PC/console mashup, and we're expecting it'll do the same. We already have the Xbox Series S and a digital-only version of the Xbox Series X.

I'm not an eggs-in-either-basket person. I have a large library of digital content, as well as physical games, music, and movies. I like buying a thing on a disc, and I appreciate the convenience of not having to do that, also.

But in less than a week we've had two major Xbox outages and one from PlayStation; living proof this all-digital future we seem to be locked into is going to be pretty awful at times.

Unfortunately, I don't really know the answer. One thing is pretty clear, though; we need more robust systems in place and we need reliable ways to enjoy our content in an offline environment when these systems go down.

Offline access needs to be guaranteed

It's not just Xbox and PlayStation catching attention for the wrong reasons in recent weeks. Ubisoft had a hit on its hands when it launched Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, only to stomp all over it when folks couldn't play it offline on PC.

A Ubisoft Connect outage somehow also stopped players playing the game offline, leading us to question whether Ubisoft even knows what an offline mode really is. Ironically there were comments about saying pirated versions of the game were working just fine

We've since found out that a licensing tool not specific within Microsoft to just Xbox is what failed and ultimately brought everything crashing down around it. Folks couldn't even see their library of 'owned' games. All these systems are in place to prove 'ownership' of our content, and it turns out that they're not necessarily up to scratch.

Steam, for all its faults, at least has a pretty robust offline mode. There are still conditions that need to be met, but assuming you keep game files up to date, there's no external connection required to launch or play, and it uses Steam's own DRM for your 'ownership' check, you're usually able to play when you don't have a connection.

I've had a Steam Deck for four years now and never once have had an issue playing a game offline on it that didn't need outside connections. The rest really do need to catch up.

The future really isn't so bright after all

I've been feeling increasingly disillusioned with gaming over the past few months, for many reasons I won't go into here. The Xbox layoffs situation certainly hasn't helped.

But I think it also carries over a little from other media. Trying to explain to my children what it was like when I was their age is like speaking a foreign language.

Going to Blockbuster to find a movie to watch at the weekend. Hitting the local games store with friends to hunt for something new to play, then being able to just put a cartridge or disc into a console and get right to playing it. No updates, no accounts, just straight into the fun.

The entertainment industry as a whole is structured now to take as much money as possible from us and give us the least in return. Instead of focusing on making good games (at least at the biggest studios), the focus is on how to ensure that a game can extract revenue for as long as possible.

We're paying more than ever with less to show for it. And it's only going to get worse.

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