Once more in the holidays' midst

 Halloween has long since come and gone (although leftover candy still lingers), veterans got their brief nod, Thanksgiving has waddled off for another year (although leftover pie still lingers, but not for long), and Christmas is on the horizon.  And still, Russia and Israel (and why not, likely Hamas as well) can keep fucking off.

Internationally, it's mostly status quo shit show.  Apparently, we're back to trying to carry Russia's water for them when it comes to talks about stopping their invasion (which, of course, they could stop single-handedly by just... stopping).  Israel has its ceasefire with Hamas, so apparently decided that meant attacks in the West Bank and Lebanon were fine (insert Inigo Montoya "that word you keep using" meme here).  We're still blowing up small boats in the Caribbean, apparently using "no survivors" orders that will hopefully find a suitable courtroom one day.  All that, and our president is now declaring the entire airspace of other countries as "closed", seemingly preparing to launch a war with no say-so from Congress (you know, like the Constitution demands).

Here at home, it's a little more interesting.  People are noticing things like groceries costing more, in spite of the gaslighting from Trump's team, and some of those people are starting to figure out that it's not the only thing they've been lied to about.  It's a similar story for people with ties to the immigrant community, noticing the whole "we're only after the violent criminal illegals" line means more like "if you're not white enough, be prepared to have a bad day".  The surprise from this is that, apparently, some Republicans in Congress have had enough, to the point of "retiring early" so they don't have to try and defend all this bullshit through the midterm election cycle... and actually retiring early enough that off-cycle elections could, theoretically, alter the balance in the House at least.  It's not time to be dancing in the streets yet (except maybe as part of a No Kings rally or the like), but big cracks start small and all that.

 So, real-world stuff out of the way, what's up in play-land?  I gave The Outer Worlds 2 a go, and enjoyed it well enough... for a time.  Honestly, it brought to mind a lot of the issues I had with Avowed (see my thoughts on that here), but the world presented isn't as focused (they looked to draw inspiration from a lot of different things, games especially, that I've seen before), and the skill/perk system all but demands a more specialized build to be effective.  On the plus side, it doesn't have the "tiered loot" system Avowed did, they found a way to handle healing with food/chems that isn't a massive chore, and earning character "quirks" through actual gameplay activity was a breath of fresh air.  I didn't like it enough to pay more for it right now, but, like Avowed, it's likely good enough for a sale-price pickup eventually.

Outside of that game, well... Herdling was a nice evening's worth of game, not too complex and very what-you-see-is-what-you-get.  Stellaris certainly looked like a good way to consume your life with 4x space-empire building, if that's your thing.  But my main takeaway (as in I was willing to buy it to keep playing after Game Pass expires) is PowerWash Simulator 2, a follow-on to the 2022 game I briefly mentioned here - it's basically the same game as before (maybe slightly easier?), making it perfect for an hour or so here and there, and it's been long enough since the last one that the sting of that one's last level has faded a bit.

So now what?  Well, I'm in my annual "buy for others, not for me" phase, and I've come up with a mad scheme.  I found the "list games by playtime" section of my Steam profile, and I'm going to work my way up from the bottom, trying out and categorizing old games in preparation for the launch of the new version of the Steam Machine.  No, I'm not going to do detailed reviews or anything like that... but, the first game of any substance I found this way was a copy of Fallout that I got who-knows-when and never played... or before Steam started doing play-time tracking (yet more proof that I've become Old).  I'll just say that it both works surprisingly well on my Ubuntu box, and still seems surprisingly fun to play nearly 30 years later (it released in 1997!), just don't try to run it windowed on a modern screen.

Stopped clocks, lowered expectations, and all that

 Never let it be said that I won't give credit where credit is due.  Somehow, since last I wrote, team Trump has managed to get a (technical) ceasefire going between Israel and Hamas that hasn't fully fallen apart yet.  Also, in the Russian invasion of Ukraine matter, they've managed to not swing back to their earlier stance of fellating Putin yet, so good job there.  Still, the fuck-off tally for Russia, Israel, and Hamas keeps going up for now, although the last two could be coming to an end if things keep improving rather than falling apart.

Of course, things holding steady or marginally improving overseas doesn't mean the same is happening closer to home.  There's more bonkers pardons (including a Bitcoin mogul) and sentence commutations (including George fucking Santos), more attempts at installing federalized troops in various predominantly-Democratic cities (thankfully mostly held in check by the courts so far), and more trade/tariff insanity (like cutting off trade talks with Canada over the airing of a commercial including Ronald Regan's thoughts on tariffs, of all things).  I'm sure there would be a lot more, but, currently, the government is "shut down" because the Republicans tried to force a funding bill down the throats of the Democrats in the Senate, and they didn't take kindly to that, but the Republicans won't back down - something about the bill allowing tax cuts to expire and make health care significantly more expensive for average Americans, but they're not wealthy donors, or something like that.  The end result of which is that there's a lot of "non-essential" spending that, legally, can't be done right now.

Of course, that doesn't stop team Trump from plowing forward.  Sometimes, that's in readily-defensible ways like trying to reroute existing Department of Defense funds to pay military paychecks (because unpaid troops are one path to a revolution nobody wants to see).  Others, not so much, like tearing down a wing of the White House (!) to make room for a ballroom funded by private donors.  Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd see the day where the "Epstein memorial ballroom, sponsored by Amazon" could possibly be a thing.

Well, enough about that real-world bother.  Last I wrote, I was getting into Visions of Mana, and I can happily report that I liked... the first half of the game.  Finding out that the whole villager sacrifice thing was basically an emergency response to changing world(s) conditions that just gradually became "that's how it's always been done" was a bit more true-to-life than I've come to expect from this genre of game.  Then, I hit the "betrayed former hero" trope, which could have been something interesting, about the same time I got reminded that this is a NetEase game, a company that's been doing questionable things to Western developers in recent years, and I went from "let's play it through" to "let's see what Wikipedia has to say about the story going forward".  Simply put, it didn't really resonate with me (especially bits about people getting a happy ending "in their next life"), so I stopped.

Since then, well, more No Man's Sky, and I had enough "play later" entries in my Game Pass queue that, since Outer Worlds 2 is getting good press and coming to the service later this week, I upgraded to the new-and-more-expensive Ultimate tier a bit early.  The only backlog game that's stood out positively to me so far is Wheel World, a bicycle racing game with some bike crafting and world-saving thrown in for flavor.  Definitely a "look at a video, you'll know if it's for you" sort of game.

I'll try to let you all know what I think about Outer Worlds 2 next time, as well as other good Game Pass backlog titles I get to.  I'd say the same about improvements in real-world conditions as well, but that's not the trend-line I'm seeing right now.

What a month

 For starters, Russia, Israel, and Hamas, kindly fuck off, keep on fucking off... you know the drill by now.

You know, I remember a time when I'd hear some government pronouncement or other, and, at worst, my reaction would be "well, I don't like it, but I can see what they're trying to handle."  These days, it seems like every time I hear something, it elicits a "fuck off" or "fuck you" reflexive response, and that's just plain not healthy.  But what else am I supposed to say, when the Supreme Court says racial profiling is OK when ICE does it, Congress is delaying swearing in a newly-elected member for nakedly partisan (Epstein files) reasons, and the President and his team are a non-stop shit show?

Of course, that's all the expected fun of the current (hopefully to continue without shenanigans) election cycle.  Then, you get wildcards like the Charlie Kirk killing coming into play to add spice to everything.  For anybody blissfully unaware, Mr. Kirk was a rabble-rouser whose shtick was going to college campuses to try and get people to "prove him wrong" on topics of his choosing, where he came prepared with cherry-picked data and a willingness to say pretty much anything to defend his chosen ground.  Because of that, he's got a wealth of quotes about things like (to paraphrase) empathy being a made-up term that does damage, and gun deaths being an acceptable cost for the Second Amendment.  That alone makes me feel justified in finding it fitting that he died from a gunshot at a rally he was holding while trying to shape a gun-violence argument in terms of gang violence.  Frankly, for all it came at the hands of a gent of questionable stability, the fact that he won't get to profit from the world he was trying to create pleases me greatly.

Naturally, that's not how Mr. Kirk's allies see things.  Rather, he gets called a hero and a martyr, while bringing up a shadowy "them" as being responsible, with revenge needing to be taken - and that's just from the President and his team!  No surprise then that when the late-night comedians started weighing in, Trump's head of the FCC decided to take the opportunity to try and force one off the air, in this case Jimmy Kimmel.  A couple of the larger station-owners (Sinclair and Nexstar) played along, performatively scheduling a Kirk memorial in place of Kimmel's ABC show, and Disney got the message, "indefinitely suspending" the show.

Amazingly, given this timeline, people at large decided this was a step too far, and responded by canceling their Disney+ memberships.  Long story short, Disney relented, the station owners relented, the FCC head is making noises about how he really wasn't trying to censor anybody, and Disney's shareholders are now demanding info on how Disney's actions were in their best interest, which is all lovely to see.  As for me, I don't own Disney stock and didn't have Disney+ to cancel, so it's purely spectator sport for now.  Of course, if Nexstar's attempted acquisition of Tegna (which owns my local CBS affiliate) goes through, I'll have to delete those channels from my over-the-air channel list, but that's about it.

Whew.  Well, that's enough about the shit state of the real world, how about a game? I've been tooling around in No Man's Sky, but I decided to give Visions of Mana a shot, since it came onto Game Pass.  I like what I've played so far, although the background theme of "villages cheerfully offering up sacrifices to keep things stable" is more than a little jarring - I really want to see how things play out there.  Well, that, and getting a cat-folk party member that's not a cat-girl (with all the baggage that comes with that) is kind of entertaining, although seeing him triple-wield daggers by involving his tail is a bit over the top, really.

Summer doldrums time again

 Yeah, the world's still shit, and the nation's going to hell in a handbasket, so the traditional hearty "fuck all y'all" to the major players there.

That out of the way... summer is winding down (for all the weather hasn't gotten the memo yet), and there's no rioting in the streets yet, so I find myself with disturbingly little to do with myself.  It's Labor Day tomorrow, which, in my case, means I'll actually do some labor (housecleaning, likely), and past that work will be ramping back up a bit, but there's all that other time to be filled, and I can only watch so much anime.  Which brings us to games.

I've effectively finished Monster Sanctuary (as in, I hit an end-game difficulty spike that says "casual players need not apply").  Civ VII isn't striking me as something I want to play right now, and Baldur's Gate 3, well, I've played a bit, but it's not sticking either.  I'm still plinking away at Balatro and Spelunky in short bursts.  I've got Dorfromantik and Islanders: New Shores set up on the Steam Deck (think world- and city-builder puzzle titles respectively, I like 'em!), but anything more than an hour of either tends to put me to sleep, especially later at night.  Basically, I need something more engaging-in-the-moment to hold my attention right now.

For now, I've hopped back into No Man's Sky, which just released an update with ship-building (and yet another free update, at that!).  Will it hold my attention long enough for the Outer Worlds 2 to come out in October, or will my attention inevitably rotate to something else in the meantime?  Time will tell!

Things are not right or normal - call it out!

 Just to get tradition out of the way, here's a quick "fuck off" to the international bad actors of the age - Russia, Israel, Hamas, and anybody else looking to set aside or ignore the established conventions of the world that keep things civilized.

That done, here's a quick update on some of the shit in play in the USA.  Whether it's yet another attempt to distract from Trump's Epstein problems, trying to solidify their power for the mid-term elections, or some mix of those, we've got a combined assault on fair elections currently underway.  Most recently, we've got Trump issuing executive orders (which, as always, aren't laws) trying to push through an out-of-cycle census that would exclude some people, in an effort to mess with how many representatives each state can send to Congress.  Meanwhile, we've also got the Republican contingent of the Texas state representatives trying to push through an out-of-cycle redistricting to try and send more Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives next election.

Now that we're firmly in the realm of "taking jobs and power that matter", Democrats are, unsurprisingly, reacting.  Naturally, that includes various other, Democrat-heavy states making threats about doing the same thing Texas is trying to do, but the immediately important thing that's happening is that the Democratic Texas state representatives have made themselves scarce, so that they're not just letting things happen as if that's just how things are supposed to work.  They've done so well enough that the state house can't get enough representatives together to legally do any business, which is a bonus - and you know it's effective from all the shit Texas Republicans are throwing at the wall, hoping something will stick (trying to get the FBI involved in a civil matter?  Really?).

In an unrelated matter, nationwide net neutrality is off the table again, after a lawsuit loss on appeal against a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court.  In normal times, this wouldn't be the end of the story, because they could go through one or two more rounds of appeals, ending at the Supreme Court, albeit a process that would take a fair amount of time and money.  Instead, they're dropping the case, but making sure everybody knows that one big reason that they're doing so is because they know that they wouldn't get a fair hearing at the Supreme Court.  To illustrate, the spokes-lawyer in the story I linked said the conservative majority of the court "have shown hostility to sound legal reasoning" and "cares very little about the rule of law", which is about as damning a thing you can say about any court, never mind the Supreme Court.

So yeah, seriously, no more "both sides are bad", no more go-along-to-get-along.  We need more of this level of response to the sort of bullshit Republicans are trying to pass off as business as usual.  Mind you, I am explicitly not saying "don't take part in elections" or anything like that - especially since elections are about the only way things are going to improve.  Well, short of everybody going out and punching a Nazi, but elections are definitely the cleaner way to fix things, if they're allowed to work.

Another month of crap... but then, there's Monster Sanctuary

 There's just so, so much wrong with the world today.  On the global scale, of course there's Russia's invasion of Ukraine (fuck off, Russia), and the whole Israel-Hamas thing (a pox on both your houses), which has, naturally, evolved into Israel fucking with humanitarian aid to Gaza to the extent of kids dying from malnutrition.  Nothing new from Iran, India, or Pakistan lately, but Thailand and Cambodia are looking to step up to the plate.  Meanwhile, Trump is back to his tariff-bullying ways, and, whichever help us, some countries are falling in line, signing trade deals in exchange for reduced pain.

That brings us to the national issues, things like "Alligator Auschwitz" for the concentration of illegal immigrants rounded up by ICE's masked miscreants, and new executive orders looking to target the homeless, among other governmental endeavors.  Now they're working their way down to mass media, between pulling funding from public broadcasting (because they don't like what they're saying) and forcing CBS to accept a political officer (sorry, "ombudsman") to approve a merger between Paramount and Skydance (to ensure they like what CBS is saying).  There, I'm kind of sorry that all I can do is remove my local CBS channel from my TV's channel lineup - I don't have any goods or services that are part of the larger picture, and I refuse to consume media from any outlet with a political officer involved.

It's not all bad, though... Trump and company have been fighting hard to get the whole "Epstein Files" issue out of the headlines, but they're finding that's not easy when they brought on a large part of their base with promises to release everything related to that pre-election.  Funny thing, people viscerally care about pedophiles running about free, especially when it's arguably/demonstrably the rich and powerful that are tied into the whole mess.  Will any of this bear fruit?  Tune in next month!

Well, enough of the shit state of the world, how about a game recommendation instead?  Monster Sanctuary is best described as a pixel-art Metroidvania Pokemon game.  You collect a team of monsters that levels up with you as you go along, each with their own skill tree.  You use those monsters in various kinds of fights with other monsters, as well as using their powers while traversing the game world to let you find treasures and traverse areas that would otherwise be impassable.  I picked it up for $5 in the last Steam sale, and, somewhere around halfway through, I'd say it's worth full price, if a game like this appeals to you at all.  My Steam Deck gaming routine now is to get an in-game day of Book of Hours played, then spend the rest of the night playing Monster Sanctuary.

Meanwhile, my XBox Series X is mainly my Crunchyroll streaming box at the moment, with the odd bit of Balatro or Spelunky thrown in for flavor.  Civ VII, well, I finished a playthrough, and started another one, but, well, for all its differences, it's still Civ at its base... I'll still plink about with it on occasion, but, right now, I'd be hard-pressed to say I'd jump back into it whole-heartedly once I've dealt with Monster Hunter and Book of Hours.  I'm thinking it's more likely I'll give Baldur's Gate 3 another go, when that time comes, assuming some other new shiny hasn't come along to demand my attention.

Given the state of this world... yeah, Civ VII works for me

 So, in addition to all the crap otherwise happening in the world, Israel decided to turn it up a notch by turning their bombing attentions to Iran.  How much of the why of that is the stated "we can't let Iran have nuclear weapons", and how much is Israeli leadership looking to keep a war footing at home so they don't have to face personal consequences for their actions, I have no way of knowing.  Funny thing, though... Iran has some continuing capacity to fight back, and Israel has the gall to complain about some of their targeting choices, which mirror what Israel was just doing to Gaza a little while ago.

Oh well, no worries, regional conflicts, minor powers, and all that, right?  Of course not, not when we've got our supposedly America First president in play.  See, there was at least one site in Iran that Israel didn't have the tools to destroy properly, but we do, in the form of a "bunker buster" bomb.  So, after a degree of waffling (and, doubtless, wanting to distract from his current issues and offset the "TACO" reputation he's built of late), Trump orders a strike on Iran.

Now, for those of you who don't keep up on that whole international relations thing, that would be an act of war.  As in, before you go bombing the bejeezus out of a country, you're supposed to declare war first (and yes, we've done plenty of this in the past, which doesn't make it right).  The ones who get to declare war around here are the members of Congress, not the President (although, if you want a more nuanced description of that, here's a link).  At least, that's what the Constitution says.  Of course, I'm sure Congress will get right on that, especially after The Onion put out an editorial declaring how now, more than ever, we need their cowardice.

While I wait with not-bated breath for that, a few words about Civilization VII.  Yes, I'm playing that at the same time as I'm playing Book of Hours, and the easy explanation on that is that, mid-week, Book of Hours is easier to put down as bedtime approaches.

Civ VII still has the one-more-turn stickiness of past entries, but the structure has changed more than a little, with the full game getting broken down into "ages", with major events/calamities to close out each age before a partial reset to start the next age.  It's a structure that has more than its share of critics, but I happen to like it.  After I finish my current game, and maybe one or two at higher difficulty (I'm basically curb-stomping the AI on this run), maybe I'll do a proper write-up on it.  For now, it's enough to say I'm liking it more than Civ VI, and I'm liking it more than some of the off-brand alternatives out there right now - for example, I picked up Old World through a Humble Bundle recently, and the reliance on "workers" a la older versions of Civ there, among other dated/limiting mechanics, sent me packing.