300 days of Russian aggression, and life goes on here

The winter solstice approaches, Christmas is right around the corner, and yet there is still a huge stain on what would otherwise be a joyous season.  Today, I'm told, marks day 300 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  While Ukraine has managed to stall, and even push back a bit on, the Russian advance, thanks in part to the weaponry that the U.S. and Europe have poured in, the conflict still goes on.  The stories of outright war crimes committed by Russian forces are staggeringly routine at this point, and they've even made not-so-veiled threats to start using nuclear weapons if we keep giving the Ukrainians better tools to defend themselves with.  I won't say that I would welcome that outcome, but at least it would likely end the farce of "we're not fighting you, we're just providing all the weapons the guys fighting you are using" that has allowed this state of affairs to continue for as long as it has.

Well, enough of that for now, I guess.  Here at home, not much has changed.  Destiny 2 is still the game of choice for now, although I have doubts that will continue past the current season, what with the increased level of shameless monetization that's crept in.  Cats and work are still all doing as hoped and expected.  That electric car... well, months on, no progress, but I kind of expected that, from all I've heard of backlogs for those things.

And that... is pretty much everything of note at the moment.  Happy Holidays to you and yours, and here's to better years to come, with any luck.

Again with the games and Ukraine stuff

 So, I'm told it's the 200th day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  The only change of note being that Ukraine has reclaimed some of the territory it initially lost.  Good on them, here's hoping for more of the same, since we're content to just keep feeding them materiel instead of getting our collective hands dirty.

Games, then... I ended up finishing the campaign in Power Wash Simulator, but the final mission (cleaning a pyramid/palace/temple thing) broke me for the game, just because the scale was so much larger than anything I'd had to clean up to that point (including a subway station).  I had my fun with the game, but I don't see myself going back for any of the optional content, pretty much ever.

After that, I took a quick detour to play some Popup Dungeon.  You can probably tell pretty quick whether it's the game for you, with its tactical RPG mechanics and papercraft aesthetic.  I really rather like it, and may well come back to put more time into it as the mood strikes me, but it just wasn't enough to scratch a very specific itch I was having, so it's fallen by the wayside for now.

The itch needing scratched being, of course, Destiny 2.  I actually tried to convince myself that any similar/adjacent shooters would do the job, but they all came up short in my estimation on one basis or another.  Luckily, the most recent "major release" was on sale over the Labor Day weekend, and the current season (space pirates, woohoo!) had only been live for a week, so I got in on the relatively cheap.  Of course, being the game it is, I doubt I'll be pulling away from it before winter at the earliest, but time will tell, as always.

Outside of that, one bit of news... I did put in an order for a 2023 Chevy Bolt EV.  My aged Toyota Yaris hatchback is coming due for major maintenance in the spring, there's enough infrastructure to make owning an electric car feasible now, the new car should be significantly more efficient, and pulling power from our regulated electric utility rather than the wild price swings and dubious sourcing of gasoline vendors, all of those (plus potential tax incentives, of course) convinced me that now is the time to make the switch.  Plus, I can just see the confused looks on peoples' faces when I pull up to a pump in it, until I pull out the gas can in the back for the mower.  I'm really looking forward to it.

The power of simplicity

 First, as tradition dictates, a brief blurb on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Still going on, and Russia's still behaving badly (even for an unjustifiable invader).  The only real change of note, as far as the outside world is concerned, is the resumption of grain shipments from Ukraine, after a deal between the two combatants to allow such - which, of course, Russia went and launched missiles at Ukraine's port almost immediately thereafter.  Well, as always, I'll hope for better from our side than some logistical support, but I won't be holding my breath on that, either.

Now, on to the games.  I did play some Hand of Fate 2, and remembered why I enjoyed the original Hand of Fate as much as I did.  In the original, you had the cards-based "map" you traveled across, triggering various encounters along the way, maybe needing to do a "pick a card" round if there was some element of chance to be handled, and otherwise dropped down into a basic melee action game when combat inevitably broke out.  It was a fairly simple system, but it worked well, and allowed for a story to be told, while also allowing some variability from the map cards the player chose to include in the deck.  In HoF2, they tried to add on to that formula, hoping to make something even better no doubt, but they just kept adding more stuff without any of it significantly adding to the experience of the game.  You get a companion character to bring along on each run, and cards specific to those characters, but that makes the story less about your adventure and more about those companions.  You get extra non-combat mini-games like dice or a pendulum setup, but they're at least no more compelling than the "pick a card" rounds where you get to see the mix of outcomes you're possibly in for.  Some maps have things like blessings, curses, and fame to worry about, which you might be able to turn to your advantage... the second time you play a particular map.  There can also be pawns other than your own moving about the map, again making the story less about your adventure than whatever else is going on around the map.  Overall, it's just more for the sake of more, and the game suffers for it.  I still have it installed on my machine, and it's a small install... I might come back to it on occasion, but I'm not playing through it anytime soon.

Moving on, the next game in my backlog would have been Just Cause 3.  Now, if there's one game that I absolutely loved, it would be Just Cause 2 - a third-person shooter fun with a versatile grappling hook tool, unlimited parachutes, and an environment that is not only destructible, but is actively encouraged to be destroyed to advance the game - mechanically, it's just about perfect.  JC2 also had an over-the-top Bond villain as the head bad guy, whose pronouncements you got to hear as propaganda broadcasts in the various villages you were "liberating", which added a little special something to the game as a whole.  JC3, I already remembered, expanded the toolbox by adding a wing-suit, but downgraded the villain to something resembling an actual third-world dictator, and that's a lot less fun to hear continually in passing throughout the game, so JC3 gets a pass.

However, Game Pass has Just Cause 4 on it at the moment, so I took the excuse to start that up instead.  The villain this time around seems to be a step in the right direction - heck, he even has a weather-based doomsday device!  On the other hand, it looks like they're complicating the mechanics again, by adding a mechanism for configuring additional effects onto your grappling hook, which seems like it will over-complicate an otherwise straightforward system.  So, once again, I'm not planning on playing through this, but it's cloud-streamable, so I may come back to it on occasion while I've got an active Game Pass subscription.

That's two games I've given the thumbs-down to for over-complicating things, how about an example of simplicity carrying the day?  Power Wash Simulator seems like the epitome of a not-for-me sort of game.  I mean, doing cleanup chores when I've got a whole house and yard full of such that I could be doing anyways?  But, it's on Game pass and, having heard good things, I gave it a go.  Well, I'm hooked.  Turns out, when you eliminate the physical labor, the wrangling with materials and support systems, and the ability to make a mess worse by just interacting with it (looking at you, Viscera Cleanup Detail), and all you're left with is a cleaning tool and a thing/site to be cleaned, it can become an almost meditative experience.  I've found it to be a perfect match for these hot summer nights, as a way to wind down after the demands of the day are done.

Which brings us to the regular question, what next?  Well, next in my list would be Minecraft, and I do have it installed on my machine already (being such a tiny install), but... I already know that, historically, I get so far into the game before getting bored and moving on to something else, so maybe, maybe not.  If not, next after that would be No Man's Sky, which is still getting updates all these years later, but nothing in recent updates makes me say "that's worth getting back into it for", so probably not.  So, next would be Outward, which I really do want to give a go.  My only concern there is that, as I recall, it's got a Souls-influenced combat system, and not the greatest of graphics, which may tend to steer me back towards Elden Ring instead.  Well, I guess we'll see what happens.  Until next time!

Mass Effect 2

 Just to get the obligatory out of the way, yes, Russia's assault on Ukraine continues, with Russia targeting civilians among other Geneva Convention violations, while all we're doing in response that's showing to be at all effective is giving some limited military hardware assistance to the Ukrainians.  So, same as it's been for months, really.

So, Mass Effect 2... I finished it last week, while I was stuck in the house on COVID quarantine.  All in all, it was decidedly okay.  Combat-wise, the switch to bullet/clip mechanics wasn't terrible, and getting rid of the version/strength concept on the various weapons made sense (and made it a lot easier to find and use the weapons you actually preferred).  Exploration-wise, greatly reducing the ground-vehicle sections made sense, and implementing a planetary scanner system for materials location and extraction worked well (although why you would need to do that manually on a ship with a dedicated AI never made much sense).  Story-wise, it doesn't really live up to the potential promised by its introductory missions - you go from literal resurrection to work for Cerberus, a shady human-supremacist organization, to gathering a huge team (that you can only ever use two of at a time in your squad), to doing side-missions for those team members so that they will actually use all of their skills rather than sandbagging on you, to more side-missions showing terrible things being by Cerberus locations (but never at the behest of the main organization, just by individuals trying to meet performance goals imposed by the main organization), to murdering hundreds of thousands or millions of non-allied sentients to defend the rest of the galaxy (yes, there's no way around it), to a final "suicide mission" and climatic boss battle.  Of course, it's during that final mission that you discover that the Reapers (the big-bads from ME1, who also control the Collectors, the initial big-bads from ME2) aren't quite entirely mechanical, and are using the genetics of humanity (and others?) for reproduction, which, okay, ew.  But then, they use that as justification to make the final boss fight basically your squad against a giant mecha-baby, which struck me as an incredibly weak climax.

With that, the final scoring to date has ME1 as an entirely-skippable B-grade movie sort of affair, while ME2 is an okay game, hampered by some forced choices and a weak ending.  I did decide to start up a game of ME3 after I finished ME2, but... I think I'm going to have to back-burner that for a while.  I just can't get into the initial conceit of "you were on house arrest for genocide for several months, but now you're back, reinstated into both the human military and the Alliance's Specter corps, toodling around the galaxy chasing the means to fight back while the Reapers (the inexorable destroyers that are not only more advanced/powerful than the entire galaxy combined, but capable of converting the conquered directly into fighters for their side) are currently attacking everybody simultaneously, yet somehow not wiping the floor with them all instantly."  Even if there weren't this whole Russia-Ukraine thing going on right now, that's a hearty bit of disbelief you're asking me to suspend there.

Instead, I'm going back to the XBox One backlog for a bit.  I left off at the Halo Master Chief Collection before, but I'm going to set that aside for now - I don't need another shooter at the moment, and I've heard they're looking to retrofit micro-transactions in there somehow, which would be a hard pass.  Next after that would be Hand of Fate 2, a follow-up to a very entertaining game, which I think I left off because I wasn't up for the grind needed to proceed.  Well, we'll see how it goes this time.

Where are we going, and what am I doing in this handbasket?

 We're past the 100 day mark of Russia's invasion into Ukraine, and Ukraine is still holding out, so that's something.  How much of that is because of the rest of the world's half-assed support in the way of supplying the Ukrainians weaponry, but only the weaponry that won't piss off the Russians too badly (because heaven forbid that weaponry should leave a mark on Russian soil).  There's also the various economic sanctions against Russia, of course, that appear to be having mixed results at best, while empowering a wave of inflation the likes of which I've never seen in non-Russian countries.  It's a mess, and it's not getting better any time soon, especially while we refuse to do anything more direct about it.

Of course, we're not going to do anything more direct any time soon.  In fact, as often happens when something unpleasant is about, we're doing our best to distract ourselves from it.  In the UK, they're taking the more civilized route and holding a Platinum Jubilee for the Queen this weekend.  In the US, we're distracted by the immediate issue of a rash of mass shootings, while we wait for the Supreme Court, packed by the same party that refuses to do anything helpful on multiple fronts, to officially pass down its already-leaked ruling on abortion protections, the first of however many precedent-shredding decisions likely to come in the near future.

So, the world and national scenes are both shit-shows at the moment.  Locally, it's not so bad, outside of a rising homeless population amidst the rising prices for everything, due to an uncertain mix of "proper" inflationary pressures and larger companies trying to use those pressures as an excuse to jack their prices even higher than where those pressures would naturally result.  That, and, of course, the ongoing threat of more pandemic entertainment from a new variant strain or a brand-new disease entirely.  So, yeah, local's fairly shit as well, really.  I'm thankful I'm in reasonably good shape financially, with a secure, low-stress job, and a predisposition to stay home already firmly in place, courtesy of things like books, streaming video and video games.

Yeah, video games, that's not entirely shit at the moment.  Let's see, since last I blogged, I did do a quick round of Game Pass to catch up on some of the mildly-interesting games that came out in the past few months - sorry to say, nothing that made enough of an impression to really write about this time around.  The remainder of that time, I tried out some more Elden Ring - multiplayer does improve the experience, even without bringing anyone into your game, but not enough to keep me paying a monthly fee just for that.  Finally, I did get back into Mass Effect 2, and I'm still having fun there, but I'll write that up properly later, likely after I finish it.  And... that's about it, for now.  Of course, the Steam Summer Sale is coming up shortly, so that may throw another spanner in the works there, but we'll see what happens there in a couple of weeks.

War goes on, Elden Ring not so much

 So, wow, a month and a half on, and the war in Ukraine goes on.  Sanctions against Russia haven't proven to change their behavior in the slightest, which, considering that their behavior seems to include actual war crimes like targeting and executing civilians, still doesn't say good things about the rest of the world's effective non-involvement.  At least we're providing some weaponry and supplies to let the Ukrainians keep trying to defend themselves, but it hardly seems like sufficient contribution to the defense of civilization as we know it.

Well, it's all beyond my control, so I'll just leave it at that for now.  How about that Elden Ring, hey?

Here's the thing:  Elden Ring is a good game.  I haven't gotten terribly far into it, but I like what I've seen of it, and I can see an earlier version of me sinking in the time required to "get good" and, eventually, conquer the thing.  But current me, I've got a job, and several other pass-times vying for my attention - on average, I might get one or two multi-hour play sessions in during a week, and that's not nearly enough to make much headway in this game.  Combine that with the lack of any sort of pause feature, for when one of my cats gets to physically demanding attention, and I can't continue to make this my go-to game.  I'll keep it installed, and I might dip in every so often to grind out another level or two, but that will definitely be on an "as the mood strikes me" sort of basis.

So, what will I do instead?  Well, I was working my way through Mass Effect 2 when Elden Ring came out, so I think that will do for now.  There's always new shinies coming out though, so we'll see what the future brings.

For all there is war, the games go on

Weeks have passed, and Russia hasn't steamrollered Ukraine yet, which is a pleasant surprise in my book.  Sadly, it doesn't seem any other nation has been inspired by Ukraine's resilience to take a more direct hand in thwarting Russia's invasion, relying instead on slow-acting sanctions coupled with weapons shipments to Ukraine to solve the problem.  While I understand the desire to not light off World War III, if all that's being accomplished is pushing off that light-off to some other guy's watch, after Russia has consolidated their gains from this invasion, that's not in our long-term interest.

Well, our course is set, and the rantings of one occasional blogger aren't going to change things any time soon.  I guess we'll see where things go.  I only hope that I'm wrong, and our leaders have cause for the faith they're putting in to their less-directly-confrontational methods.

So, while things degenerate over in Europe, life goes on here in the US, if a bit more expensively and with supply chain disruptions.  In my case, that means games, of course.

Destiny 2, I've basically dropped at this point.  I have Mass Effect 2 to continue plugging away at if I want shooty things to play, and, for all Destiny 2 is pretty, I just can't see myself doing the freemium "pay us for a year's worth of game at full price up front, then pay a quarterly toll to access more of that game you paid for, and maybe pay us some more for cosmetic items as well" model they've evolved into.  Maybe if they end up back on Game Pass so I can justify paying for one of those levels of monetization with the other games that I can check out, I'll give it another go.  Otherwise, if I want a pay-as-you-go experience, I have no shortage of such that I can mostly play for free otherwise, such as Warframe and Lost Ark.

Oh, that's right, I haven't said anything about Lost Ark yet.  It's a Korean fantasy MMORPG, recently localized for the US, with some good production values and years of content to explore.  I rather enjoyed what I've played of it so far, up to the point of getting a pet that hoovers up dropped loot for you (which, I have to say, the starting pet being a white bunny with saddlebags is an excellent choice, if only for the sheer cuteness value).  That's where I ran into their monetization model... basically, you can unlock the pet's inventory space (so it's not constantly cluttering up yours with trash), and get some other quality-of-life upgrades as well, for $10 for 30 days - basically, the equivalent of a subscription, which I expect from any MMORPG these days.  What I don't expect is for that subscription fee to be per character, not per account.  So, basically, if I want to play more Lost Ark, I would have to research what server I wanted to play on long-term, then decide on a character to play exclusively, unless I wanted to start spending way more than I could justify for the amount of play time I have.  Even so, the temptation is there... but there are always more games to play, so Lost Ark goes on the "maybe later, maybe never" pile for now.

Enough sad stories about monetization, how about a nice story instead?  I've played the Civilization series back since the very first one, and I haven't cared for the direction monetization has gone there at all, what with recent versions having their mechanics chopped up and spread out among multiple packages at a significant per-package price point, then with extra civilizations, leaders, and scenarios further split out and packaged up for sale.  That, combined with my dislike for Take-Two Interactive (who changes license agreements on games they purchase), which owns the current publisher for the series, has kept me from buying the most recent version, Civilization VI.  That changed when the game went up on Humble Bundle as a "some proceeds go to charity" bundle for $15.  Of course, by default, their "portion to charity" was slated to be less than $1 by default, which I found to be a bit offensive, so I swapped things around so the publisher got $1, Humble Bundle got their cut, and the rest went to charity.  As for the game itself... yeah, I think I like the changes I've seen so far, and I do want to play more, but this is another game that can be a real time sink, and I've got another one I'm playing that fills that role right now:  Elden Ring.

Yeah, as a rule, I don't buy games anywhere near launch date.  But, you combine an open world built for exploration, high marks from both critics and regular players, and some leftover Christmas gift money in my store account, and it was all but inevitable I would join in the fray.  That said, it's not like I've made major progress in the game so far, and it will likely be even slower going since I'm playing solo, but I've quite enjoyed my time as an undead bandit.  I look forward to seeing what I can tease out of the game, and how long I can hold off on looking at all the videos people are posting to be "helpful".

War returns to Europe

 I forget, who was it that said history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes?  That's what I'm thinking to myself, about 24 hours out from when I first heard that Russia had decided to go ahead and start its full-blown invasion of Ukraine.  Apparently, and unsurprisingly, Russia wasn't terribly deterred after the world's tepid response to their prior invasion of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula, and is willing to bet that any response to a full invasion will still be a net positive for them.

Now, as belligerent as this post will sound, I have no desire for war.  Civilization is a much better option in my book, and I would choose that path in almost every situation.  However, civilization only works if all the groups involved are committed to working within that framework.  To use an analogy, it's rather hard for everyone to enjoy a game of poker if one of the players gets up from the table to go around and punch one of the other players.  Well, Russia just started throwing punches at our collective poker table, so what's our response?

So far, outside of the less-than-worthless "thoughts and prayers" lines dribbling from the mouths of those who want to appear to care, but don't care enough to actually do anything else, it's been a mix of giving military hardware to Ukraine and applying limited economic sanctions to Russia.  Well, the hardware might help Ukraine somewhat (never mind that they're greatly outnumbered), but sanctions?  Seriously, you're trying to use a long-term pressure tactic to dissuade an immediate threat to another country's continued existence?

I'll set aside the all-too-apt comparisons to the lead-up to World War II that others are bringing up routinely, in favor of another, more recent conflict.  How about the first Persian Gulf War - no, not the one with the supposed weapons of mass destruction that had us invading Iraq, but the one where Iraq invaded its neighbor Kuwait, intending to take it over?  I don't recall us saying "oh, that's terrible, thoughts and prayers all around, and we'll apply harsh economic sanctions against Iraq."  Rather, we demonstrated that we object to forced takeovers of sovereign nations in the strongest possible terms, by using military force to eject the would-be occupiers.  The fact that we're not taking that path in the face of this invasion strongly implies that either that earlier response was driven by what we stood to gain from Kuwait, by how little risk we felt in putting our armed forces against those of the Iraqis, or both, and none of those answers reflect well on us.

But OK, I'll accept, for the sake of argument, that, this time, we don't want to put our people in harm's way for the well-being of our fellow humans.  How about some other, broader actions, rather than trying to target individuals and select companies within Russia?  Shut down their trade, restrict the ability of all their citizens to travel the civilized world, heck, shut down the Internet links to their country, since that seems to be a constant source of trouble as well.  Yes, any and all of those would cause us pain as well, but that's kind of the point.  The calculation the Russians seem to have made is that we won't do anything too bad to them, for fear of causing ourselves inconvenience and discomfort.  Right now, I'd have to say they seem to be right on the money.  Here's hoping I'm proven wrong in the coming days and weeks, for all I may not enjoy the side effects.

That's Mass Effect 1 down, on to the next

 I recently finished the Mass Effect 1 portion of the Legendary Edition trilogy remake.  While I'm glad I was able to go through the whole game once, thanks to the gunplay and companion AI improvements, the game itself was okay at best.  Some of that comes down to what they were able to attempt with the hardware available at the time, no doubt.  However, there were enough plot holes and failures of common sense scattered throughout, generally of the flavor of "we want to do this cool thing at this point, so let's ignore the problems with the setup needed for that cool thing to happen", that my suspension of disbelief was regularly broken.  Basically, if this was a sci-fi movie instead of a game, I would put this closer to Battle Beyond the Stars than Star Wars.

That said, I still have hopes for Mass Effect 2, now that I've started in on that volume of the trilogy.  Where the first game starts you off tied to both Earth's military and the ruling galactic council, with "I am the law" levels of personal power, the second makes a clean break with that by having a mysterious ship track down and destroy your stealth-enabled ship.  You manage to get some of the crew off safely, but you end up jettisoned into space with a suit leak.  Fast forward to you waking up, two years later, after a shadowy humanity-first organization named Cerberus (who you took out some unsavory projects from as side-quests in the last game) has given you the Six-Million Dollar Man treatment via their Project Lazarus - and even that is an early wake-up call, because someone decided to sabotage the facility's security bots, likely in a bid to kill you properly this time.  Surviving that, you find out about an ongoing issue that might be linked to the big-bad Reapers that you managed to stop last game, something the powers-that-be seem to treat as settled, while Cerberus is willing to give you an updated ship, some of your old crew, and contacts to gather more crew to investigate and deal with things as you see fit.  For now, your goals and those of Cerberus align... will that hold true throughout?

Simply put, the story of Mass Effect 2 looks to be more interesting than the story of Mass Effect 1, and there are mechanical changes between the two games as well, so the only reason to play the first game would be the story... and the second game includes an "interactive comic" that you can use to get yourself up-to-speed with the story from the first game.  All in all, I would say to give the first game a skip, and just start with ME2 at this point, if you haven't played either.

Now, it's just about time to show my face to the galactic Council.  It'll be fun to see how that turns out.

Giving Mass Effect a proper go

 The Mass Effect series of games has been around for a while (since 2007, if Wikipedia has it right).  I like RPGs, I like sci-fi shooty bits, and I've heard over and over that it has an amazing story.  So, why haven't I played the main series yet?

Well, for starters, I did try, once long ago.  At some point (it's been long enough that I don't remember exactly when), the original Mass Effect dropped below my threshold of cheapness, and I snagged it on Steam.  I didn't even make it past the first intro mission, whether due to the then-janky gunplay or the need to micromanage your teammates in the middle of combat.  I bounced off the first one hard, and the next two were continuations of the first, so I saw no need to jump into the middle of a series I had disliked from the start.

Eventually, Mass Effect: Andromeda came to be, and I eventually gave that a go, hopeful that the intervening years had improved the experience.  Mechanically, it was a vast improvement over what I remembered from before.  Story-wise... eh, it's fine, nothing earth-shattering, but certainly not the modern marvel I had been primed to expect from glowing reviews of the previous games.

Now, the original trilogy of games has gotten the remaster treatment that's all the rage these days, coming out as the Mass Effect Legendary Edition.  This remaster got decent reviews, and I caught it on sale, so I figured it was worth one last try.  So far, I'm pleasantly surprised.  I started with the first game (naturally), and, while there are some bits that definitely show their age (primitive terrain and over-reuse of level maps especially), the gunplay and teammate AI is greatly improved.  Not only did I manage to get past that first level, I've only rarely had to revive a teammate after they've gotten overzealous in their pursuit of the enemy.

The story, though?  I can't say much about that yet.  Basically, I've taken to doing too many side-quests "while I'm in the area" to properly focus on the main storyline.  The bits I have seen have some potential, but mostly seem to cover some well-traveled ground (corrupt officials, corporations pursuing profit over safety, legality, or common sense, deciding whether your loyalties lie with yourself, your species, or the greater good of the galaxy, that sort of thing).  The overarching setup of "the ancient scourge is going to destroy us all, unless YOU put a stop to it" isn't exactly fresh either, but there could be some wiggle-room in there for a good story overall.

In short, if, like me, you bounced off of the original Mass Effect series because of its mechanics, the new Legendary Edition could be worth a go, if you find it on sale (or want to try it out as part of Game Pass Ultimate on the XBox ecosystem, of course).  Now, will it hold my attention past the launch of the Witch Queen expansion for Destiny 2?  That, we will see.