I looked back over my old posts, and, sure enough, it really has been a full year since Russia decided to do a surprise invasion on its neighbor Ukraine. Back then, if somebody had said that this would still be gong on after a full year had passed, I would have been wondering what drugs they were taking. I'm not proud of our role in doing nothing more than sending select weaponry over for the Ukrainians to use, but, I have to admit, for certain values of the word "works", what we're doing "works", in so far as it's keeping the Russians occupied, at the cost of Ukrainian lives. Since it doesn't look like Putin is going to back down any time soon, here's hoping for some forced change of leadership taking place - I mean, there's certainly been enough falling-out-of-windows "accidents" over the past year that it seems like a threat they're considering, so I wouldn't mind at all if that threat came to pass.
Well, all that aside, life goes on here at home, and that of course means games. On the XBox side, Destiny 2 is wrapping up for the season, and for the current expansion, with a new expansion scheduled to launch next week. Much like last year, I'm thinking I'm not up for feeding that monetization machine any more, but, on the other hand, I do still have a fair bit of Christmas cash in my account, so... maybe? If I hear something really good about the new expansion, maybe?
Also on the XBox side, Atomic Heart came out recently. I was going to give it a go, since it's on Game Pass and all... but middling reviews and a collection of controversies, including questions about how Russian the developing studio is, who's funding it, and the message the game, made me decide that I really wasn't that keen to play it after all.
So, if that's XBox, how about that new Steam Deck? Well, first, the "boring" parts... I did receive the docking station for the deck and gave that a go. Games work well, mostly (I'll list an exception in a bit), and desktop apps seem to work well enough, although the audio on my Chrome app seems to have stopped working - that app, and only that app. After poking around a bit, I've pretty much given up on using it as a desktop replacement, though... the default setup relies on Flatpak to add apps to the system, which, while a neat idea, seems to leave you at the mercy of if/when apps ever get updated in that format, and the regular Linux O/S is locked down. Basically, it's more likely that, when I decide to replace my Windows 10 machine, I would get a box to install a Linux distro on, then add Steam on top, rather than muck about with the handheld/docking station combo.
Outside of that, I'm still mostly playing with the same games I listed before, but I did add a couple more games to fill a couple more niches:
- Dorfromantik (Compatibility: Verified) - a hex-tile-laying puzzle/building game, where you build a land/water mass with villages, forests, plains, rails, and water features, aiming for a high score by completing tasks that crop up and placing your tiles to maximize similarities across tiles. I really like the game, but I've had problems with getting my Steam Controller to work with the game without it crashing out, so it's handheld-only for now.
- Rogue Legacy (Compatibility: Verified) - a quirky little Rogue-lite platformer, where the hook is that each "run" through the game is being performed by a descendant of the previous heroes, and may have a genetic condition of some sort that will (most likely) hinder their performance. I actually had to dig in my library a bit to find this one... I think it may have had some issues when I tried streaming it from my gaming PC before, but it works fine on the Steam Deck.
I think that pretty much covers everything for now. Until next time!
