Russia, Israel, Hamas... something something go fuck yourselves.
Well, it's been an unusually lively couple of weeks in the real world. War, politics, and the Olympics, all coming together to keep anybody not directly involved entertained. Here's some of the notable bits in my book:
- After the Trump assassination attempt, there was a brief period of "we need to turn the heat down", "can't we all just get along", that sort of thing. I think it may have even lasted more than two days. But, well, Trump, along with the Republican National Convention taking place, pretty well put that out to pasture. They did manage to get their Vice President candidate pick locked in, though.
- Which is funny, because, shortly thereafter, Biden dropped out of the race, and Harris stepped in, and none of the Republican leadership looks to have anticipated that. Mind, by "dropped out", I mean to say that Biden was effectively force-retired by his party after a particularly bad showing against Trump at a live debate, but, outside of the optics of all of that, I can't really fault the Democrats there.
- More potential assholes, in the form of Hezbollah and Iran, might be making moves to get involved in the whole Israel-Hamas thing. Of course, the inciting act being a rocket attack at a soccer field full of not-necessarily-Israelis that Hezbollah denies being behind, well, seems a bit fishy, but we'll see what washes out there.
- In local politics, it's almost time for the state primary election, so the airwaves are packed with ads from the local Trump-humpers and their allies, some of which are almost offensively "this will appeal to those backwoods hicks" in their crafting. The sad thing, of course, is that they're made by people with experience in this arena, so they've made things they honestly think will work.
- Thankfully(?), the Olympics are also on right now. No, I'm not really watching or paying attention, but, if I leave them on as background noise, the ad blocks the national players have paid for have effectively squeezed out the local ad traffic. So, no local political ads, fewer drug ads (especially those damn Jardiance ads), all in all I'll take it.
In the meantime, there's games to be considered, but the news isn't great there, either:
- I've basically given up on The First Descendant. It's got decent gun-play, but the story and characters are just bad. As in, when you "awaken" the AI assistant that ties all of the playable characters together, two characters are left out. And somebody is leaking intel to the enemy. And one of them goes off on their own to try and go all Dr. Mengele independent of both sides, after being left alone with a "salvation of humanity" device for no better reason than that he said he was tasked with bringing it back, alone. I mean, at least before that, I had some question as to whether the two odd men out were working together as moles for the enemy, but that answers that question.
- I've also put No Man's Sky back on the shelf. The update came through after about a week, and I got several hours of gameplay in. Saw some changes, some of which were cool, some of which were pretty and not much else... and then the game crashed to desktop (or, well, console user interface screen, same difference). That was enough to snap me back to evaluating what I'd played so far, and... what's changed, it's either too much or not enough. What I mean is, compared to last time I played, all that looks to have been added play-wise is the ability to be a part of the "bad-guy" faction (the Voice of Freedom). But, compared to the first time I played, it's got all this base-building, fleet management, and social gaming stuff that... while, yes, I could just avoid interacting with it, really dims the idea of the vagabond wanderer playstyle that attracted me to the game in the first place. Doubtless I'll look in again later, maybe after the next patch, but, right now, it's not the game for me.
