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.
