The hits keep on coming, but gaming keeps me... sane?

 Well, in the Before Times, I never even considered that anybody capable of getting into power at the federal level would do some of the incompetent and stupid shit that I've seen in recent weeks, and certainly not with broad support from either political party, and yet, here we are.  There's too much to recount in detail, but, just to call out a few recent examples:

• High-level officials passing classified data around on Signal, then accidentally inviting a reporter into the chat, then lying about the contents of the chat under oath to Congress.
•  Tanking the market by imposing mass tariffs on the world, including islands without permanent human habitation but excluding Russia.  Compounded by "conservative" voices being unable to decide whether the problem is just a math error by the President's team (!), or even whether these massive tariffs will increase consumer prices.
•  Shipping people to El Salvador to imprison them based on their suspected gang membership, without due process, based on things like "they have a tattoo".  Not a gang tattoo, mind you, just a tattoo.

Meanwhile, the world at large continues to burn, with Russia and Israel both violating cease-fires in their respective fights and playing fast and loose with the truth.

At least there's signs of people getting properly pissed off about the state of things, although we're still at the "let's have a lovely weekend afternoon protest" stage.  There were a lot of people at the various "Hands Off" protests yesterday, so maybe that will help some congresscritters realize that they have an actual problem, and aren't just facing "Soros-funded" protests any longer.  Not that I'm holding my breath.

Well, enough of that unpleasantness for now.  On the games front, I actually finished Disgaea 2 PC!  Well, "finished", in so far as made it through the "main" story... which gives you a choice between restarting the main story line, or doing a side story/prequel involving one of the characters you encounter repeatedly in the main story.  So, yeah, I've got a save there waiting to go, if I want to dive back in for that content... but I'm kind of thinking I might check out the Book of Hours DLC first/instead.

Of course, none of that will take place until I clear out my XBox Game Pass backlog, which, right now, isn't budging because I'm still playing through Avowed.  I'm enjoying the game a lot, but I'm also noticing things that make me question why, exactly, I'm liking the game as much as I do.  Maybe I'll do a proper write-up on it once I'm done - I've worked my way through three of the four major "zones" in the game, so it shouldn't be that much longer before I've finished.

Our long national shit-show continues

 Recently, the 3-year mark of Russia's invasion of Ukraine passed, which obviously isn't ideal for anybody involved, to put it mildly.  Still, Ukraine stands strong, backed by the military hardware they've received from the West.  Unfortunately, we went and elected a president with strong dictator tendencies who, at best, sees a lot to admire in Putin and his governmental setup, and wants to end the conflict soonest, in Russia's favor.

My god, the gall of Trump and company... first, they try to arrange a "peace deal" without Ukraine or any European partners being involved at all.  Then, they try to pass the laughable claim that Ukraine started the war to weaken opposition.  Then, most recently, they lure Zelensky to the White House with the promise of a "trade deal" with no security strings attached, that Ukraine would have likely taken just so the U.S. had some skin in the game... only to ambush him in an Oval Office photo op that, "somehow", Russian state media had somebody present live-streaming.  And after that, many federal-level Republicans start saying things about how Zelensky wasn't very appreciative, and that he'll need to resign.  Honestly, do you people think nobody's watching this farce?

Of course, at the same time, the whole "doge" business continues apace, now with threats that they're going to go after Social Security.  Funny thing, though... in their haste to take an axe to everything they don't like and/or want to steal for themselves later (yes, I'm looking at you Elon), they both neglected to make sure they dotted their Is and crossed their Ts, which is coming back to bite them in court, and made cuts to things that are both visible to and cared about by many of their MAGA faithful, so the Republican enablers in Congress are starting to hear back on that in places like the "town hall" forums they love to hold.  Of course, that means they're doing things like running away mid-forum and canceling future forums... and that's guaranteed to turn out well.  Nothing builds bonds like performatively not listening to your constituents, after all.

So, now we're entering the "race" part of the whole "reshape government to Trump/Musk's will" thing.  Will the bad guys manage to push through their desired changes and consolidate power before the Republican congresscritters decide that they'd rather risk Trump's ire over the heat (and likely much worse to come, historically speaking) they're starting to get from their constituents?  Oh, and I suppose the off chance that the courts find a way to meaningfully interfere that SCOTUS won't overturn, although that process is, by design, slow enough to not likely play a role here.

Yeah, I'm definitely starting to see why Warren Buffet is shifting his investments to alcohol producers at this point.

Everything expected, and more

 Well, it's barely more than two weeks in since President Trump took back the reins, and I'm feeling suitably ill (and not just because I've got the latest seasonal crud, either).  As expected, Trump has been doing plenty of shady shit with questionably-legal orders, either direct to his flunkies or by means of executive orders, while giving no fucks about how that makes the U.S. look.  Well, outside of "looking strong", that is, which is some pretty weak sauce in a world with an active Russian invasion of Ukraine lingering on.

What I didn't expect... well, where to begin.  Trying to start trade wars with our bordering, in-a-free-trade-agreement neighbors, maybe.  Talking about taking back the Panama Canal or taking over Greenland, either of which would, I'm pretty sure, count as casus belli with our allies.  Sending the world's richest Nazi (yes, that was a fucking Nazi salute, you sane-washing media freaks) and his hand-picked tech team to commit Blitzkrieg on various government agencies.

The one I just heard about, though, takes the cake.  Trump wants the U.S. to take over Gaza, and rebuild it as a resort area.  I mean, I get it, from his addled, real-estate developer mindset, it's a fine way to improve the property values of that recently-at-war region.  But that has to totally ignore, well, everything about that region for the past few millennia.  I swear, it's like somebody seeing a recently-kicked hornet's nest, where the hornets are just starting to calm down a bit, and deciding that the hole in the nest would be a great place to stuff their dick.

There are interesting times ahead, to be sure.  Here's hoping they involve some quick push-back and firm limits from those co-equal branches of government, however unlikely that may seem.

Inflection point incoming!

 Change is in the air.  Heck, I only have to call out Russia this time for their continued douchebaggery, since Israel and Hamas have got a ceasefire in place, with hostages getting released and everything.  Between that and Syria's recent changes (which, funnily enough, isn't getting a lot of press coverage here in the U.S., and I haven't heard anything about us lifting any sanctions on them or anything like that), I'd normally say that things are looking up a bit.  Of course, that would ignore what's coming down the pipe tomorrow.

Tomorrow, of course, being, among other things, the re-inauguration of Trump, the once-and-future president.  Sure, he's been credibly shown to have tried to hijack the last election, and he's been convicted of felonies in the meantime (no thanks to the previous head of the Department of Justice there), but the stupid, stupid people have spoken.  Starting tomorrow, the loony wing of the Republican party and their enablers, the rest of the Republican party, will have some measure of control over all three branches of the federal government.  Here's hoping they don't manage to do anything to corrupt or eliminate future elections entirely.

Of course, one thing that will complicate their plans is a good crisis or two.  Right out of the starting blocks, they've got one (for certain values of "crisis", I suppose), and it's of their own making!  Namely, TikTok showed more integrity than they all expected, and, after the Supreme Court told them that the law trying to force them to sell out on supposed "national security" concerns was constitutional, TikTok took everybody at their word and shut down U.S. access to their systems.  Now, they've got a bunch of angry people on their hands, Biden says he's not enforcing the law, and Trump is making noises about using executive orders to bring TikTok back.  Simply put, this isn't what you expect from the success of a well thought-out response to a national security threat.  Me, I've never been on TikTok, so I've got no direct skin in the game, and I look forward to the gymnastics involved in what happens here going forward.

PC gaming stocking stuffers

 Season's Greetings from the House of delRhode to all the good boys and girls of the world that aren't invading their neighbors or trying to use them as human shields.  Between year-end sales and recent Humble Bundle charity bundles, I've come across a few games recently that I thought deserved mention, so, here we go!

First, in the category of "I played through it fully, and it's pretty okay", is Terra Nil.  It's a collection of world-puzzles where each level is set in one of four biomes (Temperate, Tropical, Arctic, or Ruins), and your goal in each is to go in, restore its habitat, then leave with no major physical traces of your having been there.  This goal is handled in three major phases - cleanup/green-up the polluted space, diversify the environment, then extract - each of which has its own set of tools that changes on each level, and are only revealed at the start of each phase.

I enjoyed the game well enough, but that's not to say it's without its sticking points.  One would be its weird difficulty tuning setup, with both an initial difficulty level selection (that sets starting resource levels and building costs for the entire game) and a selection of "optional" goals to meet on each level if you want the game to consider the level 100% cleared.  Another would be building effects that don't strictly make sense.  For example, you have various power-generation buildings like windmills, but on some levels you need to, basically, extend their range using power pylons - but the pylons are treated like power sources themselves, making it possible to power most of a map with only one or two windmills, well in excess of what they could handle on their own.  Still, I enjoyed going through the different maps, for all I won't be going back to get the 100% on most of them.  In short, it's a decent game, but gets a stronger recommendation if it's on sale.

Second, in the category of "I'm midway through, and enjoying it thoroughly", we have CATO: Buttered Cat.  It's an odd platform-puzzler sort of thing, where you control a cat and... well, a sentient piece of buttered toast.  The cat can walk around, climb some things, and fit through some tubing, while the toast... kind of flops around, and can stick to some surfaces.  But the magic happens when you bring them together, as now you get, in line with one version of the old jokes, a form of anti-gravity, played off in the game as basically an infinite aerial multi-jump.

With these simple rules, and a few things in the environment to interact with (like switches that know the difference between cats and toast, icy floors and walls, and a number of toaster-adjacent interfaces), the designers have made many, many levels of actually tricky puzzles to solve, neatly packaged into at least five themed worlds, each of which ends in a non-puzzle final challenge, be that a boss fight, an over-the-shoulder roller-coaster ride with the cat sitting on the toast as a sled, or some other insanity I've yet to see.  If that sounds interesting to you, follow the link and take a look, and I'll tell you it's money well spent.

Finally, in the category of "That's absurd, I like it, but I can't give it the time it needs", we have Mr. Sun's Hatbox.  I got it as part of a charity bundle, and, given its kiddie look, I had zero expectations going in.  Turns out, it's what the developer calls a "slapstick roguelite platformer", and, if I had the time, I'd be all-in on seeing where it goes.

Just to give you some idea of the insanity involved, here's a brief rundown of the opening minutes of the game.  Mr. Sun runs a hat shop, and is getting a delivery from an Amazon-like company.  In the middle of the delivery, a shadowy, crescent-moon-headed fellow and a couple of henchmen steal the package mid-delivery.  Apparently, Mr. Sun paid for a delivery guarantee, so the delivery guy goes in pursuit, entering a tutorial tower where you learn about sneaking about, jumping on peoples' heads like Mario, snapping necks (!), and using balloons to retrieve objects and stunned people a la Metal Gear Solid.  At the end of the tower, you fail to catch the thieves as they take off in a helicopter, but your delivery guarantee says you'll get the package back by Any. Means. Necessary.  So, you commandeer the ground beneath Mr. Sun's shop to build a base, recruit agents (either voluntarily or, later, by brainwashing captured people from the missions you go on), and proceed to build your organization's strength while the search for the culprits continues.

Seriously, from what little I've played so far, this is a great game.  Individual mission runs are short and sweet, which is good, considering your initial batch of recruits all have various issues/traits working against them, traits that can be removed at random (or supplemented with neutral/good traits) with leveling.  However, permadeath is also a thing, so you might not want to risk your best agents on particular missions.  Combined with the slapstick feel of combat when things go wrong, it's an amazing start to a game.  By all means, if you've got the time to give it, give it a go.

Syria is under new management

 It was a little weird, seeing the news that Syria's rebels finally managed to oust their dictator.  On the plus side, one of Russia's clients has likely slipped from their grasp, and it's likely not something they're going to be able to tackle any time soon (another good, concrete reason why you don't go around invading countries like Ukraine - you might lose some of what you already have!).  I can only hope more such instances will follow.

On the meh side, it's not like I know a lot about the rebels involved.  Fair odds though, they won't immediately revert to gassing their populace and establishing secret prisons or anything like that, so it's likely a plus overall.

Of course, now is where we wait for this to turn out to be a "monkey's paw" wish.  Maybe it turns out the rebels are actually Super ISIS?  Maybe Russia decides they need to demonstrate their willingness to use nukes on territory they don't intend to occupy?  Maybe, flush with success, the rebels decide to push south towards Israel for some reason?  Like the old saying goes, hope for the best, expect the worst.

Greed, thy name is Disney

 Right, so, time for a break from my usual rants about the shit state of the world (and a traditional holiday Fuck Off to the major offenders in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel/Hamas thing while I'm thinking of it) - time instead for a rant on the shit state and trend of commercial video streaming currently, with a special nod to Disney+.

If Wikipedia's dates and figures are right, Netflix first launched their stand-alone streaming service in 2011, for just shy of $8 per month.  At the time, it was an amazing value, compared to cable TV subscriptions closer to $40 or $50 a month (if memory serves), especially given its two major features.  Namely, they had a library of titles large enough to practically guarantee you could watch whatever you want, and, whatever you watched, it would be ad-free.

In the intervening years, enshittification has changed that dynamic greatly.  First, the larger owners of most popular films and shows decided that they would rather be making money themselves rather than handing content off to Netflix, so they launched their own streaming services, with varying degrees of success.  Quickly, given the niche nature of their content, some such streamers made "bundle deals" available to get multiple stream sources for a reduced price, echoing the bundling that started cable down its road to ruin.  More recently, most streamers have started splitting their content into tiers, not based on things like how many screens you can have running at once or the audio/visual quality of the streamed content, but on whether they can feed you ads at the same time.  So, now, sticking with Netflix for this example, you can access a greatly-reduced range of content under one of three plans:  "good enough" quality with ads for about $7/month, the same without ads for more than $15/month, or high quality without ads for about $23/month.  In contrast, Curiosity Stream offers their (admittedly niche) content for no more than $5/month for a high-quality stream, which should give a good idea as to how much of other streamers' fees are due to meeting hardware requirements to supply their customers.

But, like I said, I really want to focus on Disney+ for a bit here.  Why?  Well, I had an account a while back (likely when they launched in 2019 at a roughly $7/month price point).  I specifically didn't go for their ESPN and Hulu bundle for about $13/month, for one simple reason:  I take a hard stance against paying for ads, which was part and parcel of any Hulu experience at the time.  So, I watched my fill of Disney fare, Star Wars stuff, and the odd National Geographic content, and let my subscription lapse, ready to wait until more content I cared for had accumulated.

Here we are in 2024, and I caught wind via a YouTube ad - Disney+ is doing a Black Friday sale, $3/month if you sign up for a year up front!  Color me intrigued!  So I go to the Disney+ site and... oh, it's another Hulu bundle, with ads on Disney+ as well.  Normally, something they charge about $11/month for.  And the ad-free version of that bundle isn't on sale at all, and they would want you to pay about $20/month for that.  And there's various other bundles available, but none where you could get everything they have on offer, for up to about $30/month.  And just getting Disney+?  Not even shown in the same area - you have to dig in the FAQ section for it - about $10/month with ads, $16/month without.  And with all those choices, nothing is mentioned about stream quality - it's probably high-quality, but who really knows?

Now, here's the thing... I get Disney's angle on this, they want to push bundles to maintain engagement, and they want to normalize ads, because they can make more money overall that way (otherwise, they wouldn't bother to offer it).  But, in doing such a deep discount on one service option without providing any discount for anything else, their message is, basically, "you would be a sucker to do anything but this."  And, looking at their price structures, and how much everything else costs versus a $5/month ad-free Curiosity Stream subscription (or, for something a little more mass-market, an $8/month ad-free CrunchyRoll subscription), I have to agree.  But, since I won't pay for ads, that's not happening, and there's nothing that's come out from Disney in the past few years that makes me want to bend over and take it, either.

So, congratulations, Disney, you managed to both lure me in the door with one offer, then drive me out again with all your other offers.  Well, I'm sure, eventually, maybe, you'll produce something I'm willing to pay a premium to watch.  But today is not that day.