Where the Water Tastes Like Wine

 I'm just going to give real-world events a skip this time - pre-election shenanigans have been kept in check for the most part, and I don't expect anything of substance to change until elections are out of the way, assuming our Sideshow President doesn't step on any more rakes.

Games-wise, I found a good stopping point on Kotamon (until/unless more content is added, I think I'm done there).  With what remains, I found myself unsatisified with the story-to-grind ratio of Labyrinth of Galleria, so I pulled up another game from my backlog, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine.  That's almost nothing but stories.

The setting is unusual in the gaming landscape, with you playing as a supernaturally-contracted hobo criss-crossing the United States during the Great Depression, collecting and spreading stories and watching them mutate over time.  There's also an element of working your way into the trust of other wanderers, but that too is governed by the stories, basically by telling them what they want to hear.  It's not terribly deep, with your interaction with the stories being "choose A or B" at the most, but it's all fully voiced, and with era-appropriate background music as well.  Maybe not for everybody, but if wandering around and getting short stories read to you works for you, it works for you.  It certainly works for me.

A month closer to elections, plus Kotamon

 Yet another month of "I wouldn't have believed you if you said this was going to happen in the before times" down, another month closer to elections to maybe, possibly put a damper on our national insanity and embarrassment.  Of course, team Trump is doing what they can to try and shape that election to their liking (unconstitutionally, as is on-brand for these assholes), but, so far, so good.

Of course, it hurts nothing to remember a few reasons why they feel the need to corrupt elections.  You've always got Epsteinapalooza burbling in the background, so they're always needing to have a distraction going.  Their last big one, attacking Iran, hasn't turned out so well, and the only escalation they could really do there to make an impact would be an invasion of some magnitude (which would drive their favorability with voters even lower than it already is), so they're trying the "declare victory and move on" approach, which only works if your audience is willing to buy in to your bullshit.  

Meanwhile, they've moved on to trying to bully Canada into new trade terms... and might have gotten away with it too, if, by reports, they hadn't attempted to include terms like "no more French speaking" in the bargain.  Instead, they've got a new trade war on their hands, and Trump has, unilaterally, decided to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America (not to be confused with the Gulf of America, better known as the Gulf of Mexico).  Piled on top of all the other crap they've pulled, both internationally and domestically, I'll be more than happy to see some checks and balances get reinstated.

Well, latest mini-rant out of the way, let's move on to games.   I'm still loving my Steam Machine, and I've only thrown a few more games on since last I wrote.  That started with the demo for the upcoming Travelling at Night, which is shaping up to be an RPG in the same world as Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours, but a bit further down the timeline, with more of a post-WWII bent.  That got me thirsting for more, but I couldn't justify another run through Book of Hours just yet, so I put Cultist Simulator back on, and learned a bit more on how to make that game work for a later play-date.

The one that actually holds my attention though... I'll give it the full title just this once.  KOTAMON: My Sis Found A Super-Rare Card In Her Cereal Box, So I Became A Garbage Man To Find The Entire Collection And Earn $1,000,000 is really barely a game at all.  It's a cartoonish mockery of Pokemon card collecting, where the artwork stays on the safe side of suggestive, while there's no such guarantee for anything else (for example, a safety sticker on a trash compacter shows the standard "don't put your hands in here" image of a hand running through gears, but the accompanying text is something along the lines of "don't fist robot girls").  The story, such as it is, involves an ultra-rare card that's the key to collecting a million-dollar prize getting found and tossed by your sister, so you take on work at your local dump sorting through trash piles, bagging most of it to feed to the trash compacter and get paid for, while picking out stray cards and bits of cards (that you can reassemble), along with other "interesting" collectibles.  Oh, and tossing trash bags at the compacter if you don't feel like walking all the way over, and drinking beer from the on-site vending machine if you need to recharge your energy... or just because.  It's light-hearted stupid fun, good to eat up some time if you've got a few minutes to spare, and it's on sale for about $5.

The Odyssey

 Well, I finally all-but-exhausted that Regal Cinemas gift card by catching a matinee showing of The Odyssey.  It's a well-managed edit of the original thousands-of-years-old story, and I enjoyed it overall, especially the core concept of the Law of Zeus - I assumed I had read the base material before at some point, but it must have been select readings for a class at best, to let that sort of story thread slip by me.  At any rate, I enjoyed myself, and I think it's worth your time, should you want to experience the whole audio-visual spectacle on the big screen.

That said, it's not a movie without its issues... and lest anybody get the wrong idea, no, I'm not bothered by the multi-racial cast like the world's richest Nazi and his ilk are.  The easiest one is that Matt Damon delivers some lines a bit flat, but that might be just a personal taste issue.

No, the biggest issue likely ties back to the source material.  See, Odysseus is painted as the strongest man in Ithaca, and the smartest warrior among the Greek forces.  I get it, he's supposed to be like the ancient Greek Superman, and you can't have a war story without warriors.  Given the time period, strong warriors are better warriors, sure.  But the thing that sets him apart, particularly starting with the Trojan Horse (side note, well done on making that sequence work without making the Trojans look like complete idiots) and continuing on through his travels, is him using his cleverness to make the best of bad situations.  Then, he finally makes it back home (I know, spoilers) and, without explicit coordination with his family, sets up first a test of strength, then a wholesale slaughter of the suitors for his wife's hand.  I get it to an extent, Homer's setting up the contrast between the "true warrior" Odysseus and the only-clever suitors.  But it also paints being clever as a sin in and of itself, as even Odysseus comes to believe his clever trick with the Trojans becomes the trigger for the downfall of civilization in years to come.  It's a common-enough view in early warrior cultures, sure, but as a more-clever-than-brawny sort myself, I don't much care for it, especially in times like these.

Steam Machine has come, plus a happy obituary

Just to get the politically-charged bit out of the way first... there's a quote I've always resonated with, something to the tune of "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."  That's certainly held true with the news I saw today about Lindsey Graham's death.  Not because he was "on the wrong team", exactly... rather, I always enjoy when somebody doesn't get to live to enjoy the fruits of their labor in making the world worse for their personal gain.  Petty, sure, but that's truly how I feel.

Now, in gaming news, Steam Machine has launched, and this time, thanks to Valve implementing a lottery to minimize the impact of scalpers, I actually managed to get my hands on one!  It just so happened to hit as my interest in Forza Horizon 6 and Warframe waned, so that's why you'll only see Labyrinth of Galleria over on my "games that have my attention" list now.

My verdict?  Paired with the new Steam Controller, it's pretty much exactly what I expected and hoped for.  Heck, it's basically what I was really wanting back when I got my Stead Deck three and a half years back, used in tandem with a dock and the old-model Steam Controller.  The biggest changes, from my perspective, are the increased power of the device (pretty much a given), well-behaved WiFi, HDR support, and waking the Machine with the Controller actually working solidly (I used the feature with the old Controller/Deck combo, but it was always a little flaky).  I'd broadly recommend the cheapest Machine/Controller combo to many people, but it still has the basic issue of not being a Windows machine, so things like competitive shooters with kernel-based anti-cheat won't work, along with a small selection of games that have their own issues.  Luckily, Steam has updated their compatibility ratings for the new Machine (and for SteamOS in general, on the off chance you want to build your own machine for cheaper), so you can see if there's any deal-breakers in store for you ahead of time.

But me, I expect to be using this Steam Machine largely as a backlog sampler, and there's one area where it really shines.  It'll run older titles like 7 Grand Steps and Rogue Legacy without a hitch, as I've verified, and both titles will stay on my Machine for the foreseeable future - not games I'd say have my attention per se, but certainly worth pecking at for short play sessions as the mood hits me.  Similarly, I've also got Pixel Puzzles Ultimate and No Man's Sky loaded - not short-session games by any stretch of the imagination, but each filling a niche to satisfyingly scratch particular itches.  That's it for now, although I did see a couple of games I had previously marked as "doesn't work on any system I own" that supposedly play nicely with Steam Machine, so I might have to give those a try later.

That's the gaming landscape, but it also means that I now have a good, quiet PC hooked up to my TV.  I may be able to do something in the way of a Jellyfin setup to back up some of my DVDs and such to a local server of some sort and increase my video-watching options as well - it's not like I'm lacking content, but I find the desire to physically find a disc and insert it into my XBox routinely falls to my desire to stay planted on the couch.  It's a terribly first-world problem, but that doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing, if the setup process isn't super-annoying and can be handled as a one-and-done thing.

Steam Controller in hand, I stare down my backlog

 Sure, Epsteinapalooza and the Iran mess are still in play, for all they've quieted down a bit, but it's not all doom and gloom out there.  Ukraine is taking the fight to Russia, literally, better than ever before, even with our lukewarm support.

 Closer to home, I finally got my hands on a Steam Controller.  A little over a month's wait isn't too bad, especially considering I gather new reservations at this point won't get to people until 2027!  It's everything I hoped for, especially once SteamOS 3.8 dropped and I was able to use it to wake up my Steam Deck from the couch.  The grip to use it is a bit different, but it's not bad in any way, just takes some time to get used to.

So, better controls mean more gaming to be done in Steam's ecosystem... when I can pull myself away from Warframe and Forza Horizon 6 on the XBox at least.  What's the game I start with?  Well, I was going to put some time into The Thaumaturge -  what's not to like about wielding the supernatural while palling around with Rasputin in 1905 Russia?  Unfortunately, some graphical glitching I didn't see when testing it on my Ubuntu machine had me set that aside.  Plenty of time to get back to it after the Steam Machine launches, I'm thinking.

I decided instead to give some proper attention to Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society.  Mechanically, it's a first-person turn-, party-, and grid based dungeon crawler, the sort of thing that dates all the way back to the dungeons in early Ultima games... but much prettier, of course, given its developer, NIS.  Story-wise, well...

I'm sure I've vented here before about how tired I am of the standard "team of heroes sallies forth to save the world" shtick. Labyrinth of Galleria is distinctly not that.  The titular labyrinth is a space beneath Galleria Manor, someplace off the beaten path, that a former owner collected various objects, then sealed them away with magic such that there is only one way in or out.  That access point, a magical wardrobe, has one major issue, though... it will allow entry without issue, but any living thing trying to exit by that route gets minced into meat.

Naturally, there's a Count that wants some of the objects that are hiding down there, and he's not exactly a nice sort.  He buys the manor, and hires a witch to work out how to find and fetch the items he wants.  Her solution?  Get around the "living thing" limitation using soldier puppets - actual puppets with souls bound to them.  Problem being, she doesn't have a good way to make them do what she wants while out of her sight.

The answer lies in getting a spirit to follow them in and act as a commander, but the witch isn't capable/willing to handle that herself.  Instead, she advertises in a far-off country town and ends up bringing in an energetic, naive, and frankly not-very-bright young noble lady with a knack for finding things to act as a medium for the spirit.  In this game, "you" are the spirit, and you follow the story of what happens outside of the labyrinth from the young lady's standpoint.

Now, could this story eventually evolve/devolve into the same old "save the world" trope?  Sure, there's no knowing where the story could end up at this point, otherwise there's not much point in following the story.  I'm definitely willing to see where it leads from here, though! 

One last goodbye, Destiny

 December 2023 is when I gave up on Destiny 2, a decision I haven't regretted.  Did it help usher in the change I was hoping for?  Not really, no... Sony didn't take the nuclear option and flush the Bungie board (doubtless thinking of the lawsuits that would be sure to follow), but rather allowed the then-head of the board to cash out, without replacing him.  In the meantime, Sony basically absorbed everything from Bungie except their Destiny and Marathon teams, then watched as Destiny staggered about without sufficient support or focus, pinning their hopes on Marathon instead.  As of this writing, that looks to be a poor decision, with Sony having to write down some of the value of their Bungie acquisition after Marathon finally launched to a tepid market response.

At any rate, the game looks to be up for Destiny.  The current game has been announced to be getting its last update next month, after which it will be in maintenance mode, just like the last game.  It's always possible that Bungie could be thinking in terms of prepping a Destiny 3, but current leaks make that look unlikely at best.  Rather, there's likely to be layoffs after that last patch comes out, with maybe some lucky survivors getting yeeted over to the Marathon team.

I feel for the Destiny team members, truly.  There's never a good time to be laid off, but these days are amazingly bad.  Still, Marathon doesn't strike me as my sort of fare, and, even if it were, there's still at least one lingering board member there from before Sony's takeover, so I'm still not getting involved in anything Bungie for the time being.  At this point, it's almost with clinical detachment that I'm keeping an eye on Bungie's future.  Will they somehow parlay Marathon into something that will reverse the company's fortunes, or will Sony eventually absorb the remnants, and squirrel away its IP?  I know which path I'm seeing as likely.

Tidbits from gaming land

 Yeah, I'm going to give the real world's continuing slide from SNAFU to TARFU a rest this time.  Let's stick with smaller-stakes stupidity from the world of games.

First up has to be Valve's launch of the new version of the Steam Controller.  I get why they might have thought the demand wasn't going to be as high as it was, because they tried this game once before, in 2015.  I got one back then (and still use it to this day), even though it was apparent that it was a compromised device in some respects - notably, lacking a physical d-pad or right analog stick, and expecting the clickable track-pads to be a suitable replacement.  At least they learned from that when they made the Steam Deck, which helped it become as dominant as it is in its gaming niche.

So now, May 4th, in a world seeded by the prominence of Steam Deck, they launch orders for their new Steam Controller, this time without those pesky compromises, and they decide to do so as a worldwide launch at 10am Pacific.  I tried to get my hands on one, but, to nobody's surprise, the scalpers and their bots won the day, overwhelming Steam's payment processing systems, with eBay listings for two or three times the price cropping up shortly thereafter.

Normally, that's where the story would end, but Steam is a different sort of company in many respects.  They took much of the week thereafter to look at what happened, and think about countermeasures.  So now, as of May 8th, they decided to implement a reservation queue, similar to what they did when they launched Steam Deck, limited to accounts "in good standing" to effectively shut down scalper shenanigans.  My reservation is in, so now we wait.

Of course, I could start up another game now, and the temptation is there, especially when I see things like publisher sales on quirky "AA" games.  But lately, there's been a disturbing up-tick in games getting launched even as (or after!) the studios that worked on them are shut down, effectively eliminating any chance that their worst bugs will ever get fixed.  So, shout out to Bellular for this video about Nacon, detailing some of their business moves and their relation to the state of the games they've been releasing of late.  Long story short, they've just jumped up to the same level as Ubisoft for "do not buy"-ness for me, if only for engineering the shutdown of a subsidiary union studio while they staff up an internal non-union studio for the same game genre the old studio served.

Well, things should improve in this space with time, maybe after the AI bubble pops and further constrains the credit markets.  For now, I'm getting by fine on Warframe, and Forza Horizon 6 is on the horizon, courtesy of a more-palatable Game Pass subscription price.  Let's see what comes next!