So yeah, Ukraine, the war, Putin's still a bastard, not much new there.
Destiny 2, I did go ahead and spring for the "full year" package. Basically, my brother's Christmas present (a $100 gift card) paid for it, while I covered the tax. I'm liking it for now, but I haven't really gotten into any of the repetitive activities as of yet. Worst case, I'm set to drop in and out of the game at will for the next year, at least.
Steam Deck has had its first casualty of the new game-playing regime - Dragon's Dogma is out. I gave it the best-to-date play sessions yet, and ran into two main issues. First, the "pawns" (the rest of your adventuring party, mainly) are played up as having no will of their own... but damned if they're not keen to charge into combat with anything that comes within sight. That would be bad enough, since that basically dictates your play style for you. However, on top of that, there's the matter of the enemies in the game - if there's anything worse than palette-swapping your enemies out to make tougher versions, it's making tougher versions of enemies while keeping their visuals unchanged. Once I've fought wolves/bandits/whatever, and I see another group of the same, it should be reasonable to expect more of the same to be, at least roughly, the same strength/toughness as before, but that's not the case, as demonstrated by the sharp difference between the starting-area wolves and the first wolves you encounter in the Dark Arisen expansion. Those nuisances, plus the way enemies seem to respawn instantly when going back to already-cleared ares, soured me on the game, so I'm done with it.
That leaves an opening in the RPG niche, which I've decided to fill with Disgaea 2 PC (Compatibility: Playable). I played Disgaea 3 on the PS3 back in the day (all the way to the "end", no less!), I've played Disgaea, Disgaea 4 and Disgaea 5 a bit, and more editions are coming out as the years pile up. What can I say, I'm a sucker for the systems in these games, but there's one big issue that tends to hold me back, namely the way you can only save a game out when you're in a "safe area". Given that part of the grindtastic gameplay involves diving into what's known as the "Item World" to improve your gear, a process that can take untold hours, that's a major problem for anybody with anything resembling a life. However, this is one place where the Steam Deck really shines - you can put the Deck to sleep at any time, even in the middle of a game, and it will turn back on like nothing happened at all! I see great possibilities for actually finishing D2PC, and maybe pursuing later editions, assuming I don't just burn out after a while.
Outside of that, there's possible progress on the electric car front. Got a call from the dealership last month, saying they got word from the factory that they could get my chosen specs into production... if I was willing to drop the lighted charger port from the build. Says I, by all means! So, in theory, my car might be ready for me to buy late this month, or maybe sometime next month. I'm hopeful, but, of course, until it actually happens, I'm not getting my hopes up too high.
