Starting with today's "shit state of the world" report... wait a minute, Ukraine aid has gotten through Congress, and Israel is making offers for a cease-fire in Gaza? Well, it's a bit early to be calling either truly "good news", but one can hope, right?
Before I get into the main meat of this post, gotta give my updated take on Steam on Ubuntu in general. The big thing being that, as of right now, anybody wanting to use Steam on Ubuntu should not use the "snap" version that Ubuntu offers as the "safe" version. That's because at least one game, and likely more, misbehaves if you have that version of Steam installed, but works fine if you have Valve's official version installed - and since that game is No Man's Sky, that's kind of a big deal. Other games I've tested include Bridge Constructor Portal and Everspace (both of which have Linux-native versions), as well as Skyrim, all without major issues beyond some graphics glitches when I try to push my APU a bit too hard. Proton is a beautiful thing, and ProtonDB is a wonderful resource.
With a little experience under my belt, I felt safe enough to actually spend money on a new game, in this case Helldivers 2. Yeah, I'm a little late to the party, but between making the move to a new PC and overcoming my resistance to having anything to do with Sony anything (see my earlier posts as to how I came to leave Playstation for XBox back in the day, if you're interested), I'm not feeling too bad about it. Early is nice, but seeing how a business runs a game is nice too.
For those not in the know, Helldivers 2 is a futuristic third-person shooter set in a galaxy where you are fighting for "managed democracy" (read space-fascists) against hordes of alien creatures and automatons, in various missions with up to three other players. Tonally, it's a weird sort of playing-it-straight-for-laughs setup, which is helped by two mechanical aspects of the game: all the missions are Player-versus-environment (PvE), and friendly fire is always on. Part of the fun is just in avoiding (or not) taking out other players with some of the ludicrously powerful options at hand (think orbital strikes, auto-turrets, flamethrowers, that sort of thing). And unlike most shooters, when you die, you don't magically respawn (or get brought back to life a la Destiny's space-zombie Guardians), but your replacement dives down onto the planet's surface... they may look a lot like your previous guy did, but the voice change and different patriotic "barks" make it clear that this is somebody entirely new. The obvious reference point for all this madness is Starship Troopers, but it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't some Paranoia in the mix as well.
So, how's it play on Ubuntu? Pretty good, or, as one of the ProtonDB entries put it, it doesn't crash any more often here than on Windows. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, but the whole at-my-computer-desk thing makes it harder to play for extended sessions, especially once cats get added to the equation. If it ever comes to the XBox side of the console space, I might just buy it again for $40, just to play it over there... but I'm not holding my breath, and I'm damn well not buying any PlayStation console to play it on now - bad enough that I had to set up an account. Overall, I'd generally recommend this, outside of those people I know that just wouldn't enjoy anything shooter-y.
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