Halloween has long since come and gone (although leftover candy still lingers), veterans got their brief nod, Thanksgiving has waddled off for another year (although leftover pie still lingers, but not for long), and Christmas is on the horizon. And still, Russia and Israel (and why not, likely Hamas as well) can keep fucking off.
Internationally, it's mostly status quo shit show. Apparently, we're back to trying to carry Russia's water for them when it comes to talks about stopping their invasion (which, of course, they could stop single-handedly by just... stopping). Israel has its ceasefire with Hamas, so apparently decided that meant attacks in the West Bank and Lebanon were fine (insert Inigo Montoya "that word you keep using" meme here). We're still blowing up small boats in the Caribbean, apparently using "no survivors" orders that will hopefully find a suitable courtroom one day. All that, and our president is now declaring the entire airspace of other countries as "closed", seemingly preparing to launch a war with no say-so from Congress (you know, like the Constitution demands).
Here at home, it's a little more interesting. People are noticing things like groceries costing more, in spite of the gaslighting from Trump's team, and some of those people are starting to figure out that it's not the only thing they've been lied to about. It's a similar story for people with ties to the immigrant community, noticing the whole "we're only after the violent criminal illegals" line means more like "if you're not white enough, be prepared to have a bad day". The surprise from this is that, apparently, some Republicans in Congress have had enough, to the point of "retiring early" so they don't have to try and defend all this bullshit through the midterm election cycle... and actually retiring early enough that off-cycle elections could, theoretically, alter the balance in the House at least. It's not time to be dancing in the streets yet (except maybe as part of a No Kings rally or the like), but big cracks start small and all that.
So, real-world stuff out of the way, what's up in play-land? I gave The Outer Worlds 2 a go, and enjoyed it well enough... for a time. Honestly, it brought to mind a lot of the issues I had with Avowed (see my thoughts on that here), but the world presented isn't as focused (they looked to draw inspiration from a lot of different things, games especially, that I've seen before), and the skill/perk system all but demands a more specialized build to be effective. On the plus side, it doesn't have the "tiered loot" system Avowed did, they found a way to handle healing with food/chems that isn't a massive chore, and earning character "quirks" through actual gameplay activity was a breath of fresh air. I didn't like it enough to pay more for it right now, but, like Avowed, it's likely good enough for a sale-price pickup eventually.
Outside of that game, well... Herdling was a nice evening's worth of game, not too complex and very what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Stellaris certainly looked like a good way to consume your life with 4x space-empire building, if that's your thing. But my main takeaway (as in I was willing to buy it to keep playing after Game Pass expires) is PowerWash Simulator 2, a follow-on to the 2022 game I briefly mentioned here - it's basically the same game as before (maybe slightly easier?), making it perfect for an hour or so here and there, and it's been long enough since the last one that the sting of that one's last level has faded a bit.
So now what? Well, I'm in my annual "buy for others, not for me" phase, and I've come up with a mad scheme. I found the "list games by playtime" section of my Steam profile, and I'm going to work my way up from the bottom, trying out and categorizing old games in preparation for the launch of the new version of the Steam Machine. No, I'm not going to do detailed reviews or anything like that... but, the first game of any substance I found this way was a copy of Fallout that I got who-knows-when and never played... or before Steam started doing play-time tracking (yet more proof that I've become Old). I'll just say that it both works surprisingly well on my Ubuntu box, and still seems surprisingly fun to play nearly 30 years later (it released in 1997!), just don't try to run it windowed on a modern screen.
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