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.