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!

Seriously, the fuckin' POPE?

 Just gotta keep reminding myself, every day that passes is another day closer to us being, maybe, with any luck, done with Trump and his cronies.

I mean, sure, the guy's gotten us into a pissing match with Iran, he's throwing his under-performers under the bus, and Epsteinapalooza constantly burbles in the background.  Those are just a sample of the things he's been doing over the past year, but pretty much all things that I'd say fall within what I'd expect him to try and pull.  I honestly never thought I'd see the day where he'd try to take on the Pope.

So, I'm not going to link to the source materials this time, because it's all social media, so ew.  But basically, the pope, like many before him in modern times, came out and said something to the tune of "war bad, don't try and justify it with religion."  Trump apparently took that as a rebuke (duh!), and put up his own rant about how the Pope is weak on crime(?) and terrible on foreign policy... then followed up with an AI-generated picture of Trump as fuckin' JESUS CHRIST.  Saner heads prevailed and got that pic taken down (with Trump making the lame excuse that he thought it was made to look like him as a doctor, not, you know, a major and readily-recognizable religious figure).  Since then, there's been a little bit of back-and-forth, but, unsurprisingly, the Pope is being the bigger man and refusing to let things escalate.

But the kicker is that it's not just Trump.  His VP and the Speaker of the House, both supposed men of faith, have, in effect, told the Pope to stay in his lane... and apparently, there's significant support for that stance among various Trump voters.  Honestly, it would no longer surprise me if the people dredging up bad ideas from the past didn't have "once we've got the brown people under our thumb again, we're going after the Catholics next" on their agenda.

Seriously, the midterm elections can't get here soon enough.  I need another read on my fellow Americans, to see how many are in the camp of "no, really, this is what I voted for", handily sorted by region so I know where never to go in the future. 

Project Hail Mary, and another dose of the Regal experience

 This past week, I went and saw Project Hail Mary.  For those not in the know, it's basically the story of a man who wakes up, after an induced coma and with severe memory loss, on a ship at a distant star as the last survivor of his crew.  After working out/remembering why he's there (saving Earth, natch), he encounters an alien ship, crewed by the last survivor of their group, similarly looking to save their world.  Hijinks ensue, hurdles are overcome, and everybody makes it through.

I liked the film overall.  Sure, it's got its holes in the science here and there, but all in service of telling a better story, so I'm not going to nit-pick too hard.  There were even a couple of "oh, you decided to go there" moments that elevated the film a bit in my eyes.  Of course, it probably helped that I was in a better mood from a somewhat-improved theater experience from last time.

 I'm still working on that gift card I got for Christmas, so I chose a different Regal theater this time.  The main positive takeaway here is that you want to check the tag-spam of your theater/show choices for the "Recliner Seating" option - I'm sure it's more expensive (although I don't know for certain, since I did a matinee this time around, so it's not a simple apples-to-apples comparison), but actual adult-scale furniture with padding and the ability to put your feet up makes a world of difference, especially when it's time to get back up.

Beyond that, the compare-and-contrast with my last Regal experience was pretty spot-on.  Same dodgy app experience (and a note on the ticket booth to buy tickets at the concession stand instead of touch-screens), same commercial overload.  I did get to experience the concessions this time around, and what an experience that was - it's never been cheap, but I'm amazed at what it's become.  Candy is no longer hoarded behind the counter, but scattered through a serpentine approach to the stand.  The signage above the stand shows large photos of the products on sale, in their various combo packs, while the prices are relegated to a small bar at the bottom, barely legible while standing at the counter - not certain what percentage of "intentional customer behavior shaping" and "shame at the prices we're charging" is involved, but the first part's gotta be higher.  End result, for a small popcorn (similar size to the 3/$1 microwave bags you get at the grocer) and a medium soda (which translates roughly to Big Gulp sized) approaches $20, pre-tax.

Well, now I know what Regal brings to the table for the movie-going experience, and I remain unimpressed.  I figure I'll get one more movie out of that gift card, then I'm going to have to pay for a movie or two at other local theaters to see how deep the industry rot has spread. 

A few small items, while things are relatively quiet

 Weird that I can think of "at war with Iran and shooting up boats in both the Atlantic and Pacific" as relatively quiet, but here we are.  Everybody's fussed about the entirely-foreseeable after effects of the US attacking Iran jointly with Israel, so nobody's actively looking to rock the boat any further - assuming you don't include Trump "joking" about Pearl Harbor with the Japanese prime minister, of course.  Otherwise, Epsteinapalooza continues to simmer, alongside the many, many other problems Trump and company have brought down upon us.

Side note, did you know there's another No Kings protest scheduled for next week?

Anyways, the main bug in my bonnet today isn't the big picture, but a smaller piece of corruption and control.  Turns out, yesterday, the Nexstar acquisition of Tegna was approved.  You know, one of the companies that tried to support the FCC head in his attempt to get Jimmy Kimmel kicked off the air back in September, getting special dispensation from that head to bypass the law (under what authority?) to extend their empire further.  Some states have filed a lawsuit to try and stop it, but, in my mind, Tegna is already tainted.  So, as promised, I've dropped their local stations from my tuner's channel list.  Mind, the local Tegna station's main channel was the CBS affiliate, so it's just their also-ran UHF channel (CW affiliate, maybe?) and all the filler sub-channels for both that went away.  Kind of a wash all around, really, but I might miss getting tempted to watch some Svengoolie thing on a random Saturday night in the future, I guess.

 All the more time for games then, yeah?  Let's start with PowerWash Simulator 2 - I finished that the other night.  No major surprises, up to the end credits, which suffered a crash-to-"desktop" on my XBox.  Ah well, I had my fun, but I'm not champing at the bit to get any DLC for it, so take that for what it's worth.

Outside of that, I've added a couple more programs to my "games that have my attention" list.  Trash Goblin is a fairly simple game (barely more than a visual novel, really) where your young goblin self sets up a shop where he takes bits of trash sourced by his Auntie, chips away the worst of the encrustation on them, (usually) cleans them up, and (sometimes) pieces things together before selling them off to the townsfolk that stop by.  Most of the mechanics are forgettable at best (although the cleaning sponge you start with is absolutely wretched), but the chiseling part does a really good job at hitting the same puzzle-solving notes as manually examining an object you're trying to uncover/decipher.  It's got my attention for now, but we'll see how the story holds up.

There's also Dawnfolk, which I'm playing on my PC due to the controller setup, mainly (anything d-pad related on the first-gen Steam Controller is not a good time).  It's a minimalist town-builder with a Commodore-64 aesthetic, including very simple mini-games for some tasks.  It hasn't proven to be "hard" (at the normal difficulty level at least), but it's both engaging and charming.  I'd say take a look, while the Steam Spring Sale is on, maybe it'll grab your attention too.

Again with the war criming

 Here's another one for the pile of "I never thought I'd say this", but... I kind of miss the bad actors in our government having enough respect or fear for their constituents that they felt the need to get their stories straight before they started their shenanigans.

This time's example?  Well, we're at war with Iran, now.  We've been blowing their leadership, people, and stuff up constantly for the past week.  Why?  Nobody has given a consistent reason to date.  The closest anybody's come is something along the lines of "they were going to attack us, so we attacked them first."  Try that line of reasoning if you ever find yourself in an assault trial, see how that goes for you.

Of course, once again, this is a war launched on a sovereign nation without Congress having a say in the matter, counter to what the Constitution requires.  No worries though, the baddies in both chambers said it's OK, although they can't seem to come up with a reasonable answer as to why.  I don't know what's worse, the ones who say it's "not really a war" (to which I would say, if the shoe was on the other foot, and DC was getting bombed for a week, would that be a war?), or the ones saying because Trump's commander-in-chief, he gets to do what he wants with the military (you know, like the Constitution explicitly doesn't say).

And what's a new war without new war crimes to go with it?  Take your pick, so far we've at least got us bombing a school (possibly chosen as a target using AI) and sinking a warship, then refusing to rescue survivors.  Just imagine what we get to look forward to if Trump decides air power isn't sufficient to cow Iran into submission and sends in land troops.

Mind you, I'm not terribly sad that Iran is on the receiving end of all of this.  They're a theocracy with decades of "death to America" running through their foundation (however justified some of it might be), and a regular supporter of actions destabilizing international relations.  Heck, if anything, I do like that they're not likely to be sending many more drones to Russia for their Ukraine campaign, and having an EV in a hydro-power state insulates me somewhat from their immediate ability to strike back at us economically via oil prices.

That said, I'd really prefer not to use fighting Iran as an excuse to become more like them.  I'd really like a functioning republic back, without our military leaders talking up a war in terms of hurrying Armageddon along.  Sooner rather than later would be good here - I'm hearing stumbling steps in the direction of making Cuba our next target.  Enough of this sort of thing and, internal governance aside, the other nations of the world are likely to start looking at us as something that needs "dealt with", especially if we're low on supplies from our prior adventures.

Fun movie, bad theater

 It's been years since I've stepped foot in a movie theater - the last post I see here that attests to me being at a theater was from 2011.  I'm sure I must have seen something else in a theater in the meantime (maybe Everything Everywhere All at Once?  Great film, by the way), but I couldn't swear to it.  However, I got a Regal Cinemas gift card for Christmas, and found something worth giving a go over the weekend, so away I went.  Sadly, there's nothing like years of absence to make enshittification stand out when you do eventually return.

First things first though, the movie... Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die was both different and better than I could have ever expected, given the setup.  A man shows up at a diner, looking like the prototypical paranoid homeless guy, ranting about being from the future, where things have gone horribly wrong due to social media and AI, and he's looking for team members to change how it all goes.  This is one of those movies that's better to go into blind, so I'll just say it's a little dark, a little gory, and supremely silly.  I giggled several times throughout, and not in an "it's so bad it's good" sort of way.  I heartily recommend it.

In contrast, we have the Regal Cinemas experience.  I mean, I know theater chains are struggling, but some of this shit is downright abusive.  I've still got credit on that gift card, so we'll try another of their theaters in town for my next experience for a compare-and-contrast, but some of it is outside of any one theater's control.

I knew I was in for disappointment as soon as I went to order a ticket through their phone app.  Yes, I'm sure there's some way to use a gift card without the app, but I'd already accepted that modern inevitability and set things up prior there, so it's not like the app itself is all that terrible, if you set aside the popup ads that get in the way of doing what you came to do, of course.

Anyways, I pick my seat, select an adult ticket, and go to checkout... and they hit me with a $2 booking fee on top of the ticket price.  A booking fee, on their app, for their theater.  If I were paying cash, I might well have noped out at that point, but somebody else already paid for this, so what the hell.  Continuing on, as soon as the purchase is complete, I get no fewer than four "special offers" from various services that I have to decline before I can get the QR code for my show.  At this point, I'm wondering whether the convenience of the app beats just showing up at the theater and buying a ticket.

I get to the theater about 10 minutes before the posted showtime.  The first thing I notice is that the ticket booth is entirely unstaffed, humans replaced by touchscreens, so I fully expect the local purchase pattern to mirror the app.  That's not my problem for the day, though, so I head up to the ticket taker (or whatever their job is called now), get scanned in, and head off to the theater - no time to stop for concessions, right?

As I arrive, the ads are already playing, so I find my seat.  Turns out, whoever's in charge of arranging seats here has some airline experience.  I mean, there's plenty of legroom (because the layout of the concrete steps dictates it), but the fold-down arm rests are close enough together that I couldn't comfortably sit with one arm squarely on each (never mind the one-arm method they must be envisioning).  And of course, those armrests are also too short to lay an arm down, without your hand sitting in the drink holder - very convenient, if you have a drink, I'd guess.  I'd get one, but the show's about to start.

Of course, the show wasn't about to start.  From at least 10 minutes before showtime, to more than 20 minutes after, the ads continued to flow.  They eventually shifted to mostly movie previews, as expected, but not entirely - there was one of those superbowl AI ads thrown in the middle, which was kind of funny in hindsight given the way the movie goes.

Eventually, the ads end, the movie shows, I have my fun, then I creakily lever myself out of the seat and go home.  I will say, what was in the control of the local staff seemed to be fine - everything was clean and in seemingly good repair, and no hiccups from the projection and sound equipment were noticed - but, if this is the standard across theater chains for how they treat their customers, I'll stick with streaming, thanks. 

Coming up for air

 So, what, a month-and-a-half since my last post?  Sure feels longer than that.  The world at large is fairly quiet, maybe in part thanks to the Winter Olympics going on.  The AI bubble may not have popped quite yet, but it sure is looking wobbly.  Best of all, the U.S. hasn't started any new shit in the world at large as of yet, although we're definitely making moves that say beating on Iran a bit is a matter of when, not if.

Why might that be?  Well, it's because things inside the country have taken enough turns to keep the baddies occupied.  ICE did their best "occupying power" imitation in their Minnesota surge, up to and including executing citizens, but, amazingly, the citizenry neither cowered nor exploded into the violence needed to act as an excuse to impose martial law.  Things got bad enough on that front (for the baddies) that they had to replace the guy in charge on the ground, who eventually announced that they're going to pull back.  Of course, given the track record of truth in announcements from this group, that's a definite wait and see.

Meanwhile, Epsteinapalooza continues apace.  Having released about half of the total documents, with significant mis-redactions,  the Department of Justice (hah!) wanted to declare everything required by law to be released as released and move on.  Funny enough, Congress didn't see it that way.  The most recent visual stuck in my head on that is the head of the DoJ in a Congressional hearing doing three things:  contemptuously attacking congresscritters from a cheat-sheet, refusing to look at the victims seated behind her, and ranting about the Dow Jones Industrial Average hitting an all-time high (as if that had any bearing on her performance of her job).

Of course, those are just the headline items.  There's plenty of other smaller-but-not-less-important items, like the baddies trying to find a way to nationalize the next elections, because they're projected to do so poorly in them that they're willing to try and strip that Constitutionally-protected function from the states to protect themselves.  The clock is ticking, and I think it's sinking in that their New Reich plan is coming apart at the seams.

On the topic of waiting for things to come apart, can that AI bubble finally pop, or at least significantly deflate?  It's interfering (in a definitely first-world-problem sort of way) with me getting a Steam Machine and revamped Steam Controller!  The controller's the most important part of that batch, since it would let me play a few games I've been itching to play from my couch (I could make something work for the rest of the gear).  But Steam is apparently waiting on some clarity or stability on things like memory prices before they launch their latest batch of hardware, something I honestly don't expect to see this year.  But I wants them!

 While I wait, I'll mention that I've gotten some good mileage lately out of Reus 2.  It's really more of a re-imagining of the original game (which I wrote about back in 2013) than a sequel, but whether that's an improvement or not will be mainly a matter of personal preference.  I do like that it's no longer a timer-driven affair and a fair bit less fiddly, but you lose things I liked from the original like biomes interacting with each other.  All in all, I think I like it better myself, although there is a fair bit of "min-max your way to victory", as I put it in my original writeup.

No more finger-wags from me for a while

 Time for another milestone on the "I never thought I'd see the U.S. do this in my lifetime" track.  Proving once again that "America First" means "I get to do what I want, and none of you will stop me", yesterday Trump unilaterally invaded another country, attacking their military, abducting their leader, and declaring that the U.S. is now in charge there until he says otherwise.

Now, there's a lot of people who are actually happy about this state of affairs, since the country involved was Venezuela.  A lot of exiles like it, because the ruling party there has a history of disappearing people it doesn't like, and many are thinking it's the beginning of the end of their exile.  Some people in the oil industry are doubtless very happy, since they're looking at getting back assets that Venezuela nationalized some decades back.  And of course, Venezuela has been all to comfy with Russia for quite some time, so I'm sure there's some people who are putting this up as a "win" on their tally boards for international influence.

But all of that ignores a few things, starting with the whole "invading a country without declaring war" thing.  I mean, that's basically what I've been pissing and moaning about Russia doing to Ukraine for the past few years (and, incidentally, is a fine example of what happens when the quick, surgical strike doesn't pay off as intended).  As far as the rest of the world is concerned, in one stroke, we've gone from "their current leader is a bit unhinged, but we can work around that" to full-on mad dog status.

Why didn't we declare war?  Well, that would have meant getting Congress involved, since that's one of those "only Congress can do it" things in the Constitution... and of course, Trump didn't want to ruin the surprise, so he just... didn't.  As of this writing, the response of the Congress critters has been along party lines, which is simply insane - Trump prevented you from having any input, and you're somehow fine with that?  He just pulled a Pearl Harbor on Venezuela, and that's hunky-dory by you?

Well, as one lone American, all I can say to the rest of the world is sorry.  Don't feel too bad about treating any promises we make in the worst of faith from here on out, and definitely don't feel bad about needing to set up anti-U.S. alliances to contain our madness.  Russia, Israel, apparently we're one of you now, so I won't be asking you to fuck off for the foreseeable future, until we get our own shit straightened out.  And of course, lest I forget, China, I won't even bat an eye if you decide to finally invade Taiwan at this point - we've proven that we're in the age of "strength means more than civilization" now, and, at the very least, you've got territorial claims there that we didn't when we decided to eat Venezuela.

As for me, I long ago swore a pledge of allegiance that included the line "and to the Republic for which it stands," so I'm going to be doing the bare minimum in support of this country until and unless we have a functioning Republic again.  Of course, there's that other oath I swore about defending the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic... we'll just have to see whether anything aligns to force action on that oath in the days and years to come.

Winding down another year

 ...and, just to get the necessaries out of the way, a happy holiday fuck-off to Russia and Israel.  Hamas, I'm going to stop worrying about for a bit at least - with their leadership getting assassinated in spite of the cease-fire that's supposedly still in place, I think Israel can bear their share of fuck-offitude for a while.

Here in the US, Epsteinapalooza has kicked off, with Trump's Department of Justice attempting to slow-walk and over-redact document releases.  Luckily, whether by ineptitude or sabotage, some of those redactions were apparently done by "highlighting in black", making them trivial to undo, so that's nice.  Between that and the upcoming expiration of Affordable Care Act health-care subsidies, the coming month could be entertaining, at least.  Now, if we can just keep them from unconstitutionally embedding federal controls into state-run elections, we might be getting somewhere.

On the games front... I did manage to finish categorizing and organizing my Steam library.  For a library of several hundred games, at about 1-2 hours a day, it took me about a month to finish.  About 44% of titles ended up being "I'm done with this" (for either possible meaning of that phrase), a further 4% are unsupported by Steam Deck, and 2% are buggy enough to not bother playing until/unless they get fixed.  That'll simplify finding things I actually want to play, especially once the Steam Machine launches (assuming a reasonable price-point there, of course).

Beyond that, it's Steam Winter Sale time, so I've got a few new toys to peruse there... but of course there was a gap between ending my categorization and the sale starting, and I didn't want to play nothing but PowerWash Simulator 2 for hours on end... so I reinstalled Warframe.  Let me tell you, it is nothing but amazing how well that game has held up over the years, as well as what they've managed to do to expand on its basic formula.  If you've never played it, I'd recommend it... and that's about the one free-to-play game that I can say that about.

Once more in the holidays' midst

 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.

Stopped clocks, lowered expectations, and all that

 Never let it be said that I won't give credit where credit is due.  Somehow, since last I wrote, team Trump has managed to get a (technical) ceasefire going between Israel and Hamas that hasn't fully fallen apart yet.  Also, in the Russian invasion of Ukraine matter, they've managed to not swing back to their earlier stance of fellating Putin yet, so good job there.  Still, the fuck-off tally for Russia, Israel, and Hamas keeps going up for now, although the last two could be coming to an end if things keep improving rather than falling apart.

Of course, things holding steady or marginally improving overseas doesn't mean the same is happening closer to home.  There's more bonkers pardons (including a Bitcoin mogul) and sentence commutations (including George fucking Santos), more attempts at installing federalized troops in various predominantly-Democratic cities (thankfully mostly held in check by the courts so far), and more trade/tariff insanity (like cutting off trade talks with Canada over the airing of a commercial including Ronald Regan's thoughts on tariffs, of all things).  I'm sure there would be a lot more, but, currently, the government is "shut down" because the Republicans tried to force a funding bill down the throats of the Democrats in the Senate, and they didn't take kindly to that, but the Republicans won't back down - something about the bill allowing tax cuts to expire and make health care significantly more expensive for average Americans, but they're not wealthy donors, or something like that.  The end result of which is that there's a lot of "non-essential" spending that, legally, can't be done right now.

Of course, that doesn't stop team Trump from plowing forward.  Sometimes, that's in readily-defensible ways like trying to reroute existing Department of Defense funds to pay military paychecks (because unpaid troops are one path to a revolution nobody wants to see).  Others, not so much, like tearing down a wing of the White House (!) to make room for a ballroom funded by private donors.  Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd see the day where the "Epstein memorial ballroom, sponsored by Amazon" could possibly be a thing.

Well, enough about that real-world bother.  Last I wrote, I was getting into Visions of Mana, and I can happily report that I liked... the first half of the game.  Finding out that the whole villager sacrifice thing was basically an emergency response to changing world(s) conditions that just gradually became "that's how it's always been done" was a bit more true-to-life than I've come to expect from this genre of game.  Then, I hit the "betrayed former hero" trope, which could have been something interesting, about the same time I got reminded that this is a NetEase game, a company that's been doing questionable things to Western developers in recent years, and I went from "let's play it through" to "let's see what Wikipedia has to say about the story going forward".  Simply put, it didn't really resonate with me (especially bits about people getting a happy ending "in their next life"), so I stopped.

Since then, well, more No Man's Sky, and I had enough "play later" entries in my Game Pass queue that, since Outer Worlds 2 is getting good press and coming to the service later this week, I upgraded to the new-and-more-expensive Ultimate tier a bit early.  The only backlog game that's stood out positively to me so far is Wheel World, a bicycle racing game with some bike crafting and world-saving thrown in for flavor.  Definitely a "look at a video, you'll know if it's for you" sort of game.

I'll try to let you all know what I think about Outer Worlds 2 next time, as well as other good Game Pass backlog titles I get to.  I'd say the same about improvements in real-world conditions as well, but that's not the trend-line I'm seeing right now.

What a month

 For starters, Russia, Israel, and Hamas, kindly fuck off, keep on fucking off... you know the drill by now.

You know, I remember a time when I'd hear some government pronouncement or other, and, at worst, my reaction would be "well, I don't like it, but I can see what they're trying to handle."  These days, it seems like every time I hear something, it elicits a "fuck off" or "fuck you" reflexive response, and that's just plain not healthy.  But what else am I supposed to say, when the Supreme Court says racial profiling is OK when ICE does it, Congress is delaying swearing in a newly-elected member for nakedly partisan (Epstein files) reasons, and the President and his team are a non-stop shit show?

Of course, that's all the expected fun of the current (hopefully to continue without shenanigans) election cycle.  Then, you get wildcards like the Charlie Kirk killing coming into play to add spice to everything.  For anybody blissfully unaware, Mr. Kirk was a rabble-rouser whose shtick was going to college campuses to try and get people to "prove him wrong" on topics of his choosing, where he came prepared with cherry-picked data and a willingness to say pretty much anything to defend his chosen ground.  Because of that, he's got a wealth of quotes about things like (to paraphrase) empathy being a made-up term that does damage, and gun deaths being an acceptable cost for the Second Amendment.  That alone makes me feel justified in finding it fitting that he died from a gunshot at a rally he was holding while trying to shape a gun-violence argument in terms of gang violence.  Frankly, for all it came at the hands of a gent of questionable stability, the fact that he won't get to profit from the world he was trying to create pleases me greatly.

Naturally, that's not how Mr. Kirk's allies see things.  Rather, he gets called a hero and a martyr, while bringing up a shadowy "them" as being responsible, with revenge needing to be taken - and that's just from the President and his team!  No surprise then that when the late-night comedians started weighing in, Trump's head of the FCC decided to take the opportunity to try and force one off the air, in this case Jimmy Kimmel.  A couple of the larger station-owners (Sinclair and Nexstar) played along, performatively scheduling a Kirk memorial in place of Kimmel's ABC show, and Disney got the message, "indefinitely suspending" the show.

Amazingly, given this timeline, people at large decided this was a step too far, and responded by canceling their Disney+ memberships.  Long story short, Disney relented, the station owners relented, the FCC head is making noises about how he really wasn't trying to censor anybody, and Disney's shareholders are now demanding info on how Disney's actions were in their best interest, which is all lovely to see.  As for me, I don't own Disney stock and didn't have Disney+ to cancel, so it's purely spectator sport for now.  Of course, if Nexstar's attempted acquisition of Tegna (which owns my local CBS affiliate) goes through, I'll have to delete those channels from my over-the-air channel list, but that's about it.

Whew.  Well, that's enough about the shit state of the real world, how about a game? I've been tooling around in No Man's Sky, but I decided to give Visions of Mana a shot, since it came onto Game Pass.  I like what I've played so far, although the background theme of "villages cheerfully offering up sacrifices to keep things stable" is more than a little jarring - I really want to see how things play out there.  Well, that, and getting a cat-folk party member that's not a cat-girl (with all the baggage that comes with that) is kind of entertaining, although seeing him triple-wield daggers by involving his tail is a bit over the top, really.

Summer doldrums time again

 Yeah, the world's still shit, and the nation's going to hell in a handbasket, so the traditional hearty "fuck all y'all" to the major players there.

That out of the way... summer is winding down (for all the weather hasn't gotten the memo yet), and there's no rioting in the streets yet, so I find myself with disturbingly little to do with myself.  It's Labor Day tomorrow, which, in my case, means I'll actually do some labor (housecleaning, likely), and past that work will be ramping back up a bit, but there's all that other time to be filled, and I can only watch so much anime.  Which brings us to games.

I've effectively finished Monster Sanctuary (as in, I hit an end-game difficulty spike that says "casual players need not apply").  Civ VII isn't striking me as something I want to play right now, and Baldur's Gate 3, well, I've played a bit, but it's not sticking either.  I'm still plinking away at Balatro and Spelunky in short bursts.  I've got Dorfromantik and Islanders: New Shores set up on the Steam Deck (think world- and city-builder puzzle titles respectively, I like 'em!), but anything more than an hour of either tends to put me to sleep, especially later at night.  Basically, I need something more engaging-in-the-moment to hold my attention right now.

For now, I've hopped back into No Man's Sky, which just released an update with ship-building (and yet another free update, at that!).  Will it hold my attention long enough for the Outer Worlds 2 to come out in October, or will my attention inevitably rotate to something else in the meantime?  Time will tell!

Things are not right or normal - call it out!

 Just to get tradition out of the way, here's a quick "fuck off" to the international bad actors of the age - Russia, Israel, Hamas, and anybody else looking to set aside or ignore the established conventions of the world that keep things civilized.

That done, here's a quick update on some of the shit in play in the USA.  Whether it's yet another attempt to distract from Trump's Epstein problems, trying to solidify their power for the mid-term elections, or some mix of those, we've got a combined assault on fair elections currently underway.  Most recently, we've got Trump issuing executive orders (which, as always, aren't laws) trying to push through an out-of-cycle census that would exclude some people, in an effort to mess with how many representatives each state can send to Congress.  Meanwhile, we've also got the Republican contingent of the Texas state representatives trying to push through an out-of-cycle redistricting to try and send more Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives next election.

Now that we're firmly in the realm of "taking jobs and power that matter", Democrats are, unsurprisingly, reacting.  Naturally, that includes various other, Democrat-heavy states making threats about doing the same thing Texas is trying to do, but the immediately important thing that's happening is that the Democratic Texas state representatives have made themselves scarce, so that they're not just letting things happen as if that's just how things are supposed to work.  They've done so well enough that the state house can't get enough representatives together to legally do any business, which is a bonus - and you know it's effective from all the shit Texas Republicans are throwing at the wall, hoping something will stick (trying to get the FBI involved in a civil matter?  Really?).

In an unrelated matter, nationwide net neutrality is off the table again, after a lawsuit loss on appeal against a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court.  In normal times, this wouldn't be the end of the story, because they could go through one or two more rounds of appeals, ending at the Supreme Court, albeit a process that would take a fair amount of time and money.  Instead, they're dropping the case, but making sure everybody knows that one big reason that they're doing so is because they know that they wouldn't get a fair hearing at the Supreme Court.  To illustrate, the spokes-lawyer in the story I linked said the conservative majority of the court "have shown hostility to sound legal reasoning" and "cares very little about the rule of law", which is about as damning a thing you can say about any court, never mind the Supreme Court.

So yeah, seriously, no more "both sides are bad", no more go-along-to-get-along.  We need more of this level of response to the sort of bullshit Republicans are trying to pass off as business as usual.  Mind you, I am explicitly not saying "don't take part in elections" or anything like that - especially since elections are about the only way things are going to improve.  Well, short of everybody going out and punching a Nazi, but elections are definitely the cleaner way to fix things, if they're allowed to work.

Another month of crap... but then, there's Monster Sanctuary

 There's just so, so much wrong with the world today.  On the global scale, of course there's Russia's invasion of Ukraine (fuck off, Russia), and the whole Israel-Hamas thing (a pox on both your houses), which has, naturally, evolved into Israel fucking with humanitarian aid to Gaza to the extent of kids dying from malnutrition.  Nothing new from Iran, India, or Pakistan lately, but Thailand and Cambodia are looking to step up to the plate.  Meanwhile, Trump is back to his tariff-bullying ways, and, whichever help us, some countries are falling in line, signing trade deals in exchange for reduced pain.

That brings us to the national issues, things like "Alligator Auschwitz" for the concentration of illegal immigrants rounded up by ICE's masked miscreants, and new executive orders looking to target the homeless, among other governmental endeavors.  Now they're working their way down to mass media, between pulling funding from public broadcasting (because they don't like what they're saying) and forcing CBS to accept a political officer (sorry, "ombudsman") to approve a merger between Paramount and Skydance (to ensure they like what CBS is saying).  There, I'm kind of sorry that all I can do is remove my local CBS channel from my TV's channel lineup - I don't have any goods or services that are part of the larger picture, and I refuse to consume media from any outlet with a political officer involved.

It's not all bad, though... Trump and company have been fighting hard to get the whole "Epstein Files" issue out of the headlines, but they're finding that's not easy when they brought on a large part of their base with promises to release everything related to that pre-election.  Funny thing, people viscerally care about pedophiles running about free, especially when it's arguably/demonstrably the rich and powerful that are tied into the whole mess.  Will any of this bear fruit?  Tune in next month!

Well, enough of the shit state of the world, how about a game recommendation instead?  Monster Sanctuary is best described as a pixel-art Metroidvania Pokemon game.  You collect a team of monsters that levels up with you as you go along, each with their own skill tree.  You use those monsters in various kinds of fights with other monsters, as well as using their powers while traversing the game world to let you find treasures and traverse areas that would otherwise be impassable.  I picked it up for $5 in the last Steam sale, and, somewhere around halfway through, I'd say it's worth full price, if a game like this appeals to you at all.  My Steam Deck gaming routine now is to get an in-game day of Book of Hours played, then spend the rest of the night playing Monster Sanctuary.

Meanwhile, my XBox Series X is mainly my Crunchyroll streaming box at the moment, with the odd bit of Balatro or Spelunky thrown in for flavor.  Civ VII, well, I finished a playthrough, and started another one, but, well, for all its differences, it's still Civ at its base... I'll still plink about with it on occasion, but, right now, I'd be hard-pressed to say I'd jump back into it whole-heartedly once I've dealt with Monster Hunter and Book of Hours.  I'm thinking it's more likely I'll give Baldur's Gate 3 another go, when that time comes, assuming some other new shiny hasn't come along to demand my attention.

Given the state of this world... yeah, Civ VII works for me

 So, in addition to all the crap otherwise happening in the world, Israel decided to turn it up a notch by turning their bombing attentions to Iran.  How much of the why of that is the stated "we can't let Iran have nuclear weapons", and how much is Israeli leadership looking to keep a war footing at home so they don't have to face personal consequences for their actions, I have no way of knowing.  Funny thing, though... Iran has some continuing capacity to fight back, and Israel has the gall to complain about some of their targeting choices, which mirror what Israel was just doing to Gaza a little while ago.

Oh well, no worries, regional conflicts, minor powers, and all that, right?  Of course not, not when we've got our supposedly America First president in play.  See, there was at least one site in Iran that Israel didn't have the tools to destroy properly, but we do, in the form of a "bunker buster" bomb.  So, after a degree of waffling (and, doubtless, wanting to distract from his current issues and offset the "TACO" reputation he's built of late), Trump orders a strike on Iran.

Now, for those of you who don't keep up on that whole international relations thing, that would be an act of war.  As in, before you go bombing the bejeezus out of a country, you're supposed to declare war first (and yes, we've done plenty of this in the past, which doesn't make it right).  The ones who get to declare war around here are the members of Congress, not the President (although, if you want a more nuanced description of that, here's a link).  At least, that's what the Constitution says.  Of course, I'm sure Congress will get right on that, especially after The Onion put out an editorial declaring how now, more than ever, we need their cowardice.

While I wait with not-bated breath for that, a few words about Civilization VII.  Yes, I'm playing that at the same time as I'm playing Book of Hours, and the easy explanation on that is that, mid-week, Book of Hours is easier to put down as bedtime approaches.

Civ VII still has the one-more-turn stickiness of past entries, but the structure has changed more than a little, with the full game getting broken down into "ages", with major events/calamities to close out each age before a partial reset to start the next age.  It's a structure that has more than its share of critics, but I happen to like it.  After I finish my current game, and maybe one or two at higher difficulty (I'm basically curb-stomping the AI on this run), maybe I'll do a proper write-up on it.  For now, it's enough to say I'm liking it more than Civ VI, and I'm liking it more than some of the off-brand alternatives out there right now - for example, I picked up Old World through a Humble Bundle recently, and the reliance on "workers" a la older versions of Civ there, among other dated/limiting mechanics, sent me packing.