Video games update

 Again with the "over a month since posting anything" thing... well, nothing like a little update on the video games I'm playing to fix that little issue.

First, on the XBox Series S side, have I mentioned lately what a lovely thing Game Pass has become?  I normally only pony up for it when there's some specific game I want to play (or at least try out) that has hit the system, but, in recent months, there have been enough quality games hitting the service that I haven't found cause to drop my subscription at all.  Case in point, I just played a bit of Psychonauts 2 yesterday, and I would heartily recommend it to just about anyone.  It has the same "cartoonishly disturbing" look as the original, updated for modern hardware, along with a fair degree of wit and humor.  To say more than that, I would have to use descriptive phrases that make no sense outside of the game, like "the maternity ward in the hospital/casino with the rigged wheel of fortune", so I'll just leave it at that.

Of course, finding gems like that make you re-evaluate the other games you're looking to play.  In the case of Fallout 4, I realized that I had switched from "I want to play more of that" to "I should play more of that", and, if I'm not mistaken, at just about the same point I dropped the game on my initial play-through.  So, barring a sudden urge to wander the wastelands and shoot more raiders and super mutants, I think I'm done with that game... and if not, I've got a save file with a good starting point for next time, now.

On the PC side... well, most of the games I like playing all but require a significant time commitment for even a single play session, so I'm always on the lookout for games that I can play in much shorter bursts (and better still if I can still play those games for extended periods without burning out on them).  Recently, I've dusted off my Steam copy of "Mahjong Pretty Girls Battle", which is much tamer than the title suggests.  This isn't "puzzle" Mahjong solitaire like many of you might think when you hear Mahjong, but 4-player Riichi-style Mahjong, you against three CPU players.  The "pretty girls" in question are the avatars for the various players, reflecting the strengths and weaknesses of those players, and, as you win games, you unlock more characters.  I find a single game takes about 10 minutes, which is just about perfect for filler, yet, if the mood strikes me, I can spend an entire evening playing.  I would obviously recommend it, but the game has no tutorial mode or anything like that, so you need to learn how to play the game elsewhere first (I found and printed online rules).  It's not a terribly hard game to learn, though... it's mostly Gin/Rummy with a few tweaks.  Scoring is the real bear, but that's handled by the game in this version.

That's where I am at the moment, games-wise.  What new things are coming down the pipe that will grab my attention?  Will I ever drop out of Destiny 2 again?  I'll doubtless let you know, when the time comes.

It's Olympics time again...

 Usually, I rather enjoy the Olympics.  For example, here's my 2008 post about the opening ceremonies there (which I still haven't seen anything surpass to date).  This time around is quite different, courtesy of our favorite modern plague, COVID.

Naturally, the story starts last year, which is when the Olympics were supposed to take place, but COVID was still new enough for everyone to give it a degree of respect, if not fear, and those in charge decided to postpone it to this year, a reasonable and prudent decision.  Fast forward to this year, and it seems prudence and reason have dropped out of the running.  We've gone from "we'll be good to go as normal this year" to "we'll have to ask foreign fans to stay in their home countries" to "not even the locals cane come and watch, and we're going to aggressively test and sequester everyone involved to limit the spread of the disease."  I was fine with the earlier restrictions put in place, but the current setup says to me that the Olympics should have been canceled or postponed one more year.

Which of course brings up the question, why are they so hell-bent on pushing forward, when the global average of vaccinations is only about 25% (and in the low single-digit percent range in several countries)?  Some of it is going to be the athletes themselves of course, the once-every-four-years nature of the event meaning some of them get exactly one shot at attending, and for some of those this is it.  However, the various countries involved haven't had any compunctions about restricting non-essential activities and travel, which handily describes this entire event, so there must be more to it than that.  Sadly, all I can see as a driving force beyond the zeal of the athletes is a mix of profit drives for the various sponsors involved and the varied goals of the nations involved, be that "proving" their people superior to their neighbors or showing their own people that things are going back to normal.  Honestly, it turns my stomach, and I'm not alone in that - when significant numbers of the locals protest the opening ceremonies of the event that's supposed to be inherently non-offensive and a point of pride for your country, that's a pretty good sign that you should stop and re-evaluate.

Of course, any re-evaluation should include the ever-popular question "what's the worst that could happen?"  Here's an article that lays out some of the possibilities.  International super-spreader event and breakout to the local populace are possibilities I had already considered as "bad enough", but the idea of the very mix of variants and states of vaccinations that the Olympics involves could result in a new variant that evades vaccine protections and gets brought back home by those involved is impressively bad.

So, yeah, it's Olympics time.  If we're lucky, only a few athletes will have adverse effects from this whole mess, and nobody will die.  If we're lucky, anything that happens at the Olympics will stay at the Olympics.  Personally, I'm not reassured, and seeing anything Olympics-related is going to feel like stumbling across a sleazy infomercial.  I guess, enjoy it if you can, but I'm not feeling it this year.

Just a quick catch-up post

 Just noticed that I hadn't updated the blog for nearly two months, so I figured I'd better at least poke my head in for a quick catch-up post.

Long story short, I've been busy.  My job-search strategy finally paid off (if not in the way I originally intended), and I'm now working for the state of Washington.  I'm not going to go into great detail there, but suffice it to say I'm doing work I consider worthwhile, that serves to do something more than line some executive's pockets, while getting paid similarly to my last job, especially once you include benefits like good healthcare and an actual pension plan.

Speaking of healthcare, I'm free of all casts, braces, and the like on my wrist now.  I'm still going in for orthopedics visits and occupational therapy (mainly range-of-motion stuff at this point), but I'm at the stage of "whatever the wrist will tolerate" function-wise.  That currently includes typing (in brief bursts, at least), so this is the first update in a while I've been able to do two-handed.

I'm also capable of properly handling a game controller now (although I find I need to take a break more often as my wrist/fingers stiffen up), which alters my game time choices a bit.  First, I did drop Octopath Traveler finally... I still like the game structure in general, but I found boss fights to be increasingly bullshit-filled, in part because they can tune them based on which character the know is guaranteed to be present for the fight.  You could still level your way past them, but that involves grinding for the sake of grinding, which I don't find particularly fun.

So, what am I playing now?  Well, speaking of grinding for the sake of it, mostly Destiny 2.  I skipped the last season, but the current season has a storyline I took interest in, as well as a new activity that I could check out as a mostly-solo player, so I ponied up for that.  I still intend to get back to Fallout 4, but that will come when I either unexpectedly get more time on my hands again, or there's another soft patch in the XBox Game Pass offerings (and I'm not active mid-season in Destiny 2).

Oh, and I guess it's worth noting, I did snag an XBox Series S as well.  I like the upgrades to prettiness well enough, but the big winner is the quick startup and load times.  If you don't have the eyesight to fully appreciate the native 4k output of the XBox Series X, the Series S up-convert from 1440p is very nice.  I'm well pleased with it, so far.

New pressure to treat ISPs as utilities

 I've wanted ISPs to be regulated as utilities for a while now.  Of course, that's just been the opinion of myself and a scattering of private individuals, while the view of "let private competition take care of things" has been the stated position, backed up by significant paid lobbying, of the ISPs that would be the target of that regulation.  Unsurprisingly, the ISPs have had their way, resulting in a lack of competition and elevated prices for consumers.

While this won't be enough on its own to change the state of things, in my opinion, I have to take heart from the union representing technical workers for some major ISPs pushing legislation to get ISPs regulated as utilities.  After all, it's one thing for random yahoos like me to say regulate ISPs, it's quite another for the very tech workers for those ISPs to collectively say it's a good thing.

Still gimpy, but gaming a bit.

 Wouldn't do to let a month go by without posting something, hey?  So, quick catch-up, I'm still in a cast, but a less restrictive one, including a much-more-free thumb.  Can't properly hold a controller for any first-person or super-active games, but there are options now at least.

Before, in the old cast, I was pretty much stuck with what I could dredge up from my Steam backlog that I could play with a trackpad and, maybe, the occasional key press.  The best of that lot was Torment: Tides of Numanera, which I finally played through.  I enjoyed it well enough for what it is, but then I do like unique stories in odd settings.

Now, in my latest cast, I may not be able to hold a controller properly, but I can still twiddle the left-hand controls a bit.  That's just enough to let me play some Octopath Traveler, courtesy of XBox Game Pass.  It's early yet, but I'm really enjoying it so far, particularly the varied origin stories and motivations of the characters I've picked up so far (for the record, that's the Scholar, Merchant, Warrior, and, erm, "Dancer").  Fun stories, good presentation, and a turn-based combat system that makes you think a bit, what's not to like?

Involuntary gaming stop

 So, the good news, I made my way to Diamond City faster than ever before in my most recent Fallout 4 run.  Amazing how much faster you can get things done if you don't let yourself get bogged down by the settlement questline they added in this game.

The bad news... I slipped and fell a couple of days back, breaking my left wrist.  No holding a controller for me for weeks to come.  I'm sure I'll fill the gap with some PC gaming of some sort, something mouse-centric, but I'd rather not speculate on what that might end up being just now.  If it turns out to be noteworthy, I'll put up a post.  Otherwise, well, I'll post again when I have two functioning hands again.

Enough of Elex, next!

 Well, as I hoped, Elex tempted me with a fun world idea, in the form of a previously-highly-technically-advanced world doing the whole post-apocalyptic thing due to a comet impact that, incidentally, spread the substance Elex all over, which different factions found different uses for.  But then, as I feared, the execution of the game chased me off.  Combat wasn't the issue so much this time (I'd put in in the OK category, which is better than I expected), but, between storytelling issues and camera oddities, I couldn't see myself loading the game back up again.  The worst of it was likely the bit near the very beginning where the game commits a cardinal sin for any role-playing game, not just removing agency from the player but revising after the fact to meet the narrative they want to tell (I came out of a ruin, saw a man sitting in the path ahead with their back turned to me, so I casually walked up to him, only to have the game treat it like I had tried to sneak up and club the guy from behind instead).  So, yeah, immersion broken, plus general jank on top, all says I'm done with that game.

Next up on the list would be Elite:Dangerous, but, having just put down No Man's Sky, I don't need another solo-flying-through-the-galaxy sort of experience with more complex controls just now... maybe if multiplayer was available to me at the moment, but it's not, so we'll pass for now.  That says the next game is... Fallout 4.  I've generally enjoyed that game, but always gotten bogged down before I could finish the main story line.  So, one more go, before I retire it for good.