Pluribus - I'm really enjoying it. I love the pace. So brain fried are we as a species that an episode (seven) that focuses on characterisation without SOMETHING HAPPENING EVERY 5 MINUTES is causing people to start moaning that it's "slow" and "boring".
I was so gobsmacked to see a TV show take a breath and let you experience a character arc and journey without Marvel quipping or an aggressively cut flashback it made me quite nostalgic. It also clearly has a lot of stuff to say about the society in which we live (loneliness, privilege, changing nature of human relationships etc) which I could see slipping past people who are half watching it while browsing TikTok.
Play
In a post Monster Train malaise, I returned to Balatro. I find the theme/look just a little depressing, but I have been playing it more and came within a whisker (100ish points, I nearly cried) of completing a run. It's a bit combo and build heavy for my liking (I tend to prefer my deck builders higher on theme and lower on granular complex interactions to try to get massive trigger-storms) but it's fine.
More interestingly after many videos, self reflection and pondering I gave Caves of Qud a try. It's certainly astonishing. It's one of the most confident games I've ever played. A real nostalgia hit, and something that's easy to really lose yourself in. It's Oblivion and BG3 distilled to such purity of vision that you have to respect it. If you'd told me in 1995 I'd be playing this game, I wouldn't have been surprised, and I'd probably have marvelled that gaming in the future hadn't moved on at all. I do wonder if I'm the right target audience though as it is absolutely brutal. And weird. And very story dense. And makes me feel thick. Amazingly, it has pad controls (which are too hard for me to use) and I'd love to see a console port, it would be absolutely mad.
In my misty haze of nostalgia I also downloaded Puzzle Quest, which I used to absolutely adore on the DS. There's a few versions floating about for PC, but I settled for the "Immortal" version, and it has been great (jammed with content). Nice for portable play on the Ally, and a very odd mix of a match game and RPG. The AI cheats ALL THE TIME, but it's still relaxing and fun to play. I do wonder if someone could do a really modernised stab at the concept, as I think the principle is brilliant (so it's surprising you don't see it ripped off a lot).
Also been plodding on with Fallout 4 (good), Detroit: Become Human (good, but also intolerably smug at times), Stanley Parable Ultra (also intolerable) and the Sam and Max Poker game (also intolerable at times). Basically a smug month full of smugness.
Want
I've had the flu/cold for a week, I'd like it to stop now
Bin
Same as every month.
Strong "how to draw an owl" vibes from Dok there.
Avowed, Immortals, Oblivion, Stalker 2 and other UE5 titles have a lot of problems, but you could argue that sometimes unless you're totally Digital Foundrying it, it's not that perceptible to a mortal.
Any fixed platform normally has an element of just accepting what you get, while on PC you can drive yourself insane tweaking performance. But I found Avowed and Immortals particularly egregious on PC as choppy frame times and visual instability was impossible to get rid of on the Ally or even my still fairly beefy laptop. Once I brute forced it in my main PC with a 5070 it ran pretty well, but that's a bit ridiculous. At launch I know the 30fps and 40fps modes on Xbox were good, but the 60fps mode was a bit of a shimmering mess (at least at launch). Might be better now?
Immortals too isn't great, but the dev folded, so a lack of patches probably isn't helping. Stalker 2 is a disgrace - for how it looks the performance is absolutely shocking on anything other than a top end PC.
cavalcade