Category: Geekery

The Superfriends

Fandango’s streaming site had the new Superman film on rental for fairly cheap last night so I decided to spend a couple of hours checking out the movie folks have been raving about for months now. There’s a lot to rave about, I’ll agree. With that said, there are also some things to rant about and my brain simply refuses to leave them alone. Like a dog worrying at a chewtoy, one might say.

Please note that I’m going to have to spoil some major parts of the movie to talk about my issues with it properly. Also note that I’m not lambasting the movie as a whole. In general, it’s a fun flight of fancy with a lot of good stuff going on and it has great heart. (Most of the time.) It’s certainly an improvement over the dour, grimdark efforts of the last set of Supes movie outings.

But.

Let’s get into it.
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25 September, 2025
Guild Wars 2: Settling In

One of these days I’ll get back into playing one of the existing characters from before my 7-or-8-year break.

Today is not that day, however.
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18 September, 2025
Satisfactory: Release +1 Year

I may wander off, I may restart time after time, I may abandon more saves than I finish… but I love this game as much now as I ever have. It’s gotten me through my diabetic years (and the pandemic years, both of which are ongoing) at least as much as any other piece of entertainment you could name, and moreso than most.

This image uses one of the new screenshot Photo Mode filters added in version 1.1, the “Noire” filter in particular.

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of Satisfactory’s version one point oh release. The reasons I keep coming back are varied and probably too many to count, but I’ll count some of them here anyway, in no particular order:
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10 September, 2025
Cruel Summer

I only managed three posts in August. Whoops.

Look. The Box o’ Fun transformed me into a moa bird, then we triggered the post-battle cutscene, and… well, this isn’t entirely my fault okay?

Let’s catch up a bit.
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4 September, 2025
Murderbot: All Systems Reread

Now that I’ve had a few weeks to let my feelings about the televised adaptation settle, I did a re-read of the novella which started it all: Martha Wells’ All Systems Red. Part of my motivation to do so was to put “faces” to characters, and another part was to consider the questions of adaptation. Mostly, though, I read it because it’s a damned good book. There’s a reason this series is so beloved, after all. And a lot of what hooked us with the first installment did, in fact, make it into the TV show.

Just, for the most part, not exactly as in the original text.
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9 August, 2025
Blasted Epoch

I decided to take a bit of a break from Satisfactory. Yes, again. The news of Titan Quest 2 hitting “early access” made me consider getting back into Last Epoch (they’re both what’s called an “ARPG” for whatever reason) so I looked around for information about Last Epoch’s upcoming “season” event.

What I found instead was the news that the game’s studio was sold to Krafton, the folks behind such hits as PUBG, the debacle that is the Subnautica 2 situation, and the gen-AI hot mess that was InZOI.

Oh.

Well, Last Epoch was fun while it lasted but y’all might as well uninstall it if it’s on your hard drive because it’s about to be hyper-monetized and micromanaged into oblivion.

And the alternatives aren’t great: Diablo products are of course from Blizzard, with all the baggage that entails. The aforementioned Titan Quest sequel? THQ, thus Embracer Group, which is a non-starter for reason I don’t have the stamina to delve into right now. (If you know, you know. If not, you have a new research project now, don’t you?) Torchlight? I think it’s a mobile game now or something, and Torchlight 3 was a cruel joke. My experiences with the Path of Exile game family aren’t great. Which leaves me with… playing old games for nostalgia value.

All I wanted to do was spend a quiet Sunday afternoon having some fun. Instead, I’m even more depressed. Feh.

3 August, 2025