Media

This week has been filled with old habits and trying new things. Join me as I try to take my favorite PS5 “zone out” game portable, find comfort returning to the magazine aisle, and get drawn back in to my first British soap love thanks to hot shirtless men now that it’s on YouTube.

Currently Playing: Spider-Man 2

Starting things off this week, I’m finally playing this year’s Spender-Man sequel. I’ve been dying to play this one, but finding the where for that to happen proved tricky.

A couple of years ago I got some quality time with a PS5 and PlayStation Plus subscription. The Spider-Man games were on sub at the time, so I decided to try them out. It’s maybe the perfect kind of game for when I just need to zone out and kill some time swinging around the city and collecting stuff.

But, I had a problem: I no longer had access to a PS5.
I did get a steam deck last month, though.

Steam has it listed with a green check-mark for Steam Deck play-ability. But based on the Oblivion anecdotes, I was skeptical. So I head to the sub-reddits and try and see how well (or poor) the game runs and see if it’s feasible. My hopes were seemingly dashed.

Alas, I think to myself, I guess I’ll just go download the first or second entry and play that instead.

But then I didn’t. The green check-mark was taunting me and the lax return policy with Steam gave me courage. So, I downloaded it.

The default settings were trash. The dynamic up-scaling was enabled and left everything looking so rasterized and jagged as I moved that I got where the hate was coming from. And on ultra-low settings?!

But then I turned that off and everything was fine. I even turned up the settings to the regular “low.”

There’s occasional slowdown and the quality of the PC port seems to be iffy (though it has apparently improved with patches). But, as someone who’s main driver for all gaming was a Switch for 5+ years, It’s decidedly Fine.

If I had other means to play this game, I would. But I’m enjoying it. And, one perk of getting it on Steam is that, if (lord willing) I ever manage to get a real gaming rig, I know it’ll look gorge.

Currently Reading: Wired Magazine

My favorite thing as a kid–and yes, i suppose this gives a good bit about me away–was the magazine aisle at the store. Oh, mom thought she was getting a little helper for the grocery shop this week? Nah, your boy was in the magazine aisle reading EGM, Wired, and Nintendo Power, trying to decide which one I would beg my mom for.

Usually it was Wired because the neon, over-designed, phone-book-sized periodical really spoke to me. The long-form magazine articles breathed life into technical topics that I’m sure I didn’t quite grasp as an 11 year old standing in front of the brightly lit magazines on aisle 7 of Kroger in Centerville, GA.

Well, a quarter century has passed, and I’m comforted that Wired has been pretty dedicated to covering how technology is encroaching on society in all aspects. That in addition to political reporting from a tech magazine I didn’t know I would both rely on and cherish led me to buy a physical print subscription to Wired a few months ago.

My second issue came in the mail last week and it’s very nice to have something to grab, learn about something interesting, and pass the time while not connected to an endless stream of notifications.

Currently Watching: Hollyoaks

I have no shame when it comes to my love of British soaps.

Hollyoaks was actually the first one I ever saw–back when it was streaming on Hulu. It sucked me in by the number of hot, gay men featured in prominent stories. Though, to be fair, there’s plenty of queer love to go around and not just gratuitous man meat.

I dropped off after Hulu removed the show from its line-up because pirating a soap from across the pond is just too much effort and i couldn’t be asked.

But, I was in luck! They apparently started uploading all their episodes (and, even better, omnibuses!) to YouTube for global viewing at the same delay they used to post to Hulu.

This means that I can actually watch the gayest UK soap again!

The show has been putting a lot of gay stories on as front-burner plots again, and I’m here for it. They also tend to lay on the gratuitous male nudity a little bit, which is even better.

Bonus Track: Bitch on Heels

This week’s Bonus Track is “Bitch on Heels” by The Vivienne.

It’s inexplicably a song written by Diane Warren and it get stuck in my head all the time.

R.I.P. Vivienne, you were gone far too soon 💜.