One More Comment on Cold Eternity - And On Borrowing Villains from Real Life

 Something that came to mind while reading S.A. Barnes' Cold Eternity novel but which I forgot to include in my review was the fact that, for all of the shenanigans at the end involving Spoiler-Type stuff I won't mention here, the real villain of the novel is Zale Winfeld, the filthy rich entrepreneur who seeks to escape death. His presence in the novel is entirely, for the most part, posthumous in the sense that he's apparently been dead for a long time, and ironically never got his chance to be cryofrozen (allegedly) due to his own mishap. 

During the book, I kept thinking of this guy, and how there really does seem to be truth to the notion that sometimes having too much money does bring out the villain in you. Indeed, within Cold Eternity, the relationship hints between Zale and his son Aleyk are not dissimilar to the stories ciruclating around Bryan Johnson and his own son who gives blood so his father can pursue his own insane anti-aging schemes.

The novel I read after Cold Eternity (I'll blog about that one soon), The Haar by David Sodergren, shined a light on the fact that more and more contemporary horror is borrowing, rather easily, like low-hanging fruit, from the contemporary villains of our age, which in turns reminded me that the same scenario seemed true in Cold Eternity, where the real culprit behind everyone's suffering was yet another filthy rich madman who subjects everyone to his own villainous ministrations; and his buddy Karl, of course, who is effectively a modern day camp follower. 

On the one hand, it would be fun to see more unique villainy in such novels.....but it is both appropriate, I suppose, and disturbing just how easily recent novels can simply extract ready made villains cut from the cloth of real life to fill out their pages. Ah, what a horrifying timeline we live in!

Book Review: Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes

 

Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes (B&N) (Amazon)

Fair disclosure: I started reading Cold Eternity earlier last year, but did so in ebook format and got about nine chapters in reading a bit here and there before setting it down and forgetting about it, as can often happen with ebooks, which just feel more ephemeral than their bound matter counterparts. Cut to January 2026 and I spotted a hardcover in the local book store which I decided to snag (along with a copy of the newly in print There is no Antimimetics Division, about which I shall write more later). For reasons I can't quite put my finger on I have a habit of vacillating between trying to go full ebook on my reading, followed by lengthy periods in which I find it impossible to pick up an ereader and just read actual books. 

As it happens, snagging Cold Eternity in hardcover format was what I needed, and I plowed through it over the last two weeks. It's around a 6-8 hour read, and the third book in S.A. Barnes' science fiction horror novel series. I have not yet read her prior to novels in this set, but have picked them up and plan to do so (so consider that obvious praise for Cold Eternity that it motivated me to get her other books).

In brief, the core premise of Cold Eternity would make a great Mothership campaign: our protagonist, who narrates the story from her perspective, is a woman named Katarina who is on the run following a bad fall from grace in the political scene of a setting that organically grows with her narration, a future society which has colonized the solar system and is now run by a parliamentary agglomeration of various colonies. She was wrapped up in some sleazy political manipulation, effectively an idealist used as a pawn, and then ordered to lay low while waiting for the inquiry to pass when the dealings are exposed. A scary encounter with a thug motivates her to get off the EnExx17 station near Enceladus entirely, and she finds a off-the-books job offer from a mysterious guy named Kurt who needs cheap and desperate help.

The job, it turns out, is on an ancient starship called the Elysian Fields, a relic vessel from a century earlier that was initially started as part of a grand project to study life extension through cryogenics, and ended up being a mausoleum in space when the technology failed to generate results. For a while it was operated as a tourist trap to generate revenue, recently enough for Katarina to remember visiting it as a child. The ship's public concourse was turned into a gaudy tourist trap advertising the mysterious family behind the construction of the ship, the Winfelds, including elder Zale and his desire for immortality, and his three children who all died in a shuttle accident and were then "immortalized" as holographic constructs. In the intervening years the ship apparently wound down its tourist operation and was moved to maintenance mode, with the enigmatic technician Karl on board to keep things running smoothly.

Katarina takes a shuttle to the Elysian Fields after an ominous warning from the bartender where her remote interview for the job took place, suggesting others have been hired by Karl and none of them have ever come back to the station. From here, she quickly learns the bizarre routine of monitoring the accessible floors of the ship (upper and lower decks are barred from her by Karl) and a weird requirement for her to push a button every three hours to "check in with the board," something Karl says he has no time for due to his working on ship repairs. She still hasn't met Karl, who remains in the guts of the ship somewhere making a constant racket.

The story moves into "haunted house" territory with the Elysian Fields very much being a true mausoleum in space, and Katarina begins to encounter oddities, including a video feed she was convinced showed some sort of sickly looking person crawling on the floor. As the story progresses, she deals with evidence of prior employees with superstitious tendencies, stranger noises, eerier hallucinations caused by her sleep deprivation due to the button pressing schedule, and then the holograms of the children of the Winfelds begin to manifest in their designated performance auditorium, speaking to her.

I won't dive any further without a spoiler warning, but will say that about 90% of the intense action this story is end-loaded into the last 80 or so pages. It also takes a weird and interesting turn, and there's a single chapter in particular which effectively infodumps everything that is going on. There is a moment where the shift goes from slow, creepy haunted spaceship story with questions about the sanity of the narrator to "action movie mode" with a plot twist that is so far out of left field that I started to wonder if maybe Barnes had originally envisioned a much slower, more methodical storyline and someone, an editor maybe, advised her to pick up the pace a bit.

So, if you would like to read an interesting book with a lot of ambient world-building that does a great job at a gothic haunted house slow-burn story but on a spaceship (at least for the first 80% of the book) then this is a must-read. The ending is pretty exciting, even though it does raise many, many questions. Overall I enjoyed it enough to immediately seek out Barnes' other two scifi horror novels, and I feel that the story is worthy of inspiration for a future Mothership campaign, too. Solid A!

So now for the Spoiler Warning. You have been warned!!! Go read the book first, then return here.

The late-game reveal in the book involves discovering that the ship has been used for the last century or two by Zale Winfeld as his laboratory for solving death. He manipulated his children into serving him, except for his eldest son Aleyk, who he later forced into submission by cryogenically freezing and uploading their minds into an AI system. Some of the details on why he did what he did to them are a tad bit sketchy, I guess it was mainly so he could have them around for company. What Zale did to himself, though was much more extreme: he apparently got into the occult, discovered an ancient cult which practiced possession, and figured out how to get possessed by something akin to a demon, though defined in the story as potentially an alien visitor from thousands of years ago. The exact details are vague, and just off kilter enough that I was left wondering why the explanation of his nature wasn't attributed to nanotechnology, cybernetics or something more grounded in regular scifi; to put it simply, the monster that Zale turned into, assuming he found the beast or its parasitic remnants on earth, would have had a history that is hard to shake, especially given how difficult it is to kill once the thing is fully revealed.

The story tries to wrap up in a very cinema-action style way both Katarina's plight on the ship with the Zale (and Karl) plotline, but also tried to put a bow on her flight from the political mess she was involved in. The net result does leave one feeling like it was all tacitly resolved, but I really felt like maybe, just maybe it was not the original intended ending of this book.....or maybe Barnes' free associates when she is writing? 

So some thoughts on what the real ending could have been: my first thought for much of the book was that it was going to eventually be revealed that it was a rogue AI causing problems (Svalbard). Maybe the AI constructs of the kids were real, and maybe Zale was still around (but cybernetically enhanced), but I was pretty sure the reason Karl never appeared in person was because his feeds were AI generated. The truth in the end was of course Karl was so cybered out he was grotesque to behold, but it felt like an interesting miss here. Maybe the intent was to imply "AI is doing all this" as a feint, but to then move to "occult research leading to lost alien presence on Earth," honestly felt like an even bigger reach to me. 

Still, it was a fun book, and the ending holds well enough even though the tonal shift to insane gore-drenched ending felt maybe a bit forced, but I think maybe if the book had a bit more evenly spread out action and was able to find ways for Katarina to slowly piece together the mystery over time rather than info dump from Aleyk's AI construct toward the end, it might have felt like the explosive ending was a bit more earned. I guess what I am saying is, for better or worse, the reason Resident Evil type games are filled with scientists and madmen who like to journal everything is so your character can find this stuff and piece together what is going on. If Katarina had found more clues and information over the course of the first 200 pages of the book then I think the surprise payoff at the end would have been more impressive. Who knows, maybe the reference to the occult ceremony and the mysterious cave (which she does find the holographic depiction of, but without context or clues) are the basis for other future stories....or maybe something referenced in prior novels? I don't yet know, but will be reading her other works next.

A couple other odd comments: 

1. If Katarina was 12ish when she visited the Elysian Fields, and we assume she's 30-35 now, then it means that the ship was receiving regular visitors within just the last 20 years. But the transition of Zale to possessed host for the demon-alien happened as a precursor to the ship's founding more than a century (or two) ago.....so what changed that led to the ship being rapidly decommissioned as a tourist trap and put in maintenance mode? Lots of questions like these go unanswered since the book is told exclusively through the perspective of Katarina. 

2. Karl's backstory is another late reveal. All of Karl feels vaguely forced. It would have been interesting if Katarina had been able to learn more about Karl sooner, so that when his big reveal does happen it is more shocking. As it stands, we learn all the info on Karl at once, so the only surprise was that he was, in fact, a real person and not an AI construct by Svalbard.

3. Katarina's political abuser, Niina, conveniently shows up at the end with the away team. I think (but correct me if I am misunderstanding) they were following the ship all along.....but why? It does sort of feel like the subplot of the political snafu that drove Katarina underground was growing as the story progressed, and what it felt like in the first couple chapters feels distinctly different from the last few chapters. Maybe a rewrite to align the eventual ending with the beginning might have helped this feel a little better in terms of continuity? Although I do feel like the book feels like its story was evolving as written, it holds together well enough for me to wish that these bits and pieces had been maybe re-evaluated just a bit so that the pay off and reveals at the end of the story feel more properly aligned with the setup.

Either way, a good read, well worth it. 

January Gaming Review

 At the end of 2025 I predicted I would play a lot of Starfinder and Pathfinder this year because I am getting stuck in my ways. That is half right; I would say that is true, but part of my ways include being fickle and annoyed with the systems of choice. Right now, after the last month of running both Pathfinder and Starfinder each campaign is hitting a story arc conclusion which means I could comfortably take a break and try something else for a while....or keep going to the next story arc. 

The problem with Paizo's two systems is that they work best with a serious time investment in absorbing the rules and really meshing yourself in an understanding of the mechanical elements of both the structured intention of play and the possible emergent play. This is a problem when you have tiny slivers of time in your daily life to actually devote to preparing for such elaborate game sessions; one can run games off-the-cuff or with a mildly structures campaign arc as I tend to do, but its a rough ask in a game like Pathfinder where a GM should plot out scenarios to include suitable downtime, or to consider carefully the wide array of magical items that could eventually be distributed as useful loot by the level-based mechanics of the system. If you don't take the time to do this, your game can rapidly devolve into loads of encounters mixed with roleplaying that may (at least to me) feel like stalling before the next set-piece encounter. 

Sometimes, in fact most of the time, I really prefer a more relaxed emergent gameplay element. I love game systems where I don't necessarily have to think about every encounter in advance, and so systems where random encounter tables where the element of chance plays an important role are quite appealing. I love random treasure table options because it is never that fun to me if you simply have zero chance by the system as written of getting an amazing magic device just because you're not the right level for it. You can technically break the mechanical design of Pathfinder by granting higher level magic items as loot, but the system starts to creak at the seams when you do this, and it creates power disparities that are evident in play. 

Indeed, with Pathfinder and Starfinder I have at least a couple players who are often absent, but by the rules as written their characters need to keep leveling up even if they are non-participatory for a session or two because the game design is so tight that it really can't handle PCs of varying levels very well. This has always been a bit of an issue in D&D and its cousins with level-based design, but it was generally handled better in prior editions; PF2E and SF2E both only really work well when everyone is on the same page in terms of level and power.

I have also complained about how Pathfinder handles skills in the past. While I have mellowed on this (or more accurately, just gotten used to it), this continues to be a rough spot for the players who often want to do something interesting, only to be told by other rules lawyers at the table that no, in fact, you cannot do that because you lack the requisite skill feats and such for it. This is a severe drag on the players' creativity. My last pathfinder session only had the old veterans who know Pathfinder very well, and they had a good time because everyone was sympatico, but the absence of the players who want to think out of the box was noted by me, at least, as a sign that they may not be showing up because its hard to have fun in a game system that needs that fun to fit neatly into the mechanical box and is not into the creative expression elements. 

That led me down to the rabbit hole of realizing that as a GM while I can run the mechanically rigorous system, I would really rather be running a game system that was neither mechanically rigorous nor so procedural; a system which actively encouraged creative expression and emergent gameplay. Obvious systems exist for this purpose: Cypher System comes to mind, but any game system which encourages this style of play will work. Shadowdark, for example, and even Tales of the Valiant, which offers plenty of randomization and does not lock content such as magic items behind level-based mechanics. 

A good example of what I am talking about: my level 1-4 range group includes players who want characters who have skills that let them tinker with and make or install augments (magical and cyberware stuff). But actually doing this seems to be rather heavily gated by a range of skill, feat, and tool requirements that are incredibly difficult to achieve at these levels, even though a majority of the augments are meant to be for this level. It also requires parsing out multiple different sections of the book to get the full picture on this. It is, in short, complicated.

To contrast, imagine doing this in Mothership, Savage Worlds, Traveller or Cypher System: it is essentially a non issue, and the absence of structured mechanical prerequisites means that the system itself can breathe a little, and let these things happen more organically according to the needs of emergency gameplay and story.

So yeah....I think for February I really need to think about some alternative systems that fit the play style I am more in the mood for. 

February Plans: A Return to the Indie, OSR and ALT-RPG Scene!

 While doing a lot of reorganizing in my home office and study I realized I had a metric ton of small brochure and zine shaped RPGs and sourcebooks, predominantly for Mork Borg and Mothership, but Shadowdark came in at a close third, followed in no special order by Cairn, OSE, Swords & Wizardry and sundry other weird abominations, including one of my latest favorites, Outcast Silver Raiders. 

In short: the indie RPG zine-scene is thriving, and it is often blending in interesting and weird ways with the OSR scene thanks in no small part to Old School Essentials and Shadowdark, which is admittedly less OSR and more "5E, after you take a weed-wacker to it." 

So, for February I am going to focus on a medley of the choicest gems to have arrived from this otherworldy dimension of chapbooks, fanznes and weird art experiments that exist like mynocks on the fringe of the giant ship that is the conventional expensive hardcover RPG scene. Should be a blast!

In no particular order I plan to dive in a bit on:

Outcast Silver Raiders (the coolest blend of grimdark, weird and OSR yet)

Cairn Boxed Set 2E

Liminal Horror's latest offerings and where its Kickstarter is at

What's up with Mothership stuff lately

Mork Borg....is there no end to the flood?

The Final Handheld PC Review (for now) - ASUS ROG XBOX ALLY X

ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X (7" FHD 120Hz screen, AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme, 24GB RAM, 1TB SSD)

My final review in the handheld PC gaming market is the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X, the slick black-cased big brother to the Xbox Rog Ally base model I reviewed in the beginning of the month. It's a nice device, and in terms of the AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip it sits neatly next to the Legion Go 2 and some of the new MSI Claw models that are imminently coming out. What it does not have over the Legion Go 2, however, is a larger screen (it's got the standard ASUS 7 inch screen, though the screen quality is very nice), and it is loaded with only 24GB of RAM, and I have to be honest, 32GB of RAM has been the sweet spot for performance improvements. I have run games on the Xbox ROG Ally X and then compared the same game on the Legion Go 2 and noticed that they do not always stack up; I can often see a slight bit of graphical hitching on the Xbox Ally X that I do not see on the other device, or even the MSI Claw 8 AI+. 

That said, the overall performance of the Xbox Ally X is just fine, and I enjoy playing games on it due to its best feature: the ergonomic controller-style grips and incredible sound make for a very pleasant playing experience. I have often reached for this device for travel over the last four weeks, and find that even with the smallest handheld screen its generally the thing I enjoy playing for a short spot here and there over the bulkier Legion Go 2 and MSI Claw. It's performance is still better overall than the older Z1 Extreme chip, so if you want cutting edge, this is the next best thing to the Legion Go 2 in terms of performance.

The Xbox Ally X suffers in a few spots. The smaller screen is noticeable compared to most of the competition; on the plus side if you only have this device you will not be wanting for a larger screen and just get used to it. The Xbox Full Screen Experience is fine, and better than Windows 11 by itself, but I often find the thing fiddly and periodically have to back out of the FSE mode to get things done. Like all ASUS products I notice its got terrible read/write speeds on its MicroSD.....to contrast, I can get shockingly good MicroSD performance out of other devices like the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and Legion Go 2 (and for some reason the Linux-based Steam Deck and Legion Go S models have the best r/w speeds on their MicroSDs of all the bunch). It does not seem to have the problem its weaker counterpart does in which some games are just too much to run from the MicroSD, however....at least none I've encountered as of yet.*

The other major issue with the Xbox Ally X is the obvious one: it's not really an Xbox, and you can't actually play your full Xbox library on it, only the Play Anywhere titles. You can use their PC game store and Game Pass on it, and you can set up to stream most games, but this does mean that you should not buy this with the idea of a console-like experience; it's a PC through and through.

The Xbox Ally X is honestly Perfectly Fine in every way except that it doesn't quite have as many bells and whistles as the Legion Go 2, and even the MSI Claw 8 AI+ feels a bit more prestigious than the Xbox Ally X. If you had $1,000 and wanted a handheld, I would say this thing is perfectly fine, but also advise that if you saved up another $100 you could get the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and then 3D print some grips for it, and if you save up $350 you can have a stellar experience with the Legion Go 2. But if you were totally fine with the Xbox Ally X as-is, you won't regret your decision, unless your eyes don't like the small screen! A B+ for what its worth, though the ergonomics are a solid A+++. 

*As an update, I don't know if this due to recent driver, bios or Windows updates, but I noticed just in the last day or so that both Xbox Ally X and the base model are suddenly performing better when it comes to the r/w speeds to the MicroSD cards. I even booted up a couple games on the white model that previously wouldn't run at all (Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning notably) and now they run just fine. I am thinking maybe some driver updates fixed this issue? if so, this puts light on a common handheld PC quirk: they start off buggy and weird, and thankfully do get better over time.   

The Legion Go S SteamOS Edition - A Short Review

Legion Go S (SteamOS Edition, version reviewed has the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 8" 120Hz refresh display, integrated RDNA graphics)

The Legion Go S is the intermediary step in Lenovo's attempt to dominate the handheld gaming PC market. Released after the original Legion Go and before the Legion Go 2, Legon Go S comes in no less than four flavors: A purplish edition with SteamOS as its operating system and a white edition with Windows 11 as the operating system, and each of those editions has either a Z2 GO chip or a Z1 Extreme chip. The model I picked up early on last year was the SteamOS Z1 Extreme edition. The price of these units varies wildly, but when I got mine it was $829 MSRP. During a sale I snagged another unit for my nephew for a measly $649 (Z1 Extreme, no less), and that was a very nice price indeed. At this exact moment Best Buy is listing it as on sale for $799 which is honestly not a bad price for what you get.

It was immediately clear from my first hands-on with this machine that it is a spiritual sort of Steam Deck 2, and the device effectively behaves in all ways like a Steam Deck, except with overall better performance. I can't comment on the Z2 Go version of the Windows 11 powered versions....but can say I wouldn't even want to bother with those myself, this is the one to get just for sheer performance and expectations at this price point. 

Unlike its fellow Legion Go and Legion Go 2 cousins, the Legion Go S does not have detachable controllers, and is instead a very solid feeling, comfortably ergonomic unit that feels like it can handle lengthy play sessions without discomfort. Until I got my legion Go 2 it was pretty much my default device for road trips, and the only devices I feel are more comfortable than it to hold for long play sessions is the Xbox ROG Ally models. It smokes the poor MSI Claw 8 AI+ in terms of comfort. It is also fairly lightweight in feel compared to the other devices; the distribution of weight in the Legion Go S feels just right.

Of all the devices I have written about this month, the Legion Go S has the biggest soft spot in my collection for just being friendly to use. It's got all the good features of the Steam Deck and none of the faults, and its better performing hardware means that you encounter very few glitches in software that is Steam Deck friendly when running on the Legion Go S. Just like the Steam Deck, because it is a Linux-based operating system with some restrictions on games that lean on Easy Anticheat and other services, that means you won't be able to play, say, Destiny 2 on this thing easily. But like any Linux based system, you can go into the OS proper and find work arounds for most non Steam game stores if you want. 

The screen on the Legion Go S is also my favorite non OLED screen of the batch. It is really clear and honestly if someone told me it was OLED I would have just believed them (though if you compare it to the Legion Go 2 the difference stands out). This screen's slightly larger size also makes it stand out against the ROG Ally lineup, which feel petite by comparison.

I really don't have a lot to say that is negative about the Legion Go S. It's....um....I guess it's main failing is that there isn't a Z2 Extreme version of it (I mean, there is the Legion Go 2 of course) but its performance is so good that for many I doubt the Z2 Extreme chip performance gain is worth paying $550 extra just to get. 

Oh, and while it's controllers are not detachable Joycon-style devices, this leads to a very solid design and something else no other handheld has: switches to set your preferred tactility of the trigger buttons. You have three level settings you can use, and it is a nice feature to have.

I've run a lot of games on the Legion Go S, and it was my go-to handheld for most of last year. I continue to reach for it just for chilling out, even if I can see better performance in the MSI Claw and Legion Go 2, simply because it is so comfortable and easy to use; none of the very annoying Xbox Full Screen Experience problems here, just good old SteamOS. 

It is with this review that I will give the Legion Go S SteamOS Edition a solid A+ and suggest that if you want to dive into handheld gaming and want to spend less than $1,000 to do so, that this is my top suggestion, especially if you can find it on an even cheaper sale this year! I would also advise jumping on it at such a price given we have no idea how long the market will bear lower prices on these devices with the cost of RAM going through the roof. 

The Legion Go S is absolutely the best overall experience of all the handhelds relative to price that I have in my collection. That said....if you've got money burning a hole in your pocket, the Legion Go 2 is also a no-brainer, but if you got the Legion Go S you would find this thing will serve you quite well. We shall consider this the Winner of the Best Mid-Tier Handheld Category; we'll reserve the "Best Budget Priced Handheld" for Switch 2, and the "Best Prestige Handheld" goes to Legion Go 2. Lenovo keeps knocking these out of the park, and I am intrigued to see what comes next....albeit with the caveat that I'd like to wait a couple years before I upgrade any of these devices, I need some proper time to really get my money's worth out of all these gadgets I have.

The Steam Deck OLED in 2026 Vs. The Competition

Despite all of the new handheld PCs coming out, with their fancy new Z2 Extreme chips and Intel processors, the Steam Deck OLED remains a thing and is still quite affordable. The question is: given how crowded the market is, how does the Steam Deck OLED hold up to all the new competition?

My own Steam Deck OLED as well as my original Steam Deck have both had hardware issues, meaning even if I wasn't stupidly obsessed with these handheld gadgets I would have had to upgrade at some point. The original Steam Deck had a HDD failure, so its toast without taking some time to repair. The Steam Deck OLED still works, but for reasons unknown if I leave it alone for a couple days I can only restart it by force booting into Bios half the time, and I have no explanation for why this is so. It is not impossible that the hardware in these devices is, similar to laptops, given to a shelf life of only a few years. Either way, it has made the Deck a frustrating experience last year, as I spent a fair amount of time researching online for solutions to the problem which often felt like they bordered on magical ritual.

So given that.....what to do when you think you need to upgrade?

We're going to ignore the expensive and prestige machines for purposes of this comparison because I am going to assume that if you are tired of the old Steam Deck OLED's level of performance you will find the funds to upgrade to one of the fancier new machines. So the real question is: does the Deck hold its own against other lower-priced models, specifically the Xbox ROG Ally base model, Lenovo Legion Go S, and other last generation models such as the older ROG Ally X and MSI Claws? 

Well, the very short answer is: absolutely. Steam Deck OLED holds up just fine in the current market, even if it is getting a bit long in the tooth. At least part of this is due to the fact that so many SteamOS compatible games have been released with deliberate Deck optimization, and it also helps that despite new and fancy tech like DLSS 4.5 coming out, the actual state of computer games has been fairly stagnant for the last four or five years now, meaning that while you can get games which don't run on Steam Deck or have suboptimal performance, it doesn't happen nearly as often as one might expect. As a result, if you just want some on-the-go playtime with your Steam library, odds are the Deck will cover you just fine.

Now, if you are looking at the Steam Deck from the perspective of "does this hardware feel long in the tooth, and should I upgrade anyway for a more modernized experience?" or you are thinking, "I would really like to play some games that only work on Windows 11," then yeah, maybe you would like to take a look at the alternatives. Assuming you are sticking to a similar budget in terms of cost, you will find that the top competition for Steam Deck OLED space is the Xbox ROG Ally base model (the white one), and I have had this device for about two months now and continue to play on it. While the XRA is a Z2 Go chipset and therefore closer in functionality to the Steam Deck OLED, it has a lot of modern features that make it stand out. For one thing, despite loving the old 720p OLED screen on the Steam Deck, I much prefer the nicer and newer looking 1080p 7 inch IPS screen on the XRA, which for whatever reason just looks and feels better to me with the extra resolution. It can run some games that the Steam Deck can't, though more graphically intensive titles may have long load times due to shader caching, though these games often have the same lengthy load and cache times on the Steam Deck. 

Although the Steam Deck has a pretty decent ergonomic design that I really like, the XRA and its bigger cousin (the "XRAX") beat all handhelds in this department with their controller-style grips, so that's a no brainer of comfort in play is your goal.....but noting that the Steam Deck grip feel is still really decent.

You can find the XRA for as little as $489 on sale right now, which makes it price competitive with the Steam Deck, too. 

The other competitor in the new handheld space is the Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS edition. This one I will review more shortly, but the short version is: you get a SteamOS experience (if you buy the Steam ready edition), and if you get the Z1 Extreme chip version you get the best last gen chipset you can find, along with 32GB of RAM (who knows if that will still be the case going forward, though), and that extra power essentially smoke the Steam Deck in terms of performance. The grip of the Legion Go S is also very comfortable....not as amazing as the XRA, but as good (imo) as the Steam Deck in feel. It's biggest drawback: the price varies wildly, though patience will usually net a sale where it can drop to as low as $650 for the Z1 Extreme model. If you can snag that version for a good price, grab it, it's worth the upgrade.

Finally, you don't have to buy new to get a decent replacement for an aging Steam Deck. If you are willing to brave the marketplace, I have found that there are a metric ton of decently priced used-market handhelds out there. Worth taking a look, as you might even be able to get a deal on a newer generation handheld. 

So, given that, if I had only picked one budget device to replace my Steam Deck, which one would it have been? The short answer would be the one I actually did pick to replace it originally: the Steam Deck 2.0, alias the Lenovo Legion Go S. With that said, I am surprised at how much I have enjoyed and continue to use my base model Xbox ROG Ally, which deserves more respect than it has gotten from the online community.....its a robust and comfortable handheld, even with a weaker processor.

Okay, next, time to talk in more depth about the Legion Go S!

"Why NOT Switch 2!" - Zoidberg

 This post will join my collection of reviews and comments on the various PC handhelds flooding the market. You can go over to Ebay and do a little searching to see just how many of these things are out there....it's nuts, especially OneXPlayer which churns out high priced handheld variants like Games Workshop churns new Space Marine models. But they have a lot of competition in this space now, with some of it being higher end but still cheaper than what they have to offer (MSI Claw, Legion Go line) and some of it being cheaper (Steam Deck, Xbox ROG Ally Base Model, Legion Go S). It seems like $1,000 to $1,500 is the "prestige price point" now, and anything over that is the dominion of OneX. Meanwhile, you can still spend less than $600 and get a perfectly decent experience, even if not all of the PC games in your collection will run optimally.

All of this is moot, though, when if all you want is a convenient on-the-go gaming experience then you can get a Switch ($379 last I checked), Switch 2 ($450 at least for now) or good old Switch Lite ($229 new, I think?) and have pretty much all the gaming you can stomach, even if its restricted to the walled garden of Nintendo. So what are the advantages of going this route, and what reasons might you not want to do this?

The top advantage aside from price is that the Switch 2 is an actual console, so it and its predecessor is built with ease of use in mind. You can dock it and it just works on your TV. You can take it to go and it just works, unless you are using a second unit and then you have to connect to wifi to get it to handshake with Nintendo's servers before you can play digital games (card-based games will work enywhere, unless you are using one of the cards that is only a code on  Switch 2). You can pop off the joycons and do multiplayer. You can kit it out with all kinds of stupidly fun accessories. I love the Satisfye style grip handles, for example. You can play it, stop a game, shut it down and then start it up again right where you left off with game pause that actually works. 

It does, in short, all the cool things that make consoles a better user experience than a Windows 11 PC in console clothing can do. Even SteamOS which tries hard is still only about 85% of the way there.....though with that said, if you really want the closest experience to a Switch at the closest price point to a Switch then the Steam Deck is a no brainer.

The downside of course is it is a console. So you can't load all your Steam, Epic, Xbox and GOG libraries on a Switch, and if you don't like the types of games that tend to find their way on the Switch then you are out of luck (this is really less of a problem than it seems, though Nintendo's eshop is kind of filled with hentai garbage these days and cheap cash grabs, the Good Games do stand out from the chafe). 

Switch 2 games tend to be more expensive. Many come on game cards but are really just codes; if it says its just a code, don't bother getting it unless you want to take turns sharing that code with family, which I think is possible. Even then, one day in the future if you like having a device guaranteed to last a long time, odds are those codes will eventually fail as all console storefronts tend to go kaput when the user base drops low enough for the company to sunset everything. Likewise with the eshop....look in to how Nintendo closed down their DS/3DS shop for an idea on what its going to look like on the Switch in 5-10 years. 

A note on Switch 2 ergonomics: its got terrible ergonomics, though you can figure out how best to hold it, or go buy a grip attachment or silicone skin like I have to make it more comfortable. That said, all of this is moot as the mere fact that it feels like a feather compared to all the PC handhelds means it will be a much friendlier, easier device to play with for long sessions as a handheld.

All that aside, for many of us there is an expectation that we may not plan on playing all games on a device for the rest of our lives and that the hot newness of 2030 will be far more important than whether games on the 2017 Switch will still be available. So for that scenario....buying one now is totally fine.

Anyway, this is hardly a review of the Switch 2, but it is a moment of sanity that I wanted to shine on the month I do all these handheld reviews: PC handheld gaming is awesome and fun, and I love these gadgets, but if I was on a budget and wanted some on-the-go gaming, I would stick with a Switch 2 in 2026, or maybe also a Steam Deck OLED (or Asus Xbox ROG Ally base model). The Switch 2 is the benchmark by which all of these other devices should aspire to.

Blog Retrospective: A Look Back to February 2011

 So here's how this concept for posts started: while writing the prior blog on Resident Evil Village I did a link on the search bar to prior posts that spoke about Resident Evil. While perusing those posts I was more than a little surprised and entertained to see that many of them are so old now that they talk about situations and perspective that feel like ancient history to me. There was a time, for example, when you couldn't get the original Resident Evil games from the PS1 era on GOG.com, or to play Resident Evil Revelations you needed access to a Nintendo 3DS. Hell, some of those posts are written before Resident Evil 6 came out and caused Capcom to rethink their approach to the series! Other posts were me writing about the batshit crazy multiple-character scenarios of RE6. 

Bottom line is.....my blog started in February 2011 and spun out of a time when I had more free time and less to worry about (also, less money, meaning more to worry about in a different sense), I was involved a lot in learning how to self-publish online and my then fairly new marriage hadn't yet even spawned our first child. So when I started this blog I was recently married to my third (and final) wife, did not have a child, was using online publishing and POD as a source of income (mainly to get more money for games) along with my then accounting job, I ran RPGs Wednesday and Saturday nights, and my video game time was centered around MMOs on the PC and the Xbox 360, my exclusive console of choice back then. I also note an old air of pragmatism that I think I should try to re-adopt, as I tended to have one thing (say, one console, one e-reader or one MMO I was obsessed with) that I was thoroughly focused on. Meanwhile I lived in an apartment up near the mountains in our local city that was small but very cozy for my wife and I. We had a lot of cats.

To contrast today, my wife and I passed our 16th anniversary last September, my son is 14 years old and asking me for advice about his sundry girlfriends, I am still gaming on Wednesday nights though not Saturdays anymore, I haven't touched an MMO at all except to occasionally pop into Guild Wars 2 just to see what's up only to play an hour then log out for another six months, and I don't have a single console....I have ALL the consoles and I have a real problem with handheld PCs, too (and tablets). In fact I have a problem with collecting and hoarding gadgets and I really, really need to stop doing that. Meanwhile I no longer put any effort into self-publishing online outside of the blog, mainly because the long term reward-to-effort value simply wasn't there; I get more fun doing the blog for fun, and while I still write a lot, its mainly for the home campaigns and the entertainment of my player group. I am no longer an accountant, and am instead a business owner who hires accountants to do that work for me. I am, ironically, still working in the exact same building as I did in 2011, but its by coincidence a completely different company that I have ownership in. Oh, and I own a house which is a 30 minute highway commute away. And we have even more cats than we used to, though only one of the cats from 2011 is still with us (he is 17 years old now).

I only had three blog posts in 2011: an introductory blog post, one which talked about our experiments in Swords & Wizardry, and a third one which talked about The Rising Dark, a book on the lands of Agraphar, a setting I published for Swords & Wizardry and had also adapted to D&D 4E (holy cow, that was the edition of 2011....yikes...). The Lands of Agraphar is still available in print at Lulu, I think....PDF probably at Drivethrurpg. I never used it as written; I ended up modifying and adapting its scenario concepts to other systems and settings, notably D&D and my Lingusia setting. You know....I have this book on my shelf even today, in my S&W section. I should pull it out and run the thing as originally intended at some point, it would be a fun exercise.

Apparently I played and was only mildly impressed with the game Singularity in Feb 2011, commenting on how it was good enough to finish but also not good enough to feel good about finishing. Weird, as over the years I have replayed that game a couple times and liked it more on a new playthrough. I recently tried getting it to work on the handhelds but it is difficult to get Singularity to play nice with modern controller schemes, unfortunately....and then I thought, "I should really play some of the new games I have stacked up, like RE Village." So that went away.

I also talked about being into the early adopters of the free-to-play model of MMOs: Champions Online and D&D Online. I really did love those two games, but eventually the interest petered out. Both games were fairly decent at least early on in their F2P models, with the goal being to sell actual content such as scenario packs and classes and stuff. They would eventually turn this approach into a far too expensive proposition, and as we all know, F2P models have turned into predatory nightmares that are so bad now I simply won't give a F2P game any effort or energy, noting that rare exceptions remain those which sell you actual content even if their base game remains free (so "free to try") like Guild Wars 2 or Destiny 2.

Okay! This might be a fun exercise, periodically digging through the ancient archives and revisiting long lost eras of this blog. Maybe there will be more of this. 

A Brief And Very Late Review: Resident Evil Village

 

Long time followers of this blog know I have written a lot about the universe of Resident Evil games, books and movies in prior years. Like....enough that it may surprise you to know that it took me approximately 4 1/2 years from the date of its release to get around to playing (and finishing) Resident Evil Village....and I haven't even started Resident Evil 4 Remake yet, either. It took me a good year or two to get around to playing and finishing the RE 2 and 3 remakes as well. 

Part of the problem with writing about the RE 2 and 3 remakes is that, well, they were kind of decent and managed capture the feel and style of the originals in a more modern play experience without bringing over any of the wonky or janky bits. In fact they were both rather fun games to play, and as such the most I could say about them was "Thumbs up, would play again!" Also, these are stories that, even if modified a bit, are well known to me, having played the originals multiple times....so not quite as exciting as entirely new content. 

Resident Evil Village is a direct sequel to Resident Evil 7, which was the first in the series to break with a third person perspective, and also leaned into a lot of tropes that had become common in horror games around when it came out, including helpless protagonists (you eventually do get weapons and the game at some point begins to feel like a Resident Evil game, but not for a while), overwhelmingly villainous monsters who hold a clear power advantage, and for at least the majority of the game it is entirely unclear how it relates to the plot of the bigger Resident Evil universe. It eventually opens up with the (SPOILERS!) discovery of a beached Umbrella research ship, and the incredibly late game appearance of Chris Redfield, now working for a reborn Umbrella Corp, this time as an organization dedicated to cleaning up the mess of its predecessors, but until those moments the story is basically about a guy named Ethan Winters looking for his girlfriend who went back to see her weird family in the Louisiana Bayou, and they it turns out are all horrific mutant monsters that, you eventually learn, are being genetically modified by exposure to a mysterious mold that Umbrella was studying.

Cut to the sequel, in Resident Evil Village Ethan and his now wife Mia have had a child named Rose and moved to "Europe" (somewhere in or near Romania, it is presumed), where they seem to be living a normal and happy life, although Mia is acting a bit weird. Protip to young 'uns out there, its not really that weird, many moms act a bit off post-pregnancy, so if you ever find yourself there, trust me, she's just being herself, she is not secretly a Resident Evil monster. Almost immediately this is interrupted by Chris Redfield and his team of crack assassins murdering Mia and trying to spirit away baby Rose and Ethan without any explanation afforded; Chris Redfield is turning into a bit of a creepy black ops villain, it seems.

If you have seen any of this game's images, videos and discussions over the last years then you probably know this is the game with the big scary mommy-dommy vampiress, Lady Dimitrescu. As it turns out, this is only the game's first boss, as Lady Dimitrescu and her three "daughters," who are each creepy vampire-fly women are but the first stage of a much longer battle with the progeny/creations of Miranda, the actual real boss of the game and the actual reason this remote community in Romania is completely screwed up.

I played REV in the late-game DLC added third-person mode, so my sense of the game's creep factor was probably lowered by that fact a bit, but I really do love the over-the-shoulder third person perspective more than first person mode for horror games, its just the sweet spot I find most entertaining. That said, my son said he preferred the first person mode because it made the entire game creepier and more visceral, and he is not wrong; he plays all of these the day I buy them FYI, so just in case you think I'm buying a game and sitting on it four years....yeah I totally am, but the rest of the family (or those that care) have already played them to exhaustion immediately. 

The multiple bosses in the game that come after Lady Alcina Dimitrescu (as well as the vampire herself) are all transformative battles, which is a staple of Resident Evil games.....you meet the villain, who is usually normal-ish looking (or horribly mutated, but still in a "normal" way such as with Moreau) and then you eventually push them too far, they take some damage, and the familiar "Now I begin mutating Akira-style out of control into a beast ten times my size" event happens and you get to have a fun boss arena fight. This is only broken by one encounter, with the doll-maker Beneviento, a woman who can manipulate the mind through hallucinogens and uses the mutating effects of the mold's source to control her dolls. That entire sequence strips you of weapons and forces you to deal with her horrifying hallucinations without a means of defense until the very end, and its actually done incredibly well, leading to the creepiest mid-game moment where you still have agency. Many other encounters are creepy, but handled as cut scenes; the evil doll's sequence is masterfully done and is the one part of the game that most closely reminds me of the earlier RE7 game. Dimitrescu's Castle is also fairly close, as you can't really harm her or her minions without using the right environmental tactics, so much of the castle sequence is spent running and hiding, as well. But the Beneviento Doll maker? This is probably some of the best stuff I've seen in any Resident Evil title, right up there with the first Tyrant encounters in the original trilogy and the opening creepy house sequence in RE7.

Around 75% of the way through REV I began to get a sense of tedium. I admittedly had been almost 100%ing the game, finding all of the special treasures and looting everything I could, but there came a point when I realizes I had depopulated the entire village and surroundings, and all that remained was to go after the semi-final boss Heisenberg and then Miranda herself. Ethan Winters had graduated from survivor to true monster hunter, and by this point in the plot it was clear he himself could very well also be a monster, just one that didn't appear to be ready to mutate. Around this point I have to say that I began to feel like the DNA of REV now felt like a blend of the high octane action of Resident Evil 5 and 6 more than RE7; the game had firmly established that it was most definitely in the Resident Evil universe. 

Right before the final boss Miranda we find her secret lab where there was an insane level of information dumping. Lots of clues existed in the rest of the game, but the final lab neatly tied up everything in a bow, including explaining the Umbrella Corp./Dr. Spencer connections to the mysterious region and its mystery mutating mold monsters. The exposition dump was appreciated, but I really wish there had been more clues and details to be found more gradually; the end-of-game exposition dump felt if not a tad contrived, it might have been nicer to have it slightly more spread out, at least.

Similar to the RE7 DLC, but now part of the core game experience, you get a chance to play as old grizzled veteran Chris Redfield who must be like in his late 40's at the time the game takes place. Redfield gets a fun sequence where you are effectively given all the ammunition you need to fight hordes....literal, vast hordes of every lycan and other beast that has been a serious threat to Ethan up to this point with the firepower necessary to make short work of them. Before you rejoin Ethan following more blatant exposition dumps (and a final, grand explanation for his inexplicable healing powers) Chris manages to collect the goods, rescue Mia and plant the bomb (a surprisingly small bomb, but it does the job of wiping out the entire vale) before we return for Ethan's final showdown to save Baby Rose from Miranda. Miranda's fight is...fine....but perhaps not the most inspired as boss fights go. Not great, but at least not frustrating. If you had been maxing out your weapons and hoarding ammo, you will find this fight to be fairly easy, or at least not difficult.

I haven't played the Rose DLC yet. My son missed that the DLC released and wants to watch me play it. It sounds like it will be typical RE bonus content that is okay but not great; we'll see. The main game was well worth it, but I was surprised at how much REV shed it's RE7 vibe for more conventional RE style horror....but with the concession that maybe that was inevitable, playing in the third person mode.

If you, like me, somehow never played this game, but enjoy good survival horror, then I would give it a thumbs up for you! If you haven't played RE7 you really ought to play that one first, though. Solid A- from me, mainly because I was, toward the end, feeling like the game could have ended at about the 70% mark and I would have been content.....but to its credit, there weren't too many areas that felt like a drawn out slog (maybe tiny bit with The Factory at the end, which was tense and interesting but also easy to get lost in). But all of the locations and bosses of the family were in general well realized and different enough that the game kept providing new and interesting stuff at every step, and it really was only in the late game when I began to feel like  Ethan was the Real Monster here that it felt like it was time for the story to end (but I still had to defeat Heisenberg and Miranda by that point!) 

Now to play Resident Evil 4 Remake before Resident Evil Requiem comes out! I have pre-ordered Requiem, and am determined to play it on day of release, none of this multi-year procrastination again!

What's left to say.....hmmmm....how about, "Hey Capcom, when's Resident Evil Code Veronica getting remade????"

One final thought: what was up with Duke? Your resident merchant is never explained, and chooses to be enigmatic right up to the end. I was expecting some sort of reveal that he was cousin to Dimitrescu or something. My son says there's a connection to the arms dealer in RE 4 but he also hangs out on fan-theory forums so its hard to parse out what is real and what is just redditors pulling nonsense out of thin air.