Jag har försökt följa med i debatten och dessa munskydd verkar av oklar anledning väcka mycket känslor. Från folk som i sociala medier upprört försöker skambelägga dem som inte bär munskydd utomhus på en promenad i parken, till ett gäng tanter som stod och demonstrerade mot “munblöja” uppe på Odenplan för inte så länge sedan.
På jobbet har jag sett kollegor från andra länder beklaga sig över fördomsfulla svenskar som tittar surt på dem när de bär munskydd på stan. Och även om vissa länder gått längre än Sverige i att rekommendera munskydd så verkar fortfarande forskningen vara högst oklar över om de gör någon som helst nytta.
I dag behövde jag gå några ärenden så jag bestämde mig för att pröva själv. Det blev en drygt tre timmars promenad i det fina vädret inklusive pauser. Kan utifrån denna visserligen begränsade erfarenhet konstatera följande:
Ingen stirrar extra mycket på mig för att jag bär munskydd. Däremot oroar jag mig mer för hur jag själv ser ut. Den kulturellt rotade fördomen att bara skumma personer med något att dölja gömmer sina ansikten bakom masker gör att jag känner mig obekväm, oavsett vad förnuftet säger.
Av de få som bär skydd på stan använder kanske 90% den typ av blå engångsmasker av papper som är till för tandläkare och dylika yrken. Av dessa bär kanske en fjärdedel skyddet under hakan eller med näsan utanför. Förutom att det ser löjligt ut så uteblir förstås helt den eventuella skyddande effekten.
Munskydd av den här typen släpper igenom luft på sidorna både vid inandning och utandning. Så den eventuella nyttan består i att andra människor inte kan få min andedräkt rakt i ansiktet. Luften jag andas in och ut blir inte särskilt noga filtrerad.
Det är varken svårare att andas eller obekvämt att bära munskydd så länge man bär rätt storlek. Däremot blir det fort fuktigt och blött inuti skyddet av andedräkt och svett. Hade jag använt engångsskydd av papper hade det nog gått åt fler än ett under min promenad. Knappast bra ur miljösynpunkt.
Det ofta upprepade rådet att aldrig vidröra munskyddet med händerna är omöjligt att följa i praktiken. Det rör på sig när man pratar, gäspar eller hostar, så för att det ska sitta kvar på plats måste man justera det ibland. Man skulle kanske kunna spänna fast det hårdare men jag gissar att det skulle bli väldigt obekvämt. Dessutom verkar nästan inga av de munskydd som säljs ha justerbara snören.
Så min slutsats är att våra så hårt kritiserade myndigheter förmodligen har rätt i att munskydd inte gör någon större nytta i verkligheten. I teorin kan nog ett munskydd som uppfyller medicinsk standard, sluter tätt, bärs rätt och byts ut ofta göra nytta. Men det är i praktiken ingen utom utbildad vårdpersonal som gör så.
Visst, måste man stå tätt ihop i tunnelbanan kanske det är bra att andra inte får ens utandningsluft rakt i ansiktet. Jag tror dock att det till största delen är ett sätt att lura i sig att man åtminstone är skyddad till en viss grad.
Själv har jag inte haft Covid trots tre besök på gymmet och minst ett besök på krogen i veckan, i princip hela året som varit. Några hemmafester har det faktiskt blivit också. Så till syvende och sist kanske det handlar om otur mer än något vi själva kan påverka.
Covid-tider betyder mer tid hemma och mer tid att spela spel, så här kommer som brukligt några korta recensioner av vad jag har roat mig med det senaste halvåret. Som vanligt på engelska, eftersom jag också lägger upp dessa på Steam.
Cooking Simulator
Having seen this played by quite a few streamers I knew what I was getting myself into, but I was still surprised at just how shoddy this game is. This really is just a broken physics sandbox in the shape of a kitchen, not something which should be calling itself a simulator. Because of the terrible controls, something simple like pouring a jug of water into a mixing bowl becomes an exercise in frustration. Cutting a lemon into presentable pieces is a Herculean task. Even when doing things to the game’s expectations, I twice ended up in failure states including one where it would not recognize what I was doing and simply sat there waiting for a long since completed task, while telling me I was running out of time to complete it.
One of very few games that I’ve found broken to the point of asking for a refund (which I promptly received, thank you Steam). Not recommended.
Pixelly rougelike dungeon crawler which rewards quick reflexes and… that’s really all there is to it. There is no story to speak of. There’s no depth to the combat and the levels are auto-generated. When you die you get to start over. It’s repetitive and bland with nearly zero dungeon or enemy variety. Perhaps there are people who only want this much from a game and appreciate the minimalism but I was bored and disappointed within minutes. Can’t recommend.
Having had a great time with Starpoint Gemini 2, I expected this to be more of the same good stuff. While the graphically impressive and satisfying ship-to-ship combat remains, the story is lackluster at best and you eventually end up in a perpetual grind for more territories, which quickly becomes routine and boring. At some point the sense of progression and challenge was lost, and that’s when I stopped playing, as there was no story left to sustain my interest. There is a lot of unrealized potential here and I might still give one of the later games in the series a try to see if the developer learned anything from this failure, but there’s no way I can recommend this.
Beautifully detailed CRPG following in the proud tradition of games like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights. There is an interesting story, sadly obscured somewhat by an abundance of complex dialogue trees where characters with goofy-sounding voices will ramble exposition endlessly.
The quests are a welcome mix of puzzles and combat where you can usually decide whether to resolve a conflict peacefully or by force. Unfortunately the option involving combat nearly always offers more experience points and many of the puzzles are obscure to the point where I recommend having the wiki open on a second monitor; there are just too many cases where you will otherwise be left stuck and frustrated.
Inventory management, crafting and trading are manual and very tedious, but necessary to succeed at the game. On the positive side, combat is tactical and fun. A welcome change from similar games, this one doesn’t make high-tier magic overpowered to the point where your fighters might as well be watching from the sidelines. Overall I feel there is enough here to recommend this game to CRPG fans, but perhaps not enough to convince newcomers to the genre.
This is the kind of sequel that’s just more of the previous game, with a few superficial features tacked on. That being said, Just Cause 2 was awesome and this game delivers more of the same; as long as enough time has passed since your last dip into the Just Cause series this should be right up your alley. The story is bland and paper-thin; every mission whether part of the story or not is just to go somewhere, destroy everything, get out. Motorbikes and the wingsuit control extremely poorly. Military airplanes are almost useless and have game-breaking bugs. Enemies respawn infinitely, so running is always a better option than fighting unless you’re trying to complete a mission.
Finally, the online features introduce glitches and loading delays to the point where I just blocked the game at the firewall and resorted to always playing offline. Great bit of fun still, but the devs should have focused on polishing the core gameplay instead of adding more DLC.
Dark alt-history series Wolfenstein gets another installment which continues the story where the last game left off; having won the battle but lost the war and gotten your body properly wrecked in the process, the first part of this game is spent killing nazis while sat in a wheelchair. It gets crazier after that. The story is completely linear but the atmosphere and world-building is very solid and I felt quite immersed in it by the end. As usual for an id engine game the combat is very satisfying.
However, for a game which pretends to reward stealth, trying to be sneaky is almost pointless and I feel this element could have been done away with completely. It has the common issue where if anyone spots you for half a second, you might as well give it up or reload a save because every enemy on the map knows your exact location from that point onwards. Better not to waste your time; going in guns blazing from the start is often the more expedient approach. Overall, I still found this a rewarding experience.
Story-rich, open-world JRPG with some great writing, amazing cast and satisfying combat which sets it apart from other games in the genre. Having finished this game I genuinely miss it and would have loved to play a sequel with the same set of protagonists. Sadly, the culmination of the story was not what I had hoped for and I feel like an opportunity was lost in the devs not allowing for a different outcome and a bit less linearity. As a consequence the game has almost zero replayability. And while the combat feels satisfying, you can get by easily just button-mashing most of the time (I played on Moderate difficulty) and as a result it quickly started feeling like a grind. In the late game I resorted to just running past most enemies as I wanted to get to the final story parts.
For a PS3 era console port the graphics quality on a modern PC isn’t horrible, but the UI is an awful mess. From monster drops you end up with large quantities of nearly worthless items with no option to quickly sell them off at vendors or convert them into something useful. So, a lot of time is spent just navigating the clunky UI. That having been said the story alone warrants this game a strong recommendation from me and I’d encourage any JRPG fan to give it a try.
Ground-based RTS take on the Homeworld series which retains many of the same things that made the original games so good. The single player campaign isn’t overly long and the story is solid. The difficulty ramps up appropriately and there was a point during the final battle where I felt that all the careful planning I had done up to that point finally paid off, even as I was desperately fighting for survival. Such solid design of the core gameplay loops makes minor issues easier to overlook.
The game rewards thinking ahead and employing proper tactics to counter what’s thrown at you. There are a few areas where more polish would have been welcome, such as the enemy AI and the air units but I found those pretty easy to overlook given the strong overall experience. I’m happy to give this game my recommendation and I’d love to play the sequel if there ever is one.
