Guns: S&W 632 UC review - The Ultimate Carry?

Introduction

I've been shooting and writing about Smith & Wesson J-frames for 20 years now, so I'm pretty resistant to the "flavor of the month" when it comes to these revolvers.  S&W has put out various iterations of the formula over the decades - the LadySmith models, guns equipped with Crimson Trace LaserGrips, and sundry AirLite versions with scandium and titanium alloys - but I'm still not convinced any of them work better than the good old-fashioned 642.

That being said, when Smith and Lipsey's rolled out a new line of "Ultimate Carry" revolvers, including several chambered in the long-forgotten caliber of .32 H&R Magnum, I just had to see what all the fuss was about:

Revolver Overview

The 632 UC I picked up differs from my 642 Performance Center in a bunch of ways:

First, it's chambered in .32 H&R Magnum, an uncommon caliber that is a little weaker, more expensive, and much harder to find than .38 Special (especially for defensive ammo). The big advantages of a .32 H&R Mag is that it has milder recoil than a .38, you can squeeze a sixth round into a J-Frame-sized cylinder, and you can also shoot .32 Long cartridges, which have even less recoil.

Second, the Ultimate Carry has excellent sights, featuring an XS tritium dot up front, and a black U-notch rear. While perhaps a little imprecise for target work, these are way better than the default sights on the average J-Frame, and comparable to the three-dot night sights on my 640 Pro. The sights are tough and snag free, too.

Third, the 632 UC has some minor upgrades from a normal aluminum frame J-Frame.  It uses the sleeved barrel design of the scandium J-Frames, which gives you a shrouded ejector rod (and theoretically better accuracy), an upgraded "endurance package" action and trigger geometry, and no key lock.  The 632 UC also comes with a set of "high horn" VZ boot grips; I did not care for them, but they'd be great if you have big hands and like to ride high on the gun.

Range Report

Like a lot of gunmakers nowadays, S&W's quality control is hit and miss.  Out of the box, I experienced a lot of failures to fire with pretty standard Magtech wadcutter ammo, so I sent the gun back for repair.  Once I got the gun back, it was reliable, though obviously it's galling to have to do that with a brand-new revolver that retails for well over $600.

At the range, the 632 UC is noticeably easier to control and more accurate than a typical .38 snub. At 10 yards, I could easily get two-to-three-inch groups standing unsupported, which is pretty top-end accuracy for this shooter and this type of gun.  I attribute that mostly to the caliber/ammo and the sleeved barrel, as the trigger, while fine for a J-Frame, was not nearly as smooth as my Performance Center guns.

Fiocchi 97 gr FMJ:

Federal 85 gr JHP:

18 rounds of PPU .32 Long - very low recoil, though I had one flier:

Buffalo Bore 100 gr wadcutter - great ammo, but very expensive and pretty much only available online.  Whether or not a .32 is sufficient for self-defense is a touchy subject.  I will say that whatever load you choose, make sure it has sufficient penetration, like the Buffalo Bore .32 H&R Mag loads:

Magtech 98 gr wadcutters.  There is a decent selection of foreign-made wadcutter ammo for the .32 Long, since it's often used in target shooting internationally:

S&B .32 Long wadcutters:

Conclusion

I appreciate the thought and care that went into the 632 UC, and there is something to be said for a 6-round centerfire snubnose with mild recoil.  But when it comes to actually living with the gun, the esoteric caliber choice is just too hard to deal with.  It certainly might be the "ultimate .32," but I'll stick with my old .38 snubbies, thank you very much.

Tech: Resident Evil Requiem (Switch 2 review)

Many Resident Evil games have multiple playable protagonists (with some even allowing you to swap between them at will), but the latest and ninth entry in the main series, Resident Evil Requiem, takes that to a new extreme:

Requiem is effectively two games in one.  As Grace Ashcroft, a rookie FBI analyst, you're a nervous Nellie who has trouble holding a handgun steady.  As Leon S. Kennedy, grizzled veteran of multiple Resident Evil games, you're a zombie-killing one-man army who tosses out one-liners. Grace's sections are focused on stealthy first-person exploration (similar to Resident Evil 7 and 8), while Leon's gameplay is bombastic third-person action with big bosses and setpiece battles (much like the fourth, fifth, and sixth games in the franchise).

It's a great mix, because Grace and Leon's sections are palette cleansers for each other.  Just when the anxiety of running from your Nth zombie as Grace reaches its zenith, along comes Leon to open up a can of whoop-ass. And just as you start getting bored of decapitating zombies as Leon, the game turns to Grace and makes you vulnerable again.  As such, about the only major criticism I have of Requiem is its middle third, where the game abandons this dichotomy and makes you spend several somewhat-tedious hours as Leon in a ruined Raccoon City.

I played Resident Evil Requiem on the Nintendo Switch 2, and Capcom did a fantastic job in squeezing the title into the hybrid console.  Through the scalability of the RE Engine and the magic of DLSS, the Switch 2 version looks comparable to those on much more powerful machines, albeit with choppier framerates and worse graphical effects (Grace's hair is a noticeable victim).  Still, it's a minor miracle the game looks as good as it does, and if the Switch 2 is the only system you have, or if you care at all about playing the game away from a TV or computer, then it's a great option.

Rating: 90/100

Miscellany: RIP Chuck Norris

"Chuck Norris actually died 20 years ago - Death just finally worked up the courage to tell him yesterday."

Books: Legends & Lore - Ireland's Folk Tales

For St. Patrick's Day this year, I picked up Legends & Lore, a slim volume of Irish folk tales by Michael Scott. The book is built on all the oral and written stories Scott has collected over the years, going all the way back to his time as an antique book dealer travelling the Emerald Isle.  

As such, the lore in this volume goes well beyond your everyday leprechauns and banshees (though there are plenty of those here, too).  You'll read about legendary characters like the Gobán Saor and Finn mac Cumhaill, who are little known outside of Ireland.  I had never read anything from Scott before (as the cover repeatedly proclaims, he's the author of the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flemel series), but the book is written in an easy, conversational style perfect for elementary/middle school age children with any interest in Irish mythology.

Music: Rocky Road to Dublin

Sinners did pretty well at the Oscars this year, including a well-deserved win for Ludwig Göransson's original score. That aspect of the movie is also perfect for St. Patrick's Day, since the film includes some rousing versions of traditional Irish folk songs.  Here's my favorite of the bunch - a memorably vampiric rendition of "Rocky Road to Dublin":

Books: Dungeon Crawler Carl

Whenever I have insomnia, I usually do some light reading to ease my mind.  I try not to take on anything too challenging or deep; ideally the book should have some humor and zaniness to help me relax.  Dungeon Crawler Carl, a LitRPG series by Matt Dinniman, fits the bill perfectly.  

In the eponymous first novel, Carl is a fairly average ex-Coast Guardsman in the midst of a depressing breakup with his girlfriend.  When he follows her spoiled show cat Donut outside, he is swept up in a sudden alien invasion that transforms the entire Earth into a giant, multi-level fantasy-themed dungeon, all for a deadly reality show broadcast around the galaxy. 

It's not the world's most original premise (the book can be very accurately described as "Sword Art Online plus The Hunger Games plus The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"), but Dinniman has a breezy first-person style and a knack for drawing likable characters. The series must have struck a chord with fantasy fans, because the books are usually hard to borrow from the library and there's a TV series in the works.

Miscellany: CountyComm Embassy Pen review - The Really Non-Tactical Tactical Pen

For years, my CRKT Williams Tactical Pen passed through airport security without any issue, but nowadays TSA agents know all about these so-called "tactical pens" and won't let them through. Before I caught on to the tightening security, I had to leave several fine pens behind, including the aforementioned Williams Pen and a Tuff Writer ballpoint that the company doesn't even make any more.

I've pivoted to carrying good solid pens, like the Embassy Pen from CountyComm, with no "tactical" features whatsoever.  It's just a pen - there's no glass breaker, no "DNA catcher," nothing about it that could even be remotely construed as a weapon. You unscrew the cap and you can write with it. That's it:

Still, the Embassy Pen is a very solid hunk of metal (mine is the discontinued 2-ounce titanium version, an ideal balance between strength and weight), and it would serve about as well as an improvised weapon as anything else...just don't call it "tactical."

Books: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

I've vowed never to start reading A Song of Ice and Fire unless George R. R. Martin finishes it before he dies (which is looking increasingly unlikely), but I did pick up A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, an anthology of the three previously published novellas in Martin's Tales of Dunk and Egg series. 

Tales of Dunk and Egg predates A Song of Ice and Fire by 90 years, so it is not beholden to the crippling demands of continuity.  Freed of having to follow the thousands of pages in the main saga, Martin focuses the story on his two likable protagonists: Dunk, a lowly but honorable hedge knight scraping around for a living in the backwaters of Westeros, and Egg, his precocious but loyal young squire.  The stakes are small (the second novella is all about a dispute over riparian rights), but it's nice to root for some "good guys" in Martin's otherwise amoral universe.

Tech: Unicorn Overlord

I remember reading about Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen in Nintendo Power magazine back in the '90s. At the time, Ogre Battle was one of the only Japanese strategy RPGs out there, and it was a huge step up in complexity from the battle systems of other 16-bit RPGs.  Instead of controlling a handful of characters, you managed an entire army, and factors like the day/night cycle, terrain, and even moral alignment affected the outcome of battles. 

Ogre Battle became a classic, and the developers made several sequels (Square Enix eventually bought their studio), but true strategy RPGs are still hard to find nowadays.  Vanillaware's Unicorn Overlord is one of the best ones in years:

There's a lot of strategy goodness here - your army consists of up to ten units of five characters each, and there are dozens of classes to choose from.  The start of the game features standard fighters, archers, and knights, but in the back half, you'll recruit and battle against elves, werewolves, and angels.  Most importantly, while battles between units run automatically with no opportunity for player input, you can tweak the individual tactics of each character beforehand, a la Final Fantasy XII's "gambit" system.  That can lead to powerful combos, like having some of your characters buff the initiative of your glass cannon so she can nuke the enemy unit before they have a chance to respond.

Unicorn Overlord's main weakness is its story; you're playing the same blue-haired earnest swordsman you've played in umpteen Fire Emblem games.  While there are some choices to be made (you can recruit or execute certain characters along the way), there aren't any big twists or memorable moments.  The overworld sidequests are also boring and repetitive, though they do provide your brain some "down time" between number crunching and theorycrafting.  If you can deal with those flaws, then this is a must-play for strategy gamers,

Rating: 85/100

Sports: Alysa Liu

I like figure skating as much as the next guy, which means I really only pay attention to it during the Winter Olympics. Luckily, me and everyone around the world were treated to a joyous show by American Alysa Liu, whose gold medal after an incredibly unusual two-year break from skating made for the feel-good story of this year's Games: