From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc


Fantasy casting. Who plays you in the West End musical version of the newsgroup? I suppose my only choice right now is Phil Wang in a wig.

Play:
--=--

Like a Dragon: Ishin (PS5) - A conspiracy that should be a web is
instead a strange layered pancake as Ryoma discovers that there are
multiple suspects in his quest to uncover his adopted father's murderer.
So of course I spend 15 hours fishing and farming. When you come back
from the main story you encounter Haruka, an orphaned child who's deep
in debt, and because Ryoma is essentially Kiryu but with more baggage he immediately shoulders that burden and her 100 Ryo of house payments
(which would be about $10,000 now, I think) becomes your problem. So I
spent the whole in-game afternoon completing all the high-payoff wanted
man and delivery side missions to earn the money needed to make that
happen.

Some of these side missions are taking on some really controversial
subject matter, in what I would consider a courageous way. The mainline
Yakuza games make it clear that our gangster-with-a-heart-of-gold is
always on the side of the little guy and stands up to corruption and institutional rot. But in the Tokugawa period, the imperial loyalists
are no better than the bakufu strongment they're trying to replace, and
it's Ryoma's father's unlikely dream of an egalitarian society
motivating the actions of our heroes. And unfortunately we already know
how well that worked out for them. So the writers of the game are openly making the children confused and hurt by this ambiguity, and taking the
side of progressive and globalist arguments even as they're not very
popular in modern Japan now. Ryoma is a good guy with no support
structure, and there's a tragedy brewing because there's no way that he
can succeed in making his world any better in the face of so much other
social change.

Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection (PS4/Switch) - This is... okay. I
don't know why I was expecting anything different to old 8-bit arcade
and console platform-RPG hybrids, but they're there and they're nice.
I'm pretty glad that I didn't try to pick up the domestic releases,
which had fewer games and less other ancillary content.

Want:
--=--

Procession to Calvary (PS4/Switch) - On the way from La Belle France,
finally. Their original delivery goal was almost exactly a year ago, so
this is comedy of the highest order. And the games might be pretty funny
too.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

Expenditure:
-----=-----

Balance forward - $363

Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon (3DS) - $13
Mario and Luigi Bowser's Inside Story (DS) - $29
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (DS) - $12
Namco Museum (GBA) - $13
Action Fighter (SMS) - $10
Dark Void (360) - $4
Catherine (360) - $13
Vanquish (360) - $16
Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen (360) - $6
Dragon's Dogma (360) - $5

Total to date - $484

-KKC, who forgot to add all that crap to his Expenditure section last time.
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From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

West End musical version of the newsgroup

Well, that certainly sounds like one of the more esoteric kinds of
nightmare.

Play:

Minecraft (PS4) - there were two main structure types in this that I
hadn't checked out yet, those being underwater ocean monuments and (in
the Nether) bastion remnants. So I tackled both of those, dying a
bunch of times, but not losing a full set of diamond armour this time.
Just a couple of pieces. And a ton of gold.

The bastion is where that happened, because in shocking news, large
magma cubes are strangely fond of bashing you off of small platforms
into item-destroying lava pools. So I looted five out of the seven
chests I found successfully, but... not the best two. Bah.

In some ways I was dreading the ocean monuments as to me they sounded
awful, with the way mining in the monument area is mostly impossible
until you beat all three of the elder guardians, which as well as that
effect have "magic" line-of-sight attacks which ignore armour. But as
it turned out, this just meant I could tackle them like I did the
End's boss - chances are you're going to die at least once anyway, why
even bother with armour? So I didn't, and aside from a few deaths the
main problem was sorting out the best potions for not quickly dying
due to being underwater. (There is arguably a better alternative to
using potions for this, but I didn't have the right items for it at
the time.)

I even ended up doing a second ocean monument I happened to spot,
which went a bit more smoothly though it did illustrate how RNG-based
the monuments are for the main loot you get. The guaranteed minimum is
three items only (which is all I got at the first monument), but if
you get four rooms full (as I did at the second) then you can get more
like 100+. A curious approach to game balance.

While exploring one of the monuments I also had what might be one of
the rarer things in the game to happen - four skeletal horses turning
up being ridden by skeletons (at least in theory), the only apocalypse
required being lightning, and probably some significant RNG magic. I
doubt they're intended to show up in a partly-dried-out ocean monument
and all get comically stuck in a half-closed entrance, with two horses
already missing their riders for some reason by the time I'd spotted
them... that was probably for the best, as they're the only ones I
managed to successfully free up. I'm sure they'll be highly useful in
the monument, with its dimensions of maybe 60x20x60 or so. :-) (That
said, apparently you can ride them underwater. Which sounds as much a
minus as a plus.)

Want:

Nothing.

Bin:

Previously being wrong about Minecraft's pig-riding. Apparently you
need a saddle for that too, as well as the carrot on a stick - I
suppose skipping the saddle would have been too unrealistic.
Meanwhile, the saddle situation for skeletal horses makes the pig case
look downright sensible. Apparently on Java you need one, while on
Bedrock you couldn't use one even if you wanted to.

-Rus.
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