From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc


That's about as close to a St. Patrick's Day joke as I can muster.

Play:
--=--

Monochrome Mobius (PS5) - How do you get people to get comfortable
celebrating the 20th anniversary of your vaguely porn-y visual novel
series masquerading as an SRPG? Throw away all the baggage and
preconceptions and make a competent standard turn-based RPG set in the
same world during the same events from a different viewpoint and trust
that your narrative is strong enough to support the change in genre. I
had no idea that this game was serving a specific purpose in the
Utawarerumono series, as I'd picked it up based primarily on the
strength of the pitch and the character design. But it's lovely for
reasons I hadn't worked out until somebody told me that all of the
aesthetic design is inspired by Ainu culture, which is essentially the
biggest indigenous island culture in Japan that predates the Yamato
majority that migrated in from the mainland. It's charming and it's just
a little bit clunky and the first RPG enemy monsters you meet are
ambulatory daikon radishes. I'm excited to see more.

Yakuza 3 (XSX) - Oops, ran out of easy achievements in a week. I may
have to swap to a different Yakuza game to keep up the Gamepass reward
points.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5) - The gold rank Sujimon gym was a
tougher fight than I anticipated, and even with my party maxed out at
six members at the highest level I was only able to squeak by on luck
and just a little bit of planning. More than anything, Sujimon speed
ratings are the most important stat because overall it determines how
many times you get a turn in a battle.

Over in the real world and in the main story, I accidentally maxed out
my friendship with Tomizawa, the cab driver and main spellcaster type in
the actual game. That ended with a boss fight against enemies that were
much higher level than I was expecting, which means that after scraping
by on a few dozen dollars here and there I suddenly have $20k in my
pocket and no idea what to do with it. Seems like the logical thing is
to go and max out all my equipment now, but I suspect that's going to be
a waste if I'm about to unlock the part of the game where I can swap
character jobs.

Want:
--=--

More time - I bought nine Playstation games on a whim, partly because
there was a sale and partly because I was flush. Also took my kid on a
day trip to the Disney parks, which I'm regretting only because my
ankles and knees are very sore from the walking. Playing video games
isn't nearly as athletically taxing.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game related.

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

Balance forward - $496

Endless Dungeon (PS5) - $32
Rhapsody (PS5) - $50
Demon Gaze Extra (PS4) - $60
Blood Bowl 3 (PS5) - $30
Mercenaries Rebirth: Call of the Wild Lynx (PS4) - $40
Loop8 Summer of Gods (PS4) - $24
Mon-Yu (PS5) - $30
Zengeon (PS4) - $18
Monochrome Mobius Rights and Wrongs (PS5) - Free!

Total to date - $780

-KKC, who probably has a few things to add to that list after today.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

Play:

Outrun 2006 (PSP) - well obviously. It looked like the middle path on
Flagman 4 might be the most doable, and I ended up managing that with surprisingly little trouble. Now I've reached the very last bit
though, I imagine that might change.

Want:

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story (PS4) - Llamatron: 2112 plus Tempest
2000 equals... 4112? But also, just my sort of retro shooty action.

Bin:

Doing Outrun 2006's Cape Way stage in reverse.

-Rus.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

In article <mZVJN.2210350$eeq5.526793@usenetxs.com>,
Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

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

Bin:

Doing Outrun 2006's Cape Way stage in reverse.

Real World Rally stages are marked out on public roads, so theoretically
the banking and barriers are engineered for traffic going in either
direction. So running a stage on a reverse route is generally not an
issue in real life. I found that about half of the PSP game's track
layouts were not designed in a way that really supported the reverse
run, and I wonder if they shouldn't have done a mirror image instead to
keep their testing load reasonable.

-KKC, who has too many things to do this week.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

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

Bin:

Doing Outrun 2006's Cape Way stage in reverse.

[...]

issue in real life. I found that about half of the PSP game's track
layouts were not designed in a way that really supported the reverse
run, and I wonder if they shouldn't have done a mirror image instead to
keep their testing load reasonable.

Probably, though I think it does sort of work. It has the signs added
and so on, and I don't think the PSP version in particular tackles
things very differently to the others, unless I'm misremembering. And
overall, I do definitely like the game having the reversed stages
available. But there are still subtleties like certain slopes giving
you worse visibility in reverse, and my personal tendency to think
about how the stage looks the normal way around then reverse that in
my head and act accordingly, rather than more natively driving the
reversed version as would probably be sensible.

(There's also the oddity that a reverse run starts off harder and gets
easier - which is even true within the individual stages themselves.
Fun in a way, but... very weird.)

-Rus.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2