• Play Want Binnegan (PWBE 18 Mar 2024)

    From Kendrick Kerwin Chua@kendrick@nospam.io-nyc to uk.games.video.misc on Mon Mar 18 01:47:47 2024
    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.
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  • From Russell Marks@zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com to uk.games.video.misc on Mon Mar 18 11:56:02 2024
    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.
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  • From Kendrick Kerwin Chua@kendrick@nospam.io-nyc to uk.games.video.misc on Mon Mar 18 19:07:51 2024
    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.
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  • From Russell Marks@zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com to uk.games.video.misc on Tue Mar 19 13:02:05 2024
    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.
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