From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc


Hah. Wanted to report some last minute meatspace gaming action before
Rus decided to start the thread.

Play:
--=--

Sakura Taisen (PS4) - The soft reboot of the series from 2019 is super slow-paced and pretty chill for a game that tries to sanitise the whole
1930s Japanese culture thing, sanding off all of the rough edges in
favour of a Disney-inspired soft focus that emphasises period aesthetics
over any kind of subversive alternative history. I'm told that it takes
ten hours of play (not counting save scumming) to actually find your way
into some actual action RPG combat, which replaces the tactical
grid-based fights of the rest of the series. But for some reason what I
really needed this weekend was some mild admonishment from female
steampunk robot pilots. The protagonist of this story is one Seijiro
Kamiyama, who is as big a thick meathead as ever showed up as a male
lead in any story with giant robots fighting one another. I'm actually inspired to fire up the PS2/Wii game as well and see if I get the same entertainment value out of it.

Pump it Up 2023 Phoenix (ARC) - Holy crap am I out of shape. This is
probably the most accessible of the PIU games, with a large selection of recent K-pop hits, a few classics to satisfy the veteran dance game
players, and a forgiving countdown timer. I played with my son, who
loudly declared his ineptitude with every annoyed step. I'm not exactly
a rhythm machine but I'm sort of mildly disappointed that he doesn't
have my love for musical performance. Hopefully that means he's got some
other hidden skill that will develop over time.

Want:
--=--

Pump It Up Rise (PC) - I really hope they release a modern dance pad
that's properly licensed and has spare parts available to go with the
latest home iteration of the series. The rickety PIU pad I have for Playstation is worn out in all the usual ways and I've only ever used it
once, and it doesn't comply with HID standards in any meaningful way. I suppose what I really want is a modern Pump It Up release on console on
proper media.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing gaming-related.

-KKC, who is super tired after only 15 minutes of dance game.
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From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

Play:

Dying Light (PC) - finished the story missions. I think the end bit
was maybe the least-bad of the boss-like moments in the game, but I
don't know if I'd describe it as good exactly. More a sort of...
firmly adequate. And even then it had some slightly annoying
checkpointing quirks, which combined quite poorly with it suddenly
requiring more precision from the free-running mechanics than they
really have, and also it stealing away by far the best traversal
method you have apparently due to you being "exhausted" (which seems
like super plausible reasoning, given that you could still sprint and
jump and climb). So one fairly simple section I had to redo maybe a
dozen times, with the checkpoint always feeling like it was
excessively far back. And this in a game which ordinarily has quite a
Lego-game attitude to death, where you usually don't lose much if any
progress and hardly even notice it really.

I think overall it'd be hard to argue that Dying Light isn't a 7/10
kind of game, but at the same time, it's probably one of the best of
those I can remember. So, it may only be fairly good, but at least
it's a fairly good fairly good. :-)

Pump it Up 2023 Phoenix (ARC) - Holy crap am I out of shape. This is probably the most accessible of the PIU games, with a large selection of recent K-pop hits, a few classics to satisfy the veteran dance game
players, and a forgiving countdown timer. I played with my son, who
loudly declared his ineptitude with every annoyed step. I'm not exactly
a rhythm machine but I'm sort of mildly disappointed that he doesn't
have my love for musical performance.

The obvious solution is to buy him a drum kit. Which is clearly a plan
with no downsides.

Want:

To be following Dying Light with the following - The Following.

Bin:

Nothing.

-Rus.
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