From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc


It is really strange for political leaders to assign no value to things
like diplomacy or relationships. I read a press piece making the
argument that a head-of-state who dismantles institutions that handle
foreign aid or international trade can't hope to influence other nations because those are the very instruments with which one conducts
influence. It's a little bit like assuming that posting a Youtube video actually confers any kind of persuasive movement upon an audience rather
than for any individuals with power or responsibility.

Play:
--=--

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii (PS5) - Hah. 69 hours to
completion. Nice. I've had a grand old time and the epilogue (wot I
won't spoil) is perfect and rests on things being implied more than
shown. There's a big moment after you finish the proper story where
you're made to understand that Majima has embellished his story in many fantastic ways, so the act of playing the game is meant to represent
his colourful fish story more than the actual events that he
experienced.

I like that the Ryu Ga Gotoku team understand the balance between
challenge and entertainment so thoroughly. You can experience the whole
of the narrative (and all of the side content) without having to worry
too much about being good at street fights or ship combat. But if you're
so inclined you can scratch the surface and find a much, much deeper
game in every way. But it's not withheld from you in any sort of
gatekeep-y way, in that the rewards are meant to satisfy the player
only. I'm not as articulate at the moment as I want to be about the
subject, except to say that it was really engaging to have to hunt down
a hostess costume so that Majima could walk the streets of Honolulu in
drag for the sole purpose of winning the trust of a stray cat that
needed a home. It almost makes sense, but it is also undeniably
entertaining.

Want:
--=--

Suikoden Remaster (PS5) - Oops, I effed up. I put it in with an order
for the first volume of Kemco RPGs which is finally out on PS5....
except not until April. So that's two months before I get to see the
updated Suikoden. It's a good thing I didn't rush my way through the
game I was previously playing with the expectation that something new
was about to demand my attention.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

-KKC, who only has 4 GB left on his PS3 SSD.
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From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

Play:

Kingdom Come: Deliverance (PC) - this had an annoying quest that
pretty much turned the game into the world's worst version of Bully,
and after trying to suffer that for a while I instead opted to
essentially skip that whole thing (which happens to be doable in at
least a couple of ways - my preference involved a key, a sword, and a
swift exit). Soon after that came another of those story battles,
which just like last time crashed on my first attempt. On trying
again, the crash turned out to have been right before the end of the
battle and (eventually) an autosave. Great.

Later on, a stealth bit stumped me for a while. Having not really
needed it much beforehand, my stealth skill was very low - to the
point that I could only just barely unlock the stealth-kill ability
during the quest itself, by finally reaching level 5. But even with
that unlocked, in practice I couldn't stealth-kill the guards that the
game seemed to be requiring me to, as they appeared to be consistently
immune to any attempt I made - they just always countered me. So I had
to do something I literally couldn't... but apparently that's the
point, it seems the quest is meant to be unwinnable, at least in terms
of the original stated objective. I suppose there had been hints of
that in the game, even if they did just sound like the typical "oh
wow, this mission is so impossible, how will you ever manage it" hype
rather than convincingly indicating that the quest was a futile
gesture serving only to further the plot. Anyway, once I actually knew
about that, it wasn't too hard to successfully fail. :-)

It was a pretty clear run to the end of the story from there.
Primarily there were various optional busywork subquests (which I did
most of), leading up to a final battle - which for once didn't crash
on me - and quite a curious ending.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the game in general, it was
fairly good in some ways but had so many issues. I certainly came
close to just giving up on it a few times, especially early on.

The Lego Movie 2 Videogame (PC) - finished the story, though with so
little emphasis really given to it I'm not entirely sure I'd have
realised had the game not shown the credits. With more story emphasis
and bigger level maps I think this could have been a bit more
reasonable as a game, as it does capture one of the things Lego City
Undercover hinted at but didn't fully commit to (unless you count the
3DS curio IIRC) - sandbox-based story missions. Here, every level is a
sandbox, but... while they're of a tolerable size, IMHO the levels are
a bit too small to really feel right for that. Especially in a game
from 2019. And having all these separate sandbox levels with (at least
for me) fairly long loads between them seems a bit weird.

I think as-is it's not a terrible game as such, it's just too plain
and basic. That can already be a problem with the Lego games to some
extent, so having one lean that way even more isn't ideal. It leaves
the game feeling like it's aimed at younger kids than usual, yet they
would probably struggle with some of the mechanics so I'm not
convinced that this was an intentional thing. (I might otherwise have speculated that it was an attempt to placate Duplo fans eager to play
a game featuring that. :-))

it was really engaging to have to hunt down a hostess costume so
that Majima could walk the streets of Honolulu in drag for the sole
purpose of winning the trust of a stray cat that needed a home.

That certainly makes TLM2V's cat-herding side-mission (in classic
Bricksburg) seem pedestrian by comparison. Well, I suppose both do
involve walking around, but beyond that I mean.

Want:

Speaking of collecting Lego cats, to play Lego City Undercover (PC)
sooner than I'd really been expecting to (having checked that I could
get it working).

Bin:

Certain aspects of KC:D's depiction of 15th-century Bohemia feeling a
bit... excessive. The "Historical accuracy" section of the Wikipedia
page (which includes spoilers) suggests that all of this has been the
subject of heated debate, so I won't ignorantly blunder into such
things here - beyond just making the observation that things could
perhaps have been tackled differently.

TLM2V featuring Superman but, strangely, without the ability to fly.
Yet you can fly around in Benny's little classic-Space-ish runabout,
or a hover scooter. Logic.

-Rus.
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