From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc


Today's not a bank holiday in the States, and since half the regular
posters are now American at this point I feel perfectly okay putting up
the PWB message now so I don't forget.

Play:
--=--

Visions of Mana (PS5) - What if Logan's Run, but with swords and golems? That's a pretty compelling setup. I think the thing I find most
interesting about this twitchy action RPG is that it's got relatable
stakes. Yes, the fate of the world hangs in the balance and only
teenagers with the tenacity to change the world can overcome whatever contrived challenges are a threat at this point. But there's something
of Nier Replicant in the mix here, in that the character(s) have a view
that's very down-to-earth. Each person in this world cares about the
people close to them and what they personally hold dear, and all the
mythology and world-building is made more or less important through that prism. Most writing in this sort of game gets that order the wrong way
around.

Suikoden Remaster (PS5) - Woo. Killed a dragon. Now I have a castle. I
also had a pretty gnarly set of dungeon battles that ended in what I
think was my first consequential moral choice. I get the impression that
there won't be any consequences for going one way or another, but I've
been in an awful mood lately so I picked the option that I don't think I
would have if all other things were equal. I'm trying to avoid spoilers
and FAQs and other things, and since I only have the vaguest awareness
of how the real Water Margin narrative unfolds I'm pretty much flying
blind, which is great from a gameplay perspective. I like seeing the
little gated off areas that I can technically reach by boat but that
aren't open to me yet, one of which ends with a mad chase off of a
little island.

I'm a little worried that I've reached the point where I would
traditionally abandon the game. It's structured like an open world but
it's technically not, which means I can go and recruit more of the 108
star out of order if I like. But then that requires me to spend time
grinding in order to level everybody up to what's needed to proceed to
the next part of the story. I get that that's a time-honoured tradition
in this sort of game, but there's a little part of me that dreads having
to button mash my way through menus in order to get experience points by knocking around little microscopic enemies that I've seen hundreds of
times already.

Playstation 5 Pro (PS5) - Oh hey, I bought a new controller. It comes in
this box with the revised game console hardware. It's arguably pretty
stupid of me to own a PS5 Pro, given that none of the games I own
actually benefit from the graphical or performance boost. It doesn't
actually take a lot of oomph to make the remaster of a 2D game from 1995
run. With that said, I can tell that many little things are noticeably improved, like the menu and the disc loading and the USB storage access.
It's all just slightly better, but whether it's $800 better is up for
debate.

Want:
--=--

Lunar Remastered (PS5) - So Play Asia was caught by surprise when there
was no JPN-region disc announced, and substituted for that in my order
with the Asian-region disc. Which ended up being underproduced, so I was offered the EU-region disc at no extra charge even though it would
technically have cost me more. I'm fully expecting that I get an e-mail
in a few days asking if I'm willing to accept a copy of the US-region
disc even though it's technically an Amazon exclusive in the States. How
did Gung Ho underestimate the demand for real media for a retro RPG from
the 16-bit era?

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

-KKC, who still has a curious number of absent coworkers.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

Play:

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PC) - finished the story. If you pretend that
the constellation of coincidences are somehow magically sensible then
I'd say it was an unusually good origin story. But it's just a bit too
hard to ignore the wild implausibility of it all, which does spoil
things somewhat.

Back when my party was around level 35, I ended up trying to do a
certain fight in chapter 12 with level 50 opponents. This went about
as well as could be expected, and clued me in as to why I'd been so
abruptly introduced to the game's arena equivalent beforehand. I think
it's amusing that this is presented as optional, because... I really
don't how see how it realistically can be. It's more like "so, we
completely broke the levelling here, but you can either grind for
years or maybe sort of fudge it by doing all of these fights then
repeating the last five a few times for good measure". (At least I
took the hint immediately when they pulled a similar stunt later on.)

I took the non-years option, getting to level 47 IIRC, and tried the
fight again managing it reasonably. It's curious though - even with
less imbalanced levels, that battle felt more like a final boss fight
than the actual final boss fight did. I blame the music.

Want:

Nothing.

How did Gung Ho underestimate the demand for real media for a retro
RPG from the 16-bit era?

Gung Ho for downloads, I guess.

Bin:

YLAD seemingly picking the person with the highest HP to get the first
turn (or something like that), which nearing the end for me was almost
always Eri. I mean, she's great and all, but it was starting to feel
more like her epic quest than Ichiban's. :-)

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

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

In article <t5nNP.665025$i41.495217@usenetxs.com>,
Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

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

Play:

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PC) - finished the story. If you pretend that
the constellation of coincidences are somehow magically sensible then
I'd say it was an unusually good origin story. But it's just a bit too
hard to ignore the wild implausibility of it all, which does spoil
things somewhat.

So while all the Yakuza/LAD games are like that to a degree, it's
helpful to understand that a lot of the events in this specific game are
more ripped-from-the-headlines than in previous games. There really was
a new series of laws that made being an organised criminal more
functionally difficult. There really has been consolidation among the
Japanese crime families, and there really were uptight moralists
attempting to effect social change through nonsense political campaigns.
Like a Dragon's spice on top of all that real-world tumult from the
2010s has the effect of only dialing up the absurdity by one tick,
rather than being completely unbelievable out of whole cloth.

I took the non-years option, getting to level 47 IIRC, and tried the
fight again managing it reasonably. It's curious though - even with
less imbalanced levels, that battle felt more like a final boss fight
than the actual final boss fight did. I blame the music.

This is also a grand tradition in these games, that the actual final
boss is something of a pushover or a symbolic fight. No spoilers, but
your final opponent isn't a seasoned street fighter or a master of
martial arts, he's just a dude whose SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER makes his
SPOILER SPOILER all the more meaningful.

Bin:

YLAD seemingly picking the person with the highest HP to get the first
turn (or something like that), which nearing the end for me was almost
always Eri. I mean, she's great and all, but it was starting to feel
more like her epic quest than Ichiban's. :-)

I think this is a function of Dexterity, or whatever the equivalent is
in these games. The "Spellcaster" and "Healer" classes do tend to move
before the fighters do unless you abuse the party membership and the
power-ups in the end game to engineer it specifically some other way.

-KKC, who needs more sleep.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

In article <t5nNP.665025$i41.495217@usenetxs.com>,
Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

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

Play:

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PC) - finished the story. If you pretend that
the constellation of coincidences are somehow magically sensible then
I'd say it was an unusually good origin story. But it's just a bit too
hard to ignore the wild implausibility of it all, which does spoil
things somewhat.

So while all the Yakuza/LAD games are like that to a degree, it's
helpful to understand that a lot of the events in this specific game are more ripped-from-the-headlines than in previous games. There really was

[etc.]

That makes sense, and the idea that a long-running series will end up
being increasingly based on current events isn't that surprising,
you've got to get your ideas from somewhere. But I was mostly thinking
of the locker business, the most implausible details of which I
imagine aren't directly headline-based.

Specifically (rot13 for spoilers just in case) - gjb onovrf
pbvapvqragnyyl orvat yrsg va n fvatyr frg bs ybpxref, ol qvssrerag
crbcyr vaqrcraqragyl, ng ebhtuyl gur fnzr gvzr, fhpu gung gurl jrer va
ybpxref *yvgrenyyl evtug arkg gb rnpu bgure* jvgu abobql ernyvfvat
guvf hagvy yngre, qrfcvgr fbzrbar chapuvat bar bs gur ybpxref hagvy vg
oebxr.

I'd say that one makes tiger-punching seem like easy mode as far as
suspension of disbelief goes. :-)

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

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

In article <RE2OP.1117447$B61.996840@usenetxs.com>,
Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

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

In article <t5nNP.665025$i41.495217@usenetxs.com>,
Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

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

Play:

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PC) - finished the story. If you pretend that
the constellation of coincidences are somehow magically sensible then
I'd say it was an unusually good origin story. But it's just a bit too >>>hard to ignore the wild implausibility of it all, which does spoil
things somewhat.

So while all the Yakuza/LAD games are like that to a degree, it's
helpful to understand that a lot of the events in this specific game are
more ripped-from-the-headlines than in previous games. There really was >[etc.]

That makes sense, and the idea that a long-running series will end up
being increasingly based on current events isn't that surprising,
you've got to get your ideas from somewhere. But I was mostly thinking
of the locker business, the most implausible details of which I
imagine aren't directly headline-based.

Specifically (rot13 for spoilers just in case) - gjb onovrf
pbvapvqragnyyl orvat yrsg va n fvatyr frg bs ybpxref, ol qvssrerag
crbcyr vaqrcraqragyl, ng ebhtuyl gur fnzr gvzr, fhpu gung gurl jrer va >ybpxref *yvgrenyyl evtug arkg gb rnpu bgure* jvgu abobql ernyvfvat
guvf hagvy yngre, qrfcvgr fbzrbar chapuvat bar bs gur ybpxref hagvy vg
oebxr.

This is actually a trope of Japanese popular fiction, believe it or not.
The 1980 novel Coin Locker Babies inspired this portion of the plot that strikes you as hilariously implausible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_Locker_Babies

Sadly the narrative is inspired by real-life abandonment of children
that occurred in the period, based around the unreasonable assumption
that somebody would eventually find and care for a child in this state.

Interestingly the novel has influenced multiple video games, which is something I wasnn't fully aware of. I only knew about it as a source of inspiration for the one Yakuza game.

-KKC, who wishes he didn't remember every last thing ever.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

Spoilers for Yakuza: Like a Dragon, obviously...

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

This is actually a trope of Japanese popular fiction, believe it or not.
The 1980 novel Coin Locker Babies inspired this portion of the plot that strikes you as hilariously implausible:

That's interesting, but I'm not sure if fiction referencing other
fiction really lends plausibility to either in itself. But who knows,
maybe I'm missing some deeper context there, and I'm probably out of
my depth when it comes to any wider cultural critique in any case.

I think the specific single thing I personally found implausible
enough to trigger my urge to moan about it was two babies entirely coincidentally ending up in *literally consecutive lockers* in the
same place at the same time. For me, if that's plausible then I give
up on the entire notion of plausibility in fiction. Let's just have
pink elephants surfing disjoint functions into cel-shaded hyperspace
while reciting all the digits of pi backwards and be done with it. :-)

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

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

In article <pUkPP.271228$A71.156421@usenetxs.com>,
Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

Spoilers for Yakuza: Like a Dragon, obviously...

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

This is actually a trope of Japanese popular fiction, believe it or not.
The 1980 novel Coin Locker Babies inspired this portion of the plot that
strikes you as hilariously implausible:

That's interesting, but I'm not sure if fiction referencing other
fiction really lends plausibility to either in itself. But who knows,
maybe I'm missing some deeper context there, and I'm probably out of
my depth when it comes to any wider cultural critique in any case.

So this was also a real social phenomenon, in that during times of
financial distress about 200 children were abandoned in Japan in exactly
this way between 1980 and 1990. The faulty reasoning was that train
station staff were tasked with inspecting the coin lockers for lost
property daily, so a child would be discovered and taken to safety
almost immediately. Reality turned out not to be so reliable.

I think the specific single thing I personally found implausible
enough to trigger my urge to moan about it was two babies entirely >coincidentally ending up in *literally consecutive lockers* in the
same place at the same time. For me, if that's plausible then I give
up on the entire notion of plausibility in fiction. Let's just have
pink elephants surfing disjoint functions into cel-shaded hyperspace
while reciting all the digits of pi backwards and be done with it. :-)

That's a reasonable objection. I think that on balance you can forgive
the unlikely scenario as a method of framing everybody's motivations and contradictions. Old man Arakawa was a devoted father driven by guilt and
lost love who was also a murderer and a ruthless businessman. Kasuga is
a good guy in spite of being raised under trying circumstances, and
Misato was a firebrand with a grudge in spite of having access to all
his privilege and wealth. You think all these things woud have been true anyway, but the unlikely setup only heightens their respective hero
and/or villain qualities.

-KKC, who probably likes this silly story more than it deserves.
--- Synchronet 3.21d-Linux NewsLink 1.2