From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc


So I'm not saying that annoying American intervention did a whole lot to prevent Pakistan and India from shooting at each other over the last 30
years, but maybe it was better that we kept inviting them both to the
barbecue even though neither of them ate very much. That's a terrible
metaphor for ongoing dialogue and debate bolstered by free trade, but I
think the point stands that yelling and screaming is better than the not talking we all seem to be seeing right now.

Play:
--=--

Bloodborne (PS4) - Running on the EU disc with the DLC already
integrated into it, which sadly means that all my save data from the
US-region version doesn't work with it. So I've got a new run started,
and my hunter is two-and-a-bit boss fights into the narrative at level
31. It's silly that this game only came out like yesterday and I've lost
so much information about what to do (and ability to play properly as
well).

As I encounter NPCs I find myself making the same decisions that I did
back in my first complete playthrough. There's an 'optional' part of the
game (behind which is half the original content) where a character warns
you off, and then when you ignore him he starts shooting at you with a gigantic gatling gun. So of course my instinct was to climb up to his
location and stab his face, never stopping to remember that it's
possible to befriend this character and get some useful loot out of the relationship. If someone's shooting at me, why would I want to make
friends?

Devil World (NES) - Technically a Famicom cart as there was never a
western release. It's a charming maze game where you don't control the scrolling and are in continuous danger of being squished against a wall
as it bumps up against the border of the screen. The premise was
famously too controversial for western release, as each level is divided
into a round where you clear a maze using a crucifix and then a round
where you plug bibles into a giant wall in order to shrink The Devil
(c)(tm) down to a bat so that he flies away and sets up the next circle
of hell with dots and ghosts. It's not nearly as frenetic or as mad as
I'm describing it, and only Nintendo diehards (or collector weenies like
me) would ever want to own the game in this form.

Want:
--=--

Capcom Fighting Collection 2 (PS5) - Out this week! Hypothetically. It's
not clear if there's going to be a tariff surcharge for me here in the
States. For sure I need to buy the stupid thing locally rather than
ordering from Canada as I originally planned.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

-KKC, who wonders if House of the Dead 2 Remake will be any good.
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From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

Play:

Driver: Parallel Lines (PC) - this required use of my parallel
non-DXVK Wine prefix, as well as some parallel controller and keyboard
use just to type in a profile name so I could actually save my game at
all. Which was a great time to find out that the window didn't have
keyboard focus, and also seemed curiously fond of losing said focus,
and because it's apparently best to have the windows set to be managed
by Wine to avoid window manager issues (which predictably enough also
tend to be focus-related) I had no easy way to fix that manually
(xdotool exists so I used that, but I don't know if "easy" is a word I associate with it too strongly).

Anyway. Game. Well... the map isn't too bad for PS2-ish New York with
better textures, at least. The driving is reasonable enough, and the
combat is rubbish but not drastically worse than the PS2 GTAs. The
missions are already completely ruining the game though. I'm only a
dozen or so missions in, and really they've all been mediocre or bad,
with gratuitous time limits and repetition everywhere, and no real
sign of anything you could genuinely describe as being fun. I'll give
things a bit more of a chance, but I could easily see this being a Bin
job before long.

As I encounter NPCs I find myself making the same decisions that I did
back in my first complete playthrough. There's an 'optional' part of the game (behind which is half the original content) where a character warns
you off, and then when you ignore him he starts shooting at you with a gigantic gatling gun. So of course my instinct was to climb up to his location and stab his face, never stopping to remember that it's
possible to befriend this character and get some useful loot out of the relationship. If someone's shooting at me, why would I want to make
friends?

True enough, but I think it's always nice to have that lovely choice
between horrific violence and manipulative deviousness. Like in the
Hitman games, or Pac-Man.

Want:

Nothing.

Bin:

Motorbike control in DPL. It's like trying to steer a bouncy castle.

There's plenty else I could say about DPL here, but one other thing
that stands out is that I remapped vehicle controls (in the game
itself) to swap L1/R1 and L2/R2, only to reach a car-towing mission
where the remapped action button was seemingly ignored in favour of a
fixed binding for disconnecting the towed car - so it would instantly disconnect any time I accelerated, as the R1 button would do both at
once. It took me a while to figure out why I could never seem to tow
the cars. :-)

-Rus.
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