From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc


I had mine two weeks ago, just after an aeroplane ride. It's always
seemed to me like the switch from GMT to Summer Time is more drastic and disruptive in the UK and I can't put my finger on why.

Play:
--=--

Crystalis (NES) - Finally gave this some time after about three decades
of owning the cartridge. It fakes you out at the beginning by giving you
a full-on science fiction opening segment before dropping you into the
middle of what looks like a pre-industrial world full of swords and
armor and monsters and frightened people holed up in walled cities
waiting for a saviour. It's very much the Panzer/Megami Tensei sort of situation where the world you're running around in is implied to be a
ruined post-apocalypse Earth that only you can put right. It's pleasant
to play in the old 8-bit action RPG way, but I can't help thinking that
dev shops like Hudson and Sega were able to squeeze so much more charm
and joy out of the same parts with just a little bit more design polish, especially in the music department.

Guerilla War (ARC/NES) - I forgot to mention that I'm playing the SNK
40th Anniversary collection on PC and PS5. Guerilla War turns out to be
a more faithful conversion from arcade to console than some of its contemporaries, especially in terms of how the levels are laid out. The
notion of the landscape occasionally scrolling diagonally or
horizontally as well as vertically is sort of surprising still after
decades of being used to both Commando and Ikari Warriors doing it only
the one way. I didn't get far enough into the arcade version to witness
the spectacle of enemies pretending to surrender so that you can walk
past them and be shot in the back, which I remember back in the 1980s
felt transgressive to me. It seemed as if we were training the soldiers
of the future to disregard human rights and rules of combat, which I
suppose happened anyway without the bother of having to simulate it much
in a video game.

Yakuza 5 Remastered (PS4) - Back to this then. Saejima's story is sort
of disconnected from the big rah-rah homecoming scene that they depict
at the end of Yakuza 4, and that sort of gives me hope that they'll be
brave enough to just discard the events that ended Yakuza Kiwami 3. Now
that I know what I'm doing I understand Saejima's combat style much
better, in that there's a lot of whole body motion in a way that's not
present in Kiryu's gonzo medieval street fighting style. I'm kind of
averting my eyes from all of the physical abuse that the guy gets while
he's serving out his prison time, which sort of suggests to me that a
lot of the romance of organized crime is less appealing to me now than
it ever was to begin with.

Want:
--=--

VR to work for me (PC) - I made a half-hearted and halting attempt to
use VR again this weekend, and I just can't make it go. I don't know why
I think that it'll have any kind of immersive effect on me with only the
one working eye, but it feels like there's some kind of secret I can't
grasp or magic I don't have access to. It doesn't help that it takes so
long to set up and then so long to put away again, because I can't leave
wires and leads lying about for fear of them being chewed to bits by
cats.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing gaming-related.

-KKC, who needs a week-long nap.
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From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

I had mine two weeks ago, just after an aeroplane ride. It's always
seemed to me like the switch from GMT to Summer Time is more drastic and disruptive in the UK and I can't put my finger on why.

Probably latitude, and the additional stress of having to seem more
explicitly British for Summer Time. A right bloody pain in the arse.

Play:

Hitman: World of Assassination (PC) - or Hitman 3, as I expect I'll
still tend to call it. Another of those very non-dubious cases where I
clearly needed to play this even more than I have already. While my
N100 does not especially enjoy chugging through this one (to a greater
degree than I'd expected TBH), it can still just about run the thing
in a way that could technically be called playable. So I did some of
that on the Hitman 2016 levels. Things weren't too unusual frankly,
though for the Marrakesh military target I did take note of the rather
direct hint from an NPC, and sure enough, it really is much easier to
use the tunnel. One freak screwdriver accident later I was heading for
the exit.

Super Mario World (SNES) - a similar rash of homicides followed by
swiftly heading for the exit here, albeit with more jumping and fewer screwdrivers. And just an 87-exit finish for now, as at this point
Castle 7 and the Special levels feel... optional. I was a bit
surprised to find that it's apparently been well over a decade since I
last played this, but with it being probably my eleventh playthrough
overall, maybe I shouldn't be.

Want:

To mix up my hitmannery a bit more, as I'm mostly tending to settle
back into approaches I've used before. Which is curious when I'm
normally so very averse to familiar pursuits. :-)

Bin:

Not quite having remembered how to unlock Top Secret Area in SMW.
Needing a cape - yes. The specific area it's needed - yes. Running
left rather than right before flying - no. Luckily, the internet of
2026 remains admirably well-equipped to dispense advice on prehistoric
plumber games. Which I'm sure is useful for less absurd people than
myself, who didn't bother saving local copies of multiple online
guides for over 20 years for a game which was nearly 15 years old even
back then.

-Rus.
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