From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc


I'm only defaulting to this particular topical subject header because
all of the other international and UK-specific news is kind of
depressing or anger-inducing. Even if you're not a football supporter.

Play:
--=--

TxK (PSV) - Oh hey, I got a new achievement. I was randomly getting the
PS Vita TV thing going (just to make sure passwords and stuff were still active) and I accidentally got a trophy I hadn't had before. If you're
lucky, when one of the enemies on a web try to capture you the AI drone
will shoot it and set you free. That's apparently uncommon enough that
it merits a line item on the trophy list.

Halo Fireteam Raven (ARC) - No I didn't actually play myself, but I
watched my kid spend 45 minutes get through all six missions. There's a
minor design fault in the last mission where the game can't organically
let you keep going and the failure state requires that the game revert
to an earlier point so you can start the shooting all over again and get
it right, but apart from that it's a pretty solid if unremarkable light
gun shooter. I didn't know that this game depicts some of the events of
one of the Halo games outside of the perspective of Master Chief, and it therefore has a sad ending because the characters you're playing as and
with are fated to be supporting players but never the heroes in their
own right. That might be the only thing I've ever found interesting
about the Halo franchise.

Want:
--=--

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Collection (PS5) - Clear River appears to
have done their own print run separately from whatever nonsense Limited
Run was selling, so now I can have a disc. While I'm only a little sad
that Defender 2000 and Tempest 3000 didn't make the cut for the
collection, I understand that both of those games are kind of weirdly unplayable and don't really add a lot of value. On the other hand, I
already have Tempest 2000 on like five (!) different platforms already
so I don't know what else I expected would be worth my time. I did play
a lot of Hovver Bovver when the opportunity presented itself but I don't imagine that's going to be a life-changing PS5 play experience or
anything.

Bin:
-==-

Fennec (DROID) - The Android build of the Firefox alternative browser implemented a recent update that added a canned World Cup search box to
the home page. You can disable it after the fact but there's no
facility for blocking other future marketing or advertising content
from being installed without one's consent. And they wonder why modern
people distrust institutions.

-KKC, who has a new work monitor that's just slightly too big.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

I'm only defaulting to this particular topical subject header because
all of the other international and UK-specific news is kind of
depressing or anger-inducing. Even if you're not a football supporter.

If nothing else, I appreciate the freewheeling use of a word with no
less than four Es - a kind of effervescence usually only experienced
when seventeen electioneering beekeepers teleconferenced.

Play:

Picross e6 (3DS) - wow, those five years really just flew by. :-) As
it turned out, I'd left this in the middle of a reasonably annoying
puzzle, making for a pretty awkward reintroduction to things. Anyway,
I cleared that and more.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PC) - an odd one to play sandboxically.
But sometimes you just want to play around on a really flat map, with
water that kills you, and helicopters that can only fly up to about
ten feet off the ground. At such times, accept no substitute.

Minecraft (PC) - I seem to have a bit of a pattern when revisiting
established Minecraft saves. That of looking around a few locations
near my main base (which here has quite a few villages and shipwrecks
nearby), but not really doing a whole lot else. I think another
tradition is wondering how it is even possible to have so few diamonds
stashed on a save I've played to this extent.

TxK (PSV) - Oh hey, I got a new achievement. I was randomly getting the
PS Vita TV thing going (just to make sure passwords and stuff were still active) and I accidentally got a trophy I hadn't had before. If you're lucky, when one of the enemies on a web try to capture you the AI drone
will shoot it and set you free. That's apparently uncommon enough that
it merits a line item on the trophy list.

AI setting us free certainly sounds like it'd be worth a trophy.

Want:

Nothing.

Bin:

Heat.

Idly wondering which game I played as a kid would now be seen as the
least acceptable for kids to play, settling on Green Beret, then
looking up the Arcade Archives release to see that PEGI gave it "7+".
But... you kill endless baddies with a knife! And like, flamethrowers!
What! I know it's not stuffed with gore or anything, but, wow.

-Rus.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

In article <JJkRR.3$TKDa.2@usenetxs.com>,
Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

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

I'm only defaulting to this particular topical subject header because
all of the other international and UK-specific news is kind of
depressing or anger-inducing. Even if you're not a football supporter.

If nothing else, I appreciate the freewheeling use of a word with no
less than four Es - a kind of effervescence usually only experienced
when seventeen electioneering beekeepers teleconferenced.

Tell me without telling me that you have the Scrabble dictionary app
installed on your phone. :)

<snip>

Bin:

Heat.

Idly wondering which game I played as a kid would now be seen as the
least acceptable for kids to play, settling on Green Beret, then
looking up the Arcade Archives release to see that PEGI gave it "7+".
But... you kill endless baddies with a knife! And like, flamethrowers!
What! I know it's not stuffed with gore or anything, but, wow.

It's okay though, because you're only killing Russian soldiers. They're
hardly human. And it's not like it's set in modern times where the
Russian soldiers aren't actually Russian but are reecruited from the
global south to die in service of a former KGB agent who's too cowardly
to face up to a political status quo that doesn't match up to his
vision.

If you examine games like you do any other media, it's worth considering
how they reflect the times in which they were made. Arcade games of the
1980s and 1990s brought a lot of concern about scarcity and the cold war
to the table, and the the games of the early 2000s have a distinctly anti-authoritarian bent to them. So what was considered acceptable would
have been coloured by culture in a way that's harder to do now because
we don't have a single unifying culture. It's why you have Minecraft card-trading action RPGs next to Mr. Beast-themed colour matching
puzzles in modern arcades now, because we have no common outlook or
consensus to drive what people expect to see or find acceptable.

Too tired to take the next logical step, but it leads through porn and
ends somewhere south of 4Chan, and that's really depressing.

-KKC, getting his new Evercade carts today.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:

[...]

If nothing else, I appreciate the freewheeling use of a word with no
less than four Es - a kind of effervescence usually only experienced
when seventeen electioneering beekeepers teleconferenced.

Tell me without telling me that you have the Scrabble dictionary app installed on your phone. :)

Unprecedented perceptiveness!

we don't have a single unifying culture. It's why you have Minecraft card-trading action RPGs next to Mr. Beast-themed colour matching
puzzles in modern arcades now, because we have no common outlook or consensus to drive what people expect to see or find acceptable.

Probably, but as long as the games still hope to separate you from
your money, that should give punters a common reference point. :-)

-Rus.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2