From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc


It's a mistake to think of refugees like they're all former university classmates who are just crashing on your couch and won't leave. It's a
bit more important than that.

Play:
--=--

Tall Infinity (PSX) - Random game off of the pile to test this new PS2,
which turns out to have a bad optical drive. No matter, I have four
others. It's sort of amazing that they didn't iterate on this puzzle
format a bit more, although the notion of having to match colours means
that it runs afoul of modern accessibility standards. Also the timer is unforgiving and it's possible to mess up any one level to a point where
you can't solve it and you've essentially ended the game before you've
begun. This definitely needed a few more passes through some creative
hands to become a more beloved series.

PTO: Pacific Theatre of Operations (MD) - One of Koei's great wargame simulations, set during WWII and played on a comforting hex map for
tactics and a detailed eastern hemisphere map for strategy. I didn't
actually play, I did the thing I always do where I set the CPU to play
itself on the highest difficulty and see how well (or how inaccurately)
it reenacts the events of these naval battles that I'm not as familiar
with as I think I am. I benefitted from a pricing error and picked up a complete copy with manual and box for the same price as a loose cart,
which will look good next to the two loose carts I already own.

Yakuza (PS2) - A bunch of false starts in Chapter 7, largely on the
basis of reverting to a save file five or six times. There's a
particular side mission that depends on your ability to win (or cheat) at casino gambling minigames, and even with the difficulty turned down and
the maximum bets turned up for the duration of the quest I can't seem to double my money like the game expects me to. I'm just not wired for
gambling in the same way an adult Japanese male video game player might
be. As much as I appreciate the mechanics and the maths of it, gambling
is still sort of a baffling curiosity to me, along the same lines of any athletic pursuit.

Want:
--=--

Dusk Diver (PS4) - I have the sequel on order, arriving today as a
matter of fact. Oh hey, there's a fresh sale on.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing gaming-related.

-KKC, oh hey that's how you use VideoGamePlus points. Hey, free games!
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From Newsgroup: uk.games.video.misc

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

Play:

Minecraft (Android) - I had that look online, and chose a shipwreck to
head to first, as I always like to check those out. Apparently I'd
picked a really awkward one to spot, I just couldn't seem to locate
the thing. What was particularly unusual was the location though,
between two mooshroom islands - so named for their combination of
giant mushrooms, and cows sporting somewhat less giant mushrooms. This
sort of island has no other lifeforms except for the cows until you
reach the coast, where Bedrock's love of spawning Drowned like crazy
will go into overdrive because so little else is getting spawned. And
on visiting one of these islands I was soon reminded of that, by two trident-throwing baddies who killed me a bunch of times. Eventually I
managed to avoid the trident-flinging for long enough to hide under a
mushroom which happened to be overhanging the water slightly, and
bravely used hit-and-run tactics to slowly off both baddies. I even
got a trident drop for my troubles, which I will be sure to never use
for anything at all, as is the custom.

As much as I appreciate the mechanics and the maths of it, gambling
is still sort of a baffling curiosity to me, along the same lines of any athletic pursuit.

I think it's best to just be as lucky as possible, which you should
then of course disregard and point only to the effort involved in
taking maximum advantage of said luck. May also be true of gambling.

Want:

In theory, a phone battery better capable of withstanding Minecraft,
but I can't help thinking it would leave the phone looking like some
chunky monster from the 80s.

Bin:

Buying a small Bluetooth keyboard (admittedly some random cheap one)
which has the most non-UK UK layout I've ever seen. Fine, it does have
the pound sign, but the backslash position and Enter size seem very
US, and moving Control away from the bottom-left corner to put the
"Fn" key there seems Fn weird. It's not unusable, but does remind me
of Uni days and trying to adjust to the idiosyncratic layout of
whatever strange old terminal I'd ended up in front of.

-Rus.
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