Plastic Was Banned (PWBE 2 Oct 2023)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

No more single-use plastic utensils? I hope this is an elaborate
mechanism for making chopsticks standard for all British food from this
point forward.

Play:
--=--

Tokyo Xanadu EX+ (PS4) - Woo, more New Game Plus. Not much to report
here, except that I'm noticing now how the game subtly spoils some of
the later plot twists through the friendship choices you get earlier in
the story. Combat thusfar has been of the not-too-challenging-but-also-
not-insulting variety, which means that I still have to pay attention
but there's no point where I need to summon all my abilities to survive
a boss encounter.

Tokyo Xanadu (Vita) - I like the game enough that I'm playing through
for the first time on the Vita, just to experience the slightly-worse
translation and the lack of explanatory side missions. It's really
interesting to observe that the original release of the game must have
been cut down significantly, because the stuff unique to EX+ doesn't
feel extraneous or tacked on in any way. It's very much like a
director's cut in that there feels like a truer artistic vision at work,
but also that the original is fully complete by itself. I wish I could
articulate that more cleverly than I have done.

Want:
--=--

To play a Switch game (NSW) - I have this brand new Switch control deck
with hall-effect analogue sticks and... it's okay. It's slightly too big
and the button surfaces are too smooth and it eats battery like nobody's
business, so I don't feel good recommending it. But I just wish there
was something in my Switch library that commanded my attention like the
system did two years ago when everything was shiny and new. I may return
to SMT V or Disaster Report 4 at some point, but it's not unlikely I do
that on the PS5 instead.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

Expenditure:
-----=-----

Balance forward - $3,887

-KKC, who is shopping now but will add it to next week's total.

[Russell Marks]

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

> No more single-use plastic utensils? I hope this is an elaborate
> mechanism for making chopsticks standard for all British food from this
> point forward.

It's the only way to eat a full English breakfast.

> Play:

Minecraft (PS4) - after adding some signposts to my maze of shortcut
tunnels between portals in the Nether (which was all getting a bit
confusing), I revisited the Woodland Mansion I'd previously tackled
(i.e. the first one that I ever tried). I hadn't done things
especially well there, despite having already returned at least once
before. So this time I went around clearing the place and lighting the
rooms, as well as finding a sneaky hidden chest that I'd apparently
missed before.

I also did a bit of filling-in of my existing maps (which are at the
fully-zoomed-out level and usually have unexplored patches) which
wasn't terribly eventful but did mean I found a few shipwrecks. I
still don't handle these very well, I tend to just make a tiny base on
the surface and keep diving down to check out any chests. I mean, it
works and only needs very basic items, but it always seems a bit
risky. The two I found entirely above the water were less risky. :-)

> Want:

More Minecraft features like the treasure maps you often find in
shipwreck chests - pretty basic stuff really, but a nice idea.

> To play a Switch game (NSW) - I have this brand new Switch control deck
> with hall-effect analogue sticks

Some part of my brain was expecting that to say "hall-effect
thrusters". Presumably for a new orbital Switch variant.

> Bin:

Nothing.

-Rus.