Dry and Cold Play Want Bin (PWBE 29 Jan 2024)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

The dryness and chill are in my heart mostly, not a function of the
weather or anything.

Play:
--=--

Yakuza Kiwami (XSX) - I had forgotten some of the little side missions
that explain why Kamurocho collectively feels like they owe Kiryu. In
particular, his defence of the boxing champ who's being railroaded into
throwing a match is something that he didn't have to do, but did anyway
for the sake of basic fairness (and because Haruka asked him to). It's
interesting to remember also that Haruka is a fan of boxing in
particular and martial arts in general, which sort of explains why she's
so unfazed at the notion that her foster father gets into a lot of
street fights for no apparent reason.

So I'm only doing this for the stupid Gamepass Reward points, but I'm
really surprised at how much I'm into it still even though this is
technically like the fifth or sixth time I've been through this initial
story. It's not unlikely that I'll power my way through the whole game
on the Xbox before swapping to a different Yakuza game for achievements
and rewards later.

Sayonara UmiharaKawase (Vita) - What a charming little platformer. It's
annoying because the Rico Rodriguez tether that the main character uses
to get to inaccessible platforms has realistic physics and requires you
to move your body around and adjust the length to get to where you need
to go. But that's also flexible and logical in a way that most games in
this genre don't bother with. I can't believe that I just made an extra
effort to make sure all the column lengths in this paragraph lined up.

Cotton Fantasy (PS4) - This is the new one that came out last year, six
characters to choose from and the deepest narrative they've ever
bothered with. It's a great shooter, but I'm once again a terrible judge
of whether that's true because I stink at danmaku. I love that there's
only 2 GB of data on the Blu-Ray disc. This is the game I bought in
order to get the Umihara Kawase game (for free, weirdly) and it was the
collector edition with all kinds of clutter I don't have time or space
for. A poster, a collectible coin, an art book, a mug for tea. Oh, also
a freaking Nendroid action figure of the main character.

Want:
--=--

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5) - I think all the press about the
weird tiered product availability is well-trodden now, but for the sake
of history it's worth mentioning again that New Game Plus is a mode
gated behind a $15 DLC code. This is an excellent, if disappointing,
reason to wait for the disc version of the game to go on some kind of
post-launch discount like these things always do.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

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

Balance forward - $359

-KKC, who needs a week-long nap.

[Russell Marks]

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

> Play:

Outrun 2006 (PSP) - which clearly wasn't released nearly 20 years ago,
that's just crazy talk. I didn't feel like battling Flagman this time
(who may or may not have his own superhero comic), so just a few
normal arcade runs.

Oekaki Puzzle (PS1) - top multitasking action here, in the "I also
played this during the week" sense. This has two different animations
possible when you finish a puzzle, but it's only now finally occurred
to me that it might be doing the less-emphatic one if you don't manage
the puzzle perfectly. That would be quite eccentric though, as it
doesn't seem to give any (other) indication that you got anything
wrong.

> Sayonara UmiharaKawase (Vita) - What a charming little platformer. It's
> annoying because the Rico Rodriguez tether that the main character uses
> to get to inaccessible platforms has realistic physics and requires you
> to move your body around and adjust the length to get to where you need
> to go. But that's also flexible and logical in a way that most games in
> this genre don't bother with. I can't believe that I just made an extra
> effort to make sure all the column lengths in this paragraph lined up.

I might have tried "I seriously went and / contrived to ensure that". :-)
(Admittedly that's cheating, abusing both a slash and smiley is dubious.)

> Want:

Nothing.

> Bin:

Somehow making a mistake on a 10x15 nonogram. That one takes a real
talent and passion for wrongness.

-Rus.