Another Yank Bank Holiday Play Want Bin (PWBE 19 Feb 2024)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

It's President's Day in the States. I don't know what it is we expect
people to celebrate, apart from the ability to get a small discount on
some white goods and reading material as a result of irrelevant
commerce.

Play:
--=--

Way of the Samurai 4 (PS3) - So this isn't objectively terrible, but it
wasn't quite what I was expecting either. It's the end of the Tokugawa
period and you have the British making their historically accurate
inroads into a Japan that's divided against itself. But the character
designs for the British characters are hopelessly theatrical, with piles
of period-incorrect details that probably looked great up on the design
board but are completely awful in motion. In particular, the captain of
the British marines is a woman whose helmet and armour suggest that they
thought people still dressed as Roman legionnaires in this period. If
Yakuza Ishin was a good martial arts motion picture simulator, then this
is a cheap martial arts motion picture simulator, wherein they hope you
are blinded by the audacity and don't see that the building is a facade
and that the same six extras in identical period clothing have rushed by
the camera twenty times. And that's to say nothing of the stamina-based
combat which I've never been able to figure out in this series.

House of the Dead Remake (PS4) - Annoyingly the PS5 has no facility for
testing the functions of the Move wands, as this is apparently limited
only to PS3 and the inside of the VR client. This is why it took me a
whole day to figure out that the PS4 camera was just pointed wrong, and
eventually I was able to get both Move wands set up (after a day of
charging) for some John Woo action. Except that it's exhausting to hold
the two Move wands that way, held perfectly horizontally so that they
can be aimed properly. Worse still, the colors on the screen don't match
the colors of the Move wand balls, which means it's stupidly easy to mix
up with gun is aimed where. This is a poor substitute for actual light
gun technology.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 (XSX) - I now have it teed up in a way that I can log on
just after noon, get an achievement for raising a stat another point,
and then log out. And I can do that reliably all week. My kid had better
appreciate all the work I'm doing to keep my Gamepass going.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (PS5) - Levelling up
all of Kiryu's agent gadgets to their maximum capability had a less
celebratory outcome than I was anticipating. Also I don't really use the
agent fighting style much because it's a lot of waiting around instead
of thinking about who to hit next or how. Even so, I'm now just a little
bit closer to being able to get all of the trophies. For what reason I
know not.

Want:
--=--

To be able to sit and play a game for more than ten minutes without
being interrupted by some damn thing (RL) - Is this the future we
promised ourselves? All the games available at a moment's notice, but no
time to play them? Do I need to go on some kind of actual holiday to a
remote location where I can just hole up somewhere in order to have a
couple of continuous hours of play time? Is that something I genuinely
have to plan now? Is that really necessary?

My Analogue Pocket cart adapters - The glory of Neo Pocket, TurboGrafx
and Lynx cartridges on a modern screen with modern control inputs.
Assuming that they meet their third set of shipping objectives. As far
as first-world problems go this is pretty tame and even tolerable, as
long as your priorities are properly prioritised and your whole life
doesn't revolve around the medium. That's probably me, I hope.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

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

Balance forward - $426

-KKC, who does kind of need a break from everything really.

[Russell Marks]

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

> irrelevant commerce

Surely the best kind.

> Play:

Outrun 2006 (PSP) - unlocked an Outrun-class Testarossa, and advanced
some way further through the Flagman events. Finally. I have to say
though, the difficulty level does still seem a bit erratic.

> Want:

Nothing.

> To be able to sit and play a game for more than ten minutes without
> being interrupted by some damn thing

:-)

> Bin:

A few stages I always struggled with a bit on Outrun 2006. In
particular, Jungle and Milky Way, with those sneaky obstacles they
have sticking out on some corners.

-Rus.