School Holiday Play Want Bin (PWBE 16 Oct 2023)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

I have work but my son will be home as school is not in session today. I
genuinely want to give him a compass and set of field rations and
challenge him to find his way home after being airlifted to Vancouver or
something.

Play:
--=--

Spellforce III Reforced (XSX) - Well it's a good thing people who write
games have the Shakespearian confidence to invent new words. So this is
what they call real-time tactics, is it? It's basically a ripoff of the
Infinity Engine, but not a bad one. But I struggle with this particular
genre because I've been spoiled by decades of Sega and Square-Enix
making me think that I should have the freedom to go back and forth
around the rear of a building just because there might be some hidden
treasure there that I'm perfectly entitled to have. This is by way of
saying that this game is perfectly suited to a mouse and keyboard and
I'm not sure if I can take a lot of attempting this on a game console.

Pillars of Eternity (PS4) - Oh sure, this is good idea in light of what
I just typed. It's a bit more charming than Spellforce, with deep lore
and absurdly detailed worldbuilding that befits its Kickstarter origins.
Still didn't get into it because I want keyboard, mouse, and possibly a
separate Notepad window open to take, er, notes. It's also been free on
PC a lot, so I don't know why I felt like I needed to have a PS4 disc.

Geometry Wars 3 Dimensions Evolved (XSX) - It's... okay? It's just
Geometry Wars with more gimmicks and a mission-based progression system,
which I dislike mildly because I play these games to shoot the bad mans
until I run out of lives. The metagame of scoring goals and time limits
is sort of outside of what I find entertaining, as if I weren't able to
find the core game fun on its own for some reason. I somehow forgot that
I owned this on PS4 already and I'm not sure what the difference is
between the base came and whatever 'Evolved' is supposed to mean.
Weirdly GameFAQs seems to think that this disc doesn't exist, which
makes me wonder if it was an unusual or limited release in any way.

Want:
--=--

My Analogue Pocket cartridge adapters (TG-16/Lynx/NGP) - The actual
release of this hardware should be preceded by the firmware update that
enables these FPGA functions on the Analogue Pocket hardware. Scheduled
for 2023 but we are rapidly running out of year.

Bin:
-==-

Road Trip (RL) - Out to a college town (as we call them in the States)
to see old friends and do the game shopping listed below. Not an ideal
trip, because in Florida paved roads are still something of a novelty to
the natives. As are indicator lights and stop signs, apparently. Last
weekend on my foray north I knew that we'd crossed back over the border
into Florida after witnessing one driver dump his ashtray out onto the
motorway. It's a fascinating place, this American state that produced
both Scientology and the leaders of our anti-vaccination movement.

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

Balance forward - $3,887

Spellforce III Reforced (XSX) - $6
Geometry Wars 3 Dimensions Evolved (XSX) - $10
Pillars of Eternity (PS4) - $15
Air-Sea Battle (2600) - $4
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1
Combat (2600) - $1

Total to date - $3,935

-KKC, who really misses walking into stores to buy games.

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On 16 Oct 2023 at 00:44:56 BST, "Kendrick Kerwin Chua"

<kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1

Okay, I'll bite. What?

Oh - play: the was-free three puzzle episode of We Were Here (PS5, PMG).
An excellent way to spend a couple of hours with a co-player, this
series of asymmetric co-op is pretty inventive and did not disappoint in
this case. The middle game took significant brain power to work out wtf
the strategy was and did the "zomg I feel clever now" thing Just Right.

Want: to have the energy to play more things. I have quite the
part-played backlog.

Bin: health things.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
BANACH TARSKI is an anagram of BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI

[Russell Marks]

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

> Play:

Minecraft (PS4) - found one of the non-submerged shipwrecks I
mentioned previously, which turned out to be almost within sight of
one of my bases. It was one of the types with missing blocks, so given
the convenient location I thought I'd patch it up. :-) Then I tried a
bit of mushroom farming for no good reason (beyond a vague urge to try
out suspicious stew), which is quite odd as it seems like the best way
is to prompt a giant mushroom to grow (by e.g. planting a small one on
a dirt block then using bone meal at night) then harvesting it all to
get multiple small-mushroom drops.

I also revisited the ancient city I'd been to before, quickly
remembering why I hadn't bothered doing much there (i.e. it's no fun).
On my way back via the portal at a base nearby, the game seemed to
just hang when loading the Nether map. I gave it a few minutes, but
eventually closed the game safe in the knowledge that it clearly does
frequent auto-saves. I reloaded, and was then immediately dropped 30+
blocks down to my death in a giant lake of lava. Nice.

I saved video to check on what had happened, and it seems the game was
somehow confused about whether I was in the Nether or not - the
numeric position display I use was showing my overworld location, but
the look of the surroundings was unmistakably the Nether. Respawning
fixed things, but not the fact that I'd lost everything I was carrying
without any chance of getting it back, inevitably including the
traditional full set of decent armour (in this case meaning diamond
armour with the Mending enchantment on every piece). The portal did at
least work properly the next time I tried it.

> Want:

Nothing.

> Bin:

The race-condition and memory-leak bugs PS4 Minecraft seems to have
telltale symptoms of (the above probably being the former).

> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1
> Combat (2600) - $1

I'm not sure if this really gives you a 26-player version, but it
can't hurt to try.

-Rus.

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

In article <kp5g87...@mid.individual.net>,

Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@usually.sessile.org> wrote:
>On 16 Oct 2023 at 00:44:56 BST, "Kendrick Kerwin Chua"
><kend...@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:
>
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>> Combat (2600) - $1
>
>Okay, I'll bite. What?
>

There's a chain bookstore in the States that has had halting success in
also selling video games, and when I visited this past weekend they had
discounted some of their 2600 cartridges to a buck a piece. It felt
impolite not to get them.

This isn't an original stunt, I hasten to point out. I can't find the
source now for the collector who reasoned that each Combat cartridge
represented an Atari 2600 system that it was separated from, since this
was the default pack-in game for nearly a decade. He decided that it was
worth his time to amass as many as he could find, and the fact that I'm
able to gather so many at a whim suggests that this person has either
not been thorough or has died buried under his collection. As I likely
will be one day in the future.

-KKC, who is hunting around for more as we speak.