Wrong Kind of Football Play Want Bin (PWBE 12 Feb 2024)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

Oh look I wonder why the streets are so empty and the Internet is so
quiet is something perhaps distracting many Americans this evening I do
not know for you see I have been living under a rock on Deimos which is
a moon orbiting Mars.

Play:
--=--

Yakuza Kiwami 2 (XSX) - Oh hey, let's see the sights and try all the
food of Sotenbori. Does that mean a few hours of levelling up
unnecessarily and getting all the associated achievements, one at a
time, and once per day, until there are not left to get before
proceeding to the next chapter? Why yes, yes it does. What a silly way
to play this game. I did finally run out of things I could do before
just rolling on through the narrative, and having now finished chapter 2
again I don't think I fully appreciated how layered and nuanced Ryuji
Goda is as an antagonist. Without going on for ten pages about it, I sit
here wondering if Kiryu might have turned out the same way if he'd spent
ten years being ground down by the reality of his chosen profession,
rather than being in prison sticking stubbornly to his principles.

Yakuza 5 Remastered (XSX) - The minor delay that you get with cloud
gaming through Microsoft's infrastructure is only mildly annoying with
real-time combat, but it largely makes the taxi driving missions in this
game impossible to do. Having to react to three different things at the
same time while trying to drive on the wrong side of the road is sort of
impossible. Yes, I'm aware that for you conquering Britons the Japanese
are the only other nation that drives on the 'correct' side of the road,
but I'm fighting 50 years of muscle memory here.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (PS5) - It's
interesting to contrast the silky-smooth frame rate of this later game
with what gets presented in Yakuza Kiwami 2. That earlier game somehow
seems more cinematic for being more stuttery even though it's running in
the same engine. I'm running around trying to advance the coliseum
fighting storyline, which isn't critical path and can be done after you
finish the main plot, but I can tell my heart really isn't in it. The
notion of Kiryu managing a big stable of fighters just doesn't seem
narratively plausible, and if I'd had my druthers this would have been
something that Saejima or one of the minor side characters might have
done in his place.

Want:
--=--

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5) - Two dollars off now. I went idly
looking to see if the disc was on sale local to me, and it turns out
none of the retailers (that I'm willing to go to) have it in stock.
Essentially your choices are Amazon delivery or a game store that nobody
is willing to go to anymore, and that's just terrible. Reading between
the lines, I can see the edges of a decision wherein the so-called
American "big box" retailers just stop carrying games and game systems
altogether, and I'm not sure if I'm ready for that reality yet.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

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

Balance forward - $384

Playstation 5 Camera Adapter (PS5) - $12
Way of the Samurai 4 (PS3) - $30

Total to date - $426

-KKC, who should probably get some sleep now.

[Russell Marks]

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

> Oh look I wonder why the streets are so empty and the Internet is so
> quiet is something perhaps distracting many Americans this evening

I don't see the appeal of one of those superb owl games, let alone 58.

> Play:

Outrun 2006 (PSP) - after some... technical issues, I noticed that the
only Outrun-class car I had unlocked on this was part of a lowest-spec
grouping. So it looks like grinding might end up being an answer to my
Flagman issues, or at least, something worth trying. I've been driving
to the various goals in Outrun mode - not enough of them yet but after
a few more, I should finally be able to try a different car. No doubt,
after that I'll find out that I made another iffy choice, and go right
back to grinding. Cool.

> Want:

Maybe to try out the experimental-features setting on an alternate PS4
Minecraft save, as it sounds like trial chambers were finally added to
the Bedrock version.

> Bin:

Convincing old and dodgy flash-based memory devices to actually bother
remembering things.

Outrun 2006 having Outrun class and Outrun mode - or rather, what that
naming causes to happen. You can't use Outrun-class cars in the Outrun
2 SP mode, you don't have to use Outrun-class cars in the Outrun mode,
and the Outrun mode is maybe less Outrun than Outrun 2 SP mode. Logic.

-Rus.