Play:

Dr. Mario & Puzzle League (GBA) - one of the many variants of Tetris
Attack/Puzzle League, this is fairly similar to the DSi one. The lack
of any real theming or even game structure is odd, but nice in a way -
e.g. being able to adjust the CPU player's difficulty and game speed
independently, which I don't think Tetris Attack would let you do.
It's just curious to have a vs. CPU mode that is literally a matter of
picking your opponent settings and playing a single match, as if you
were jumping straight to the final boss. :-)

Oekaki Puzzle (PS1) - a bit of this, including some of the 10x10 ones
I'd mostly skipped.

Want:

Nothing.

Bin:

Dr. Mario. It's not exactly awful, but to me it's always seemed like
one of the more overrated puzzle games. Also, I've heard rumours that
Mario isn't even a real doctor. Outrageous.

-Rus.

In article <J5JAJ.1168004$RMW1.996772@usenetxs.com>,
Russell Marks <zgedneil@spam^H^H^H^Hgmail.com> wrote:
>Play:
>

Kena: Bridge of Spirits (PS4/PS5) - I did not expect to like this game,
and thought for all the world that it was just another indie platform
puzzler. I was pleased to discover that it's much more than that, a
stripped down 3D exploration game that prioritises narrative over combat.
I don't want to spoil too much about it because it was a joy to discover
what the game was about, and I can sort of understand why they wouldn't
want to tip their hand in the marketing that they haven't really done for
the game. But it's colourful and cheery but also serious without being
unnecessarily grim, and that's a hard balance to strike in a game that has
complete freedom of movement in it. I feel like everybody should at least
try a demo of it.

Shin Megami Tensei V (Switch) - Finally found some time to get into it,
and it's winning me over. You can tell that a lot of comforts from the
Persona series are filtering their way back into the mainline SMT series,
and a lot of that is just reducing frustration in terms of having to
collect or discover things. There is a more sophisticated story in here
that they're building up, off of concepts (if not narrative continuity)
that were only hinted at in the previous two SMT games. I'm playing too
carefully, doing that JRPG thing where I carefully gather information and
raise stats, and then wander back to heal and save so that I don't lose
any character progress. Hopefully this will be a good healthy main game to
sustain me for a while.

Fallout 3 (PC) - After spending a few hours remembering this game, I think
I want a Switch port less than I did. To make a crude comparison to the
other major Bethsoft release, Skyrim is a mess but it's a contained and
organised mess. Fallout 3 is the sort of mess that spills out and seeps up
the walls, and you can never seem to clean it up properly. The fact that I
had to jump through hoops to get the unofficial fan-made patches to work
really didn't add to my enjoyment either.

Fallout 4 (PS4) - I therefore came back to this newer title, determined to
try and enjoy it. But knowing that there's all kinds of terrible base-
building mechanisms and plot that I just don't care about means that I
didn't really do much more than run around and shoot things, and that's
not what I come to these games for. There's just so much in this game that
I *don't* want to do, and what's left there is for me to do just isn't
interesting enough.

Demon's Souls (PS5) - I am slower and less agile than I used to be. I know
this because I can tell the game isn't actually that much harder that it
used to be, and I haven't forgotten any of the enemy placement or funny
map details. Not being able to sit for four hours and just play doesn't
really help the experience either.

Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls (PC) - I wanted this on PS3 but you
can't get the western version on disk. So I held out until a Steam sale,
and now I can kind of see why they didn't think this would take off with
English language speakers. This is a very Japanese interpretation of this
type of RPG, and rock hard to boot. In an old CRPG style, you're expected
to try and fail and then try again and fail again a few times before you
actually learn how to be successful in the game, which is not unlike a
Souls game in that very early, primitive, turn-based grid-map sort of way.
I'm having a good time, but I can't help thinking that I would really
enjoy one of the older Wizardry games more, or even the PS2 game instead.

Dungeon of the Endless (PC) - I do not know how to play this game. I
wander this way and that way and then suddenly my other character is dead.
Was I supposed to know that? What's it mean to 'defend' the crystal when I
don't know what's attacking or why? As somebody who enjoys narrative
gameplay primarily, this game does a terrible job of imparting the stakes
and the setting to the player. I don't need a hour-long FMV to set the
stage or anything, but at least some context to establish the initial set
of rules and expectations would be nice. This may be why I keep coming
back to medieval fantasy games, given that the rules for that genre were
established two centuries ago and nearly everybody understands them.

>Want:
>

Jagged Alliance 3 (PC) - I only know the series by reputation, and for
some reason I only own the DS version of the first game and have never
seriously played that. Oh wait, look at the low price on the original PC
versions in the Steam library. Oh wait, they don't always work on modern
OS installs.

>Bin:
>

Nothing game-related.

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

Balance forward - $5,838

Victoria I and Victoria II (PC) - $15

Total for 2021 - $5,853

-KKC, who also bought some stuff last night but counts that for this year.
--
-- "People with happy families don't become spies. A bad | kendrick
childhood is the perfect background for covert ops. You | @
don't trust anyone. You're used to getting smacked around, | io-nyc
and you never get homesick." - Michael Westen, /Burn Notice/ | .com