It's a bank holiday for me, but the rest of nations of the world somehow
are able to function perfectly well without having to have a massively
philosophical internal debate on whether or not *racism* exists.

Play:
--=--

Shin Megami Tensei V (Switch) - Twelve hours in now, and I think I
understand a little bit more about how I was playing the previous SMT game
wrong. Shin Megami Tensei IV was a lot of flexible in terms of bending the
unspoken rules of JRPG play, so it was possible to just grind and level up
to the point where you could brute force your way through a lot of fights.
SMT V is doing its level best to bring fewer of those tropes and
expectations forward, so in some fights you *have* to negotiate or gather
information before you can be successful at all. It's also counting on you
to find your own path towards success rather than signposting an ideal
path, which is great because I've spent the last four hours running around
looking for the shortcut items that let you and your demon friends level
up without doing any work. Which is, of course, work in and of itself.

FUEL (PS3) - Finally have a copy of this for PS3. Had it on the 360 and I
remember liking it, although all my fond memories are completely abstract
and I couldn't tell you what I liked about it if I tried. Maybe it's
because racing games in general have moved forward a lot in 15 years, but
I didn't find it so rewarding to play this time around. Something about
the freedom of movement means that it's possible to stray too far off of
each weird, overlapping track route in a way where you don't know you've
already failed the race until the end. Even so, I keep coming back to this
silly game every now again determined to rediscover what I liked about it
so long ago.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory (PS3) - The third game in the series, and
the original one (without extra characters or silly online functions) that
I missed out on 15 years ago because NIS America didn't know how to run
preorders properly. They still don't honestly, which is why I'm glad
Compile Heart games are largely being distributed independently now. So
glad to have another opportunity to play through the opening have-to-lose
fight and sit through another twenty minutes of visual novel dialogue,
only to put the game away and never play it again.

Want:
--=--

Sega Rally 2006 (PS2) - Trying to pick up a copy of this JPN-exclusive
game forever now. I supposedly have an order pending with a US-based
seller of import games that's fallen on hard times, so I'm not really
holding out much hope.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

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

Balance forward - $38

Hyperdimension Neptunia V (PS3) - $25
Space Harrier II (MD) - $10
The Club (PS3) - $7
Darksiders (PS3) - $5
FUEL (PS3) - $17

Total to date - $102

-KKC, who can't hear the little 'fridge door ajar' chime from his chair.
--
-- "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

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

> Play:

Dr. Mario & Puzzle League (GBA) - again playing Panel de Pon/Tetris
Attack/Pokemon Puzzle League with a noticeable lack of Yoshi, or
Pokemon, or... whatever Panel de Pon had. Fairies or something IIRC.

Tetris Attack (SNES) - on an emulator not running as well as I'd
hoped, but good enough for a few goes. It's fair to say the
(Yoshified) original isn't terribly difficult at this point, but it's
very noticeable just how fast it gets - in my case at least this means
having to change approach on later levels to using combos and
prearranged chains, rather than skill chains you set up as blocks
disappear. Since I originally started out on PAL Tetris Attack in the
90s, most other versions tend to feel a bit fast to me even now.

Tetris Attack (GB) - quite a basic version of the game which in most
ways feels a bit slow and clunky, but bizarrely block-clearing in this
seems to happen even faster than on the SNES. It's a particularly
awkward version to get skill chains in.

> Want:

To play Pokemon Puzzle Challenge (GBC) again somewhen (since I seem to
be going through PDP/TA/PPL variants). Possibly on my 2DS, though the
d-pad there is fairly crappy for it.

> Bin:

Nothing.

-Rus.