You know what'll fix racism? Coordinated marketing campaigns by organised
sport. That'll show 'em.

Play:
--=--

Hellpoint (Switch) - Not a lot to report, except that I'm at a decision
point between three possible endings, so I'm just grinding souls to level
up. Sorry, 'axions' is what they call currency in this game. The weapons
level up on their own as you use them, and I've been getting quite a bit
of enjoyment out of the staff type weapons. They're really well-designed
from a gameplay standpoint, in that they have some nice heft and make a
nice boom-y sound when they connect. By contrast, sometimes projectile
weapons fail to make their own bang or even lack an explosion animation if
you've done one too recently, which is a moderately annoying bug among
many moderately annoying bugs. It's not unlikely I'll have made my way to
the actual real true ending in the next week and be finally comfortable
switching gears to another game.

There is a moderately uncomfortably-designed NPC named Tribal, who is
supposed to be the last remaining natural-born human being in the
universe. I sense nothing but good intentions from the developers here,
but the character speaks in a throaty rasp and wears hide trousers, no
shirt and a Native American headdress of the sort that one only sees in
motion pictures. I feel like maybe that could have gone another couple of
revisions in order to leave the ambiguously stereotypical and borderline
offensive category.

R-Type Final 2 (Switch) - A good game to switch to when I can. I also have
the PS4 disk but I haven't popped it in yet. What I've seen on the Switch
Lite so far is lovely, presented with a lot of confidence and craft. It's
not like other less crafted danmaku games in that it's not trying to
overwhelm you with graphics and noisy colours. No, it just scrolls the
levels by at a leisurely pace, confident that you either know what you're
doing or that you'll die in a spectacular explosion and then come back for
more side-scrolling shooty adventure.

Want:
--=--

Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX (Switch/PS4) - Should be shipping soon.
Because what I really need is more decades-old game concepts to occupy
myself with in a world where gaming technology is capable of immersing us
in photo-realistic simulation of exciting three-dimensional conflict and
human drama. No, I just want to push a 16-colour fat blobby sprite around
a world of floating platforms all made from single bricks just as large as
he is.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

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

Balance forward - $1,553

Hades (Switch) - $35

Total year-to-date - $1,588

-KKC, who means to get back into Sakura Wars too.
--
-- "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

On 4 May 2021 at 09:43:30 BST, "Kendrick Kerwin Chua"
<kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:
> Play:
> --=--

Nier: Replicant (PC) - I played through this (well, : Gestalt with dad
Nier) on the X360 ten years ago, then started another playthrough after
completing (endings abcde and sundry others) Nier: Automata but only got
a tiny bit in before hearing of this remaster so I stopped. Now it's
out, and by YoRHa it's so very, very near a tomato. The remaster has
done that thing where it's done very sympathetically and you think
"well, looks exactly like I remember it. Let me actually compare with
the original - omigod what is this ancient crap?", but I'm not sure if
it's also been tweaked a little to be more Automata-ish or if it always
was but the 8 years between the two games made it not so visible.
Automata had a few of the characters brought forward - with in-universe
callouts for how - and the central library appears there too. On top of
that a great deal of the gameplay was the same style, over-the-shoulder
fighting and bullet hell, top-down and side-on pseudo-2D areas,
sparkling objects, fishing, surprising quest results, stylistic quirks
like fading colours in certain areas and changing the colour cast....
Old Nier has a few more experimental things, with a sort of VN section,
a five year gap in the middle of the game, spoilers I won't spoil.
They've done a *very* good job of this, and after finishing it the
requisite number of times I may do a quick mainline playthrough on the
360 version to compare.

Beat Saber (VR) - Back on the dance floor baby.

Titting around with Amigas: My A500 is now fully fettled (for the
moment), with a Pistorm (68020@200ish), 128meg Fast ram, upgraded to
1meg Chip ram, virtual HDD on the Pi, HDMI out courtesy an RGBtoHDMI by
LinuxJedi, and a floppy switcher. I've even screwed the case back
together. It makes an excellent all-in-one Amiga Maxi console. Now I'm
moving over to concentrate on the Amiga 2000, which I've already
PiStormed and RGBtoHDMI'd and put an IDE interface into with an SSD;
more to do in there, it needs the software all setting up and being
boosted to 2meg Chip which is going to either cost me £170 or to learn
how to do SMT soldering. I've chosen the latter. Which has so far cost
me nearly £170 in Amiga parts, soldering kit upgrades and practice
parts... but should offset future costs since PCBs and components are
insanely cheap.

> Want:
> --=--

Nowt much. 2nd vaccine dose.

> Bin:
> -==-
>
> Nothing game-related.

Same.

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

I might not bother with this this year, I've not been keeping track of
all the Amiga and related retro stuff and don't really fancy knowing...

Cheers - Jaimie
--
Sent from my PDP11/45

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

> Play:

One Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows (PS4) - finished the story
missions. As much as the game could be sort of fun, it badly needed
more variety. It was much too repetitive. Also, you were doing the
same thing all the time. But I did finish the story at least.

> Want:

Pac-Man World 2 (GBA) - yes, this is a bit random. I suppose it just
finally occurred to me that I've played PMW but not the sequels. The
GBA version probably has little to do with the "real" versions and
even less chance of being any good, but the 2.5D-ish graphics do seem
fairly reminiscent of Pacmania.

> Bin:

For some reason initially assuming that a GBA take on PMW2 would have
used software 3D like V-Rally 3. Though I do vaguely remember there
being an Asterix platformer that did something along those lines.

-Rus.