Halfway through the year and it feels like we're on the backward-moving
leg of the glacier's motion.

Play:
--=--

Nier Automata (PS4) - Rolling along towards the third real ending, after
having played through twice (and experienced one joke ending
accidentally). I get the feeling I'm just going through the motions at
this point? It's fun, but surely it's not also as much fun as Nier
Replicant. It's not nearly as deep either, because the science fiction
nonsense puts a big, big barrier in between the audience and any desire
to relate to the progaonist(s) being depicted. For sure it's all the
same themes about individuality and belonging and identity, but this
second Nier game is just so self-serious in a way that robs it of
whatever entertainment it's trying to provide. I really wish I'd played
these games in the reverse order, like most players ended up doing.

Bard's Tale Trilogy (PC) - The later remake with full mouse support and
new graphics and better mapping capabilities, as a pack-in with Bard's
Tale IV from the Steam sale. So it turns out all this time, when I was
chasing the experience of this earliest gaming memory by trying out
every Wizardry clone known to man, what I really wanted was to relive
the very original Wizardry clone. The improvements are really well
thought out, in that there's now a reason to enter all of the abandoned
homes and buildings of Skara Brae because they've put random encounters
and bits of the manual in there. The game is much more accessible than
it was in the early 8-bit home computer days but not in a way that's at
all condescending or belittling. I'm playing with the so-called A-Team
prerolled characters, who are just as delightful and inspiring in their
Dungeons and Dragons ripoff identities as they ever were, and I've
loving every minute of the dungeon crawl.

Sonic All Stars Racing (DS) - My son wanted Sonic Adventure at his nan's
house, which wasn't going to happen because his grandmother can't
possibly be expected to help him operate an SD NTSC game console. With
some trepidation I gave him as a substitute my old 3DS XL with a DS game
loaded in it and he immediately understood what to do and how to use it.
In the space of 48 hours he unlocked every driver and every track in the
game, and I alternate between being proud of his brain elasticity and
horrified at the obsessive monster I've somehow created.

Want:
--=--

More time (RL) - Spent three days pulling out old wiring and broken
electrical outlets in my house. Normally that wouldn't be much pain
except that I discovered all of my game systems and all of my work
equipment somehow ended up on the same phase of the same circuit, so it
was a mighty disruptive and sweat-inducing repair job that also came
with a built-in fire hazard and risk of electrocution. All is well now
and I only shocked myself twice.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

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

Balance forward - $2,697

Bard's Tale IV Deluxe Edition with original trilogy (PC) - $13
Agarest War Bundle (PC) - $9
Titan Souls (PC) - $2
Microsoft Flight Simulator X (PC) - $5

Total to date - $2,726

-KKC, who also did way too much family maintenance that blocked other plans.

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

> Play:

PictoQuest (PS4) - finished this finally, the fairly long run of
(mostly) 20x20 puzzles up to the end was probably a bit misjudged, but
it wasn't too bad. Weirdly there was a side-missiony bit right at the
end which I thought was maybe offering a join-the-baddies bad ending,
but I didn't risk finding out (I only did that puzzle after the final
boss).

Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear To The Rescue (PS1) - tried this on PS4,
and the emulation seems fairly reasonable for NTSC at least (which I
think this game is, at least on US PSN). The game itself has some
awkward controls, presumably because they wanted it to be playable
with the standard PS1 controller - even so, I think not having the
active/passive camera mode switch available on a button was a mistake
(assuming I haven't just failed to spot it). It's very fiddly having
to go through two menus to change that each time, because you
basically want the active camera for moving around the level but the
passive camera for platforming. It's still not a bad platformer if you
can tolerate that and get used to the PS1-ness, I hadn't really
intended to do more than try out the emulation for a few minutes yet
soon ended up doing five goals on the first level.

> In the space of 48 hours he unlocked every driver and every track in the
> game, and I alternate between being proud of his brain elasticity and
> horrified at the obsessive monster I've somehow created.

Sounds about right. :-)

> Want:

Probably to get something from the current PSN sale, IIRC there was a
shoot-em-up that looked vaguely interesting if nothing else.

> Bin:

No obvious option for low-res polygons on the PS4's PS1 emulator. So
instead you get low-res 2D stuff with higher-res polys, which is nice
in some ways but can look a bit strange.

-Rus.