Ad Blocking Play Want Bin (PWBE 3 Feb 2025)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

So it feels a little hypocritical to complain about not being aware of
new games when I'm also actively bypassing the mechanisms by which
advertising might reach me. But the simple fact of the matter is that
games have hardly ever been advertised in mainstream channels. The
profit to be made is off of those who have little or no information,
making impulsive purchases without foreknowledge or information from
professional reviews. Given that developers and other talented labour
don't see the majority of the profits from game sales, on balance I feel
no shame making the complaint that I don't have enough information about
what games are available to me and when. I didn't even know about
Freedom Wars Remastered being released until about two weeks before the
disc hit Asian markets. That the west didn't get a disc at all is a
separate problem and a separate complaint.

Play:
--=--

Freedom Wars Remastered (PS5) - And still nothing else. 56 hours in I'm
using a mild currency exploit to make it possible for my NPC allies to
be at the proper level for some of the harder post-ending missions. I
recall now that I did something similar in the Vita game, but as it
turns out not the one that was most popular with players at the time. It
requires you to make notes about what NPCs are willing to trade to you
for the various crafting bits, and then move everything around for
arbitrage. It's too smooth not to be intentional, especially as they
seem to have left the whole thing completely intact in the remaster.

Want:
--=--

More games on disc (RL) - My local Target started putting discounted
games on an endcap again, but that turned out to be a one-time
post-Christmas shopping thing and not a regular stock rotation activity
like they used to do twenty years ago. I say again that thinner retail
margins reduce the number of ways that someone can make a game purchase,
in that the lower rungs are cut off the ladder and only the most
expensive and online options remain. This is not a good state for a
commercial enterprise that needs to be more welcoming than it is.

Bin:
-==-

Influenza (RL) - Oof. Whole house has had it. The medication has had the
interesting side effect that frame rates all appear faster to me, which
made playing Freedom Wars kind of a losing proposition until later on
Sunday. Probably gonna put down the controller for a little while until
I actually feel better.

-KKC, who hates that itchy lungs are a sign of positive healing.

[Russell Marks]

The profit to be made is off of those who have little or no
information making impulsive purchases without foreknowledge or
information from professional reviews.

It's probably only a matter of time before I try to have a language
model pick out what I'd like most from a Metacritic best-of list,
thereby returning myself to that maximally profitable "little or no
information" state.
Tomb Raider (2013) (PC) - finished. I seemed to find the game more
likeable the second time around, somehow. Those bullet-sponge enemies
as you near the end weren't too bad with a bit of shotgun spamming,
and I can't quite see how I ever thought that final boss was irksome,
it was pretty simple. They'd even given you a kind of practice boss
earlier in the game to give the general idea of how to approach
things.

Outrun 2006 (PC) - finally made a start on Flagman 4 in this version.
Possibly to do more post-story collect-em-up in TR (having briefly
tried that). While the game has a somewhat linear design, it does
technically act like a sandbox of sorts with fast travel allowed
between maps of a fairly decent size.
TR being essentially Grey: The Game, even if the muted colours do help
give the impression of a stormy windswept island.

Influenza (RL) - Oof.

Oh yeah, it's been a fun one.

-Rus.