Careful What You Wish For Play Want Bin (PWBE 8 Jul 2024)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

Oh crap, after you get elected you have to keep promises.

Play:
--=--

Balloon Pop (Wii) - The Nintendo Wii rides again! Risen from its slumber
it now feeds into the big 4k LED screen and looks pretty good, all
things considered. This was a sympathy purchase for my kid, who was
denied an absurd pre-owned purchase of Splatoon 3 (he's getting it for
his birthday, mum's the word) and got this as a consolation prize. It's
terribly written and causes the console to crash. Too bad.

Dragon's Lair Trilogy (Wii) - As long as I have the little white cheese
block out I might as well get some of these other games going that I
haven't touched since I bought them. Thankfully, the Dragon's Lair
Trilogy disc is identical to the PS3 version in that it doesn't require
waggle or motion and expects only a D-pad and a single button. And it is
just as unplayable as it was in the arcade, so it's nice to have an
option to just watch the computer play through all of the expected
inputs and reach the end after about ten minutes. It's interesting to
consider that there were really mercenary motivations at play in
designing this game, making players drop in just another coin to get
past a certain point after having sunk so much time and effort into
reaching a particular threshold and therefore potentially dropping a
whole day's wage into the thing.

Lost In Blue 2 (DS) - Just for a few minutes to make sure it plays. One
of the things on my giant list of things to do is to get multiple copies
of all the DS games that support multiplayer functions so that I can
play all of the features. Because that's a healthy thing to do, get both
versions of a Pokemon game so that I can have all the Pokemon. In this
case it'd be the capability to trade goods between two stranded island
dwellers, but it's the same principle.

Want:
--=--

To effing well play PS2 discs on my PS5 (PS5) - It is absurd that I
still have (more than) one Playstation 2 system active in my house, and
quite honestly in use more often than my actual PS5. Doesn't Sony think
they can benefit from the research and data that comes from seeing me
enjoy PS2 games? Or is all the salesmanship around analytics a lie, and
that what actually matters to them is the new sale over everything else?
Because they ain't getting many new sales out of me. Imagine the
windfall that would come from being able to press fresh runs of beloved
(or even obscure) PS2 and PS3 games for play now.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

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

Balance forward - $1,515

Glory Days 2 (DS) - $10
Lost In Blue 2 (DS) - $5
Balloon Pop (Wii) - $5
Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 7 (PS2) - $1
Second Sight (PS2) - $15

Total to date - $1,551

-KKC, who wishes he'd had more time to himself this weekend.

[Russell Marks]

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
Oh crap, after you get elected you have to keep promises.

And if there's one thing I'm tired of, it's so many politicians
stubbornly keeping their promises.
Pandemonium (PC) - this version seems a bit odd, I think possibly due
to the 3Dfx wrapper included, but I suppose it works well enough.
Except that the controls are way off, possibly due to my using a weird
remote-keyboard-plus-keyboard-mouse setup. So yes, I somehow managed
to have problems with the controls of a 2.5D platformer, which
scarcely even seems possible. Nice.

Total Overdose (PC) - partly-sandbox shooty thing I mostly liked on
the PS2. It's admittedly a bit jarring just how few polygons are
actually being used at times, and for me this had a similar control
problem which will be a recurring theme here - that keyboard-mouse
thing simply does not work in any usable way on it, with wild
responses to tiny movements even at the lowest sensitivity setting. I
did manage to almost just strafe my way through a couple of missions
to see that the game runs well otherwise, but I suspect it might be
best not to try playing the whole thing that way.

Saints Row 3 (PC) - not the remaster, which would presumably be beyond
what my mini PC could handle. This runs fairly tolerably in 720p on
low settings (!) at least, but... the controls again. Looking at the
floor all the time was completely awesome, obviously, but did make
shooting the opposition a bit on the tricky side. Still, using my PS4
controller via USB worked nicely (at least in Wine on Linux, which is
how I ran all of these), so I played it a bunch like that instead.

Hitman: Blood Money (PC) - similarly, not one of the newer versions.
Given how things start out it was hard to even judge how this was
running before compelling floor-staring action ensued, but it didn't
immediately seem terrible.
To try the other few old PC games I got at the same time as these -
Flatout 2, Just Cause 2, and Sleeping Dogs.
Probably only about half of the games I've mentioned having direct
controller support on PC, despite them all having it on other
platforms.

-Rus.