No More Hereditary Peers Play Want Bin (PWBE 17 Feb 2025)

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

Huh. House of Lords is getting a Labour-flavoured makeover. I only heard
about that from our American comics pages. You'd think a big change to
the UK government like that would get a bit more attention. It's almost
as if there's some other blobby presence in the world that's absorbing
all of the eyeballs and time.

Play:
--=--

Freedom Wars Remastered (PS5) - Final trophy get. Freedom Wars
Remastered is officially my very first Platinum Playstation trophy. I
thought I'd get a marching band parade or something. Anyway, this is the
rare game where I'm still inspired to keep playing long after all the
actual endings, and one of the things I'm doing is hunting down the rare
and unusual crafting materials so that I can upgrade gear. I discovered
that if I give my little robot warden a long-range cutting laser, she'll
actually use it against the big robot bosses *and* adjust her aggro
range to match, which means that I'm able to cut bits off faster while
we're both standing much further away. I also learned that the various
NPC party members have preferences and quirks not unlike in God Eater,
where some are careless shots or aren't interested in the less exciting
parts of a mission (like rescuing hostages or collecting resources). I
think the clock tells me I've played 90 hours now.

Want:
--=--

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii (PS5) - Crap. Target will stock
it online for shipment, but I can't get anybody to commit to the notion
that they'll actually carry it in the store. I guess I'm ordering this
online then, which is stupid because I really do want to support local
business. Though maybe not one that's surrendered in the face of
conservative backlash over diversity product. What kind of simpleton
complains about rainbow decorations? Can you just not buy them?

Dog Man: Mission Impawssible - While I'm here I might as well order
something for the boy. We went and saw the Dog Man film at the cinema,
and he's the right age (and the right temperament) for this kind of
silly licensed platformer. I sort of wish that my kid were more plugged
into marketing and advertising so that he could ask me for this stuff,
but I'm also really glad he's not.

Bin:
-==-

Nothing game-related.

-KKC, who wonders if the Romancing Saga sequel is any good.

[Russell Marks]

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
Huh. House of Lords is getting a Labour-flavoured makeover. I only heard
about that from our American comics pages. You'd think a big change to
the UK government like that would get a bit more attention.

It seems like a continuation of Blair-era changes, so if you see
Starmer as a Blair tribute act, in some sense it isn't that
newsworthy.
Monster Hunter Tri (Wii) - there are various two-monster village
quests which open up after you get the credits, so I figured I might
as well make a start on those in this third playthrough. The
Agnaktor/Uragaan one wasn't too bad with the long sword from the
Argosy captain, but even with my Qurupeco armour nearly maxed-out now
it's definitely showing how non-ideal it is for such a quest. As is my
dubious level of long sword proficiency, to be fair.

Tomb Raider (2013) (PC) - more collect-em-up action, finishing off
everything shown on the map for what the game describes as 90%
completion. Knowing me I might well look up where to find the rest
too, but that would probably be excessive (which virtually guarantees
it'll happen).
Maybe this eventually...

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

Shame they couldn't work Robot and Ninja into the name somehow.
Failing to run GRIP (Linux) - the gog.com installer was inexplicably
falling over in Wine, and I was considering some VM-based approach for
installation before remembering that search engines exist, and using
innoextract instead. Then the game would fall over trying to play a
video. After sorting that, it still fell over, just a few seconds
later. Apparently this can actually run on Linux, but whether it'll
play nice with my setup might be a different matter. Anyway, it's kind
of surprising given the sheer number of games that have worked for me
so far with generally fairly minimal hassle.

-Rus.

[Kendrick Kerwin Chua]

Post by Russell Marks

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
Huh. House of Lords is getting a Labour-flavoured makeover. I only heard
about that from our American comics pages. You'd think a big change to
the UK government like that would get a bit more attention.

It seems like a continuation of Blair-era changes, so if you see
Starmer as a Blair tribute act, in some sense it isn't that
newsworthy.

I won't consider Starmer to be a fully realised Blair analogue until he
declares victory and announces when he'll leave office without having
been shown the door by his own party in some undignified way.

Post by Russell Marks
Monster Hunter Tri (Wii) - there are various two-monster village
quests which open up after you get the credits, so I figured I might
as well make a start on those in this third playthrough. The
Agnaktor/Uragaan one wasn't too bad with the long sword from the
Argosy captain, but even with my Qurupeco armour nearly maxed-out now
it's definitely showing how non-ideal it is for such a quest. As is my
dubious level of long sword proficiency, to be fair.

Something I observed in all the Nintendo Monster Hunter games is that
the boss rushes were always designed to make your loadout impossible to
plan out. You'd get armour or elemental defence ready for the first
boss, and then it'd be useless against the second and the third. It was
always more important to just get the stupid earring accessories to buff
other unrelated stats, which essentially meant you were going into
battle completely naked and with a less-than-ideal weapon in hand.

Post by Russell Marks
Maybe this eventually...

Post by Kendrick Kerwin Chua
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

Shame they couldn't work Robot and Ninja into the name somehow.

I don't know any spoilers ahead of time, but I am confident in asserting
that the game will feature both a robot and a ninja in spite of their
conspicuous absence from the title.

-KKC, who also has RPG Maker With on the way.