Amnesiac

I picked up Gourmet Warriors as a stand alone release from QUByte, but the additional titles are enough to make me do a partial double dip.

All in all, I thought it was a pretty good loyalty program. If you engaged with it, it gave you an incentive to revisit older titles to earn coins or collectibles, and if you couldn’t be bothered, you still earned coins for purchases. As with all loyalty programs, the aim wasn’t to give money away, but to tweak customer behavior by getting people to spend just a little more. My guess is that they couldn’t move the needle enough, so it’s back to the drawing board.

I loved hanging out with Ryza and the gang, especially in the first two installments, but it took me a while to get into three. Partly from Atelier fatigue, and partly because it was just so wide open. On the plus side, three lets you turn your party into an indomitable killing machine through alchemy before leaving the first map. Good times!

@Northern_munkey It used to send notifications through the app when a wish listed item went on sale, but that seems hit or miss now. Still, I’ve had things sit on there for a year or more before they hit a price I was willing to buy at. Your level of cheapness may not reach my own though!

@Northern_munkey I add games that I’m interested in, but not interested in enough to buy at launch price. Then I do a quick wishlist check when a new sale pops up. Saves a lot of hunting and pecking.

The description of the pre-order bonus alone is making me want to buy this just to reward the grade A snark.

“Pre-order now and get the following bonus content:

• Early Bird DLC
  Our Early Bird Edition will have an incredibly profound effect on gameplay!
• Player Character wakes up one minute earlier each day – all clocks will be set to 8:59AM!
• Cute birdy comes by and whistles songs! “

Thirsty Suitors was a fun game (with a somewhat off putting name) so I’m excited to see how this pans out.

My tired eyes read the title as No Man’s Sky Bacon, and now I’m slightly disappointed. Still, given the outrageous amount of support this game has received post launch, a breakfast related update probably isn’t entirely out of the question.

This approach has been successful for Criterion and Arrow with films, so I’m hopeful it will work with games. I love that they include an essay, but I do wish they could add interviews or additional features on the disc. Even still, it’s nice to see so much thought and care go into these releases, and I hope it catches on.

I’m enjoying it quite a bit, and the REV system is pretty fun. I don’t know that it was ever going to be a mainstream breakthrough for the series, but it’s worth a try for anyone who likes fighting games.

That being said, the Saudi connection hangs over it like a cloud, and the guest characters, while not overly present in most of the game, have created a perception problem that is proving hard to overcome.

I’m mildly interested, since I enjoyed the VNs and some of the other Quintessential Quintuplets media, but I’d be surprised to see this in the West anytime soon. The story may translate well, but that ¥8,690 launch price for the base game won’t. Maybe it will make its way over after the Japanese launch window with a reduced price.
And I know the Special Box comes with an OVA Blu ray, but the ¥25,190 price is still stunning. Games in Japan have been priced higher for as long as I can remember, but that’s quite a chunk of change..,

Ah well, things just don’t work out sometimes. Glad I read this to steer me clear of an impulse buy regret. This just makes me want a remaster of Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat all the more.

I needed a laugh this morning, and reading the title Sir Whoopass provided it. Thanks!

Why are there so many animal based detective games? And more importantly, why do I love them so?

@AinsleyE I had no idea there was such a thing. Thanks! My first place vote has to go to Roger Stern’s Avengers, though.

@AinsleyE As the kids say, that pic is fire! Am I dong it right? I’m too old to know…

Slightly more seriously, I’d pick up a MSS Omni in a heartbeat. Not sure how they’d handle the different page dimensions, but I guess it wouldn’t be too different from converting the 70’s mags.

Nice to see the good folks at Udon publishing more nifty art books. They’re always worth a look.

I would think some of the frustration comes from choosing a launch week that suits your game based on whatever else is projected to release, and then watching a surprise drop suck up a lot of people’s gaming budget.

Happy to find two games that have been hanging around in my wishlist for a while getting their first discounts. Blazing Strike and River City Saga: Three Kingdoms Next both looked interesting but felt a bit pricey at release. Now they can move from the wishlist to the backlog.

@PlatinumMikey There’s a list of target photos for each location, and the trophies seem mostly tied to completing those lists. That, and a lot of walking about.

@PlatinumMikey Amazon tells me I ordered Afrika back in 2009 (yikes!) I’m in the country formerly known as the US, and I think it was published by Natsume here. It was a little pokey but a pretty neat experience all around if memory serves, which it may not since I’m apparently very old…

I picked this up on release as I’ve enjoyed these types of games going back to Afrika on PS3. It’s very pretty, but I found the frame rate stutters to be pretty jarring, and I’m not one of the hard core frame rate fundamentalists. Hope it gets cleaned up, but still a good experience for the price.

@Stepan Kid A Mnesia Exhibition is a marvel. It’s one of the first things I installed on my PS5 and I’ve never considered deleting it.

I had a lot of fun with this game, and it’s great on the Portal, but I think I’ll continue to keep my distance for the moment. Disney’s take on Alice in Wonderland is iconic stuff, but Dreamlight Valley just eats up playtime and there are only so many hours in the day.

Looks like good fun! I still have a Pocket Color tucked away somewhere with a handful of games in their slowly deteriorating cardboard boxes. I’d love to see the two game collections make their way to PS, but they seem stuck on the Switch for now…

I read the headline and thought Sony was giving kudos to PushSquare. Which they should, because of the fine work you do combing through the sales to find worthwhile buys. So well done all around, I guess!

The addition of the alchemists reminds me a bit of Warriors All Stars. Looking forward to giving them a spin.

@Truegamer79 I think that was the Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection. It had the first two Gradius games, Life Force, and some other good stuff. Also, Haunted Castle, which is not good stuff.

That subheading is pure gold, and I can’t read it without hearing Kiryu’s voice in my head, which somehow makes it even better.

They really should have gone with “The Best and Worst of Bubsy” as the title of the collection. That’s just the right amount of self deprecation to get me to preorder. Also, the colon use in the actual title makes me wince for some reason.

Glad to hear that the combat is speedy. In the last Ryza installment, even battles against a handful of punis could take an age. Sometimes you just want to whack a puni and move on with your life, you know?

Really? I thought the shirt, blazer, corset, or shazet as I like to call it, looked fine and dandy. This looks nice too, though!

So like a Steam Machine then? That didn’t work out too well, but it wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe the time is right to try again.

@AhmadSumadi I played it and really enjoyed it, but I don’t know you so I guess your statement stands. The game is just stuffed with interesting historical info about one of the most fascinating periods of Japanese history. If that’s not your thing, I can see it being a bit of a slog at times, but I was constantly entertained.

If I’m reading this correctly, it sounds like an app that lets you date Christian Donlan. Sign me up, the man’s a poet.

I’m always up to try a new music game. Sounds like the inputs are a bit sloppy, but my concerns are offset a bit by the reasonable price, and it being on sale at the moment.

@JamieO Happy Birthday fellow child of the 80’s arcades! Some good old Sega weirdness seems like a fine way to celebrate. As for me, I’ll be testing my old man reflexes with Under Defeat and a bit of the second Irem collection.

@get2sammyb As someone who enjoyed birding pre-toddlers, when free time was more than just a concept, I was really looking forward to Wingspan, but I’ve found the rules to be pretty dense. Or maybe I’m just too dense to understand the rules.
Balatro, on the other hand, I’ve had to consciously keep off my home screen or risk falling back into its addictive clutches. Pick your poison, I guess!

Nice! Lunar Lander Beyond was a good bit of fun, so I’m happy to see this series continuing.

@nitraM I finally got around to playing it over the weekend and I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I was a bit worried after the tutorial level, but so far the rest of the game has been good fun. That being said, it definitely has that FF13 feeling of being a long series of rooms and corridors so far. Also, the combat is full of interesting ideas that don’t come together often enough because the game gets in its own way. Still, I’m enjoying my play through and am glad that the team was at least able to bring a small part of their vision to (slightly janky) life.

I read about his passing last night and had that feeling like the air left the room. Everything was a little worse than it was a moment before. I think I can say that David Lynch changed how I experienced movies and TV. From watching the Twin Peaks broadcast as a stunned middle schooler to getting lost in classics like Mulholland Drive or Inland Empire as an adult, the style and atmosphere he created was unparalleled.

That subheading gave me a good chuckle. Hopefully the game will let you recreate the addition to the Guggenheim Museum and other works by the inimitable Art Vandelay.

“Mai Bounces Over to SF6” seems like a missed opportunity, but I guess PushSquare is too classy for that.

I’ll second @CWill97 . The conversation format makes for a fun read. Also, as a non-Briton I’m sure some of this game sailed over my head, but it was still stuffed with laughs. Also, they seemed to manage poking fun without being overly mean spirited, which is welcome and rare.

The holiday sale price and my contractual obligation to buy train related things as a toddler dad has finally pushed this out of my wishlist and into my cart.

@GrimWillows I forgot that he did the score for Mishima! I have that on blu ray but haven’t gotten around to watching it yet. Backlogs aren’t just for games! I love his scores for A Brief History of Time and Thin Blue Line, so I’m looking forward to checking it out.

@GrimWillows Seems like things get a bit out of balance in Naiad as well, with the oil-slicked, refuse-filled sewers mentioned in the review. But honestly, I was just happy to be reminded of the Qatsi trilogy, which I’m now planning to exhume from my basement and rewatch.

Just here to applaud the subheading. Time to dig out the trilogy and enjoy some random time lapse footage set to Philip Glass. Oh, and the game looks neat too!

What a nice surprise! I really enjoyed Journey to Kyoto. Such a great way to unwind.

Yes, I did pick up Unknown 9, partly because of the PushSquare review (this site has cost me a fortune over the years), and partly because it looked like a nice AA palette cleanser between other games. Hope to get to it before year’s end.