Amnesiac

This was a nice change of pace on a chilly Sunday. Love Elizabeth’s brooch in the second pic. It’s great that excellent character design can live on through cosplay after the source material has started to fade from (my) memory.

@JamieO Great to see a shout out for Rainbow Islands. Just an absolutely charming game with mechanics that still seem fresh today. Have a great birthday hanging out with Bub and Bob!

@nessisonett Yes, normal is exactly what I thought too, until I saw people’s reactions and began to question my own sanity. Maybe it’s one of those Magic Eye pictures where if you casually glance at it, it’s an average drawing of Lara Croft, but if you stare at it cross eyed you see Gerard Butler in one of those totally non-homoerotic scenes from 300.

@TrannosaurusBex I thought the sequel was on par with if not a bit better than the original game. Also, it’s part of the February Picks PS Stars campaign so you can get 50 extra coin-things if you do wind up taking the plunge.

Always a treat to get a JamieO retro review, even for a game that I didn’t play back in the day. My clearest memory of the prequels is skipping out of work early to see The Phantom Menace on opening day, and being wowed by the visuals but pretty let down by just about everything else. The quote about the target audience being 12-year-olds gave me a chuckle since I remember a big plot point being about a trade federation disputing high taxes on certain routes. You know, kid stuff.

@carlos82 I’ve happily wasted dozens of hours playing it and find that it’s the rare example of a live service game that I really enjoy without feeling like it’s trying to mug me.

I picked it up last week after learning about the early release in the comments section of a pretty reliable Playstation website called Tap Triangle or Shove Circle or something. It’s very early going for me, but the game seems pretty robust and does a great job of making you feel like you’re flying. Unfortunately, it also does a great job of making you feel what it’s like to lose control and park your aircraft in the sea, but that’s probably more on me.

@ztpayne7 Oh, you weren’t being negative at all. I was referring to the article about the Rec Room developers deciding against a PSVR2 port, which has been popping up on a bunch of gaming sites.

@ztpayne7 @CaptD Hearing that there’s an Ultrawings 2 made my day. The first one was a pretty amazing experience, so patch or no patch the sequel is going right in the cart. It’s a shame the only VR headline making the rounds is essentially a negative quote, but I guess that makes for better reading than “Sequel to Awesome Flight Game Releases Early.”

I loved the Atari Recharged series, and that was just a fresh coat of paint and some tweaks. Based on the trailer Atari Beyond looks like a complete reimagining. It would be great if they could make it a series where different developers could put their own spin on Atari classics.

For a company whose games feature some truly wonderful art design, Remedy seems to struggle with making an appealing logo. To be fair, though, it is better than the 90’s iteration that made me a bit queasy.

This caught my eye on the PS store, but I was a little wary because the logo was giving me bargain bin vibes. What can I say, I’m shallow. I’m happy to say that his review did enough to push it on to my wishlist.

These are my favorite kind of lists because they get me to pay attention to things I may have overlooked and point me towards games I passed over. And also because pointless complaints about year end lists are top five on my year end list of favorite comments to dislike, so this is a win-win for me.

It was nice to see last year’s winners again. That @nessisonett spider man shot still makes me chuckle.

Clearly I have died and gone to retro gaming heaven. Just put my corpse out with the bins on garbage day before it starts to moulder.

@AFCC Atari 50 has a platinum, but it’s a tough one and is sitting at 0.1% earned. Nearly all the trophies are tied to the new reimagined games though.

Oh wow, they threw in a Lynx title too! What a nice early X-mas present. The museum elements and breadth of content really make Atari 50 the high water mark for retro collections.

@PixelDragon Those examples are…a bit arbitrary, but I’ve had some issues with disc rot on older DVDs that have proven hard to replace. I think the lesson is that no matter what you do, entropy always wins.

@rockodoodle I just hopped back in to have a look around and it doesn't seem too much different from what I remember. Perhaps a little smoother. Apparently the lighting issue I was griping about is only present on the William's tables, which leads me to believe that it's intentional. To me, Pinball Arcade is still the best way to enjoy the classic tables, anyway. By the way, there are a few tables in the year end sale with reasonable prices.

@rockodoodle For a reboot, Pinball FX felt like a bit of a step backwards. All the elements you mentioned, plus the wonky lighting, make me head to the prior version when I need a pinball fix.

@Czar_Khastik I was thinking it sounded like Vonimir Pharmaceuticals entry into the men’s supplement market. Surely they could hire some retired athletes to promote it in a slightly uncomfortable way…

Must…fight…morbid…curiosity…

@nessisonett It well could be, but it could also be the current flag used for Japan’s self defense forces, or any number of flags from the 800 years or so leading up to the Meiji restoration.

“Well, my work here is done.”, he thought to himself before moving on to ruin the next thing.

This looks like a really good change of pace game, and the more sciencey science fiction aspect sounds refreshing. Also, the “objectives holding your hand a lot of the time” thing doesn’t seem so bad. Sometimes it’s nice to just hold hands.

That’s a shame. It seemed like a really novel idea…

But (mostly) seriously, I’m be all in for more Dickens games. Maybe a FPS take on Bleak House or an Oliver Twist survival game.

@Voltan I think it’s pronounced “fad.”

Angry runs, huh? Reminds me of that time I undercooked the chorizo..

Yes, what an awful CEO for having maintained and grown Playstation's market dominance through a generation change all while navigating a pandemic, supply chain shortages, and global inflation. Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

“It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.” Until he retires, I guess.

@NinjaNicky Yes, once you’ve completed the story, caught all the fish and their monstrous variants, found all the messages in bottles, completed the research projects and upgraded your ship, and finished the side quests, there may be nothing left to do.

It took me a little time to get acclimated to how delicate my boat is and how a slight bump can ruin a passenger's day...permanently, but this has become one of my absolute favorites of the year. Just a wonderful combination of mood and mechanics that keeps you wanting to see the next terrible thing lurking beneath the surface.

That subheading was worth the wait. Also, really looking forward to playing this in all of its slightly shameful glory.

@nessisonett It reminds me of some of the Saturn era live action gravure idol games, which were pretty snazzy for their time. I’m sure it’s not for everyone, but it looks like it features Japan’s most infamous pool, so I’m all in!

I have fond memories of the first game and am just thrilled that the sequels are being made available, warts and all. Actually, these games are just too cute to have warts. Let’s call them blemishes.

And on to the wishlist it goes! I only vaguely remember the original, but this looks phenomenal. Got a bit of the first time on the Haunted Mansion at Disney vibes.

@deathaxe As much as I enjoy the books, David Suchet is cemented in my mind as Poirot. That series was a wonderful adaptation, even though it too played fast and loose with the source material on occasion. Then again, I’m pretty sure that’s the point of an adaptation. Now if there was just a Captain Hastings game where I could push X to exclaim “I say!”

I found a snippet from a press release about the revised deal that paints a bit of a darker picture: "Alas! I had turned loose into the world a depraved wretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery”

No, wait, that’s about the original Frankenstein, not this new monster.

@__Seraph Good to know. Thanks!

I was on board until watching the video and seeing the screen fill up with enough obstacles to make a bullet-hell shooter blush. Still might bite if the frustration to enjoyment ratio isn’t too out of whack.

Nice! Seems like a good time to give Red Matter 2 and Star Trek Resurgence a go. I guess it’s going to be a sci-fi end of summer.

@Bez87 It’s definitely still a thing here in the states. A fleet of them roam around town here every morning and afternoon creating mini-traffic jams. Many of them are pretty ancient, but then again, so are the people who drive them for the most part.

Oh man, I can feel my stomach twist into knots just thinking about trying to find a seat far enough away from the 8th grade bully with the peach fuzz mustache, yet close enough to the cute girl from history class so that I might be able to strike up an awkward conversation. This add on could have easily been a stand alone stealth/horror/dating sim game.

Younger me would have gone nuts for a game like this, but older me just wants to sit quietly without any limb flailing. Still, nice to see another creative use of the sense controllers.

That is some awkward axe grinding in the IGN excerpt. I know that this is not my type of game, but I’m starting to get swept away by the flood of praise that Baldur’s Gate 3 is receiving. I need to find something to buff my impulse control…

I’m surprised that anyone is surprised by this. Embracer didn’t hoover up all these companies to let them carry on doing their own thing.The point of mergers and acquisitions is to boost shareholder value by removing redundancies (firing lots of people) and increasing profit by squeezing as much efficiency out of the new conglomeration as possible. It’s how companies increase their worth without having to get better at what they actually do.

Alright, the church level has me sold on giving this a go, if only to try and play In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. I hear it’s surprisingly similar to a little known hymn called In the Garden of Eden…

Also, nice to see the PSVR2 deathwatch squad creep back into the comments section so I can give the old thumbs down button a workout.

Baldur’s Gate really isn’t my thing, but based on the vibes of most of the articles about it, I really hope the soundtrack features Pulp’s This is Hardcore.

“ Oh, that goes in there
Then that goes in there…”

Sadly, yes. I used to be beep neutral, but after helping to make some tiny humans, I oppose all unnecessary noises.

Maybe I’m missing something, but a quick search shows that the PS3 was getting its hat handed to it in June of 2010 by the Wii and 360. Not quite sure what to make of this, but hey, it’s just numbers!

Game Hardware Sales, June 2010 (US)
Nintendo DS 510.7K
Xbox 360 451.7K
Wii 422.5K
PlayStation 3 304.8K
PSP 121.0K

Yup, got the notification on Dredge and Monster Menu going on sale from the PS app, so it would seem that Sony has launched their assault on my wallet a day earlier than usual.