klargon

I would say to try to get a frontlit unit if you can get one, then a flash cart for the games. The initial outlay might end up being around £200 I guess, but you don’t need to buy anything else. Nothing beats the original hardware. If you buy a used unit it’s worth knowing you can buy replacement lenses easily and cheaply now. I stuck a glass lens on one of mine.

As I understand it, they’re already included in the new version that’s on game pass.

Actually it was just Nebula Thread. There wasn't really any guidance that the new minigame was now available as a result of my new guest. I managed to make a bit more progress, but I suspect I may have hit another wall now. Will see how I get on.

I've got to a point where I don't seem to have access to any of the required materials to upgrade the ship and complete quests. I'm pretty fed up with the monotony of the maintenance and the travelling reminds me of Wind Waker, which definitely isn't a good thing! Willing to give it one more chance, but I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to do to progress things. Should I just be exploring the uncovered areas beyond the ice wall thingy? To give an indication of progress, I have the glide ability, the ship is one away from the largest size, and I've offloaded one of my guests so far.

I modded a couple of mine with the GBA SP frontlight. It’s not perfect, but it makes a difference. They’re both the original model though, and I’d probably rather use the slimline.

I think everyone who previously owned clamshells is feeling some serious regret! I decided to move to cart only, then shifted some of those a couple of years ago when I got a flash cart. Even some cart only stuff is pretty bloody valuable now. Nothing that I kept is.

It’s incredibly tense to watch

Booth (PC) This was an additional bonus game with this month's Humble Choice. You're conducting food quality control from an isolated booth in the sky. If you've played Papers, Please, you'll know what to expect from the daily task of food QC - you get a set of rules on what to check, and a constant stream of food upon which to perform these checks. The rest of the daily routine involves calling one of three take-away restaurants to order food, which gives the opportunity to chat with the delivery people. At points, you make decisions in the narrative. It looks like it wasn't originally written in English, as the translation is often a bit wonky. While I was largely intrigued by the game, there were two aspects which detracted from the overall experience. The first is that there are simply too many days in the game - that's a lot of monotonous routine! The other is when it comes to a point where your decisions are assessed. There were a couple of things the game told me I did where I actually chose the opposite, which makes me question how flexible the ending is. I got a pretty terrible ending, but I don't feel motivated to go back to try to change it.

You would think that was the case. Just seems strange I can’t see it on the game pass Twitter account.

I feel I should manage expectations a little... It hasn’t been confirmed that it’s on game pass, just reported in a few places.

It’s Unwritten Tales. That’s a pretty terrible selection.

And straight onto Game Pass, apparently

The Last of Us Pt. 2 I always struggle to look forward to forthcoming Naughty Dog games, despite having played the first Last of Us (+ Left Behind) and all the Uncharted's. Perhaps it's because I already know what I'm going to get. I also know they're going to be too long. Even Lost Legacy could have been trimmed a bit for me. So, I approached The Last of Us Part II with fairly grounded expectations. This feels like the most confident Naughty Dog game I've played. The pacing feels very deliberate - the spacing between encounters and exploration sections is expertly judged. To me, there's an apparent awareness of the potential monotony, routine and repetition of the core gameplay mechanics. This awareness is evident in at least a couple of places, where they throw a surprise in to keep you on your toes. The amount and delivery of supplementary detail (through written materials, optional conversation) isn't as overwhelming as it is in many other games. As ever with Naughty Dog, the areas are well-crafted. There are enough different assets to enable each location to feel, in at least some way, unique. I like to try to head off the beaten track at most points, and you're generally rewarded with something by doing so. There's not a lot of wasted space. There's also a sense of threat that remains throughout. Even though you know you've cleared an 'encounter', there's still an over-arching tension that means you rarely feel comfortable. From a story perspective, I guess I don't really have any strong feelings. I never really felt particularly invested, but the writing is far from terrible and is well acted. I played it on one of the easier difficulty settings - I don't think I'd have gained a better experience with more challenge. It gives you more crafting materials than you're likely to need, but ammo can still be fairly scarce. I could probably have skipped the progression systems (new abilities, weapon crafting), which suggests they're one of the weaker areas of the game. Overall, I guess I've come away feeling fairly impressed. I wouldn't usually want to dedicate this much time to a linear, story-driven game, but I never felt it was a chore to return to the game to make progress. Good stuff, and probably justifies the meta score.

The year one DLC is half price at £8 on PSN at the moment. That’s a lot of content for under a tenner.

Before this thread disappears for another 16 years, and while the game is still heavily discounted (you have until the end of tomorrow), I thought I'd make an attempt to convince someone else to buy it... Why should I buy it? For me, a good rhythm game is about the level engagement with the music. Rock Band / Guitar Hero achieves this through plastic instruments, Gitaroo Man and Space Channel 5 through scripted action, and Frequency and Amplitude through separating the different stems (if that's the right term). Games where you merely tap along and get a tambourine hit or clap aren't closely-coupled enough to the music for me to find them compelling. The way DJ Max accomplishes this connection is through making each button press trigger the sample from that bit of the song (I've tried to indicate this mechanic in the first track of the below video). Sure, you get a score, but the motivation isn't really to get a high score - it's to hear the track the way it was intended to be heard. Ok, so the track might be some k-pop shite, but the mechanic is so engaging that it doesn't really matter! The difficulty is pretty much up to you - choose between 4, 6 or 8 button modes, and there are generally 3 different difficulty levels for each track. Respect gathers a huge number of tracks from some of the PSP versions of the game, with some new tracks thrown in too (although, not all of these actually have the sample playing mechanic, I've noticed). I've tried to indicate a bit of an overview of the game in the short video below. Fair to say I won't be troubling the Absolute Mastery Videos thread any time soon... Tips for playing It's quite a hard game. The star ratings are generally pretty accurate, so start with low star numbers. Find a challenging track you actually quite like and re-play it a few times to learn timing - there are often common patterns across tracks for note charting. My brain can't handle anything other than 4 buttons, and rarely a track over 6 or 7 stars. There's still many hours of entertainment even within these constraints, though - don't feel you have to go through mission mode or advance to more buttons. If it's fun, it's fine! If you use manually triggered Fever (rather than auto), triggering it at the start of a section you've been failing at might see you through. I find upping the speed to 1.5x for most tracks makes it easier to figure out the timing - the notes are less bunched up. This is especially true for the slower tracks. I want more! There are loads of DLC track packs that are available, and most are currently reduced. My personal recommendation would be to go for Clazziquai (the production of their tracks is notably superior to my ear). I also went for Technika pack 1, as it has some other reasonable stuff that was in Clazziquai originally. The packs also give you the missions from that game. I still want more! The original PSP titles are worth checking out. Not only do you get a dude shouting "Max Combo! What a crazy mix!!" if you max combo a track, but you also get different note charting. Where a song has been in multiple titles, they seem to have reworked the note charting (therefore the parts of the track you are playing) for each re-use. Respect appears to have the last version of each track. Generally, the note charting was best on the first use of the track.