PWB August 2025 / bmb vanity month thread

August is my birthday month and so I will not see it tainted and having to sully itself in among the general thread of the riff raff!

Play - Donkey Kong Bonanza - my kid has now made it to the final boss of this and I am just about to hit 4 hours played…but have loved those 4 hours.

Empire Total War - Never got on with this originally as felt too different from what I liked about the Total War series, however I recently upgraded my ROG Ally SSD to 1tb when the deals were on, and decided to have a look how an older Total War would run on it, and the answer is pretty gloriously. Enjoying this much more now as barely played any Total War the last 10 or so years.

Player Manager 99 - Moved to this for my playthroughs, I get I could probably not mention this but it's nice to keep track of things here.

Professor Layton - I started playing one of these I got in a charity shop just over a year ago and liked it, but it made reference to their previous adventure and so I looked into it and spotted I had the 2nd game, I got the first and took it on holiday with us (to sunny Rhyl) and then played a few hours of it and promptly forgot about it until it came time to begin thinking of what to take for this years holiday. So am committed to properly working through it now. It's going well as my missus and kid now like hearing and seeing the puzzles and so that is helping my motivation.

Quake Wars Enemy Territory - Absolutely no one will have seen this coming. I spent two hours this week on Sky Webchat pretending to be my father-in-law (with permission) and was playing this in the background on the solo campaign (that is pretending to be the online game modes if that makes sense) - And have gotten oddly addicted to it. I can't be bothered to learn or play an online game anymore and commit to the grind of getting familiar and good at it. But this Ai/versus the bots mode was covering all my desires for an Online shooter surprisingly well.

Tony Hawk PS3/4 - Still dipping in and out of this for little blasts.

Minecraft Dungeons - We always seem to return to this when it's a significant holiday and it's just the 3 of us, after playing a bit this evening and doing the daily trails, I have purchased the DLC pack finally and so we are going to start playing through these together.

Want - Really into the idea of getting two copies of 'a pokemon' game and then me and my daughter playing them simultaneously. Not even sure where to start as seems that the main Switch one had significant performance issues that weren't fixed. Although would appreciate any suggestions or input here from others?

GoldenTee Arcade collection - Still not sorted out getting this yet. Tried to look into if anyone had gotten a trackball working with in on PC and not had any joy so held off.

DSiXL - Don't need one but now really want one as basically only that and the micro GBA that are the only Nintendo handheld form factors I have never owned.

Off to the Sheffield Games market on Sunday so will keep my eye out!

Bin

Having sorted my games collection out a tad this week I have discovered at least 25 duplicates of games that I have amassed due to error and poor memory. So I will begin checking through and collating the best box,disc and manuals and then will be offloading the rest.

Play

It's a big Switch 2 month for me.

Donkey Kong Bananza, obviously; it's every bit as fun as everyone says and constantly surprising in different ways.

I had a go at the demo for the worst-titled game of the year, The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales which was pretty good but I found some of the controls and menus clunkier than I'd like in an action RPG.

Want

Picked up Promise Mascot Agency in the sale, but so far have only made it as far as where the demo started. Looking forward to getting some time with it properly.

Bin

I've been feeling bone tired for the last few weeks, no matter how much sleep I get or at what time.

We could all have our own PWB threads. There's about 5 members left, so it's almost practical.

The ATB speed of FFIX even on max is ridiculously slow, as is the way characters deal with being queued up to do animations, if I didn't already buy this (it was like £3-£5 but whatever) I'd have probably played this modded/emulated because bruh.

We could all have our own PWB threads. There's about 5 members left, so it's almost practical.

DOK'S PWB THREAD: NOTHING NEWER THAN 1994!!!

Play.

Knights of the Old Republic. This joins the long list of games I can't quite remember playing, despite being sure I had. I know it has A Moment, but I can't remember more than that, so I'm going in relatively unspoiled. The combat feels ancient, and isn't remotely satisfying, but the plot is keeping me interested.

SWTOR. This is what made me pick up KOTOR. Still plugging through the Imperial Agent storyline, which is still great fun.

KOTOR comics. Again, as part of the Star Wars EU binge, I'm reading the Zayne (Zayde?) Carrick stuff. I've never really read any EU/Legends stuff before, but it's a shame that no-one is developing this world any more. The Disneyverse has had its moments, but for every Andor there's a Luke drinking green milk. The EU just seems so much more ambitious. Even though I'm sure lots of it is just cheap 80s sci-fi bollocks.

DK Bananza. Smashing stuff is fun.

I keep thinking about trying some of the Kotor comics as Sheffield's Forbidden planet has relocated and so we frequently go in the new store and spotted a load of stuff in there that looks interesting.

When I had a Marvel Unlimited subscription it included basically all of the Star Wars comics. I assume it still does.

I suggest this because if you are going to read a lot of bad comics you really don't want to be paying Forbidden Planet prices.

Cool. That looks perfect as has a free trial and then you can do monthly, so can cancel after the summer holidays. Will investigate later.

Last comic I bought was Daredevil: The Man Without Fear or one of the DD ones, it was okay but like, £15 and a short story where the second half of the book was just the script really burned me, I'll stick to manga I think.

Yeah Marvel Unlimited is great. I got my money's worth and I only ever read Star Wars stuff; if you're into superheroes too it must be the best deal of all time.

The only problem is reading a physical book is SO much better. The difference with comics is much more pronounced, too, being able to explore the artwork on a printed page is just a completely different experience. But yes, as mentioned, it's about 20x the price.

Ended up getting a nice DSiXL - The 25th Mario edition today from the games market with charger and in a really nice condition.

They also had a demo of the Gamie lightguns thing that is currently on Kickstarter, anyone seen that? Was very impressed with what I saw.

Well I'm surprised by this

https://x.com/KoeiTecmoUS/status/1952353835176870396?t=o3SLcd2ZrYlZIiCOpoHTSQ&s=19

I won't be getting this any time soon as I own all three and have beat two, but if you haven't played an Atelier game before and would like a comfy RPG with uber crafting this is THE best way to check out the series now

Staving off the temptation to buy the new Gradius Origins collection on Steam by playing Gradius V and R-Type Final (R-Type Delta HD soon actually!) and man, those games are so fucking hard (well Gradius V seems a fair bit harder, at least right out of the gate) but despite saying 'I don't have time for this right now, it requires a lot of time and dying and memorising' I still played about an hour longer than I initially planned to.

Right before setting off I found a copy of Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks and I ended up bringing this and it's become my Holiday game, as it's one of the few Zelda titles I havent played. Not been in the caravan much as it's been glorious weather, but what I have played I have really enjoyed. It's very odd but charming for that.

I found driving the little train about oddly satisfying.

Spirit Tracks is great, it’s almost a forgotten Zelda game at this point. Phantom Hourglass is quite well known but this little oddity is often disregarded. It’s basically a Wind Waker sequel too. Choo choo!

Yeah it's weird I never even tried to play it. I think this copy might have been directly bought by my missus too. We both loved Phantom Hourglass and I am sure she saw this in GamesTM and wanted it, so I think I never played it as was waiting for her to finish it and then just never got to it. With my kids DS kick she wanted to look through all the games we had and ended up finding this in it's actual case. Just off to the 4th temple. I celebrated our return form Bridlington by getting a massive migraine, so not had a chance to unpack my DSi and carry on today.

Play
Something weird has happened. I downloaded AC Mirage on my PC (despite being bored senseless by it on console) and I'm really enjoying it. I think it's because modern AC games are so fiddly. You've got all these different tools, and 20 years of gameplay systems layered on top of one another, so that when you're 15ft from your telly, holding a pad, it all feels a bit disconnected.

Coming off the back of Bananza - a game that injects fun into your eyeballs no matter where you go - AC games can feel very prescriptive. "If you go to this location, climb up this exact rooftop and run along this specific washing line, a nugget of fun will be dispensed in ten seconds…"

And on PC, it's easier to see the 'fun' path. Easier to pull up your tools, mouse-aim to the guard that's spotted you, and throw a knife at him. Easier to wrestle with the twelve different submenus (one for contracts, one for investigations, one for missions, one for historical facts…) when you've got a mouse.

Or maybe I'm just old. Shit I'm just old aren't I.

Mirage is very stripped-down for a modern AC title (although that was probably necessary after the extraordinary bloat of Valhalla). They clearly didn't want to do a straight AC1 remake but that's what it's most reminiscent of, and like AC1, it's best approached as a linear game with a few diversions rather than a true open world.

There's something to be said for going back to games you've previously bounced off of though, I'm still loving Tears of the Kingdom and I'm really glad I gave it a second chance after absolutely hating it first time round. To the extent that I haven't even booted up Banaza yet as I don't want to get distracted.

I got a bit bored of Mirage after a while and wandered off, but I've just started playing Valhalla. I wanted something big to wander around in, where the world wasn't necessarily immediately hostile to me, and so far it's fitting the bill okay (though I've only just gotten to England, so maybe it gets A Bit Much in the not too distant…). I am wondering about going back to Baghdad once I've had enough Viking-ing-ing, though.

Valhalla has a nice little structure whereby every region is its own little 4-6 hour self-contained story arc, the problem is that there are way too many of them. It just goes on… and on… and on. If you're doing the extra content as well (river raids, tombs, the roguelike mode, festivals, Isle of Skye, 2 DLC regions, the Ragnarok expansion) it's just absolutely vast.

The good thing is that you can do a region or 2, put it down for a couple of months then pick it up and carry on without having to remember too much about what you were up to. Easy to burn out on, but easy to pause and resume later if that makes sense.

I'll admit to a curiosity about the Ireland expansion, but I'm not much bothered about the rest. I'm generally happy to hop in and out of things, and I've never really been much of a completist.

roguelike mode

Nothing appeals to me less (unless it also involves deck building).

Decided to finally start Sakura Taisen 2 now I've finished SH3. So far it's an upgrade to the first game in every way, dialogue choice system is better, combat is better so far and it's really hit the ground running in the first chapter with things kicking off almost immediately. They also introduced 3 new characters, my favourite of which is the Italian-Japanese woman who speaks Japanese in an Italian accent, which sounds unique .

Playing the open network test for Sonic Racing CrossWorlds and it looks and feels great, at least once you've adjusted to drifting, level design is inventive and there's a ton options to explore with regards to characters and 'Karts'. The only issue is, and it's quite obnoxious so far, is the item density seems super high, I feel like I'm being targeted more frequently than in an MKW Knockout Tour lap. This makes things super volatile and a bit too chaotic right now, I hope they either tone it down or it's just a combination of me being shit at a Sonic Kart racer and/or the levels in the demo are just like that…although that isn't a good thing.

Other than that though, it's a solid game it seems, and the cross world mechanic where the leader of the race chooses a portal everyone drives through is a cool idea, you could be on Green Hill Zone one lap and then suddenly drive through to the Shenmue docks or something (I pulled those level ideas out of my arse, I dunno' if they exist although GHZ is a safe bet surely) which means each race isn't always the same because there seems to be no guarantee which portal someone will choose in the same race in a different session.

I don't think this is a MK8 beater right now (at the risk of sounding like one of those guys who thinks MK is a de facto best Kart racer simply because it's MK, what CAN challenge the content and fun of MK8 in the genre right now?) , I want to say it beats MKW but honestly I don't know yet.

I’ve got fond memories of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed so I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

Weird to get three kart racers in six months though: Mario Kart World, Kirby Air Fryers and now this. We’ve basically had MK8 for a decade so it’s strange to actually have some competition.