peffy

I buy a game when the price is something I consider acceptable, and then throw it into my giant backlog. When the mood strikes me, I start playing it (assuming I remember I own it...).

I do use a spreadsheet to keep track of my games.

If "full price" means $60 or $70 (USD).. the last one I purchased was Ghost of Tsushima because it checked A LOT of my boxes. Open world, historical Japan, excessively pretty, cute animals, easy mode. It was worth the $79.99 Canadian.

I'm not likely to pay full price again any time soon. I can easily afford it but I am just stingy. (I'm tempted for GoW Ragnarok, but with $70 games now costing over $100 here in Canada I think I'll just wait for at least a 20% discount)

I will pay for indies I am very excited for, if they're less than $20-30. I was going to buy Stray day one, but ended up subscribing to PS+ Extra instead.

@eccentrix: For sure, however the PS5 specifically remains in high demand and, by most reports, is very difficult to find if you aren't in the US. If demand craters because of this price increase and PS5s start piling up in stores and everyone buys Xboxes instead, I guarantee the price will go back down.

Here in Canada, this is not the first time they've done this. PS4 was $399 at launch, and it went up to $449 after 1-2 years because our currency value crashed. (Also, games went from $60 to $70 to $80. Right now, a $70 USD game is $90 here.)

We are now in unprecedented times, with multiple factors causing scarcity and cost increases. I'm not surprised this is happening. The price of essentials like food and gas increased, so why not the price of a luxury entertainment product too?

Personally, I got my PS4 and PS5 at launch so I'm not affected.. but I do feel bad for those who wanted to get one earlier but couldn't get one, and are now being forced to pay a bit more.

I just completed Celeste. I abused assist mode the entire time, NO REGRETS. It was already exhausting just flying through all those levels (by mashing the dash button) and looking at what I would've been expected to do.

I did complete the PICO-8 mode without assists (because you can't use assists there) but can I just say it is BS that you can't save, and they don't warn you about it. I did about half of it and wanted a break so I quit out, only to find that I had to start from the beginning when I returned.

Fresh Prince

I was a fan of Fresh Prince in the 90s, and several years ago some channel was showing reruns around the time I ate dinner so I watched some episodes again. These days I really don't watch much TV aside from news or Chinese dramas.

Oh god, really? *roll eyes* I haven't listened to Jeff's latest podcast yet, now I'm dreading it. (tbh his tastes really don't line up with mine at all, so I don't know why I bother listening)

The animations are probably the #1 thing I liked about Stray. They are good enough to fool some real cats into thinking they're looking at a real cat. Stray is not an action game or a platformer, so there's no need to have free-form jumping or extremely responsive controls. The point is that it looks like real cat doing stuff.

While I haven't played RDR2, I imagine people complained about the animations because it's a long game and there are actions that you have to do repeatedly (like looting a corpse) that take forever to animate. That doesn't compare at all to the cat's jump taking half a second to animate, plus the animation is such a pleasure to look at.

I mostly loved my time with Stray. I love cats but I can't get my own, so I just got a real kick out of "being" a cat, although this cat seems to understand stuff and be helpful in a way that a real cat never could. I even got the platinum, despite being mildly perturbed by the "don't get caught during the first chase" trophy (got it in less than 15 minutes thanks to a video guide, but I feel sorry for those who say they took HOURS of attempts to get it).

The only things that bothered me were

- the Zurk environments (and the lack of any explanation or payoff for the giant eyeballs). I don't really like stuff such as gore, zombies, "ugly" enemies and places, so those fleshy places felt out of place in what I expected to be a relatively cozy and cute game.

- the ending, which failed to show the cat reuniting with his/her cat buddies. I will just pretend that the beginning sequence where it's raining and the cats play & sleep together is also the ending so I can be happy.

I'd give it an 8.5/10, which is basically spot-on with the metacritic.

Now I've started another game but I keep trying to press O to meow.

I am, once again, extremely grateful that my grandparents & parents decided to immigrate to Canada. But with a lot of voters getting tired of Trudeau, our next leader might be as trash as the Republican Party. Sigh.

It should be pointed out that, at the initial announcement, they said there would be "up to 340" classic games. They have listed 57 of them here, so there obviously will be a lot more. We just don't know if it'll be ~340 at launch, or if it'll build up to that number over time.

These pretty awesome news bits were buried in the blog post too (but, interesting that PS2/PS3 are left out of it?):

PlayStation Plus Premium/Deluxe members will have a selection of popular classic games to play, with some titles that will show improved frame rates and higher-quality resolution compared to their original launch versions. For select original PlayStation and PSP classic games, members will also enjoy a new user interface with menus that allow you to save your game at any time, or even rewind the game if you want a do-over.

Also, players who have previously purchased the digital version of select games from the original PlayStation and PSP generation will not have to make a separate purchase or sign up to PlayStation Plus to play these titles on PS4 or PS5. When these titles are released for PS4 and PS5, players can head to PlayStation Store and download a version for the consoles at no extra cost if they already own the digital version of the title. Some of the titles will also be available for individual purchase.

Personally, I don't care much for classic games. Extra seems pretty good, but my issue is that I've already bought most of the games there that I was interested in, and my backlog is massive. I'd be more tempted if they will have day one (or very recent) indies on there, but they haven't really said that. I have a bunch wishlisted that I'd love to see here, like Chicory, Toem, Lake, Stray, Unpacking etc.

Also, there is the biggest problem that no subscription service will ever solve: I DON'T HAVE TIME TO PLAY SO MANY GAMES. I mean, I have a full time job but not much else going on, and I still struggle to get through my backlog.