Semantic Nonsense: Going for the gold

Welcome one and all to my travel day cop-out blog. Cast all the aspersions you like about me cobbling this together from leftovers, because you’d be partially correct. It’s not the best kind of correct, but it’s still something.

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Persona 4 impressions

I’m more than 40 hours into Persona 4 Golden (the original PS Vita version) and I’ve naturally formed an opinion or two already. Some of you may have been reading along my live reactions and strategizing in the Gaming Progress channel of Damage Control’s Discord. While this will touch upon some of the same subjects, rest assured that content is a beast all its own.

Coming into Persona 4 immediately on the heels of Persona 3: FES, I cannot help but compare the two directly. The biggest change is having the option to directly control your fellow party members in battle (though that isn’t new for those who came via Persona 3 Portable). And, frankly, other changes to combat balance make it necessary. Enemies now have skills that temporarily defend their weaknesses, have fewer weaknesses in general, don’t miss a turn from being knocked down unless you do enough additional damage to dizzy them (and some cannot be dizzied) and can now resist Almighty-element damage, reducing the effectiveness of all-out-attacks on the occasion you DO knock them all down. Those changes apply to you, too, and it is nice to miss fewer turns when you eat a critical attack or have your weakness hit. But with all these changes that make combat last longer, leaving your party to AI control would make it much more difficult that the previous game.

…My apologies if you’re unfamiliar with Persona 3 because that was a lot if inside baseball.

I’m enjoying the small-town setting of this game. The transfer-student plot to get you in as a newcomer has more of an impact than in the city of the previous game. The place also makes a great backdrop for the murder-mystery plot, as nobody in town can ignore it because everyone is connected to at least one victim, and probably the killer, too. I don’t know how many of the extra side activities are the result of expanding and iterating on the series’ game design and how many were inspired by the new setting, but there’s ironically a lot more to do around the small town than there was in the big city. This is especially true at night, which was often dead air in the latter half of my Persona 3 playthrough.

Another big improvement is the expanded use of social stats. While 3 has six ranks of Knowledge, Courage and Charm to manage, 4 drops the top rank to five, eliminates Charm and adds Expression, Understanding and Diligence. These stats also now grow in a much greater variety of ways, with several dialog choices and activities proving a bonus stat boost. On the flip side, there are also several dialog choices and activities the are unavailable unless a corresponding stat is high enough. It’s a much deeper integration in the moment-to-moment gameplay that the previous game really ought to have done. Similarly, there are a lot of opportunities to boost social link XP outside of social link events. It’s a lot harder to waste your time in a game where you live or die on time management.

And for the last comparison — which is apparently controversial — I think 3 ‘s soundtrack had way more bangers.

I’ve got another 100 or so hours to go, so you’ll hear from me again.

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AMC popcorn

When I first heard about AMC theaters offering various retail versions of its popcorn, I immediately thought I needed to buy them all and write a Drew v. Food about a blind taste-test comparing them to the real deal.

But there were a couple complications. First, nobody could keep the microwave popcorn in stock, if indeed they were ever supplied to my local Walmart. Because platform exclusivity is not just for video games. Second, the subject turned out to not be interesting enough to carry an entire post by itself.

As for the ready-to-eat popcorn, I must say AMC succeeded in their mission to bring home an experience as close as is practical to their theater popcorn. It’s pretty close out of the bag, but if you follow their recommendation to warm it up for 30 seconds in a microwave, it’s just like the real thing, only with a drier taste and texture since the butter-flavored vegetable oil isn’t liquid. I found the “extra butter” version to be truer to the real deal than the “classic butter” variant, but perhaps I just have a bit of a heavy hand on the “butter” pump.

Alas, though, it also replicates that authentic movie theater popcorn experience of being very enjoyable when you first start eating it but slowly turning into tasteless styrofoam that gets stuck in your teeth by the end.