Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss

Cartoons in Hell!

Hazbin Hotel (Season 1)

This violent animated musical about Lucifer's daughter trying to setup a hotel to redeem souls in hell is full of swearing and adult themes but also has some good musical numbers. As Juris pointed out, the best part about each song is that they actually advance the story in some way and the animation, while definitely on the cartoony side, is quite decent. Definitely NOT for kids and you'll need to watch the pilot episode on youtube but it still gets a thumbs up from me. Looking forward to season two!

Helluva Boss (2 Seasons so far)

Set in the same universe/hell as Hazbin Hotel this show (fully available on youtube) focuses on a corporation of lowly imps who act as assassins for hire. At least, that's what the first season hook is and when they get into fights it is gloriously bloody with smooth animation.

It also has musical numbers but less plot advance-y as Hazbin, and the focus switches to the characters early on, sometimes to characters not even in the main group, which kinda fizzles the interest for me. While this and Hazbin both fly the pride flag with very few straight characters, it's more in your face here because apparently that is where the main story lies (and not in the murdering business. Sad face). Still ok, and Stolas is a scene stealer, but Hazbin is better with its more solid plot (currently).

Lastly, because the focus for Helluva Boss is on the personal relationships and not a "plot" per se I think its main problem is the pacing, as suddenly all the other episodes are basically "filler". Cut out the excess and it will make the whole thing better. Currently I suggest: Pilot / (S1E6) Truth Seekers / (S2E4) Western Energy / (S2E8) The Full Moon. (S2 hasn't finished yet as of this post but I think S2E9 is also filler).

The Walking Dead: The Ones who Live

The return of Rick Grimes!

It's not just Daryl, Carol, Maggie and Negan getting their own shows post the completion of the original zombie show. This six episode series follows up on Michonne's quest (played by Danai Gurira) to find the long missing main character Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and what happened to them during the years they were missing.

The answer is a lot, and they somewhat wreck both characters with all the drama and somehow manage to squeeze in a useless bottle episode but hey, at least everything is resolved in this contained one season series. The zombies are almost an after thought but they are hideously cool as always. Only recommended for Walking Dead fans.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

All about saving the environment and getting gross things in your mouth.

Continuing from his first film, Aquaman (played by Jason Momoa) is back and quite bored of his job while also being domesticated. Luckily for him (and the viewers) bad guys begin a plot to end the world using... global warming? Sure whatever.

Alas this film is a bit of a step down from the last one, with some really odd plot decisions that waste screen time. We don't need to be told the bad guys plans three times, all the shots of the bad guy doing stuff that doesn't interact directly with Aquaman can be cut out and everything before the first "vault raid" can be removed.

Then you have bad guys basing their operations on land... in a volcano that is spouting green fumes... and no one can find them? This is the same world where Superman is right? Said bad guys are also patrolling the volcano base in old style metal diving suits because... its comfortable like that? Not recommended.

Fast Foursome

Four Epic games that didn't manage to hold my attention for very long.

Wild Card Football

This is all about American Football (not soccer) and presents well with some nice music and cool cartoony but stylized characters (because its football with super powers!), and obviously was designed with head to head play in mind. The downsides for me are that there are a LOT of controls. It doesn't help that I don't really know football either.

Super Crazy Rhythm Castle

This party game (for up to four) is basically guitar hero with side tasks to annoy you while you do it. Some cool songs in here though but man is the villain really annoying in that he talks way too much. Probably a better experience if not solo. :P

TOEM

A very relaxed black and white game about casually wandering around and taking photos of things to earn enough stamps to buy a train ticket on to the next zone to do it all again. There is some humor in the odd ball characters that give you your tasks but some of the targets are quite annoying to find.

Rugrats

Easily the worst of this set that seems to be relying on the nostalgia factor from the TV show. Yes you get to play as the titular rugrats to collect... things through very simple levels. The silly theme and lack of tutorial doesn't do it any favors.

Callisto Protocol

Locked in with the monsters!

This single player sci-fi survival horror sees you imprisoned on what turns out to be the worst planet to be incarcerated as soon after the facility is overrun by humanoid monsters who are out to make you die in very violent and gory ways. It's especially cool since the graphics are really detailed! The voice actors and story are decent too!

While this is very reminiscent of Dead Space complete with an LED health tracker on your back (just ... why?) its not so much horror apart from the gore and jump scares for one simple reason: outside of a few set instances that you can sneak and stealth kill, you will be forced to hand to hand these things A LOT and win (or die in very specific and detailed ways).

Combat is pretty simple too, and these things drop currency that you need to create or upgrade tools, weapons and ammo so... the "horror" part really leaves the building when you are intentionally hunting the monsters down for loot. It's still a fun ride though and one I can recommend.

Hunted (Australia TV Series)

It's a big game of hide and seek!

This currently three season reality contest sees around 10 contestant pairs act as criminals on the run, with each pair getting a discrete camera operator on their team as they try elude capture for about 20 days at which point they need to extract to win a share of the prize money (which they may or may not be carrying on them, depending on the season).

There are other limits imposed on the contestants, like they can't leave the state during "the game", they have to move every x number of days, they can't load up with loads of cash pre run and so on.

Meanwhile the Hunter force is made up of four two man ground units (+camera man) and an office of techies, ex-cops and ex-soldiers who use everything in their cheat mode level power to track down and tag the crooks to get them out of the game. It's actually really cool to see the numerous tools they have at their disposal.

Yes it's heavily edited, but its in that that makes the episodes exciting. So exciting that we ended up binge watching every available episode! While it might not be to everyone's tastes, I definitely enjoyed this one (the Australian series anyway. Other countries also have Hunted)!

Back 4 Blood

How to take a good idea and then make it garbage.

This four person coop first person zombie horde shooter tries to emulate Left 4 Dead and sort of does it... until they put all of their own (mostly bad) ideas over the top of it as well. Lets start of with the good bits: good choice of characters (even though some are innately "better" with their passives than others), good reusing of maps to fit the story, and good range of "special infected" - especially the big ones.

Onto the bits we didn't like: the graphic for one special critter might be slightly altered to mean its a different special critter. A spidery spitting thing might sometimes shoot fireballs and other times shoot a slow moving swarm of bugs. A big armed thing might just use it as a club (which means you need to shoot its arm) or use the big arm to grab people (which means you need to shoot its head).

These minor differences are spelled out in the oh so stupid "card system". Each character can assemble a deck of 15 cards to build their guy up. More stamina, more damage with shotguns, whatever. You can buy these cards as you find them at random while playing levels, using currency you also have to find. Grind inserted!

The enemy deck shows what special creep you will run into as well as how fast the regular mobs will moving but there are times where it just puts absolute BS cards on like "hunger" (you are all hungry and are constantly losing health) and the like where it forces you to play fast and loose. This removal of player agency in deciding if they want to move fast or slowly and strategically is ABSOLUTELY STUPID.

The only worse design decision beyond that is not letting players start on a mission they failed. So yeah, if you have a limited amount of game time you'd better win all the way to that next checkpoint maybe 3 or 4 missions away or you are going to be starting again. These made an otherwise fun game, absolute garbage. Do yourself a favor and skip it.