Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel and My Night Job

Games in perma-horde mode!

Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel

This slow loading game has you playing in various Norse arenas against swarms of beasties, ghosts, and others while you do repetitive objectives within a time limit to ultimately summon the Jotunn boss of the level. While there are multiple characters, weapons, and maps and difficulty modes you could possibly choose from the vast majority are locked and you must do specific tasks to unlock... the game basically (grind mode activate!). I also wasn't too keep on the game pausing every time you level up to pick a perk, but given the game play I can't really think of a better way to have done that. Ultimately not for me.

My Night Job

This small and silly action platformer has hand drawn characters and you play as some guy recruited by the military to save x number of civilians from a haunted house (at least in level one) which endlessly spawns all sorts of violent spooks that range from ghosts, goblins, and zombies to robots with gatling guns (I hate those). You're also under the clock since if rooms get too full of bad guys not only do they kill the people you're meant to be saving, they start stomping until they break the room entirely - causing no more spawns to occur there! All up the game is a short and crazy experience that you should try out if you can find it for free. 

Wonder Man and a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Two TV series that aren't like their predecessors?

Wonder Man

This eight episode Marvel superhero show is one that doesn't really focus on good versus evil, so if you're expecting the standard beat-em up you'll likely be disappointed. Instead, it follows struggling actor Simon Williams (awesomely played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) try out for his dream role of the titular Wonder Man while hiding his often troublesome powers. Opposite him is Trevor Slattery (portrayed by the fantastic Ben Kingsley) who takes more of a mentor type role while still somewhat haunted by his "terrorist" past (from Iron Man 3). So yes, quite different and also very good.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Season 1)

This currently one season show set in the Game of Thrones universe follows hedge knight Ser Duncan the Tall (played by Peter Claffey) as he tries to find honorable knightly work after the knight he was squiring for died. It's comedic and quite entertaining, especially with scene stealer Egg (played by Dexter Sol Ansell) though there are gross bits too - hey, still has to be Game of Thrones right? At six episodes it feels pretty short but at least there's no filler to be had here. Recommended and we're looking forward to season two!

Felix the Reaper

How not to make a game.

In this game you play the titular overweight and very dancy reaper Felix who has to go to places where time is frozen and then carefully stepping only on shadows, move things around to either make more shadow bridges (you can also alter where the sun is to help a little with that) and complete objectives: like killing people. 

Or at least, you'd think killing people. This is clearly the Final Destination movie style of killing where you have strings of missions just doing stupid stuff (move ale from point A to point B, move decoration from point A to point B etc) before killing which is super annoying.

Also super annoying is Felix dancing. Its absolutely shit. Whoever decided that should literally go to hell. Yeah, its cute the first few times you see it, but when he wastes time DANCE/WALKING which is like 99% of the game? That's just not fun at all. Absolute failure of design there. Along with: if you can freeze time just make the whole area night? Idiotic and not recommended. 

I hate Visual Novels... sometimes?

When players can't make meaningful decisions, is it still a game?

Return to Ash is a simple hand drawn art where you play as a dead person in the ghost land with loads of reading and options that don't really go anywhere? Too much novel and too little game for me. 

Universe for Sale has better (albeit weirder) art and animation set on Jupiter where the protagonist is a neckless, jointless, cult freak and again most of the dialogue doesn't go anywhere but forward. A few extra mini-games break up the tedium a tiny bit but ultimately its still reading a comic book. 

Eternights has animated anime style art (and full anime cut scenes that include full depictions of blood and gore [NICE]) which is also fully voiced. Its about some sort of zombie contagion outbreak and your protagonist has many action arcade segments of fighting them (complete movement and camera controls, dodging and striking mechanics and special moves). It's also very much a dating sim. WUT? Yeah. Because your companions perform better if they like you. Less narration / "thought bubbles" and funny nicely written dialogue. But you're still going through a single story with no branches. 

Lead the party in Eternights, and date them?

I guess VNs are more palatable for me the more they have other systems and mini games going on. How are they for you?

28 Years Later and the Bone Temple

Sequels to 28 Weeks Later.

28 Years Later

This movie focuses on a kid named Spike (played by Alfie Williams) who lives on the outer edge of the rage virus zone, and reintroduces us to the new and improved (mostly just more full-frontal naked) infected as he makes forays to the dangerous mainland. I'm not keen on the editing which keeps cutting to old tv shows to depict to the audience how this group of survivors learned to do things, and while Spike is put in a hard spot all throughout he keeps making bad choices which doesn't make him very likable. There are plenty of homages to the previous films and decent enough scares and action bits but really it just serves as an intro movie.

28 Years Later: the Bone Temple

The journey of Spike continues as he runs into... parkouring Satanists? That took a really strange turn! I am glad they stopped the strange cutting edits from the previous movie and there's actually a better story in this one which actually advances the "28" franchise a bit. Very good acting from the Bone Temple "residents" helps with this, and seeing a familiar face at the very end gives my high hopes for the third, upcoming 28 years movie. Recommended, though its probably better to get through the first 28 Year movie (above) before hoping right into this one.

Zoeti and Zero Hour

Two games starting with "Z"?

Zoeti

This well illustrated single player fantasy game is a card battler at its core. Your character has a deck of combat cards which you can add to or improve using after combat currency and... that's it. It's not as dark as Darkest Dungeon nor as co-operative / multiplayer as Across the Obelisk which kinda puts it behind BOTH those games for me. Not recommended, despite the pretty art. 

Zero Hour

This tactical FPS has you play as a form of special armed force of the law to take down hostile folk, rescue VIPs, disable bombs and everything else in that wheelhouse all while moving awkwardly. This includes trying to arrest people (by calling out) and then getting penalized when they actually do surrender (1 in 10) but raise their weapon to do so (so I shoot them right?). Sigh. 

Good graphics and decent AI, including AI buddies if you have no co-op buddies to play with. It's very "realistic" with damage though so expect to be one shot by some random guy hiding under a bed with an AK47... through a window. If this sounds like your jam and you don't mind long loading times, you should also look up SWAT 4 (20 year old game which should be cheaper now) which has many similar concepts to this and in some respects might be better (except for said loading times).

The Contractor and One Battle After Another

Two action films.

The Contractor 

James (played by Chris Pine) is a spec-op level operator who gets fired from the military and needs to do some contract work to keep his bank balance in the green. Things go sideways and adversaries who can't shoot straight or take cover properly arrive on the scene. I didn't mind the predictable story in this one and the pacing felt just right - but the action bits could sadly have used some work. The plot armor on the protagonist is almost visible in some of them! Still an OK movie to have running in the background while doing something else.

One Battle After Another

This movie is mostly about Bob (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), who joins a bunch of revolutionaries and then has to live with the consequences of this decision for many years after. There are some funny parts but very few decent action scenes. It's also a needlessly long movie, with the first 1/4th to 1/3rd being able to be cut altogether and had me rooting for the "villain" most of the time. There's a whole segment towards the end that can be cut as well but they decided to bring one character back to life just to kill them again later? This is a garbage flick and not recommended at all.