Shadow and Bone

This two season young adult fantasy show follows assistant cartographer Alina Starkov (played by Jessie Mei Li) as she joins an expedition through the Fold - a dangerous, dark place with demons - only to discover that she's "the chosen one" in this setting. Life for her changes quickly as her status is elevated immediately, being prized by friends and foes alike.

The B plot usually focuses on one such outfit, a small criminal gang, hired to kidnap her and strangely enough their stories are usually more compelling than her own. Very good world building here and there's usually a decent amount of action per episode. I would have liked a season three but it does wrap up well enough for its two season tenure.

Kardboard Kings and Outliver Tribulation

I did not last long in these.

Kardboard Kings

This shop attendant simulator sees you managing a playing card shop of all things, where everything is on a timer. It doesn't matter if you're listening to the tutorial cockatoo or trying to buy more product to sell on one of your very few spaces, if its opening time there'll be customers. With its odd art style and game loop of basically "managing fires" all the time I really didn't get into this one.

Outliver: Tribulation

In this horror game you play as a capable female soldier trapped in an otherworldly maze of trials with a distinctive African theme and somehow is both cool and very amateurish at the same time. For instance, the voice acting is poor and the maze is designed to force a lot of back tracking so that as you find or earn colored circles, you can unlock doorways to find more colored circles.

On the flip side when the lights go out and you start hearing footsteps chasing after you, that really gets your heart pumping. Especially since the enemy mooks pretty much cheat and teleport via lightning strike near you if you get too far. Then boss fights are ho hum (at least the first two I reached) but there's some major rendering issues with some graphics cards like the one I'm using that makes you lag. Yeah, in a single player game. Might still be worth a try if you can grab it for free.

Citadel: Diana

This spin-off from Citadel continues the world wide spy game and is set in Italy with titular character Diana (Matilda de Angelis) as the protagonist, who is employed by Citadel's rival group Manticore! While her unique hair-do grew on us during the six episode season, its funny that a spy would want to stand out.

Short one side, long on the other.

Despite that there is actually an OK story in here with alright acting and action, though Diana loses and needs to be saved a lot for a protagonist. Worth a watch especially if you enjoyed the original Citadel and we'll definitely watch a season two if it comes about...

Empyrion - Galactic Survival

Scavenging everything to make everything!

Do you like things that are complicated? Was Bear and Breakfast too simple? If so then by golly this first person survival game for you. Just from the tutorial mission where you begin on a space ship to get your bearings on how food, medicine and anti radiation showers work which are then followed by short space walks to mine an asteroid followed by the ship blowing up so you have to claim ownership of the ship to use the teleporter which puts you on a remote planet where you can kill wildlife for food and disassemble pretty much everything, claim and build buildings and manufacture hover bikes for 5 stones while working towards creating another spaceship with warp capabilities... WTF? Information overload.

But on the flip side, you can do all that stuff. And you can do it cooperatively if you have a server to play on. Gameplay wise (excluding the crafting bit) it reminds me a lot of Project Entropia: beautiful environments and structures coupled with odd looking people and insects. Not one for me but I'm sure this would fill the building/survival itch for someone.

Bear and Breakfast

Scavenging trash to make things.

This quirky game has you play as a bear who gets roped into setting up bed and breakfast motels in the forest for humans. You'll understandably start with nothing and must go foraging through the woods for conveniently appearing stacks of timber and literal garbage that you can repurpose to turn into beds and furniture for your guests, who conveniently litter some more. Smaller junk "treasures" can be traded to the local racoon for more things or blueprints of things to improve your hotel.

While the exploration part is fine (though I wish there was a way to speed up conversations) the managing of guests and having to actually make rooms, doors and the works with the particular view provided isn't great. The game also has a hard time starting up for some reason, so now I've just discarded it. Maybe a happy bear can make use and recycle it into a toilet or something (yes you need to build those too). If you just want a game where you can play as a bear, Lumbearjack beats this easily.

Uprising (2024)

Expect lots of sword clashes!

Set in the historical Joseon Dynasty in Korea, a cruel, duplicitous and cowardly king who, with the other nobles, flees from Japanese samurai invaders is shocked when his slaves and the lower castes dislike him. One such slave happens to be a master swordsman who befriended and trained one of the nobles from childhood and, despite both sides trying to bridge the class divide, now find themselves well and truly on opposing sides.

While the plot is alright the pacing with the flash backs and time skips felt off, but hey there's a lot of killing and good sword choreography going on here which might give it a pass for sword fighting enthusiasts. Not as good as I thought it would be though.

Sword and Sorcery: Immortal Souls

Slay many bad guys and make a few choices.

In this fantasy dungeon basher up to four players take the roles of long dead heroes who have been revived to stop a threat that, at least initially, involves gremlins, bandits and orcs? Guess the general populace got really weak and overweight or something. The campaign has seven quests of which one is optional / will be skipped based on choices and each mission takes a bit of setup time, getting all the cards and the map tiles and what goes on them ready.

After that, its all the good guys do things then all the bad guys might do things and then time ticks on. The time thing is driven by an event deck which determines what spawns where and any thing extra that happens while also serving as a time limit, and combat is done with customized dice for the game with some interesting rules like, holding majority on the tile is instantly and extra hit, focusing an attack is an extra hit, and knockout/knockdown is freaking amazing.

Bad guys only activate if the encounter card says so, which is good because otherwise you will get wiped out easy especially early on but does have the odd effect of some guys just standing around doing nothing sometimes and most of your gold will be spent "sharpening" your gear per mission so that you can still use the better "polished" side of the item card instead of the not so great basic side.

Leveling up is done through spending souls (of enemies you've killed) and getting killed makes you lose levels and turn into a ghost who needs to wander back to a shrine to respawn basically. There's a bit of a learning curve to it but overall I think its better than the D&D adventure system games where the bad guys ALWAYS get the drop on you and you are usually rushing to just flip tiles (but its a faster setup). Here you can rush if you want, or tactically clear the map. Thumbs up!

The Marksman and Officer Black Belt

Dealing with criminals in their own way.

The Marksman

A veteran soldier and failing farmer (played by Liam Neeson) at the Mexican border comes across a mother and son illegally crossing the fence as they are pursued by a Mexican cartel who want them back. Our protagonist is torn between deporting them or helping them, and annoyingly this continues throughout the majority of the movie. Being on the fence so much is not a great quality, and with excess scenes and low on screen body count it doesn't really make for a great movie. Skip.

Officer Black Belt

A natural athlete and martial artist (played by Kim Woo-bin) is recruited into the South Korean probation officer task force where they must monitor and handle aggressive probation violators with non-lethal close quarter combat. It is a decent action comedy, with decidedly more action than comedy (especially with the bad guys, as they are freaking dark), and a pretty good story which only gets sloppy at the end. Better that I thought it would be. Recommended!

The Spirit and the Mouse

Just trying to help.

In this cute single player game you are a little mouse who is trying to subtly help the people in a small village with their various problems, and an accident early on gives you magical powers to really do so. Its a 3d puzzle platformer at heart, but with a focus on exploration and collection backed by a pretty cool sound track. It's pretty light hearted to the point that I  don't think you can actually die. I'm just not a fan of their "spirit" depictions, but otherwise its a cute, relaxing game.

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.

Tales From the Loop (TV Series)

Don't interact with any weird devices or phenomena.

This eight episode sci-fi drama series is based on the awesome art book of the same name and for the most part does it justice despite relocating the story to the USA. Nice camera work, effects and cinematography are its main strengths but the choice of hopping around town to have a new focused protagonist per episode is a bit of a miss for me - even though said protagonists all interact with each other in some form.

This also means not all the episodes are as good as the others, with the very first one being the strongest. The non-explanation of all the weird stuff going on might also be a problem for some but I guess they're copying the book in that regard. All up its a nice albeit occasionally slow series that gets one thumb up from me.

Death's Gambit Afterlife

Get ready to dodge. A lot.

This side scrolling RPG which seems heavily inspired by Dark Souls is pretty decent. Good controls, an ok story, some nice music, customizable stat leveling and a decent variety of enemies make it a really nice package.

My only complaint, as usual, is the amount of back tracking you need to do as you get new moves that can let you access more areas that you've already passed earlier. Played this more than I thought I would to see if that back tracking thing was something I could overlook but no... the map is pretty big.

While it's not for me you should definitely check it out if you like any combination of action platforming and Dark Souls.