Cozy Grove and Clone Drone in the Danger Zone

Two games starting with C that get old quick.

Cozy Grove

This game has you play as a spirit scout sent alone to a small island that is haunted by spirits! But no, it's not a horror. The silly bear spirits all need help and its pretty cool that as you do help them remember who they are which adds more color to their section of the island, and expands the island to unlock more spirits to help. It's got easy controls and cute graphics but THE WORST collect and deliver quest system I've seen. You'll need to scrounge the place to find things that only SEQUENTIALLY SPAWN. Need three branches? You need to find the first one somewhere before the second one EVEN SPAWNS. That's just absolute shit and a complete waste of time. Not recommended.

Clone Drone in the Danger Zone

This voxel arena battler has you fighting robots using swords and bows with the main catch being that all weapons are vorpal - any piece hit of you or your enemies is easily chopped! You also get to upgrade after each match but one death and you get to start from the beginning again. The robot commentators are intentionally annoying and occasionally funny but the repetitiveness of the actual play isn't great.

Hyper Echelon and Haven Dock

Two games starting with "H" that aren't great. 

Hyper Echelon

Despite the name and the obvious attempt to show "hey, you can customize your space ship!" in the tutorial, this pixel game is just another top down, bullet hell space ship shooting the bad guys and/or obstacles while the background scrolls from the top of the screen to the bottom at a steady and fixed pace. Oh, then you can redo the same missions at harder difficulties to get medals. Yay? Hard pass.

Haven Dock

This base building game has you stranded on a small island but don't worry, by somehow collecting the absolute truck fulls of garbage that float by you can magically create (using stone tools according to the voice over) wooden platforms to establish a base, build equipment to pump and filter sea water, make farms, etc. What kills it for me is you often have to wait for materials you need to drift by close enough for collection. Not a lot you can do to mitigate that and "having to wait to have fun" is always garbage design. Not recommended. 

The Bluff and The Rip

Two decent movies!

The Bluff

In this swashbuckling tale, a band of pirates raid a small island village that happens to have a fishwife with a violent past (played by Priyanka Chopra). While the story is predictable and some of the younger actors aren't great, the action pieces are pretty good with Priyanka really getting into it. All up decent enough flick for those that like fighting and pirates.

The Rip

In this thriller, a police squad (whose leader is played by Matt Damon) suffering from loss of a team mate and low wages, raid a stash house where they find a huge amount of cash and start to turn on each other if they should keep some of the find for themselves. Good acting, a good story, and an excellent use of tension makes this an easy one to recommend. I really enjoyed it!

Turnip Boy Robs a Bank and TOMAK: Save the Earth Regeneration

Two repetitive games starting with "T".

Turnip Boy Robs a Bank

The follow up to "Turnip Boy commits Tax Evasion" continues the story of the cute veggie people, and Turnip Boy has now signed up with a band of crooks to rob a bank. Over and over (yes the same bank)! How it plays is that in the bank you've got to fight off the guards, shake down the civilians, collect loot and... help NPCs in the bank do mundane things? All in 3 minutes. After that the veggie cops show up and you need to get back to the getaway van and back to the hideout where you can spend your stolen cash on the dark web to upgrade things... and then go back into the bank to do it all again. It's very strange and you'll quickly get that feeling of doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result...

TOMAK: Save the Earth Regeneration

Do you like Tamagotchi games? The ones where you have to care for, feed and nourish your pet friend? This is just like that, except your friend is a female head growing out of a flower pot that you need to care for and you have a time limit to prove to the gods that love exists by doing so (or the Earth is destroyed). Sure, it's strange - but what lets it down is the usual repetitive boringness of Tamagotchi games. Not recommended.

Friday Night Survival

Has it really been a whole year since I posted about our Friday night game sessions? It's a case of out with the old and in with the new: we finished 40K: Martyr, got tired of the long loads of 40K: Space Marine 2 and got a bit tired out with Helldivers 2, which has a pretty good run!

We did try Elden Ring: Nightreign where and beat the first tri-wolf boss (and I soloed the sleepy flying ooze) but it runs too poorly on DL's machine so that's been put on the back burner for now. 

Mechwarrior 5: Clans has pulled majority of the time for us with good gameplay and an interesting story on top of the usual optional customization of everyone's mechs. We've won it now, including the Ghost Bear and Tukayid DLC expansions because it was that much fun! Definitely recommended for co-op sessions, but solo might feel a bit grindy and long.

We've also sailed on Void Crew which is a pretty neat "fly your customized spaceship through an array of roguelike challenges that include enemy ships and multiple space walks into space ruins for salvage". It's also a bit repetitive and I think there are only three bosses currently but we might go back into that in a bit. It's lack of story lets it down.

Green Hell is what we're hitting hard at the moment. Nice graphics, easy enough controls, and a story to boot have sucked us into this jungle survival game that includes hostile natives, deadly jaguars, and cool lessons on why not to drink untreated river water. It's not a style in our usual wheelhouse, but its very fun so far. Again though, seems it would be a drag in single player but three person co-op is just fun. For a tiny sized game it's got a pretty big map, so lets see how long it keeps us lost in the jungle!

Keep the Heroes Out!

This cooperative board game has players each taking control of one group of dungeon denizens (all of whom are cute) as they try to do what the title says: keep the heroes out! Especially from the treasure room, because if they loot the treasure, the game is lost! This is a campaign style game, so the dungeon tiles are arranged based on the scenario you are attempting (20 provided). 

On your turn you have five cards in front of you from your own deck which you can then use to command your things around. Move, attack or action which means use the room's special action like get a gold coin from the treasury or use your group's special power. The mercenary gnolls can attack more, the imps can just pull traps out of their butts, the singular dragon can regenerate HP and the ratkins can spawn more ratkins as an example.

After that, you pull hero cards which determines who spawns where. Each hero type has one special power that only applies when they first appear, afterwards they all behave the same which keeps it simple. Rogues disarm a trap where they spawn. Warriors destroy resources. Archers shoot towards the treasure room. Wizards wake up people in the prison. What? Prison!? Yes, on your turn you can "push your luck" and draw three more cards for the low cost of putting a "tired" hero in prison. Unless you pull a wizard in which case, they all wake up!

Managing tired heroes is all part of the game. After the special spawn move any active hero will first try "wake up" all tired heroes who then all get to do stuff! This will be try kill a monster on their tile or try open a chest on their tile. If they do any of those they get "tired" and are basically dormant until another hero (or special effect) wakes them up. Active heroes with nothing to do all advance to the next tile leading towards the treasure room and repeat this process.This can cause a hero cascade if you have too many dotted around the place which is dangerous. At the same time, the only way to win is to go through the ENTIRE hero deck 2-3 times (depending on your difficulty level).   

It's a pretty fun game, though you might only have a few turns depending on the player count and not all the monsters are equal, both in complexity and usefulness. 

Styx: Master of Shadows and Styx: Shards of Darkness

Being a sneaky rakash is fun!

It's been awhile since I've played a great stealth game and both these Styx games definitely fall into this category. In it you play the titular goblin who is agile, quiet, and has an assortment of skills to deal with the many foes. The main one being that you can barf out a clone of yourself!? Yeah. That's actually a main one in the first game - Master of Shadows - that ties closely to the really cool story.

Having a good story and a funny, sarcastic protagonist ticks a lot of boxes actually. But having maps that you can approach in a multitude of ways is even better. If you want to play non-lethal, you can. If you want to play complete non-detection, you can. If you want to murder everyone, you can... almost. That last one might be tricky as there are people harder to kill than others, but patience, luring and handy environmental stuff can defeat even the most armored enemies. It's a little easier in Shards of Darkness that lets you craft some nasty things and unlock skill trees that can bypass some defenses.

"I see you..."

Usually though you want to remain hidden as many enemies can insta-kill you (and on the hardest "goblin" mode, all of them can insta-kill you), and even those that don't slay you out right have a decent chance of taking you out if your parry timing isn't good and/or there's more than two of them. Sure melee combat might feel a bit rough but I think that's intentional. All up these two are super fun for those who enjoy the sneaky thief type games. Highly recommended!

War Machine (2026) and Avatar: Fire and Ash

Two movies that feel like other movies you've already seen.

War Machine

Alan Ritchson plays a soldier with a scarred past trying out to be an elite Ranger and as part of their testing they have a simulated exercise to destroy a downed aircraft. With navigation on the fritz they try explode the wrong one, which happens to be a mechanized alien invader(!) and the main chunk of this flick actually plays like the original Predator (I'm showing my age huh), but without hiding the enemy in darkness. The top notch effects and having a more fleshed out protagonist does make it worth the watch though, and its nice that it's a complete story with a myriad of possible continuations. Thumbs up. 

Avatar: Fire and Ash 

The big blue cat family led by Jake (Sam Worthington) is back, and this time they're trying to get rid of their fostered human kid (what with the air being poisonous and all) when they're ambushed by new bandit enemies and previous foes now also in new bodies. Huh? They just can't let death stick can they? Again the action pieces keep it entertaining, but we're three movies in and it feels like the best plot points only had minor advancement while the rest keep spinning the same wheels. Like me, you might wonder if you just watched the same movie a third time... 

Rustler and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Two games inspired by other games.

Rustler

This game tries its hardest to be GTA but set in medieval times (though this includes medieval graffiti,  beat boxing bards you can hire to ride along with you so that you can have some tunes, and guardsman knights whose horses are equipped with red and blue sirens). You can get the gist from its live action intro. :P

You play as the titular Rustler who is out to make some gold by doing illegal things, the least of which is stealing horses actually! I like that horses also have various "makes" (like the cars) and that you can re-color your ride through the paint station. Alas its somewhat repetitive, and the fixed top down view doesn't really do it for me, so it doesn't get a recommendation from me. 

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

This side scrolling platform game is basically Castlevania, except your protagonist is now a sexy shard caster named Miriam who has trouble jumping to places unless she wears kung fu shoes and does the correct sequence of moves to "air walk". Her proficiency in the many weapons available does somewhat depend on player skill and knowing the combos that you learn from library shelves, while her stats improve not only from the gear you wear (and craft) but also from the first time you eat any cooked dish so expect to be ingredient hunting a fair bit! 

There's a bit of a grind and more than a little back and forth through respawning enemies but what irritated me most is that you lose any unsaved progress between save points and there are no real hints of where said save points are meaning you might be doing pretty good until you get locked into a non-telegraphed boss room and if you die - hope you have fun replaying that whole segment again. I didn't. 

Steal River Kin

Three TV series related to crime!

Steal

This short, six episode British crime series stars Sophie Turner who plays an office clerk at a financial company that is hit by an armed robbery. Good editing keeps it moving at a decent clip, and the protagonist is quite likable - unlike some of her "friends"! Getting invested enough to like or not like characters is a good thing! Recommended, and as it's a complete story I don't think it will be getting a season two.

River

This six episode British crime series stars Stellan Skarsgård who plays Detective River, who as far as I can tell really shouldn't be a police man because he talks to dead people. Well not really, because they're just in his head and they only tell him what he already knows or how he is already feeling. When you randomly talk and shout to people that aren't there well... lets just say you're not at the top of the list for being someone to defend the community. Anyway, the story and acting is ok but that whole overarching premise is quite strange (in a bad way).

Kin

This two season Irish crime drama stars Charlie Cox who plays a member of the Kinsela crime family who seem to be "middle men" when if comes to the drug trade. The first season has a few slow bits but it certainly picks up as it goes along, and its funny that despite them being somewhat infamous they also are lacking in power when compared to shows that have other crime families in that they have a healthy fear of the law and are often bullied as they're never the biggest fish in their pond. That scripted "weakness" makes it interesting! I'll definitely be watching a season three if it comes out.

Songs of Silence and Samorost 3

Two games beginning with "S" that I didn't enjoy.

Songs of Silence

This fantasy RTS sees you command armies and cities across a map, with battles being "zoomed in" to both your forces and the enemy forces just doing their thing with the only input from you being their initial formation, and playing "cool down" cards to do special actions like healing a cluster of allies, telling all horses to charge somewhere etc. 

The art is pretty nice but that "detachment" to your forces, and the theme that you MUST do x by doing these steps in order (like, conquer this land BUT you must beat the RED guys first before the GREEN guys or get from point A to point B BUT you must sneak through forests or the enemy will smash you) is a bit too railroady for me. Guess I didn't expect that from an RTS? 

Samorost 3 

We're back in the funny hand drawn asteroid or our point and click protagonist who comes across a magic space trumpet and embarks on a quest to... do something with it? Definitely not as easy/obvious as the previous Samorost and the clue section pictograms also requires deciphering as there is still no language anywhere. Didn't enjoy this one very much.

The Night Manager (Seasons 1-2) and Thank God You're Here (Australia)

Shows where people are pretending to be someone else.

The Night Manager

When a humble hotel manager aka "the Night Manager" (played by Tom Hiddleston) becomes privy to a terrorist level threat (whose mastermind is wonderfully played by Hugh Laurie) he gets involved in some secret agent spy hi-jinx to take them down. This currently two season British show is really good, and I quite like that our protagonist has to often rely on his charm and wit instead of brute force violence. However it's also a great example of "gee, you wouldn't be in this mess if you just killed your enemy earlier huh?". Despite that annoyance, I still recommend it. 

Thank God You're Here (Australia)

This comedy show has a few iterations depending on country, but for the Australian version there are six seasons of sending four (or five) comedians through a door on a stage where they must act out a scene without knowing anything about it before hand - forcing them to make stuff up on the spot. They might have some hints with the costume of props they are provided with, but especially as it is in front of a live audience the results are always very entertaining! Now as you might expect, some people are not as good as others but there are a number of fantastic and hilarious ones making the whole thing worth watching. If you can find it, I recommend giving it a try.

The Darkside Detective and Definitely Not Fried Chicken

Two games starting with the letter "D".

The Darkside Detective

This small pixel point and clicker has you play the titular Darkside Detective, which includes cases involving ghosts, zombies, and things not of this world! Yet due to the awesome writing and humor, it's always funny and never actually scary. Each case is also self contained with all the items you need to solve it being at the scene, along with easy hints on how to proceed built into the character's musings (so you don't have to press a big "hint" button or anything). On top of all that are some good ideas making this a really easy game to recommend. 

Definitely Not Fried Chicken 

This voxel game is a management one, starting in the tutorial chicken shop where you need to make rooms and decorate them with functional equipment like toilets in the restrooms and friers and chicken huts (for freshness) in the kitchen then hiring staff to handle said equipment. The colonel fires you right after the tutorial though so that you can go use your newly learned skills in building some other enterprise... drugs!? Yep. Not really my style so this one is a pass for me.

Botany Manor and Boxes: Lost Fragments

Puzzle games starting with "B"?

Botany Manor

This first person puzzler has you researching how to grow some plants in a very fancy manor. Luckily the plants grow instantly when you get the experiments right, however these are no ordinary plants. The very first one needs a particular heat temperature to be set, another needs the recreation of a thunderstorm to bloom, and merely walking through the large manor has other puzzles that need to be solved to open more rooms and potentially more clues on how to grow things. While the vibe of the pretty art and music is very relaxed there's a LOT of walking so be prepared to take physical notes (or you know, pictures with your iphone as they did in the 1800s lol) to save you some time. 

Boxes: Lost Fragments

This first person puzzler takes all the walking out of the game and instead lets you zoom or zoom out of interesting areas to interact with, and as suggested by the title - it mostly involves working out how to open a variety of complex and most often utterly BS mechanical boxes. The detailed art helps and it does feel good to open these things but man, there's a bit of "find the pixel" in some of these where you wouldn't even think to look and some really tough puzzles. Fortunately there are in built hints and a skip puzzle option for dum dums like me. :P Very cool though. I prefer it to Botany Manor. 

It feels like this game certainly enjoys giving you this as you try unlock things.

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.

Skald: Against the Black Priory and Blood West

Two more horror themed games.

Skald: Against the Black Priory

This old school pixel fantasy RPG tasks you with rescuing a lady from some distant islands (the Lovecraftian "outer isles") and rather quite immediately, bad stuff starts to happen. While the writing is solid and really gets you immersed in the world right away, the combat can get a bit tiresome especially in the narrower zones where some of your party of six will find themselves with nothing to do. Protip: get everyone bows and arrows when you are able. Still a fun ride, but as it is with most Lovecraftian tales don't expect a happy ending.

Blood West

This FPS western has you play an undead cowboy in a desert already crawling with undead. The pixely graphics belie a pretty decent game though, which includes skill upgrades, stealth, rewards for being a good shot and full inventory management (the kind that is annoying at times as you can't tetris all the loot into your pack to sell later). While the quests have some interesting stories attached to them, the respawning bad guys when you rest bit does suck as there's limited fast travel. Not one I finished due to these gripes, but at least it had a strong start?

Bendy and the Ink Machine

Run and hide from a demonic "Mickey Mouse".

When visiting an old timey Mickey Mouse style animation studio, normal people might leave immediately upon finding some supernatural ink leaking from the ceiling and walls - but not our protagonist! No, he just has to stick his nose in there for some first person scares as the comical characters are brought to life in demonic form and he has to hide from them! While you can fight a little against lesser baddies (who just spawn from the floor), the controls for that aren't great and are more about managing distance and timing. 

Against the big bads though? You've got to hide. And its kind of funny that you need to use the water closets (toilets) to do so, but also really annoying because there's not much you can do while waiting for one to pass so just have a book handy I guess? Expect to be doing a lot of back tracking and fetch quests because there's nothing scarier than those apparently.

Pathfinder: The Flying Giant

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Past the hounds is a door that opens to what must be "the boss chamber" but in its center is just a half naked giant female cook who throws things (like the kitchen sink) at the party and is easily brought down. The enraged giant boss Mokmurian (who I guess was having a thing with the cook) then appears, flying from up above and shielded up to the wazzoo with anti-fire/anti-magic missile and damage reduction spells while tossing out a huge variety of magic himself, my favorite being he inverts gravity and those who don't save take "fall damage". WTF?

This turns out to be a super long fight with Mokmurian enjoying the "untouchability" Valeros had before. Only Ezren can regularly damage the flying creep while he himself is almost disintegrated and briefly turned into stone. Kyra undoes that and keeps everyone alive to simply endure all of the giant's spells until he runs out of them and comes down into melee with his club. That proves to be his undoing and he is quickly put down when he does so.

His master "Karzoug" then uses the dead giant as a puppet to insult the heroes briefly, but they're kinda too tired to listen so they just go about looting the place and going to that off limits library which they find the key to. It's full of magically preserved ancient tomes and a helpful librarian bot who will no doubt throw the next quest hook at us... in the next chapter. :P

Pathfinder: Can't Touch This

[Part of the Party Time journal]

A pair of frost giants and the lap running mammoth from earlier confront the party as they leave the Black Tower, but are no match for the heroes. Even the pair of rocs nesting in the tower who were attracted by the sounds of battle only get themselves dead or wounded, with the last remaining giant bird retreating back to its high up nest.

Proceeding below the party then uses the passphrase they found to get through the shining door into the lower basement where a strangely constructed room has Valeros shrink to half his size! While this makes his attacks weaker it also makes him harder to hit so he intentionally stays small for now.

Everyone else is protected from the shrinking magic by Ezren's shield, and they go on to beat another runeslave giant, smash a cauldron bearing golem (mostly Razmus with Shoanti blessings and then Kyra sanctified the cauldron), and fireball nuke the hell out of a zombie statue room. "Undead Giants" are the key words for things this team excels at murdering. An annoying wall demon keeps popping in and out of the walls spewing fire at them though, and it is with great relief when they finally catch that beast (a scanderig apparently) and slay it in its silo.

Advancing to the next large hall they are ambushed by five giant maidens who luckily can't hit the shrunken Valeros who pins them while the rest of the group takes them down. Resting up back in the zombie room, Merisiel soon spots a sneaky group of five dire bears and five halberd ogres stalking them and once again, Valeros blocks their progress and is untouchable as the enemies are destroyed.

The next little chamber has three hounds of Tindalos (apparently they can jump games too) get the drop on the party but are easy prey as again, they can't hit Valeros while his blind fighting and the high perception of everyone else makes their "hiding" kinda useless.

Menara

Cooperative temple building.

This simple cooperative dexterity game has players rebuilding an ancient temple. To start, put three random temple floors (cardboards in strange shapes) as the "base" with each piece only touching another with one point - load up some random pillars (pulled from a bag) for the camp space, and every player gets a handful of pillars too. Then, on your turn you can trade your in hand pillars with the camp ones if you want, then pick what "difficulty" card you want to try complete and then do what it says. 

Usually its just put x pillars which is just placing pillars on spaces that match their color. Afterwards draw random pillars back to your hand and that ends your turn. If you run out of places to put pillars, get the next "temple floor" and balance it on top to go one floor up! If this reaches your floor quota (which starts at 3/4/5 for easy/medium/hard) that's it, the players win!

If you can't put x number of pillars because you don't have the colors or just can't do what the your chosen difficulty card says, the required floor quota increases by one. And if the temple collapses at any time its game over! So yes, its a little bit like reverse Jenga and its easy to teach, easy to setup and has a fun amount of tension while playing. Definitely recommended! 

Stranger Things and Boardwalk Empire

Two five season shows that are really good!

Stranger Things

Despite having reviewed Stranger Things adjacent stuff, I'm only now reviewing the TV series which has just finished at five seasons. Set in Hawkins USA in the 1980s it is the time of crazy hair, Dungeons and Dragons, and scary extra planar creatures who like abducting people. The story focuses on a group of kids who set out to find their missing friend and end up embroiled with the illegal and supernatural. 

Though the story does wax and wane through some seasons good acting and excellent set designs and monsters make for an exciting tale, and the nostalgia factor for those of us who lived that era and played/are still playing D&D will most likely get into it. For that really specific target group (and for horror fans), its a must watch if you haven't already. For other generations, its still a good show but your enjoyment of it might be more subdued.

Boardwalk Empire

This series is set in Atlantic City during the 1920's where Enoch Thompson (marvelously played by Steve Buscemi) set about making a fortune bootlegging during America's prohibition period all while rubbing shoulders with some notorious and violent gangsters from all over. Given the subject matter, there is a bit of nudity and a decent death count in this show. 

Excellent production, story, acting, cinematography and I was most impressed by the live musical numbers that dot the series throughout. If you like gangsters, you'll like this. If you don't like gangsters, you'll still like this. It's really that good. Highly recommended.

Sky Team

A two player coop.

In Sky Team you take the role of a pilot and co-pilot who must land airplanes. To do this you need to roll your pool of 4 dice (secretly) and without discussing after rolling, place the dice in the proper spots to clear traffic ahead of you, lower landing gear, activate flaps, prep the brakes and possibly make coffee (which is hilariously quite important as each lets you modify a die result by 1). 

There's a whole checklist of things that need to be done before you reach the airport, and there will always be two dice from each player spent on balancing the airplane and handling the engines. Run into air traffic, spin too far, land too early or land too late and its game over. 

Later difficulties also have you dodging mountains, handling high winds, watching your fuel tank which might be leaking and training an intern (who must be trained by landing or you lose) just because. It's a good game, but the initial (one time) setup if finicky, and the hard requirement of two players might make it less appealing than some other choices.

Good Fortune Wrecking Crew

Two movies of the mid variety.

Good Fortune

Arj (Aziz Ansari) is doing it tough in the gig economy and when an inept angel (Keanu Reeves) oversteps his bounds to try convince him that his life is better than the one of being a rich guy, things backfire as being rich seems to solve all of Arj's problems. Turns out this movie has a decent plot with some good laughs too. While the acting of the main cast is good (though Arj is just borderline) some extras are super wooden but maybe that's the idea? Not a bad flick but don't expect anything amazing.

Wrecking Crew (2026)

The death of a PI reunites two estranged half-brothers (played by Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista) reunite and eventually team up to investigate - usually by beating up people and occasionally each other! The plot here is simpler, but the acting is better and the action scenes are decent. Again not bad, but its also not going to win any awards.

Gravity Circuit and Scourgebringer

Two pixel platform games with problems.

Gravity Circuit

Playing as a defender of the planet has never been so cumbersome. While your character in this game has a lot of moves and even a hook that can attach to the roof to swing from he still feels super clunky and the bad controls don't help which will no doubt lead to many "falling off the bottom of the screen to your death" ends, except in the parts you are allowed to fall off the bottom of the screen to progress (wtf, I hate inconsistency). To top it off the graphics are terrible, like back in the early internet flashing gifs and scrolling banner terrible. Not recommended.

Scourgebringer

Unlike the above, the protagonist here has excellent mobility, easy controls and a decent tutorial to teach you all of them. She's also 1/4th the size making her super tiny on the screen! The main loop of this rogue-like game is to move through randomly generated rooms and kill everything inside (you're locked in until they die) until you find the boss/exit to the next floor. There's also adaptive difficulty that means if you suck enemies will be removed from rooms and if you're good enemies will be added which means it should always be at a level where you eventually die. Not my cup of tea.

Wicked Moana

Two movies with singing!

Wicked

This musical fantasy is framed as a back story to Elphaba's origin aka the Wicked Witch of the West, very well played by Cynthia Erivo. Opposite her is rival and frenemy Glinda who is portrayed by the amazing and scene stealing Ariana Grande. Awesome sets, effects, songs and a nice story with a few strong emotional beats, make the long run time go pretty quick. Excellent movie. I just didn't realize it was a part one type of deal and was surprised when that showed up in the opening title. :P  

Moana

This animated Disney movie follows the titular Moana, the daughter of a chieftain to an isolated island tribe who are forbidden in sailing too far from home. Of course, Moana has an adventurous spirit and wants to find out what exactly lies beyond that horizon while also ending up discovering more about herself. Self discovery is actually the main theme of this film and it really hits home especially in the finale. Song wise its not bad, but nothing the general public will probably sing along to afterwards. Still an enjoyable film all up. Recommended!

Lost Eidolons and Godzilla Voxel Wars

Two puzzle games posing as strategy ones.

Lost Eidolons

This game has an RPG component where you can level up various characters into a wide choice of classes and arm people with an assortment of gear sorted by rarity. It also has a very nice story that gets a somewhat loose threaded towards the end but is still enjoyable and there's LOTS of talking to be had though the still cut scenes are a little strange. The main game play though? You are fielding armies (and the troops don't count, only your characters do) to face other armies and must do your best to spread out damage with the rock/paper/scissors system they have with weapons vs armor on your people while completing whatever the map objective is (sometimes it changes half way) within the time limit (usually 20 turns). This is made harder when enemy named characters appear since they get super BS armor as long as any little enemy goon is within 5 squares or so. 

By putting the time limit this falls squarely into a puzzle game, though there is an option (which I took) to turn that off to pull it back into a more strategic one. Though limited, I did appreciate being able to undo moves due to misclicks and the like. It's good but its a strange one so research it first if you're thinking of getting it.

Godzilla Voxel Wars

The main game play of this little voxel graphic game is quite the same as Lost Eidolons, only you play as Godzilla and have to save the little buildings from other kaiju (I hope your Godzilla knowledge is up to scratch). Simple controls and a decent tutorial gets you right into the puzzle mode where you need to do things by the time limit (usually 2-3 turns at the start, which also has unlimited undo moves). Alas, the puzzle part isn't strong enough to keep my attention unlike Lost Eidolons which has a decent story driving the whole thing.

F1 and Small Things Like These

Two movies that turned out to be snooze fests.

F1 

Brad Pitt plays a semi-retired but still super active race car driver who is roped in by a friend to help his F1 team win. Slick cars, a decent story and pretty cool trades craft (showing the rules then bending them) made it a little more interesting for us but alas, car racing is just not our thing so even after editing down a full race (50+ laps) with skips to just show... three laps maybe per race... it is ultimately still just cars going in a circle at the end of the day. I know some people love that. For us its like watching paint dry.  

Small Things Like These

Cillian Murphy plays an ordinary Irish coal supplier who is very quiet and introspective, especially when his usual delivery rounds lead to the discover of abusive nuns at the local convent. There are flashbacks a plenty in this glacially paced film and the ending payoff is super weak. It might have actually picked up if it went on for a few minutes but with the threat of something exciting happening the makers decided to end it just short of that. Not worth watching at all.

Cleaner and Nobody 2

Two movies where the hero gets loads of plot armor.

Cleaner

Joanna "Joey" (played by Daisy Ridley) has always liked climbing, as depicted in the opening of this flick where she is climbing around some super strong furniture. Fast forward and she's working as a window cleaner for some high rise building when a bunch of murderous eco-terrorists (who are incredibly slow with their trigger fingers) show up to take some corporate suits hostage. Too bad for them they didn't count on the ex-military cleaner chick hanging outside the window... and her autistic brother. It's... not great. I actually think G20, which has a very similar plot, is a better film (by just a little).

Nobody 2

Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) is back and needs to take his family on vacation but his "work", which involves gratuitous and hilarious violence, continues to follow him everywhere. The action and the humor are about the same from the first movie with just a different set decoration this time around, with some minor plot progression in tow - just like a holiday special right? If you liked the first movie, you'll enjoy this one too.

Predator: Badlands and Sinners

Two movies with the unexpected (because I don't watch trailers?)

Predator: Badlands

This predator movie follows a young predator on his first hunt, and somehow makes the ugly alien a very likable and funny guy in the process! While the effects are good and the story is ok, the plot seems to intentionally find every trope from previous Predator and Alien movies, with a dash of Star Wars for the fun nostalgia factor I guess? This definitely isn't a masterpiece but its a pretty decent action flick that is an easy watch. Sure, you need to read subtitles to understand the protagonist but he's not a very wordy guy so its all good. Thumbs up!

Sinners

Twin gangsters (played by Michael B. Jordan) try start up a juke joint for their hometown community of blacks, using money they stole from mobsters to buy up property from the K-K-Klansmen. To this end they also rope in their cousin who is a real good musician, so good that he can summon forth spirits from the past and future but this attracts bloodthirsty and equally musical vampires to the opening night. Does that not sound like the craziest summary ever? It does feel like it takes a super long time to setup the characters which isn't great, and when the action bits finally get around they are over far too quickly. It's billed as a horror, but its actually just boring at the start and tripping balls crazy towards the end. Not recommended.