Doomblade Arranger Down in Bermuda

Three Epic freebies that aren't so epic.

Doomblade

This platformer has you playing as an imp who follows some whispers that lead her to the titular sword (an opening that worked for Conan right?). This sword is bloodthirsty though and soon enough you'll be backtracking your way through enemies like mad. Backtracking. I hate it. Also there's a strange design decision here where your character is actually kinda slow and not super agile, but if there's an enemy you can click on with your mouse cursor you fly directly at it with the sword. Half the time this kills them. The other half it just stuns them because they are needed for platform traversal. I didn't like it.

Arranger

This is a super strange puzzle game because when you move, everything in your row or column moves with you - looping around to opposite ends if possible. This means the fastest way down a hall is usually to walk into the wall behind you so that you appear on the other end! That sounds neat, but most of the game is trying to move stuff to exact places, and not everything can be conveyor belted around. You want to kill that worm thing in the way? Work out how to move the sword to its face. You want to open the locked door? Work out how to move the key from point A to point B. It's definitely different, and while I didn't mind the village stuff as there's story there - once you get out into the wilderness it feels like there are puzzles in the way just for the sake of puzzles being in the way.

Down in Bermuda

In this kiddie friendly puzzle game you move from island to island after unlocking the "gates" in each, but the game play is more akin to Boxes: Lost Fragments where the islands themselves serve as a box that you (as god/the player) can manipulate which is really handy because these islands have buttons, levers, and locks that need keys? Not the sort of puzzle game I thought it would be. Not recommended.

Fear the Spotlight and Sorry We're Closed

Two horror LGBT Games.

Fear the Spotlight

A nerdy girl agrees to help her goth chick crush sneak into the school library to conduct a seance during a thunderstorm and, yeah - bad things start to happen! With blocky graphics and an intentionally bad shaky cam this actually isn't a bad horror game that's decent at building tension with some decent jump scares and a "sneak past the monster mechanic" while solving the puzzles that keep increasing in difficulty. I was pleasantly surprised by this one - it might not look like much but its pretty good. Recommended!

Sorry We're Closed

Keeping in vein with the above, this game has got demons and monsters and possibly zero straight characters and a bit of a step up art wise, though a fair bit of it is odd. It isn't a stealth game though and instead plays more like Resident Evil with all its fixed camera angles and needing to save at pay phones. While its still a horror (of a more adult variety) its not as scary as the above, simply because you can fight and destroy the monsters in your way. It's annoying that they respawn though, and that there's a fair bit of backtracking. While I liked this one, I felt Fear the Spotlight is better.

Eurovision 2026

This years Eurovision has come and gone, and surprisingly there was a shortage on "women lacking gowns". Instead we got nice gowns, some opera, men in armored gowns, face masks, a silver man, a cat man, a banging Moldovan song, a trip back in time with nice dance moves, some mandatory witches, someone setting the stage on fire, a bonkers UK entry, and a few acts into rope play? The winner had a pretty catchy tune, and I think you can appreciate the awesome choreography more from this audience POV video! That last link is a must watch!

I also very much appreciated the Wasted Boat comedy opening by the hosts which is a parody of last year's winning song, Wasted Love.

For some bonus non-Eurovision tunes, here's Lyv's bardic music channel once again - she's been making a whole bunch of songs! And if you need something *much* heavier after all that, how about "Wrecking Ball, but in the style of Linkin Park"?

Take it easy everyone! :)

Mongil: Star Dive and Girl's Front Line 2: Exilium

F2P games with gacha fanservice!

Mongil: Star Dive

This game is set in a fantasy land where fauna are starting to exhibit violent tendencies and its up to a squad of monster -hunter- tamers to sort it out. Good graphics, excellent animation, an interesting actiony fight system and a good dose of humor are all very welcome surprises in here (as well as being simpler than some of its competitors). The humor especially as the game plays out much like a comedy, including the "taming" process itself. 

That said it is still very "new" with lots of empty unused spaces that you can just tell will be for future content. Also the leveling up system for your random party and their gear, is quite a grind once you hit those level walls which you'll get to sooner than you think. Again, it might just be a case of being new but that killed the game for me.

Girl's Front Line 2: Exilium

This game is set in a post apocalyptic land where fauna ARE violent, just like the numerous PMCs you go up against with your squad of combat "dolls". Yep, its very Ghost in the Shell here with disposable bodies, body parts, and consciousness backups and uploads. Combat here plays more like XCOM and has a puzzle challenge component to it (kill 3 guys in the first round etc) which is neat - though you can also get one support "doll" from someone else and just deploy a level 60 each time to power your way through. :P

The story pieces come in fully voiced (no English dub) visual novel style which I find annoying, but the stories themselves are pretty neat and the art is quite good. While there's also a grindy component to level up your squad its easier to do so here than in Mongil, and because its an older game there are many game modes available to play through even if you find yourself lacking resources or levels to forge on through the main story. Recommended, but be careful as this is an addictive time sink!

Mayor of Kingstown and The Madison

Another pair of Taylor Sheridan shows!

Mayor of Kingstown

Kingstown must be a crappy place to live, especially if its only feature are the number of prisons nearby. The titular "Mayor" is not actually the real mayor of the city, but a fixer (played by Jeremy Renner) who tries to find creative solutions to keep the peace between the cops and the various warring gangs. He's definitely well connected, isn't afraid of getting his hands dirty, and usually doesn't have things go his way which makes for an interesting show, even if he spends at least 40% of each episode talking on the phone while driving ins his car. I'm just curious why everyone seems to listen to him? Still I've very much enjoyed the four seasons of this so far and am looking forward to seeing how it concludes in the fifth.

The Madison

This so far one season "slice of life" show follows a woman played by Michelle Pfieffer and her city based family deal with the sudden loss of her very outdoorsy husband, and finally going to his favorite spot on Earth (the Madison River) to visit his now empty cabins. While the main theme of this show so far seems to be dealing (or not dealing) with grief, there are some funny moments and some introspective ones too which make it interesting. I did not like the extended time in the opening episode on fishing though, but hey, that's just me. It's funny how easy it is to hate some of the characters though. That's something Mr. Sheridan writes really well. :P Not sure yet if this is recommendation worthy, but I'll be watching season two when it arrives.  

Kill Lupercal and Space King

Warhammer 40K, and 40K adjacent?

Kill Lupercal

This short three episode series focuses on a titan crew as they deploy to defend Terra against the forces of chaos led by Horus Lupercal, once the most favored son of the Emperor of Mankind. While the "extras" don't have the best CGI the main characters and titans are well done, with nice action bits to accentuate the all too short story oozing in dark 40K goodness. Recommended especially for those who like Warhammer related stuff!

Space King

This animated youtube series follows a bunch of -space- psycho marines on their quest to find their missing god, the titular Space King, and is a hilarious take on the "totally not warhammer 40k" universe. Definitely for a more mature audience, and again if you like Warhammer 40K you might get a laugh from this. Go check it out, it's free on youtube!

Tron: Ares and Wake up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Sequels that continue a franchise.

Tron: Ares

In a world where arcade game machines have enough power to create a fully immersive and digital world that you can enter by "digitizing" yourself, this latest movie of Tron actually goes the other way around where a created program (played by Jared Leto) wants to export itself to the real world. While the effects are much better than the older Tron movies (except the part that intentionally goes old school), there are some major plot holes that you'll need to jump over. Like, if Jared Leto is your best program why wouldn't you just make multiples of him instead of making different, inferior versions? Even non-techy audiences will need to leave common sense at the door.

Wake up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Benoit Blanc (played by Daniel Craig) is back, this time solving an impossible crime in a small parish with a crazy priest and a small congregation of psycho almost-cultists. Like the previous movies this one has good cinematography and a pretty interesting puzzle to solve. While there's a bit of "god bashing" in it mostly done for laughs, I do like that it's tempered with the "good priest". Also, it's definitely better than the second movie (Glass Onion). Recommended! 

More than Nothing: The Axolotl

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Barricading the way behind them in case the blue gnomes heard the fighting (they did), the team hurriedly descends to the lowest level where they come across a large cavern crawling with blind miners going back and forth. They have to navigate this as quietly as possible and do very well until Ugh rushes the last bit attracting attention at the very end. A cave in saves them from the blind miners, but now they're trapped in another chamber with the thing that caused the cave in, a great Axolotl type lizard with many legs munching on a blind miner! It turns with great interest to the new snacks that just arrived (queue boss music)!

Jerghon the Great leads it one way (its basically playing snake - moves fast but can only turn 3 times during its move) to let the others run through the tunnel it came through, then dodges it to follow. They reach another section of blind miners but with the "well" down to the underground river in sight and the lizard hot in pursuit they decide to sprint through them, losing Doxxer before jumping into the fast flowing river below - which proves to be very long and just as deadly. None of their remaining NPC allies survive it (alas poor Ungala, Winnie and the nameless folk), but the four of them eventually wake in some sort of tent with other mine survivors who had jumped the well before them and are now guarded by foreign looking guys.

An official named Quintus soon arrives and says that his men pulled them from the water, and that they're now all a long way from Goat Getterville. Quintus admits he is not a generous soul but offers a deal: that they all work for him to finish his half-built city of Partopia and in exchange they can become citizens if they so wish. But its an all or nothing offer. Either all of them leave and chance the wilderness or accept the deal. 

Since the other survivors are leaning towards staying, the four leaders agree to the deal as its more than nothing and help finish the city over the next five years - after which they all depart back to Goat Getterville... leaving their kids behind.

Plot armor was used this time!

-Master Builder Ugh used to be a farmer who walked away from a juvenile snake on his farm.

-Master Warden Jerghon the Great didn't care that the community previously thought he was a good for nothing layabout for working on a game involving rolling stones.

-Master Miner Mama had a lazy neighbor called Chitty Chatty who asked help to plant her field. Mama agreed because the neighbor helped her previously with something, and while doing so Mama found a blood ruby gem in the neighbors field which she secretly kept for herself.

-Overseer Sith was previously a hunter with a side kick called "Big Man". After tracking a dangerous ostrich by smell one hunt, Big Man then wanted to earn the bounty of an ostrich feather by reporting that he slew the beast and made her look incompetent. Sith then killed Big Man and took the feather for herself.

More than Nothing: The Great Mine

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Empress Palisa, the daughter of "Rou the beheader" and leader of the Goat Getterville nation could see the value in the precious metals hidden in the ground and commissioned a great mine constructed - overseen by our new heroes: Master Miner Mama (Mom) the daughter of Ma, Master Warden Jerghon the Great (DL) who is the grandson of Jerg, Master Builder Ugh (Juris) the third cousin of Ugh, and Overseer Sith (Rose) the neighbor of Rou.

[We had a bit of a mad-libs session prior to this where they basically designed the mine and its problems by taking turns with my prompts with hilarious results, so most of this bit of the adventure is of their own making :P]

Over the years the mine slowly became more and more dangerous and we pick up as the leaders attempt to evacuate everyone out. Alas, an earthquake sends them plummeting down one level into an underground lake which in unusable due to all the possum pee in it. Determined to escape and to be more than nothing, they and three other nameless survivors head back upstairs only to find the exit collapsed, but they manage to scare a bunch of angry possums away from a barricaded door to the barracks. 

Inside is the now elderly Winnie who can sense there's a way out through a deep underground river at the lowest level which he knows about due to his fisher people heritage. After Mama helps the team avoid a minor cave in, the team descends to the prison level (which the leaders agreed to build down here) and release Dodo, a saboteur descended from the Ostrich Riders; Doxxer, a spy who knows Jerghon's secret (that he still carries Mmmbop's ponytail); and Ungala - a deep scout who reports the rest of his unit was bitten by rabid possums. 

The result of the bite is clearly seen in his buddy Bunga, locked in a separate cell. The now blind man paces back and forth predictably but when he hears a noise he charges aggressively and attacks in that direction. 

With that knowledge they continue down, sneaking past strange blue gnomes now looting diamonds from a doorway broken open by Dodo and reach the illegal Ostrich rider hideout below. They send Dodo in first to calm his compatriots down but he gets torn apart by giant rabid possums that then rush the party, slaying one of the "spare" nameless guys before the team manages to defeat the beasties with their pickaxes.

More than Nothing: Rou the Beheader

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Sometime later the Goat Getter village is flourishing, but Shania arrives with a request to help defend Twain against the expanding territories of Tan-ned - a large city to the North, forcing villages to join or die. They agree that this threat is more than nothing and arrive just in time to defend against the pony tailed forces of Akin-Ka, but are caught by surprise by their ponytail dagger throw which kills many of the defenders. Rou and Ug's use of "I am bright!" saves the day, blinding the enemy forces who are then massacred. Rou beheads Akin-Ka post mortem.

With Shania insisting on pressing the advantage, she rallies more fighters and they them march unopposed all the way to Tan-ned which is strangely undefended? Sensing a trap they divide their forces in two, Shania and half the warriors will hold outside while the Goat Getter heroes enter the "palace temple" (just a covered platform higher than the other buildings) with the other half. Sure enough, Tan-ned's leader Mmmbop is there waiting for them with his guards and uses the powers of his god "wormy" to explode people into wriggling masses worms (by wiggling his fingers and chanting "wormy wormy wormy").

The team rush forward through the defense, and the defenders fail their ponytail dagger through after Rou throws the head of Akin-Ka at them! Mmmbop also critically fails trying to worm-splode Jerg so instead his fingers all turn into worms and fall off. Rou then hits him with a knife to the leg before Jerg captures him and leads him out to the overlooking balcony, where Rou publicly beheads him. This routs the remaining enemies.

Alas, Shania died in the battle outside but everyone else - including the rest of Tan-ned's oppressed citizens now see the four as their saviors and rejoice at Mmmbop's defeat and years pass in relative peace as the Goat Getters inherit the amassed territories of their enemy!

[This is the end of the current characters as I force retire them, and not one of them used any plot armor :P] 

More than Nothing: The First Village

[Part of the Party Time journal]

At the edge of the misty forest the Goat Getters encounter a small group of apes who warn them of a war being waged by their kind and the forest floor dwellers of Shroomy, also noting all the goats would be "shroomed" by now. They accept the apes offer of climbing up above the shroom-mist and meet the apes god "QQ", a large rainbow serpent who asks for their assistance in winning the war but since they refuse, QQ just let's them cross the tree tops to the other side of the forest and warns them never to return.

On the other side of the forest the now somewhat hungry tribe find a ruined settlement where they engage with beasts they've never seen before (dinosaurs) and clear them out. Obelisks in the ruins are decorated with pictograms of farming and building which Mama Yapa understands. She declares the time of wandering is over, and the tribe will settle down here to try farm the land. They will be more than nothing.

The young heroes are sent to gather wood and not willing to return to the misty forest, follow a large river the opposite way, encountering a sheep herder looking for his missing dog and a naked fisher person named Testikles whose invitation to visit his nudist village is rejected.

They eventually reach another farming settlement of Twain and the super friendly leader Shania agrees to help the Goat Getters as much as she can. Providing seeds, timber and a cart to transport it as well as information on the area. On the way back the team encounter a naked fisher kid named Poo on the side of the road, crying because his people sacrificed his dad to their god, the Crocagatorman, in accordance to their practice of sacrificing those above a certain age.

Rou takes the kid under her care, renaming him to Winnie instead and returns him to the Goat Getter Village which has suffered an attack while they were away. Mama Yapa says the ostrich riding raiders took some of their people off with them to the West and so the party pursues, detouring slightly when they come across a trio of naked dog worshipers and a pack of various dogs they admit to "freeing from slavery". Ug does an amazing speech that involves letting the dogs decide if they are happier with their owners and the trio agree to return all the stolen dogs while giving directions to the raiders and suggesting they only respect strength. 

As such when they find the raider camp, Jerg approaches alone and challenges their wiry short leader to a duel - and kills him with the Ug's obsidian blade after dodging the thrown javelins and mounted ostrich. The rest of the raiders kneel before Jerg, muttering "you earn what you kill" (thanks Riddick) and so not only do they free the prisoners, the raiders are also assimilated into the Goat Getter tribe!

More than Nothing: The Goat Getters

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Ug (Juris), Rou (Rose), Ma (Mom) and Jerg (DL) are young cavemen out to prove themselves on their first unsupervised goat hunt, armed only with their wits and fists. It's a ritual of the "Goat Getter" tribe (PC named) that has followed this massive herd of goats over the years. 

Having tracked their prey to the foothills of the Black Mountain, Ug accidentally spooks the goats which sends them running. A sabertooth cat takes advantage of this, killing one goat and running off. Somehow the team loses track of the herd but finds the cat tracks and not willing to return empty handed follow them to a lone tree beneath which is the goat carcass.

The sabertooth strikes from hiding, mauling Jerg but Ma kills it by bashing it with a rock and saving him. They take both dead animals back their nomadic camp but on the way find a group of weeping, dark skinned mountain folk who have been brutalized and or killed by something. The hunters decide to go past quietly.

Back at base, tribe leader Mama Yapa is happy with their performance, beating even the veteran hunters who returned bruised, scratched and empty handed. Over dinner under a pitch black night lit only by two stars, Ug overhears the veteran group boasting about their exploits against the mountain tribe.

The next day the four are off hunting again but this time Rou spots a child seemingly made of light high atop a cliff. They go to investigate and the celestial child, "Sunny" asks for their aid in rescuing an ally from his enemy who will not expect the intruders to be more than nothing, and in exchange will lend them his power if they are successful. They agree and are instructed to leap off the cliff onto an invisible bridge. Ug goes first and sure enough he doesn't fall, so the party follows the bridge directly to a tear in the sky, leading to a realm of dark and freezing cold - a large, chained wolf imprisoned beyond icy stalagmites.

They work quickly to free the creature (taking cold damage over time) when a voice commands them to stop. It is the darkness, and it doesn't want Sunny to gain more power than he already has so instead offers to give them a weapon to kill the child instead. Ug tricks the darkness into gifting him obsidian blade (an ever sharp rock) with a false promise of slaying Sunny. They free the wolf, who turns out to be Luna, and exit just in time.

As a reward, Sunny teaches them how to summon his light: to stare directly at the sun and yell "I am bright!". The pair then vanish and since night is fast approaching the young hunters return to base, noticing there is now a moon in the sky. The peace is interrupted in the village when a giant "centipede" made of a mass of congealed corpses arrives and starts killing their tribesmen, by folding them in half and putting their heads in their asses. 

Ug distracts it while Jerg locates the puppeteer mountain tribe caster on a nearby hill, using a dead baby as a hand puppet to control the creature. Jerg kills him with a large stone then tears the baby corpse in two, destroying the monstrous centipede.

Mama Yapa decides to move the survivors off the cursed mountain to pursue the goat herd into the misty forest beyond.

More than Nothing: The System

[Part of the Party Time journal]

It's homebrew time again, and this time around I'm using a simplified Ironsworn system which uses five base stats: Edge for dexterity stuff, Might for strength and fighting stuff, Wits for smart stuff, Heart for will and talking stuff and Shadow for hiding and spotting hidden stuff. Skills go up or down when I deem them to do so. :P

These all start as blank and can go down to -3 and up to +3. When doing a dangerous or interesting action the player will roll 1d6 and 2d10. The d6 result then gets modified based on the number against the relevant stat (plus any extra situational bonuses or negatives) and if that beats both d10s its a success, if it beats one d10 its a partial success with consequences, and if it beats neither d10 its a failure with consequences. Should the d10s have the same number that's a critical (success or failure defined as before).

Characters have 13 boxes for health and stress, health being marked off from the left while stress starts from the right. Health being harder to recover. PCs can spend 2 stress on their own character to reroll all dice, or 1 stress (for themselves or their team mates) to reroll one dice. And they can just keep doing that. If the bar fills up with stress and/or damage then the character is "out" and quite probably dead.

I'm also adding occasional table top warfare here using old toy figurines, with simple rules of you can walk 3" and do something or run 6" and do nothing else. Heroes need to be within 2" of allies to command them (and said allies have to be a chain of 2" or less apart each to move together) and at the end of movement all units have to be facing the same direction (usually, unless it was an intentional "spread out" command). In instances where I have grid maps, its the same with the walk being 3 squares and the run being 6 squares.

Bad guys don't really get to roll in most situations except in the table top warfare bit. There its simply a dice roll (and I determine the situation on how many dice) and the result equals how many soldiers die and/or how much damage goes to a PC. 

Lastly, each character has an option to avoid damage by using limited "plot armor". These are basically a set of flashback questions made from plot threads I couldn't incorporate into the main story that lead us to know more about each character's past, usually shady or dark. It's funny that my group knows what I'm like and try their best to avoid using it at all costs!  

As usual I'll throw in more systems as we go along but those are the basics, and a lot of this is based off the many RPGs I've been reading through. :)

Greenland 2: Migration and Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

Two sequel movies with ":"

Greenland 2: Migration

The survivors of Greenland have made it to temporary safety, but that wouldn't make an interesting story so the first thing to do is take that away and get them moving again. Only this time they have to travel much farther, but its ok because most of the deadly things are only deadly when they're mentioned and then forgotten about and the party gets loads of expendable helpers on top of the ridiculous amount of plot armor to get them through the string of roadblocks that basically make up this film. It's a more epic journey, but its somehow a worse movie than last time.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

The finale to the series sees protagonist Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) having become a recluse and handing over his gang to his gypsy son who is doing his best and succeeding at being an asshole to everyone, all while making some really bad decisions. So bad that his dad has to be awoken from his slumber to come fix everything. 

Everything considered the plot is actually quite small scale and would really only appeal to people who have watched the series. If you were a fan then yes, this is for you, complete with cool non-era music and shots of just "looking cool". 

Hounds of War and A House of Dynamite

Two movies that should be exciting but aren't.

Hounds of War

After a group of mercs are setup on a doomed mission, the lone survivor seeks violent revenge on those responsible. You could do many things with that generic plot line, but this movie decides to make the protagonist only involved with a third of the action - delegating somewhat important tasks to nearly nameless side characters. It also feels like they did a lot of work for very little / indirect payoff and that combined with the terrible editing of putting cuts everywhere in the action sequences just really makes it bad. Not recommended. 

A House of Dynamite

When an ICBM bound for the USA is detected, everyone starts to panic as plans fail and hard decisions have to be made. Only they don't really - because while this movie might have good actors and an interesting hook, it lacks content and makes up for it by showing different viewpoints on the same overlapping number of minutes. Conversations you've already heard are spoken again, and really things you know and don't know remain the same throughout. Don't expect any resolutions here. Not recommended. 

Arknights: Endfield

Set in a universe of anime style characters who have spaceships but still use swords and spears, this free to play single player game (currently on Epic Games) features some nice graphics, decent voice acting and a click fest of combat that rewards timing.

Not only do you have to balance your team of four from a roster of operators (most of whom are possibly teenage girls) who will each individually require leveling, gearing, leveling the gear, and such - you also have to get lucky to recruit them from the gachapon style lucky draw that you earn every so often.

You can see more characters in the trailer.

Base building is also a pretty big component of this game (which caught me by surprise). Sure, you can hit minerals and gather bushes to craft stuff. But you can also setup auto mining rigs, processing plants, fabricator factories, conveyor belts between said parts to move materials around and electrical generators and have to run electrical cables to each of these for them to activate. Cable not long enough? Build a relay to keep it going! 

You can easily spend sessions not fighting at all but just harvesting, expanding and such. Oh, and you also build outposts that you can assign one of your team to manage, that can then trade and grow on its own too. There's also a stock market where you can buy goods and hope that you can sell for higher, because this "single player" game still takes into consideration what other players are doing. And if that isn't enough you can then fix up and build out your space ship. :O

Yes, there's A LOT going on here with tutorials galore in the form of simulations, including the base building part. Cool game but ultimately just too much for me, and you can almost taste the grinding as you need loads of things to level up your people, build your base and the like.

Of almost forgot one more negative: every single enemy, regardless of your level, feels like an HP sponge. Not sure if that's intentional but it certainly is annoying! 

Zootopia (1 and 2)

Disney doing something right!

These animated flicks where everyone is an anthropomorphic animal takes place in Zootopia, where predators and prey live in peace and "anyone can be anything". That doesn't mean it will be easy though as learned by protagonist bunny cop Judy Hopps who takes in on herself to take on a missing persons case and discover why some predators are going feral. 

Zootopia 2 continues the story of our heroes and does more world building with another case, and while its still a good watch it isn't as strong as the first one.

Regardless, both have good CGI, a well written plot, cute and likeable characters, and many funny moments to boot! Disney is doing very well with these. Highly recommended!

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.