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