The Last Cowboy (TV Series)

A Taylor Sheridan reality series about reining!

This documentary-competition which currently spans six seasons showcases the lives of various horse reiners as they prepare and compete in the Taylor Sheridan created "Run For a Million" tournament. What is horse reining? It's being able to ride your horse out into an empty arena and then doing a set pattern with it involving spins both ways, circles of various speeds, and the sliding stop signature move where the faster you go the harder it is to be accurate where to stop but the more points you might get. Much like figure skating, judges then give a score and whoever has the highest wins! If you watched Yellowstone you would have seen some of this as some of the reiners make an appearance there!

It's nice to see the tournament evolve in later seasons as it gets more popular to also include cow-horse (now you do that pattern on your horse while forcing an often non-compliant cow to also do it with you), cutting (there's a herd of cattle in the arena, separate one out and keep it from returning to the herd for as long as you can), and bareback (get on a wild horse and hang on for 8 seconds).

We do like the people the show focuses on too, as its great to see them evolve as people not just competitors. It's not a plot related thing, that's just life. The producers also use a good technique of rotating focus of riders per season, because all these people keep showing up again which means in later seasons even if a rider isn't heavily featured, you know exactly who it is when they get called into the arena. Awesome show and one I hope to see more of! Recommended!

Marshals and Dutton Ranch

First seasons of TV that continue Yellowstone...

Marshals

This police procedural follows Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) as he gets roped into a team of law men and women who each get to fire their guns each episode! Ok, maybe not but there's a lot of tactical action and the inclusion of other Yellowstone regulars on top of new likeable characters does add a lot to the show which helps make up for the "less deep" plot when comparing it to the original series. It's fine with me though, if they keep slinging bullets I'll keep watching. :)

Dutton Ranch

This series follows Beth Dutton's (Kelly Reilly) family who move away from Yellowstone to Rio Paloma to try start a new life but hardship seems to find them around every corner. This drama has better acting and better plot than the above and continues the glimpse into ranch life, but it comes with less gun fighting and some really unlikable characters. If you liked Yellowstone this show is more in the same spirit of it and yes, I'll also be watching season two for this! 

Age of Mythology: Retold

As many would know, strategy games aren't really my forte but this one has somehow made it into our Friday night game sessions and has probably become my most played strategy one for awhile. Obviously the co-op component helps a lot, though you can only co-op two players if going through the campaign story. That's ok though as there are many other modes that you can play through which is good, given my graphics card bombs out on some of the maps too.

A standard game round has you selecting your civilization (Norse, Greek, Egyptian, Atlantean, etc) followed by a major deity in that civilization - so for a Norse player you'd be choosing between Loki, Odin or Thor for example, each giving you slightly different "god" powers and "tech" trees in the form of minor gods who you get to pick as you advance from age to age.

Usually you get a town center, some peasants and some form of scout of your civilization type and from there have to collect food, wood, gold and favor to expand up through the ages. Favor is your battery for magical powers or making magical creatures and you how you gain it depends on your civilization. Atlanteans gain it by having their oracles stand as far apart from each other as possible. Greeks gain it by having as many people worshiping at the temple. Norse get it by killing enemies, and so forth.

AI wise, the fun bit is getting the mix n match of their personality types. A few examples are the defender who only defends, an attacker will constantly harass you, a humanoid will ignore all magic-related things and just fight you with men and machines, and an overwhelmer will just mass a big ball of troops and then throw it at you if you wait too long. You can also up the "difficulty" by letting the AI cheat basically if you really want a challenge (your peasant hits a tree once and gains 1 wood, their peasant hits a tree once and gains 1-3x wood).

It's simple enough to learn and fun enough to keep playing. Coming from me, a non strategy game player whose PC can't even run 1/4th of it properly, that's saying something so it must be doing something right! :)

Batman: The Telltale Series

Having played a few other Telltale games I can confidently say this one is the best. Excellent art, voice acting and branching plots that really give player agency make this a beautiful game, especially since the writers weren't afraid to have a different take on this Batman universe. 

Over two "seasons" with five chapters each (get the "Shadows" edition to get them both) you'll encounter many familiar faces from the rogues gallery and while there's a bit of QTE combat to be had (which is on the easy side of things) it's the timed dialogue choices that will really get your brain working. Excellent game and highly recommended! I only wish there was more of it! 

Your Friends and Neighbors

In this comedy drama series, Jon Hamm stars as Coop - a hedge fund manager with a lot of money but many relationships that put a strain on him. Upon losing his job he decides that he needs to keep up appearances with the titular friends and neighbors, who are also pretty well off themselves, and he does so by continuing to donate exorbitant amounts of money to charity, attending parties which mostly consist of people he doesn't like, keeping up his membership at the exclusive golf club etc.

He does this by robbing them, one expensive item at a time. This is great as plot wise he's hoping its something they won't miss as to not get caught, but also for us viewers they put in a "product ad" for said items which is really  cool and also just highlights how crazy some people are to own them. It's a fun show with a surprisingly high amount of sex scenes, but also a number of filler bits that are just used to pad out the story. Still worth trying out though, especially if you're a Jon Hamm fan. 

Robobeat

This rogue like rhythm FPS is somewhat the epitome of annoyance. Never mind the story or graphics, the game play loop itself if so tedious. Shoot on the beat (or your shots do less damage) must be one of the most ridiculous systems ever. It's not like guitar hero where the music is the point. Here you need to shoot things to clear zones and advance and requiring to slow everything down to tempo to do so just really takes the enjoyment out of it. Not recommended.

Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods

This is a documentary about a small piece of the war filmed mainly from body cams - following a company of 99 Ukranian soldiers holding a railway forest against the Russian advance. It shows the daily lives of the troop: the down time, the scavenging, the danger, and yes - some of the fighting too. You will see a few dead people (most are blurred/censored/out of shot if too close) so that might be your time to "nope" out, but otherwise it is a sobering 1 hour flick that just makes me really glad I'm not there as I wouldn't last five minutes in those conditions - and that's without an opposing force! Definitely worth watching if you can find it and is possibly one of the best anti-war films around.

As of this post it is day 1585 of Russia's two day special operation.  The front seems to be a stalemate currently, but drone warfare has improved to the point where Ukraine is now hitting targets in Moscow.