The Walking Dead: Dead City and Daryl Dixon

While the main Walking Dead series is done and dusted, its off shoots are still shuffling around.

Dead City

Taking place years after the original series we find Maggie (Lauren Cohan) tracking down a most unusual ally, Negan, (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) to save her son. For those who haven't seen the Walking Dead, rejoice - you don't really need to as the plot explores not just what's happening in zombie land but also the continuing tension between the two main characters. Alas, for those who have seen the original that part is a bit of a rehash at this point but it's the main draw for the show and works well. There's some new scenic locations for randomly spawning zombies to appear from and its genuinely entertaining enough to warrant a second season. Thumbs up! Hopefully they find a new song to play on their fiddle moving forward though.

Daryl Dixon

My favorite character gets title billing for his own spin-off!? Hell yeah! Through "a bunch of bad decisions" Daryl (Norman Reedus) finds himself in France because the only thing scarier than a zombie is a French zombie! Seriously though, this series introduces more variant deads and a lovely countryside to slay them in. That's cool and all but story wise Daryl survives many-a-time through epic luck and plot armor me thinks, while tasked with the worst possible plot combination: baby sitting and escorting a child somewhere far away. There are some nice call backs and interesting ideas being fostered here, and hopefully season two lets our main character have a bit more agency and more skill reliant than counting on miracles. Thumbs up again, but if I had to compare these two I'd say Dead City is currently the stronger show.

Decluttering Day 16: Unused bag hooks and an equally unused (possibly expired) foot care kit.

Pathfinder: Goblin Interrupted

[Part of the Party Time journal] 

While the local clerics get busy cleansing the taint we found beneath Sandpoint last session and helping Ameiko with funeral arrangements, the town council looks over the intel gathered from the glassworks and sends us to next take down the "head of the snake", leading the goblins at Thistletop. Reinforcements led by the recently returned sheriff will do a diversionary attack on the main goblin force elsewhere which should give us an opening... in theory.

And so, after a quick ride we find ourselves facing a maze of thistlethorn which is uncomfortable to crawl through - especially when we come across some random deep hole that drops into the sea. Whatever swims below roars and terrifies Ezren (Juris), but Valeros (me) manages to pin and quiet him until he calms down. This is a stealth assassination mission after all!

Unfortunately we are noticed by a goblin jedi with a flaming sword who quickly calls forth some goblin dogs (really big rats) and a big cat that knocks Valeros down upon arrival! While Ezren and Kyra (Rose) try out their new abilites of prismatic spray and spiritual weapon which truly handles the dog pack, Merisiel (mom) has great difficulty against the cat and makes use of an expensive health potion to stay alive.

Meanwhile, instead of getting up (and letting the jedi and cat get attacks of opportunity) Valeros decides to wrestle the goblin jedi (who misses his attack of opportunity) - and succeeds!? So for the entire combat, these two are just writhing around on the floor together with Valeros getting free punches in and the goblin not being able to do much at all due to his small stature. Eventually the animals are slain and Yoda surrenders (that's not his name, but it might as well be). In exchange for some information, Valeros decides to just chain him up and knock him out instead of killing him - much to the chagrin of his companions who seemingly all wanted to throw him down the sea hole.  

Alas Valeros is Neutral Good (Ezren and Kyra too actually) so I don't think that's something he would do. Besides Yoda's intel about the rope bridge trap leading to the island fortress proves true so Ezren reminds Valeros to temporarily stow his heavy armor in his bag of holding before crossing after Stolas (Ezren's owl familiar / switched from the premade Staff familiar) finds that the watch posts are manned by non-observant goblins. At this point real life got in the way so we had to stop the session there.

Decluttering Day 15: An old tray and a sticky toaster.

Gloomhaven: The Deep Sh*t Ruins

[Part of the Party Time journal] 

Gloomhaven is pretty up there for the award of city with the most secure sewers, as while continuing to investigate for the source of the poison our team triggers some sort of alarm that not only awakens some nearby undead but also activates laser gun stone golems and... cannons!? Who the heck puts cannons in a sewer system!?

It takes us a total of three attempts to achieve the winning condition of occupying all pressure plates simultaneously to turn off the alarm - located in two separate chambers! On the first go, DL and I went left while Juris and Jim went right but Jim was too slow to reach his plate before people ran out of cards. Attempt two Juris and I went right instead but the cannons pushed Juris off his plate then immobilized him at the worst time - losing us the game.

Third go, we basically just killed everything in the most ridiculous manner possible. This included me (a small vermling) pushing a gigantic cannon into a bear trap to destroy it, and for Jim's battlebot spider to somehow make a stone golem bleed to death!? Egads! Now that this section is clear maybe we can actually get back to finding the source of the poison?

Decluttering Day 14:  Old metal gate pieces. Heavy.

Beckham and Black Mirror

Two interesting series!

Beckham

As someone who doesn't particularly follow soccer (outside of the fictional Blue Lock lol) or sports in general, I rolled my eyes when my wife suggested we watch this four episode documentary on the life of David Beckham. "Sure, let's watch the first ten minutes and if it's no good we can always switch to something else," was my reply. Turns out no switching was required as we were quickly hooked with the snappy editing interwoven with the interesting interview segments. It also helps that video evidence of the excellent physical feats told in here are shown to the audience as well. Definitely recommended simply because it's an entertaining story told in an engrossing way. Give it a try!

Black Mirror

People have been suggesting this currently six season anthology series to me for years now, and while each episode is stand alone with maybe a few Easter eggs that reference other episodes, all of them deal with future tech used for the wrong or unexpected reasons with equally wrong or unexpected (and usually bad) results. As with any anthology series some episodes are better than the others, but even the "worst" of these is still an interesting watch. I feel kind of silly only watching this now! Recommended!

Decluttering Day 13: Foldable shopping trolley which for the last 10+ years has just been storage for even more junk.

Exception and Sweet Home

Two first season horrors!

Exception

In this CGI animated series, the copies of five specialists are "printed" on an advance ship (which goes so fast that no life form can survive that journey) to begin terraforming a planet for a colony vessel that will arrive in a hundred years or so. Issues arise when crewman #5 is misprinted into a monster, and that the ship's printer won't let them print "weapons". While the horror here is less jump scares and more cranial, there are some really fantastic and philosophical ideas in this series too. The art is... a different style with very angular characters but it can be overlooked. Story wise it starts off very strong but it does feel that the season could have been shortened, or did something else towards the end where it wobbles a little. Recommended if you are in the mood for something different.

Sweet Home (Season 1)

This Korean horror focuses on an all-in-one apartment block that gets locked down when people inexplicably start turning into monsters world wide! It must also be one of the few times that I was actively rooting for the monsters to kill all the moronic, scummy and worthless humans for at least the first half of the season. That's actually my main problem with it, it takes that long to find someone to get behind as the main protagonist is one of the most unlikable wooden person (probably by design) through out all of it. The show does better when he isn't on screen! Isn't that a problem? Lucky the story is entertaining enough to stick with despite the plot going through phases of monsters showing up out of nowhere and difficult to follow action sequences - possibly to try hide their lack of monster budget. The monsters are ok though, really. The story is too. They just need to do something with the protagonist. Surprisingly, I'm still recommending this and am hoping season two can improve some things.

Decluttering Day 12: Old plug-in type vacuum. The stick vacuum replacement is really much better.

Ahsoka and The Continental

Two first season series set in popular universes.

Ahsoka (Season 1)

It seems there are actually a lot of Jedi that survived the purge, and this show follows one of them: Ahsoka Tano played by a very zen or very bored Rosario Dawson who is on a quest to prevent a long lost Imperial admiral from returning to restart the war. I'm guessing many of the cast here are from some of the many animated Star Wars shows but since I've not watched any of those, I can only go with what is portrayed here and the word I keep coming up with is... inept? Yeah.

Good guys and bad guys alike make crazy decisions and in "deadly" light saber fights usually manage to land hits with the less lethal pommel or with a spinning kick  rather than their main weapon. Also, I know nothing of light saber "weight" but for regular blades a dual wielding person would want to dodge or deflect (let the strike keep going but just push it a little so it doesn't hit you) and attack with the other hand as opposed to blocking which is what happens here regularly (the traditional light saber dead stop clash). It all just feels... odd? Things happen to further the plot, but the things that happen are often due to stupidity or luck.

Currently the Mandalorian is better. If you want one with even less fighting but stronger plot then try Andor instead.

The Continental: From the World of John Wick (Season 1)

This currently one season (three episode) show examines the characters around the titular hotel (for assassins) prior to it being visited by John Wick. Colin Woodell stars as a young Winston Scott who wants nothing to do with the Continental but is dragged back into its world thanks to the actions of his brother. Expect violence and some cool fight scenes, but also a lot of talking to fill the space in between. It's not bad per se, but I was a little let down that it didn't really focus on the "assassins world" which the movie franchise made pretty cool, and I was also not impressed by the end which smells like they want to have another season, forcing the plot to aim towards that. [Translated from Joe speak: "Too many people survived"].

Decluttering Day 11: Tattered Christmas table runners.

Honkai: Star Rail and Godlike Burger

Two games I got on Epic for free.

Godlike Burger

This is another cook to order game where you are running a space traveling burger joint and are under time pressure to make the correct orders for the various aliens that wander in. Luckily you don't need to deliver it to them as they come to the counter when its ready, however expect to kick your equipment often as they break down and if you REALLY are efficient you can even murder your customers to get some free meat, just be careful not to be caught and who you feed that to as it might attract the space cops!

An interesting twist for sure but one that I couldn't really utilize because I hated the burger assembly interface (there is none). You can't remove wrong ingredients once placed and by default you put anything you are holding (up to 2 things) into a burger automatically so you can't get lettuce for one and tomato for another because both will go to the first one you interact with. Maybe I'd enjoy it more if I ignore the cooking component and just treat it as a murder simulator, but there are so many other games that already do that. Not recommended.

Honkai: Star Rail

After the feeling of incompleteness from my run of Genshin Impact followed by enjoyable exploration in Tower of Fantasy comes Honkai: Star Rail, another gacha game of collecting characters to help you fight battles, often with some elemental alignment that is stronger against some enemies and weaker to others. This time around it is turn based combat and features a train that travels through space! But I've got to say, this must be the WORST of these three.

What? But the graphics and music are nice! The characters are also pretty good and the story is... short, but they're working on it! Sure. My biggest gripe is unlike those ones, the grind in this is put right in your face early on. The main story is level locked and you can't unlock future chapters just by playing through the main chapters. And there aren't even enough side quests (some of which have built in delays of "come back tomorrow to do the next part") to get you to the required ranking to advance. Instead it asks you go through the same few map zones via "Virtual Simulation" (at least two different forms of this too) to grind your level up.

That is ridiculously BORING! Especially when they start adding HP sponge bosses just to draw out combats. Lastly the clearest way to know if the designers are making a grindy turn based battler is if they include an AUTO COMBAT feature, aka "we know its boring so, press this button to make it go faster". This game introduces it to you IN THE TUTORIAL. Strongly not recommended. Stay away from this garbage.

Decluttering Day 10: An old small, and now unused bin. Why the heck were we still hanging on to that one?