Caliban’s War
This the second book in The Expanse series. It felt like a bit of a retread but with less interesting characters. The T.V. show is better.
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary on MS-DOS
I remember watching my housemate play this game quite a bit back when we were in college. I don’t think he had the CD-ROM version—which included voice acting from the original cast. Luckily this GOG.com version has all the recorded elements (and none of the weird DOS set up problems). Yup, there’s nothing like hearing an aged, breathy-voiced DeForest Kelley read mediocre video game dialogue!
The past few months I have been in a Star Trek state of mind as I have been streaming episodes of The Next Generation. This game really seems to capture the essence of the shows. This is despite the opening space battle which, to me, really doesn’t feel very Trekish. Space combat pops up a few more times, but, for the most part, the game is about beaming down to worlds, exploring and solving problems. It’s broken up into nice short episodes, each with their own flavor and challenges.
As for the adventure gaming, it is pretty good but there are a couple annoying moments about halfway through the game. The Harry Mudd episode is funny but lacks purpose. The “Feathered Serpent” episode has a couple of puzzles that rely on you having taken notes early on and having a knowledge of base-3 numbers. And the final episode has a game stopping bug that will leave you wandering around with nothing to do until you are finally killed when time runs out. I can’t imagine how infuriating this game was before the age of internet walk-throughs and hints.
Just like the original show, the plots leave nothing for Sulu, Chekov, Mr. Scott or Uhura to do but sit on the bridge and mope around. It was also severely lacking in Kirk mountain-punching. Seriously, what’s TOS without some Ponfarr ritual battles?
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
I was hoping for another Luc Besson film at least on par with The Fifth Element, but this was terrible. It has some of the worst casting I have ever seen. The lead has an annoying surfer dude voice and his co-star is only capable of vacant stares. Terrible dialogue, wooden acting and standard clown-vomit video game style action sequences. Pretty colors though.
Berberian Sound Studio
The only reason to watch this movie is to get a feel for how the sound design was created in Italian giallo movies. Unfortunately, this drifts too far into art film territory. More to confusing than entertaining. Half the dialogue is in Italian and is deliberately not subtitled in order to hammer us over the head with the disorientation that the main character is feeling. It just never went anywhere.
Destiny 2 on PC
I’ve been playing this off and on for the past few months. This is supposedly designed as a multiplayer experience and have been playing it as such. The campaign is not at all interesting narratively. It has something to do with a bad guy with a space hare lip controlling an orb thing that grants powers to the good guys. I lost interest in the first cut-scene.It’s all very pointless and boring.
But the multiplayer game-play is crazy fun, right? Not exactly. The game doesn’t really do anything original with its mechanics. Just a basic FPS with game modes that amount to defend this thing, destroy this thing or capture that thing. There is no satisfying end goal. The hook is supposed to be finding exotic weapons and gear. Who cares? Borderlands did this but it didn’t take itself seriously. It was fast and fun. Destiny 2 tries to pass itself off as an MMO or something but it just manages to make the game bland and repetitive.
Tomb Raider [2018]
Definitely better than the first Tomb Raider films. This reboot seems to be using the game’s reboot as inspiration. The plot is pretty bland, but enjoyed the performance of the lead actor and it avoided the horrible CGI action until the last third of the movie.
From Up On Poppy Hill
A cartoon drama from Studio Ghibli about a teenage girl who misses her dead father and raises signal flags for him every morning. She gets involved with a boy who wants to save the school’s club building from demolition. No moving castles here, just melodrama and possibly incest. As always, it’s a stunningly beautiful animated movie, so I can’t really hate on it.
Caged Heat
This should be a standard Roger Corman women in prison movie, but it was directed by Jonathan Demme and supposedly stands out from other movies in the genre. I wouldn’t go that far. It’s about as sleazy as these films come and hits all the required check boxes. But there are quite a few long, almost arty, boring stretches at the beginning. The last act is entertaining but what would make a film like this stand out for me would be some better developed characters and maybe a few plot twists. Oh, and Pam Grier.
Death Wish 3
What seriousness there was in the first Death Wish is gone. The violence is not terribly gorey but it’s ridiculous and just a joy to watch. The gangsters look straight from the cast of Breakin’ or a maybe low-rent Mad Max. Nothing makes any sense and the plot is just a means to get from one shoot-out to the next.
Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror on PC
This game is a bit of a mixed bag. I really like the main characters and it has some genuinely funny moments but there are weird tonal shifts. One moment characters are bloodletting themselves to please an ancient Mayan god, the next you are walking around asking people to comment on the panties you found.The big issue with most point and click adventures is whether or not the puzzles make sense. Again, Broken Sword 2 is hit or miss. When your goal was clear, the puzzles made sense and had just the right amount of challenge. But many times you were put in a situation where there were no clues as to what you even should be trying to do. A few times a puzzle’s solution involved talking to a random person one more time after you thought you had exhausted all your dialogue options. Thankfully, there is a pretty robust in-game hint system. Spoiler alert: you never need to use the panties.
Despite the flaws, all the chaotic threads come together in the climax and I ended the game thinking that I wanted to play the sequels.