Games I’ve Played Recently

Posted on April 18, 2022 by ashleymanningwriter

It’s been a while since I’ve written about games that I’ve played on here. Recently I’ve been playing a lot more than I would do normally, and just wanted to write a little post about that. At the moment I’m playing Lego Star Wars with Tabby. We’ve been big fans of the Lego games for a long time, and this has been one of my most anticipated games for a long time.

Sadly, it’s not as good as I was hoping, but I’m still really enjoying it. To get the bad out of the way, I think the films are rushed through in the story. It feels like some key moments are missing or condensed, and I understand that it’s a lot to pack into one game, but I would have preferred more levels and less fetch quests. The bigger issue is just how buggy the game is. I’m playing on PS5 in co-op, and the game is a mess. It freezes, there’s a boss fight the just wouldn’t progress, twice, and it seems if you play it for a long period of time things just start to go a little wrong and that builds up until you have to turn the game off and on. It feels a little unfinished, which is a shame after how long it’s been delayed. They should have held it back to iron out the issues.

Thankfully, when the game is working, which is most of the time to be fair, it’s great fun. The humour is excellent, especially if you’re a Star Wars fan. The combat is greatly improved from previous games, and the open worldness of it all is pretty great. There’s something special about driving around on Jakku and going over a hill to find a town to explore. It feels very big and expansive to find little things to do and that’s really fun.

Before Lego Star Wars, I played Elden Ring. I like the Souls series, so an open world game with input from George R. R. Martin was a must. I did put off buying it, because I knew I would sink so much time into it, but in the end I caved. I have a problem with playing games, that I need to 100% them and Elden Ring was a challenge, but I managed to do it. 100 hours later and I did everything in the game. Overall, I found this game so frustrating, and not always in a good way. Malenia, and anyone who’s played this boss will understand my pain, is just an awful time. It was one of the last things I did in my playthrough, and it took an entire evening of struggling, dying and repeating. I did manage to beat her in the end, but it was a struggle. The repeated bosses in the smaller dungeons also annoyed me a lot. To be honest, I didn’t enjoy the game as much as I thought I would. I used to enjoy playing hard games, getting good at them and then reaching 100%, but this one just wasn’t as fun, for me at least. I think it’s me getting older, but when I look back at the time I spent playing it, I do slightly regret it, it just wasn’t that fun.

I remember when Bloodborne came out and I sank so much time into that and loved every second of it. I struggled so much, spent like eight hours on one boss in a day, but I got really good at it. To the point that I got the platinum trophy and then helped a friend at work get the platinum themselves as well, and then we played through new game plus over and over. I loved Bloodborne, but I can’t say the same about Elden Ring, but I think that’s mostly on me.

Other than that I’ve been slowly playing through Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, which is a lot of fun even if it feels like a cheap Final Fantasy game while we wait for XVI to be released. I’m trying to limit myself to playing one level at a time, and it’s a great action game. Not too difficult, but there’s enough of a challenge there to keep me coming back for more. I don’t know how much I have left of the game, but I’m enjoying it so far. It’s not excellent, but a fun time all the same.

Beyond that I’m really looking forward to The Quarry, which is my most anticipated game of the year now that Lego Star Wars is out. It looks like a great successor to Until Dawn and I can’t wait to play that. I’m also looking forward to Evil Dead, as I love the films. Also the Klonoa remasters, as I’ve never played them but always wanted to. There’s just too many games, and not enough time.

Thanks for reading and until next time,

Ashley

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TV Shows That I’ve Been Watching Recently

Posted on April 17, 2022 by ashleymanningwriter

Happy Easter everyone! I hope everyone’s having a great weekend so far. I haven’t watched another film recently to review, so I thought I would write a little bit about the TV shows that I’ve watched recently. As I’ve said previously, I don’t watch that many shows, but I still watch some.

Over the weekend I finished The Afterparty, which I really enjoyed. I only started it because Ben Schwartz is in it, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s about a high school reunion afterparty where one of the attendees is murdered and each episode is a detective questioning one of the partygoers and seeing the events from their side. It’s funny, and had me completely gripped. I had my own theory going, but was completely wrong and didn’t see the ending coming at all. I’ve read that a second season is on the way with a new crime, and will definitely be watching that.

I’ve also recently started Severance, with Adam Scott in it. It’s a mystery thriller about employees who have their mind split so while they are at work they don’t remember anything about their personal life and while at home they don’t remember work at all. The first episode didn’t grab me, but my wife is a massive fan of Adam Scott so we stayed with it, and it’s gotten a lot better. We’re five episodes through the nine episode season so far and I’m enjoying it, even if I have no idea what’s really going on. It’s a very weird and unique show, nothing like anything I’ve ever seen before.

Last week Spy x Family started, which is one of my favourite manga from the last couple of years. The second I saw that an anime was coming out, I knew I was going to watch it. The first episode was great, very close to the manga and just as entertaining. I’m looking forward to more of the season and that is definitely going to be something I watch every week, like clockwork.

Something that I thought I would keep up with, but haven’t, is Star Trek Picard season 2. I watched the first episode when it was first available and I really enjoyed it. I liked season 1 a lot, and the opening episode was even better. I just haven’t found the time to watch the next few episodes yet. I know I will soon, and hopefully it’s just as good. With season 3 already in production and a lot of TNG cast returning for it, I’m excited to see what happens next.

That’s all the TV I’ve watched this year, apart from The Book of Boba Fett, which I really enjoyed as well. Have you watched any of these shows? Or do you have any recommendations, as I know I’ve missed more than a few gems, let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading and until next time,

Ashley

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The Witch – Film Review

Posted on April 16, 2022 by ashleymanningwriter

Director: Robert Eggers

Writer: Robert Eggers

Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrumshaw, Ellie Grainger, and Lucas Dawson

Rating: ★★★★½

With The Northman just being released, and as I’m not able to see it yet, as I’m stuck at home ill, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to revisit Robert Eggers first film, The Witch. Released back in 2015, The Witch is a deeply creepy and unsettling film and was a massive critical success, often mentioned as one of the greatest horror films of recent years. It was a great start to Robert Eggers list of feature films, which also includes the excellent The Lighthouse.

The Witch is also the first film to star Anya Taylor-Joy, as long as you don’t include a deleted scene in Vampire Academy, who stars as Thomasin, a teenager whose family is banished from the local village due to religious reasons. Her family builds a farm in the middle of nowhere, near a forest where a witch lives. When Thomasin is playing peekaboo with the baby of the family, Samuel, he’s snatched while her eyes are closed, and the family starts to turn on each other as things get stranger and stranger.

Until Samuel disappears it’s easy to mistake this film for a period drama. It’s set in the 17th century, and everything seems to be setting up for a family drama, and then Samuel is kidnapped in an instant, which is followed by a strange and surreal scene of the witch sacrificing him. It’s an intense opening, that’s accompanied with a loud and eerie from Mark Korven. It’s something that really gets under you skin and doesn’t leave.

Once the horror really gets going, it’s very bizarre and strange. It’s not the goriest or the most shocking, but it’s completely visceral and is deeply unsettling. As the family start to turn on each other, and they’re not really sure what’s going on, it’s some of the greatest moments of horror from the last ten years.

Part period drama and part horror film, The Witch leaves a lasting impression that stays with you long after it ends.  

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Choose or Die – Film Review

Posted on April 15, 2022 by ashleymanningwriter

Director: Toby Meakins

Writer: Simon Allen

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Iola Evans, Eddie Marsan, and Robert Englund

Rating: ★★★1/2

The latest Netflix horror is about a cursed text-based video game, that has real life consequences for its players. Iola Evans stars as Kayla, an aspiring coder who is stuck with a low paying cleaning job and looking after her mother after the death of her younger brother. She finds a game called Curs>r, at her friend Isaac’s (Asa Butterfield) place, with an unclaimed prize. Seeing it as a way out of her situation, Kayla starts playing the game and is forced to make terrifying decisions.

Curs>r is a text-based game where the player is given two options and must choose or die. Whatever choice the player makes has a real-life consequence and ends up hurting either the player or someone else. The game has somehow managed to influence the world around it, changing the place you’re playing it in or taking control of otherwise normal people. The film starts with another player, Mal (Eddie Marsan) choosing his son’s tongue to be cut out, without really understanding it. As the opening credits then start to roll, we get a story of how the tape is being spread about and multiplied. If you make a copy, it saves your family. Almost like the tape from The Ring.

Choose or Die is a love letter to the 1980s, from the text-based game to the music and posters of A Nightmare on Elm Street on the wall in Mal’s gaming room. It’s not too heavily based on nostalgia, which is refreshing, but there’s enough retro stuff in Isaac’s apartment to keep people paying attention to the background, with old games and consoles lining the shelves. There’s also a nice cameo from Robert Englund as a fictionalised version of himself.  When Kayla calls to see if the prize is still available, she finds a recorded message from Englund, in an almost callback to 976-Evil, the film that Englund directed back in 1988.

While the film is a horror, it’s not particularly scary. Despite that, there’s a lot of cool moments, especially when the game starts to take control and more than enough eye-wincing moments, where people are throwing up tape or chewing glass. The film moves at a nice pace, and is really short, making this a really fun and enjoyable film. The plot does get very strange as it goes on, especially towards the end, but it’s always entertaining to watch.

Choose or Die is a nice throwback film to text adventures of the past. It’s not very scary, but it’s still entertaining.

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Drunken Angel – Film Review

Posted on April 14, 2022 by ashleymanningwriter

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Writer: Keinosuke Uekusa and Akira Kurosawa

Starring: Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Reizaburo Yamamoto, and Noriko Sengoku

Rating: ★★★½

Drunken Angel was Kurosawa’s seventh film, and more notably his first film of sixteen to star Toshio Mifune. Released in 1948, the film is a Yakuza story set in post-war Japan. The country was also under American occupation, although due to censorships that only makes subtle appearances throughout the film.

The local doctor, Sanada (Takashi Shimura), is interrupted one evening by an unexpected patient, a yakuza Matsunaga (Toshio Mifune), who has been shot. With little care Sanada patches him up, but notices that he may be suffering from tuberculosis. The yakuza initially rejects the diagnosis, and reacts angry, but after getting a second opinion he comes back to Sanada to seek help.

One of the most striking things about Drunken Agnel is the setting. It’s almost post-apocalyptic, with most of it set in run down and impoverished town. In the centre of which is a bomb site filled with infectious water that Sanada has to scare children away from playing near it. The effects of the Second World War on normal people are really felt straight away, even if Kurosawa couldn’t mention it directly.

Then as you get into the story, the plot is pretty straight forward. Sanada reluctantly treats Matsunaga, and along the way they bond a little and Sanada tries to turn him away from the life of the yakuza. Matsunaga believes there’s a code of honour and loyalty in his lifestyle and that is put to the test as he tries to help the doctor. It’s a tragic story, that reaches an inevitable ending.

Overall, the film is just as gripping as it would have been back in 1948. Kurosawa is a masterful director, and this is one of his early classics. It’s a great moral story and one that will have you hooked from start to finish.     

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