dumpster

£4 Xbox and £6 PS4 at Cex.

It reminded me of Orbiter 9 (Netflix) in that "for the greater good" way.

Fucking massive spoiler within.

I live a short walk from the cinema, it's £4.99 and you can get two people in with a Meerkat for that price. But if you'd need a babysitter, a taxi, and tickets are £12, I'd probably wait for it to appear elsewhere.

Absolutely this. And that's the issue as this was written for the screen by Shymalan but the story is from a graphic novel so he's not really contributed much here. It's like he read the graphic novel and said "that's the sort of thing I do" and made it into a film.

Enjoyed that, but expectations were low. It's basically the trailer with an ending. The ending elevated it from a 4/10 in my head and took it to a 6/10. It's very Shymalan, and the story is enough because the script, acting and filmaking is atrocious. If you saw this on The Horror Channel on a weeknight and knew nothing in advance, you'd say "that was pretty good for The Horror Channel on a weeknight." However, TimeTrap on Netflix is the same sort of thing but much better. 'Old' has time passing normally whilst people age at an accelerated rate. TimeTrap does it the other way around and was my film of the year in 2018 so definitely check that one out.

I'm in a completely empty cinema and will post a review after.

Anyone seen this yet? Worth a watch?

I never realised there was a third series of Count Arthur Strong. Steve Delaney spent his whole life working on that character and I believe 'The Day the Clocks Went Back' and 'Arthur the Hat' to be two of the funniest half hours of TV ever written. I've not been a fan of his other stuff, it all seemed a bit one-joke, but taking Delaney's character and giving him a co-writer, toning down certain elements and writing a sit-com around him was a masterstroke. Every episode is brilliant and I can't recommend it enough.

The Jackass movies on Netflix have audio description soundtracks for those with sight impairments. It's quite surreal and hilarious watching them that way - try it. "Bam punches Johnny Knoxville in the face".

I played Resident Evil 4 on Wii with a cheat code for unlimited health. I played one of the bosses for a full 30 minutes, cursing myself for not remembering it's weak spot or what the strategy was. A full half hour of this bullet sponge before I realised it's health bar is a percentage of your own and the cheat makes it invincible.

Playing this on Series X fixes the long loading times and makes me wonder how I ever completed it on PS4. Those loading times combined with the 1 hit instakills and invisible traps were such a pain back in 2016 when I last played but they are more bearable when each time I die (174 times this playthrough) you don't have a 30 second wait to get back to it. Also there's a couple of sections where you kill the enemies and they infinitely respawn. You can lose all your ammo until you realise there's a scripted end to the section. You have to approach this game as a stealth game, conserving ammo, staying out of sight creeping around. The claustrophobic play areas mean you don't have a lot of room when the bosses appear but all this appears to be deliberate design and once you realise that, there's a lot of good here. I think this is a definite unpolished gem which is now better than ever on Series X and worth a revisit. I just wish they would frameboost it. It's definitely on a par with the sequel, maybe even better.

There's so much content these days and you only have a fixed amount of free time. I took some time off work a few years ago and it was life changing. I'd never not worked right from leaving school and the prospect of taking 6 months out really appealed. But from a gaming perspective games stopped being something I crammed in, and suddenly I had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted. This came back into my mind this month because I got the Xbox Series X and found myself playing The Evil Within to quite near the end. I only started it to see if it had been patched (as the sequel has been) and it runs better than usual, but still not great. The instant load times make a massive impact though. But playing it now for me thinking about when I quit work. Because I owned this game originally on PS3 and it was really poorly optimised. I picked it up cheap on PS4 and it wasn't that much better. I'd posted here how revealing the trophies were, like when you complete level 3 the system reveals that only 60% of people have that achievement and you can see how people give up midway. I can't remember how far I got. But then, being out of work I went back to the PS4 and started from the beginning and ploughed through. The loading times, the difficulty (even on easy for crying out loud) couldn't stop me and I could tell there was a good game under there trying to get out. And I completed the game for the first time. Nothing could put me off or stop me. I was enjoying it, despite having given up on it for legit reasons in the past, just because I had the time. I also platinum'd Bloodstained in that same period. It took hours of grinding but I had the time. Lots of it. Enough time to devote to a game I loved (Bloodstained) and a game I wanted to like but struggled to (Evil Within). So jump cut to 2021 and I'm playing Evil Within on Gamepass where a number of the issues are fixed and I can't quite believe I stuck with it on PS4. The sheer number of instadeaths with a long loading time after each one would surely be enough to put me off. But on Series X it's much better and I'm really enjoying it. But this week I'm working 5 days and have commitments for this weekend and next. So I'll get back to it, some time... I'm literally at the final level boss and in about three weeks I'll do it. And I think that's the point. If you're time poor you just can't devote that little time you have to playing something you're not absolutely loving. For me, if I have the spare time I might use it to stick with something I'm not initially enjoying. But right now I'm too busy and there's no way I'd be playing EW with those instadeaths and loading times if they hadn't been fixed.

Launchbox is cool. It's one front-end that lets you choose your individual emulator on a per game basis.

This Russian guy on YouTube seems to have gone from strength to strength, taking Scooter's Techno riffs and creating semi-original music in that early nineties style. In fact, as Scooter seem to have got worse with every album since Rick Jordan left, this guy has nailed the feel of the music I grew up enjoying. This first album is a few years old.... But this track from it is a belter.... And his latest, whilst having lyrics that don't seem to have translated to English very well has some great stuff on.... And even though he's still calling it a Tribute to Scooter, it's so much better than anything Scooter have done in years. Ignore the lyrics and enjoy the 90s sound of "I'm running away to find my way" which is track 2 on the above. Anyone for a bit of shouty techno?