deanb

Superman: Red Son One of my fave "what ifs" and one I'd figured would do well if DCEU wanted to just drop a connected universe since it covers most things people are familiar with but in a new setting. Unfortunately this adaptation kind flounders on quite a few of its changes. I think bringing in Svetlana ("Lana") was a nice change, but loads of others not so much especially with him killing off Stalin, making America-man (or whatever it was) be just a slug fest in the Siberian tundra than the comic-book fight against bizarro in London which devastates the city and culminates in bizarro flying off with an accidentally launched nuke. They basically didn't develop the Hal Jordan storyline at all except to be "oh look we have a green lantern" (and in the comic the green lantern corp was create in the phantom zone to avoid Superman becoming aware of it). Also kinda feels like they went in with "oh it's communist superman so he's evil and bad cos he's communist" rather than it being "he's still fucking superman, just now he's communist". Hardly like the Kansas raised Superman is a capitalist beacon. Felt like it wasted times on the wrong parts of the story and too briefly skipped over the more interesting things. Like it's nearly two minutes introducing "Superior Man". In the comic they just have him heading right over to the soviet bloc, you just need to see a second superman with a "US" on his badge and you get where he's from. Never mind the big fight right after that wastes chunks of time. And he's not even fucked up like Bizzaro superman

I work at a college of roughly 5,000 (older high-school thing, not a uni) which my department has spent the last half-week waiting for news on-high to close schools and colleges down. Already checking we can work from home (I can only do like 20% of my job externally, but chunk of my job is sending staff to external conferences and training so not going to be a major issue cos we'll likely stop that). Problem is our government doing nothing except state "some of your loved ones will die". The Health Secretary posted their plan to a pay-walled website rather than to an official gov.uk site too. Boris is pretty much a more eloquent Trump, just all full of bluster and spin, and hopefully people are paying attention to the woeful response of the tories for the next election (oh one action taken has been to postpone local elections a year. Oh and another thing to give themselves emergency powers to detain people suspected of being infected. Because police are now the medics). Oh and they've asked factories to pop out ventilators. It turns out production lines set up for making cars can be easily reconfigured to making ventilators. Thank god we didn't do anything recently that meant many qualified doctors and nurses left the country...

"Fuck off Hitler"

Looks pretty . Still not gonna bother at all with this until (if/when) the full game is made.

It ties a lot more in with the book than it does the film (especially the method of 'world peace'). The film I'd say is a bare minimum to watch ahead of time while understanding that the film, while a decent enough adaptation, is missing a lot of things from the comic and has a different ending which the HBO show doesn't follow from. The comic is always worth a read anyway. There's a reason Alan Moore is considered one of the greats.

Remainers are aiming to get Ode to Joy, the EU anthem, to the top of the charts for Brexit day. Apparently it's doing quite well. https://www.classicfm.com/composers/beethoven/andre-rieu-ode-to-joy-charts/ (Leavers are trying to get "17 million fuck offs" into the charts. I'd say this might be a bit on the nose difference between the two sides)

Threw me for a split second with Maul being in this until I remembered he died in the other show and this is still "in the past" to that show. No white-sabers for Ahsoka just yet it seems. Still looking forward to the future from this; (which I've noticed the file is names "ahsoka_gandalf"

We're starting the year in quite different ways (it was less than £4 on Amazon, figured it's worth a shake for that much)

Game of 2019 might be Pokemon Sword, by virtue of being one of the few 2019 games I've played. My other one being Outer Worlds, which is solid but Pokemon is bringing me the most joy.

I've watched: His Dark Materials - Unlike Hollywood BBC has the balls to kill a 10 year old boy in time for Christmas. I'm mainly surprised my younger sister isn't watching this, she's pretty into her YA adaptations. I quite enjoyed it, reminded me of some of the stuff used to watch as a kid about this time of year like Borrowers (the old TV show, not the John Goodman film). Watchmen - Took me a few episodes to get into but then once I was in I was totally in and binged it all in like 2 days. Certainly one for the book readers, if you've just seen the films you might be a bit thrown (though if you've seen the film and know what was changed that might be enough). Mandalorian - I see now why on Wookiepedia all the dates are measured as "Before Baby Yoda" and "After Baby Yoda". Also Gus Fring (who I'll be honest I don't know from Breaking Bad but other things such as *cough* Once Upon A Time) Witcher - Really could have done with like a framing device maybe or something. I get it's based on short stories but you get whiplash from it jumping around so much chronologically, especially when your main characters are semi-ageless. Also Roache doesn't do enough squats so boo to that. Is making me itch to get into Witcher 3 again (and seemingly not the only one; news is its hit its highest concurrent play count on Steam in 4 years). Crisis on Infinite Earths - Obviously not as big as something like Infinity War/Endgame but has been pretty fun to watch so far (there's two episodes left in the new year) and cool to see some of the old folks pop up. Lex Luthor writing on the Book of Destiny in sharpie pen was a pretty great move. Got the new Expanse and Lost in Space to watch as well (you wait ages for TV shows to pop up then like twenty come at once).

Kylo Ren was the big bad. Snoke was just an arch-bad guy. And the Kylo v Hux thing would have done well instead the sidelined Ren on his hunt for Palpatine (who didn't need to come back and shouldn't have and the film still never explained how/why he did and kinda negates RotJ to do it) and got rid of Hux at its earliest convenience to introduce Richard E Grant (who is great, but also not really required when Hux was already there). Hux, Snoke, and the Knights of Ren were all things that JJ came up with and all things he brushed to the wayside to suddenly bring in Palpatine and spend ages hunting for a map piece to his hidden planet (hey...that sounds like another JJ Star Wars film...) rather than expand on those characters in a meaningful way. TLJ gave JJ a pretty solid and respectable foundation to build upon and push Star Wars further. Instead the guy who was (quite rightly) accused of copying A New Hope went on to disregard anything previously set up and went on to copy RotJ MK II. If you put the script through TurnItIn he'd be kicked out school for plagiarism as some of the lines are literally word for word from RotJ. But yes Kathleen Kennedy as a runner of the franchise should be kicked off after losing Trevarrow for this and Lord & Miller for Solo (and potentially Rian Johnson for KOTOR). At the end of the day it's still Star Wars and there's a wealth of talent chomping at the bit to join in (once again; look at Mandalorian and it's cast and crew). I think Mandalorian gives them a nice idea of where to go for the next few years in doing some "smaller" TV projects and then pop out with say KOTOR or whatnot on the big screen down the line. Just seen FLDs post: for the $billion element I've not been too off the net much but I've not seen any news on this breaking any particular records or sizeable chunks of that christmas holiday viewing so I'd guess it's doing pretty middling. It's the second lowest CinemaScore for Star Wars, just beating out the animated Clone Wars movie, so that won't be earning it much kudos with the big wigs. (MCU on the other hand has only once dipped below A- in 22 films and that was the first Thor).

Donut Country I got it on Switch with some of the pennies off my sister. Thankfully it was on sale because I started it to wind up to sleep and beat it before I was off to bed. All told I'd reckon it was barely over an hour. Kinda cute writing but the game didn't really amount to much and there's some puzzle elements but super minor. Could have done with maybe some more head scratching puzzles and a more katamari-esque scaling up. So yeah, kinda disappointed on that one.

Technically "Star Wars" (later Episode IV A New Hope) was done without a plan. Prequels had the benefit of knowing that you had to reach a point where certain characters are in play (and clearly certain bits have to ignore some of the things mentioned by older Obi-Wan). As for Rian Johnson his failing is certainly not as a film maker given Knives Out. JJ Abrams is the one that's continually showing his arse as a nostalgia-hack. Back in Into Darkness the whole "oh no, he's John Harrison not Khan"...half hour into the film "My Name Is Khhhaannn" (with no follow up "why are you saying that like we're meant to know who that is?"). He's done the same again here with Palpatine and Lando as those hits of nostalgia to try and earn a quick undeserved emotional win. JJ brought in the likes of the Knights of Ren and Phasma then did jack shit with them (at least Johnsons gave Phasma a bit more to do), and in RotS Knights of Ren once again did jack shit. As for not giving a crap on the next guy at least Johnson didn't end his film on the beginning of the next one (on an island that is a nature reserve causing headaches for the production crew of the next film too). Obviously some of this burden is shared by the co-writer of the film who has BvS and Justice League under his belt. Two well received films known for their coherency. Let alone all the stuff this film did to appease the shittiest of the fan base in making sure Rose was not in the film much and bringing in Poe's old (very female) flame, and when it does have a same-sex PDA it's in a very easily cuttable scene. Anywho watch The Mandalorian. It's pretty good. Jon Favreau at the helm. Has a sort of Firefly-ish vibe to it. Which I guess is me saying it's a space-western. Has these cool vignettes at the end of the episodes as credits roll:

....at least we have The Mandalorian. And baby yoda gifs (since "The Child" is no longer a spoiler I guess).

Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker Star Wars really needs a Kevin Fiege type person at the helm to give a general overall steering because this is clearly the culmination of JJ trying to set up a bunch of stuff (way too much stuff) in TFA with there being no clear marker for it to continue, and then Rian Johnson coming in with the "let the past die" stuff from TLJ, and then JJ coming back and trying to cram in way too many films into this one providing zero room for any breathing and just throwing a shit ton of fan service stuff and hoping no one will notice it's doing what TFA did and just reheating older Star Wars films rather than...letting the past die. That droid tinker alien is fun though.

Knives Out Watched this a few weeks ago with my mum. Being taking advantage of us both working mon-fri 9-5-ish jobs. Really enjoyed it, at first my mum wasn't wanting to go but watched a newer trailer and quickly changed her mind. Both found it quite fun. Last whoddunit we watched was Murder on the Orient Express and that was wank. This had character and flavour; some quite fun characters. Can't really say much without then going into spoiler territory. Oh and some quite current affairs stuff with the two grandkids barbing each other with jabs of "SJW" and "right wing troll" (it's kinda clear that one of the kid is going against the family grain). Frozen II This time also with my younger sisters. I'd imagine certainly fab for young kids, much the same way the first Frozen was. Some stronger character bits, a few more songs (I kinda liked the 80s power ballad dad rock thing). And the bigger laugh from me and my mum being the "I prefer you in leather" near the end. Jojo Rabbit isn't out until start of January in the UK. But really looking forward to it.

Soz I'm not in this. For one not been on here as much. For two, and it's the bigger one, I'm fine being a santa but honestly I don't game as much as I used to and wouldn't really want a gift that's likely to languish in my steam list for an age. Game wise in the short term I'm looking at what my bro gets for Switch and *fingers crossed* new house I can have a more permanent/better gaming set up.

The Outer Worlds Finished this on the weekend. I'd say similar issue around the ending being a bit flat (did fight, but like the ultimate last fight was TTD then a single bullet. Before that I'd had to fight RAM which was a painfully difficult fight compared to what had come before. Mainly in being a bullet sponge). I liked the general world and especially many of the characters but did feel it was a tad linear. You don't have much reason to pop back to anywhere (and nothing really changes; in Edgewater every just stood around for what'd be months really). Inventory was an absolute nightmare (mainly in only being able to sort your own inventory, but not for boxes or companions so hard to find what's a good upgrade or not),. Probably could do with significantly less consumables. All the branding and such meant that you had 20 food stuffs that did the same thing and they didn't sort by what they did. Fast travel, especially between planets was a bit laborious given you needed to get to Unreliable, then go into the nav console, then pick the planet, land, then pick where you wanted to fast travel too. Maybe have me do that the first time I visit each planet (what with "Navkeys") but then just have the map screen have Local | Region | Halycon so you can zip around a little bit quicker. I did enjoy the game, but some faults struck me as things that should have picked up early on. I'd be interested in future games, there's clearly mention of other colonies around, be cool to have them play about with different societies and such. I regret not encouraging the lass to check out the retirement centre. I'm also similar to Ethan, the selection on Game Pass on PC is quite nifty so might keep it around.

If only someone put together a guide some point.... (probably way out of date mind).

I think if you buy the clothes in the gyms then it's for the gym battles only. I know the cycling clothes are only for when you're cycling (I have pikachu ones a guy offered me in trade for some watts).

I went with the rabbit thing. Haven't looked at the evolution paths of the pokemon. I did much the same with the Onix ?. I'm finding that the pokemon that hang about in the open are basically mini-bosses. Having them out in the open is pretty cool, does mean in some cases if you run fast enough you can blast through an area, and lets you kinda pick which pokemon you want to encounter/catch. No more billion zubats.

Sorry Mal

So general thoughts so far (I've just done the Gym Challenge ceremony in Motostoke(-on-trent)) - As a brit until it was pointed out I hadn't realised the localisation was pretty good. Your "mum" would "go spare" if you left without saying goodbye. You can watch the gym challenge on your "telly". You're encourage to "chin-wag" with your friends. The train line is delayed. It's pretty solid on that front. - My last Pokemon was Omega Sapphire (3DS) so it's cool to see pokemon with dramatic cutscenes and such (though no voice is a bit off putting). - This game was clearly not made with the Switch Lite in mind. For one it doesn't seem to use the touch screen aspect at all, despite quite a touch friendly UI. I'd guess they mostly tested it out in TV mode. It's a bit annoying, especially given it would make managing boxes so much easier if you could drag and drop. Having the triggers act as confirmation buttons is also a bit annoying. And also since it's designed around singular joycon use the + only opens the map when you're in the menu. It's a bit weird given the special-edition Switch for Pokemon is a Switch Lite, but obviously those aren't developer decisions (but even regular switch is a handheld mode and touch screen...) - There's loads of QoL improvements, such as being able to manage your boxes out in the field. You get a fast travel/Fly option regardless of having a Fly equipped pokemon in your party. You can toggle move descriptions in battle, and it will tell you if it's effective or not so no need to memorise the big table of type-advantage (which was a big table back in my Gameboy Color Pokemon Blue days, even bigger these days). - Having "Y-Comm" be a constant (and only) HUD feature when it requires you to get Nintendo Online feels a tad shady in a kid focused game. (also coming from the 3DS games, it stinks a bit to have to pay to trade with online friends). Also I generally think the game looks pretty, but I'm comparing in my head with previous pokemon games (and on a Switch Lite screen which is smaller and crisper than Switch in either mode), rather than say up against Witcher 3 on a decent PC (cos Witcher on the Switch is impressive feat but clearly a bit fugly). I am enjoying so far.

The Mandalorian is pretty good (I know it's not out in the Outer Rim for a few parsecs but I smuggled it past an imperial blockade). First five minutes is clearly just "people like Boba Fett, how do we make them forget him" and hey look what we get. And this guy hasn't fallen down a Sarlac pit knocked over by a blind guy on accident yet! It's pretty much what I'd have wanted from a "A Star Wars Story" type film; to explore other stories going on around folks without having to bring in a Skywalker or what not. It's got a lot of "oh it's that thing from that thing" stuff going on but it nothing really strained so far. End of the day it's Star Wars and you're going to get stormtroopers (or similar), you're going to get droids, speeders, etc. I can kinda forgive that carbonite freezing is now a fairly small scale self-contained and regular thing rather than experimental, risky, and requiring a decently sized facility. It's looking like it will be a fun slick romp in the backyard of Star Wars. I have spoken.

Skywalkers so far are two to one on turning to the dark side. I think the smashed item is a Knight of Ren (or statue of a knight of ren). What of this Boba Fett movie?