If you have any interest in action films, you've probably heard of the John Wick films. I saw the first one in the cinema, and I've only just got around to watching the sequels. You don't need me to tell you they are worth seeing. Easily the best action films of the last 5 years.

But with all that said I do think they are somewhat overrated. I only say this because there are elements that I don't think are up to the hype. Don't get me wrong, the films are still great, but I also don't ignore other problems simply because there's no competition.


To me, the John Wick trilogy can be divided into two separate films.
The first film is a completely self contained, stand alone film that establishes a cool universe in the background, answering questions like "what happens to all the bodies after a gunfight" with a funny yet plausible in universe explanation. The plot is a straight up revenge story. Some arsehole kid of a Russian mob boss kills John's dog, and John kills his way through the Russian crime syndicate for revenge. John is capible, but still human.
Films two, three, and I'm guessing film four, expand the rules of the underworld, and the plot focuses on said underworld organisations. John Wick's abilities are slowly dialled up to the point of super human. In the first film he was almost taken out by a lucky bouncer, at the end of the third film he survives falling off a 7 story building. It makes up for this with more memorable action scenes.


John Wick
The first film, as I said, is the neatest in terms of plot and smallest in terms of scale. His dog is killed, he goes out for revenge killing any and all mobsters and hitmen in his way.
It's a good film with a couple of action scenes stand out. The raid on his house and him attacking the nightclub are my favourite.
Other action scenes are mostly forgettable. Such as attacking the safe house. There is also one scene that falls into the trap of shaky cam and not showing where anybody is in relation to each other, but I've heard it argued that's a deliberate choice for that scene. It makes sense, I get the argument even if I don't like it personally.
Much like Mad Max Fury Road, the claim that there's little to no CG feels hollow, as the CG muzzle flashes don't look great, and there's a few shots that feel CG even if they're not, like the guy falling over the balcony. I don't know if it's the quick pan down or the motion blur, but that scenes feels like bad CG to me even though it's a fairly simple (but still impressive) stunt and thus unlikely to be CG. I dunno, it's weird.


John Wick 2
A bad guy calls in a mark. A personal favour that John agreed before the events of the films. The favour demanded is to kill a member of the High Table, a super organisation that oversees all the other criminal organisations. John does the job, is stabbed in the back by the person who told him to do it, and John goes out for revenge. This sets up the events in John Wick 3.
There's some fun stuff here, the gearing up scene is great, and there's some fun action scenes too like the running gunfight through the streets. The hall of mirrors fight is cool, memorable, and impressive on a technical level, though I think it might be over-hyped? If there's a problem, it's that the action scenes in general aren't quite as memorable as the other two film. At very least, I struggle to remember them. It's not bad, it's just sandwiched between two other great films.


John Wick 3
The film starts where the second film ends. Though it does an Evil Dead Army of Darkness thing and makes some minor retcons the ending set up in the previous film. eg. John got a mark from management in 2, but he doesn't have it at the start of 3.
Having been kicked out of The Continental for breaking the rules, John is now on the run. Much of the movie is like a video game. The film moves from action scene to action scene at a fairly swift pace, with conversations included just to get the plot moving from scene to scene. And there are some great scenes. The horse back bike chase might be the meme, but I was more impressed by Halle Berry's action dogs. Those things are amazing.
There's a bunch of cool moments in this film. The knife fight in the weapons shop is bad arse. The afore mentioned dog scene is bad arse. The fist fight in the glass room is bad arse. The fist fight in the library is bad arse. Even that guy everyone says is from The Wire gets to be bad arse in this film.
While the CG has improved substantially, there's still some awkwardness. Some makes sense, you can't have a horse really kick a guy in the face, but the CG heavy bike chase took me out of the film.
The film ends on a sequel hook. Thereby completing the video game feel.

By the end of the third film the universe has expanded to the point of silliness and introduces some plot holes in the process.
Spoilers, but the whole premise of John Wick being hunted was because he's killed members of the High Table is stupid. The first he assassinated was a hit he had to honour or be killed, and the second was the person that ordered the hit. There's also a scene where John cuts off his finger to show loyalty to the high table, only to tell them to go fuck themselves a couple of scenes later. I suspect this is part of a sequel hook, but I'll cover that should I ever see John Wick 4.

Taken as a whole, the John Wick trilogy is great. The first film stands alone as a decent action and revenge film. The sequels provide lots of action with minimal plot to get in the way. Worth seeing if you're a fan of action films, but you already knew that. Hence why I decided to nit pick a bit more than normal.

I'm thinking of streaming game development, but I doubt anyone is interested in watching me write lines of code and read things on the internet. If you think I should stream that stuff, let me know.

The country is locked down.
A pandemic sweets the planet.
But nothing stops pizza delivery leaflets.

Also, this video is great.

The place I live has joined the Covid-19 quarantine club. ...sort of. See, we're under a soft quarantine. Schools are still open, but doctors and clinics are emergencies only, and police have told people to only leave the house when necessary. Though that hasn't stopped someone renovating outside.

So, my advice, and what I'll be doing over quarantine time.

-Stockpile while you can-
If you're in an area where panic buying hasn't started, add a few tins of canned food to your shopping list and put it somewhere. Keep doing this for a while. After a month or 2 you'll have enough canned soup to last should Covid come to town.

Make sure it's something that you would eat. Canned food lasts years, so if you still have them when all of this blows over, you can eat them whenever.

-Remember the companies that did right-
Some people have lost money or even lost their jobs due to Covid coming to town. Sometimes this is unavoidable. If, say, a convention has already spent your ticket money, they can't exactly give a refund. But some companies are keeping employees on without work or giving refunds out of pocket, putting people (customers or employees) over short term profit.


-What I'll be doing over the quarantine-
The quarantine will have minimal effect on my life. That said, I'm thinking of running a pen and paper RPG, doing some art/dev streams, or even streaming some games.

The dev streams are self explanatory. Leanna game, Sally Ninja, and maybe something else.

Art I'm not sure. Suggestions welcome.

Pen and paper RPG will be played on Roll20 (it's free) and will be either in text or discord. The rules are simple enough to learn on the fly so no past experience required.
https://sta.sh/0232izkle1qd
I'm also planning a longer DnD 5 campaign, but that's still in the planning stages.

As for game streams. I've just started a run of Fallout New Vegas with the World of Pain dungeon mod. Playing as Ada from Resident Evil, and might be limiting it to clothes only. Not sure.
I also want to play the FMV game Contradiction: Spot the Lier with a group of people on discord (I stream, you help me make choices), but so far no takers.

So, got an update on Sally Ninja, a new game to announce, and a possible new project I'd like your opinion on.

-Sally Ninja-
The game is still being worked on. I took a break from extended PC use recently, but I plan to get back to it. I've learned a lot in the process of making this. AI needs to be finished, and I have to figure out Godot's tilemap system again since it's getting tricky to have it do what I want.


-Leanna 2D-
If you read these journals, you likely already know that the Leanna game is a game I've wanted to make for a long time. Leanna game 2D is a small, top down, 2D version of that game. This is mainly as a way to get the core mechanics and programming down in 2D where it will be (hopefully) easier to solve any problems before making the jump to 3D.
Instead of making just a small slice of the Leanna game, I'm considering making it a small side adventure, possibly with a new character.
I'm still having problems finding to people to work on the game. Usually people just stop replying to messages when it's time to get serious.


-Fallout Mod-
I've been playing a lot of Fallout New Vegas recently and watching talks about the making of the Fallout games. I'm considering making a mod for one of the games.
It will be a dungeon crawl mod inspired by World of Pain, but aside from that my ideas are mostly vauge. I don't even know which game I want to mod as 3, New Vegas, and 4 all have their pros and cons. Opinions are encouraged.
If the mod was large enough, I'd like to ask some like minded people to suggest ideas, maybe even write terminal entries or notes.
But this is not just for my own fun. Bethesda Fallout games use snapping 3D tiles to allow them to create lots of dungeons quickly, so it could potentially help with my own work.


-The Rest-
As per usual, I could bore you with lots of projects I want to make but doubt I will, from a fetish RPG/strategy game, a Myst like game, and I even thought about a MRC-like racing game featuring kei cars. But practically speaking they're unlikely to see the light of day outside of tinkering project on the side.

Sally Ninja progresses. Much of the work is done. I had to make various changes along the way. Not least of which is abandoning my plan to use the Master System palette as the bullets were often very hard to see without completely changing them.

I've had issues with "best practices" and "Object Oriented Programming" and all that nonsense. See, apparently objects are not meant to talk to each other. They should be completely compartmentalized, and if they have to talk to each other you're doing it wrong. However, there are times when you need to access another object. Such as a bullet dealing damage to the thing it hit, or an AI getting the navigation data from the world map. I don't know how you're supposed to do these things without one thing talking to another.

I've decided not to add cameos from people's OCs. I think they'd be a bad fit for this game, and might be better in one of the other projects I'm thinking of doing, which I'll announce some other time.

The current issue is with AI. I had problems with getting them to follow a line, but I managed to fix that. Now I'm having problems with AI seeing the player through walls, or them losing sight of the player if they stand still.

Today, I checked my messages, and found a watcher from a few months ago was removed. Not usual, but I also found a bunch of messages saying that comments or the journal/submission there were posted on have been deleted, all from the last few months. So I don't know if someone has gotten nuked from FA or what. I don't know why FA doesn't say what submission or journal the deletion happened on.

So, after getting N64 emulation working, I ended up playing some N64 games.

-Goldeneye-
To no ones surprise, Goldeneye holds up. Playing it on Agent is a breezy playthrough. Secret Agent can get tough at points. Particularally control and Aztec. I persevered and did finish the game, and got most of the cheats up to that point. I considered playing 00 Agent, but I didn't feel up to the grind. But maybe some day I'll go back and try and get that Facility inviciblity cheat that evaded me when I was a kid.

-007 World Is Not Enough-
I've wanted to play this game for a while. What little I heard of it wasn't good. I played the game on agent and they were right. It doesn't seem so bad at first. The graphics are nice, and the gunplay is fast and responsive. It also has some nice cutscenes and even full voice acting.
There's some weird rules though. eg. Using the stun watch or punching people counts as lethal damage, though tranquilizers are ok. If you so much as graze a civilian, they die and you fail the mission, but you can allow them to gunned down by the bad guys without consequence. As such, there's no reason to try and save the random civvies since doing so is dangerous, only the mission critical hostages matter.
I think the real flaw with the game is the level design. It's awful, committing almost every level design sin I can think of off the top of my head. Instant fail stealth missions, check. Escort quests, check. Underwater maze, check. Lengthy unskipable talking scenes before action scenes with no checkpoints, check. Enemies attacking from outside the draw distance, check. Shitty boss fight after lengthy level with no checkpoints, check. The last level is so bad it's second only to Armoured Core in the bad final level competition.
It's telling that the games best level, a London subway filled with bad guys that reminded me of Soldier of Fortune, avoids most of these gimmicks. Focusing instead on fairly straight forward action.
Multiplayer is ...interesting. There's bots too which is nice. There are 2 things I want to mention though. First, you have the option to set how detailed the weapon models are, ranging from close to single player detail, to basically textured boxes not too different from the kind of weapons I made during my early 3D game attempts. Second, you aren't allowed to have good characters fight each other, which is a strange restriction.
One final thing I want to mention. The Playstation game seems to share similar assets like graphics and sounds, but the levels are different. I might give that a try some time, see if it's better.

-Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire-
Nostalgia fuelled retro gamers remember Shadows of the Empire as a great game back in the day. I never owned it, but I think I rented it a few times, or played it round a friends house. But I've seen a YouTube review complain that this is a bad game not worth revisiting. I didn't get far in the game, but what I played so far was fun, which I wasn't expecting because I heard it didn't hold up.

-F-Zero X-
F-Zero X holds up. The models are blocky, but the fast paced racing with smooth frame rate and controls keep it fun to play all these years later.
Most of the AI tricks common in racing games even today like rubber banding, aren't present here. The only trick I noticed is that a random few racers will be chosen to place highly more often than not. One thing I liked about GX was that this trickery wasn't present, so you could win a tournament despite not placing first due to being consistent. You can kind of do that here as well, but it's not as easy.
That said, this is some real nitty gritty stuff. The core gameplay of 30 super sonic cars battling it out over courses that twist and loop like roller coasters is great fun. You can also destroy other cars on the feild, so a well timed nudge to take out a rival is a viable strategy.
It's just well put together from top to bottom, and holds up great.


And that's about it for N64 games so far. I want to go back and play through Body Harvest, see if it's how I remember it, but otherwise I'm playing other stuff.

I'm an idiot that didn't do his research, so now I'm warning you not to do the same.

GRID was one of my favourite racing game on the 360. I wanted on PC for 60 FPS and better convenience. So when I saw it on humble bundle for £5 I bought it.

Imagine my surprise when I found that it was basically the same graphics, AI, etc. But the game had dumbed down considerably.

There's no hiring co-drivers, no buying cars, no sponsorship deals, no money at all, just exp.

Why would they do this? I'd understand if the console version was dumbed down from the PC version, but why the other way around? Turns out there are 3 versions. GRID the 360 version (technically called Race Driver GRID), GRID with 2019 version, and GRID Autosport which is seems to be a version made for the Switch.

So yeah, 3 games, all with the same name, but GRID Autosport is a PC port of a Switch port of a Xbox 360. Don't get this version.

What is the best art site, and what is the best alternative art site?

When I ask, I usually get the following answers.

DA- Bans stuff on a hair trigger.
Pixiv- All Japanese
FA- Owner is friends with rapists, antifa supporter that will ban you on their say so.
E621- Owners are zoophiles/into bestiality.
Ink Bunny- Owners are paedos, allows "cub porn".
Art Station- For industry professionals only.
So Furry and Weasyl- No one uses them because no one uses them.

Edit- From Sedra on Discord
Twitter - Timeline format. Horrible for image sharing
Tumblr - HAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Edit 2- AJVulpes suggested Newgrounds as an option.

Edit 3- Pillowfort. Is invite only, made as a Tumblr alternative.

So, options and opinions?

I've been emulating N64 games. Thanks to   Isinia for helping me with some issues during set up.

Emulating N64 games has always been imperfect. Not only does the consoles unique controller mean getting a good set up on PC is difficult, but the emulators themselves are a mess of various plug ins and settings that have to be tweaked and re-tweaked to get a game running right. Now, those issues have been solved. Kind of.

-Tribute 64 controller-
The N64 controller is unique beast. It's a shame then that Nintendo decided to make the sticks out of chalk, meaning even real hardware has a limited shelf life. If you owned a 64 back in the day, you likely remember that weird white powder that used to build up at the base of the stick. I do have a nearly new controller, but I'm afraid to use it.

For reasons I don't recall, I bought the Tribute 64 controller from Amazon. I got the USB version for use on PC, but there is a real N64 compatible version available as well. I'm kind of tempted to get one as the Tribute is a good controller.

First, the layout. It uses a Dreamcast/360-ish layout, with triggers acting as Z, and the D-pad being down and right from the stick, in the middle of the controller. This 2 hand approach is arguably better than Nintendo's weird 3 pronged monstrosity, but that's debatable.

The D-pad is not good. Not as bad as the 360s, but then what is? The build quality of the d-pad is fine, it's the position that's bad. While it's fine for menus, trying to play a d-pad heavy game on it is awkward due it it being crammed against the A and B buttons.
Buttons are decent. Nothing to write home about, there's no fancy switches or anything, but they are good enough to be reliable and they don't distract. One quirk is the start button would open Big Picture mode if I had steam open.
Shoulder buttons are fairly weak. The larger z triggers are fine, but the L and R buttons are a bit vague. They aren't PS3 levels of horrible, but they are enough to distract me when playing Goldeneye or Resident Evil, and I didn't feel I could rely on them. They have to be pressed in the middle to work properly. The build quality of the controller as a whole is decent, so maybe I just have to get used to them, or maybe it's the position that's bad. Whatever the case, there were a few times where I'd stop aiming for a moment in Goldeneye because I wasn't holding the button right.

But where the controller shines is the stick. They claim it was made in Japan for the best quality, and I believe it. It's basically the GameCube stick. ie. The gold standard of analogue sticks imo. This thing is glorious, and I'm kind of tempted to get one of these controllers for my real N64. It could be great for Smash Bros and racing games. On emulators, I had to tweak it a bit to get the sensitivity feeling right, but I don't want to blame the controller for that.

For the price, this is a good controller for playing N64 emulators. I've not tried it with other emulators, and I've the only d-pad heavy game I tried didn't play well on it, but so far I'm happy with it. And like I said, I'm considering getting another one to use on actual hardware.


-AngryLion Graphics Plugin-
I guess you could call me a mid tier emulation snob. I'm not someone who demands 100% cycle accurate emulation, although I see the value in that for archiving. But I do want emulators to "just work", and play the games fairly close to how they originally played. I don't mind playing Goldeneye at 1080p 60fps, but I don't want to play it with a mouse and keyboard or HD texture pack.
I think it's why the Xbox Live port of Perfect Dark didn't really do it for me, because they tried to cram a N64 control scheme on a 360 controller, and they messed with the graphics resulting in something that was uglier.

I was never happy with N64 emulation because it was always a hassle getting games working right, and by the time I got a combination of plug ins and settings I was happy with, I didn't want to play that game any more. I've been looking forward to the Cen64 emulator that seeks to do away with these plug in shenanigans, but that's not ready yet.

Anyway, enter AngryLion's N64 video plugin. A "pixel accurate" video plugin for N64 emulators. This is what I wanted. It runs games at native resolution at proper speeds. So while you don't get to play Goldeneye at 1080p 60fps, it does mean that most games I've thrown at it just work without any fiddling or graphical glitches.
For example, on the default Glide plugins, Shadows of the Empire stutters during the snow speeder level, and the on foot mission flickers like it's having a seizure. With AngryLion, the game just works and looks how I remember it.
It is technically slower than using Glide, but my 3.5hz i5 was enough to have it work, and I didn't notice any real glitches even on the "fast" setting.

By default it has some kind of filter on, but with a resolution this low it just serves to make it feel like you're looking at the game through a tub of Vaseline. I turned that off and enjoyed the raw pixels.
Which brings me to something that isn't a problem for me, but seems to be for others. The N64 had a standard resolution of 320×240. That's a lot of chunkiness for those who aren't used to that kind of thing. For me, the trade off is worth it. For others, it's a bit much. Especially if you're at your desk top.

At time I've writing, I've not tried it with the notoriously tough-to-emulate games like Rogue Squadron and Pokemon Snap. I did give Resident Evil 2 a go, and it worked fine with only a couple of minor glitches that could have been in the original version for all I know.

-Conclusion-
While it's too early to say for sure, I think the combination of the controller and reasonably accurate graphics plugins means N64 emulation is now something I can enjoy. Yes, it was a hassle doing the first time set-up, and some games still require tweaking (Body Harvest had some sound issues that required some fiddling to fix). But so far, N64 emulation is looking like something I can enjoy, instead of being a endless string of troubleshooting and compromises.

Well, my last film review of the year, and of the decade, is one of the old adventure serials. Serials we before my time, but according to wikipedia, serials were weekly, almost like a TV show, but at the cinema. With some inspiring famous blockbusters like Indiana Jones.

The plot has a man named Reardon, and a woman name Claire go to Mystery Island, to rescue Claire's father, who is being held prisoner by the evil pirate Captain Mephisto, who has a secret machine allowing him to change his appearance.

This cheesy set up could be entertaining, but unfortunately, the serial is boring, bland, and repetitive.

It has the usual serial problem of fake cliff hanger endings. For example, one episode ends with Claire's plane crashing into a mountain, but the start of the next episode shows the same scene, but the plane doesn't crash. It's a cheap trick I don't like but can be forgiven.

But each episode itself is boring and crammed with filler. I'm going to make up some numbers to explain what I mean. Each episode starts by showing the last minute or 2 of the previous one, sometimes with changes as said above. Whenever Mephisto transforms, we get the same footage of him using the transformation machine which is about 30 seconds to a minute. Let's say each episode is 15 minutes long. That's a quarter, if not a third of the show that's recycled footage.

This might be forgivable if the stories and action were good, but they're not. Fights are samey, though they usually destroy most of the room in the process. The plots are likewise samey, with the only progress being the first few and last few episodes. The final episode tries to have a few twists, but in order for it to work the final battle happens off screen.

So yeah, can't really recommend this one. It's too repetitive and boring to stay interesting. If you do watch it, watch the first few episodes, and skip to the last 2. You're not missing much. There is apparently a 100 minute movie edit, which I've not seen by it could potentially be better.

One thing I want to mention. Claire is not a damsel in distress. She is sometimes, but other times she rescues Reardon, and she's generally capable throughout. Not a bit deal, but just something you don't normally associate with the genre at the time.

Tomorrow, we'll be in the cyberpunk year of 2020. Have fun, and see you next decade.

How was your Christmas? Do anything fun? Santa leave you any presents?

I'm working on a game called Sally Ninja. Basically a Hotline Miami clone. Well, more like the Hotline Milwaukee game from Devolver Bootleg.

The question I want to ask is, should I add hostages in the game? This would mainly be an excuse to add sexy stuff to the game, but the graphics are so pixely it might not be worth it.

For context, this is how my last attempt to make a game like this looked.
https://sta.sh/02hjrkfbsza

And here's what the hostages looked like in that game. (Bottom row)
https://sta.sh/02b3tld7no84

Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle is a film that surprised me. Not only is it a decent film, but I didn't know it was about kids getting trapped in a computer game until just before I watched it.

The plot starts by setting up a bunch of kids (if you hate kids in films, don't worry, they aren't in it much) who fall into broad types. There's the coward, the loner jock, the nerd, and the self absorbed instagram thot.

Soon they are transported into Jumanji, which is now a games console instead of a board game. Each person turning into one of the characters from the game that are at odds with their personality. The coward gets the Indiana Jones esc Dr. Bravestone, the nerd gets the Lara Croft esc sexy kung fu expert Ruby Roundhouse, etc.

The cast at this point are perfect for their archetypes. I found it funny that Jack Black plays the eccentric professor when he played the eccentric film professor in one of the many King Kong remakes, and The Rock? He played this type of character in another film also called Welcome To The Jungle, which is kind of cheating.

The film is kind of clunky early on as it explains basic concepts like NPCs and limited lives as if the audience has never played a computer game before. But after that, the film gets good. It's a typical adventure movie/game with the characters moving through the different "levels" each making up typical adventure set pieces, almost like an extended episode of Reboot. I won't spoil the ending or anything that happens, but it's fun.

While I could knit pick this or that, there are 2 problems I want to mention. First is the overuse of CGI. I know, I know, I complain about this stuff too much, and here it's justified by being both a game, and because the nature effects couldn't realistically be done practically. But whenever Ruby Roundhouse does a flip and it cuts to a wide shot with a bad CGI puppet, I can't help but think it could have been better.

The other complaint is harder to explain, but the best way I can describe it is to say there's a lack of threat. I don't remember much about the original Jumanji, but I vaguely remember 6 inch killer mosquitoes and giant killer plants. The jungle here doesn't really have anything on that level. There's also little sense that the characters are in real danger. Maybe it's the video game layer with things like extra lives and characters skills that is getting in the way?

Despite my complaints, I liked Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. It's a fun film. Not exactly a classic or anything, but it's a fun time if you like adventure games or films.

A little while ago, I watched Mask of Zorro. A good film that I didn't review because I don't have much to say about it other than it's good and you should watch it if you like revenge films or adventure films.

In contrast, 6 Days is a mediocre film I have opinions on, even though it kind of doesn't deserve a review.

Long story short, it's a dramatisation of the Iranian embassy siege. Some terrorists took hostages in the Iranian embassy in London, and it ended when the SAS stormed the building. If you ever wondered why the SAS are so famous, and why in games are usually portrayed wearing gas masks and hoods, the Iranian embassy siege is the reason.

It's a great story that makes for great documentaries. While it sounds like a great premise for an action movie, a drama film, or even a game, in practice it doesn't. Likely because there are so many players involved, and none of them have a story arc that would make for good drama, and the raid on the embassy itself was over in minutes, and there were only 6 terrorists, so there's really not much to work with action wise either.
I'm no scholar on the siege, but the film seems accurate enough to the events as I understand them. The film mostly focuses on the negotiator, the SAS, and strangely, a news anchor standing outside. I would've thought the hostages would have got more screen time instead, but it is what it is.

While there are some good performances, especially the police negotiotator guy, there just isn't enough meat on the bones here due to the nature of events. To give an example. They try to hype one of the gunmen as a big threat, a trained soldier who will attack when cornered, but he's just gunned down like the rest. There's a story arc where one of the SAS guys is reckless and keeps missing guys hiding during training, but it never amounts to anything. Again, this is understandable because of how events played out in real life, but why bother adding that stuff at all?

6 Days is not a bad film. It's just nothing particularly special. And yet, it's also arguably the best you could do with the material. Maybe a fictional film inspired by the events of the siege would work better, or an in depth documentary with dramatic re-enactments. As it is, it's an average film for people who want to see what the Iranian embassy siege would be like as a film.

Do you like practical monster effects?
Do you like stories of Lovecraftian otherworldly horrors that drive people insane?
Do you like sexy librarian dominatrix types?
Have you ever wanted to see the guy from Dawn of the Dead run around in tiny orange briefs fighting monsters?

If you answered yes to at least 2 of those, you might like From Beyond.

The film stars Jeffery Combs as a scientist who, along with Dr Pretorius, has built a machine that allows them to see, and interact with, otherworldly creatures that are all around us. The experiment goes awry, leaving Pretorius dead and Combs accused of his murder.

The film wastes no time setting this up either. What I've described so far happens in the first few minutes, and the film opens with Combs starting the machine. Were this an older or newer film, then we'd spend 20 minutes establishing what the machine is, how it was built, where he buys his lightbulbs, etc.

Combs is in an asylum due to his crazy story that Pretorius was killed by an invisible monster that "bit his head off like a gingerbread man". Obviously the ravings of a crazy man, after all, gingerbread men can't bite peoples head off. Despite the evidence supporting this story, Combs is faced with a choice. Go to prison for murder, spend the rest of his life in an asylum, or re-run the experiment to prove his innocence.
He chooses the latter. Along for the ride is the cool guy from Dawn of the Dead, and a sexy psychologist called Katherine. This is where the film gets fun, with the resonator machine basically being a "make cool monsters appear" switch. This is where the film is at it's best.

Unfortunately, the last third or quarter of the film goes off the rails a bit. Yes, it gets crazy, but it's lesser than what was before. Monsters go from cool and weird to a vague, poorly defined mess. Characters actions make little sense as well. An example of what I mean is Katherine cleverly escaping various situations, only to be grabbed by the ankle and lie screaming ineffectually.

Overall though, I think From Beyond is worth seeing if you're into this kind of stuff. The first 2 thirds or so are fun, and at under 90 minutes it's fairly quick watch.

I should note, this film is freely available on YouTube at time of writing, so if you're interested you can watch it yourself.

The word Gaslight has 2 meanings. The first is the old meaning. After candles, but before electric lights, homes used to be lit with gas. Basically small hobs on the wall that were used for light. You can see these in the old Disney's Robin Hood animated film.
The second, modern use is to describe a form of abuse where the abuser makes the victim doubt their own sanity.
The modern use of the term comes from this story.

The film opens with an old woman being murdered. The killer then spends all night searching the house, ignoring valuables like jewelry. Eventually, the killer flees.
Some time later, a man and his wife (who recently had some kind of nervous breakdown) buy the house. As you might have guessed, the man is soon revealed to be an abusive jerk. Hiding things then blaming his wife. She is sent to her room to recover from these episodes, at which point the gas lights dim and she hears someone moving around in the loft.

The performances are fantastic. The guy that plays the abuser especially really sells the role. It's one of those performances that gets more impressive when you think about it, since he's not just acting as a villain, but a acting like a villain who is himself putting on an act. The rest of the cast are not bad either.
The film can be tough to watch in a single sitting, though for arguably the right reasons, as the scenes of abuse are uncomfortable to watch.

The film avoids most of the pitfalls from films of that time. For example, the locations feel like real places, not cheap sets or a sound stage as was common. The script is also lean and tight. I struggle to think of scenes you could cut and still have the film makes sense, something I attribute to this being adapted from a play.
That said, it still has some of the black and white film pacing with some scenes going on a little too long, and basic camera work for the most part. I think the end was a little too neat, but that's more of a nit-pick than a genuine complaint.

Overall, I liked Gaslight. I realise this review doesn't have any jokes in it, so here's a picture of a fox in a box.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/34031730/

While there have been many films based on the stories of HP Lovecraft, most of them are not what you would call Lovecraftian films. There's no paranoia, no cults, no indescribable horrors beyond mans understanding. Instead, most seem to be generic monster movies or student films with Lovecraft's name slapped on the cover.
That said, I have heard there are 3 Lovecraftian films worth checking out. In The Mouth Of Madness, The Ninth Gate, and the subject of this review, The Devil Rides Out.

The film starts Christopher Lee and That Guy You Know From Something But You Can't Remember What. When their third friend doesn't turn up for a reunion, they go to check on him and find that he has picked up a new hobby of devil worship/the occult. And the 2 decide to try to save their friend from this evil cult he's gotten himself up to his neck in.
All of this is established very quick and the film wastes almost no time getting to the good stuff. That quick pace, along with some great acting by the 2 leads, are the highlight of the film.

To give an example what I mean. Rex (the not-Lee character) is understandably skepitical at first, but gives his old friend a reasonable benefit of the doubt, and becomes a believer when paranormal stuff starts happening. There's no time wasted with fake skepticism, showing how these guys were friends back in the day, or setting up how Lee has all this occult knowledge.
I mentally likened these characters to RPG characters. Lee put his points into occult knowledge and mental stats, while Rex put his points into physical stats.

Unfortunately, the film has 2 big problems. One of which are the effects. The sets are great, and the best moments are when it does a lot with surprisingly little, like the old making people disappear in a puff of smoke editing trick, but there's some stuff that is just awful. The scene where they are standing in a circle of protection being assaulted by bad green screen effects and footage of a horse being played backwards and forwards several times in a row kills the mood.
But it's not just the big effects either. Some stuff is bad for seemingly no good reason I can think of. A car trip conversation with rear projection I understand, but when they use it during a car chase it just seems silly. There's also some badly done day-for-night shots, which is a problem in a film where the passage of time is important. On a related note, how much bad luck do you need for your day-for-night shot to be filmed on England's one sunny day of the year?

The second big problem is the film kind of falls apart by the end. You know it's bad when you need a monologue from one of the main characters to explain what just happened. At one point during the film, a character even asks "Why doesn't [the bad guy] just walk in with a gun and shoot us?", and that's handwaved away as the bad guy being too cowardly to put himself in harms way. Except he does put himself in harms way, and he has a cult of loyal followers he could order to do it. Yeah, I know that's the whole "Why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker." argument, but it's still a valid criticism.

I saw Devil Rides Out for nothing on YouTube, but is it worth your time? Eh. Maybe. As I said, the first half cuts a quick pace and has decent atmosphere and good performances despite some questionable effects. The second half is where the film starts to lose me, relying on ropy effects that suck the tension away, and a questionable plot that does the same.
If you like Lovecraftian horror, or games inspired by said horror, then it might be worth a watch. But don't go out of your way to see it. You're not missing out if you don't.

With Monster Madness completed, my next big video project was going to be a Joseph Anderson/TehSnakerer style long form review of The Surge 2, a game series I think is underrated.

However, the game uses Vulken and I can't record that on OBS. There are 2 options. One is to get Shadowplay (which was renamed to G-Force Experience). The main problem with that is that it basically has DRM/spyware. I don't know of any alternatives to Shadowplay and OBS that are good and support Vulkan. Maybe Dxtory? But I don't know anyone who's used it.

The alternative is to make a different video. The question is, what do you want to see? Code Vein is the obvious choice as it's another souls-like I've got my eye on.

So, Earth Defence Force: Iron Rain is out, seemingly came out of nowhere as I missed any hype or announcement for the PC release. But, I have a bit of a problem. That problem is-


I'm currently wrapping up work on my Monster Madness series for Halloween. I wanted to do a bonus video about Resident Evil Zero, but I don't like that game, and can easily pass on it.

My plan was to start work on a long form Joseph Anderson esc review of The Surge 2 after Monster Madness was done, and get back to work on making games.

I also want to play Code Vein at some point. Destiny 2 has been using up a lot of my time recently.

Part of me wants to say that this is just temporary. That all the games I'm interested in are being released in the same 1-2 month window. That I'll have lots of time before something else comes out. But games like Phantasy Star Nova (which I imported a year or 2 ago now) have shown that is rarely the case. I have a huge backlog of games and anime to get to. I have to pick and choose.

Some games like Destiny 2 and EDF Iron Rain are co-op focused. I'd have to jump on that particular boat with friends, or else it will end up in the "We'll play it later" bin that we never get around to.

Ideas Guy is going to me posting any game ideas I've had (within reason), mainly because I think it's fun, but also to gauge interest.

Today's post is the game "Past Darkness".
I got the idea when watching a   Tierafoxglove stream. She was watching an Eternal Darkness let's play, and we (Tiera and the chat) got talking about why there never any sequels or any copy cats.
There is a myth that Nintendo owns the copyright to sanity meter/bar, but I find that hard to believe as other games like Amnesia and Call of Cthulhu have used sanity meters.

Since then, I started thinking of ideas for a knock off game. There's lots of fun to be had with the insanity effects these days. Fake micro transactions and dashboard overlays spring to mind.

The rest of the game would be a clone of Eturnal Darkness, albeit looking more like the cancelled N64 version that the GameCube game everybody knows. The plot would involve a bunch of characters over a span of time. About 120 years from the late 1800s/early 1900s to now, and be limited to a small area that changes over time. This can be small changes like signs and vehicles, too layouts of levels and even entire areas being replaced.

What makes for a good day for you?

Maybe it's a productive day at work. Maybe it's doing house work. Maybe it's spending the day in your pants playing DotA. Maybe it's something else entirely.

What, by your own standards, is it that has you going to bed looking forward to the next day, or at least feeling good about the day you had?

I do like a bit of drama, at least as far as people being stupid or childish goes. But there was one I didn't talk about at the time because it wasn't funny drama, but legitimate "This woman is crazy" type behaviour.

A while ago, I was blocked by an artist that was far from favourite, but they did good work at a good price, and I liked the pics they drew for me. In casual chats, she would talk about the various crazy people she seemed to always encounter. Weird stalkers, people who claimed she was dating them, perverts leaving creepy comments on her works, that kind of stuff.

One day, I mentioned how I liked a pic she posted. She took offence to that and blocked me, banned me on Discord, and made a journal ranting about me, which included calling me one of the previous mentioned creepy perverts. If you're wondering, my comment was literally. "I like that pic you posted :D"

As you no doubt noticed, this is a bit different from the usual kind of drama I post about. This isn't someone throwing a tantrum because they lost at a game, or someone saying something stupid and repeatedly doubling down. This is genuine crazy, as in, they might have a problem or be on medication.

It also instantly made me re-think the various people she named and shamed before and after my ban. It's not been long since she posted another journal raging against and blocking a long time regular she calls a stalker because he favourited a bunch of pictures.

I don't know how to feel about this one. On the one hand their destructive behaviour seems self inflicted, but I kind of feel bad for them because she clearly has a problem and is going to destroy her income because of it.

So, after the recent outage, FA nuked old notifications, bringing me from over 10k to around 4500. So if you want to know who broke FA, it was me, I guess.

It would have been nice if I had some warning ahead of time, but then again I can't really complain if they were that old. Any idea that I'd get around to commenting or whatever weren't going to happen.

But, with the old notifications gone, FA will never go down again! ...right?