Ben-Hur (1959)

For a film as old and as famous as Ben-Hur, I was expecting fewer surprises.

It's as long as expected, but for the most part doesn't feel like it, because there's more plot than I thought; it's more subtle and even-handed, politically, than I thought it would be; and it's got a lot more Jesus than I expected, as he shows up periodically to give someone a drink or wander around on a hill in the background, always shot from the back so you can only see his magnificent hair.

He's always accompanied by an organ swell, too, just to make sure you know it's really Him.

Rogue One

I love Star Wars.

The Empire Strikes Back is probably my favourite film of all time. I mean, sure, I was burned by the prequels, I'm not the hugest fan of The Force Awakens, and I think Return of the Jedi is actually more than a little bit rubbish, but I love Star Wars.

I hated Rogue One.

Don't Starve Together

Most of the time I've spent with Don't Starve to date has been vicarious; charming as it is, the Tim Burton aesthetic never quite clicked with me, and the gameplay was just a little too punishing; I prefer my games with a little more direction included, or at least some kind of instruction beyond the title, even if it's as simple as No Man's Sky's "reach the center of the galaxy at some point".

My wife and her sister, however, meshed immediately, so I've spent uncounted hours sitting on the sofa with Winston or Wendy or Woodie tramping around the procedural landscape, offering advice, if not assistance.

But now Don't Starve Together has launched on PlayStation 4, and I'm pitching in to "help".

No Man's Sky

I was going to leave it at No Man's Diary, but after a couple of weeks with this, I feel like I've digested it enough to talk about in a more review-y kind of way. No Man's Sky is too big, too different, too weird for any initial gut reaction to be properly accurate.

It struggled to live up to the hype - but then, how could it not? Pitched as the biggest, most ambitious game you've ever heard of, never mind played, No Man's Sky is a functionally infinite universe of planets to explore, mine, trade, and fight among. Gameplay is relatively simple - it's essentially resource and inventory management, with simple combat layered on top - but the "I'll just go over here and..." factor means there's always something on the horizon: an alien outpost, an ancient monolith, another upgrade you're just a few more minerals short of...

No Man's Diary #6

( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 )

Day 7
As I scour my current system for the elusive chrysonite, I find another ship upgrade. It's pretty incremental - only a single inventory slot - but I like the look of it, and manage to scrounge enough materials to get it up and running. I have to fly without a shield for a while, but only fall afoul of pirates once.

I ignore the next crashed ship I find; I'm finding that repairs quickly get expensive and time-consuming, so I think I'll wait for something that's a more dramatic upgrade than a single inventory slot.

Unless it, you know, looks really cool, or something.

Hitman episode 4: Bangkok (and Bonus Summer episode)

One town looks very like another when your head's down over your target, brother.

So far, Hitman has taken us to an exclusive fashion show in a Parisian mansion, a secret lab located under an Italian seaside resort, and the Swedish Embassy in Marrakesh, so a hotel seems a little... ordinary? Certainly, it's the first location where an ordinary person could find themselves without being a high-flying international assassin for hire.

But the Himmapan luxury hotel is no ordinary venue; this is, after all, Hitman, and that means plenty of backroom areas rife for exploration and exploitation.

No Man's Diary #5

( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 )

Day Five
I've spent the last two systems searching in vain for chrysonite, but haven't seen so much as an atom of the stuff. Salt in the wounds was Sarah practically tripping over the stuff on a planet she found, but I keep looking.

I find a world with huge mountains of gold, and spend an hour mining the stuff to swell my coffers a bit; despite the new ship I got yesterday, I'm still in the market for a bigger ship, but the ones I like the look of all cost between one and two million units. I've currently got less than half a million.

No Man's Diary #4

( 1 | 2 | 3 )

Day Four
As I fly low over the surface of another mostly-dead world, I spot a blob of blue and red standing out from the surrounding brown ground, a plume of smoke billowing out into the thin atmosphere.

I land nearby and sprint/jetpack over the rocks to survey my prize: a crashed starship.

The Thing (1982)

Waaay late to the party on this one; I've owned The Thing on BluRay for about two years, but I only finally got around to watching it last night, after seeing a bunch of people on Twitter talking about it in relation to an allegedly-anachronistic reference in the Netflix show Stranger Things.

It's been a journey.

Anyway, we watched it, and #controversialopinion time: The Thing isn't really that great.

No Man's Diary #3

(1 | 2)

Day Three
I warp into a new system, which I find is occupied by a gruff but honourable warrior race. The first planet I land on, I find another Manufacturing Plant - score! While trying to blast the door down, I attract the attention of the Guardian drones nearby. By the time the dust has settled and the door is open, I've killed five of them, but I now have the blueprint for antimatter, which will come in useful for making Warp fuel.

The second planet is a storm-prone radioactive rock with scattered oceans. It has no vegetation, and it's populated entirely by bouncing potato creatures. I haven't named the planet yet; I may just call it "Ireland".

Star Wars: Rogue One - trailer 2

You've seen it already, I know you have, but what the hell:

That... doesn't look too bad. Then again, Lucas managed to make Star Wars boring, so the guy who turned in a snorefest like Godzilla..?

Yeah, I'm pretty definitively on-record as not having a very high opinion of Gareth Edwards' last movie, so I suspect that if this is good, it'll be more down to a script he didn't write and the involvement of Christopher McQuarrie and Tony Gilroy. Still, I want to be optimistic, and I will say that if Edwards is good at anything, it's solid VFX work, and getting the sense of scale across. The guy sure can pick a DP, too, and I love the score going on here.

Felicity Jones seems about as emotionless as I'd expect from the guy, though, so... fingers crossed, but breath definitely not held.

No Man's Diary #2

(previous entry)

Day Two
I spend the first hour or so continuing to explore Coyote Tango. Setting out from the Trading Post I'd parked at, I stumble almost immediately on an upgrade for my Exosuit, increasing my inventory space by one. It's the first of three I eventually find, though I fill them all with mechanical upgrades, leaving my actual carrying capacity entirely unchanged.

As I explore - mostly from the air now, which is faster but requires a lot more Plutonium with repeated takeoff - I come across a Manufacturing Plant, which has a door that needs to be blown open. My mining laser doesn't make a dent, so I wander off. By the time I realise I can switch the multitool into a combat mode, I've lost track of where I am, and can't find the door again.

I spend about another hour trying in vain to relocate the Plant, but just find more outposts and beacons, as well as enough alien sites to increase my known word count to over 30. Eventually I give up on ever finding the door again, and blast off to investigate the system's third and final planet.

No Man's Diary #1

Day One

I wake up on a hot, windy planet, and the first thing that happens, after a slow scan of the horizon and my smoking, damaged ship, is a warning from my suit that the temperature is hazardous. According to my HUD, it's less than 40 degrees Celsius, but I take the suit's word for it that the depleting heat bar is a bad thing, and move off in search of shelter and the materials I need to repair my ship and multitool.

Ninchilla Prime (my new homeworld) is a planet of rolling hills and towering plant life, scattered with timid herbivores; in the whole time I spend there, I don't see a single hostile or carnivorous animal (though there is a particularly aggressive plant species I call Mr. Whippy).


There's an almost overwhelming amount of stuff here, most of which I leave with their auto-generated names, although I later regret not renaming the system to something more memorable in case I ever want to come back.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Ultimate Edition)

When Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (I'm not going to bother typing the full title again) was released to a critical savaging, my interest level in it leapt dramatically upwards. I wasn't a huge fan of Man of Steel, and I don't know that I've seen a Zack Snyder film that I thought was particularly good (though Watchmen probably comes closest), but there's something much more compelling to me about a grand, glorious catastrophe.

But as the venom for Dawn of Justice faded, so, too, did my urge to see it, and I ultimately never got around to watching the thing theatrically. But now the alleged Ultimate Edition is out, and the talk online was that it actually wasn't bad - so, I figured, why not.

Now, I've still not seen the theatrical cut, so comparisons aren't possible - but I figured that it'd be interesting going into the "director's cut" without any baggage (well, aside from the trailers, and the aforementioned critical mauling)... but I can easily see how a hacked-down version of this could have been terrible.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Ultimate Edition... is.

Warcraft: The Beginning

There are probably two major barriers to entry on Warcraft, and characters with names like Gul'dan, Khadgar, and Medivh only represent one of them; the other one, and perhaps the bigger of the two hurdles, is that there's just too much here to fit into a two-hour movie.

The opening is breakneck, throwing characters, locations, and names around with enthusiastic abandon, but without really introducing any of them. It's a shame, because there are some valiant attempts at character work scattered throughout, but a huge amount of development feels missing - it often feels like they've left fast-forward on for long sections, as we whizz through (or, more often, past) the "craft" part for the sake of getting to the "war".

Full disclosure: I was a big WoW player for about seven or eight years, from just after launch in 2007 to about midway through Cataclysm. In that time, I was something of a lore fiend, and went so far as to read several of the tie-in novels. The point being, I already had some idea of what the plot of Warcraft was going to be before I even got close to booking a ticket.

I have no idea how confusing this film must be for someone without that reference point.

Hitman: Marrakesh

Another month, another exotic, sun-drenched location to explore; IO Interactive only just managed to get this one out in May, but they are just about managing to keep to their one-a-month “schedule”, and Marrakesh is yet another change of pace from what’s gone before. Where Paris was contained clockwork, and Sapienza was sleepy and flexible, Marrakesh is tense and claustrophobic.

The targets this time around are a banker, currently holed up in the Swedish embassy, and an army general looking to use public unrest surrounding the banker’s paramilitary-assisted avoidance of prosecution to build up support for a military coup.

With violence brewing, 47’s sent in to prevent the fall of a government… or, more specifically, the building contracts that said government has awarded to the ICA’s construction-company client.

The Jungle Book

Lots of people have a nostalgic attachment to Disney’s first take on The Jungle Book, but I'm not one of them; there are a couple of catchy songs in there, but there’s not a whole lot in the way of story, or even characters. So I thought it was an odd choice for a live-action remake, but the fact that there’s so much space to fill in means that on reflection, it probably makes more sense than Beauty and the Beast or The Little Mermaid.

And it really works - the script fleshes out the world and the characters, and builds a more robust plot with actual stakes. The credits describe it as "based on the books by Rudyard Kipling", so perhaps the changes come from this being a more accurate adaptation, but either way, it's a much better story than the 1967 version.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

The cliff-notes version is this: the writing is as good as it's ever been, and Naughty Dog have squeezed near-unbelievable performance out of the PS4. The gameplay is... well, it's Uncharted: slightly floaty (but mostly forgiving) puzzle/platforming interspersed with fairly loose gunplay, but both are spiced up by the introduction of a grappling hook, which opens up possibilities for both traversal and Tarzan-swinging aerial takedowns that simply never get old.

Narrative-driven games are always more difficult to talk about. Potential spoilers abound, even when discussing the opening stages.

So I'll try and avoid spoilers, as always, but... Pyrates - ye be warned.

X-MEN: Apocalypse

For the most part, movie versions of comic book properties have largely avoided the convoluted continuity that’s always been (for me) the biggest barrier to reading comic books. With the ongoing success of the MCU, however - and to a lesser extent, Deadpool and Batman v Superman - we’re starting to see more and more characters forming larger and larger teams.

The X-MEN franchise's ownership by Fox means that (for now) Avengers crossovers are off the table - but there have been a LOT of X-Men over the years, and X-MEN: Apocalypse wants to play with them all.

To that end, it brings back most of the First Class/Days of Future Past roster (Xavier, Magneto, Mystique, Beast, Havok, Quicksilver), along with the titular Apocalypse; joining them are new versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Angel, plus cinematic newcomers Psylocke, Jubilee, and Caliban.

Most of these characters have very little to do; aside from Magento, Apocalypse's horsemen serve the same basic function as set decoration.

Jubilee's entire contribution is taking Nightcrawler to the mall.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Yeah.... I’m a little bit late. The Force Awakens released on Blu-Ray in April, but I hadn’t seen it since it opened theatrically in December, and yesterday seemed as good a time as any to revisit.

The reason I put off rewatching it for so long was….

Okay, so a little bit of personal history: the high bar for Star Wars, walking into The Force Awakens, was The Empire Strikes Back, which is probably my favourite movie. When The Phantom Menace was still in production, I avoided pretty much everything about it (only to be spoiled by the soundtrack listing - thanks a lot, Qui-Gon’s Noble End), only to be horribly disappointed.

Two days before Attack of the Clones was released, I read the screenplay, which is the clearest demonstration I can come up with for how much The Phantom Menace had damaged my affection for the franchise.

The Force Awakens was going to be different, though - the first new “main series” Star Wars in a decade, with not just a new director, but one who was a self-professed fan. Even watching Abrams’ Star Trek, he seemed like he’d be a better fit for a galaxy far, far away….

Captain America: Civil War

It's good.

Really, really good.

...I guess I need more than that?  Okay, then...

Captain America: Civil War isn't just a sequel to Age of Ultron, although it is that as well; it's also a sequel to The Winter Soldier and The Avengers - even Ant-Man, to an extent. It's the first Marvel movie that seems to really reward - if not outright rely on - knowing who all these guys are, and if you've skipped any of the four movies mentioned above, you might find yourself a little confused.

Especially by Vision.

Having said that, it does a pretty good job of re-establishing who people are and how they relate, without getting bogged down in retreading stuff you already know if you rewatched the lead-up recently.

I'm going to try and avoid spoiling anything, but be warned - if you want to go in blind, all you need to know is this:

It's good.

Really, really good.

Hitman: Sapienza

Six and a half weeks after it launched, I've still not done everything there is to do in Hitman's excellent inaugural mission, Paris; so of course, here comes episode two, set in the sunnyAmalfi coast town of Sapienza.

If I didn't manage to rinse Paris yet, I don't think I'll ever see everything there is to see here - Sapienza is colossal. Aside from the villa that acts as a sort of focus for the new Story mission - which itself feels almost a third the size of the Palais de Walewska in Paris - there are winding streets, apartments, offices, a beach, boat docks, sewers, and more to explore.

And of course, there are loads of NPCs to choke unconscious before stealing their clothes.

The Road to Civil War - Avengers: Age of Ultron

With Captain America: Civil War less than a week away (for the UK; two, if you’re Stateside), I’ve gone back to rewatch some of the MCU movies leading up to it. The most directly-related, I figure, are Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, so those are the ones I’m going to be looking at. It’s been a while since I’ve seen most of these, so it’s interesting to revisit them with a new perspective: both the passage of time, and the knowledge of just how successful Marvel’s grand cinematic experiment actually turned out to be.

I previously reviewed Age of Ultron for this blog, but it's interesting to go back to it - both with a little bit of hindsight, and the lead-up movies fresh in mind.

Ultimately, Age of Ultron is a movie that I feel a little bit conflicted about; a lot of the sequences are great, and the dialogue is solid, zingy Whedon, but some of the character beats still feel odd, even if nothing is outright wrong.

This is now the third time I've seen it, and having previously watched it with the commentary track on, I think I understand better what Age of Ultron is attempting - even if I'm not sure it succeeded on all counts.

The Road to Civil War - Captain America: The Winter Soldier

With Captain America: Civil War less than a week away (for the UK; two, if you’re Stateside), I’ve gone back to rewatch some of the MCU movies leading up to it. The most directly-related, I figure, are Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, so those are the ones I’m going to be looking at. It’s been a while since I’ve seen most of these, so it’s interesting to revisit them with a new perspective: both the passage of time, and the knowledge of just how successful Marvel’s grand cinematic experiment actually turned out to be.

Much has been made of Steve Rogers' status as the man out of time; a guy from a simpler time, with simpler values. Usually, this is to show how a more straightforward, black-and-white, right-and-wrong attitude is better. And yeah, Steve always tries to do The Right Thing; but a Good Guy Doing Good Things isn't interesting - the core of good storytelling is conflict - so the question with The Winter Soldier is, how do you make Steve Rogers conflicted?

The Road to Civil War - The Avengers (Avengers Assemble)

With Captain America: Civil War less than a week away (for the UK; two, if you’re Stateside), I’ve gone back to rewatch some of the MCU movies leading up to it. The most directly-related, I figure, are Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, so those are the ones I’m going to be looking at. It’s been a while since I’ve seen most of these, so it’s interesting to revisit them with a new perspective: both the passage of time, and the knowledge of just how successful Marvel’s grand cinematic experiment actually turned out to be.

It’s hard to imagine, after four years and over a billion dollars, a time when The Avengers seemed like a risky proposition - but even with the successes of Iron Man, Thor, and The First Avenger, a team-up movie on this scale was a big gamble. Getting Nerd God Joss Whedon to take the helm helped build up a lot of good will, though - after if anyone could handle an ensemble this outlandish, it was going to be Whedon.

So out it came, and the rest is incredibly profitable history. Marvel cemented themselves as a box-office force to be reckoned with, letting them run wild with their weirder properties and led us to the five-year slate of releases ahead, including Doctor Strange, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel - all of which would have been completely unimaginable a few years ago.

So, the gamble paid off - in just about every way. The Avengers Assembled, and to a great reception.

So, four years and six more movies later, how does it stand up?

The Road to Civil War - Captain America: The First Avenger

With Captain America: Civil War a week away (for the UK; two, if you’re Stateside), I’ve gone back to rewatch some of the MCU movies leading up to it. The most directly-related, I figure, are Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s been a while since I’ve seen most of these, so it’s interesting to revisit them with a new perspective: both the passage of time, and the knowledge of just how successful Marvel’s grand cinematic experiment actually turned out to be.

When Captain America: The First Avenger was initially released, I liked it, but less than I wanted to. It had most of the ingredients - the performances are pretty universally great, especially Chris Evans’ earnest, noble Steve Rogers, and the script has all the wit and character that are Marvel’s hallmarks - but I remember leaving the cinema with a sense of airlessness, a lack of gravity to the whole thing, like there was never any real feeling of threat.

Part of that I put down to director Joe Johnson, whose 1991 movie The Rocketeer - which also revolves around an average-guy-turned-hero fighting nazis in the 1940s - left me with a similar lack of more visceral excitement. Maybe before, I just wasn’t paying attention, though - The First Avenger is better than I remembered.

A lot better.

Doctor Strange (teaser trailer)

The first teaser for Doctor Strange is out:

I can't remember the last time I was awestruck by a trailer. I mean, yeah, Cumberbatch sounds a little more... Gregory House than I expected, but but... holy hell, this looks incredible.

Platinum Demo - Final Fantasy XV

Confession: I've never finished a Final Fantasy game. Not even VII (I once got to Gold Saucer). In fact, I've never finished any JRPG; something about the systems, the style, or some other aspect of the things just never clicked with me. A few have come close; Final Fantasy XIII, once I worked out what the hell was going on, but that was cut short a mere 28 hours in when my PS3's hard drive failed, and I've never worked up the energy to start again.

But, despite my own lack of synchronicity with JRPGs, they're one of the juggernauts of the "hardcore" gaming community, so I keep coming back, thinking that maybe this one will finally let me in, allow me to glimpse what it is that everyone else seems to love so much.

Based on this demo, Final Fantasy XV will not be the one to let me in.

Boot Sheep says GOODBYE

After a long, hard, 5-minute think, Boot Sheep is no more.

Fracturing my online presence into multiple "personalities" doesn't seem like the greatest idea, so here goes: everything now coalesced (where possible) to Ninchilla.

Any references to Boot Sheep in the handful of reviews I've ever posted remain, to confuse any future readers who dare to head off into the archives (did I really think that well of Transformers?).

Anyway, I'm going to try and post more thoughts/reviews, though I'll also keep things brief. I'm not one for thinkpieces, and if you are, well, there are plenty of places to look for those. I'm not going to bother with scores, or even the old yes/no system (at least, for now) - hopefully I don't write so badly as to make getting to the end that much of a chore.

So here we go.

Hitman (2016)

Hitman is not an action game. Despite its title, it’s not really a “murder simulator” either, though I don’t doubt there are some who’d call it that, pearls firmly clutched; no, after a lot of hours spent exploring the cavernous mock-settings of the ICA training facility, and the opulent, baroque Parisian palace, I’m pretty sure it’s a puzzle game. A huge, sprawling, complex puzzle with dozens of solutions - and, yes, okay, quite a lot of murder.