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.

Mad Max: Fury Road

I am not what you'd call a Mad Max fan. I never saw the original three growing up, at the early- or pre-teen age that seems to be when most of my generation developed a fondness for them; my awareness of Mad Max as a character or a movie phenomenon was largely through the zeitgeist - all I really knew was that it was a weird, car-obsessed post-apocalyptic action franchise.  Then, when the Fury Road hype started to build (and, let's face it, those visuals), I decided it was probably time I had a look.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a good movie. It's a hell of a lot of fun, with some great set-pieces, and zippy dialogue; but it has a few problems, too, which mean it fails to elevate itself to Avengers Assemble heights.

Some spoilers follow, but I'll try to keep things as safe as possible.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Full disclosure: I've not played much of Dragon Age Inqisition yet. I think my current play time is still under 20 hours, I've got at least two other party members to recruit, and the Inquisition's fortress of Skyhold hasn't even been mentioned once in my time with it.

Still, I think it's enough time to know two things: one, I'm going to get a hell of a lot more hours under my belt; and two, it has some problems.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I enjoyed the spectacle of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, though I don't think The Two Towers or Return of the King impressed me quite to the degree that The Fellowship of the Ring managed.  My main memory of leaving the cinema after Fellowship was thinking how great the Balrog had been, but Towers and King really just felt like More Of The Same; having read the books, the story was no surprise, and so all there really was left was the grand visuals (and Andy Serkis' phenomenal Gollum).

Enter the Hobbit.

The Dark Knight Rises

Forests' worth of writing has already been done on this subject, no doubt, and I'm not sure how much there really is to say.  I've been a huge fan of Nolan's take on Batman from the beginning, and despite a few minor flaws, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are way, way up on my list of movies I could watch repeatedly forever.

The Dark Knight Rises (or TDKR from here on out) is the last of Nolan's trilogy, and picks up 8 years after the death of Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight.  Thanks to laws passed in Dent's name, Gotham is cleaner than it's ever been, but Jim Gordon is still torn up a bit by the lie he and Batman fabricated to keep Dent's name clean.

Queen of the World

Queen of the World is the debut novel by Ben Hennessey, a fantasy story that follows the adventures of Sarene, a young girl who's grown up in the farmlands of Tamir, but is forced to embark on a long and difficult journey after her home is attacked.  The book begins with an introduction to Sarene and her family as they go about their daily lives, and cutaways to other characters bring in the hunter Kanderil, Hawk (a bandit-type fellow), and others.

Each of the characters that we meet are significant in some way, despite being so disparate and distant in the beginning, but their individual threads are more than interesting enough to keep me hooked - I wanted to know who they were, and how they'd end up influencing Sarene's journey.