Ninchilla

For some stupid reason, I've now subjected myself to (re)watching all the Predator movies.

For some even stupider reason, that includes both AvPs.

Jesus wept.

Don't know if anyone cares to read my thoughts in greater detail, but I wrote it, so here you go:

Prey is the best of the lot. Characters you can give a shit about, a script that knows when to shut the fuck up, and some really inventive action beats. If there's a flaw, it's that I think it shows too much of the Predator early on.

The original Predator is pretty good fun, still, and almost holds up. Shane Black's vile "comedy" character really dates the thing, though.

Predators and the first AvP are both okay, or at least have interesting concepts. Predators tries to cast Adrien Brody as an action star, which I don't think would work even if he didn't spend the whole thing doing an impression of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, which is just distracting. AvP isn't as tense as it could be, with too long of a build-up to get to the action, and too few ideas once it gets there.

The other three, though, are absolutely awful, just irredeemably shit, though for a range of reasons - none of the scripts are any good, but The Predator has a surprisingly decent cast doing their best with material that's at best silly, and at worst offensive.

Predator 2, meanwhile, has a poor cast led by Danny Glover, who's far too old for the role and barely phoning it in on a budget of what looks like about five dollars. Poor Bill Paxton (the only actor ever to be killed by an Alien, a Predator, and the Terminator!) tries, bless him, but his character is shit.

Firmly at the bottom of the list is the truly abhorrent AvP2 - a stupid, adolescent, badly written, poorly shot, hyper-gory slog, with a frankly staggering amount of brutality towards women and children. While none but the top two on the list are really worth watching, this is the only one I'd recommend everyone in the world actively avoid.

There Is No Game: Jam Edition

Short free version of the premium game that, as its name suggests, was submitted to a game jam. It’s a short, silly, logic-based point and click that took me about half an hour to play through, at which point I immediately bought the real TING. Lovely stuff.

TING is great! I played through it a few years back. The Jam Edition is good, but the full version is just something else.

Thanks to Gar (and a lot of social media gifs), Star Wars Outlaws. Well, soon - it's installed, but I haven't started it yet.

Just finished the opening mission, and so far it's exactly what I expected (and wanted) from it. Stopped right before I had to get on the speeder bike, because I hear that's awful and wanted to end on a positive note. Looking forward to getting into it properly!

Play
Thanks to Gar (and a lot of social media gifs), Star Wars Outlaws. Well, soon - it's installed, but I haven't started it yet.

I've decided I'm definitely going to finish Assassin's Creed Mirage and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but at this point it'll probably just be a case of mainlining the story to get to the end. I just don't have the time, and neither of them quite clicked with me to the point of engrossment.

Want
The closer it gets, the more interested I am in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I was trying to go through Inquisition again in preparation, but despite having some great characters and decent plot stuff, the mechanics and structure (and the extremely shonky character creator) do their damnedest to kill that game stone dead.

I've hardly been on the outside of the DM/GM/LM screen for about a year; I don't even know if I remember how to only play a single character.