Andor is Really Good (Really)

I’ve been a little down on Star Wars lately.

The Abrams-Johnson-Abrams story hand-off in the sequel movie trilogy still pisses me off. Have a meeting and work your shit out, K? That’s what professionals do.

Mando is fun in a Saturday morning cartoon / western sort of way. I wanted to throw something at my TV at parts of The Book of Bo-bo. Kenobi was at least partially broken in the Editing Bay, though there is a pretty good fan-edit that fixes the pacing and re-assembles it as a movie instead of a clunky serial. So, I was frankly surprised how good Andor is. It is … Empire Strikes Back, good. (Yeah, I was skeptical, too)

I can’t really blame those who have passed on watching Andor considering recent installments out of Mickey’s Star Wars film factory. A TV Series about a not-particularly interesting secondary character from a prequel-one-off that hit theaters 6 years ago.. How could this possibly be any good? If it wasn’t for the persistent praise of friends and reviewers with similar taste, I’d likely have skipped it too.

I’ve heard it said that many of the Disney Plus Star Wars shows are like John Favreau and friends playing with their Star Wars toys; smashing them together and having fun. With Andor, Tony Gilroy puts the toys away and explores the moral perils of a burgeoning rebellion, the inner workings of a galactic bureaucracy, the thin line that separates revolution and terrorism, imperial control and cultural dominance. Don’t get me wrong, there is room and audience for both lanes: The Toy box and the Assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

NSFW The Critical Drinker’s Review of Andor that puts it into perspective better than I can…

Andor is a 12-episode series on Disney Plus that is structured (more or less) into 4 related mini-arcs. It is a dense show and not conducive to play with your phone second-screen shenanigans. The good parts are wrapped with neon arrows and may not be evident until the story develops.

The initial episodes lay groundwork for the conclusion and in the moment, they felt to me like a slow burn. I’ll admit that up through about episode 4 or 5 I wasn’t really getting what the buzz was about. By 6, I was sold and the show just amps up in every way until the final scenes, which pay off the initial setup episodes.

Reprising his role as the (not yet) rebel spy Cassian Andor, Diego Luna provides a stable through-line character for the series. Though much like in Breaking Bad and similar modern anti-hero dramas the supporting characters elevate the overall experience. I don’t want to say Cassian takes a back seat in his own show rather they know how to use him and when to cut away. There is a brief finale after-credit scene that pays off an assumption most astute-viewers will make that tie this series back to Andor’s final moments in Rogue One.

Genevieve O'Reilly reprises her role as Mon Mothma and this time she isn’t relegated to battle briefings. Her subtle character work, poise and grace make for a terrific performance. Her political machinations within the imperial power structure and viewer knowledge of the cost of her choices make for great television. Stellan Skarsgård plays Luthen Rael, a pre-rebellion co-conspirator and art / antiquities dealer. Watching him switch between an art-dealer and bit of a dandy to a menacing revolutionary is quite the spectacle. If you’ve seen Skarsgård in Chernobyl, you know what I‘m talking about. When he switches on the gravitas, his performance (and his ship) are my favorite moments of the series.

About late mid-season, Andy Serkis makes and appearance and without spoiling anything: holy crap, he’s awesome. Really, everyone turned in exceptional performances by any standard much less by Star Wars standards. I’m leaving other characters out in the interest of brevity that frankly deserve discussion but…. maybe later.

The writing and dialog on this show are the best I’ve seen in Star Wars and top contenders across modern drama, television and streaming content. Andor isn’t going to beat Breaking Bad, The Leftovers, The Wire on prestige drama pantheon but it belongs in that category, which is a strange thing to say for the same intellectual property that brought us Tatooine Vespa gangs and Luke milking a space-Walrus.

My Pitch

If you are looking for a more textured and complex story in the Star Wars Universe that is somewhat divorced from dogmatic-preachy Jedi, sniveling Skywalker descendants and Cackling Sith - give this show a try.

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… If you require further evidence, here’s a clever edit from a Luthen speech overlayed from other clips so that it obfuscates spoilers…

God of War Ragnarök: A Perfect Sequel

Bias upfront, I’m fully in the bag for this franchise! (My review of the previous installment, here.)

With the latest installment of God of War, Santa Monica Studios confidently doubled down on what made the last installment such of a success. This game knows exactly what it is, an epic an immersive adventure campaign. It breaks with trend from other game studios to try to emulate large-arena online multiplayer or throw too many modes into a game with too little QA. (cough, Halo Infinite, cough)

The game picks up 3 years after the events of the last installment. Fimbulwinter is in full effect, ostensibly set in motion by the death of Baldur. A realm-hopping adventure ensues with surprising twists and turns; including both familiar faces and well-imagined new characters. It is a father-son adventure. It is a coming of age story. It is an epic throw-down of cosmic proportions. Its just damned fun. Honestly, this game has a better story than most recent Marvel movies. The story is well done, the voice actors are well cast and the gameplay never felt like a grind. Most importantly - they stick the landing.

My son and I played through the campaign over a few days, with him occasionally taking the controls from me in frustration of my old-guy reflexes and persistent stubborn refusal to turn-down the game difficulty. The game doesn’t include an official co-op but it isn’t really a detriment, in my opinion. Having a game where you can hang on the couch and pass the controller back and fourth is such a refreshing change from the high-fps-multiplayer focus of most modern console fighters and battle sims.

Pro-Tip: When the friendly NPCs suggest you take some time to explore, take that hint and use the opportunities to buff the character by completing favors or exploring the realms. These prompts are well-placed throughout the storyline.

Collector’s Edition

I put a not-insignificant amount of time into trying to find the Jötnar Edition but I refuse to buy from scalpers. Eventually, I found a Collector’s Edition (which is a slight step down from the Jötnar Edition) at Best Buy.

Funny, the God of War Ragnarök Collector’s Edition Box is larger than the PS5 box.

I do appreciate that the interior box riffs on the Jötnar shrine motif from the game. That’s a nice touch. The included Mjölnir toy/prop is larger, heavier and nicer than I expected though I suspect it wouldn’t survive a great amount of rambunctious playtime.

I did find it a little strange and disappointing that even the Collector’s Edition failed to come with an actual disc but instead a steel case with placeholders for two discs and download codes.

W.T.F.

Performance Observations

We played on both the PS4 and PS5. While the PS5 edition looks great, the PS4 edition looks great, too and performs surprisingly well. The game-load times aren’t punishing on the older console. I suspect they targeted the lowest common denominator for performance benchmarks and allowed the PS5 GPU to do some basic environmental effects and lighting enhancements through #if-[env] type directives or target-conditional compilation.

In this, I think they found the right balance; especially considering PS5 rollout and inventory challenges. All this to say it looks great but I don’t think it ever actually challenges the PS5 hardware. Our PS4 is on a 4k QLED Samsung and the PS5 is on a 4k OLED. The inky-deep blacks of the OLED/PS5 combo really made some of the scenes pop but if you are rocking an older setup - you will still find some jaw-dropping visual set-pieces.

Video Clips

The video clips below might serve as mild spoilers. You have been warned.

Scope and Scale

It took several multi-hour game-sessions to complete the main storyline while taking time to complete 2-3 side quests per opportunity in order to buff the characters. Figure about 30 hours to complete the main storyline. At conclusion, I found that I’d only completed about 35% of Vanaheim, less than half of Svartalheim and Alfeim. Like the last game you are encouraged to continue playing through a number of side quests and explorations that are also quite fun. My only complaint is that at times you can feel that you are after-the-story because your NPC traveling companions have little to say or are repetitive. The challenge of filling 60+ hours of relevant and entertaining dialog isn’t lost on me.

Free Play Florida 2022

I was pretty stoked to check out Free Play Florida this year. It has been a few years since I’ve made it back to this particular show.

Not wanting to diminish the incredible amount of work that goes into these shows…

Maybe my expectations were just too high or not properly aligned but I felt like the show fell short of previous years. I loved the years at SFGE and Free Play Florida that had the game room in multiple carpeted rooms; often with with music and novelty lighting. There was a certain vibe I was hoping to recapture.

I was really looking forward to the carpeted divided room days of the past as expressed through Free Play Florida.

The Verdict: meh

Carpet, Auditory Experience - ☑
Music & Vibes - ☑
Lots of Arcades - ▢
Diverse Lineup of Pinballs - ▢
Well-Maintained Machines - ▢

2 out of 5 checkmarks.. So, much of my post about the show, isn’t going to be about the show. :)

The Venue

The Venue for Free Play Florida is Caribe Royal in Orlando. My initial impressions of the resort are all positive. Friendly staff, spacious rooms, comfortable bed. Magical black-out-curtain on the window. The show room blocks were reasonably priced, too.

The venue also hosted American Legion members and as someone with one foot in NerdDom and one food in other interests, I found the mingling of Retired Vets and ÜberNerds to be choice people-watching faire. The mixture of poor hygiene, stale cigarettes and untethered-from-reality bumper stickers really took me back to being a kid and of riding along with Dad delivering semi-truck tires to truck stops service centers.

Jock Lindsey’s Hangar Bar

A trip to the Disney-adjacent portions of Florida wouldn’t be complete without a stop off at Jock Lindsey’s Hangar Bar for a drink.

Awesome Legos are Awesome

Queuing Up and ticketing

Always find it a little odd when preordered tickets and day-of tickets go into the same line. The checkin process was struggling a bit; the Friday-night queue took about 20 minutes to pick up pre-ordered tickets and a game shirt. We actually asked questions about after-hours events and didn’t really get answers. Maybe they are just figuring it out..

I’m also wondering what the point of the lanyard AND the paper sticky bracelet are. Generally speaking it isn’t a good idea to adorn yourself about town with something to draw attention to your tourist-status. Makes you a target for shenanigans. Also, I’m about to go eat seafood… so now I get to walk around with a crabby-smelling paper bracelet? Negative Ghost-rider, the pattern is full.

The Game Floor

I have to admit, my initial impressions walking around the game floor were: “This is it?” On the first night of the show, none of the AAA new titles were on the floor and the larger vendors were still at IAAPA. The arcade showing was poor and many, if-not most of the pinballs had issues, often serious ones.

Why do people bring rusted, broken ragged out games to a show just to sit turned off all weekend? I recall feeling a certain level of apprehension bringing games that lead me to want to harden them, have a nice presentation. I’m not specifically picking on the game above, as it did get fixed but there were many games down all weekend and quite a few rust-buckets in the lineup, this year. Seriously, why do this? Just to get a free game-bringer pass by sacrificing the continuity of show quality?

Normally, these shows are such a challenge to fit all of the games into the space, you’d never see the backs of a pin row like this.

The [People] : [Working Games] seems a bit off here.

I don’t know why this was here but it made me smile; I suppose that is reason enough.

Dinner was had.

Day 2: things are looking up

Ice Cold Beer Remake

Flipperless Pinball

A legend plays a legend

Liquid Dinner and great tunes

After Party

It is pretty common for shows to offer after-hours events for game-bringers and show exhibitors. Free Play Florida opens up and allows folks to buy extra-magic-hour tickets for $25. Ostensibly, the whole point of the after party is to get in with shorter lines.

That really didn’t pan out for this show. The lines were still there.

Sorry to harp on this but for some reason this show wants you to wear a paper hospital bracelet in addition to the lanyard. The show lanyard art and presentation was nice. The paper hospital bracelet? Not so much. For weekend passes you were the green one all weekend. I suppose daily showers and bathing rituals aren’t considered here. The pink one is for the after-party. The thing to do here is to flag the lanyard with color coated-ribbons, stickers, marks or use color-coded lanyard straps. Not: psych-ward bracelets.

Takeaways

Pros
Little Shop of Games, CGC, Pinball Dudes were great and frankly saved the show IMO
The antique / flipperless pinball presentation was very cool and well staged
Carpet (Deadens sound, reduces standing fatigue, you can almost hear a game while you play it!
Music, Dancing, Lights
Nerds having Fun
Venue was a great value and great location

Cons
Very Poor Arcade Showing (quality and quantity)
Very Poor Game-Bringer Pinball Showing (duplicate games, non functioning games)
Staff Seemed Disorganized (Checkin was a squirrel circus, no way to formally report game outages, plus other inconsistencies)
Attendance Parking is a problem at this Venue

Modern Star Trek Round Up

TLDR: If you liked older Trek, go watch Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Something that Modern Star Trek and Modern Star Wars seem to share in common:

Modern takes on these franchises often seem to be poorly received by their fandoms.

I’m not the type of person to crap all over someone else’s art with my opinion. After watching some awful modern attempts at Star Trek, I’ve found myself staring at after-show credits thinking to myself: “That was garbage. How the hell did this get made?”

In the Beginning, There was T.O.S

The Original Series only ran for 3 seasons, between 24 and 29 episodes per season costing about $180k 1966USD’s per episode to produce. Originally considered a failure, Star Trek found its audience through syndication.

The episodic anthology used space exploration as a backdrop to explore geopolitical topics at times and in other times as a setting for silly futuristic adventures. In doing so it sparked the imagination of millions and set off one of humanity’s most iconic entertainment franchises.

TNG Era

Star Trek: Next Generation evolved Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian human future into 7 seasons of 26 Episodes spanning 8 years. With DS9, Voyager, there are Star Trek on ramps for the 90’s and 2000’s kids as well.

Big Screen, Mixed Results

As Star Trek was adapted for the big screen, the box office results were often flat. A few were critical successes (Star Trek: The Motion Picture & Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan) but the rabid fandom failed to translate to large box office earnings. 2002’s Star Trek Nemesis barely eek’d out a profit, eventually - maybe. The Studio decided it was time to make a change.

Production budgets vs Box Office

(Contemporary adjustments for inflation in bold)

Original Series

Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Budget: $46 million — $152.5 million
Gross: $139 million — $460.7 million

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Budget: $11.2 million — $27.9 million
Gross: $97 million — $241.9 million

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
Budget: $16 million — $37 million
Gross: $87 million — $201.5 million

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Budget: $21 million — $46.1 million
Gross: $133 million — $292 million

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Budget: $33 million — $64 million
Gross: $63 million — $122.3 million

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Budget: $27 million — $47.7 million
Gross: $96.9 million — $171.2 million

The Next Generation

Star Trek Generations
Budget: $35 million — $56.8 million
Gross: $118 million — $191.6 million

Star Trek: First Contact
Budget: $45 million — $69 million
Gross: $146 million — $223.9 million

Star Trek: Insurrection
Budget: $58 million — $85.6 million
Gross: $112.6 million — $166.2 million

Star Trek: Nemesis
Budget: $60 million — $80.3 million
Gross: $67.3 million — $90 million

Reboot, the Kelvin Timeline

Star Trek
Budget: $150 million — $168.3 million
Gross: $385.7 million — $432.6 million

Star Trek Into Darkness
Budget: $185 million — $191.1 million
Gross: $467.4 million — $482.8 million

Star Trek Beyond
Budget: $185 million
Gross: $318.1 million (to date)

ref: Reddit Post

Help Me JJ, You’re my Only Hope

(that’s going to piss some people off, lol)

Bad Robot

The Studio flipped the keys of NCC-1701 to JJ Abrams and the result was 2009’s Star Trek and the beginning of the Action Trek era that persists today. The idea was to expand the appeal to the average summer blockbuster moviegoer. The 2009 film was a refresh of TOS, a reimagining…. a.. (ffs) reboot. (Big Sigh) It would borrow from the past but adapt Star Trek to the modern ADHD / Twitter addict sensibilities. Young and sexy actors right off of underwear-model gigs, giga-hours of CGI render time, a soaring music score underpinned with rock-hiphop contemporary staples and lens flares for days.

Modern Trek takes the dramatic pacing of Breaking Bad, mixes two parts Calvin Klein commercial, two parts “pew pew pew pew space lasers!”, one part X-Games and one part canon-breaking technobabble to create the red bull commercial in space that is modern Star Trek.

I know that all sounds negative, so I should put my cards on the table here. I like the new cast and I like the sensational visuals and over-the-top sound design. I just sort of hate that Star Trek on the Big screen usually has: First Act: Long, lingering spaceship-Porn showing the ship docked at some amazing StarBase and Third Act: Same amazing space ship gets exploded or crashed into a planet in a narrative sacrifice. Seriously - Get a new story, already.

The Abrams era Star Trek films appear to have been successful at the Box Office despite some story stuff that does violence to Trek canon. In Abrams Trek, you can bring people back to life with a super blood transfusion; transwarp beaming can send an individual (or bombs) to seemingly anywhere. “Whatever”. Star Trek has always played fast and loose with the rules.

Star Trek Discovery

Star Trek Discovery centers around the hi jinx of Spock’s secret adopted sister. Discovery is a TOS era ship equipped with an experimental spore drive that allows the ship to transport itself through a cosmological mycelial network to nearly anywhere in the known Galaxy. “Black Alert!” Because: magic mushrooms and tardigrades. If it sounds stupid, well: that’s because it is.

That aside Star Trek Disco is sort of a mixed bag. Michael Burnham (Spock’s secret sister) has this space Jesus thing going that can be a bit much at times, despite the fact that I genuinely like the actress that plays Burnham: Sonequa Martin-Green. In fact, I like most of the casting on this show. Doug Jones plays a Starfleet officer named Suru and his physical performance goes a long way to make Saru believably alien, not just another dude with plastic crap glued to his face. Anthony Rapp plays the ships engineer (Staments) with a believable tinge of Aspergers. Wilson Cruz plays the ships’ doctor (Culber) and Stamet’s love interest. They have pretty great “opposites attract” chemistry and their relationship makes sense within the story.

Discovery Season 1 establishes Burnham’s character and explores the Federation-Klingon war.
Discovery Season 2 is a time-traveling / runaway AI story.
Discovery Season 3 is a dystopian future story.
Discovery Season 4 is the story of the future dystopia making a turn back towards core federation values.

Star Trek Picard

As a fan of STTNG, I looked forward to character study of Jean Luc Picard. Instead… we got something else.

Picard Season 1: The JL Apology tour
This season introduces the viewers to an even further aged-up Jean-Luc Picard. It introduces us to a new crew of younger characters. The casting on the new characters is good but there are some truly baffling writing choices in this show. One character: Raffi, lives in a trailer, smokes snake leaf and has a frustratingly over familiarity with Picard. She calls him ‘JL.’ One admiral that I’m going to call “admiral bitch face” just cussed Picard out when he comes to her with valid concerns. Picard spends the majority of the season just sort of meandering between plot contrivances. Patrick Stewart’s charisma still comes through at times but it mostly overshadowed by the dark and violent mood of this series. One side character gets his eyes forcibly removed, while he’s awake. Plenty of disintegrations, decapitations and death. One bright spot is seeing Jonathan Frakes and Steward together on screen. Riker is always a joy and has some great line delivery. I’d also love to build his pizza oven in my backyard. One day..

Picard Season 2: The Voyage (Sorta) Home
I came into the second season ready to overlook the numerous shortcoming of the first season. First seasons can often be shaky until a cast and crew finds their groove. Stewart has better energy and people spend less time bitching him out this season but the overall story still feels like something written as part of a middle-school writing contest for a free personal pan pizza. This season is a time travel plot that brings the characters to our near future, much like The Voyage Home. Also like The Voyage Home: Season 2 explores social commentary and contemporary issues such as the wild fires in the Western states, climate change in general, CBP abuses of illegal immigrants, poverty, healthcare & the pitfalls of late-stage capitalism. Unlike The Voyage Home, this season of Picard explores takes on these issues without any nuance, proposes no solutions and isn’t particularly fun. You never get “nuclear wessels” or “double-dumb-ass on you” moments that you got in The Voyage Home. You could watch the 1st, 2nd and final episode of Season 2 and not miss much. Worst of all, John Delancey never really shifts into the mischievous gear.

Star Trek Strange New Worlds

Star Trek Strange New Worlds is a refreshing entry to modern trek. The cast is great, the story is good, the enterprise looks amazing and the overall “feel” is Star Trek. It is a campy, optimistic romp through the stars and a true return to form for Star Trek.

Stranger Things Season 4

Stranger Things Season 4 dropped this weekend. It. IS. GREAT.

Mild spoilers in the form of context-less stills below. If you are severely spoiler averse, come back after you’ve seen Season 4a (up to Episode 7).

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(in portrait mode - that renders wrong but I’m not going to change the whole site template for one ascii gag)

I’ll be somewhat vague on details here so as not to spoil specific plot elements, though these stills may reveal story and character beats.

Bias up front: I was a kid in the 80’s, from Indiana. Stranger Things is high-grade, pure-cut nostalgia crack for someone like me.

Stranger Things Season 1 was an incredible achievement. In many ways it kicked off an entire genre of nostalgia-bait lookalike projects that often fell flat. In my opinion, Seasons 2 and 3 did a good job at character work, delivered some entertaining moments but lacked some of the thrill of the essential mystery of the first season. There is a formula to it and the formula gets to be pretty obvious.

That formula usually looks something like this:

Hey, Remember the 80s? -> Characters Pair off and Adventure -> Eleven screams and force-chokes a portal -> Roll Credits and Synth Track.

Despite my love for the material I have to admit I’ve been giving my Netflix subscription the stink-eye lately. The subscription cost keeps creeping up while the utility and entertainment we get from Netflix keeps falling. I often see Netflix properties as Great-Value Brand knock-offs of better shows. They’ve hooked me and cancelled several series without providing adequate closure. To the point that I’m often hesitant to engage with newly buzzing series; defense against future rug-pulls.

As of episode 7, Stranger Things Season 4 is an incredible outing for the series. If they stick the landing, it may be the best yet. Netflix spared no expense, spending an average of $30 million per episode and it shows. After watching the series, I’m going to cut that Netflix subscription some slack.

The show continues to do an incredible job of period-accurate set pieces and scenarios. Drawing inspiration from classic 80’s movie, television, music and culture. Not just in subject matter, either. The Duffers continue to nail the aesthetic.

I always appreciate a good period film (Chernobyl, for instance) and Stranger Things excels at this by leaning into period-accurate sets. The video rental store is a really nice touch.

Some of the techno-babble stretches credibility for 1986 tech. “IP-Geolocation” is mentioned. NSFNET was live in 1986 and used early TCP/IP implementation through fuzzball routing but there were only 6 nodes and (probably) no meaningful interconnect between NSFNET & ARPANET-MILNET. I mean, famously the ICBMs control silos still used 8” floppies in 2014. Hopefully that EM shielding on the silo control bunkers is top-notch.

(Pushes up my nerd glasses...) But, I digress…

The episodes are biggie-sized, coming in at an hour or more per episode. The pace feels right and the show never felt like it was running out the clock. It is refreshing to see a show take the time it needs. “Good, Fast or Cheap - Pick 2” We got great, long and expensive and I’m here for it.

Season 3 wrapped towards the end of the 2018 and Season 4 was protracted and delayed b/c of COVID-19 impacts on the industry. In terms of casting there have been valid concerns that the extra four years of real time would strain believability in such young characters. Through lighting, make-up, costume, practical effects and shot-framing the production crew did a great job of accounting for the actors ages. Millie Bobby Brown is a charming young lady these days but they make use of story-grounded reasons to dress her in ways that obscure her age. Through loose-fitting hand-me-downs or other scene-appropriate costuming, you forget that she’s 18 now. It doesn’t hurt that MBB is an incredible performer. At the extreme, Charlie Heaton is 28. Some of Heaton’s IRL pharmaceutical shenanigans have diminished his youthful appearance. The writers lean into that in a clever and fun way to even make Jonathan’s age believable. Joe Keery (Steve) is 30 but has a Toby Maguire thing working for him.

This season nods to classics like Nightmare on Elm Street, Carrie, Evil Dead, Amityville, Munsters, IT and much more. Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) even plays a Character named Victor Creel. Despite the influences, the story never feels like a cheap knock off. The writing on this show is expertly crafted and character moments are interwoven brilliantly. Be warned though, this season leans more into horror territory than the Goonies-esque adventure start of the franchise. If you get easily squicked out by body horror, you may not enjoy this ride. It never feels gratuitous, though - the point of the horror is to establish the stakes.

The light and sound design of this season are incredible. At times, the audio-video experience here is downright visceral and almost always in service to the story. Lighting is usually period-appropriate with incandescent warm glow. Computer monitors and TV’s usually have scan-lines. Though, I suspect they may actually be LCD/LED panels installed in old chassis with black borders and a filter to produce edge distortions. The sound design makes great use of ambient hums and electrical clicks to bring extra intensity and to highlight “power up” moments. They often lean into practical effects and the attention to detail is quite remarkable. There are some digital-de-aging shenanigans on display and they usually work quite well. Clever cuts between old-vs-young keep shots from lingering too long on de-aged subjects and do a good job of hiding the uncanny valley of video-game-like faces.

Shot-blocking and composition are particularly inventive this season. There are some outstanding scene transitions, also in service of the story and designed to clue to viewer into plot details. Thematically, there is a two-sides motif that is often aided by the rotational transitions between Hawkins and the Upside Down. Low camera angles can establish hero shots or be used to put the viewer into the perspective of a child and they use this brilliantly. They often lean into zoom shots instead of dolly works, the zoom-pulls and pushes being a staple of 80’s horror.

The soundtrack is very good - and you guessed it: also services the story. You’ll notice Kate Bush climbed the iTunes chart to Number 1 this week in part thanks to in-story use of one of her songs.

The show explores the 80’s Satanic Panic and Parental overreaction. It also explores Bullying and the “Other-ification” of people, conformity and demagoguery. These things could be mirror-allegories for modern times but the Duffers are here to entertain, not preach - and it all lands without being overbearing.

Honestly, after a month or so of force-feeding my eyeballs some truly laughable modern content: I found Stranger Things Season 4a to be a brilliant and refreshing departure. The writing is excellent, the old characters are even better and new characters really hit the spot. A new character, Eddie - immediately became one of my favorites. Argyle and his not-quite mystery-machine van are a nice addition, as well.

Much like the Purple Palm Tree Delight, Stranger Things Season 4 is a real treat.

Two great podcasts to check out:

As always, I’m a big fan of the guys over at Bald Move:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dungeons-and-demogorgons-a-stranger-things-podcast/id1296708934

The Streaming Things Podcast is also quite entertaining:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/streaming-things-a-stranger-things-podcast/id1291620241

PS5

I scored a (retail) PS5 last month. Pretty wild when you think about it that the PS5 was released in the end of 2020 and in the 1st third of 2022 they are still hard(ish) to come by; outside of scalpers.

My in, was the Best Buy Total Tech membership. I had signed up for it in order to get access to a GPU for a virtual pinball and gaming PC build. Aside from other benefits around warranty and rewards points, the Total Tech Membership gives you early access to hard-to-find things as they come into stock. The membership is $199/year (kinda steep IMO) but since I was able to buy an RTX 3070 and RTX 3090 at retail, it already paid for itself in my view.

At any rate, I’m not a huge modern console gamer but there are some touchstone titles that I feel compelled to play. On Sony’s Platform, for me: God of War & God of War Ragnarök are must-haves. The original game left such an impression, I was excited to revisit it with upscaled graphics in preparation for the new game this fall.

Astro’s Playroom

The PS5 is bundled with Astro’s Playroom. This game is great, especially considering the tenuous footing from which it was created. The point of the game is to acclimate you with the controller on the PS5 and the game itself is little more than a playable commercial for Sony PS merch. In it, you play as this little robot, Astro and explore hardware-themed levels and unlock Playstation memorabilia. That’s it. Doesn’t sound fun, but it really is.

The primary thing that makes Astro’s Playroom great is level design coupled with adorable characters. I know, that makes me sound like a pre-teen girl referring to a favorite stuffed animal but Im a 40-something beer-and-whiskey drinking nerd guy, unashamed to tell you the characters are cute. If you stop playing for awhile, it pulls out a little PS Vita or PSVR and entertains itself. At times, you can see the character shaking its little robot ass to the theme music of the stage you are on. All hail our future ass-shaking robot overlords.

Most gamers are probably aware of the history of Mega Man and its influence on level design that reaches even into modern games. Kitamura paid special attention to level difficulty, the idea being to allow the difficulty of the game to ramp up at a natural pace while maintaining a consistent-average-play-time per level. He wanted the game to teach the players how to play gradually, wanted to reduce the chance of players being stuck and frustrated and emphasized re-playability.

Astro’s Playhouse is a bit of a love letter to these early tenants of game design. The level design finds a balance of feeling open-enough to not be claustrophobic while balancing difficulty, skills and power ups to keep it engaging. Cute characters, good theme music and sound effects and quick respawns round out the experience to make Astro’s Playhouse a very fun game. (Despite being a giant Playstation Commercial.)

As a bonus, the PS5 is powerful enough to play Astro’s Playhouse while other games are installing. Pretty bad-ass.

Unreal Engine 5 City Sample

Unreal Engine 5 released a playable demo alongside the streaming and blu-Ray release of Matrix Resurrections. The UE5 City Sample includes cameos from Reeves and Moss and offer two modes: a playable car chase reminiscent of The Matrix Reloaded and a free-world environment to explore the City.

City Sample is available for free on the PS Store (search for Matrix Awakens) and the City Sample is available for download for free within the Unreal Marketplace. It includes assets, textures, models and examples to highlight UE5’s capabilities for film makers, creators and game devs.

Bobiverse Books

ref:Art Station

We Are Legion (We Are Bob): Bobiverse, Book 1

The Bobiverse Series

The Bobiverse is one part Ready Player One, one part Multiplicity, one part Bicentennial Man and one part Real-Time-Strategy game.

My first exposure to the concept of Von Neumann probes came from Nick Bostrom’s SuperIntelligence wherein a single-minded Artificial Intelligence replicates itself by exploiting natural resources in an exponential expansion into the cosmos.

What if, instead of an AI: the Von Neumann probes were bootstrapped from the consciousness of your run-of-the-mill middle-aged loner-ish nerdy programmer?

The Bobiverse series is about the exploits of the Von Neumann probe descendants of Robert Johansson as they set up shop in distant star systems, mine resources, build out interstellar infrastructure and balance exploration of the cosmos with the exploration of sentience.

I give the Bobiverse series 5 out of 5 quarters.

Free Guy

Free Guy manages to strike that balance of incorporating Studio-note-driven obligatory action set-pieces and storytelling for storytelling’s sake. The movie is fun, it has heart and it looks fantastic. In my opinion, Free Guy succeeds where the Ready Player One film attempts failed in adapting video game derived material towards a general audience.

Jodie Comer plays a programmer-turned gamer-investigator named Millie in Free City; a not-very-subtle nod to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Following a casual interaction between Comer and Ryan Reynold’s Guy (an NPC), Guy becomes self-aware. The plot is advanced through the investigation of a mystery grounded in corporate greed, betrayal and hubris as Guy works to level up within the game by playing the normally violent game as a White Hat player.

As a fan of Reynolds, this movie pitches right over the plate for my expectations on humor and action. Joe Keery’s (Steve from Stranger Things) performance as a support debugger / programmer is really quite good and Jodie Comer brings a ton of charm to Millie’s character. Taika Waititi’s take on a douchey-dot-com tech billionaire is inspired.

The movie actually tells a good story with a decent moral. It is funny, stays pretty “safe”: it is definitely a family-friendly faire. Most surprisingly, the movie manages to have some heart. I found myself engaged with the characters through an ending that .. works.

I give it 4 out of 5 quarters.