Peter Capaldi’s final season saw both characterization and story come together to give us one of my favorite seasons of Doctor Who since the classic era, rising Capaldi to one of my all time favorite Doctors. It’s not perfect, but it scores some pretty high marks and after the last two fairly dreadful seasons, it felt like a colossal win. We needed this!
RP: 7 – Bill is immediately brilliant, and it’s also great to have Nardole back as a regular character. A good story, although perhaps a little too soon to be doing dangerous water again. Amazing visuals for the alien planet. Continue reading
Many anime series take place in fantasy worlds that take inspiration from Europe of the Middle Ages, but they tend to go no further than copying the look of the period, and use that as a starting point for creating a magical world. Much of the isekai genre, where ordinary humans are reborn into a fantasy world, works basically in that way, adding swords and sorcery into the mix. Spice and Wolf is unusual in that it is set in a fantasy world, but the use of medieval Europe as a basis for that world is so accurate that it might as well not be a fantasy at all. The attention to detail is stunning, with a particularly impressive representation of how economics worked during the 14th and 15th Centuries. This was a time when guilds, large companies and the church wielded much of the power, and barter economies were increasingly being replaced by an ever-increasing supply of coinage, creating a disparity between the nominal and physical value of money. Basically, it was the birth of modern economics. 
Lt. Columbo is visiting London, the land of “Scotland Yard, Jack the Ripper, and all that,” and he’s very excited. He rushes around like a hyperactive child, photographing the Changing of the Guard, anything that looks remotely like a landmark, and even a policeman directing traffic. Surely he won’t spend his holiday getting involved in investigating a murder, right?
You know what happens on the long road? Crashes. Whenever you’re driving for a while, the risk increases. The longer the road, the higher the risk. Alas, we’re only two episodes into Crusade, but The Long Road is a traffic accident. The police report shows that Babylon 5 was driving at warp 2 when it ran a jump gate and crashed with The A-Team, causing them to plough it into Dungeons and Dragons. Thankfully no one was hurt. But that really is what we have here. I commented on that after watching A Call to Arms and then again with War Zone; this series is of the fantasy genre wearing the mask of a sci-fi show. We’ve got our fighter hero, a mage, rogue, a ship called Excalibur and now we have a dragon and an inn. Can’t have a good fantasy without visiting an Inn. And hey, we even have a second mage in this story! 
Last week I mentioned that Return to Mysterious Island was my second favorite adventure game and it only seems right to share some thoughts on the one that gets top billing in my book. In 2005, just one year after their last success, Kheops Studio released Voyage. The game sported fairly unexciting cover art on the box, but it was no leap to see what this story was aiming for. It captured my imagination immediately and having loved their previous game, it was only logical that I’d pick this one up. The box claimed to be based on Jules Verne again, but I found more in common with Wells’ The First Men in the Moon. That did nothing to detract from my enjoyment, however, I was just a bit perplexed by the statement. The fact is, I’m a bigger fan of Wells than Verne, though both are worth reading. From the main character, Michel Ardan, who reminded me instantly of the First Doctor with his pants and cravat, to the rocket being shot out of a huge gun, I was lured into this world. Like its predecessor, it’s a point and click adventure with 360 rotation for looking around but it was the aesthetic that really won me over. 
It’s funny because when I played 
The school idol phenomenon is fertile ground for anime. If you’re not familiar with the genre, it’s a simple enough idea: some school girls get together to form a group of singers, who overcome various obstacles and hardships to become a famous pop group. I’m just starting to dip my toes into the genre with the fabulous Love Live!, and I like what I see, but ironically the first series I’ve completed (until I can watch the second season) is a parody of the genre, where the girls are all dead.
A sport is being played in a big stadium, represented by some grainy stock footage. It’s that game that’s a bit like rugby, but with lots of lines drawn on the grass and players wearing an amusing amount of padding. Private Investigator Carl Brimmer from 
Encounter / City / Streetlights
Join us in the Junkyard as we enter the final few weeks of a major undertaking: the entire Babylon 5 series including the spinoff, Crusade. We start Crusade with a typical setup episode. You can’t expect opening episodes to be that strong, what with having to establish all the main players, but War Zone does a fair job. From the outset, we are reminded of what lead to this series; the events of A Call to Arms. In that movie, the Drakh released a plague on earth that will take 5 years to adapt to our biology and destroy all life on our world. Coupled with the deaths of some 7000 military personnel, the Drakh have become public enemy number one. When a ship goes down on Ceti 4, the newly established crew is sent to recover them. So on day one, their critical mission is put on hold. Odd concept. I do think the series did the right thing opening with a news clip to remind us of the previous events, then immediately sets the stage for our new Captain. As his crew panics and fighting breaks out on his ship, Captain Gideon keeps calm and proves himself both a capable fighter and a level-headed leader. Within the first 5 minutes, we have a likable captain. 
I blame my job. I’ve been in the IT industry for over two decades and that has an impact on you. If you’re like me, you enjoy doing the job because at the end of the day, you’re helping people. But IT work affects you on another level; it has a deleterious effect on the ability to take ridiculous nonsense and think it makes sense. When Myst came out in 1993, it kicked off a huge number of Adventure games. Typically adventure games are puzzle games wherein you explore a locale looking for clues to get to the end of a story. Last weeks The Neverhood was of a similar vein but leaned a bit more on the fun side of storytelling but the sheer volume of actual point-and-click puzzle-driven games was off the charts. And most of them I really disliked. Why? Because they were ridiculous nonsense. 
When I watched The Outer Limits as a kid, I loved it. I think it had the right mix of horror and science fiction in a palatable setting. Coupled with the philosophy of that brilliant Control Voice, and what more could you ask for? But lately, upon a revisit that took me years to get to, I’m realizing there are a lot of weak moments in this series. The biggest issue is, without a doubt, the preview of what’s to come. It’s been a thorn in my side since The Sixth Sense and it never stops bothering me. Here we are given an episode that might have offered a real shock when Reese Fowler unmasks for the first time. Instead, not only is his telepathy given away in the first 5 minutes, but so is his bizarre appearance. And the thing is, his appearance isn’t just bizarre – it’s awesome! I love the strangeness of his eyes. But when you spoil the surprise right off the bat, it takes away so much from an episode that didn’t offer a lot to begin with. And why not, you ask? The characters were among the worst in the series so far. Enter the crew of the USS Rotten Misery… 
Oreimo stands for Ore no Imoto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai, which translates as “my little sister can’t be this cute”. It’s an odd title, because “cute” is the last word I would use to describe Kyosuke’s sister Kirino. In most respects they have a relationship that will be very familiar to anyone with a sibling. She barely even speaks to him, and treats him as beneath contempt, acting aggressively towards him when they interact and very quick to blame him for her own problems. She’s a fairly typical grumpy teenager, very far from being “cute”. Whenever he offends her, she treats him to frequent slaps around the face, which is a common anime trope that I intensely dislike, as it normalises female-on-male violence and uses it for comedic purposes. 
Bath / Journal / Laundry
Time definitely changes us. My first impression after watching Legend of the Rangers was that it really let me down. I wanted more Babylon 5 and I was hoping to find it when this movie emerged. But it wasn’t B5: it was a new and different thing, so I disliked it. But literally 20 years later, re-watching it makes me realize how many things are the same. The difference is that this comes off like a B-movie one finds on Saturday afternoons of our youth. That’s not to say it’s bad! I remember a 1972 movie called Gargoyles which is also a B-movie and I love it. The Boy Who Cried Werewolf; another B that I loved. Legend of the Rangers has that same feeling but you can see it actually has a lot in common with its parent series. The biggest thing might also be one of the saving graces for this pilot: G’Kar. Now, just because I wanted more B5, doesn’t mean they were on the right track here. I mean, Crusade was part of the B5 universe, but it was a very different style of story. Legend does give us a lot of the same stuff we saw with B5 but that’s not automatically a good thing. 
When I awoke one recent morning, I began debating what should I do this week’s game post: pull something from the modern Steam library or aim for an old classic? Roger seems to like the older games but I’m not sold on that option as I think so many games have passed beyond the veil, into that forgotten realm, that land of the lost video games. But then, as I was feeding my cat, I realized the song that was playing in my head held the key to a classic I’ve grossly neglected. 
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DrAcrossthePond
Roger Pocock
