Black Mirror: Bandersnatch Review

Bandersnatch

It’s hard for me to talk about Bandersnatch without comparing it to an earlier, similar “choose your own adventure” film called Late Shift. What’s odd is that Late Shift was much more of a movie than Bandersnatch but seems to have found its home on gaming marketplaces. Bandersnatch, on the other hand, feels more like a video game but is delivered on a movie/TV streaming service. Yes, I get that the point was to blur the line between film and game. However, it’s easier to classify Bandersnatch as a game simply because you can “game over” very early on and have to rewind to try again.

I do like that beats are skipped when you’re re-watching scenes, and some of the dialogue even references the fact that you (and the characters) have been through this already. That’s actually the neatest thing about Bandersnatch, how it occasionally veers into meta territory and either subtly talks to you, the viewer, or has the main character grow paranoid that someone is making decisions for him. Unfortunately, and depending on which story paths you follow, this idea isn’t explored in any great detail. Despite having multiple possible endings, none of them feel very Black Mirror-ish.

Black Mirror has always been about the abuses of technology, but there’s really no tech in Bandersnatch. The tech is basically Netflix itself, which would have been cool had they pushed harder into breaking the fourth wall. But, again, not every story path goes there, and those that do still wrap up unsatisfactorily. Taken as a movie, Bandersnatch is simply about a boy who goes mad trying to develop the perfect video game. With the interactive element thrown in, I suppose you could feel that you drove Stefan insane. It’s just hard to appreciate that conclusion when your options either end the game too soon or let the madness play out to its own completion.

Happy! – Season 1 Review

Happy!

I was totally onboard with Happy! in its first few episodes. It struck a wonderfully weird tone of silliness and gritty violence. Further into the season, though, things got a bit too weird to the point where I don’t even understand the rules of this universe anymore. I could accept that Hailey had an imaginary friend who only she and her dad could see, but then it turns out… other people could see Happy, too. And there are actually other imaginary friends who can all talk to each other. And anyone who can see one imaginary friend can see them all. Oh, and apparently people can come back from the dead in this world? And there are possibly aliens at play, too? It’s… it’s too much, man.

Still, I appreciate that a TV show like this exists. In a way, it reminds me of Amazon’s The Tick in that it embraces comic book camp while still reminding you that real-world violence is a thing. The contrast between Nick Sax (aka the dumpster version of The Punisher) and Happy (an overly positive flying unicorn) is pretty great. It’s odd, then, that Happy, who has the show named after him, really isn’t in it that much. There were long periods where I forgot he was even a character. Without Happy, though, the show Happy! runs the risk of feeling like any other crime drama. Well, I suppose the occasional zombie, off-beat joke, or alien bug orgy would say otherwise. So there’s that.

Kirby Star Allies Review

Kirby Star Allies

Kirby Star Allies looked like it’d be a return to form for the pink puff, much like the Wii’s very excellent Return to Dreamland. The Wii entry is still the better game, though, for a few reasons. In Return to Dreamland, other players could still be Kirby. In Star Allies, only Player 1 gets to be Kirby, and it’s only Player 1’s death that matters. Extra lives are liberally handed out, though—my wife and I had over 100 extra lives by the end—and the game’s pretty easy, anyway, so there’s little threat of “losing.” Only the boss battles really pose a challenge, and they can easily be beat if Kirby just hangs out at the top of the screen while his 2-3 other minions… I mean, friends… finish off the baddies.

What made Return to Dreamland challenging, if you were looking for a challenge, was that some secrets couldn’t be obtained if you failed to hold onto a power-up long enough. In Star Allies, however, the game makes sure you don’t miss anything. Optional puzzle rooms give you everything you need, and not much thought is required to solve the problem at hand. Honestly, the best part of this game was after we beat it and opened up four bonus levels in “Another Dimension.” The puzzles here could be missed if you weren’t careful. The main game, however, was a button-mashing cakewalk that certainly oozed of cuteness and fun powers but was a pretty forgettable experience overall.

F is for Family – Season 3 Review

F is for Family

I wasn’t planning on giving this show another chance after an atrocious Season 2, but I was curious to see if it had corrected course at all. To my surprise, I think it has. But that’s not to say the show is great now. While they’ve dialed down the grossness and ridiculousness, they still haven’t fixed some of the issues that have plagued the series since Day 1. The supporting cast has always been weak, and yet Season 3 introduces even more uninteresting side characters. Why is a show about family (the word “family” is in the name, for God’s sake) spending so much time following the lives of their neighbors?!

A large portion of Season 3 is dedicated to new neighbor Chet, who—in typical sitcom fashion—immediately wins over the heart of Frank while Sue sees right through his bullshit. And so a lot of Frank’s and Sue’s squabbling revolves around whether or not Chet’s a good guy. Spoiler: he’s not. His storyline unsatisfactorily wraps up in the penultimate episode, leaving the finale to scramble for some sort of theme to tie everything together. The ending, though, feels like the same ending from the last season and the ending from every other cookie-cutter sitcom. Frank realizes he hasn’t been fair to his kids and says sorry. Roll credits.

F is for Family is weird, because it pretends to be a show that pushes boundaries with free-flowing swears and traumatizing nudity, but if you take that away, the scenarios driving the plot are things we’ve seen a thousand times before. What really makes this show special is the love-hate (emphasis on hate) relationship between Frank and Sue and their children. They fight like real families. It’s so relatable, it hurts. But sitcoms gotta sitcom, yo, and the family keeps getting separated to interact with paper-thin, one-joke, grating neighbors and friends. Get rid of the side characters or actually flesh them out. Either way, something needs to change here…

McDROID Review

McDROID

The difficulty of this game is an interesting story. Apparently the developer, after the game had already been released for a while, decided that “normal” was too easy after all and made a new difficulty setting called “souls.” The normal difficulty was then renamed to “toddler,” and souls became the new default. I did not realize this at first and was pretty flustered when my wife and I couldn’t even beat the second level. Downgrading to the toddler setting seemed a bit demeaning at first, but even toddler packs a wallop. Some levels still took us several tries to beat.

The thing about McDROID is that it’s crazy. The game will send hundreds of bugs towards your base, which, combined with the many explosions of your own weapons and towers, creates a chaotic cloud of noise that can be hard to make sense of. That’s not necessarily a complaint, though. McDROID is a lot of fun, and if you’ve been prepping your base and towers correctly, those final waves of chaos are fairly manageable. Harvesting strawberries as the game’s currency, spending special gems on extra robot buddies, or upgrading towers to the point where they take up half the screen are all rewarding elements.

So if you haven’t guessed yet, McDOID is another tower defense hybrid, but it’s very hands-on and action-oriented. You’ll spend just as much time collecting stuff around the map as you will tending to your towers and attacking the enemies yourself. Because the game is so big in scope, though, it’s no surprise that there are glitches. Online multiplayer frequently stopped responding for one player or the other, and even on the lowest graphical settings, certain maps were framerate deathbeds. But it’s easy to forgive such flaws when everything else about the game is an absolute delight.

Sick Note – Season 2 Review

Sick Note

Binging this show is a bit weird, since there’s no story gap between Seasons 1 and 2, making the Season 1 cut-off feel out of place. There are definitely some major shifts that take place in Season 2, though. The Kenny West character leaves, thank God. His cartoonish vulgarity was too much. And then we have Lindsay Lohan to replace him. It’s great to see her acting again, although she does seem a bit rusty. The biggest disruption, however, is the arrival of Will. I think Will would have worked better as an online-only presence that still managed to screw with Daniel. Showing us Will in real life was a mistake, mostly because Will is just as unlikable as everyone else on this show.

So Sick Note is one of those shows where every character is either a selfish asshole or unrealistically daft, making it hard to like, root for, or empathize with anyone. While I enjoy mean comedies like Always Sunny and The League, the scenarios have to be somewhat grounded, and the characters’ terribleness needs to affect them more than it does their neighbors. In Sick Note, however, the shenanigans at play—cancer fakeouts, drug deals—keep getting more and more people killed. Sure, I get that this is a dark comedy, a British Breaking Bad parody if you will, but it’s not dark enough and not funny enough to pull it off.

Sick Note is more of a comedy of errors. The only reason Daniel and Dr. Glennis get away with anything is because the universe continues to shower them with lucky coincidences that can be pretty aggravating for the viewer. I think I still enjoyed the show overall, though. It’s hard to tell, because, in the age of streaming content, this is quintessential “binge and forget it” material. It’s amusing and fast-paced and strings you along with legitimate cliffhangers, but I say that with only a hint of praise. It’s not particularly clever or particularly memorable. Rather, it passes the time when nothing else is on. And, frankly, that’s where we are with Netflix shows now.