Jumanji: The Next Level Review

I watched both of these newer Jumanji movies back-to-back, and for the first half of the second movie, I was thinking, “You know what? This is a pretty good sequel.” The humor was a lot better this time around, because the body-swapping dynamics were more interesting. I liked that the teenagers didn’t end up in the Jumanji avatars they wanted, and having two new people—some old farts who don’t understand video games—get sucked into the game with them helped liven things up. The main thing I disliked about the first movie was that Kevin Hart was basically just being Kevin Hart, so it was refreshing to see him dial it down and play against type for once. Jack Black “playing black” was a little cringey at times, but I thought everyone (mostly) felt like their real world counterparts. The addition of Awkwafina as an avatar they hadn’t seen before was also a nice touch.

But then there’s the horse. I have so many issues with this friggin’ horse. First, why would a HORSE be a playable avatar? Oh, and Alex riding in on the horse (who was Bethany, by the way) had somewhat gross connotations. It was also really stupid to swap everyone’s avatars at this point in the movie and put Milo in the horse’s body. Whoever is in the horse is basically a non-character, so it ruined the emotional impact at the end that he was supposed to have with Grandpa Eddie. Also, he chose to stay in the game as a horse?! So dumb… Seriously, the second half of this movie ruins all the goodwill it had by essentially resetting the teenage characters and shoving the older characters out of the way. Every potential lesson these people were supposed to learn is thrown out the window as the movie devolves into an uninteresting, unfunny, generic action flick. And I blame the horse.

Dwarrows Review

I love a good mash-up of genres, and when Dwarrows clicks, it’s a lot of fun. Dwarrows is a casual adventure game that’s half puzzle platformer, half town building. Admittedly, the town building aspect isn’t that great, but I like how gathering resources for said town plays into the greater adventure. Like, you’ll gain access to a new area that’s not only filled with more puzzles to solve but sturdier trees and rocks that produce more resources per hit. Plus, almost all of the treasure you find exists solely to help build up the town back home, be it spirits that can be turned in for more land rights or artifacts that lead to new blueprints. There’s just so much to uncover in what first appears to be a somewhat small game world.

Unfortunately, Dwarrows has serious pacing issues that are mostly the result of super vague instructions. On one hand, I do appreciate that you have to just… wander around and stumble across things on your own. However, that means it’s possible to miss very important elements that will bring all progress to a screeching halt. The most egregious example of this is when you reach a door that you can’t open until you pay a toll that’s more than the amount of money you can carry. The only way to increase your wallet size is to build a bank in your town, but getting the blueprint for a bank requires jumping through so many other hoops that are never explained in-game.

It feels like the developers had a specific series of events they expected players to follow but gave players too much freedom to do things out of order. They also expected players to spend much more time on town management than I think a lot of us are willing to do. For me, I got very sidetracked by the collectables and exploration, because that was far more interesting and engaging. But then I would continually run up against limits and be forced to gather resources for the next hour or so. The end-game buildings are simply too expensive, and I don’t think I’ll ever fully complete this game. But I at least explored every inch of the game world and got my money’s worth in that regard.

Severance – Season 1 Review

This show gets off to a really slow start, but it’s worth hanging in there. I’ll admit that I dozed off during the first few episodes, though. They’re longer than the others, about an hour each compared to the later episodes’ 45-ish minutes. This is mostly because the show loves to indulge in long takes of people doing monotonous things. I get that there’s thematic reasoning for that, but so early in the show, when you don’t know what’s going on yet or have any connection to the characters, it is a bit of a slog. However, Severance gets better and better with each episode and culminates in a really satisfying season finale. Yeah, it still ends on a cliffhanger with a lot of unanswered questions, but there’s enough payoff otherwise to make you feel like you got your time commitment’s worth.

Without spoiling too much, Severance is about a very weird, future-ish company that’s figured out how to “sever” people’s brains. The employees’ out-of-office personas have no memory of what they’ve been doing at work and vice versa. It opens some intriguing philosophical questions, like are these two separate personalities or individuals? Who ultimately “owns” the body and gets to decide when the other retires? It’s fascinating to watch the in-office personalities slowly realize things aren’t on the up-and-up and try to reach out to their outer selves. We mostly only get to see Mark’s outer self, but Adam Scott does an amazing job of playing the depressed “real” him and the more confident office version of himself. In fact, the whole cast is great, and I cannot wait to see more of them, in and out of the office, going into Season 2.

Outer Wilds Review

I’m really disappointed in this game, but it’s my own fault for not looking into just what, exactly, the game even was before buying it. Part of the problem is that every positive comment for Outer Wilds says, “Don’t read anything about the game. Just go in blind!” It’s like everyone collectively agreed not to spoil the main gameplay mechanic that basically determines if you’re gonna like the game at all. I don’t even know why it’s a spoiler, because it’s essentially the inciting incident. (Insert spoiler tag, anyway.) So… there’s a time loop. Every 22 minutes, the universe explodes, and you start over. Your goal, then, is to figure out why by looking for clues on various planets. In theory, it’s a cool premise, but the execution makes the game feel more roguelike than I would have preferred. You might not even realize there’s a time loop at first because of how easy it is to die in general.

There’s no combat in Outer Wilds, but you can still run out of oxygen, fall to your death, get killed by ghost matter, etc. Several of my deaths were the result of me getting flung into space by a tornado or something similar, with no hope of getting back to my ship. That can get pretty frustrating when you’ve been trying to wait out the time loop, since key locations can’t be explored until near the end of the cycle. The constant threat of death is exacerbated by the controls. Whether you’re trying to land your ship on a planet’s surface or jetpack through underground caves, you’re always one bump or thrust away from completely messing up your current loop run. I get that these are supposed to be super realistic space physics, though, so maybe I’m just not smart enough to appreciate them. But I also don’t play video games for realistic physics and don’t have the patience to “git gud” at a game that doesn’t really respect the player’s time.

Everything Everywhere All at Once Review

I had fairly high expectations going into this movie, and yet I wasn’t disappointed. I think what (pleasantly) surprised me the most was how culturally relevant it is to the Chinese American experience. I mean, yeah, I knew it was about a Chinese family just from the trailer, but it is a very Chinese movie. About 30-40% of the dialogue is all Chinese, after all, and the themes about generational approval are painfully relatable. My wife (who is Chinese) possibly enjoyed this movie more than I did, and she’s not usually one for violence or wacky humor. What’s magical about Everything Everywhere All at Once, though, is that the violence and wackiness all serve a purpose. Yes, there are many “LOL, random” moments, but they come with a payoff later in the movie and/or juxtapose the deeper feelings the characters are having.

I like to describe this movie as a family drama disguised as a sci-fi, multiverse action flick. The first half of the movie is very action heavy with some great fight choreography that takes full advantage of its multiverse gimmick. The rules of said multiverse are really fun to watch unfold, even going into the second half of the movie when the action slows down considerably. I guess that’s my only complaint with the movie; the more drama-heavy second half goes on for a little too long. It’s a satisfying conclusion to everything that has happened before, but it does requiring sitting through three different monologues from three different characters. Still, this is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time and, according to my wife, a much better example of Hollywood/Asian representation than Crazy Rich Asians was.

Sable Review

Ever since playing Yonder, I’ve been itching to find the next great “casual adventure.” Sable might just be the closest experience I’ve found to Yonder. It features a big-ish open world that’s broken up into distinctly mapped sections, lots of mountains and space wreckage to climb and explore, and small communities of people who dole out side quests. And, of course, there’s no combat or death. It’s the perfect chill game that only occasionally gets derailed by an obtuse puzzle. The majority of the time, you’re just cruising around the desert, soaking in the gorgeous visuals, and looking for the next obstacle to climb. There are some really great moments where you need to meticulously plan out how to reach certain heights. And there’s almost always a reward at the top, be it money, new clothes, or a “chum egg” that can later be exchanged for more stamina.

I also like how the story is framed. There’s no “darkness” or whatever you have to rid the world of. You’re just a girl who’s ready to find herself by going out and having adventures on her own. Who you choose to become at the end depends on which mask you don, so the main goal is to find more masks. Alas, it wasn’t clear to me how you get new masks until I was already nearly done with the game. Sure, some of them you just find, but most are only obtained by first collecting three badges and then handing those badges over to some sort of mask wizard. That’s fine and all; I just wish I had known that was the process sooner so I could have been swapping between more mask options. But the game is so good that, even after finishing the main quest, I still pressed on to find the remaining masks and fulfill all of the other achievements.

So, yes, I highly recommend Sable, but there’s something you should be aware of first. It’s pretty damn janky. Like, this is one of the buggier games I’ve played in a long time. My character would frequently get hung up on ledges, the hoverbike would flip around uncontrollably, button prompts would disappear, etc. Ten hours into the game, I completely borked my save file by doing a quest out of order. The game simply would not load afterwards. Fortunately, the gamesave is just a plain English JSON file, so I could go in there and delete the last few things I did to reset that quest. But the fact that I had to do that is a little unnerving. Oh, I know you’re thinking, “If a game is that buggy, is it really that good?” And the answer is still yes. If there was combat and death in Sable, I think the bugs would have killed the experience. But it’s so relaxing and rewarding otherwise that the jankiness is forgivable.