Phonopolis!

I love the developer Amanita Design, I have all their games, and their latest is...

PHONOPOLIS!

In the city (polis) everyone is controlled by orders from loudspeakers (the Phono). Felix (not pronounced as you'd expect) finds a pair of headphones, and from that point onwards the loudspeakers have no sway over him. From there, it's on him to find his way to the top of the city, discover what has become of Rachel, and find and/or defeat the Absolute Tone.

AD is great for doing games that do not need any dialogue, and indeed their games generally don't have any text aside from the menus. From the first flash Samorost to the famous Machinarium, to the full puzzler Creaks, they are rely on visual understanding only.

And this game is a break from that. There's dialogue! There's story! People tell you things! Fortunately, the puzzles are still largely just working out what is going on, not needing to read anything, but it is quite the change.

I have now 100% the game (with a little help), and most of the achievements are just having fun with doing weird things with the machines/situations you play with, but some of them I just had no idea about.

Still, there are 16 AD games on Steam... and I have them all! ...although I don't have 100% of the cheevos of them... hmm....

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MIIRTAL KIIMBAT

Oh wow, this is... this is just bad.

Two warriors fought a long time ago, and now the descendent is in Mortal Kombat! No wait, that was the first movie.. and this one, although the descendant in this case is the daughter. But that's all right, we have a reluctant fighter in the form of Johnny Cage, who is in this movie. As is several others. And Cole was also there. But is this Katara's or Johnny's movie? Yes!

This is a dark movie. No, I don't mean emotionally, I mean someone should really turn the lights on. But if they did that, we'd be able to see the CGI better, and boy there is a LOT of CGI in this. It's like every fight has people rubber banding all over the place as the movie pretends something interesting is going on.

Frankly, I've got nothing much to say, because I watched this... and it was nothing!

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One Another After Battle

So there's this award winning comedy...

French 75 are a reasonable success revolutionary group that gets into compounds and frees people, with two of them hooking up, although one army dude has his eye on the woman. Cut to 16 years later, and the army guy is still after them, only now the woman is "dead" (ie she isn't) and the man is buzzed out of his mind, and his daughter gets taken by the army dude. The man struggles to remember how to operate in this world, and the army guy is just trying to get in with racists.

It's a "dark comedy" so no wonder I didn't smile once. Is this supposed to be old men's fantasy of a) a pregnant woman with a machine gun, and b) becoming a hero to rescue your daughter? 'cos that's certainly what the trailer was focusing on. I can't say anyone's performance blew me away, but I do like how some various come-uppances were subverted, but...

A nearly three hours, I can't say I saw the point of this movie.

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Shibuya kaidan

This is a wee duology of movies, so much so I could easily believe they were made at exactly the same time.

We start with The Locker, in which a group of college friends have a camping trip, and then strange things start happening to them... because of them also used a cursed locker! There was a discarded baby put into the locker, and now the baby is out for revenge on anyone that dares use it! There are six of them, and can you guess how many are alive by the end?

One of them was teaching a middle school student, who is whomst we follow in The Locker 2. She's warier of the locker, but others aren't, and so bad things continue to happen. We get one more line of lore (the baby was discarded 5 years ago) but otherwise this is just following more people and more deaths. Who will survive? Don't bet on it!

The same actors and locations, and being released in the same year, is what makes me think they were made at the same time, and given both are barely over 70 minutes, they really are a part 1 and part 2.

There is somewhat of a slow build, with enough strange things happening to keep you interested. There are a few weird death effects, but mainly people being pulled into nothingness (very Ju-on reminiscent).

A double feature if you want a full film, but ultimately nothing that impressive these days.

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Cavaet

Damian McCarthy released a new movie, so let's see his first one!

An uncle askes his friend to keep his niece company, she has a few mental problems. He reluctantly agrees, and finds out that the house is indeed out of the way. There are definitely some odd things happening, but are their supernatural things happening? He and the niece don't necessarily get along, and there are some secrets that come up that cause more than a few problems. But surely the uncle is completely on the up and up, right?

This is a very small cast, with Johnny French and Leila Sykes being the two we spend the most of the movie with. And they do come across as quite uncertain and untrustworthy, like the movie as a whole... and that is one big problem I have with the movie. It's all "what is going on?" but I'm feeling that in a bigger "what the hell is any of this to do with anything?" and not in a creepy unsettling way.

It's got potential and I love a good atmosphere, but I also enjoy having an idea about what the atmosphere is building to. Still, this is his first film, there is more to go.

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Joy of Sudoku

There's this Youtube creator I watch: Cracking the Cryptic.

They started with doing Cryptic Crosswords, but expanded into doing Sudoku puzzles. Then during the lockdown, the sudoku really took off, so much so they went from one video a day (featuring Simon solving) to two puzzles a day (the other being Mark solving). And from that point on, it's been at LEAST two videos a day, and actually a lot more these days.

Just sudoku? Just putting in numbers in a 9x9 grid? Well yes, that's the basic grid, but they are really into crafted variant sudoku. (Most sudokus that appear in newspapers are computer generated ones.) These ones are specially made, often have a great break in, and then a smooth ride through solving. And as for basic...

There are cages, where the digits add to a total. A 'v' or 'x' between cells mean they add to 5 or 10. There are lines; purple lines are renbans where numbers are consecutive, in any order; thermo lines increase in one direction; region sum lines break the lines into equal sums; arrows, diagonals, chess based rules (no digits a knights/kings moves away)...

There are spots outside the grid that give sandwich sums, skyscraper clues, little killer lines. This can mean that the grid itself can be entirely empty...

9x9? Grids can go down to 4x4 or over 11x11.

Recently they have been getting back into cryptics with weekly videos about the Friday puzzle. And on the Patreon they do the Times Monthly Special and... I've heard of those of those words... one or two. Yes, they have a Patreon, where $2 gets you extra videos and monthly puzzles, and $3 for the solutions to those. Mark also does Connections and Gridograms...

And also daily videos of Wordle, and Minute Cryptic...

They do a lot, is the point, and if you enjoy good puzzles and seeing how to solve them, this is a great channel to follow.

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There She Comes

Sequel? Like immediate sequel, it's the next day!

Grace is taken to hospital after her new husband died, and her sister turns up. However, ex-hubby family has decided that steps need to be taken and kidnap both of them, and Grace must die before dawn so one of them can get the seat.

Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton are sister... sure, okay... and they are fine. They get kind of an arc, which is about three scenes of them yelling at each other in between lots of violence. Quite comic violence at that! David Cronenberg is appropriately creepy in his cameo, and Sarah Michelle Geller should get better parts than this. The only one clearly having fun is Elijah Wood.

Theme-wise, it's the same as the first movie, only with more people. And the movie looks about the same too, so... successful sequel that is just the first movie again? Seems like. It works, but doesn't do anything amazing.

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