Amazing?? Spider-Man

Way back in the depths of time, I had this game, and played it a lot because hey, I could be Spider-Man! No idea what I played it on, some PC I assume, but I do not recall that opening trailer with the story part. But hey, we are in YouTube times, so here's someone playing it!

I got... about half way when I played it. Couldn't beat Leo's Maze. But even up to that point, you can see the wonderful features of the game: can Spidey stand straight? Can he move on some damn slippery floor? Can he go back and forth over the same bits of puzzle time and again to flip all the damn switches in the right order? Yay, all the fun stuff!

I do recall you could, from the start/first screen, get to the last level, but on the outside of the building. So I could see it, but never get to it. And now, we can all see the entire journey!

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Still Just Cause 2 Hate Things

More complaining. Why am I still playing the game then? Because I actually like the story and the events, I just don't like some of the actual gameplay elements.

Back to the map, it still sucks. I have learnt some aspects of it, so I can track down pick up items (if I'm close), but that still doesn't help hunting down that last 5% item the base/city/place is wanting you to get to make it 100%. Oh, and there are collectables, 100 for each of the three factions, and only now do I realise the blue marks on the map are indicating them. I say "now" because I have checked them before (the yellow marks are places to visit) but nothing showed up before. Maybe I didn't have the collectibles activated yet? But now there are 300 collectables and so much map to clear up... if I care. If I'm in the area, maybe, but otherwise I doubt I'll go that far (he says before his neurosis kick in).

The vehicles also suck, and they are what you need to get around the place and do races. However, unless you upgrade them, as soon as you hit anything (another vehicle, some bit of geometry) you can be sent flying. And upgrading them isn't that straight forward, some are already upgraded, some aren't. And if you upgrade something and pay to get it delivered... I hope you don't want to hold onto it because you can lose it just as easily.

So is there anything I like? The hacking/hijacking mini game isn't bad, actually. These are QTEs from the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4. For hijacking, it's a three button sequence. For hacking, it's around 10. Enter the numbers in time, and you are done. If you don't... the hijacking isn't bad, you just pick up where you were, but for the hacking you need to restart. But hey, it's easy enough that it's fun. And I hijack A LOT. A lot of helicopters get sent for me, and they explode me a lot. (Reminder, I am cheating and have infinite health, which is very useful as I can't even tell where the damn thing is before its shot me up.)

All this, and I've sunk over 20 hours into this already. And the story missions are just waiting for me. I've filled up so much of the bars just farting around completing places that I can now just hop from story mission to story mission... but maybe I'll check out that place first, and do that race of there before...

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Nyarp

It's been out and about the world for a few weeks now, and I've heard some discussion, but not a lot. Would have expected more talk about Peele's latest in the spaces I'm in.

Out on a horse training farm, an accident leaves OJ looking after his pop's work, and doing badly at it. His sister comes to stay, and some odd occurrences suggest there is something strange out and about. And so slowly gathers a group of people to try to capture it on film.

Let's get the obvious out of the way. Yes, it's a slow build. And yes, it's worth the build. I wasn't entirely sure what the through line is, especially with Gordy, but yeah, it's obvious enough. Good performances from the actors, although I found it hard to read some of what Daniel Kaluuya was doing.

As before, Peele gives us a story that is about the black experience and the human experience. Check it out, however while it is visually impressive in parts, I'm not going to insist on seeing it in a cinema.

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I have Just Cause 2 hate the map

Having playing Far Cry series, I thought I would continue with that feeling by playing the Just Cause games. JC1 was... very much the old graphics of the time. And game play was basically "get to the checkpoint". I played a few hours, but gave it up.

Bringing me to JC2. So far, I need to expand the various fractions so I can get to the guy, which involves going around the map and dealing with the bases. At each point, there are weapon etc upgrade parts to collect, and some times things to destroy, which go toward the completion. Once 100%, the base is done.

However... and this is where I start complaining about the map. For a start: you can't place markers on the map. So if I want to get somewhere, I am constantly bringing up the map to make sure I am on track. And then when I am at the base, for parts if you get close you see a marker, but otherwise... no idea where anything is. No idea even what counts as the area of the base so I don't know how far I need to look. And people don't show up on the map either, so I don't know where people are until I get shot. This is NOT GOOD gameplay.

And so I am playing... but I have a God Mode cheat on. Hey, it's my game, I can play how I want. But me not getting killed while I have no awareness is how I can deal with the deficiencies of needing to wander around trying to find things. Which means I'm going to play this game more, but definitely on my terms.

(And there are other things I don't like, but again, God Mode gives a lot of forgiveness.)

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Marc Spectator

Since it was a Disney tv series, I grabbed a lot of Moon Knight comics and read them. Okay, skimmed them, but I was wanting to know something specifically, to whit: where did his Dissociative Identity Disorder come from? Ie, when was it made "canon"?

When Moon Knight starts in the 70s, Marc Spector is a mercenary, dies, and is brought back by Khonsu to be the Moon Knight. He takes on the guises of Stephen Grant to control the money and Jake Lockley as a cab driver to get the low down dirt, but they are just other guises. Like how Batman has Bruce Wayne and Matches Malone. Marlene refers to him as "schizophrenic", but mainly because he gets into each part rather than they really are other personalities.

This goes on over a few different volumes. Depending on the writer, he could just be Marc Spector, or sometimes the other guises come up, especially as one "dies". Any hints of DID is peripheral at best, but again as if he is getting really into those parts rather than they are other identities in his head.

And then we get to Bendis in the 2010s and suddenly, yep, he has full on DID with other personalities being Spider-Man, Wolverine and Captain America (don't ask, Bendis gonna Bendis). But from that point on, he is just assumed to have always had DID, with later series getting even more into that space.

So no real moment, just a slow canonisation of that aspect of the character.

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Bluebridge / Interislander

I popped down to Picton this week because... it was there! So why not? Although pro-tip: if you go to Picton, get there before 9pm because everything will be shut then. To get there, I took the BlueBridge Ferry down and the InterIslander Ferry back. So let's compare!

First off, BlueBridge. I got a cabin, which was quite useful. Now, through no control of their own, the weather was terrible, and we got away late. Like, by the time we left we should have arrived in Picton. This also meant that the trip over the Strait was... not great. And so a cabin was really great, in that I could lie down in the dark and, most importantly, had a toilet in my cabin, which had a very useful feature: proximity. I also didn't try any of the food, but it looked fine? And certainly other people were getting it.

The InterIslander. They don't have a cabin on their regular cruises, but they do have the Plus Lounge, which is adult only. I went for that. You do get a larger chair to sit in, and they bring around food for you, quite often. Fortunately, the weather was nicer, so I was happy to eat, and the travel was a lot easier.

Comparing the two, if I had gotten something to eat on BlueBridge, then the price would be about the same. If you want privacy, a cabin is good. If you are more likely to eat, go for the InterIslander.

That said... my actual recommendation is take a plane. SoundsAir flies there, and takes around 30 minutes compared to the over three hour ferry journey. Yes, the price is also about the same, but the time saving more than makes up for it (although you do need a shuttle at the Picton end to get to the actual town).

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Them/They

This is a new horror Blumhouse movie set at a gay (de)conversion camp... you know what, you don't need the horror in this for this to be a horror movie!

A group of kids go (are sent) to this camp, and the educators there are... terrible people really. Just treating these kids in the way of these camps is bad enough, we don't need a slasher. (And I found it amusing that considering these kids are mostly gay, splitting them into a boys cabin and girls cabin seems a bit antithetical. Oh, and they need a gender neutral cabin now, but I'm sure camps will go as hard as possible to never do that.) But eventually, we do get a slasher, and that's a thing that happens here.

The slasher aspect is rather unexciting. Bad people get slashed, and the movie sets them up to not be liked, so that's fine, but it happens to incidentally to the movie you could easily think the movie thinks this is lesser plot as well as I did. (And the proper way to pronounce this movie is "They Slash Them", so just explaining how that ties in.)

It's a decent picture, but they could have done something better than throw this trapping onto it.

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Bulleto Trainu

It's fun! Go watch it!

Okay, you want a bit more? A snatch and grab guy goes onto a train to get a briefcase and get off... only there are many other people also there with their own plans that intersect and often frustrate each others plans. This is based on a book, and I wonder how much of the wackiness was in the original novel and how much was added for the movie.

There are a lot of names here, not only Brad Pitt, but also Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hiroyuki Sanada, Andrew Koji and recent the recently seen Joey King (from The Princess). And some other cameos I won't reveal but I often went "hey, I know that person!" although one took me a long time to place. While I don't generally say "avoid spoilers" before going in, I will offer my anecdote that being surprised by who turned up was very pleasant and I'm glad I didn't know to look out for them.

This is definitely on the comedy end of the action spectrum. Definitely recommend checking it out!

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Liteyeah

They finally did it. A Lightyear movie. It was inevitable, with only two things being different now: Tim Allen isn't doing the voice (although why not the older Buzz?), and it doesn't actually match what they already established.

Buzz crashes a ship on a hostile planet, and so begins his quest to find a way off while people live lives around him. Which is an easy way of him being involved in the set up, then jumping so that he can see in the next generation of recruits, the sort of thing that would be a second movie. But there's a lot of story in this movie, and I felt like we were approaching the end when we were only about a third through it!

Ultimately, it's a fine movie. It's the standard "solo person needs to learn to work with a team" that works without doing anything challenging. Really feels like Pixar was running on automatic for this one.

But yes... I do want a Sox toy, so that worked.

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