#MiniReview #Movies Continuing on my never-ending journey into movies that sparked Internet memes, I watched Will Ferrell's Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) that gave the "I'm not even mad, it's amazing" and "Boy, that escalated quickly" memes. Overall I didn't enjoy very much this ham-fisted attempt at tackling sexism in a professional context, and many celebrity cameos felt unnecessary, but I did laugh when Jack Black kicked Will Ferrell's dog in the San Diego Bay.

#MiniReview #VideoGames Bounty Train (2017) by Corbie Games is an economic simulation set in the American East around the Civil War. Zooming between stations in your personal steam train, you will have to transport passengers, cargo and crew to make money and face the many perils of this time, including bandits, native Americans, Union and Confederate soldiers, and even the Ku Klux Klan.

This game manages to breathe life in what is essentially a min-max game with interesting diminishing returns, timed and random events, and an overarching storyline that keeps things from going stale. You'll meet, even briefly, characters like Ulysses Grant, Robert Lee, Mark Twain, Samuel Colt and some of the most famous rail barons of the time.

Interestingly, I abandoned the game a few years back because of a save game breaking bug, but when I reinstalled it recently, ready to start over, I was able to resume my old save and complete the campaign.

#MiniReview #VideoGames Dredge (2023) is a light horror-fishing game I discovered on a Twitch stream and liked instantly. With simple QTEs for the actual fishing and a somewhat limited map, it isn't very long (I finished the main story in about 10h) but makes up for it in raw charm. Visuals, sounds and atmosphere are all top-notch, while forgiving mechanics makes it avoid the die-and-retry pitfall.

Highly recommended!

#MiniReview #Travel Montréal in Canada is a nice city with plenty to see and plenty to do, including diverse architecture and a rich culinary, cultural and entertainment offer. But even on the second visit I still can’t get past the twin language (Québécois-English) quirk and the cultural mix between Old French and Contemporary North American cultures breaks my brain used to Metropolitan French culture and American culture separately.

#MiniReview #VideoGames

• Install Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus (2018).
  
• Get team wiped out on the second tactical battle after the tutorial.
  
• Uninstall.

I simply don't have the time for these games.

#MiniReview #VideoGames As the sole survivor of a mission to save the world, you are The Captain (2021) on a journey back to hopefully save Earth. With a branching storyline that you can fast-replay to get all the alternative paths, it is a nice point-and-click game with engaging characters. I couldn't bear to finish the game though, as the story themes around loss and responsibility started to weigh a little too much on my mind. Still recommended.

#MiniReview #videogames After Two Point Hospital (2018) that was too close to Theme Hospital (1998) for me to enjoy on its own, Two Point Campus (2022) is the proof that Two Point Studios have Bullfrog-like chops. Played during a recent Free Weekend, I found it to be a fun and engaging building/management game, this time like no other.

#MiniReview #VideoGames Finally played @IndustriesGame after backing it several years and waiting for the 1.0 release a week ago, went bankrupt during the tutorial mission, 10/10 will play again. 👍

#MiniReview #VideoGames Sunless Skies (2019) is the direct sequel to Sunless Sea (2015) taking place in Failbetter Games's gothic horror Fallen London universe. And exactly as its predecessor, it's very well written and eventually very tedious.

#MiniReview Humankind™ (2021) is a nice game, but it is so similar to Civilization VI (2016) that it feels like a glorified mod, down to the degraded performances on my computer and the odd couple of quirks. The few new concepts are neat, but they don't alter the overall game experience beyond its obvious inspiration. #VideoGames

#MiniReview After 8 hours, I finished Titanfall 2 (2016) single-player campaign and it was very, very good, as @Bean!_ advertised. I tried to find a multiplayer cooperative Frontier Defense game but I couldn't keep a connection to the server before actually finding a game. I'm sad there's no local bot match but overall I can't complain.

#VideoGames

#VideoGames #MiniReview I just finished Hardspace: Shipbreaker at a marathon pace (50h in 10 days) and it’s a really good game with a worthwhile political content to boot. If you like puzzles, space simulations, engineering and/or unions, this game is for you.

#MiniReview Weedcraft, Inc is a management game to my liking: you can do everything, but there’s so much to do tasks have to be delegated albeit in a less efficient manner than if you perform them manually. Also margins seem tight selling pot, either legally or not?

#MiniReview Life Is Hard (2021) is a side-scrolling survival city builder game that kicked my ass for all the wrong reasons. A slew of bugs that escaped the Early Access phase, abysmal documentation about in-game concepts and ultimately limited choices made it hard to like.

#MiniReview I beat the final boss of Salt and Sanctuary (2016) and I feel good putting the game down. As my first Dark Souls-like game, I wasn't expecting to go that far, but it turned out to be rather forgiving even if I became lost in the sprawling map towards the end. #videogames

Returning to a tradition I started in 2018 on my penultimate transatlantic flight, here's another selection of rapid-fire reviews of movies I watched during the round-trip to France over the holidays. #MiniReview #Movies

#MiniReview Stranger Things 3: The Game (2019) is meant to complement the third season of the eponymous TV shows. With cute pixel art and spacy synthwave, it hits the right aesthetic notes, but combat proved to be too fast-paced for me to keep up. #videogames

#MiniReview Mainlining (2017) by Sam Read is a fun, cute and short "point and click hacking adventure" that would benefit from better feedback from arrest mistakes and a few placeholder variable fixes. #videogames

#MiniReview Deus Ex: Human Revolution - The Missing Link is a standalone DLC with more of the same from the base game: comically easy stealth (which I enjoy) and cutscene to a room full of enemies (which I don't). It is now included in the Director's Cut of the base game.

#videogames #MiniReview I just binge-played Frog Detective 1 and 2 by @gracebruxner and while both are very short, the dialogs were hilarious (at least to me) with no filler. Looking forward to Frog Detective 3!

#videogames #MiniReview Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas is a shorter Finnish indie take on The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Clunky at times, uneven boss fights, but I had to look up a guide only thrice over my 9 hour playthrough so it's pretty good for me with adventure games.

#MiniReview #Cinema Today I watched Infinite (2021), an Antoine Fuqua action flick starring Mark Wahlberg, and I've never seen a #movie so inadvertently and completely void the villain's main motive halfway through it. The rest of the movie was hard to watch.

#MiniReview #Movie I do not believe things made by women are better just because they're women, but I do believe Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020) is so (so!) much better than Suicide Squad (2016) specifically because director Cathy Yan and especially writer Christina Hodson are women.