Red Dwarf: M-Corp

This episode does that classic sci-fi thing of criticising a real-world issue through an incredibly ham-fisted and implausible analogy. You know, like Black Mirror. Only Black Mirror takes itself seriously and this is pretending not to take itself seriously. I think Doug Naylor wants to write for Black Mirror. Honestly, make a few minor adjustments to the characters and the pacing and this could be a Black Mirror episode.

A famous poem by an Australian author

Sorry I ate your plums.

They were real good but.

More quick looks at games

Catan (10 mins)

I've played this game in real life and I know it's not that complex, but this version of it is fucking impossible to get into. If you already know the rules of the game it's probably fine, but if you don't then good fucking luck getting through the insanely long and disorganised rules/tutorials. I might end up finding a copy of the rules online and trying again, but I'm not dealing with the hassle of trying to learn this way.

Ironclads: American Civil War (50 mins)

I can't believe I spent so long on this. This is the most tedious thing. I think I killed five ships, but they kind of just disappeared so I'm only guessing. The game gives you basically no information or feedback on anything so it's impossible to say if I was doing the right thing or not. I was just driving my boats around in circles firing cannons at other boats until there was only one enemy boat left and it just wouldn't die so I gave up and quit.

Talisman: Digital Edition (2 hours)

The same as the board game, which is to say pretty fun but with one huge, enormous, glaring flaw: it goes on for-fucking-ever. If you told me that no one had ever successfully finished a game of Talisman I would believe you. I played for two hours before I got sick of it and no one even looked like they were close to winning, least of all me.

Small World 2 (10 mins)

Seems to be a fairly good adaptation of a board game I've never heard of, but I don't know how to play it and the tutorial is broken, so I can't really say. I might find the rules at some point and give it another go.

Magnifico (25 mins)

Another strategy board game. Relatively straight-forward. Probably one of those games where you get the basic rules pretty quickly but it takes a lot more to actually get good at it. I'd probably enjoy this as an actual board game with other people but I'm not sure I'm that into it as a computer game as it's not really something I can just sit down and play for half an hour without really getting into it and learning its complexities first.

Red Dwarf: Mechocracy

I actually timed it this time. it takes about 13 minutes (of a 28 minutes episode) for the actual plot to start. The entire first half of the episode is set-up. And if you're wondering if the pay-off is worth it, you haven't been reading these reviews. To its credit, I didn't find this episode as offensive as the previous ones, but I'm not sure that's the tag line they'd go with for the advertising.

Agents of Mayhem: First impressions

I've been meaning to get this game for a while, but held off until it went on sale and I had a bit of spare time. Well, it's my holidays and it just went on sale, and I'm certainly glad I didn't pay full price for it. Actually, it seems like it might end up being pretty fun, but it's hard to tell I've played an hour and a half of it, and I'm just sort of starting to figure out what's going on and what I'm doing.

Red Dwarf: Timewave

It's been a while (almost eight months, in fact) since I started watching this season but it's only six episodes long so I thought I might as well try to finish it. Guess what? It's still real bad. It's interesting that I concluded my last review by saying that the theme of the episode seemed to be that criticism is bad, because the message of this episode is the exact opposite of that. In fact, insulting and belittling people is good... because otherwise they might be happy and confident?

More of the Steam backlog

I tried a few more of the games I've bought but not played.

More short reviews of games I barely played

I have a bunch of school stuff to do in the next couple of weeks but I finished my last essay early so I earned myself a little bit of breathing room, and since I have way too many unplayed games in my Steam library I thought it seemed like a good time to briefly try out a few games to see if they're worth playing more of.

Star Trek: Discovery - Will You Take My Hand?

So, the last episode. It was OK. The story was garbage, but some cool stuff happened. And it does reset the status-quo in a way that allows for season two to be much, much better. I wouldn't recommend the first season at all, but I'm going to watch season two.

Star Trek: Discovery - The War Without, The War Within

I have no idea how they're going to wrap this up in one episode, because nothing happened in this one. Or practically nothing. Maybe they're just setting it up for the next season, but if so then I don't think next season's going to be any good at all.