pseudonymouspenn-blog

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

WhatWatchers (5 November, 2017): What you should (and shouldn’t!) be watching on television

Not sure what to watch? #WhatWatchers has you covered.

Hello and welcome to WhatWatchers! With everything that’s on TV at the moment, WhatWatchers aims to identify what’s worth watching and what isn’t with short, snappy, and to-the-point reviews.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency S02E04: The House Within the House TL;DR Rating: B+

Dirk Gently continues to be my favourite thing on television at the moment, adding more twists and turns to the…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

Random Movie Review: Jeepers Creepers (2001): A wonky B-grade horror movie with moment of genuine horror overcast by moments of hilarious absurdity.

The best kind of B-grade horror: the one you can openly ridicule.

  Jeepers Creepers (the third of which was released earlier this year) is the story of siblings Darry and Trish as they are accosted by a monster while travelling home for spring break. They stumble upon the haunt of the Creeper (an old church) and the Creeper begins to give chase when it realises that they’ve seen him disposing of the body down a rusty old pipe.

Or so it seems, until he drives…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

Wisdom of the Crowd: A tame swim through lukewarm procedural waters

Wisdom of the crowd decides to play it smart and safe, suffering all the more for that.

Wisdom of the Crowd’s premise is simple: using an app (Sophe) one can crowdsource answers (much like Facebook and Reddit); but here, the crowdsourced answers solve crimes. From the get-go, WotC never really does much more than what it sets out to do and what it sets out to do isn’t very much. Not to mention the plethora of inconsistencies and issues that jar against real-world perceptions.

Featur…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

Cuphead: Immensely frustrating and immensely addictive, this 30s-fuelled run-and-gun is not for the faint of heart.

Cuphead: A surreal, insanely difficult romp that will leave you in tears: joy or sorrow.

As of writing this, I am about 40% into Cuphead, and I’ve died a hundred and forty two times. Yet, I keep playing, and that’s the greatest thing that Cuphead has to offer.

To call Cuphead a run-and-gun doesn’t do justice to the game. Sure, there are run-and-gun levels, but they mostly work as breathers between the varied and continual boss battles, some more difficult than others. So far, I’ve…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

Stranger Things 2: A season that stumbles in the middle, yet manages to deliver a strong sophomore performance

Things get stranger in great but uneven ways.

Note: This is a full season review of Stranger Things 2. Mild to large spoilers follow.

Things get stranger in the second iteration of Stranger Things, which sees us back in Hawkins, Indiana, with our cast of lovable nerds, after almost a year since the events of Stranger Things.

While Stranger Things 2 doesn’t quite live up to its preceding season, it does provide a lot of entertainment in the…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

WhatWatchers (22 October, 2017): What you should (and shouldn’t!) be watching on television

Not sure what to watch this week? #WhatWatchers has you covered.

Hello and welcome to WhatWatchers! With everything that’s on TV at the moment, WhatWatchers aims to identify what’s worth watching and what isn’t with short, snappy, and to-the-point reviews.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency S02E02: Fans of Wet Circles TL;DR Rating: A

Dirk and Todd reunite in the second episode of the return of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, and thank the gods…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

Little Nightmares: A brief game that manages to shine despite its familiarity

Little Nightmares: Never has playing with your nightmares been more fun.

Little Nightmares, a 2.5D horror game, follows Six, a faceless protagonist, as she works her way through a dangerous environment with most of everything out to kill her.

Sound familiar? If it does, then you know that the same concept is followed by Inside, Playdead’s critical darling and straight-up masterpiece. And while everything Little Nightmaresdoes has already been done better by Inside, it…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

Neō Wax Bloom: An exercise in experimental excellence

Neō Wax Bloom: Experimental avant-garde electronic at its finest.

You probably haven’t heard of Iglooghost. I haven’t either; or rather, hadn’t, until I stumbled across Neō Wax Bloom.

And what a glorious stumble it was.

Set at a little over forty minutes, Neō Wax Bloom plays like a soundtrack more than an electronic album and it’s a soundtrack I could listen to endlessly. Each track is finely crafted, each beat is meticulously placed, and no two tracks sound…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

WhatWatchers (8 October, 2017): What you should (and shouldn't!) be watching on television

Not sure what to watch this week? #WhatWatchers has you covered.

Hello and welcome to WhatWatchers! With everything that’s on TV at the moment, WhatWatchers aims to identify what’s worth watching and what isn’t with short, snappy, and to-the-point reviews.

9JKL: Pilot TL;DR Rating: D

Laugh track? Check. Low-brow jokes? Check. Laugh track laughing to low-brow jokes? Check. If this show doesn’t annoy the hell out of you in the first three minutes, you may…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

>OBSERVER_: A Whole Lot of Pressing ‘W’/Pushing Forward on the Controller

Adhering to its name, observing is pretty much all you do.

Observer, at first glance, seems an enjoyable game to play. Set in a dystopian future where war has decimated all superpowers, a large majority of the human race being destroyed by a virus that has attacked their augments, and a conglomerate now running the world, Observer should’ve been a rich world to play through.

Inspired by Blade Runner and George Orwell’s 1984, Observer is set in Krakow,…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

In Young Sheldon, Sheldon is the weakest link.

Young Sheldon shows some promise, but fails to interest enough in its pilot.

Well, well, well. The spin-off/successor to The Big Bang Theory is finally here, and the most important thing about it, it seems, is that Lorre has finally learned his lesson about laugh tracks. The first episode of Young Sheldon was made more tolerable by the absence of a “live studio audience”, although it might just be possible that no one was laughing because of the outright lack of jokes.…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

Awake: Illenium settles into his sound as he delivers an album that is spectacular, emotional, and just a little flawed [Movin' to the Beat E02]

@illeniummusic puts the feels on max in sophmore album #awake -- most of it works.

Okay, let’s get this out of the way: I love Illenium. All the way from his remix of Dada Life’s Tonight We’re Kids Again to my favourite song of all-time: Afterlife. He’s honestly the reason I love future bass as much as I do.

Awake, a 13-song (not track—note the distinction), 47-minute LP, has Illenium settling into his sound (as made popular by the massive Fractures featuring Nevve) while…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

The State: An unflinching yet ultimately flawed show about life in ISIS

Based on a polar, highly controversial topic, The State tackles ISIS and its horrors.

Let me start off by saying this: you should definitely watch this show. Not only is it a real eye-opener to the happenings in Syria, it is also damn good (if a little wonky) television. It follows the lives of four British–Muslims as they decide to head to Syria to help in the formation of the Islamic State (IS). There, their expectations are slowly and systematically broken down as they’re made…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

Mass Manipulation: REZZ excites over the course of 30-odd minutes in her debut outing

Mass Manipulation: Being manipulated has never sounded this good.

(Note: Mass Manipulation was released on 7 July, 2017; I just got my hands on it (and some money) and I can finally share what I think about it.)

REZZ brings her signature sound and more to her debut album Mass Manipulation: a weird, trippy, and fun experience into an avenue of electronic music that is ripe for exploration (or, in this case, re-exploration). There’s something eerily satisfying…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

Disjointed: Two & a Half Men with more pot, less interesting characters, and (hopefully) less longevity.

Disjointed: So bad that it brings down the intellect of TV everywhere.

Hey, guys *canned laughter* and welcome to *canned laughter* my review of… *canned laughter* [pause]

Disjointed!

*canned laughter and applause*

If you hated reading this as much as I hated typing this, then don’t watch this show. Disjointed, from sitcom giant Chuck Lorre (The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men), is plagued by various issues, the least of which is in its title. Bland, unfunny,…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

The Defenders Season 1: A Review

The Defenders is a fairly decent show, but it could've been so much, much better.

I’ll admit it: I love Marvel shows. From the stellar two seasons of Daredevil to the so-so Iron Fist, I’ve loved them all.

So it goes without saying that I was extremely excited for The Defenders. Having all of these street-level heroes in a story that had the potential to be dark, powerful and impactful sounded fantastic.

And it was fantastic.

…

Up to a point.

The Defenders can be broken up into…

[pseudonymouspenn-blog]

Atypical: A Shoddy Attempt at a show that could've really been something.

Atypical is... typical.

Atypical, for those of you who aren’t aware, is a classic coming-of-age show about a kid. One catch: he’s autistic. You’d think that, for a show that has an autistic kid (sorry, person with autism), they’d do their research and get it right. All “Atypical” serves to do is pander to its audience while desperately trying to cover up its shoddy writing and underdeveloped characters.

To top it off,…