Silo, Season One | Life is Strange Remastered
Trapped in a space and rewinding time.
MOVIES
- No new movies seen in the last week, although I did watch The Marvels again and enjoyed it again, still completely unable to see what's so bad about it.
- Saying that, it's actually got quite a high audience approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes, so it really does feel like it failed due to naysayers making their voices the loudest more than any fault of the film.
GAMES
- Life is Strange Remastered is done and dusted (although I will be going back to episode one to get the last few optional photos I missed) and my feelings about the game are about as mixed as they were when playing through the original version.
- For starters, I still think the first two episodes are too slow and, for me, the game doesn't really click until the climax of episode three, when we start getting branching timelines and alternate realities coming into play.
- I did enjoy playing the game more this time, but I'm not sure whether that's the game appealing more to me now, or if it was knowing where things were going and what I needed to do that helped, or even just further 'gamifying' things by seeking out the optional photos to hone my concentration.
- Either way, I'm still not sure if I'd really recommend the game as a result, because I still don't really get the appeal of the core story (other than for representation's sake, although that's not really enough in my opinion).
- I do think the game does look better though and absolutely deserves the 'Remastered' part of the title, even if the lighting in the original game was already exceptional.
- I'm also fine with everything on the audio side, from the music to effects and the performances of the cast, even if there were very characters I liked, which is an issue with the writing and not the actors.
- It might be worthwhile if you can get it cheap, and there's at least a solid enough foundation to keep you pressing forward, so it might well turn out to be a fantastic experience if the story and characters work better for you than they did for me. [7/10]
- Baldur's Gate 3 is still progressing nicely, although I did resist one Dark Urge moment in Act Two that I had to think over a lot before deciding that my character's dark side was more prone to killing individuals rather than mass slaughter.
- I'm also enjoying having returned to Euro Truck Simulator 2 after buying the Iberia expansion and opening up Portugal and Spain as places to visit while doing other things (see further down)
- Marvel Snap playtime is continuing to come down as the more negative aspects become more prominent and making it easier and easier to stop playing.
TV
- Another Apple TV series down with the first season of Silo finished and, like Life is Strange Remastered, I have pretty mixed feelings about it.
- I'm not sure if it's due to the pacing of the books the show is based on, but how events unfold seems really oddly done to the point of me almost quitting after the first few episodes.
- To elaborate: I really enjoyed episode one; then found episodes two to four so ponderous and dull that I almost stopped watching; episodes five to seven were decent at best, but had enough of a hook to keep me watching now I was that far; then I really enjoyed episodes eight to ten.
- Being an adaptation, I don't want to criticise the show too hard if there's stuff they have to include to set up future plot threads from the books, but it really does make it tough going at times early on.
- Weirdly, despite liking Rebecca Ferguson in the Mission: Impossible movies, Dune and especially how fucking great she is as Rose the Hat in Doctor Sleep, there's something about her performance in this season that just doesn't quite work for me, which isn't great considering she's the central character.
- I'm not even sure what it is either, but it's almost like her energy levels never quite sync up with what each scene requires and knowing well enough that she's more than capable of living up to and enhancing what she's got to work with.
- The supporting cast is pretty decent even if it might most of the season before you remember who's who, and having a big name like Tim Robbins playing what appears to be a minor role at the outset seems like a walking spoiler alert that his character is going to become much more important later on.
- I'm not sure if I'll be back for season two despite how well this first season ended as there might not be enough other shows and/or movies to entice me back to Apple TV by the time it comes out, and I don't think it's a subscription seller by itself. [6/10]
OTHER
- Just to add to the Euro Truck Simulator 2 bit above, I'm currently listening to, and approaching the end of, Andy Serkis' reading of The Hobbit again as I drive around a digital Iberian peninsula and really enjoying it, even if it is still a little odd to have a movie-matching Gollum voice and entirely new voices for the other roles!
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