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Notes, page 3

  2. Godzilla: King of the Monsters ★★☆☆☆

    2019 film

    Rewatched 8 April 2021

    The uncanny valley between the ponderous Godzilla 2014 and the bombastically campy Godzilla vs. Kong. I’m sorry but if you want to make a serious movie you have to stick to the serious monsters, you can’t put on the three-headed electric dragon and big moth. Pokémon aren’t scary.

  4. The Expanse, Season 5 ★★★★★

    2021 TV show

    Watched 16 December 2020 – 3 February 2021

    This series has built so much, and gone so far. The transition from “Game of Thrones in space” to one of the most poignant human dramas in science fiction has been a true joy to witness.

  5. The X Files ★★★☆☆

    1998 film

    Rewatched 14 January 2021

    More exciting than I remembered, but still disappointing and, at best, inessential. It tries too hard, and also not hard enough. Like most TV-to-film adaptations, the texture feels wrong. Character-wise, the plot isn’t much more than condensed retreading of old ground. And worst of all, it shows too much! It’s certainly a big-screen adventure, but the desire for one-upmanship has the side effect of making the world, the conspiracies, and even the aliens seem small and shallow.

  6. Drill Dozer ★★★☆☆

    2005 video game

    Played 4 September – 19 October 2020 on Game Boy Advance

    There’s some interesting ideas and clever mechanics here, but I could never get past the clunky, sluggish controls. Movement expressiveness is limited to such a degree that neither platforming nor combat feel good.

  7. Good Sudoku ★★★★☆

    2020 video game

    Played 23 July – 27 September 2020 on iPhone

    In just a few short weeks, this game took me from sudoku dilettante to completing Sunday “Pro 💀” puzzles in 20 minutes without hints (if I’m feeling patient enough). Good Sudoku has taught me more about sudoku than I ever thought I’d want to learn.

    Jan Willem Nijman said it best:

    This game is incredibly cyberpunk, like you just slam a new ai deck into your neocortex to kick ass at sudoku.

  9. Tenet ★★★☆☆

    2020 film

    Watched 26 August 2020

    A very cool sensorial experience, but emotionally shallow. It tries, but there’s too much time bullshit for character motivations and plot structure to survive. A movie made for endless YouTube explainers.

  10. I usually only keep one game on my phone at a time. More often than not, they’re @helvetica games. Now it’s gonna be Good Sudoku’s turn for a long while.

  11. Rick and Morty, Season 4 ★★★☆☆

    2020 TV show

    Watched 11 November 2019 – 2 June 2020

    My diagnosis: Rick and Morty has gone too meta. I want to laugh because the show is funny, not because the writers are clever.

  12. Underwater ★★★☆☆

    2020 film

    Watched 11 May 2020

    Solid genre entertainment. Not much more than what I expected, but it’s well done, straightforward, looked cool. 90 minutes club!

    Kirsten Stewart has the best shaky hands I’ve ever seen on film. This movie is worth watching for her performance alone. The rest of the cast was… okay.

    In the end I was left with some questions: Was this at some point meant to be a Cloverfield sequel? Why does it look like it was edited for commercial breaks? Were the voice-overs really necessary? Was the girlboss-beat-drop end credits song picked by a focus group?

  13. Lumines Remastered ★★★☆☆

    2018 video game

    Played 23 December 2019 – 15 January 2020 on Nintendo Switch

    It’s cool, but I’d rather just play Tetris.

  14. The Outsider, Season 1 ★★★☆☆

    2020 TV show

    Watched 13 January – 9 March 2020

    First half was great: intriguing mystery and plot developments, great characters. Then the mystery is completely resolved, and the second half is mostly seeing the characters catch up with what the audience already knows and doing lots of talking in cars. It ended with a whimper, and I was disappointed.

  15. Picross S ★★★☆☆

    2017 video game

    Played 12 January – 11 March 2020 on Nintendo Switch

    I love me some Picross, but they really phoned it in with the UI and controls in this one. No touchscreen support and no option to use the right stick means you can never really play one-handed, and that’s just incredibly frustrating for such a simple game.

  16. Celeste: Farewell ★★★★★

    2019 video game

    Played 9 September – 23 December 2019 on Nintendo Switch

    The Progress screen in Celeste, showing full game completion, at a cost of over 23 thousand deaths and 66 hours of gameplay.

    Not many games have rewarded me with such a deep sense of accomplishment. Celeste gives me life.