Bigger on the inside.

There seems to be no consensus on how well mental health is portrayed in Hellblade games, and since I’m not an expert, I won’t say more.

What I can say is that it leans a little too much towards punishing the protagonist for my taste. It makes the comebacks more powerful, but I don’t know if it justifies the whole thing. To put it another way, I was curious about the first game when it was released, and felt compelled to follow the story in the second, but wouldn’t be upset if I never played both.

For me to consider something problematic, both the good and the bad should be on a comparable level. It’s not perfect, but Doctor Who seems to have been pushing diversity for a while now. I even started watching it after they announced that there would be a female Doctor.

At this point I have watched everything with the Ninth, Tenth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and now Fifteenth Doctors. Yes, I skipped the Moffat era.

On the other hand, the BBC seems to be pretty bad in many areas. Is it worth it? Well, I don’t give money to BBC, so sure.

The show has a somewhat weird and unique tone, where it tries to be for as much of an audience as it can, so sometimes it can be too silly or simplistic. But the premise means that almost every episode would lead main characters on a pretty unique adventure, and if you like those characters, then at least it would be fun, if not provocative, gut-wrenching or awe-inspiring, which occasionally happens too.

Puzzles, secrets and discoveries.

Botany Manor is brilliant. There is nothing more frustrating than illogical puzzles. It is subjective, but I never got stuck on one in this game. The overall pleasantness of the world with a touch of, shall I say, melancholy also helps.

Gylt is a more light-hearted Silent Hill, I guess. Not particularly scary, but spooky atmosphere, with lots of world to explore, secrets to discover and enemies to fight.

Indika left me cold. Not a bad game, not at all, but if the story does nothing for you, like it did for me, there is nothing else there.

Stitch is an interesting variation of nonogram-like games. You have numbers that tell you the size of rectangles that should fill the whole area. The overall picture kind of helps because you can guess which colors go where, but it can fail in places if you’re colorblind. There are a lot of penguins!

There’s not much more I can say about Star Trek: Discovery now that it’s finished its final season. Also, I tend to judge the thing as a whole, not individual elements. In the end, I’m glad I watched it, but I wouldn’t give it a medal, so to speak.

Nintendo. Nintendo never changes.

Fallout is a comedy. A dark, violent, crude, bloody comedy. That doesn’t mean it’s funny, the structure is comedy. Ridiculous and awful things happen to ridiculous and awful people. But yeah, sometimes it is funny. And very good!

Princess Peach Showtime! has an inherent problem: rarity. Mario seems to appear in a dozen games a year, but Peach may appear as a playable character in two, if that. So no matter what happens, the game will be at a higher level of scrutiny. I’m not saying that as an excuse, Nintendo doesn’t deserve it. They should do better!

But if you ignore that for a second, I think the game is pretty good. Not great, but good. Would be a great start to a series! *stares at Nintendo*

Also, it seems that the premise of the game – Peach playing many roles – is the answer to the rarity problem. They want to bridge the gap faster by having 10 games in one. That is probably not the logic the developers had, but it is funny to think that way.

It’s cold outside
There’s no kind of atmosphere
I’m all alone
More or less

Kirby and the Forgotten Land goes places. Well, ok, maybe a few places, nothing out of the ordinary, but still. A post-apocalyptic Kirby game? Ok, the story has moments that justify that choice. Also, the final boss is… awesome! Other than that, it’s just a very good game.

Choo-Choo Charles is more silly than scary, really. But pretty fun.

I also watched more of the new Star Trek shows.

Question: What if something that checks most of the boxes but still doesn’t feel right? To me, that’s Discovery. The representation alone should be praised, loudly, but the overall feeling is kind of meh. It doesn’t help that basically everything good has a pretty noticeable stain on it. The show talks about mental health all the time, but uses ableist language. Representation is done in a very bizarre and awkward way, with a lot of obvious missteps. There are good characters, almost all of them, but again, I just don’t like the story.

Question: What if your expectations are pretty low? That’s The Orville. I can’t say I never liked MacFarlane, but I don’t like him now. But I can’t deny that first, the show doesn’t really feel like his show most of the time (when it does, it’s very jarring), and second, it’s not bad, not at all. If you add those low expectations, it’s a strong sci-fi series. It doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, but it doesn’t hide behind the humor (it’s barely there) and isn’t afraid to go for heavier subjects.

Discovery stumbled so Strange New Worlds can chill. Saying it’s low stakes is a little weird, but it kind of is. It’s not the first Star Trek show out of this new bunch, it’s doing safe, mostly episodic storytelling, its comfortable in bringing in a lot of characters from the original series. It’s, well, chill.