The More Than A Year Or So In A Bad Education Towers #13

Well. Looks like we kept this up with our usual level of efficiency.

Its not often that I go to the cinema twice, I normally say I want to but don’t bother. I did see The Suicide Squad twice but that second time was because I missed the time for another film so was like “screw it, I’m seeing this again”. So whilst I saw it twice, the second time was almost by mistake.

Not so with Everything Everywhere All At Once. No, I saw that twice because I wanted to because its brilliant.

Yes, it won’t be to everyone’s taste; when it gets going it chucking loads of ideas at you, some daft and some deep and I can see it rubbing up some people the wrong way. Its a Michael Gondry film by way of a late 1980s Jackie Chan film via art house cinema. Take that as you will, for some I imagine thats either a warning sign or a massive tease.

In its way its almost un-reviewable because people will just take against it. Which is obviously a shame, as the message at the heart of the film is almost universal but the packaging around it will hide that for some. Luckily, I was very much in the “this is a masterpiece” side of things which meant I had a great time, twice.

Despite making a video about how I should get around to playing Dark Souls, I haven’t been playing Dark Souls. What I have been playing, is Vampire Survivors.

Now. This isn’t a new game, I remember seeing some screen shots of it a while ago and it looked mad; 16bit art style, mad load of sprites, vampires. However, it being a Steam game cooled my interest a little as these Steam game that bubble up in the socials tend to be on Windows only so I get all excited then I can’t buy it. So I never really looked into Vampire Survivors, just filed the name away just incase. And then one day I checked out of mild curiosity and there it was; on Steam, playable on Mac and like £2.

Sold.

Then it took me about a month or so to actually get around to playing it and, oh boy, it’s a belter.

From the screen shots it looks like you’re going to get a twin stick shooter but it’s not; you walk around a large map with your character automaticlly shooting which you have to guide around as best you can. Most enemies killed drop some XP, when you level up you get to pick a random new weapon or item. Things like a whip, a crucifix, bibles that spin round you, armour, stuff like that. And so it goes, until you die or…you die.

It’s pretty straight forward, a mad combination of shooter and idle clicker where the goal is to build the best set of kill crazy weapons out of the stuff you’re presented with. Ideally, you’ll level up weapons to the point that that evolve into new even madder weapons. And if you’re really lucky, you’ll get to the point where you don’t even have to move because of the wall of death thats emanting from your character:

There is also a Rogue Like aspect where the coins you collect in the game can be used to level up bits and pieces to then take back into the game. There’s new levels, music, characters, a whole mess of fun.

And fun it is; game has a great flow of having you being overwhemled, then powering up enough to feel like an absolute brute and then you notice a massive wave of baddies heading your way and, oh God, its all bad again. That up and down of emotions is so well managed, its brilliant.

And its only £2!

Been having a retro itch recently what with digging my Saturn out of the loft. This ended up in getting my mum’s old Wii because, as we remember, everyone had one. But, some how, she didn’t have the Wii Sports disc which is annoying as thats what my youngest has been badgering me to play. So a trip to CEX and and they didn’t have any copies of Wii Sports either so we picked up a copy of Wii Sports Resort which was great till I got home and remembered that Wii Motion Plus was a thing but wasn’t for my mum so couldn’t play that. Brilliant.

So it’s going real well so far. I did pick up Boom Blox for £1 though so can’t argue with that, expect a #QuidGames video on that at some point in the future. And/or I might just say screw it and make it a naughty Wii and load it up with all the roms.

Obviously, there’s way more stuff than that to talk about since the last newsletter, but who can be bothered with that. Let’s forget the past (except for video games movies and other such cultural relics from the past) and press on. I will try to keep this a regular thing, really as somewhere to throw up half formed ideas and thoughts without the bother of a blog or anything like that.

Anyways, bye!

PD