The Week In A Bad Education Towers #23

Been absolutely full of grotty cold this week so having been doing too much beyond sneezing repeatedly and working my way through lots of tissues.

And then the TV broke so had to buy a new one, nothing too fancy (given the recent boiler escapades and potential upcoming new Mac escapades) but now being able to properly see the 4K output of my PS5 is pretty sweet. To confirm the previous TV was this LG one which was a plasma (apparently, as this is news to me) that couldn't even do full HD. It was a good 10 years old so it more than did its time. This also opens up buying ultra HD blu rays as the PS5 can play those discs so its always good to find a potential new money sink.

I've always had a take it or it attitude when it comes to DreamWorks animated films. Chicken Run? Yep. Shrek? Meh. Then they seemed to go through a purple patch that peaked around How To Train Your Dragon 2 and Kung Fu Panda 3 and that was it, after that it was back ti stuff like Trolls and Boss Baby. Around the same time you had other studios knocking home runs out of the park, things like Spider-Verse and The Lego Movie. So I was very pleasantly surprised by The Bad Guys when I saw it last year; a great Ghibli infused art style, funny characters and a great story.

And then I saw that we had another Puss in Boots film out this year. Now, going back to Shrek I was always in the camp of "decent at best". The films aged really quickly, tying themselves to an art design that aimed for photo realism in a fantasy world. The jokes also tied themselves to contemporary pop culture references (the Spider-Man kiss, a Matrix style sequence) that again quickly aged the film. The sequels were alright, but over shadowed by the other better films that DreamWorks was putting out. Puss in Boots was a spin off of those films, showing up as a character in one of the sequels before getting his own film.

I didn't even bother watching the trailer but I saw fold talking about it on Twitter in glowing terms, and in particular one sequence from earlier in the film; it looked great, like Bad Guys taking its cues from the scratchy mixed media aesthetic of Spider-Verse. On that alone I was like, well why not?

And I'm glad I did, as walking out of the screen yesterday I was like "that was a cracker". It still has that fairy tale meets the real world vibe but much less of "remember that scene from that other film because here it is again", and when the action sequences kick off its looks fantastic. The opening sequence is an absolute belter, so its almost a shame when these finish and it kind of drops back its the normal vibe. Thats still one of the best things about Spider-Verse, the way it was all in on that look in every single element of every single shot. When Puss in Boots goes for it the film honestly can go toe-to-toe with anything from Spider-Verse, but it can only do it in quick bursts and not for the whole film.

So recommended, easily better than all of the previous Shrek films os give it a go especially if you get chance to see it on the big screen

Gloucester town centre is in a bit of a bleak place when it comes to video game shops; at one point there were like 6 or 7 places you could go to buy a game, indie places and the big chains. But thanks to the internet we're not at the point where the only Game store is in a small corner of a Sports Direct and one collectors place that sells toys and Funko Pops and retro games.

And they have some free to play arcade cabs in there, which is brilliant. There's a Time Crisis 3 where both guns still have their recoil, an Outrun 2 cab, a Street Fighter II in an Astro City style cab with a Tekken VII cab next to it and a Terminator 2 light gun cab. So its nice to drop in there and play some games before buying something cheap to say thank you.

So we go in there this weekend only there's some new cabs; WrestlFest! Strider?! And the pièce de résistance, a Final Fight cab.

Which was cracking, as this was one of the games the youngest got into when we set up the Batocera machine a couple of weeks ago. Now, here we are side by side playing it on an actual arcade machine. Just brilliant.

I mean, he did get the higher score than me but that was because he selected Haggar before I did and he’s my main but what can you do?

Was just in the midst of putting this together and realised that I had actually done stuff this week; recorded episode 50 of the Conquistabores! And put out a new video on the channel:

And already writing the next one! Which isn’t a good sign of when stuff will et done as wrote that Columns one last August but, again, what can you do?

Right, thats enough as talking about Final Fight is making want to play it so going to go do that.

Bye!