As close to Top Gear: The Video Game that we'll get

Well I haven't written anything on here in ages, but in all fairness that's because uni has left me without the time or the money to go see movies. I've been reading books, admittedly, but nothing I feel like reviewing. I read a book called Jack Glass: it was interesting in the way it subverted stereotypical genre conventions of a murder mystery/detective story, but the ending was twee and felt out-of-character for the most part.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about books. I'm here to talk about Forza Horizon 2. It's a video game on the Xbox One, and I got it a while ago because the demo was awesome (game demos are your friend, people!). I was able to snag a Day One version with some free cars, which was a bonus (they don't give you great cars - you get a Ferrari for free after the first championship anyway, but it gives you more options when it comes to the early races).

In essence, Horizon is a racing game. You drive around Europe taking part in championship races, from lapped circuit races to checkpoint-to-checkpoint sprints, all the while buying new cars and tripping them out. And there's a lot of variety to the races: despite only needing to win fifteen championships to unlock the Horizon finale, there are so many races to take part in. And the barn finds add an element of exclusivity to some of the cars, as well as giving you free unlocks at certain levels and allowing you to take part in even more races.

Now for the bad: I don't like how the supercars feel in particular. They're very fast, yes, they're fun to drive, but they all feel too controlled and there's no difficulty to the handling. Look, I can't drive; but I've watched enough Top Gear to know that a lot of supercars need some strength to handle. They just feel too light and airy. And the barn finds are too sparse: no matter how much I explore, I can't find any barn finds before I'm told about them, I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to. You can only get them at certain levels, when the game tells you where to find them. And Ben, the Horizon festival's host, is annoyingly chirpy, although the XP boards dotted around the map do give you the ability to ram his smug face in.

But by far my favourite thing about the game is the garage; in particular, the upgrades system. If you have enough money (which you can earn by winning races, challenging the AI drivers in head-to-head, or through wheelspins from levelling up) you can auto upgrade straight to A-class, or even S1. And the custom upgrades give you the power to change almost everything, which has given me an S2-class Volkswagen van and a Willys Jeep which can reach 150mph over dirt fields. Honestly, the entire system is ridiculous. Almost half of my cars are ridiculously difficult to control, many of them are S1-class or better, and thanks to all of my upgrades nearly all of them can beat even the most difficult AI drivers (or drivatars, as the game calls them) through sheer straight-line speed.

So yeah, that's Forza Horizon 2: where you can have a 1960's Abarth which tops out at 150mph, but the supercars feel so generic. My advice to you is to get this game, get the smallest, most ridiculous car you can get, and trick it out all to Hell. The game becomes endless fun when you just mess about with the cars, and driving itself becomes a challenge.

Star Wars and Serenity had a foul-mouthed baby and it is good!

As I write this I'm listening to Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix, Vol. 1, so you can already tell what this is going to be about. And on top of the kick-ass soundtrack there's a good movie with some great effects and a surprising depth to the colourful character roster.

Changing the World gets the High Score!

So I consider myself a bit of a gamer. Not a usual gamer - I don't tend to play first-person shooters, I have little interest in big-franchise games (except Watch Dogs, because that's awesome. Oh, and Titanfall) and I'm more interested in art, story and character than gameplay.

But here's the thing: I've been reading about games too. And it turns out, games have the power to change the world.

How to Break a Dragon's heart

I want to go on record here, right now, and say that at present I prefer Dreamworks to Disney Pixar. Yes, Pixar have had some great films, probably more than Dreamworks, but there's something about the way they handle themselves and the way they portray their characters that makes me wanna root for the guys at Dreamworks.

Oh, and in case you couldn't tell from the title and the opening, this is about How to Train Your Dragon 2.

A look at good games and "meh" games

I haven't been to see any movies recently, as you might have noticed, and that's partly why I've been branching out into book reviews and game reviews. These past coupla weeks I've been reading about game design and what makes a game good or addictive, so today I'm going to talk about a couple of games, one an example of what I consider good game design, and one I consider not-so-good game design.

Book Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

Okay, so it's been two days.

And I've already finished another book.

To be fair, Jon Ronson's writing is very readable. The topics are often absurd, seemingly larger-than-life, but that's the sort of thing he becomes involved in. My first experience of his writing was with The Psychopath Test which was an interesting look at psychopathy and the traits which give it away, looking less at the condition itself (these are, again, more of those "popular science" books I love) and more at how it affects people and how people treat it. Likewise, this look at the US military and its more... shall we say, "unusual" tactics in warfare, is approached in typical Jon-Ronson-style from the strange angle of its PsyOps division, the shady area of army intelligence concerned with psychic viewing, new age thinking and, as the title of the book suggests, staring at goats. Yep, this is The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Book Review: The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat

Today is a book post, in part because I haven't watched any new movies recently (or really in the past month at all) but also because books are something I love, but don't have the opportunity to talk about very often. Books are something I really ought to talk about here, being as my movie experience is very much based upon storytelling - a movie without a good story is not a good movie at all, people! - and being as I'm a creative writer (particularly poetry right now, but more on that in future). Reading is just something I do.

In particular, I love reading non-fiction; fiction is great and all, you get a wonderful sense of escapism and vast scale in a good fantasy or sci-fi, and the stories they tell can bring to light modern problems, even if they were written long ago. But as a kid I really grew up reading the Horrible Histories and Horrible Science books, I found them endlessly fascinating and amusing and I'm sure they're still a great influence on what I read, although now that quest for real-world information has turned to perusing the "Popular Science" and "Smart Thinking" sections in Waterstone's rather than the back-of-beyond dusty history sections in second-hand bookshops. But what I find there is still of great interest, particularly when I stumble upon something as engaging and informative as Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.

Hacked Off

I have to start this review by saying I'm not all that far through Watch Dogs. What I've heard of the storyline (and it's very little) is promising, but for my part I haven't really done much of it. I've had it for a few days now, and every time I play I get stuck on it, sucked in, unable to quit or leave. Many a night has been spent staying up 'til three in the morning trying to finish another side mission or just muck about and hack as many random NPC's as possible. Because here's the thing about Watch Dogs: there's so much of it, and it's all so much fun.

A Bundle of Reviews

So I've had an Xbox One for about a week now, and most of my time on it has been spent either grinding through ridiculously difficult side-scrolling platformers or expressing my disbelief that they actually bothered with a campaign mode in Titanfall. Anyway, I think I week is long enough to have bought all the good games (short of Watch Dogs with its extravagant £60 price tag or anything which involves a sport and is not affiliated with the Kinect) and to have time to review the console itself. So here are my thoughts on the Xbox One.

One Big Colossal-Monster Punch-Up

When Godzilla came out in 1998 I was amazed. I'm ashamed to say it was one of my favourite films (probably - I was six when I first saw it and it stuck in my mind, they obviously did something right) but I have never watched it since I was old enough to go and see 12-rated movies in the cinema. Now, with the rise of a new Western take on Japan's biggest export (from head to feet) it's time to see how Gareth Edwards' more traditional interpretation of a classic kaiju holds up.

Bigger, Better, Bloodier!

If Gareth Evans is a name with which you are unfamiliar, why do you read this blog? It's about movies. And Gareth Evans is a name which, in the movie, world, is quickly becoming huge. When The Raid hit screens three years ago, it was a low-budget, gritty martial arts action film and its visceral action sequences and close camera work made it a cult hit and raked in fifteen times its one million-dollar budget.

Now, The Raid 2: Berandal is out in cinemas and it's bigger, badder and bloodier than ever before. Featuring a more expansive world, more involving story and an impressive array of detailed characters, it's still the bone-crunching, face-breaking fist-thrower the prequel was; only this time, Evans has the budget to spread it about a bit.

The Winter Soldier: The SPOILERIFFIC Review

WARNING: SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER AND DO NOT WISH TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN IT, DO NOT READ THIS POST.

A Night-time Screening of a Slick Superhero Spy Thriller

There's something interesting about a midnight screening. Perhaps it's the exclusivity - being the first one to see a movie, being able to call it before anyone else, and when they ask the next day you, bleary-eyed and proud, can stand up and say "Yes! I have seen that movie!". Perhaps it's the silence as you step out of the cinema and realise it's nearly three in the morning - the one time of day you can see a movie and the sky looks pretty much the same when you leave as when you went in. Perhaps it's just the fact that it's midnight - it's always been a pretty special time.

Whatever the reason, I expected something special out of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And I can't say I was disappointed.

Pastel-Coloured Poetry in Motion: Zipping through Wes Anderson's Latest Flick

Wes Anderson was not, until recently, a name which appeared on my radar. Which is a shame, because it's going to take me so long to get this finished because I'm watching The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou as I write this. Anderson's films have a way of drawing you in, and the same can be said of his latest offering.

Summon Creature of Habit: my experience with HabitRPG

The past few weeks I've been trying to make better use of my time than simply watching YouTube videos and neglecting to practise my languages. I've already told you how useful I find Duolingo as a tool, but the reason I've been using it daily is because it's one of the habits I've been training myself to pick up, thanks to an ingenious little tool which has been helping me pick up better habits.

It's called HabitRPG, and it works like a traditional 8-bit RPG: you get hit points and experience - you gain the latter by ticking things off your to-do list, and you lose the former by avoiding your daily tasks (for me, that's usually language practice and writing). Okay, so maybe not entirely like an 8-bit RPG. But the principle is the same; if you lose all your HP, I assume you die. I haven't been apathetic enough to try this yet.

The new Robocop: It's good, but it's no Verhoeven...

So, as you might have guessed from the title, I went to see the new, action-packed reboot of Robocop today. It tells a pretty similar story to the 1987 original: rendered comatose thanks to a bunch of criminals, Alex Murphy is rebuilt as the titular Robocop, a robotic police officer who, in between snippets of satirical news shows, single-handedly cleans up the streets of Detroit. But when his human side begins to override his robotic body, he goes on a quest for revenge against those who made him what he is. In fact, the most notable difference is that it is not a ridiculous jab at big-money corporations, but is in fact a serious movie where they try to play the whole "robotic police officer" thing straight.

A Fun New Way to Learn Languages

I remember my school days, spent lounging at the back of Spanish class during my A-levels, idly doodling in my notepad or else trying to keep up with the rest of the class as I desperately tried to recall the Spanish for "Lorca uses lots of phallic imagery in his plays". The thing is, I wasn't all that bad at Spanish; it's just that, compared to the others, I wasn't all that good. Much of that was of course down to me: I rarely took the time to look at the vocabulary or revise until exams came by, at which point it was already too late. I seem to recall doodling during much of my preparation time for the oral exam, too, actually.

But the past month or so has led me back into languages, through a route I hadn't hitherto given much thought. With the advent of smaller, faster technology we have more and more ways to access information, a fact which Muzzy and Rosetta Stone have taken into account with their DVDs and computer software. But me? I've gone for something a little smaller, more... handheld.

Movies, Oscars and a pre-Valentine's Day Apology...

I feel like Inside Llewyn Davis has really drawn the short straw in being out this year. In time for the Oscars this February, it's netted just two nominations (for cinematography and sound mixing - how did this miss Best original score?!), coming up against such giants as American Hustle and Gravity. Which seems a shame, really, given my opinions.

'Tis the Season...

I really should stop reviewing movies. For one thing, I can't stand any of them. I go in expecting something brilliant, and the half I like is always overshadowed by the half I detest. Sometimes there's too much story getting in the way of a cheap-thrills B-movie ride, sometimes there's all action when we need some quiet talk and agonised looks. I hate trilogies, I hate superhero movies, I hate plodding crime "thrillers". I hate movies, basically. But I really hate the fact that awards-season is rolling round now, because it means we get into these thick, story-heavy movies at a time when you need a marshmallowy chocolate winter warmer.