In 2020 I played Watch_Dogs, Ubisoft’s 2014 open world game that functions very much like every other Ubisoft open world game. It is generic, and very triple-A, and it’s absolutely fine. The story is bold and basic and predictable. It’s a 6 out of 10. It’s fine. It’s fine. It also isn’t fine in a bunch of ways I’d love to talk about but I don’t know enough about politics or sociology to be educated about it, but that’s not the point. Well, it sort of is the point.
In a way I had a year off from gaming last year - I took a lot of time out to figure out what I was actually enjoying and whether or not I wanted to play at all. At the start of the year I’d pretty much planned to get rid of my gaming PC, but by the end of it I’d upgraded it and I’m excited for next year. Its good to take time to evaluate what you do.
These days, I’m pretty skeptical about Valve. I’ve waited so long for so much, and I’ve seen so much abandoned and left behind that I try to avoid the hype surrounding them. I love Valve games, they’re free to operate however they like, and I certainly don’t believe they owe me anything, but I always take the approach of believing it when I see it when it comes to their releases. All that said, it was pretty hard not to be excited about a new Half Life game. Hype is a difficult thing: once you get swept up in it, the thing you’re waiting for needs to be everything you expect in order to pass muster.
I’ve read a lot of cyberpunk, but I haven’t seen many cyberpunk movies, so I took a look at the Cyberpunk Subreddit wiki’s list.
The list starts with Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott. I watched this a long time ago and really didn’t like it - I found it very slow and hard to follow. Since then, I’ve got a whole lot older, and I’ve seen and read a lot of sci-fi, so I thought it was time to give it another shot.
Film Club in Lockdown 2 was a lot of fun, and we’re now in Lockdown 3 so it’s time to do it again. As before, no scheduled Zoom meets (but don’t let me stop you if that’s your jam) and nothing more than suggestions of interesting things to watch.
The theme this time is “optimism”, which is a tricky theme. I’ve tried to pick some optimistic films, but at very least I think they fit into the category of “feel good”. Hopefully they manage to bring some joy to your locked down lives.