Month: December 2020

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: “The Evil League of Mutants”

The plot episode I was expecting! Baron Draxum sings! Things move forward! We find out what the big deal about Lou Jitsu is (mostly), and the turtles give Splinter a big speech about how he’s their father which was something I was sort of on the fence about. I usually like Splinter as a story about adoption but they kind of went to a weird place with him in this series.

A very very weird place.

I kept thinking that those crab people reminded me of evil versions of the PSA guys from this animation by SmallBu. I think it was the posing.

I figured Todd was a villain after the ‘milking puppies’ thing. I was right.

Midsomer Murders: Wild Harvest

When a wealthy farmer is covered in truffle oil and mauled to death by a wild boar, Barnaby and Nelson’s investigation leads them to a tyrannical celebrity chef.

There was apparently an extremely gory death )the boar thing) in this episode they completely did not show. Just the face. I feel cheated, usually Midsomer is never coy.

Murder was pretty satisfying. Actor playing Nick Ivers was very handsome. Good Sykes subplot. An entire family was wiped out by just being adjacent to the actual target which was delightfully over-murderous.

Also Ruth Cameron’s actress had the best accent. Loved hearing all her lines.

Not a period piece so I have nothing to say about the clothes, but I point out Midsomer Murders has been going on so long that the first season does technically count as a period piece. Watching the evolution of the cellphone through the eyes of Midsomer has been quite the thing.

My grandmother was all about Murder, She Wrote, but my grandpa is all about Midsomer which means I can enjoy the same show as him while he’s still around to talk about it. I had to watch Murder, She Wrote after the fact to get to know my grandma better.

It’s nice to be in the episodes with the second Barnaby so I can understand why we kept using different names for the lead…

Planet Zoo: Session 2

Well, last time I played things were going pretty good! I had a baby aardvark, my staff were doing things, etc, etc.

So my next session I decided to get bold. A SECOND exhibit! Oh the luxury. I got two grizzly bears and used what I’d learned from making the aardvark haus to make them their exhibit. Bit of trouble as I figured out plant life, but otherwise it was fine.

And then the pathing issues started. For some reason my staff couldn’t get into the gate to tend to my bears. So I took the door out which left a solid wall and moved it to somewhere else.

ALERT ALERT DANGEROUS ANIMALS HAVE ESCAPED

I looked at my bears, sitting calmly on top of their climbing shelter. I think one was scratching itself. The alert shut off when I put in a new door, which also apparently couldn’t be walked into by staff. But I saw SOME OF THEM go in so I was like, okay, it’s working? Maybe?

So I built a new area, for phase 3 now that I’d figured out how to make work areas. I was going to breed so many Galapagos tortoises (four). But a new problem along with the old: STILL no keeper could get into the habitat (I don’t know what I’m doing wrong! No one has trouble with the aardvarks!) and the habitat was too small for my army of four tortoises. So that’s fine, I thought, I’ll just take away the path surrounding it and expand the habitat.

Then I discovered I couldn’t delete the pathways. Or the fence. And when I searched help, it wasn’t exactly forthcoming. No results for delete, and when I started trying to read more closely, the fans on my computer suddenly started screaming which it turns out is not particularly conductive to reading a help file. This game is a real resource eater, wow. I haven’t really had that problem with games on the new pc at all.

So I saved, closed out, and vowed to discover what I’m doing wrong… tomorrow.

Please don’t let me dream of anymore disintegrating turtles.

I’m aware that because comments are turned off that pretty much means no one can ever offer me a solution to these problems but fortunately this is mostly a record to myself so I can look back and go ‘I never did figure out how to delete those paths’.

Partners in Crime: The Sunningdale Mystery

Boy oh boy I love the clothing in period mystery shows. Watching this 80s series (about… the 20s? I said I liked the clothing, but I’m not good at you know, dating the clothing) about Tommy and Tuppence has really made me resent Tuppence’s appearance in either the Miss Marple or Poirot sexed up later episodes where she was a miserable alcoholic whose family hated her. Tommy and Tuppence are so delightful in this series. Very pleasant to watch.

I own the entire original book series and I think I’ll try to read something of the detective being parodied in each one when I read them, finally.

Mystery was fine, onto the fashion.

Tommy and Tuppence drinking tea together and Tuppence is in a lovely vest.
No hat here, but I love her outfit.
Tuppence in Partners in Crime wearing a lovely magenta hat that covers her whole scalp and hair
The first hat. I love it.
Tommy and Tuppence looking into the middle distance while Tuppence wears lounging wear
Even dressing up to lay about! I do not aspire to this. You are lucky if I actually leave my pajamas in the first place, especially after winter hits and I can just wear a big heavy coat for errands.
Tommy and Tuppence riding horses, Tuppence is wearing a bowler and a suit.
I love her bowtie oh my gosh. The third hat.
Tuppence in a golfing outfit, the hat is brown and floppy.
The fourth (not final or even really the fourth hat, I skipped one that looked like an admiral’s tricorn and the final one with a big pendant on it that never really went fully into frame) and oh boy, is this whole outfit adorable. Ten stars to whoever did the wardrobe on this show.

Grim Tales: The Legacy Session 1

So we begin our session with a bit of resolution on the last game that we apparently DID let that guy out of the dungeon eventually because we are on the way to his castle! And we crash our car? But we don’t care much about that.

Immediately the game gives me a machete.

Hidden object screen with a hamster visible
It’s a hamster! I just wanted to point that out. I like hamsters.
Screencapture of a game trying to use a machete to gain access to a frog in some cracks in the pavement
Already they are denying me clearly normal uses of the machete

 

I end up using the machete to clear some weeds but then I throw it away and replace it with a morning star which they are not letting me use on: ghost in the painting, crow holding object I want, locked door, object in chair, clearing fog, or missing chess pieces. Why even give me a mace if I can’t use it to its full potential?

 

EDIT: I got to bash the head off a suit of armor. All is forgiven.

 

EDIT 2:

A page describing the habits of werewolves
My relatives are so weird and WHY are there WOLVES everywhere in this CASTLE I came to visit my relatives in and WHERE are my relatives

 

EDIT 3:

Puzzle box that says "I just need to find and place the cross-shaped bas-relief, and all that is secret shall be made manifest" in the floating text above it.
That’s a little more on the nose than I was expecting.

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Episodes 11-12

I’ve started watching this series and as we hurtle to the end of the first season I still have no idea if I actually like it. The turtles fucking around is pretty funny and the art’s great. Still not sure how I feel about sociopath Donatello and Bad Dad Splinter. DO like softie Raphael and sweetie Michelangelo. Neutral on Leonardo. April is great.

 

11a “The Purple Jacket”

A Donatello episode! Where we get to see his soft shell, which I think is pretty neat they’re all different species now. Also April, who is always a delight. It was pretty cute seeing how excited Donatello was to go to a school. I liked it. Good episode.

11b “Pizza Pit”

I liked the punk band. (Reminder these are mostly just notes to myself)

12a “Smart Lair”

Another Donatello episode!

‘No hard feelings, I promise!’ ‘Don’t fall for it’

More of Splinter being a questionable parent and an urge to eat… endangered animal eggs? I’ve noticed that some of the more recent reboots tend to randomly spin the characterization hand to ‘chaotic evil’, although I admit I am completely basing this on this show and some of the stuff Scrooge has done and not like, a huge sample. So ‘some of’ means ‘2 shows I have watched’ but I don’t watch a lot of stuff so that’s like 100% of the reboots I’ve watched, OKAY. Scrooge dancing around that dead guy’s corpse is pretty memorable to me.
12b “Hot Soup: The Game”

I really liked this one. The Foot Clan guys were really great interacting with the Foot Recruit. And Raphael being protective over Michelangelo was so sweet. And, of course, good Donatello moments like him using his robo arm to pat Michelangelo on the head without actually looking up and the sarcasm that wasn’t sarcasm about having an app to tap into the security cameras in the city. I GUESS LOU JITSU IS KIND OF IMPORTANT I guess that’s why they keep mentioning him in almost every episode.

 

A quick check of wikipedia when getting the episode #s and titles is that the next one is an actual full size plot episode. Nifty. Next time I eat, I guess. It’s a bad habit to watch things while you eat, but new habits start fast.

Grim Tales: The Bride session 2

The plot’s really heated up. My protagonist seems to have a particularly kind heart because if a hand suddenly shot out of a wall at me in a game where a demon is sending me around through time, I’d have to say my reaction wouldn’t be ‘oh no some poor soul has been bricked up! How awful!’ it would more like ‘okay, time to run’.

That said, it’s still suffering from the giving me a hammer with a bunch of nail problems but saying the nails are actually weirdly shaped amulet keys STOP TRYING TO USE THE HAMMER.

Grim Tales screencap where I attempt to use a hammer on a puzzle and the game says it won't work
Oh I am pretty sure this would work if you would just let me try

 

EDIT: So this guy marries into the family and gets locked in the family dungeon. We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there.

Found a skull in the kitchen to solve a puzzle and you know combining this with the existence of the ‘family dungeon’ I’m starting to think this wasn’t a normal group of relatives.

EDIT 2: And done! That was the most abrupt ‘back to the start screen!’ ending I’ve yet experienced (you rescue the girl, she smiles at you, BAM start screen hope you didn’t blink). I wonder if I ever go back and help that guy we locked up.

Planet Zoo: Already getting into my head

I stress-bought Planet Zoo the other day and installed it forever (10 gb is a bit on my puny connection) and played it for, Steam says, 64 minutes.

It’s full of stuff! I don’t get half of it and forgot almost all of the help I read within seconds of reading it! But it’s really easy to find when you forget and want to look again.

A big issue I had was finding out how I was supposed to get animals. At all. Eventually I figured out where to go and got myself a pair of aardvarks who eventually gave me a lil’ aardvark named Musa. My zoo has exactly one exhibit and it is aardvarks. 64 minutes and that was my achievement. It got me a steam card! A cheetah!

Anyway, then I played Grim Tales (Grim Tales: The Bride session 1) until a migraine forced me to go shiver in bed (not Grim Tales’ fault in any way, I had one when I started) and my brain was apparently not done with Planet Zoo because it decided to give me a nightmare about it.

Nightmare: I adopted a mountain lion to put in an exhibit but it was too young to put in there on her own and I couldn’t put her with others so I had to wait until she was ready and then I had to go on a journey and during that journey she turned into a small turtle (but I thought she had always been a turtle at that point) who kept trying to escape and was so small I had trouble keeping her with me even with my whole hand closed and she kept falling out and it got worse every time and eventually she snapped in half and it was like the whole body was made of chalk.

I have decided that for tonight’s Planet Zoo session, I’m probably gonna do something… other than mountain lions. I don’t even know if you can adopt them too young to place. Apparently there’s also some sort of player marketplace? I’m going to learn how to do more than one exhibit before I try that out.