Chindie

I think the capsule toys might be the last thing Shenmue needs to worry about... 'Hey you guys know where I can find any sailors round here?!' And the hilariously racist elements of it as well.

A couple of entries are pretty good in fairness. This just seems to be taking the wider narrative and doing it's own thing, which might not be a bad thing compared to a true adaptation, except that that wider narrative is bollocks.

I have a slightly odd family. My mom came from a big family, she had a lot of siblings, possibly into double figures I think. I know next to nothing about any of them, besides a few token names and that almost all of them had health problems and a lot died fairly young. I've never knowingly met any of them, and could walk past them in street without knowing a thing. She only really kept in contact with one of her sisters, until her death, and again I never met that particular aunt. A few of them came to my mom's funeral and we didn't even speak. We've always been closer to my dad's side of the family, but still wouldn't say we're really close. My dad was effectively an only child, he had a sister who died as an infant and was never spoken about, to the extent we don't even know where her grave is. My grandad died when my dad was still at school. So I only really knew 1 grandparent, my dad's mother, who lived with us and pretty much looked after us whilst my parents worked, she used to cook for us all. The extended family basically all ties back to her, her 2 sisters have always been known to us as our aunts, and we used to regularly visit them despite them being scattered about the country, to the extent when I was much younger we'd go on holiday with them, or take holidays to visit them. There are also whole other sections of the family I've barely any knowledge of, which ties back to my nan's father remarrying and their extended family I think. Both my parents, and my nan, are dead now but I still receive Christmas cards from family members I've never met, never heard of, and haven't the faintest idea of the relation to. Of my aunts familes, one went very country and got into village life and became increasingly 'farmy', and are more 'touchy feely' than the family generally. The other side is more money savvy and got into property - very much do it yourself people, and have had a good life, from the outside looking in anyway, because of it. We've kinda drifted a lot, especially with the older members of my family dying, and the most direct relations getting older, we don't see as much of each other as we did when I was a kid. It's increasingly at funerals that we meet up, unfortunately.

Literally the only good thing the Abstergo crap gave anything in the Assassin's Creed storyline was the (brilliant) use of 'glitches' and 'fake loading in' to hide the fact Assassin's Creed Unity was a broken mess. Perhaps the new movie could explain shitty CGI similarly - 'Sorry Mr Fassbender, that awful CGI was just a limitation of the current gen Animus system. Also the nausea you're feeling is due to the dodgy frame rate and poor FOV of the new firmware...'

Having seen someone open a finger print lock with a flat, black and white, printed picture of a fingerprint, I don't think I'd trust a fingerprint scanner with anything.

You get Uplay points if you make it through the end credits.

I suspect this isn't going to buck the trend of video game adaptations being usually fairly bad. The choice of music is dreadful and the conceit of Assassin's Creed (which always seemed completely superfluous to me) looks even more daft on screen.

Finally finished off the second series of Better Call Saul. Wow. Really assured second series, that really came into its own in the second half. Episode 9 was truly fantastic. I can't recall any show that tears me as much. I dearly want Saul to succeed, but the show is a constant procession of him being unable to play straight, and there a palpable tension watching, desperately wanting him to either not do it or avoid any consequences every time...

Picked up Stellaris as a bit of a change whilst taking a break from Dark Souls. Played a few hours today. Unlikely to play much more. I'd heard it was an approachable Paradox title. I've played and enjoyed Civ before now so surely I'd enjoy this with its interesting galactic stuff? Nope. Starts well, explains most of its systems decently enough, but then a few hours in I basically can't do anything. I'm perfectly willing to accept I've missed something or am being thick, but I found myself cornered in the galaxy by 2 empires both advanced well ahead of me, who both were instantly opposed to me with all of my influence gone (and bizarrely not refilling) preventing me exploiting areas that were open to me, and preventing me replacing scientists, and with no habitable planets to expand to, no alliance available, and warfare completely unviable. So I couldn't do anything. And it's put me off completely.

Out this week. I've no interest in the multiplayer at all (and neither will anyone else in a week) but I'm a sucker for some Doom campaign... Please be good. There won't be any reviews day one as they've held back review copies until launch day asb they want reviewers to be able to review the game in full with servers up and people playing... Apparently.

COD is more immediately accessible and you can fairly easily lone wolf play and be a hero. Battlefield tends to promote more teamwork and a longer game. Both have their merits, but COD's slowly got more daft in the search for ways of stopping gameplay they nailed 10 years ago going stale, with greater and lesser success.

I'd see them hang Olly every week. They desperately, desperately need to kick Danaerys' storyline up the arse. She doesn't do anything. I get that the three series of sitting around being a queen conquerer is character development of her trying to learn to be a great ruler, but that plot has to go somewhere fast. I'm increasingly convinced she's effectively, from the Westeros point of view, going to be a Deus ex machina... Right now the last thing Danaerys needs is to be sat around in a hut, that story needs to move. As for Bran... He's obviously going to be important, I just hope they do something interesting with him.

Xmen Apocalypse reviews are out. It's not a runaway hit. Most of the reviews are meh, really, generally saying it has it's moments (Quicksilver, Wolverine) but otherwise it's a mess.

The Sand Snakes fight stands out. Absolutely dreadful. Everyone standing around waiting their turn, clearly swinging with no volition, flat dull and completely unconvincing.

The BBC put out one of it's irregular Conspiracy Files shows the other night about the MH17 crash. Very interesting viewing, not least of which is the extent of Russian efforts to drown out the truth with never ending streams of misleading contradictory and bizarre stories. Well worth a watch.

You should watch Batman V Superman. It literally starts with a recap of the Zod fight from someone else's perspective, and Superman has 43 lines of dialogue on the entire thing. Makes Man of Steel look like a masterpiece.

Amongst other things - Disney didn't tell toy manufacturers to keep it under their hat until it was far too late and every single one had revealed it at a bunch of conventions. They then tried to pretend that hadn't happened and told them not to reveal items that gave it away... Typically it's one of the best moments in the whole movie...

I actually had that spoiled months ago in a very roundabout way, but everyone thinks that moment is a great one and a highlight so best not to spoil it

I'd spoiler some of that - it's one of the movies best reveals and moments and shouldn't be spoilt really.

Edit - ive absolutely no idea how I managed to cock this up so badly...

The Mirror thinks a Chinese investment group is the front runner in the takeover and could have it all done in a fortnight.

This series isn't hanging about. Not a really flashy episode but a helluva lot of plot development, even in the minor storylines. Danaerys kept her record of having the 'Nobody ****' cares!' plot, though that was probably the only section not to deliver somehow.

If ENB's attempts at the Pontiff weren't bad enough, he's now at Aldrich and actually allowed himself to die when he could have won because he 'couldn't work out' an attack. Made all the more incredible because a dog could explain what he couldn't work out. He spends the entire fight whinging about it as well.

There is a special release, and it looks closer to the In Rainbows one than the King of Limbs, thankfully. The album itself... it's certainly a different Radiohead. It's much more orchestral, but still quite restrained, with the odd electronic bass line. Listening in the past hour I thought it wasn't as immediate as much of their back catalogue, but looking back at it theres a lot of songs that I foresee entering my top rated playlists... I think it'll be a grower that also has a few instant hooks. Better than King of Limbs straight off the bat.