Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures (2009)

Started on Wallace And Gromit episode 1, and it's really good! They've got the feel and presentation of it pitch perfect, the models have little sockets in the pupils and fingerprints in the clay and stuff, the music's great, there's lots of little gags and references to past adventures strewn around, and the little Britain atmosphere is just right. It's really fun padding around as Gromit, frowning at stuff. Two tiny quibbles are that it's a shame they couldn't get Peter Sallis in and the soundalike they got is 90% there but not 'Marty soundalike' level, and that they've lowered the frame rate for facial animations to match the original stop-motion which is a great idea but they've taken it a little too far and it looks a little jerky now.

The puzzles are good fun and quite inventive (fittingly), but surprisingly tough! I kind of assumed these would be aimed at a younger audience and relatively easy, but I'm not breezing through it. I may even need to use a walkthrough at some point, though I'm not there yet!

Finished episode 1 (without a walkthrough) and it was excellent! What a pleasant surprise. Some really good puzzles, funny writing and they got all the little things right like doing the VO in England and doing the music with live instruments. Seems like Aardman was fairly heavily involved as well, judging from the credits. Two more tiny quibbles are that the signposting is sometimes a little obtuse (the usual one-click Telltale issue exacerbated by controlling a mute dog!) and there was some minor glitchiness (camera switches acting a bit odd, mostly). I think this is the first game on this playthrough that I've never played before and been this entertained by. Hope the rest of the episodes stack up!

Second episode was really good as well! The biggest compliment I can pay to these is that they really do feel like they could be one of the (good) shorts. Both boss fights have been really good as well.

Finally got round to playing episode 3 of Wallace & Gromit! Sadly, it's taken a bit of a dip. The presentation is still charming and funny, but clearly their monthly schedule started catching up with them as there are a lot more bugs present, and the puzzle design is lazier - a lot of riddles and sliding tile puzzles. Worst is the signposting is a lot weaker, so I often wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing or what my options were. For the first time with this series I resorted to a walkthrough, partly because one puzzle was a 'you have three golf clubs and two starting positions, and each combination has a different effect, and you need to get the effects in order' thing that I couldn't be bothered to get a notepad out for, and partly because a combination of bugs and bad signposting made it very unclear what club-swapping I could and couldn't do, what was and wasn't having an effect etc. Even after I'd used the walkthrough to get through a section there were a couple of puzzles that I didn't understand the logic for. Half the puzzles were still fun, though - I really enjoyed getting a golfball to the right hole by putting an address sticker on it and whacking it into a postbox!

So, bit of a shame, but I'm hoping that they rushed this one to spend more time on the finale...

Finished episode 4, and it was really good again! Phew! Perhaps a tiny bit easy, but it did ramp up a little as it went and had a fun 'murder mystery' structure where you had to find a motive, weapon and witness for someone getting bonked lightly on the head. I think this may genuinely be the best thing Telltale ever made. (I did enjoy Borderlands ep 1 but never got round to playing the rest, and it felt more like a series of entertaining QTEs with the occasional pointless 'walk along for one minute and look at stuff' interactive section to break them up. Also, I haven't played most of the post TWD S1 stuff, but I didn't hear good things!)

Rating: Very good

Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)

Much like Kate (also 2021), this is a solid performance and some great action in an utterly formulaic film full of tropes and straight up steals from many other, better movies. The dialogue also could have used a second pass. But it's worth coasting through to see Gillan and a bunch of older female actors get to do some awesome action.

Rating: Pretty good.

The King Of Staten Island (2020)

A standard Apatow movie except the comedy has mostly been stripped away and all that's left is the formulaic drama that the laughs are normally hung on. Worse, the man-child in this one is not adorable or charismatic and in fact is a cruel, selfish 25 year old brat with 'his dad died when he was 7 and he has ADHD and is on anti-depressants' for unsuccessful pathos; he is fixed for the happy ending by living with ten new father figures for a couple of weeks.

Rating: poor to mediocre

You People (2022)

Starts off feeling like it's going to have some real bite, but instead opts for the easiest option every time filling its social commentary with stereotypes, and quickly devolves into a Meet The Parents clone full of predictable tropes.

Rating: Meh.

Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis (2009)

Have made a very brief start on it and it's definitely better so far - there's a slightly better opening cutscene, then you get a nice easy puzzle in the middle of an action scene as an old English priest hiding a manuscript and whatnot, then you get another cutscene as he is killed and we switch to whatserface from the first game. A much better start, even if it is funny to go from W&G's earthy accents to one extremely plummy English accent and another that sounds more like Australian. Anyway, back to thingummy and everything's already slightly worse again! Her puzzles are immediately less exciting and also the combination of her writing, direction and acting comes out as very robotic. I tried to pick up her handbag to which her response was "even a woman should be able to go for five minutes without her handbag", and I can't tell from the delivery whether that was intended to be sarcastic or if the writers genuinely think this is a strong Girl Power stance.

Also, hilarious moment in her introductory cutscene - she's about to board a cruise ship, some guy runs up to her in a panic, says something cryptic to her and then immediately gets killed by a forklift truck, and she just gazes in that direction for a moment then wordlessly turns and boards the ship! Just could not give a shit about this human dying in front of her!

Okay, this is atrocious. Giving up. She sounds like a robot high on weed the whole time, almost ever line is a misread, the puzzles are dire (someone is leaving riddles around the ship for you to follow so you can get your suitcase back, for some weird reason, and the first one is about things that come from the stars which sounds difficult until you come across a big plastic UFO sitting in the reception), and they just made another weird comment about "women's lib". Also, a cruise ship is functionally a hotel, and so many of these games start in hotels, it's so goddamn boring. I never want to press a reception bell again. It was at least very funny to watch someone in skin-tight jeans and a vest top somehow put a six foot oar and a full bucket of soapy water into her inventory.

Rating: Awful

Blackwell Unbound (2007)

(Dave made a massive error here because they don't sit in correct order in your games library - he should have committed to naming them so the release order was also in correct alphabetical order!).

Played a fair amount of Unbound. It's definitely better. There's a bit more polish, though still some issues. The music is good, it's jazz that matches the 70s NY setting well, and it's more consistent (if still too damn loud). The art is all by Ivy Robinson, and it's a little more cartoony but it looks nice and it's more consistent as well. I think I prefer it. And no portraits, woohoo! Just need to get rid of that stupid egg timer. The storytelling is better (though I still have my nitpicks) and so are the puzzles. The only problem really is that it's still a detective game which mainly revolves around pinging back and forth between a handful of characters topping up your conversation topics. It's also a bit silly when your optimum path involves walking into someone's office in the middle of the night (for some reason everyone is still awake and at work), asking them a single question and then leaving again, about ten times in one night! But there is other stuff thrown in there, like controlling Joey and going snooping around for clues, using the phone book to look places up (it was ace calling up a newspaper and saying "have you got a reporter called Mitchell there?" and getting the info, just like they do in the movies), and honest to goodness use of inventory items.

Finished! I hadn't realised how short these games were. Not in a bad way, just that I'd imagined they were 8 hour games rather than 4 hour ones. And this one was only $10 on release and more polished, so it feels a lot more reasonable to me (if I try to set myself back to a 2007 mindset!). So yeah, still some clunkiness in most areas but holds together a lot better. One thing that's annoying me a bit is how much of a prick Joey is. He just does not want his 'mediums' to have lives at all, constantly makes snarky or shitty comments, and he still gets angry at ghosts for not knowing they're ghosts which is, like, The Whole Thing. There's no 'he's frustrated at the situation, but he has a strong bond with his medium and can be a positive supportive presence in her life'. He's a dick and they're all depressed. They could make the most of this situation - help ghosts, have a good friend who can use his powers to benefit you, and still have some sort of life because he can go float 30ft away from you in other rooms and watch tv or whatever. I guess I've been spoiled by Ghosts!

Rating: Okay.

Nelly Cootalot in Spoonbeaks Ahoy (2007)

I tried the freeware version and it still looks great (possibly even better than the HD version, with its big chunky fuzzy lines) but there were too many quirks running it on Win11 so I've plumped for the HD version with ABK voice acting turned off. He's done a really good job of uprezzing it while retaining the charm. The animation is a bit smoother and so looks a little more Flash-y, but it's barely noticeable. Regardless of version, though, it's still instantly charming and funny and really well presented (outside of a bit of AGS glitchiness). Just a lovely chill sweet little game.

Finished! That was a bit longer than I remembered, really nicely structured to keep widening out a little bit more. Fun and funny all the way through too, puzzles are clever but not too difficult. Except one last one where you have a Full Throttle-y magnet control pad puzzle thing and it's a bit irritating, but I just fluked it in the end!

It's very good and I really hope the sequel isn't shit.

Rating: Very good