It’s holiday-time for me, which means there is a little more time available to play games. It has also meant more time thinking about how I play games and sometimes wondering why I play at all.

First off is what GOG tells me is risibly called LEGO® Indiana Jones™: The Original Adventures. My 5⅚ year-old daughter and I play a level or so a day of this as her preferred screen time, and we sit in the living room in front of the big HDTV plugged into to my PC. She loves the stress-free co-op, and although it’s no masterpiece I do think that playing the Temple of Doom levels actually might be more entertaining than watching that film again.

Next, I was looking for something straightforward to play, and ended up downloading the Kega Fusion emulator to play the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Simple games with big old pixel graphics look great on my Logitech G Cloud handheld, and although I could run an emulator directly on the handheld, I am so used to using Sunshine/Moonlight to stream from the main PC that I just do that. I’m sure it adds some few microseconds of latency but I am too old to notice or care about such things. I am just as bad at Sonic as I ever was–but it brings back happy early 1990s memories for me. Being handheld I can just do it on the sofa or in bed for a few minutes. Save states are the other thing that make these games far more playable than they used to be–and frankly every game should have them. Let the player decide how they want to play the game.

In terms of contemporary games I’m alternating between Indiana Jones the Great Circle and The Last of Us Part II. As the TV is inevitably already in use I find another room and put on my Quest 3 and use Virtual Desktop to stream to a giant floating screen. These kind of games just aren’t as impressive on portables, and the added benefit of VR is that I can run them at arbitrary resolutions–2560x1080 in the case of these two. Ultrawide gives a great wraparound feeling that works well for first and third-person games. When I was recently completing Astral Chain on the Switch I couldn’t stream or ultrawide it, but I still used a cheap HDMI to USB-C adapter so I could play on a big screen in the Quest. When I tried Astral Chain in handheld mode it just wasn’t as engaging. I’d also note that it’s the decent passthrough the Quest 3 provides that makes putting on the headset far less alienating than in the past.

Finally, I did actually play a few games in “full” VR. Minecraft Bedrock, as it turns out, has a VR mode built in you can access simply by launching it with a special shortcut. Worth it for a visit to a world you’ve spent some time in. Slime Rancher also has a recent VR mod out (not the official one) so I gave that a go, and despite the cheery music it is faintly terrifying trying to manage these greedy alien creatures by yourself on a desolate planet. Not as cosy as I expected.

Each game (and way of playing) really has felt pretty unique–and that is a testament to the amazing diversity in gaming available nowadays.

(dir. Wim Wenders) Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho), a reticent toilet cleaner in Japan, enjoys a simple daily routine that rarely changes. The film shows us this routine, and then shows a number of events that upset Hirayama’s carefully-arranged “perfect days”.

The meditative pace reminds me of The Taste of Things, but while that film showed showed how the slow preparation and enjoyment of food was intertwined with personal relationships, this is a much more solitary film. Hirayama’s combination of work, 60s & 70s American music, photography, restaurants, and reading is his way of finding contentment, but the life of this “urban hermit” in ultra-modern Tokyo seems far less appealing to me than being in love with your cook in the Loire Valley.

Putting aside the comparison, however, some searching about the film took me to an interesting article by Luca Galofaro on ArchDaily, pointing out Perfect Days’ connections to Moriyama-San, a 2017 documentary about a Japanese “enlightened amateur” living in Tokyo, and to an article about the Buddhist possibilities of being an Urban Hermit by Mu Soeng. Well worth a read if you enjoyed the film’s tranquillity. ★★★★☆

(dir. Martin Brest) What could have been a hokey and familiar drama about a scholarship kid at an elite high school taking on a Thanksgiving job looking after a blind man becomes far more affecting because of a good script from Bo Goldman and a mesmerising performance from Al Pacino. ★★★★☆

Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents (by Octavia Butler, 1993 & 1998)

Butler’s vision of a future America sadly seems closer today than it may have in the 1990s. The two books are examinations of how faiths and beliefs might change in a decaying nation, and the beginning of Trump’s second term has made it clear that fundamental societal values can indeed shift with surprising rapidity. Butler’s unflinching approach to the violence and death in her story also makes many other dystopian tales seem far too kind to their protagonists in comparison. These are excellent novels. ★★★★★

Vaxxers: A Pioneering Moment in Scientific History (by Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green, 2021)

Written by two of the lead scientists working on the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine, this is full of interesting detail about how the vaccine was developed and tested at record speed. ★★★★☆

Your Life is Manufactured: How We Make Things, Why It Matters and How We Can Do It Better (by Tim Minshall, 2025)

Some of the examples here felt familiar to me, but others, like Strix in the Isle Man (maker of kettle “blades”) or the tree-harvesting machines (YouTube video here) were fascinating. ★★★☆☆

(dir. Coralie Fargeat) Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is an aging Hollywood star who decides to take “The Substance” to try and retain her job and celebrity. She spawns a second, younger self, “Sue” (Margaret Qualley), but the delicate balance between these two selves cannot be maintained indefinitely….

I was unimpressed by the first half of this film, which seemed unoriginal in conception and execution. However, the second half gleefully takes its body horror to a degree that is both deeply revolting and hilarious. I am not squeamish, but some of this I had to watch between my fingers. This will become a cult classic, at least for those with strong stomachs. ★★★★☆

Careless People: A story of where I used to work, by Sarah Wynn-Williams (2025)

This exposé by the former Facebook Directory of Global Public Policy reveals the social media giant’s leadership is even worse than you imagined. It is the degree of ignorance of the wider world and the lack of attention to anything apart from the company’s growth that was most damning to me, although Sheryl Sandberg’s sexual harassment of her staff and Zuckerberg needing others to explain to him how Facebook helped Trump get elected (the first time) are equally dispiriting. ★★★★☆

(dir. Steven Soderbergh) George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is a British intelligence agent tasked with discovering which of his fellow agents has stolen a classified piece of software code-named ‘Severus’. The first step in his investigation is to throw a dinner party at his home, inviting all the suspects, including his wife (Cate Blanchett)….

Soderbergh (also handling the Director of Photography and Editing roles) is very effective here with a tight, dialogue-heavy script from David Koepp (Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park, Raimi’s Spiderman and more). Its London spies are a blend of John le Carré and modern Bond film, with the casting of Pierce Brosnan and Naomi Harris a not-so-subtle metatextual wink about its inspirations. The film is more funny than tense, but a speedy 94 minute running time and a cast clearly enjoying themselves make the time fly by. ★★★★☆

(dir. Hirozaku Kore-eda) This tells the story of a poor family living in cramped conditions in Tokyo; the father, Osamu (Lily Franky), has taught son Shota (Kari Jo) to shoplift to supplement their limited income. One evening they find a young girl left outside her apartment, and after taking her home discover that she has been abused by her parents.

Despite their various flaws and criminality the film portrays a loving family who care about one another in the face of society’s indifference. The state’s eventual breaking apart of the family is legally correct but leaves the viewer regretting the severed bonds between adults and children, all in need of love. ★★★★☆

It has a Saturday-morning-cartoon plot, script, and voice acting, but its action gameplay is thrilling in a moment-to-moment way that Alan Wake 2 never was. Superb high-tempo electronic guitar music, good graphics (although I can’t help thinking it would be better at 60fps on something more powerful than a Switch) and a unique chain mechanic for you to control your beast buddies. It made me smile every time I turned it on and started bashing enemies.

I played this on Easy difficulty–people who are actually good at this kind of game might want challenge, but I just wanted fun and spectacle. The final boss, however, seemed impossibly hard, and it turns out there is a world of complexity in the upgrade trees and modifiers that I had completely missed in my hammer-the-buttons playthrough. Usually I loathe having to spend time in menus rather than playing the game, but figuring out of a configuration of abilities to defeat the boss made me appreciate just how cleverly assembled this game is.

If the other games by director Takahisa Taura and supervisor Hideki Kamiya are half as good I have many happy hours ahead of me. ★★★★★

House of Huawei: Inside the Secret World of China’s Most Powerful Company (by Eva Dou, 2025)

The subtitle made it seem this would be a China-panic book about the evils of Chinese companies, but Eva Dou writes a much more nuanced book investigating how Huawei went from selling then manufacturing telephone branch exchange switches in the early 1990s to the leading suppliers of telecommunications equipment in the world by 2012–and then to target of Western sanctions and prosecutions.

There is a slight disappointment in the fact that, despite Dou’s excellent reporting, founder Ren Zhengfei 任正非 and his family remain somewhat opaque characters. Ren believes in hard work and undercutting his competitors, but there is little evidence of him being an ultra-nationalist plotter for Chinese global dominance. He is more likely, it seems to me, to be a keen capitalist who has managed to thread the needle of running of globally-successful private company headquartered in a country firmly controlled by the CCP. The European-style Ox Horn Campus in Dongguan and his younger daughter’s (Annabel Yao 姚安娜) Harvard education and attendance at a Parisian debutante ball point only to a tawdry ultra-wealthy cosmopolitanism.

Nevertheless, this book lays out all the evidence available for you to make your own decision about whether Huawei is friend, foe, or just another big tech company simply looking for profit. ★★★★☆

(dir. Andrew Niccol) Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) is a genetic “invalid” in a world of gene-engineered perfection. He borrows the identity of Jerome Morrow (Jude Law), a paralysed “valid” to be able to work at Gattaca and dreams of making it into space on one of their missions. The investigation around the murder of a Gattaca administrator, however, threatens to reveal his secret identity.

I hadn’t seen this since around its release in 1997 and remembered very little. It is still visually striking–not for its sci-fi special effects, but for its careful photography and heavy use of colour filters that render the film off-putting but beautiful. The distinctive faces of Hawke, Law, and Uma Thurman add to the otherworldly intensity of the visuals. Sławomir Idziak (Three Colours: Blue) was the Director of Photography.

The film is really not interested in creating a plausible vision of the future–the cars and fashion are retro-styled, the astronauts wear suits and ties, and it all seems more 1950s than 2050s–but that’s perhaps because the real interest is in sibling rivalry, human frailty, and imperfection. From Vincent, to Irene, to the mission director, all the characters fail to hide their flaws from those around them.

Michael Nyman’s music is also key to setting the melancholic tone of the film. It all should seem portentous and heavy-handed–it even has bookending voice-overs!–but there is nothing wasted here. It’s an exceptional film, and I won’t wait twenty-five years before watching it again. ★★★★★

(dir. Quentin Tarantino) There are two stories of wartime France here that join together in the final act: Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) leading a team of Naxi-scalping soldiers behind enemy lines and Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) as the polyglot ‘jew hunter’ for the Reich.

Pitt is the funniest he’s ever been, Michael Fassbender relishes his role as German-speaking film critic & commando Archie Hicox, Daniel Brühl is hilarious and terrifying as sniper hero Zoller, but it is Christoph Waltz who steals every scene with a charmingly sociopathic performance as Landa. He quite rightly won nearly every supporting actor award the year the film was released.

Tarantino’s talent is evident from his dialogue writing to his shot composition to his anachronistic but excellent use of music. Here he crafts numerous smart, funny, and tense scenes. Ultimately, though, I found this a rather slight film that, while entertaining to watch, didn’t leave me feeling like I hard learnt anything new. ★★★★☆

(dir. Ken Loach) This is the story of Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) who, after suffering a heart attack, is refused the UK’s Employment and Support Allowance and told to go back to work. He goes on to meet Katie (Hayley Squires), a Londoner single mum who has moved to Newcastle, hundreds of miles away from home but the only place where a house is available for her and her two children.

The scene with Katie in the food bank is the most disturbing and horrifying moment in film I have seen for a long time. Hayley Squires’ performance there was outstanding. Even gloomier, though, is that Katie never gets a neat resolution–as far as we know she ends the film still doing sex work so she can feed herself and her children without the food bank’s help.

Daniel’s story is also grim. My only critique would be that I felt the timing of his death and the discovery of his letter slightly undercut the verisimilitude that Ken Loach had crafted so well in the rest of the film. The film didn’t need to be that dramatically neat to make its heartfelt and important points about the cruelty of unemployment bureaucracy. ★★★★☆

Cowboy Bebop’s idiosyncratic story-telling and cool style impressed me enough that I went looking for other well-regarded anime to watch. Neon Genesis Evangelion was widely praised, so I picked up the Blu-ray set.

I had thought Faye Valentine’s outfit in Cowboy Bebop was crass but it’s got nothing on the obsession with boobs and general sexism in Evangelion. Yes, the protagonist, Shinji, is a fourteen-year-old boy, but there is no reason the show itself needs to follow his pubescent gaze so slavishly. This mistake is part of the wider problem of the series: following his teenage desires and angst is just not that compelling after a while. By the latter half of the series I had had enough of Shinji and wanted him and the series to grow up; watching him to continue to yell and sob time after time became irritating rather than profound.

The original TV series ending (not the one in End of Evangelion) weren’t great episodes, feeling like heavy-handed psychoanalysis, but they made sense for a show that was ostensibly about giant mechs but really about the mental struggles of their teenage pilots. The film ending added bombs and bombast but doesn’t really change the fundamental direction of the story. It does have more of Shinji yelling and sobbing, if that is your thing.

On the more positive side, the visual designs of the Angels and the Evas are wonderfully weird, and the music is memorable (the “Decisive Battle” drum theme tribute to John Barry’s 007 scores being my favourite). ★★★☆☆

(dirs. Matthieu Delaporte & Alexandre de La Patellière) This is a glorious and thoroughly entertaining version of Alexandre Dumas’ novel. The sumptuous costumes, sets, and cinematography elevate the familiar tale, and Pierre Niney captures both the wounded and vengeful sides of Edmond well. Laurent Lafitte also clearly relished playing the mustachioed and detestable Villefort. Great fun. ★★★★☆

The rock musical level of Alan Wake 2 is one of the most enjoyable and creative sections of a game that I’ve played. It’s a shame, then, that I found much of the rest of the game uninspired. Combat feels clunky and does not evolve significantly in the course of the game. The “deduction” mechanics did not make me feel smart. The plot is neither particularly original nor surprising–and the cliffhanger ending filled me with no anticipatory excitement.

To be fair to Remedy, I should say that the audiovisual craftsmanship is highly impressive. The graphics, cut-scene shot composition, sound design, and musical choices make this the closest thing to prestige drama that there is in gaming. It’s stylish. It just wasn’t that much fun to play. ★★★☆☆

(dir. Brady Corbet) From the disorienting first shot following Lázlo below decks on a ship arriving in New York to the slanted credits at the end this is a visually striking film. This works with David Blumberg’s unsettling but propulsive score to establish a tone of wrongness that undercuts the prosperous 1940s and 50s American setting.

Adrien Brody as Lázlo is good, as is Felicity Jones as his wife, but it is Guy Pearce’s weird performance as Van Buren that was the real highlight for me. He is always nearly charming, but with something lurking beneath that surface that only reveals itself more clearly near the end of the film.

It is a film that seems to wants to challenge simple interpretation, so if you are someone who is frustrated by a lack of clarity it will likely irritate more than please over its three-and-a-half-hour (plus intermission) runtime. It is a gruelling watch in many ways–the sex scenes are particularly difficult–but I never found it anything less than fascinating. And it is also occasionally also very funny, with Lázlo’s putdown to a rival architect delivered perfectly:

Everything that is ugly, cruel, stupid — but, most importantly, ugly — is your fault.

★★★★☆

Playing with Reality: How Games Shape Our World by Kelly Clancy (Penguin, 2024)

This is a well-written book examining the rise of game theory and how it has been used across different fields. The central argument is that what started as narrow mathematical models of game strategy have been widely applied in often unsuitable contexts. Reality is not a game, but we have created systems where, for example, war, economic markets, or even social interactions can be gamified and ’explained’ by reductive winner-takes-all theorizing. As she concludes:

Any consequences too subtle to measure–environmental costs, civic discord, troubled diplomatic relations–are simply omitted from the score.

If our systems are built around assumptions that we are all rational (“greedy” would be Clancy’s preferred term) agents seeking only to win, then we should not be surprised when people begin to act that way. I hope she is correct when she writes the “average person is more empathetic than Machiavellian” and would like to think that co-operation, not conflict, is humanity’s optimal strategy. ★★★★☆