Things consumed November 2021 PART TWO
Nov. 7th, 2021 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrI've decided to go through the games in my steam favourites/to play list in order of how well rated they are, since Steam makes that very easy to see. The aim is to finish them, watch a Let's Play, or give up and uninstall them. Because there are SO MANY and they are apparently VERY GOOD so I REALLY SHOULD PLAY THEM.
First up is A Short Hike!
I've added some other reviews I had pending, too.
Games: Agent A, A Short Hike
Movies: Enola Holmes
Anime: Komi Can't Communicate
Games:
Agent A: A fun, silly adventure/puzzle game where you're a secret agent working against a sneaky evil spy. Relatively easy for an adventure game, but hard compared to casual hidden object style puzzle games, with a few timing/reaction speed parts I managed but found a little challenging. The protagonist is very explicitly Not Gendered, which was nice, and it's more stylish, coherent, and funny than these sorts of games tend to be, if still not super deep. Not really worth the full price but I got it on sale.
A Short Hike: This is a cute, funny, clever little pixel exploration/adventure/platform/flying game about a young woman-bird climbing a mountain and meeting people along the way. And I could not finish it because I just really hate platformers, especially ones where I keep getting lost and having to redo parts. It's not very hard, and so much fun otherwise that I managed to play it for quite a ways before I got sick of it, but eventually I had to redo one section too many after misjudging a glide and falling off a cliff, and I gave in and watched a Let's Play on double speed. Which was fun and only took like 45 minutes, and I did enjoy a chunk of the parts I played. So, a rec for anyone who dislikes platformers less than me.
Movie:
Enola Holmes: A very silly and highly anachronistic bit of fluff about Sherlock Holmes' Secret Badass Teen Sister solving a mystery, avoiding finishing school, and helping a hapless pretty nobleman in distress. A lot of fun if you can get into the right mindset to enjoy it and not think very deeply, the lead actress (the genuinely teenaged Milly Bobby Brown) really makes the film work with her gleeful energy. It's overtly and sincerely feminist if not very deep. On the other hand it does some lazy colourblind casting of secondary characters then completely ignores race as an axis of oppression in 19th century England, which was pretty ehh in context.
Anime:
Komi Can't Communicate: A generically nice boy starting highschool meets a beautiful girl with paralysing social anxiety and decides to help her make friends. So far this is a pretty good adaptation of the manga, of which I have read quite a lot, and I am hesitant to rec it without a LOT of caveats: the humour is really over the top and silly, and it is SUCH blatant male wish fulfilment, about The Prettiest And Most Popular Girl In Class (blatantly based on Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh) falling in love with you because she is secretly shy and Only You Understand. Also the treatment of queerness is Quite Unfortunate! The things I like about it: The protagonist Tadano, while bland, is nice, and while interested in on Komi cheerfully accepts that she's out of his league and genuinely just wants to help; there's an androgynously gendered trickster character whose asab the manga never clarifies (Tadano is sadly not great about this); While Tadano does eventually have multiple people interested in him, at the point in the manga I got to it's just two girls and a Very Confused guy, and a LOT more people of multiple genders are into Komi; The queer aspects are all played for laughs, but (except the confused guy) everyone's pretty unabashedly unambiguous; a nice boy helping you with social anxiety and making friends is also pretty good wish fulfilment. But yeah. The height of subtlety and progressiveness this show is not.
First up is A Short Hike!
I've added some other reviews I had pending, too.
Games: Agent A, A Short Hike
Movies: Enola Holmes
Anime: Komi Can't Communicate
Games:
Agent A: A fun, silly adventure/puzzle game where you're a secret agent working against a sneaky evil spy. Relatively easy for an adventure game, but hard compared to casual hidden object style puzzle games, with a few timing/reaction speed parts I managed but found a little challenging. The protagonist is very explicitly Not Gendered, which was nice, and it's more stylish, coherent, and funny than these sorts of games tend to be, if still not super deep. Not really worth the full price but I got it on sale.
A Short Hike: This is a cute, funny, clever little pixel exploration/adventure/platform/flying game about a young woman-bird climbing a mountain and meeting people along the way. And I could not finish it because I just really hate platformers, especially ones where I keep getting lost and having to redo parts. It's not very hard, and so much fun otherwise that I managed to play it for quite a ways before I got sick of it, but eventually I had to redo one section too many after misjudging a glide and falling off a cliff, and I gave in and watched a Let's Play on double speed. Which was fun and only took like 45 minutes, and I did enjoy a chunk of the parts I played. So, a rec for anyone who dislikes platformers less than me.
Movie:
Enola Holmes: A very silly and highly anachronistic bit of fluff about Sherlock Holmes' Secret Badass Teen Sister solving a mystery, avoiding finishing school, and helping a hapless pretty nobleman in distress. A lot of fun if you can get into the right mindset to enjoy it and not think very deeply, the lead actress (the genuinely teenaged Milly Bobby Brown) really makes the film work with her gleeful energy. It's overtly and sincerely feminist if not very deep. On the other hand it does some lazy colourblind casting of secondary characters then completely ignores race as an axis of oppression in 19th century England, which was pretty ehh in context.
Anime:
Komi Can't Communicate: A generically nice boy starting highschool meets a beautiful girl with paralysing social anxiety and decides to help her make friends. So far this is a pretty good adaptation of the manga, of which I have read quite a lot, and I am hesitant to rec it without a LOT of caveats: the humour is really over the top and silly, and it is SUCH blatant male wish fulfilment, about The Prettiest And Most Popular Girl In Class (blatantly based on Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh) falling in love with you because she is secretly shy and Only You Understand. Also the treatment of queerness is Quite Unfortunate! The things I like about it: The protagonist Tadano, while bland, is nice, and while interested in on Komi cheerfully accepts that she's out of his league and genuinely just wants to help; there's an androgynously gendered trickster character whose asab the manga never clarifies (Tadano is sadly not great about this); While Tadano does eventually have multiple people interested in him, at the point in the manga I got to it's just two girls and a Very Confused guy, and a LOT more people of multiple genders are into Komi; The queer aspects are all played for laughs, but (except the confused guy) everyone's pretty unabashedly unambiguous; a nice boy helping you with social anxiety and making friends is also pretty good wish fulfilment. But yeah. The height of subtlety and progressiveness this show is not.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-07 09:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-11-08 02:42 am (UTC)Oh yeah Celeste was WAY harder. The accessibility stuff helped but again...I just don't like platformers which makes it hard to motivate myself to keep trying.
no subject
Date: 2021-11-07 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-11-08 02:41 am (UTC)Yes, very cute!