Adam McLaughlin

I'm conflicted. People once complained that DS9 "wasn't Star Trek" because it showed you the darker side of paradise... because apparently, sharing a galaxy with the Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans and Borg should be all sweetness and light with nobody acting behind the scenes against all the hostile alien infiltrators. Now we're getting films and TV shows starting mirror universe characters featuring murders, explosions and a fairly nihilistic take on Trek, and apparently we're committing a crime if we don't want it. I'm all for showing the cloak and dagger stuff from time to time, but it seems this is the direction Trek has taken for good. And modern Trek also has a tremendously generic "industrial sci-fi" look where it no longer even resembles what we expect. Save yourself the bother, go back to DS9 and thank the great bird of the galaxy that we got a "darker" Trek show that still believed in diplomacy, cooperation and human courage. In other words, Star Trek done right.

If you love zombies, you'll love this. I don't think it offers much that's super-new, but people come to this genre for a reason, and wow, All of Us Are Dead delivers in spades. It's funny, tragic, violent and superbly well-made. I've only recently got into Korean TV and while it has its own tropes, it's so refreshing to get away from Hollywood and there isn't really a reason to go back to it now.

FNAF Security Breach should have been an easy 5-star game, but CONSISTENTLY goes out of its way to be as frustrating, unintuitive and sometimes unfair as possible. You play as a kid who somehow stays behind after closing time and suddenly every robot, security guard and giant walking rockstar mech in the place is after you. They veer between super-creepy and threatening, to so cute or mundane it destroys the atmosphere. Only one mech is on your side, who you can even control at times (which is awesome), but he runs out of power every 30 seconds which is an instant game over, he does not provide immunity from all enemies and the game constantly keeps you away from him. The good: The game fools you by starting out with total cuteness. Cuteness is not and has never been scary. But when the real gameplay starts, this is consistently creepy and intense, and often frightening, although the game isn't nearly as scary as Amnesia Dark Descent or The Evil Within. The graphics are beautiful. When you know where to go and what to do, it's really fun to explore a well-realised location. I was hooked from the first minute which is very rare these days. The bad: The map is next to useless. It marks ONLY your location, never displays the correct floor, you can't zoom in. Rooms and areas are not labelled, which is super-unhelpful when your mission is to reach "the atrium" (where?) or "Chica's green room" (what's that?), so it's hard to know where to go next. The CCTV cameras are mostly useless as they are usually in weird places with limited pan and zoom, and they flicker horribly. Everything one-shots you but save points are horribly far apart with no auto-save. If you miss a bit of dialogue, there is no log and nothing is repeated. You can't skip cutscenes if you've seen them before. The difficulty level is pure madness - good luck trying to do the music disc mission without tearing your hair out (try the lift glitch, it helps); your reaction time must be on par with that of a flea. The game frequently grinds to a halt to load the next section. Saving takes several seconds before the game actually saves -- why is this necessary in a game? Overall: A deeply flawed game which is solid enough when it isn't confusing, misleading or cheaply killing you. Unfortunately it does these things over, and over, and over again. It could have been brilliant.

I'm a massive fan of classic Red Dwarf (series 1-6). I'm not a zealot though and can acknowledge a show's faults. Being a zealot is not the same thing as being a fan. And you'd have to be a zealot to think Red Dwarf is still good. The episode starts off really funny and clever, and the Cat leader and his henchman put on a good performance. Holly gets a good scene later. (Yes, this is now the 3rd or 4th time they bring the male Holly back, hooray again again again again?) Everything feels "off" in modern Red Dwarf. Even 30 minute episodes feel empty but this is 90 minutes of mostly derivative drivel. Holly's back, again. There's a new type of hologram, again. They split Starbug up, again (this was admittedly very cool). Storylines abandoned back in series 1 are dusted off. Rimmer has to be bigged up by Lister, again. Horrible dialogue is delivered with weird timing. Most of the jokes simply are not funny. The crew have almost zero chemistry any more. Meeting the Cats adds no depth at all to the Red Dwarf universe. Basically Red Dwarf is only being made because of its name and because the BBC doesn't do comedy. The golden era of British comedy died in the late 90s and it doesn't look like it's ever coming back.

This weird crossover could have been something special. The acting is really good. Some of the jokes are really funny. The "Hangover" actors imitate the original characters amazingly. I didn't think it felt super-cheap either. I can't help feeling that if this film had some more thought and a bit of maturity put into it, we might have an oddball, cult classic. Unfortunately, for most, this is guaranteed to offend, especially fans of the original films.

This is the scariest game I've ever played. Evil Within 1&2 are scary as hell, and Last of Us is tense, but you can fight back in those games. Here, you can only run and hide. Alien Isolation takes a LONG time to get scary; Outlast is frightening from only a few minutes in, and before long it is terrifying to the point where I had to quit, only to return again and again. My one issue is the repetition of having to walk around a poorly-lit, mazelike series of rooms, trying to hit X number of switches, while an enemy is looking for you. I had to resort to guides a few times. This was needlessly stressful and not much fun. There is a notorious example of this early in the game which will put some players off. You've been warned. If you enjoy being scared to death, and/or you thought REmake 2's Nemesis was an essential part of the gameplay, you absolutely must play this game. If you felt RE2's Nemesis was an over-used gimmick which created stress instead of suspense, or you hate having to look for gameplay guides, this will frustrate you. And if your definition of scary is a Hollywood horror film, you'll find Outlast is well out of your league.

Imagine some unworkable blend of Stargate and Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle, rewritten to be desperately unfunny, and splice in the very first draft of the Sliders TV series. Strip out all the imagination. Add in unlikable characters, unconvincing special effects and a blend of inappropriate sexual humour. Chop out any pretence of being original. Give the viewer an overwhelming need to switch it off after half an hour. Congratulations, you've got Land of the Lost.

Alien, Aliens and Predator utilised a minimal number of gore scenes and instead focused on an incredibly well-received cast of characters who became science fiction legends. The creatures were superbly utilised too. Each film was an exercise in tension, a masterclass in how horror doesn't just mean gore. Aliens Versus Predator 2 pays great heed to these things before chucking them in the bin for scene after scene of moronic characters and needless blood-and-guts. I mean no-one who grew up watching 60s, 70s 80s and even 90s films expects much class from today's film industry but come on, there has got to be someone out there who "gets" the Alien and the Predator, who understands what makes them iconic. But nope, we just get shash like AVP 2. Absolute horrible tosh - I'd rather have a facehugger attached to my face in real life than watch a scene from this disaster of a film.

Bring your own underwear. I played this game after playing Outlast 1&2 and Evil Within 1&2. At first, I was disappointed, as the first hour is little more than scary noises, ghostly guff-clouds and an invisible force chucking furniture around - stuff I've already seen elsewhere. And your character freaks out in the dark, when the dark is the least of his concerns. (If anything, it's his friend, the kind of abusive friend who "protects" you by bullying you.) Not a recipe for 5-stardom. But then. BUT THEN. The game takes its first turn when you realise there are monsters in there with you. They are deployed sparingly. They are absolutely terrifying. You can't fight back. You can only run and hide, listening to them growling for you, while off-kilter music plays and your character freaks out. By the time you reach the prison area after fixing a lift which takes you into the bowels of the castle, it's brown trousers time, ALL THE TIME. You are given tinderboxes and a lantern to light your way. There are tons of tinderboxes, and tons of things to light, and light equals sanity. But the brighter things are, the easier it is for the monsters to find you. It's a balancing act. You must go into the dark, letting your character's eyes adjust, and risk your mental health to keep yourself alive. Things get frustrating at times, particularly a nightmarish water sequence where you must hurry to escape without falling into the water, and sometimes items can be hard to find. Do not let this put you off. This game is a masterclass in agonising terror. There are only three games I ever turned off because I couldn't face my fear: Doom for the Sony Playstation (Aubrey Hodges' masterpiece soundtrack of babies crying and demons howling prayers), Evil Within 1 for its spider boss, and Amnesia, for... well, bloody everything. Update 9 Feb 2021: The Justine expansion gets a hard fail from me. Unlike Amnesia, it's not really a game, just a short and maddening series of puzzles which are REALLY obscure, with scary moments thrown in. Even with a guide I struggled to find one or two documents and unlike in the main game, you need to rip books off bookases to find vital information. If you liked user-made classic Doom maps where secrets vital for progression were totally unmarked, you'll like this.

A bland and joyless film which tries to be a comedy, but simply falls flat. There is no chemistry between any of the characters, which makes many scenes awkward rather than funny. The characters are not even interesting, nor do they do anything to make you root for them. Root for what? The plot is insipid and pointless, which means that most things happen for stupid reasons. I can only assume that people who found this empty void of a film to be "funny" are too young to have seen a genuine comedy. If you grew up watching 80s and 90s films, be sure to give "Dinner for Schmucks" a miss.