Glen Perkins

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A mediocre drama revolving around a convict doing time on an honor farm fighting fires to earn time served, and trying to right some wrongs of his past. Your typical love triangles, relationship conflicts, and family tropes. Nothing very original here except the convict angle. Sadly, what depth the characters do have are mired in terrible medical scenes and some rather unrealistic fire scenarios with bad CGI. Although it’s engaging at times, there are several opportunities to roll your eyes and shake your head. Don’t expect anything groundbreaking here.

Sadly, it’s completely unplayable on PS4. Settings also seem to reset. I tried getting through the tutorial, but found the game dropping to a single frame or completely freezing for several seconds within a minute or two. The tutorial was far behind the actions of the player and wouldn’t record any action already taken. Managed to only suffer through making a bedroll before deleting the game from my console. Unfortunately a game with some decent potential isn’t worth the time to install.

Definitely not a four or five star rating by any stretch. Although not an expert on Fallout lore, and almost no knowledge of the first or second games, or Brotherhood spin-offs, I’m confident in the tone and setting of the show. It adds the requisite zany and dark humor, the over the top gore, and the wonderment of the games. Sadly there was more exploration in the television adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand decades ago. At times the CGI is wonderful and at other times I kept expecting the blue haze from Raiders of the Lost Ark to suddenly appear. And sadly the show opens up with a severe continuity issue as the blast wave levels everything except the people, who miraculously stand directly in the path and don’t even stumble or have their hair blown back. The first 4 or 5 episodes have trouble gaining traction, leaving the final half of the series to pick up the slack, and there is a lot of slack. And this leads to a fairly rushed conclusion in the final two episodes. The acting is solid. The actions sequences (however few there are) feel clunky at times. More time with an action choreographer would be most helpful. Plus the big, scary mutated monsters are too easily dispatched, and posed almost no threat, which is where the show deviates significantly from the games. The sets look magnificent, but the Super Duper Mart and Red Rocket are basically just sign posts as they hold no significance in season 1. A good start overall. The first season would’ve benefited with four more episodes to allow fuller engagement with the world that has been crafted. As long as Amazon doesn’t drop the ball like Reacher season 2 or seasons 3 and 4 of Jack Ryan, I could see 6 or 7 seasons for this series. But if they stumble into their own bear trap again, it’ll be over in season 2.

About as good a racing movie as you can get. Same goes for a video game to movie adaptation. The acting is fairly solid throughout. There are enough emotional highs and lows to keep you interested. The pacing is solid. The focused racing sequences are intense, albeit often having a video game quality. Could’ve including far more training outside of the car, and more specific aspects of racing inside the car. Has the cliched pedal work you would expect from a movie about racing to create dramatic scenes instead using actual fighting for position like in real racing. And that’s where the movie fails a bit and goes too far towards fantasy instead of staying in reality. Most track and position battles are over in an eye blink with some gear shifting and otherworldly acceleration that simply wasn’t available before the script calls for it. A quality racing movie that outshines the current Gran Turismo (7) title.

Meh. I’ve never considered the Joe Pickett novels to be top shelf reads, but I generally find them entertaining as brain dead mysteries go. But this TV adaptation takes far too many liberties to make readers of the series anything but disappointed. While some of the characters do hold true to their written counterparts, significant changes were made that I simply didn’t enjoy. Joe Pickett is a bit of a flatfoot, even a dolt at times on paper, but he’s never a depressive, woe-is-me type. And the casting of Nate’s character was jarring. Nate is an imposing, scary human with an overwhelming constitution and full of confidence, he simply isn’t like that in this show. There are much better novels to TV adaptations than this series. And I seriously have to wonder how much more askew things will go in the future. If there is a future.

Just isn’t amazing. Yes, it is breathtaking visually like all GT games previously, but that’s the limit of its value. Some improvements with audio as well. Clunky menu (Cafe) system. Races and license tests (which should be optional as in GT5) forcing a player into specialty racing, off-road as an example with the Ford Raptor, which doesn’t really sound like a Raptor in the 6.2 liter genre. Rally racing should be in Missions or a completely separate racing circuit. A rather poor Used Car lot, which simply doesn’t reset often enough. Same goes for the Legendary Car Lot. Painfully disappointing washing and oil change animation. Rather dense AI as in previous versions. Micro transactions are here as well as loot boxes, and some rather expensive vehicles that try forcing you to spend real money on fake money to buy cars faster. Sadly, it feels as though 25 years of experience still hasn’t solved repeated issues of previous versions, and continues to hamper returning players with the same old gripes while adding new ones. I think GT4 was the best game in the series, and GT5 is the best option for gaming as PS2s and periphery are hard to find. I would’ve been more pleased with a remake of GT4 with all the new bells and whistles of today’s technology. To Sony and PD, looks aren’t everything. After 25 years it’s time to start improving the game. Don’t take the Madden football approach where teeny tiny improvements are made with each version.