I liked Total War: Warhammer 2 because it learned enough lessons from its predecessor last year to come up with an even better campaign that lets you cut loose with a collection of weirder factions than before. And while updates have so far been imperfect, Creative Assembly is providing lots of support for the title,…

I’m not sure what I’m playing this weekend. I’ve been busy with Christmas shopping and various activities and just flat-out haven’t played much in the past week, so the field is wide open if I carve out some free time.

They are all collections of a few really good scenes and, in a few instances, iconic performances. But even the best one is kind of insubstantial.

Kind of amazed that neither Jaws nor The Godfather made this list. The book version of The Godfather features a subplot that is honest-to-God about a woman’s struggle with coping with her huge vagina. In fact, it’s a huge plot point!

I also want to make some progress on my Skaven campaign in Total Warhammer 2 and continue leveling up Hellboy in Injustice 2.

This weekend I’ll be trying the Endless Space 2 free weekend. It’s on sale for 50% off, too, so if I enjoy it enough I’ll pick it up. I haven’t really sat down and dug into it yet, but it’s aesthetically a big step up from the already nice-looking earlier Endless games. I will say that the interface is maybe a bit too…

But that’s the point: the museum mode is some kind of semi-guided experience. It’s not collected in a menu because now you will experience it by wandering around in the game directly. Or something. They’ve been a little vague if it’s just slapping informational panels onto the existing game world or if it’s some kind…

My boyfriend’s been playing this, and it does seem meaningfully different from the typical Assassin’s Creed. I’m not sure if it’s different enough for me to really want to give it a go, but it’s easier to admire the craftsmanship of the historical setting and overall visual design when you aren’t being completely…

Asylum is the high water mark, but I do think that Roanoke turned a lot of the show’s weaknesses into strengths and managed to deliver an unusually coherent horror story.

“If that is the way the winds are blowing, let no one say I don’t also blow.”

But, in the spirit of positivity, focusing on the First Age material from The Silmarillion as a loosely connected anthology is obviously the best possible outcome. It’s basically an outline just waiting to be filled in, with all the high drama, conflict, and incest an audience could ask for.

I want it to go away, because this whole thing is a bad idea.

Having Apu expand his franchise and age up his kids would probably be the best move. The best Apu material is always Apu as another slightly weird Springfield resident and not Apu as a stereotype.

I’m chipping away at the post-game in Mario Odyssey, but the game has essentially morphed into a crossword puzzle book for me: something to do while I’m watching TV, but not really an activity that demands all my attention. I think this structure works better for Mario than it did for Zelda.

It’s sort of weird that it’s set in Missouri but filmed in the mountains of NC. Are there places in Missouri that resemble the region?

I like the interview with Richard Dreyfuss in Nathan Rabin’s My Year of Flops book where Dreyfuss explicitly makes it obvious he only gave the interview to trash talk Oliver Stone.

I honestly can’t believe they didn’t give Mario a Bela Legosi-like Dracula outfit or something for that world.

I hadn’t picked up on the fact that Holden reacted more strongly to Ed than to his girlfriend breaking up with him.

I think that is another consequence of the movie being so front-loaded. Your butt is numb by the time you get there, but it’s, to me, one of the best scenes in the film.

I could take or leave Kali’s band of misfits, but as a part of El’s personal journey I thought it worked fine.