Reviews

9 February 2023

Unpopular Opinion: Harry Potter is not that great

Due to the release of the video game Hogwarts Legacy, there’s currently quite a bit of controversy about Harry Potter and its creator, who now spends her days spewing hate speech against transwomen instead of writing magical children’s stories. I would like to add my two cents to this discussion. As a millennial, I grew up with Harry Potter. I started reading these books when I was around 14 years old, and they played a significant role in me acquiring the English language, as they were some of the first books I read in English. I read every new book […]

6 February 2023

Experiencing nausea when gaming

Last week I wrote about my issues in gaming with dark mode, which seems to be the standard for video games. In this post, I would like to address another issue that stops me from playing a lot of games: dealing with nausea with gaming due to first person perspective, enclosed spaces, camera shake and related issues. Some time in the past 10 years, I have lost my ability to play first person perspective video games. While I was still able to play Skyrim in early 2012 without any issues (on the XBOX), I have since not been able to […]

31 January 2023

Dark mode as a commonly overlooked user experience issue in gaming

I’ve been a video gamer for over 20 years, starting out with classics such as Diablo I, Diablo II, Grim Fandango and Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption. While I did not always game as much, I’ve been getting back into gaming for the past couple of years with games such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Valheim, Wasteland 3, etc. However, I noticed that I’m not as young as I used to be. 20 years ago, I didn’t really have issues playing video games, but these days, the number of games that I can actually play has become […]

3 October 2022

Read Dead Redemption 2

Rarely have a been carried away by a video game as I have been by Red Dead Redemption 2. What an absolutely amazing, outstanding, and somewhat heartbreaking game. Admittedly, Arthur and I had a rough start, I really hated Chapter 1 because learning the controls in this game (and learning to not accidentally shoot people) takes way too long. But once that was over and the story truly began, the game really grew on me, and I enjoyed just riding around this breathtaking, pristine landscape, back when times were simpler and the world was not quite insane yet. Just Arthur […]

31 March 2018

Y: The Last Man

I was very excited when I heard about the graphic novel Y: The Last Man – a dystopian world in which all men but one mysteriously die? But I was hugely disappointed, as this isn’t the feminist utopia I was looking for. It’s anything but, and the fact that this title was written by a man should have warned me. It’s very obviously a title written by men for men, as it’s pretty much every man’s fantasy to have a world of women at his disposal, isn’t it? Well, the comic cleverly tries to avoid such implications by making Yorick, […]

1 May 2016

The Magic of The Magicians

“Hogwarts for adults” is how Syfy’s new show The Magicians is popularly described – but it’s SO much more than that. I admit the parallels are pretty obvious; both The Magicians and Harry Potter are about a guy who discovers magic and proceeds to go to magic school. Both stories have a truly terrifying, seemingly omnipotent villain. And in both stories, the school teachers seem surprisingly unhelpful in solving problems. But compared to the complexity of characters in The Magicians, Harry Potter seems terribly flat. Actually, I would argue that The Magicians is rather the spiritual heir to Buffy the […]

29 September 2015

The 100

Yet another TV show about a post-apocalyptic world? Well… yay! (Honestly!) I’m a big fan of this genre, so big that I actually wrote my bachelor’s thesis about it. And quite a few blog posts / reviews ([1] [2] [3]). So here’s another one of those review blog posts: this one is about The 100, a TV show that began airing on The CW (US) in 2014. The 100 begins loaded with teen drama (or whatever you want to call it), as the premise of the show is that 100 juvenile delinquents are banished to a post-apocalyptic earth which is […]

26 September 2015

Red Dog

Australian films – do they exist? Well they do, but a lot of them are not exactly great. Also, a lot of them try to hide the fact that they’re Australian, such as for example the first three Mad Max films. So when I came to Australia, I tried to finds some good ‘real’ Australian films just to learn a little bit more about the culture. And perhaps the most unexpected film I came across was Red Dog. When I first heard the name of the film, Red Dog, I just couldn’t imagine what it could possibly be about. “Red […]

25 September 2015

Blood and Chocolate

Yesterday I finally finished watching the latest and likely final season of Hannibal. Sadly, Hannibal has been cancelled by NBC and by now it doesn’t look like the show will be picked up by another production company, as most people involved in it have already moved on to other projects. Though I always did admire Hannibal for its writing and cinematography, I did not always necessarily enjoy watching it – it’s just a bit too disgusting for me, and way too sick. I think that’s pretty obvious if you read my profanity-laden post-season-one review of Hannibal. Therefore, I have to […]