The Onion’s Sex House is now our reality

Here’s a pitch for a reality show: move a group of young, attractive, single people into luxury accommodation. Cut them off from the outside world and deprive them of any entertainment beyond social interaction. Use overtly sexual challenges and nudges from the producers to encourage them to act on their attraction to each other. Other reality shows may pretend to be a social experiment, but this one has no illusions about why the audience is really there: we want to see people hook up on television.

Today, this show is ITV2’s monster hit Love Island. But back in 2012, this was The Onion’s Sex House.

Some thoughts on Rampage

Tonight I watched Rampage, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I watched it because I will watch literally anything with The Rock in it. I have even seen Pain and Gain, a film which made me want to remove my brain from my skull and just slosh some bleach around in there for a bit to try to remove the deep sense of shame.

Here are some facts about Rampage I learned from briefly looking at its Wikipedia page:

• To get inspiration for how to animate the many, many destroyed buildings in this movie, the special effects team watched footage from 9/11, which… yeesh.
• Rampage is the best-reviewed video game movie on Rotten Tomatoes. 52%, baby!
• Uwe Boll, king of crappy video game movies, threatened to sue Warner Bros and accused the film of “brainwashing America”.

Now that the tone is set, let’s get into the plot. Spoilers, I guess.

Playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

Last autumn, I started playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on the PS4. I’d had a mixed experience with other games in the series: I played a fair bit of Black Flag; watched a fair bit of Assassin’s Creed III; and played 15 minutes of Assassin’s Creed II before I ran down a street I wasn’t meant to go down yet, failed the mission with a “you can’t go that way” message, and immediately ragequit. Since that experience, Ubisoft and I had been on an extended break.

But I am a sucker for the classical world, the reviews were good, and the option to play as a female protagonist was a big draw (turns out they’re not that hard to animate after all). So I fired up the console, cocooned myself on the sofa, spent ages downloading updates, and then settled into the game.

Several months and 110+ hours later, I’ve completed the main quest, collected most of the achievements, and visited most of the expansive map. My time with the game definitely isn’t over yet – there are islands I haven’t even seen yet, major secondary quests that need completing, and I haven’t touched the DLC – but at this point, I think it’s safe to say that I really, really like this game. So here’s why.