Dealing with backlog: The Wasteland series

The original Wasteland game is older than I am, released in 1988, and I haven't played it, but I've heard good things about the game and it's subsequent sequels/reboot. I decided to start from the first modern game; Wasteland 2, and then go from there, finishing by playing the remaster of the original if I enjoyed my time in the sequels. 

Wasteland 2: The four rookie Rangers in your party are pretty much like the soldiers in XCOM: just characters without much of a personality aside from what their blurb says; but even so I became strangely attached to Pills and Slick. My favourite companion became Corran Cain and his end was strangely poetic. I allowed him to sacrifice himself to save the rest of the Rangers from Cochise. The gameplay is nice and smooth although the dice-rolling mechanic for skill checks are extremely annoying. It became a habit of mine to manually save before any skill check (like lockpicking or disarming a bomb) because even if the meter said 93% chance to succeed, you bet I'd fail *sigh* The story picks up some 20+ years after the events of the original Wasteland, but seeing as the sequel came out so very long after the original the devs are kind enough to not expect anyone to have played the original beforehand (thank you) and there's a lot of storytelling from veteran Rangers to your rookie squad about the events that led up to Vargas being general. I liked Vargas. I was happy I managed to tweak the ending to save him and the others. I enjoyed most of the gameplay and the story. The suicide bombers were massively annoying considering they'd literally blow my squad's clothes off if they happened to stand too close to an explosion. By the time I finished in the Canyon/Temple of Titan my squad was running around butt naked, and I treated every piece of clothing I could find as if it were made of gold and diamonds. The first part of the game takes place in the barren wasteland of Arizona, but the second part takes place in the slightly less barren wasteland of California. Actually it's pretty nice. There's greenery in California. I much preferred the time I spent playing in California. The side stories in California were all much better than the side stories in Arizona. I really enjoyed this game. That song in the end didn't hurt either.

Wasteland 3: It became pretty obvious very quickly that the devs' canon ending to Wasteland 2 is that everyone died. Which made me feel pretty sad. I also didn't like what they did to Angela Deth in this game and I wish they could've left her well-enough alone with her being MIA after the events of Wasteland 2. I much prefer the nuclear winter wasteland of Colorado over the arid barren wasteland of Arizona. After the events in Wasteland 2 the Rangers are in desperate need of help and they reach out to Colorado where a man calling himself the Patriarch his leading a community. He invites the Rangers up to negotiate a deal. Nothing about it goes smoothly. The Patriarch isn't as good of a man as he makes out (but that's just reality imo) and Angela pops up and offers an alternative to the Patriarch's wishes. An alternative that I find to be extremely anti-Ranger and I can't believe they did that to her. No, imho the Patriarch isn't perfect, nobody is, but he's the best they've (we've) got. I became weirdly attached to Vic and if I do another playthrough of this game I might just do everything he wants so that I can keep him in the end. I played this game 1½ years after release and any bugs have been ironed out. From what I've read it was a buggy mess when it released and as usual people were hating on it because of that. But I got no bugs whatsoever. This has been one of the smoothest gameplay experiences ever. I also really enjoyed that they had actual songs to every single defining battle and not just instrumental soundtrack. It added a unique layer to the game that I appreciated. There were so many references ot Wasteland 2 and I loved it. Lucia and Jodie are my girls ♥ I also really liked Darius Kwon. This game went from "alright this seems pretty good" to favourite so fast. 

Wasteland Remastered: So if I understand this correctly this game is the same as the original 80s game only with updated graphics and music  and with modernized controls. Even if "modernized" seems to be pushing it a bit... In any case the 80s is still clearly visible through the polished exterior. Games were simpler in the 80s and 90s and not always in a good way. This game seems shallow compared to the other two, and while I get that they had less to work with 30+ years ago it's still a bit disappointing that there isn't more depth to it. I didn't finish the game, so maybe there's more to the story later on, but in the beginning it's pretty much the world ended; this is the Rangers; you're one of them. The gameplay is pretty simple, but with a lot of odd things that are completely unexplained and you get to figure out through trial and error. I might pick it up again at some other time to finish it, but for now I feel pretty much done. 

My last 5 books: Rowling and samurai

1. The Ickabog, by J.K. Rowling. I loved it. It's obviously a children's book, much more so than the first Harry Potter book, and it's written like a traditional fairy tale. There's a bit of Brothers Grimm to it, and a bit of Disney, maybe even a bit of Aesop... I loved watching the story unfold and see how Spittleworth dug himself into an incresingly deep hole. I honestly didn't expect the Ickabog to actually be real after all that came before the reveal, but in hindsight of course it was. And such a sweet thing. The way it's described it makes me think of a huge and green Cousin Itt... The pairings at the end came about exactly as I expected and hoped, and I was happy that Fred got something of a redemption. He wasn't mean; just ignorant and vain. Ma Grunter was reminiscent of the evil stepmom/witch in Grimm stories. This story tickled my fancy and woke up my childish imagination. Less than 50 pages in I just wanted to keep on reading to find out what would happen next. I wanna go again. 

2. Shogun, by James Clavell. A friend of mine talked about how great this book was so I decided to read it. It was great, amazing even. Only complaint of mine is on the Japanese romanizations in the book like... either he's using 17th century Japanese, which I admittedly know nothing about, or he just doesn't know Japanese even though he makes a great effort at making it seem like he does. The vocabulary, the word order, omfg what are you doing. Also why can't Mariko pronounce Blackthorne's name when she can speak both Latin and Portuguese? Like if she can maneouver her tongue into Portuguese, then "Blackthorne" shouldn't be very hard... The character development in this book is insane. For the first half of the book I wanted to slap Blackthorne for being such a child. Him and his crew kept throwing tantrums at the slightest thing, every time they didn't get what they want, and omg all the complaints about meat and bread and alcohol... Sit down, shut the fuck up and be grateful that they actually cleaned and fed you. They just as well might not have. And then came Blackthorne's big moment of self-realisation and I was so proud of him. At the same time I couldn't help but feel weird about it, like as a European I should relate to the Europeans, right? I should take their side. But I never did. I sighed and rolled my eyes at the Europeans and their blatant disrespect, obvious superiority complex and annoying tantrums. I was sat shaking my head at all the mentions of bleeding. Sorry 17th century doctors, but the blood is supposed to be inside the body. Blackthorne's subsequent reaction to the conditions in the eta village is reminiscent of a modern person hearing about living conditions several hundred years ago; pure disgust. I went into this book completely blind, but while reading I got the sneaking suspicion that Toranaga was based on Tokugawa Ieyasu; probably the most famous shogun in Japanese history, and after I finished the book I read up on it and found out Toranaga most definitely was based on Tokugawa Ieyasu. There wasn't much in this story that I could see coming from a mile away, but I nailed the history xD As proud as I was of Blackthorne at the end, and as much as I appreciated Mariko, Toranaga was my favourite character. So shrewd and clever and always ten steps ahead of everybody else, but still a decent and pretty jovial person... I loved him. Everytime a character said "so sorry" I heard a "sumimasen ga" in my head. ぜひ読んでください。

3. The Christmas Pig, by J.K. Rowling. This was... lovely. An absolutely heart-warming adventure that gave me the same nostalgic happy feeling as Toy Story 3 or The Polar Express. This story is written for children but it doesn't shy away from the difficult subjects, and that's a good thing. Children should be allowed to explore the darker sides of life (from the warmth of a safe home); they should be allowed to ask uncomfortable questions and recieve the truth (however simplified and dolled up). This book does exactly that. Jack is very young, but he learns a lot about himself and the way of the world through his journey in the Land of the Lost, without ever losing the wonder of his childish innocence. When I was very young I used to imagine that lost things were never truly lost; they had just gone somewhere else and would return once they were found. I have a nagging feeling that I didn't come up with that idea, but that I got it from somewhere but it's only a half-remembered feeling and I can't pin-point it. I'm sure every child has at some point imagined that their toys would come to life behind closed doors and in the dead of night. I did too, way before Toy Story was a thing, and this story just hits all the right buttons with the Alivened toys and the lost Things. This story made me take my teddy down from his perching spot atop the bookshelf and hug him for the first time in over a decade. 

4. Samurai William: The Adventurer Who Unlocked Japan, by Giles Milton. So this book is a reconstruction of events of the very real Anjin-sama who inspired the story told in Shogun. (And which also inspired the story in Nioh, and I'm sure many other things). Interestingly, this book carries the name of Samurai William but told more about the Dutch and English mariners who came to Japan after William Adams and employed him and his expertise to gain a foothold in the country. This book tells you more about the unruly 17th century Europeans who literally behaved like teenagers. All money they ever received was used for drink and sex, and then they complain that they have no money... 17th century Europe was suitably aghast to discover Japanese pornography and dildoes. (That was fun). This book details the story of how Europeans tried to access the mysterious country of Japan, situated on the edge of the world; how William Adams came to end up the first Englishman there and how he gained the trust of the shogun; how another group of Englishmen arrived over a decade after Adams and their subsequent struggles; and finally how Japan ended up a closed country for over 200 years. It was a super interesting read that struggled with the extent of information it tried to put out. I had to take several breaks from it because the outpour was intense for such a short book. But did I enjoy it? Yes, very much.

5. Harry Potter: A Magical Year, by J.K. Rowling & Jim Kay. I know this book is supposed to last for a full year, with a small snippet of Harry Potter to read each day, but all those small snippets did was leave me wanting more and so I read all of January in my first sitting. Then I tried to not pick it up again but still I did and went through all of February and March for my second sitting. I tried to forget about it and yet I picked it up a third time (just to look at the pictures) and ended up finishing the whole thing.  I adore the illustrated versions of the Harry Potter books and Jim Kay's illustrations are marvelously perfect. Unlike most material out there, his illustrations are based entirely upon the descriptions in the books and not on the movies and I'm all here for it! His portrait of Dumbledore is amazing ♥ I've wanted illustrated Potter since I got my hands on the first book back in the 90s and I will collect every single illustrated version to come. This book made me want to reread the entire Potter series again. Might be about time I do that...

Game completed: Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Siege of Paris + the free updates

So I finally got around to playing the latest DLC for Valhalla. I started on the DLC just a few days before Christmas and finished it just a couple days after Christmas. 

After the base game in 2020 and the Wrath of the Druids DLC in 2021 I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what to expect, and I wasn't far off the mark. I kept waiting for another Order to go through, but there wasn't any. As much as the Children of Danu was expected in Wrath of the Druids I felt a little bit cheated that there wasn't something similar in Siege of Paris, especially after I picked up an emblem from Little Mother. I thought that would be the starting point for another Order, but no such luck. I kind of missed the investigative element of trying to solve the riddles of where to find the Order members. 

I knew a little bit about the history concerning the very real Viking siege of Paris and so I was excited for the story and it ended up being better than the story in Wrath of the Druids. There was a lot more choice and consequence in this DLC than in the previous, including the base game iirc. Mostly concerning whether to fight and kill every French person in sight or whether to try and talk to them. I mostly chose the diplomatic approach, which made Sigfred call me Eivor the Talker, but I felt vindicated (and also a little sad) when I talked him down from his final confrontation and watched him leave. I ended up really liking Richardis. For the most part I felt sad for Charles. History says he was probably epileptic, but the game makes him out as probably schizophrenic. 

The siege itself was epic and well worth the wait caused by diplomacy and preparations throughout the game. 

One annoying mechanic that I wish wasn't in the game was the rats. I hate hate hate the rats. They made exploration hell wherever they were, even though the game makes it quite clear on how to deal with them. 

Rebel Missions were just the same kind of deal as the Royal Demands in Wrath of the Druids. They were repetitive as hell, but I did enough of them to get the achievements associated with them. I ended up running through this DLC with a big ass scythe in one hand and a short sword in the other while completely decked out in the Reaper armor and shooting rats at unaware enemies so I could watch them get devoured by the rats. Fun stuff. 

Side note: All the French accents in the DLC inevitably made me think of Orlais in Dragon Age. 

After I had finished the DLC I still didn't feel quite done with my time in the game, so I decided to finish up on some of things I had left hanging from my playthrough of the base game. So I did a bunch of drinking games, and defeated all of the Orlog players. I finished up some easy-to-get achievements that I had missed; like lighting all of the braziers on Hadrian's Wall, swimming 3km on the horse, sliding 150m in the snow, and assassinate an enemy from the horse. Then I completed all of the Hunter Deliveries, before I turned my attention to the fishing. I really, really dislike fishing (both in games and irl), but I set my mind to it and spent the two following days just fishing and fishing and fishing. Until I managed to complete all of the challenges and recieved the Swordfish. 

After having done all of that I decided to get through the free update content. Starting with River Raids. It was a fun concept, but it soon became pretty repetitive. I played through the entire quest arc in one go and half-way through Ireland I was getting pretty fed up with the repetition. Especially since my crew were so fragile and no map provided enough rations to counter-act their fragility. Eivor was running around like crazy collectiong every berry and mushroom on every raid site just to collect enough stuff for rations. The champion fights in each region provided the best diversion from the repetition of the questing and gameplay, to the point where I kept going with the questing just so I could get to the next champion fight. 

When I had finished the River Raids arc. I decided to quickly do the Yule Event, which took maybe 30 minutes all in all, but it was pretty fun, nothing special. And then I headed on to the Mastery Challenge free update, which I started on a little bit just before I played Wrath of the Druids. I only managed to get one gold medal, but got enough silver and bronze medals to complete the quest. It got pretty annoying towards the end, especially on the maps where Eivor had basically no armour and all it took was for one enemy to swing their weapon ones and Eivor was "dead" and I had to restart the challenge. So many sighs and eye-rolls on this one. But I felt pretty good once I managed to complete it.

And then I turned to the Isle of Skye free update, and hello Kassandra. After all the achievement hunting, raiding and challenges it was fun to run around a new zone, do a story and hunt down all the collectables. I wish the questline had been a bit longer. I know some fans complained about the fact that Kassandra showed up in Valhalla, since her story takes place around 200 years earlier, but the devs did make her immortal so...¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyway I did enjoy the Isle of Skye update and it made me want to play Odyssey even more. Which I still haven't done...

Once that was done it was time for the last bit of content I had left; the Tombs of the Fallen. I expected intricate, difficult puzzles and fully expected to need a guide to get through them. But I went in blind to all of them and found that they were pretty straight-forward and kind of simple. The first Tomb is just outside Eivor's settlement (that's handy) and it serves as a tutorial for the rest of the Tombs. In each of the three following Tombs you can find an artifact that probably will be needed to open the big gate in the tutorial Tomb. "Probably" because you need five artifacts to open it, and there are currently only three of them in the game. The Tombs were fairly simple puzzles that were entertaining enough without posing much of a problem. I enjoyed these a lot more than I thought I would. 

I still want more Valhalla, though, so I'm excited for the next DLC coming in March :3

Gotham

So after Fate I chose Gotham as our dinner show, and since it's five seasons long it has taken us a while. But it's been well worth it, damn this show was good. 

So we knew from beforehand that this show wasn't a Batman origin story, but rather a Jim Gordon origin story and the story of how Gotham came to be what it is when Batman is around. That being said, there was quite a lot of the Batman origin story in it too. 

And they've found such good actors for all the roles! Such amazingly good fits. Every time Penguin was on screen I was just inwardly squealing with how good he was. And did we ever really see an episode without me going "He's such a good Penguin!" at least once? Riddler was good too, and Joker (especially in the later seasons), and Alfred, and Zsasz. Bruce and Selina were really good fits too. Just generally a really good cast. Most of them should get asked to do any upcoming Batman movie. 

I grew up watching Batman: The Animated Series and so I always compare any Batman live action character to the animated ones. I can't help it. And that final iteration of Penguin, after the 10 year gap... I was just squeee. He's perfect. Absolutely perfect.

I had a lot of fun with this show and it managed to defy every expectation I had of it. I expected a kind of police procedural drama with a twist, but it's so much more and it's just perfect. Even with the slight changes to the lore to fit the time period and still make it Batman they've done everything respectfully. I could easily go through this entire series again.

Death Stranding

Where to start with this game?

Before release we followed all the trailers closely and we were perpetually confused. The trailers explained nothing, said nothing, and yet we were both intrigued by what we saw.

The game released for PS4 and seemed to be an exclusive, and with me being as bad with controllers as I am, I resigned myself to not play it myself but watch Toni play it. I watched him play through a lot of it, although not everything, and halfway through his playthrough the announcement came that it would release for PC. I stopped watching anything story-related in the game, but from time to time came to watch his gameplay.

He talked a lot about the little annoying things. Little annoying mechanics that were there to give the game a sense of reality, but only served to make it annoying. We usually don't find the same things annoying in games and so I figured that most of those things he mentioned wouldn't bother me. Because we don't think the same way when it comes to games and gameplay. 

Then I got it and started playing it. I was excited to get started. But the story failed to pull me in and all the little annoying things Toni had mentioned annoyed me too. All that and much more. I got to the point where I got fast-travel and felt cheated because I couldn't bring anything with me. The game explains the whole thing that he can't take anything with him apart from himself. Then why does he have clothes?!

Anyway I got super annoyed by my constantly breaking boots, by him constantly dropping all the stuff he was carrying, and by the JRPG-ish mechanic of getting attacked every 10 meters (that annoys me in every JRPG tbh - just let me go where I'm going ffs).

The characters failed to be engaging. The story failed to pull me in. The gameplay annoyed me to no end. It's like one of those artsy things that are weird just for the sake of being weird. 

After I got to the first big city, the point where the rest of the game kind of opens up I decided to take a break and play other things, but with every intention of coming back to it. That was mid-October 2020. 

Then I didn't play it for all of 2021 and I decided to just drop it.

I loved the soundtrack, the vibe, the atmosphere... But none of the things I loved about it could outweigh the things that annoyed me. 

It's the little things that can make or break a game. And for me, the little things broke Death Stranding. 

There are some games where you play 10 hours and it feels like no time has passed. Then there are games where 10 hours feels like an eterenity. Unfortunately, for me Death Stranding ended up in the latter category. 

Showing off some of the vibes/atmosphere and soundtrack that I loved about it.

Final readings of 2021

1. The Alienist, by Caleb Carr. This book took way too long for me to actually get through. I only picked up this book because I loved the TV show, which meant I already knew the story. And that was probably what shot me in the foot with this book, because I already knew everything. The story pacing is pretty slow and without the feeling of "I need to know what happens next!" this book becomes pretty tedious. Sara and Kreizler are the most interesting characters in the book, and the most intelligent, but for some reason the main character is Moore and the book is mostly about him being confused about things and Sara/Kreizler patiently waiting for him to catch up. Which is a drag, because the book is from his POV. If I hadn't known the whole story before-hand I would probably have enjoyed this book a whole lot more, since I really like the setting and the old-timey serial killer story (i.e. Jack the Ripper). And Sara is awesome.

2. The Angel of Darkness, by Caleb Carr. As with The Alienist I had watched the TV show before I read this book and so I expected to go into this book knowing exactly what would happen and how it'd turn out. Except nothing in this book matched the show. Nothing aside from names was the same, and once I realised that this book soon became a lot more interesting than the first one. This book is narrated by Stevie Taggert instead of John Schyler Moore, which is definitely in its favour. I didn't care for Moore in the first book or in this one, but Stevie is a sweetheart. Now knowing that Carr is originally a non-fiction history author makes the long-winding descriptions and explanations a little easier to bear, although they still were a drag to read through. Sara and Kreizler are still the best characters to grace these pages. Any time Moore opens his mouth I want to smack him. I enjoyed the roundabout feminism in this book and seeing clearly how the story protested against the common mold that all women were/are supposed to fit into. Not as much nowadays as in the past, I suspect, but the mold is still ever-present. Libby Hatch is a psychopath, but her case is a sad one. Monsters aren't born; they're made. A point this book and the previous firmly tries to prove. Kreizler's idea of context is the precursor of modern day profiling. Having finger-printing thrown out as an unproven and unreliable science in the courtroom made me laugh. Reading Lucius' claim that there's no way to differentiate one type of blood from another gave me much the same feeling as hearing Dana Scully talk about science that doesn't exist in 90s X-Files - a kind of smug "oh if you only knew" feeling while cosied up in my 21st century chair. It's certainly obious that Carr isn't first and foremost a fiction writer, but I did enjoy this book a lot more than the previous one. I kept waiting for that one death from the TV show to happen in the book, but it didn't and that made me very happy. Although I did shed a couple tears over the one death that did happen. All in all, I don't know why this book took me so long. 

In 2021 I read very few physical books and the ones I read took weeks or months for me to get through, but that's not to say I didn't read. I started to read ebooks via Radish and did a deep-dive into romance; a genre I never really cared for before. Most of the stories on there are pretty short, but there are some honourable mentions from that app. Off the top of my head there are four authors whose stories I just couldn't stop reading until they finished, and even then I wished they weren't done. The one person who caught my interest the most was Abigail Barnette. I loved her series The Boss and even though it has probably been a couple months now since I finished that story I still feel like I need more Sophie Scaife in my life. Amy Brent and Katee Robert became my go-to for short and fun stories. Just something light to read every now and then. And then we have Lexie Miers, whose story I now follow. Amy, Katee and Lexie are all good, but they pale in comparison with Abigail. The Boss encompasses eight volumes. I also read the spin-off, comprised of three volumes. Amy's and Katee's stories are all pretty short and what I've read from them would probably fit into a decent-sized short story compilation each. Lexie's story is ongoing, but that's sizing up to a pretty normal-sized book. 

I feel kind of bad reading ebooks on my phone when I have a bookcase full of unread books... I will try to read more physical books in 2022 :)

Movies I watched in 2021

This is aside from the horror movies we watched during the summer.

Death to 2020 (2020)
This movie pokes fun at the mess that was 2020. It was the first movie we watched in 2021 and I've since been recommending it to everyone I know. It's a mockumentary and its self-depricating humour is exactly what I needed after the shitshow that was 2020.

Downton Abbey (2019)
I wanted to watch this at the cinema, but had nobody to watch it with and it never made it outside of the independent cinemas and so it wasn't running for very long. Long story short: I missed it. Then I found it on Prime and ofc I had to watch it. All the nostalgia came flooding back and I realised how much I had loved this show, to the point where I started to watch the show again.

His House (2020)
The first horror movie of the year and it was weird. Not bad weird, just weird. I loved that it was the woman who saved the day even after being repeatedly told by her husband that he'd handle things and she shouldn't worry about it. On top of being a horror movie it was also a heart-wrenching account of war and refugees and trying to find your footing in a foreign country. I enjoyed it despite its weirdness, and there were some really creepy moments. 

Hot Fuzz (2007)
I have a hard time with comedy, usually, because all it tends to be is me hiding behind a pillow in shame and embarrassment, which is why I had never seen this one. Toni talked me into watching this with him after it showed up on Netflix and I had a great time. This is a classic and it's so much fun. Absolutely loved it.

Little Evil (2017)
Horror comedy is usually my cup of tea and this was no exception. It was funny. It had jumpscares. And it was heart-warming in all the right places. It's a parody of Omen and it showed, but it was definitely better than I thought it would be. 

No One Gets Out Alive (2021)
Our horror movie for Halloween week. It was great up until the monster reveal as these things usually are. Same as with The Ritual last year. But from what I could tell online they did a pretty decent job with the mythology. I did spend the entire time feeling exasperated that this girl who's an illegal immigrant is so damned trusting, especially of people who are in the same desperate situation she is. But other than that, this movie was solid. The internet doesn't agree with me that it was solid, though.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)
One of the first movies we watched this year and probably my favourite movie of the whole year. It's funny and chaotic and heart-warming. It shows the value of family without getting high and mighty over what's normal, all the while providing a stiff middle-finger to the idea of conformity. I love it! The humour is tongue-in-cheek and extremely punny. Both of us were laughing our asses off watching this. I laughed until I cried. It was great.

The World's End (2013)
The next movie in the Cornetto trilogy that I had amazingly never seen before, due to me being skepitcal of comedy. It was hilarious. Not as good as Hot Fuzz, but still so funny. 

Watchmen (2009)
This one was on everybody's lips back when it was new and I overheard many discussions concerning whether it was good or not and how it had dealt with the source material. Somehow I never watched it back then, but it showed up on Netflix this year and so we decided to watch it. Having never read the source material I can't say how it did there, but I really enjoyed the movie. Especially Rorschach (should come as no surprise to anybody).

Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
The original Zombieland was one of the first movies Toni and I watched together as a couple. So when this one showed up on Netflix it was a given that we would watch it. It was fun. It was good. There were a lot of laughs. Especially during the scenes where they meet different versions of themselves. Not as good as the original, but a solid movie. 

Tulip Fever (2017)
I watched this movie on TV during Christmas, because it was on. I had no idea what it was, but I became weirdly invested in it as I first lazily threw an eye in the direction of the TV and then couldn't stop watching. There wasn't a lot of action or humour, but the storytelling was great and I do enjoy a good story. 

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
I watched this movie on my own last year and I really liked it. I nagged on Toni to watch it, simply because he tends to enjoy movies starring Will Ferrell even if he doesn't enjoy Eurovision. He wasn't convinced. But then I got to choose a movie for us to watch for my birthday so I decided that we should watch this. I enjoyed it the second time around too. Toni wasn't convinced. But we spent weeks afterwards singing Ja Ja Ding Dong. 

Death to 2021 (2021).
We started the year by watching Death to 2020, and we finished the year by watching Death to 2021. This one wasn't as great as the first one, but it made us chuckle from time to time. 2021 has been a hell of a ride.