I am not sure what all the fuss was about

I was super excited to learn that the oscar-trumping Korean-made Parasite was now on hulu, and so, I set aside the obligatory number of hours needed to watch this masterpiece of theatre - or maybe not. Perhaps no movie could live up to the hype of best director/film/writing/international film ... but I did expect a little more than I received. For some reason I thought this was going to be a psychological horror film where the rich folks were somehow unhinged ... but I was wrong.

On the surface, it's a far-fetched story where a family of (literal) gutter-dwellers finagle their way into all working for an upper-crust family. The main themes cover the hackneyed tropes, like the one percent, classist struggles and (perhaps) some pointless nuclear bomb commentary. Maybe I didn't get the significance of the nuclear references - perhaps due to the tensions between North and South Korea - but I don't think it added anything to the story.

From a cinematic standpoint the movie was beautifully shot and, for the most part, relatively well acted. The story builds very nicely, although I don't think you should rate some of the acting or story points on a western scale. Even if I may have enjoyed watching an amazing film like Oldboy - but, at least for me, it had at least a few scenes which didn't seem like a realistic response. So, perhaps, I shouldn't be too harsh with Parasite - but I should at least list a few issues I did have:

• The rich family is really dumb and unbelievably gullible
• One man kills a man because that man is repulsed by another man's smell
• The family trashes and abuses the house of the rich family for no good reason
• The Have vs Have-Not allegories are bludgeoned into you to the point of being comical
• A man lives in a panic room for 10+ years and whose sole purpose in life is to turn on lights on the stairs
• The conclusion didn't have much weight due to some strange tonal shifts

Perhaps not the most scathing list of issues ... but I just couldn't get a bead on the tone of the film. I was unsure whether to watch this as a drama, thriller, social commentary or comedy. Maybe this hodge-podge of styles was intentional ... but I found it distracting. This movie follows a classic three-act structure but, by the end of act 2, I didn't really feel much desire to want to watch till the end which is not a good sign. Structurally, upon reflection, it was actually done pretty well. I can see that there was some good framing in place which would allow even a virgin viewer the ability to notice some of the cues but it wasn't enough to rescue (what turned out to be) a pretty weak ending. In conclusion, I did actually enjoy parts of the movie but the 'tonal kaleidoscope' kept me from reaching the heights I had expected. I would say you should probably watch the film but probably not expect anything amazing, even with all the accolades.

As welcome as a vagorant

Ah Valorant (or vagorant, as I like to call it). You promised us something new ... but I'm unsure whether your definition of new aligns with reality - but I'm getting ahead of myself. Valorant is the latest Beta-stage IP from Riot games, who is most famous for LOL which, in reality, was a clone of DOTA (which was responsible for creating the MOBA game genre), which is a mod for an RTS called Warcraft 3. Now that I've escaped the acronym soup, I would be okay if it were merely a poor man's amalgam of CSGO, FN, AL and OW (perhaps I'm stretching with a few of those acronyms) - but they didn't stop there, which brings me to the crutch of this article.

... or perhaps not. 

 I get tired when vendors don't even iterate on a proven formula - they merely copy - like what happened with all the BR's attempting to emulate the success of PUBG (just with slightly different contexts) . <*I promise* that is the last of the acronyms> Where has all the creativity and growth gone in the AAA games industry? I find myself having to lean on the exploits of single-man indies with any semblance of evolution on an original idea. But, anyway, here's the break-down of what vagorant has delivered:

• Tight weapon mechanics (CSGO)
• Weapon buy (CSGO)
• Slow player movement (CSGO)
• Colourful maps and colours (OW/FN)
• Snarky one-liners (OW/AL)
• Power-ups (LOL/DOTA/OW/AL)
• Deagle (CSGO/AL)
• Brimstone = Gibraltar (AL - not even trying)
• Viper = Caustic (AL - not even trying)

I could go on but I won't. You get the point that there's clearly a lack of originality when it comes to this 'New IP.'  I could go into the basic map design (very cubist - FN/CSGO) but I think that was intentional; so you could clearly see opponents against the spartan surroundings. In a classic (and unoriginal) modern twist, this game is free ... but it does come at a price. You can (unimaginatively) buy weapon skins and such - but the real price comes in the root kit that's installed to fight cheaters. From what I've seen, it is having great success at fighting the script kiddies but even if it was a good game I'm not going to subject my PC to getting infected with a backdoor just to play something that isn't even fun (VNSFW - sorry).

Even if this were the bees knees of free-to-play (or F2P - sorry) I wouldn't play it. Especially considering Riot games is owned by Tencent which may just mean that the Chinese government (if they were so inclined) could force Tencent to force Riot games to data-mine or create a network of zombie PC's. Tin foil hat off: this actually could be a reality and I'm unwilling to help them with their nefarious plans. You have been warned: treacherous - but dull - waters ahead.