The Stochastic Game

Ramblings of General Geekery

I played through The Last Of Us (Part 1) a couple months ago and my hot take is that it’s like a David Cage game: it’s more interested in being a movie with vaguely interactive scenes between story beats than being a video game. The difference with a David Cage game is that it’s actually very good.

Joel is about to shoot someone. Ellie says no, wait, we killed 98% of the NPCs we met so far in this story, so can we, like, ease up? Maybe give a few other voice actors some dialogue?

Think your #TTRPG PC background is too far fetched? Here is Harukichi Shimoi: a Japanese poet, Asahi soft drink entrepreneur, Karate teacher, and member of the WW1 Italian “Arditi” special shock troop whose choice weapons were daggers and grenades, and whose motto was “We either win or we all die!”


By the way, the funny thing about that “Silent Night, Deadly Night” reboot is that if you stick to a three-sentences description of the story, it really sounds like a Stephen King book. Of course, the actual movie treatment and writing style couldn’t be further from it.


Silent Night, Deadly Night (2025) was great fun! It somehow includes a lot of elements from the (rather mediocre if you ask me) 1984 original, but completely and pretty brilliantly re-contextualizes them with a different overarching premise. Plus: a cathartic mass-killing scene for our current times.


OK, this is the day, I’m finally watching The Beastmaster! And…. holy shit, WTF, I have SO MANY EMOTIONS. And NOT ALL OF THEM POSITIVE.

Then again, it makes sense given this was made by the “Phantasm” guy.