What do a movie, an email application and a video game all have in common? They are all new parts of my life over the last few days and I am going to take a moment here to record my initial thoughts, starting with the film…
The
Last night I watched the (alleged) horror film The Lodgers. If there is such a thing as too much mystery and subtlety this film has it. Despite making it all the way to the end of the film, I still have no idea what the titular “lodgers” actually were or why they did anything they did or what exactly was going on at any point in the movie. The ambiance was solid, the performances were good, the house was spooky, but seriously, no idea what was actually happening. Are the ghosts? Vampires? Lamia? Sirens? No idea. If you happen to watch this (it’s on Netflix) and you understand what they are, please tell me. I am dying to know.
Mailbird (Windows application, http://www.getmailbird.com)
I don’t know how many years I have been seeking the ultimate email client application. Maybe forever. Maybe I was born on another continent in a former life, eons ago, and began seeking a quality email client application, I can’t rule it out, it certainly feels that way.
This might be the strongest applicant to the job opening yet. I’m hella impressed with Mailbird. Hella impressed enough that I took advantage of the $29 Lifetime Pro License deal. Reasons:
- Clean interface with solid junk mail management
- Unified Inbox with Inbox Zero Support
- Tons of add-ons and integrations
- Social media (FB, Twitter, etc) integrated into the UI where they effin’ belong so you can catch up with all your messages in one place
This app is BOSS but sadly, is Windows only. My quest for a perfect Linux, Mac, iOS and Android email client will continue even if I have Windows covered.
Forza Horizons 4 (XBox One)
See that picture? That is a screenshot of a 1962 Triumph Spitfire 4 from Forza Horizon 4. Now here is a picture of my 1969 Triumph Spitfire Mk3:
I’ve been playing Forza for a LONNNNNNNGGGGGG time. Every version ever released for every platform. Forza 1-7 (XBox/XB360/XBOne) and the previous three installations of Horizon and I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited than the moment I uncovered a Triumph Spitfire just like my very own sitting in an abandoned barn in the British countryside in FH4. OK, mine is a LHD 1969 Mk3 and the one in the game is a RHD 1962 Spitfire 4, but still, that was amazingly cool and allowed me to test just how realistic the Forza experience is. The answer? Pretty damn. The virtual Spit drives almost exactly like my real one. Crazy.
That aside, here’s the skinny on this game. As expected, the game is addictive as hell, massive, beautiful but with some BIG annoyances. I’m going to focus on those:
- The entire “rave culture festival neon EDM blah blah
hoonigan ” aesthetic wears real thin real fast. Menus are annoying, the radio stations all suck,basically they’ve gone out of their way to hype every square inch of the game and it’s really just exhausting and irritating - The actual racing mostly sucks. If you enjoy driving racing sims with a wheel and shifter and all that stuff (think Project Cars 2) then Forza gives you some of that and an open world and you can just tool around and have an awesome time… until it’s time to race. The courses are cramped, badly designed and frustrating and there is no option to learn them in advance. Events are generally 3 laps of craziness with no semblance of feeling like a sim, very arcadey, very “hyped”. There is an event where you race a locomotive, lots of “big air” jumps, it’s very silly. For tooling around the open world I generally drive with all assists off, manual trans with
clutch , but for the races and events, I turn damage off (you WILL be rear-ended and side-swiped pretty much constantly by the idiot Drivatars) and set the driving params to lower difficulty settings just to get through them. I find myself wishing I didn’t have to do the events to get points and XP but, well, ya gotta. - I would love difficulty settings that would be stored with the car being used! Forza has needed this feature for YEARS. When I’m in my Triumph Spitfire there should be no ABS, Traction Control, or Automatic transmission. I don’t need them for such a low powered car and they don’t make sense for a car from 1969. On the other hand, I jump into a 1000 HP Zenmo or whatever and yeah, all that stuff. Wish I could store those prefs with the cars instead of having to change them everytime I move from one car to another.
- The game is working so hard to through shit at you that it is often the case that you will get invited to two or more other things when you’re just on your way to doing one thing. “Oh, I’m going to this barn find”
get’s interrupted with “There is a new race” or “Hey Ryan, participate in this Forzathon Live event” or whatever, over and over. I often tell the game to STFU and just let me play.
Basically, racing == dumb, graphics == stellar, car selection == awesome,