Monday, 9 March 2026

Fiction

Redwall by Brian Jacques
Book Two, Chapters 16–19

Video Games

DOOM Eternal
So, I was checking out GeForce NOW on my Steam Deck when I was surprised to see I supposedly owned this game. It's via Xbox for PC and, after some investigating, turns out I must have redeemed it when it was free from Prime Gaming in October 2024 and then completely forgotten about it. Anyway, I was there to see how well GFN worked, so this seemed as good a game to try as any because I was curious if it would even run (because I didn't remember owning it, I thought it must be some mistake — I did my investigating after that, obv).

After sitting through GFN's ads and navigating the confusing menus once in the game, I started the tutorial... and got bored with it before that was even over. I want to run around and shoot stuff in a DOOM game, not have to learn various systems for jumping and climbing and how to kill enemies in super special ways to replenish health and blah blah blah blah blah.

GFN tells me I lasted 12 minutes. I doubt I'll be back.


The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition
Popped on to just do a couple of quick things... of course, I ended up playing for 45 minutes (short by my standards), but I did achieve what I set out to do and witnessed a rare event and semi-randomly had a crack at an encounter I've failed two or three times at lower levels, and this time beat it. Hurrah!

Tabletop Games

Daggerheart
All 3 games continuing.

Sunday, 8 March 2026

TV

Critical Role
4x09 To the Hounds! [1st hour]
Having not watched any Critical Role since mid-December (January was my first CR-free month since February 2024) due to personal time constraints, I'm now terribly behind (the most recent episode is 17, which means I have 32½ hours of viewing to catch up — even before you count Cooldown and the first episode of their new periodic talk show, Tale Gate, which together add another 4 hours and change). Even worse than that was the memory challenge to get my bearings on what was going on. Thankfully they still do recaps at the start of the episode proper, but the cold open was borderline baffling!
[Watch it (again) on YouTube, or for subscribers on Beacon or Twitch.]

Fiction

Redwall by Brian Jacques
Book Two, Chapters 13–15

Video Games

Monument Valley
Forgotten Shores

Placid Plastic Duck Simulator
This is a strange... game? It's not really a game. I feel like I'm missing something. Possibly "the joke". Though, from what I can tell from a quick bit of interneting, there really is nothing to it. Except naming the different ducks. That's kinda fun, coming up with good names.

this week on 100Films.co.uk

With the start of the month falling in the middle of last weekend, my regular monthly posts on 100Films.co.uk have been split in two (again). But hey, at least that means I'm currently doing two of these 'weekly' posts each month!

Anyway, this week's one and only post was my 'failures' from February...





More next Sunday? Anything's possible.

Saturday, 7 March 2026

Films

This is Spinal Tap (1984)
[2nd watch]
[#11 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2026]

Fiction

Redwall by Brian Jacques
Book Two, Chapters 7–12

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Monument Valley
Having raced through the first nine levels, the tenth and final one put up more of a challenge — actually thanks to the puzzle design, rather than just battling the still-awkward controller controls. (I don't know what they could do to make them better, to be fair. This was clearly designed to be played with a touchscreen, but I try to avoid smearing my fingers all over my Steam Deck's screen.)
Also made a start on the first expansion, Forgotten Shores. It adds another 8 levels, but based on the length of the first of those vs the length of early levels in the main game, I think it might take as long as the original. Not bad for something one might ignore as mere "extra content".

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Bought a bunch of stuff during Rarewaves latest end-of-month 10% discount period, but only one arrived. I guess they're just slow.

Number of titles in collection: 3,669 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 974 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,695 [up 1]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 509 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 8,811 [up 2]
Number of films: 4,712 [up 1]
Number of additional cuts: 485 [up 1]
Number of TV episodes: 10,163 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,282 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday, 6 March 2026

Fiction

Redwall by Brian Jacques
Book Two, Chapters 1–6

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Made it to city #6 today — four to go! And one of those is from a DLC, so slightly feel like I should leave it until after I've done the main quest. But we'll see.

Thursday, 5 March 2026

Films

Kung Fu Panda 4 3D (2024)
[#10 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2026]

Fiction

Redwall by Brian Jacques
Book One, Chapters 11–20

Reached the end of 'Book One' (of three). Expected it to mark a break or change in the story for that reason, but no, it's in the middle of a battle! That feels like it should be the climax, even though there's 70% of the book to go. Interesting structural choice...

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Articles

Esoteric Ebb isn't just the best Disco since Disco, it's the closest anyone's come to the magic of tabletop D&D in a videogame
by Ted Litchfield (from PC Gamer)

I was very interested in Esoteric Ebb before I read this review, but now I'm positively excited for it. Might even buy it right away.

...but will I play it right away? I mean, I'd have to cut into Skyrim (gasp!) And as I've not played the likes of Disco Elysium or Baldur's Gate 3, but do own both and very much want to play them, should this really be jumping ahead? There's always the chance it'll get patches and improvements down the line, as so many games do nowadays. Maybe I should just play the literally hundreds of games already in my backlog and wait a year or two.

...but it sounds so fun!

Wednesday, 4 March 2026

Films

PK (2014)
[#9 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2026]
"What Do You Mean You Haven't Seen...?" 2026 #1

Fiction

Redwall by Brian Jacques
Book One, Chapters 1–10

So, the new Daggerheart game I mentioned joining takes place in a world inspired by the Redwall series. I was aware of those books as a child but never read them, for whatever reason, and in recent-ish years have considered trying them. Well, joining a game inspired by them was the push I needed!

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Over an hour of play and, to be honest, I felt like it was all admin: selling loot, enchanting a few things, moving stuff around, decorating a couple of my houses... I don't pay too much attention to in-game time (because it doesn't actually matter how many days pass), but I teleported all around the map to do that, so my hour of doing a few bits probably took the 'characters' half a week or more!

I think this also demonstrates how you can sink so much time into this game. I mean, I didn't feel like what I did took over an hour, or that I was wasting my time, per se. But you couple that with things like spending two hours just making potions (and I've done that more than once, which I'd forgotten 'til I looked up those posts!) and, yeah, you see how I've played 182 hours without advancing many storylines or even visiting half the map.

Tuesday, 3 March 2026

Films

Different from the Others (1919)
[#8 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2026]
Blindspot 2026 #1

Fiction

Swords in the Mist by Fritz Leiber
VI. Adept's Gambit Chapters 6–9 [the end]

These are so great, I'd probably happily move right on to the next book again; but I have something else I want to interrupt with first.

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Monday, 2 March 2026

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

I had plans to read a book, watch a film, do all sorts of stuff today. Instead... I played 4½ hours of Skyrim. Oh well.

Towards the end of that time I hit 180 hours. Even more importantly, today I hit level 50, at which point you get the "Master" achievement on Steam. I believe the game's original level cap was 80 (I think the DLC made it unlimited), so in theory I'm a significant way through what's possible. Maybe I should actually start the main story soon... or maybe I'll just continue my way doing side quests (also earned the side quest-related achievement today) and exploring the world (I've still not visited half of the cities! And I'm not even close to completing the quests in all the ones I have been to).

Tabletop Games

Daggerheart

This past week I added a third PBP Daggerheart game to my schedule, so a slight shift in how I'm listing them here: I've decided to ditch the 'titles' and just stick with a comment along the lines of "all 3 games continuing". Something like that, anyway.

Sunday, 1 March 2026

Fiction

Swords in the Mist by Fritz Leiber
VI. Adept's Gambit Chapters 3–6

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Monument Valley
This isn't a long game, but I'm playing it in relatively short bursts because I think it's better that way — a quick level or two at a time, rather than burning through the whole game in a single hour-or-two sitting.

this week on 100Films.co.uk

Just sneaking in to this week (because it was posted this morning) is my review of January on 100Films.co.uk...





Failures next Sunday (or tomorrow on the blog itself).

Saturday, 28 February 2026

Films

The Naked Gun (2025)
[#7 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2026]

Fiction

Swords in the Mist by Fritz Leiber
VI. Adept's Gambit Chapters 1–2

The longest Lankhmar story so far (it's got chapters! Or numbered sections, at any rate, and what are those if not chapters?)

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Good old "I'll just pop into Skyrim for a few minutes, do this one thing... but while I'm here... oh, and also..." and suddenly it's been well over an hour and you still feel like you've "just done a couple of things".

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Only one new addition this week, although it is a five-film box set. It's also time for the monthly running time update (we're 1/6th through 2025 already!), but quite a few of this month's additions were upgrades (including one new copy of Thunderbirds replacing two old ones), which means it's not as much of an increase as my physical pile of recent purchases would've made me think.

Number of titles in collection: 3,668 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 974 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,694 [up 1]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 508 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 8,809 [up 3]
Number of films: 4,711 [up 5]
Number of additional cuts: 484 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,163 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,282 [no change]

Total running time of collection (approx.):
615 days, 18 hours, and 46 minutes.
(Up 18 hours and 34 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday, 27 February 2026

Films

Dead Souls (2025)
[#6 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2026]

Fiction

Swords in the Mist by Fritz Leiber
IV. When the Sea-King's Away
V. The Wrong Branch

Video Games

Bael's Rock: A Text Adventure
5. The Windows Sky-High
Finally finished this part off, with help from the guide — another puzzle where I got most of the way there, and maybe if I spent a long time pondering it I would've alighted on the solution, but it's just so much easier to pluck that final 5% from a walkthrough (for good or ill).

Monument Valley

Thursday, 26 February 2026

Video Games

Bael's Rock: A Text Adventure
5. The Windows Sky-High

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition
Today, just a quick excursion to pick up some great loot I missed on an earlier expedition... and then a lot of time spent crafting and enchanting and selling. I only meant to do a bit of it quickly, but somehow spent an hour on it. Oh well — quests next time? Maybe.

Monument Valley
It's a shame installation woes and poor controls put me in a bad mood about this, because it's actually pretty clever (still think the controls are rubbish, though). Seems like it'll be quite short, though, so nice that it was free.

Wednesday, 25 February 2026

Fiction

Swords in the Mist by Fritz Leiber
III. Their Mistress, the Sea

Video Games

Bael's Rock: A Text Adventure
4. The Duel of Wits
5. The Windows Sky-High

So far I've persisted until finishing a chapter each day, but I got stuck on Chapter 5 and didn't want to lean on the walkthrough too much (I've already had to resort to it a couple of times when I thought I knew what to do (and I was right) but couldn't work out what text to enter to make it happen).


The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition


Monument Valley
Got this puzzle game free on Epic a little while ago; started playing it now because the Steam version is in a bundle with its DLC and I thought that might be better, but I needed to know if I liked it enough to pay for it. It's quite clever, but also clearly not made to be played with a controller — I believe it was originally a touchscreen phone game, and it feels like it. I could use the Deck's touchscreen, but I don't want to get finger smears all over it that'll annoy me when I play regular games. Might try installing it on my Mac and playing with mouse. Anyway, I doubt I'll be buying it — the free version, while less than ideal (getting it to run took more fiddling than it should have), will suffice for what it is.

Tuesday, 24 February 2026

Fiction

Swords in the Mist by Fritz Leiber
II. Lean Times in Lankhmar

I’ve enjoyed all the Lankhmar stories, to one degree or another (I’ve not read a bad one yet, but some are, of course, better than others), but I think this may be the greatest of all. So far, at least.

Video Games

Bael's Rock: A Text Adventure
3. The Firefly Cave

Monday, 23 February 2026

Video Games

Bael's Rock: A Text Adventure
1. The Ghosts of the Desert
2. The Trial of Hope


Picked this up during Steam's recent typing-related sale and decided to play it on my Steam Deck. Playing a typing game on the Steam Deck may sound a little ridiculous... and it is. But I kinda wanted to see if it would work, and... technically it does, but typing using the onscreen keyboard is a little slow. As you only need to do simple commands ("examine door", that kind of thing) it's ok, although you can't see the text entry box while you're writing, so that's a pain. But as the game has no Mac version, the Deck remains my best way to play this. Which is daft, but there you go.


The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Started this up today without a real goal in mind; thought I might just read all those notes that were dumped in my inventory by the Anniversary Edition and start the quests. Well, in the end I played for an hour... and actually did stuff! Started some of those quests. Progressed a few. Even finished some — gasp!

Tabletop Games

Daggerheart:
Dragon Heist in the City of Splendors
&
Curse of Strahd

Sunday, 22 February 2026

Saturday, 21 February 2026

TV

How I Met Your Mother
1x15 Game Night [2nd watch]

Poker Face
2x04 The Taste of Human Blood

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x64 Week 13: Thursday
9x65 Week 13: Friday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

The Rookie
7x06 The Gala

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Played for over 3 hours today. Still feel like I only got 'a few things' done. I crossed the 170-hour mark, too. Kinda hilarious to think I once balked at the idea it would take me at least 27 hours to complete this.

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

Two new 4K releases this week: Arrow's edition of Excalibur, which replaces the HMV-exclusive Blu-ray, and Predator: Badlands. I feel like I've had a lot less stuff on preorder this year than usual, but there's still a regular trickle dropping in.

Number of titles in collection: 3,667 [up 1]
Of which DVDs: 974 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,693 [up 1]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 508 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 8,806 [up 3]
Number of films: 4,706 [up 1]
Number of additional cuts: 484 [up 1]
Number of TV episodes: 10,163 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,282 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday, 20 February 2026

TV

How I Met Your Mother
1x14 Zip, Zip, Zip [2nd watch]

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x61 Week 13: Monday
9x62 Week 13: Tuesday
9x63 Week 13: Wednesday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

The Rookie
7x05 Til Death

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

So, turns out I haven't actually been playing the Anniversary Edition since Monday due to some quirk of how it installs, but (after wasting a bunch of time fiddling today) I now am. First thing I did was buy a backpack — 75 extra carry weight, y'all! Second thing was bump into a courier who gave me a veritable pile of notes to kick off quest. Fun times!

Wednesday, 18 February 2026

TV

How I Met Your Mother
1x12 The Wedding [2nd watch]

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x57 Week 12: Tuesday
9x58 Week 12: Wednesday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

The Rookie
7x04 Darkness Falling

Fiction

Swords in the Mist by Fritz Leiber
I. The Cloud of Hate

Plunging on into the third volume of collected Lankhmar / Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser / Swords stories. As I wrote when I started the second, I didn't expect to just keep reading them like this, but I'm really enjoying them. I guess it probably also helps that I've ended up spacing them out so much that it doesn't feel intensive.

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

Tuesday, 17 February 2026

TV

The Diplomat
3x07 PNG
3x08 Schrodinger's Wife [season finale]

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x55 Week 11: Friday
9x56 Week 12: Monday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Monday, 16 February 2026

TV

The Diplomat
3x06 Amagansett

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x53 Week 11: Wednesday
9x54 Week 11: Thursday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Tabletop Games

Daggerheart:
Dragon Heist in the City of Splendors
&
Curse of Strahd

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

After thinking about it for a while, today I finally caved and bought the upgrade to the Anniversary Edition, which adds 70 fan-made creations released officially between 2017 and 2021. These introduce new quests, items, homes, and other fun stuff (pets! wild horses!) to the game. (In 2023 it was replaced with the "Verified Creator Program", which also sounds like it has cool additions, but those ones disable achievements (the AE content does not), so I intend to consider them once I 'complete' the game... if I still want more of it... which I feel like I well might...)

Some people think the Creations are a collection of worthless clutter and would rather they weren't there; others enjoy what's added. I'm sure there are some I couldn't care less for, but I felt like I was missing out on some of the stuff I've heard about. Plus, one of the major criticisms seems to be that a lot of what it adds is available early in the game but overpowered to be had so early. Well, I'm certainly not early in the game anymore (162 hours! Level 40-something!) and I wouldn't really care about unbalancing it even if I were. I'm playing on the easiest difficulty for a reason.

All this shiny new excitement will have to wait, though, because I'm still in the middle of exploring Windhelm, and I had less than an hour to play today — so I haven't even come close to encountering any of the added content yet. And, of course, I've still got tonnes of the base game left to explore. But now there's even more (hooray!) I'm sure I'll run into it soon enough.

Sunday, 15 February 2026

TV

The Diplomat
3x04 Arden
3x05 Birdwatchers
Weird time jump and status quo changes between episodes four and five, so extreme that it feels like the start of a new season or something. Makes me wonder if they were expecting Netflix to do their two-part release thing, which didn't happen.

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x51 Week 11: Monday
9x52 Week 11: Tuesday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Fiction

Swords Against Death by Fritz Leiber
X. Bazaar of the Bizarre [the end]

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

When I loaded this up today, I actually had a plan to act on what I said yesterday... then I hit an unexpected roadblock (in short: a bug I thought I'd fixed, but hadn't), spent a bunch of time clearing that, then did a spot of travelling, with the usual distractions, and eventually ended up at the first waypoint on my target... after well over an hour of play. I do love this game, but at times like that, it feels pretty frustrating. I even had to set it down for a bit (gasp!)

When I came back later, I finally progressed to my fifth city — huzzah! Didn't have time to explore most of it thanks to all that wasted time earlier, but hey, progress. And it's only nine days since I encountered my previous one! Real progress. If I keep going at that accelerated rate, I'd finally visit them all by... early April. Jeez. Huge game.

Saturday, 14 February 2026

TV

The Diplomat
3x03 The Riderless Horse

How I Met Your Mother
1x11 The Limo [2nd watch]

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x48 Week 10: Wednesday
9x49 Week 10: Thursday
9x50 Week 10: Friday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

The Rookie
7x03 Out of Pocket

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

Feel like I didn't achieve much today. I did a quest... well, most of one, because if you finish it at the level I'm at, you don't get any rewards, so I have to wait to hand it in. One skill I did push through several levels was pickpocketing, in order to get a specific perk, so that was a success. Otherwise, I mostly just built a bunch of furniture at my house, so it now looks a bit less empty. But that doesn't feel like much to show for over 2 hours playtime. Once again, I'm at a one point where I'm kinda just noodling about without a specific goal — I need to either dive in to going somewhere new (but where?) or get stuck into one of the many (many) quests already sat in my journal (but which?)

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

The 60th anniversary collector's edition Blu-ray of Thunderbirds finally arrived this week (delayed from the end of last year), which means I can finally ditch my original UK Blu-ray (which had the episodes 'remastered' into widescreen) that I never watched, and also my older DVD copies (which I kept for the original aspect ratio) that I also never watched. Will I now finally rewatch the series on this shiny new edition? God only knows.

Number of titles in collection: 3,666 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 974 [down 2]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,692 [up 2]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 506 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 8,803 [no change]
Number of films: 4,705 [up 2]
Number of additional cuts: 483 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,163 [down 29]
Number of short films: 1,282 [up 2]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Thursday, 12 February 2026

TV

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x44 Week 9: Thursday
9x45 Week 9: Friday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

Here's that screenshot I mentioned yesterday, to contrast with the 73-hour one — this is at 151 hours, so 78 hours further on.



As I said, most things haven't changed at all (even though half my reason for going to Riften was to join the Thieves' Guild, I still haven't), although Misc Objectives has gone up a more-than-proportional amount: it was 73 at 73 hours, so I've done 113 in the next 78 hours. That's nice, because I half suspected the average would've gone down — I feel like I've spent a lot of time noodling about with non-objective-based things like house building and decorating, smithing, alchemy, enchanting, and general exploring, rather than always doing tasks and missions.

I'd like to say "maybe now it's time I did get on with quests", but with so much of the map still unexplored (six out of ten cities still unvisited!), there's still a lot of potential for just "seeing what I find".

Tabletop Games

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

Wednesday, 11 February 2026

TV

How I Met Your Mother
1x09 The Pineapple Incident [2nd watch]
IMDb says this is episode 10, but it was definitely episode 9 where I watched it (and it was the same all those years ago when E4 aired it, too).

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x42 Week 9: Tuesday
9x43 Week 9: Wednesday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

Passed the 150-hour mark today! I've been meaning to share an update of the image I posted at 73 hours, but for the moment, suffice to say most of those stats have not doubled. Heck, it's likely most of them haven't increased at all.

Tuesday, 10 February 2026

Monday, 9 February 2026

TV

The Night Manager
2x05 Episode 5
2x06 Episode 6 [season finale]
[Watch the whole series (again) on iPlayer.]

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x38 Week 8: Wednesday
9x39 Week 8: Thursday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

Tabletop Games

Daggerheart:
Dragon Heist in the City of Splendors
&
Curse of Strahd

Sunday, 8 February 2026

TV

The Night Manager
2x04 Episode 4
[Watch the whole series (again) on iPlayer.]

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x36 Week 8: Monday
9x37 Week 8: Tuesday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

The Rookie
7x01 The Shot

Films

Solo for Sparrow (1962)
[#4 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2026]

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

this week on 100Films.co.uk

After last week's summary of business at 100Films.co.uk only featured the January review, this week it's time for its regular companion piece: my failures.





More next Sunday? Wonders never cease. But regular reviews on 100 Films might have.

Saturday, 7 February 2026

TV

The Night Manager
2x03 Episode 3
[Watch the whole series (again) on iPlayer.]

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x33 Week 7: Wednesday
9x34 Week 7: Thursday
9x35 Week 7: Friday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

There's so much to do in Riften that, even after two hours today spent non-stop exploring, meeting characters, and completing quests, I feel like I'd barely started playing, because there's so much more just waiting to be done — and that's without even starting the major faction questline based in the city.

Tabletop Games

Good Puppers!

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

All new releases this week, including one title that I imported the DVD from Thailand many, many years ago because the special features were supposed to be better (or have any at all, really, which other editions didn't), but when it arrived it turned out because it was an older title the second disc was out of print, so it was just an extras-free single-disc... and now it goes from that experience to a Criterion 4K! (It's Birth, by-the-way.)

Number of titles in collection: 3,666 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 976 [down 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,690 [up 3]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 504 [up 2]

Number of discs in collection: 8,803 [up 4]
Number of films: 4,703 [up 2]
Number of additional cuts: 483 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,192 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,280 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader.

Friday, 6 February 2026

TV

The Night Manager
2x01 Episode 1
2x02 Episode 2
I would say "has it really been 10 years?!" but, yeah, feels like it. Anyway, I thought this was a good start.
[Watch the whole series (again) on iPlayer.]

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x31 Week 7: Monday
9x32 Week 7: Tuesday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

Today, after I-don't-even-know-how-long of intending to, I finally entered Riften — my fourth of the ten cities I keep harping on about. Immediately got hit with half-a-dozen quests and I wasn't even trying, and I've only skimmed the surface of exploring the city (even with an hour's playtime dedicated to it today). Great game.

Wednesday, 4 February 2026

Monday, 2 February 2026

Sunday, 1 February 2026

TV

Richard Osman's House of Games
9x22 Week 5: Tuesday
[Watch various episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Video Games

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

I've been on my way to do something specific for days, but keep getting sidetracked by other stuff I stumble across — ah, that's Skyrim!

Like today: I was going to clear one dungeon, then do some other stuff... but it turned out to be quite a big dungeon, which took over an hour. That's another thing: you never know quite what you're going to get when you enter one of those. Which is good, I guess — it'd be rubbish if they were all the same — but bad for "I've got a few minutes, I'll just pop in here", because while sometimes a location is tiny and cleared in five or ten minutes, sometimes... well, it's an hour-long sidequest.

Then I set off to do what I was planning... but got distracted by a few other things. For another hour-and-a-half. Altogether, I've probably spent longer "on my way to this one thing" than I have done completing entire other games (point-and-click adventures that can be done in six to eight hours, for example). Mad.

But next time I'll get there... yeah, next time...

Tabletop Games

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

this week on 100Films.co.uk

Is it February already?! Jeez! Well, that means it's time for the first monthly review of 2026 over on 100Films.co.uk...





Next Sunday: my January failures.

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.

This week, that sale order from All the Anime finally turned up. And that was all.

Number of titles in collection: 3,664 [up 4]
Of which DVDs: 977 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,687 [up 4]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 502 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 8,799 [up 5]
Number of films: 4,701 [up 4]
Number of additional cuts: 483 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,192 [up 4]
Number of short films: 1,280 [no change]

But it's also time for a monthly running time update!

Total running time of collection (approx.):
615 days and 12 minutes.
(Up 23 hours and 45 minutes from last month.)

See you next week, faithful reader.