Collection Count

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

Except, for the third week in a row, I have nothing to report here. What is happening?! Did I forget to add some stuff?! (I'm genuinely wondering that at this point, because it doesn't feel like that long since I had a new delivery. But time flies nowadays, so I guess it has been.)

Number of titles in collection: 3,608 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 986 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,622 [no change]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 461 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 8,672 [no change]
Number of films: 4,597 [no change]
Number of additional cuts: 466 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,172 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,267 [no change]

I have been preordering stuff, though — I just spent hundreds of pounds on a handful of titles from Australia, which won't turn up until December (or January, if Christmas post is a bugger). And there are a couple of titles due to arrive later this month, so maybe there'll be something to report next week. If not, the monthly running time update will hold steady. I'm not sure that's ever happened.

See you next week to find out, faithful reader.

TV

Critical Role
4x01 The Fall of Thjazi Fang

Campaign 4, here we gooooo!

A big moment for me as a Critter, because this is the first CR campaign I'll be watching 'live'. I stayed up for this premiere episode, even, which I certainly won't be able to do every week (it starts at 3am my time). Another complicating factor is I still have 30 episodes of Campaign 2 left, and I absolutely intend to finish it*, so we'll see how all this goes with scheduling and whatnot.

But anyway: what an amazing start. Shakeups to the format that don't break it but keep it exciting. A tonne of characters all well introduced and established, plot threads and mysteries set in motion, and some good laughs and memorable moments already. Can't wait to see where this all goes over the years to come.

* Even though it's been almost two months since I watched any (gasp!) I wanted to focus on getting Age of Umbra finished first, and then it seemed fruitless to try to pick C2 back up with C4 so close.

[Watch it (again) on Beacon, Twitch, or YouTube now if you're a member, or free on YouTube from Monday.]


Critical Role Cooldown
Campaign 4, Episode 1
[Watch it (again) on Beacon.]

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2413

Wasn't sure I'd be in the mood to finish the entire rest of this issue in one sitting, but I did, so that's a successful Day 14.

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2413

Hopefully in the next couple of days I'll find time to sit down and finish this issue properly. For now, I read a couple more strips. Importantly, that makes this Day 13.

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2413

Just one more strip (although, again, a double-length one), but it keeps it ticking over: Day 12! And that's really the important thing, because it's when I stop reading, due to a busy day or week or whatever, that I fall out of the habit and have a nine-month break.

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2413

I spent so long fucking with Forza that I only found time to read the opening Judge Dredd strip from this issue — though, as this is the extra-long Christmas edition, that is at least the length of two regular strips. Anyway, as I wrote yesterday, I consider anything enough to count towards my catch-up streak, so: Day 11!

Games

Forza Horizon 4
Today, worked out how to patch my copy to update it to the final version of the game — went so well, I then tried to install a crack to let me play it online — but that wiped my save data, although after some thinking and fiddling I managed to get it back... which apparently disabled the online stuff again. Not exactly a successful day, then. I did consider just starting over — most of my "achievements" are the auto-unlocked free DLC anyway — but, really, the only reason I want to get online is try some of the online-only features, which I'm not sure I'll particularly enjoy anyway, so... Well, now I know how to back up / swap out save files, maybe I'll try again at some point.

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2411
Prog 2412

Day 10! Next up is last year's Christmas Prog, which is bumper-length so might take me a couple of days (2022's did; 2023's didn't*); but I'm not aiming to read "an issue every day", just "some every day", so that won't break my run.

* Note how neither of those was read in December, so this is nothing new.

Games

Forza Horizon 4
Nearly three hours in this again today! That's slightly inaccurate, in the sense that I wasted a bunch of time trying to fiddle with settings — for reasons I can't ascertain, in handheld (i.e. regular) mode it will crash after about five minutes, max; but when docked to my TV, it runs perfectly for hours, in Full HD with high graphics. Even reducing those settings, it will still crash handheld. I don't know enough to work out why that would be, but it's frustrating. I mean, I'm happy enough playing on my TV, but sometimes it's nice to have a little play in bed or whatever. (*ahem*)

But I did also spend a lot of time actually playing, because there's so much to see and do! Today I decided to head into the LEGO Speed Champions area… and it's basically a whole extra game! I was expecting a couple of sights to see, a few LEGO cars to unlock, but no, there's tonnes of content, on a map that feels almost as big as the main game. I expect it isn't, but that's more because of how huge the main game's is rather than any fault of the LEGO area. (Google says it's actually ¼ of the size. Like I said, the main one is just huge.)

And there's a whole other DLC expansion I haven't visited yet. Assuming it's anything like the LEGO one, I might just leave it a while.

Films

Drive-Away Dolls (2024)
[#80 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2410
Day nine...

Games

Forza Horizon 4
Popped in to change a setting and decided to take a drive up to Edinburgh — doesn't take long (the open world map is big, 52 square miles, but far from life-size), but then I ended up just driving about and such things (I did all of one race), and suddenly it was over an hour-and-a-half later. I'm sure that will get boring eventually... but I went back to the game later and spent another couple of hours in it, so not yet!

And then something weird happened. I reached the point where you unlock more stuff — like so many games nowadays (it seems to me, from what I've heard/experienced), it leads you carefully for a little bit, then decides you've learnt the basics and so opens up more. Except because of, um, how I acquired the game, it comes with everything that was available to unlock, all DLC content, etc. And so rather than just a little more progress, I was flooded with stuff. I don't think everything is unlocked — it looks like completing races, earning points, etc, will make still more stuff accessible — but whereas before it offered a couple of options to choose between for what to do next, and stacking up points eventually unlocked the next level and season, all of a sudden I was Level 17 (I think I was Level 2 or 3 before), and the map was covered in options, and notifications kept flashing up with stuff I'd unlocked, and I had enough points to basically jump to the next season every time something in the game might trigger that. And the game crashed several times, I think overburdened with everything it was having to process! (It eventually settled down and seemed to run fine again, thank goodness.)

That explosion of content and progess was... kind of exciting, I guess; but it also felt like I was being rushed past the 'training wheels' phase, and I kind of liked that gradual progression and uncovering stuff. For example, once you've completed the 'training' part — which introduces mechanices and options, but also progresses you through a full cycle of seasons over a couple of hours of playtime (according to reviews) — the game changes season every week. So rather than linearly moving on whenever you complete/earn progress (and you can rack up points by just driving around as much or little as you want, so you'd have some control), if the week you're in is Spring and you want to see something in Winter, you've got to wait up to four weeks for it to cycle through. It's a neat concept, but potentially frustating. And in terms of unlocked races and whatnot, I'm sure everything remains revisitable, so I haven't literally missed it; but, for example, I did one event in Autumn and was pushed straight to Winter, then did one thing in Winter and it was straight to Spring. I don't think it's meant to work like that! I think you're meant to, sort of, be guided along a bit more gradually, then eventually set loose.

Ah well, it is what it is. At least having access to so much stuff is, as I said, kinda exciting, and I can pick and choose whatever I want to do from a vast array of possibilities. And there is a lot to work through!

Films

The City of Lost Children (1995)
[#79 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]
"What Do You Mean You Haven't Seen...?" 2025 #9

Fiction / Non-Fiction / Games

Daggerheart: Core Rulebook

Yep, still progressing through this. I'm not necessarily intending to read the whole thing cover to cover (as I said, not the point, I don't think), but I am reading sections to learn stuff — like, today, I read about all the different classes.

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2409
Day eight...

Games

Doom
Doom is the 11th greatest PC game of all time and 2nd greatest retro game of all time. I'm sure I played it Back In The Day, but never thoroughly. Nowadays, you can get it dirt cheap along with its sequel, plus a bunch of mods and stuff, with some updated graphics and whatnot (not a total overhaul, but it's in widescreen, for example), so I thought I should give it a go... on the lowest difficulty, natch. And on my Steam Deck, which normally isn't ideal for FPS games (controllers are so hard to aim with), but as you don't have to look up and down in Doom, it's considerably easier. Also, like I said, lowest difficulty.

I would say I breezed through it, and I did in the sense that I didn't die until the boss fight at the end (it took me a couple of goes to realise I could run anywhere — clearly "red floor = lava = death" wasn't a game design concept back in 1993), but my times were atrocious: it took me 79 minutes to play the first episode, Knee-Deep in the Dead, while the combined par times (given at the end of each level) total under 18 minutes! I presume they're a target to aim for rather than a "what you manage on your first go, while blundering around getting very lost on some maps and having to backtrack a lot", which is certainly what happened to me. Oh well, I mostly had fun shooting stuff and not dying (lowest difficulty, remember). Said episode contained nine levels, while the combined DOOM + DOOM II I referred to reports to have 187 missions all-in. That's the potential for plenty of value from the less-than-£3 it cost me.


Forza Horizon 4
On the other hand, I can't really remember what piqued my initial interest in this. A chain of events got me to download it today, though: somewhere I stumbled across the news that Forza Horizon 6 will be set in Japan, which made me curious where previous games were set, and (long story short) I discovered 4 was set in the UK but is no longer available to buy (it was discontinued at the end of last year due to licences expiring). The UK setting and my background interest was enough that I probably would've bought it, but as I couldn't I learnt something new about my Steam Deck: how to get games on there from, uh, questionable sources. It's amazing how much that world has come on in recent years, but I won't extrapolate too much.

Anyway, I'm glad I did because it's actually a tonne of fun! Being an open world game, you can just drive around roads — which might sound dull because, y'know, I could go outside and do that for real; but not at these speeds, in these cars, on a condensed map that packs in various different parts of the UK. It's fun! And then there are races and story mode bits and stuff to progress. Me being me, I turned the difficulty right down, to the point where actually it was just silly so I turned it back up a bit. Fun times. It looks great on the Deck too, running in full HD to my TV and only experiencing issues on loading animations (which, as you're not playing at that point, I can totally live with).

I can see myself sinking hours into this, possibly.

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week... except this week, there's nothing to report — same as last week. And, at present, next week. What's going on?!

Well, I guess it's just been a quieter time for must-buy new releases. I don't think I've overlooked anything I really wanted, although I have passed on a couple of maybes in favour of trying to cut back generally. Plus, of course — as recent weeks' posts on this blog will attest — I've been spending a lot more time (and money) on computer games instead. Maybe I should start a collection count for those, too...

Number of titles in collection: 3,608 [no change]
Of which DVDs: 986 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,622 [no change]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 461 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 8,672 [no change]
Number of films: 4,597 [no change]
Number of additional cuts: 466 [no change]
Number of TV episodes: 10,172 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,267 [no change]

See you next week, faithful reader — whether there's something to report or not.

Films

9 (2009)
[#78 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2025]

Comics

2000 AD
Prog 2408
Day seven...

Games

Pullblox
Starting another new game?! Yeah, well, I considered playing something I already had underway, but this was what I fancied. Also, I’d intended to make it my next 3DS game before Pilotwings nabbed my attention, so fair’s fair. According to Metacritic it's the 6th best game on the 3DS (listed as Pushmo there because that was the title in the US), behind only a couple of Zeldas, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Shovel Knight, and a 3D Mario — all of which I also own, but this sounded the most pick-up-and-play friendly, as it's a cute puzzle game with platforming elements.

And it's a lot of fun! The gameplay — which is based around pulling boxes in and out to create levels to jump up — works fantastically in 3D. I'm sure it would be playable in 2D, but it really works with the added sense of depth. I spent half-an-hour on it initally and got through the 18 training puzzles and first half-dozen Level 1 puzzles, then went back later for another 40 minutes and did the remaining dozen Level 1s. I can see how it would be great to just quickly do a puzzle or two — especially as they do get trickier, and sometimes involve more precise platforming skills — but it's also fun to play for a little while and get through a few. Once the hand-holding introduction is done, it's lightly challenging without being stressful... although, as I say, sometimes the platforming is a little tricker. I hope it doesn't get too bad, because precision platforming isn't really my thing.