SpikyCactus
TCI: not enough ratings
Games in Common: 0
Not in Your Top 1000 TCIs
Bio: A failure in almost every way modern science has found to measure it, I spend my hours digging gardens, mindlessly delivering delivery vans and trying to keep The Man at bay. At other times I listen to music, watch films, play games and go to mostly punk and ska gigs, to try and hide the fact that I've got no friends. I live in a place I call Cactus World. Like most concepts that outlive their original purpose, Cactus World is an ill thought-out but increasingly complex muddle of canonical contradictions, fuelled by a mixture of decent alcohol (vegan cider and wine, 'interesting' beer and Guinness), movies, games and music, which encapsulates the sneaking suspicion that basically I'm a talentless nobody, a parasitic observer of life rather than a participant in it.
I learnt everything I need to know about life from watching Tom & Jerry, Laurel & Hardy and Star Trek, growing cacti (and other succulents), reading Thomas Hardy, going hiking/camping, playing Traveller (it's a role-playing game), listening to punk, skanking really badly and owning a guitar I will never learn to play.
On a more technical note, I'm on a mission to write up to 600 characters of mostly irrelevant, superficial, ill-informed, uninteresting and unamusing rubbish about each film I own as I watch it, with a special (management speak alert) laser-like focus, on cats, cacti (and other succulents), chainsaws, decapitations and general badassness. (You know what I mean, the sort of low grade, background noise that the Internet allows people with no talent, understanding or considered thoughts to publish). I do occasionally write something coherent about the film itself, but mostly I just go off on a tangent somewhere else. I imagine this probably infuriates many real movie buffs who take these things seriously, genuinely know something films and are interested in other people's thoughts on them; but please, just try and roll with it.
I have noticed that some people (probably accidentally) press the 'star' button by what I've written. To them I say thank you for giving my life meaning, substance and direction, plus the courage and fortitude to sit through some pretty terrible films all the way to the end, just so I can then share this pain with others here.
My scoring system. I score in multiples of 10; anything more granular hurts my head. However, if a film has something intrinsically special about it I add an extra five. 70 is my base score for a decent film that I found entertaining but probably wouldn't miss much if it vanished from existence tomorrow. This is quite high, but I mostly watch things that, for better or for worse, I've bought a copy of; and I try not to buy things I don't think I'd like much. I score heavily based on how much I enjoy a film, although I will begrudgingly give a slightly higher one to movies that have a value outside of my enjoyment of them, be it social, historical or technical. Anything that gets less than 60 is terminated by me in an exceedingly cruel and heartless fashion, unless I've a specific reason for keeping it. (And I do seem to be very good at finding excuses for doing the latter, which isn't helping at all to make my living room look less like a forgotten branch of Blockbusters.) Anything that gets 90 or more I upgrade to the highest definition disc or digital copy possible if I don't already own it. Simples!
TV Series. I don't rate these. This is partly because I'm just not capable of condensing several seasons into one paragraph of flippant comments. Also, it's a big commitment to watch a TV series all the way though. This means I only do so if they're really good, which then unbalances my scores here with too much TV near the top of my list. TV should have its own section, like games do.
Games. I do rate these, but I take so long to play through them that I only add one very occasionally. I have to be in the right mood to play one as it's just so much easier to sit down and watch a film, rather than face horrific dangers, terrifying monsters, impossible puzzles or certain death, over and over and over again.
Recent Ratings
Check out SpikyCactus's...
| 50 0% | The 7th Guest (1993) - Rated 07 Jan 2024
"Top badass moment? Reading the plot outline on Wikipedia. So that’s what it was all about - I had no idea. You know those football matches where your team grinds out a victory, but you find yourself wondering why you spent 90 minutes of your life on it? This game is like that, except it took me 11 times longer. I did frequently find myself wondering whether anyone had actually ever finished it without cheating, at least a bit. Stauf’s a knob by the way. No cats, chainsaws or decapitations."
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| 75 0% | The Longest Journey (1999) - Rated 14 Jan 2023
"Top badass moment? Taking nearly four years to complete it - I cheated a lot too. A sex-mad bird, a lot of waffle about The Balance and an underwhelming ‘handbags at dawn’ final confrontation. I grew quite fond of myself as the drainpipe-thin April (eat some cake for God's sake), although by the end I was beginning to feel our relationship had run its course. Luckily, as the game goes on there are less and less puzzles to solve and more cut scenes to watch. No cats, chainsaws or decapitations."
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| 80 0% | Syberia (2002) - Rated 19 Apr 2019
"Top badass moment? The chance to explore my feminine side. I think I did pretty well, dealing with so many people who could easily have a second career as the annoying 'nutter on the bus'. I also seemed to be surrounded by incredibly self-centred people; my mother, best friend, boss and that needy, narcissistic asshole of a boyfriend, Dan. Even Oscar, the driver of the most unreliable train this side of South Western Railways, was a bit too full of himself. No cats, chainsaws or decapitations."
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| 85 0% | Star Trek: Elite Force II (2003) - Rated 06 Dec 2018
"Top badass moment? Finally getting a snog with Telsia. I liked her more than Kleeya, the bikini babe scientist. Yes love, that's such a practical outfit to wear when you're fighting Exomorphs. And Korban really needs to get out of the armoury occasionally. The guy's always in there; it's not normal, even for a Klingon. I found Picard's gushing complements at the end a bit hard to take too. I think he'd been in the Ready Room, sampling his wine again. No cats, chainsaws or decapitations."
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| 80 0% | Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force (2000) - Rated 23 Oct 2018
"Top badass moment? Never mind all the shooting and stuff, the Vorsoth are clearly a race that tries to talk its enemies to death by spouting endless propaganda to depress them. By the time I killed the Vohrsoth Leader I actually was starting to believe that I really am just a puny and insignificant human. I guess that's the trouble with alien scum, it just doesn't know its place. At least I impressed Telsia, not that it seemed to get me anywhere with her. No cats, chainsaws or decapitations."
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