I am rewatching The X-Files(1993)

The X-Files is the show that literally taught childhood you that the dark was full of things with too many teeth, and you probably shouldn’t trust the people telling you it’s all in your head. ​

I use to watch it when I wasn’t supposed to In Italy in the late 90s, The X-Files lived in that forbidden “red” slot on TV, the colour that basically screamed “no kids allowed” even if every kid immediately took it as an invitation. ​ I remember peeking in the dark living room at around ten years old, while my dad watched the episodes with volume turned down to almost nothing, trying to watch Mulder and Scully chase monsters without him noticing that I waws mainlining the stuff the broadcasters had politely tagged as off-limits. ​

At least once it did exactly what that red badge warned about: a single episode slipped through my brain’s defences and followed me into sleep, the imagery turning into those cheap, sweaty nightmares that feel more like glitches than dreams. ​

How it feels on rewatch Coming back to it now

The X-Files feels like a transmission from a world where paranoia is analogue: VHS grain, CRT glow, case files in metal cabinets instead of cloud drives. ​ Those Vancouver years are still the definitive look in my head: endless wet forests, empty highways, flickering strip lights, and two flashlights cutting holes in the dark while something ugly breathes just outside the frame. ​ The show’s mix of “monster-of-the-week” weirdness and slow-drip conspiracy is clumsier than you remembered, but that actually makes it more charming; it’s messy, earnest horror TV that believes in its own campfire stories

Rewatching it now also adds this extra layer of fun: horror tastes have shifted so much that some of the cheap shocks, rubbery aliens, and overcooked conspiracy twists that once felt dangerous now land as accidental comedy, a kind of endearing, dumb genius that makes the scares and the silliness play together in the same scene. ​

Overall what hits hardest on rewatch isn’t the aliens or the green goo; it’s the tension between Mulder’s haunted need to believe and Scully’s stubborn, exhausted scepticism. ​

As a kid, Mulder is the fantasy: the adult who says “you’re right, there really is something under the bed,” and then goes to fight it; as an adult, you end up feeling more like Scully, trying to autopsy every fear into something rational. ​ Somewhere between those two positions is where the show lives, and maybe why it sticks: it gives shape to the idea that not knowing is scarier than any rubber-suit monster, but also suggests that having someone next to you with a flashlight makes that unknown survivable. ​ Does it still work? The big mythology arc absolutely wobbles now: years of retcons and reversals mean the alien colonisation plot feels more like a migraine than a narrative. ​ But the standalone horror episodes still have teeth; they’re tight, strange little urban legends that remember the basic rule that made ten-year-old you hide under the covers afterward: show just enough, then cut to black and let the brain do the rest. ​

 Rewatching The X-Files in 2026 is a weird comfort: it’s a return to that “red stamp” ambient terror of childhood, but with the awareness that the thing you were scared of was never just the monster—it was the feeling that the adults didn’t have answers either. ​

Arc Raiders

I usually don't cover big name games, I usually do indie-ish stuff but hey,
 I am loving this so here's couple of thoughts on
Arc Raiders 

Arc Raiders feels like a game that arrived carrying other people’s expectations on its back. You hear the name and you expect noise: bombast, endless firefights, another live-service meat grinder yelling at you to grind harder. The pedigree doesn’t help—ex-DICE devs, clean sci-fi aesthetic, big machines falling from the sky. It sounds like it should be loud, sweaty, and exhausting.

But playing it? It’s quieter. More deliberate. And honestly, that’s where it got me.

There’s something in the rhythm of it that clicks on a personal level. Earth isn’t heroic here—it’s picked clean, half-abandoned, lived-in southern Italy landscape. You’re not a chosen one, not a poster character. You’re a scavenger with a job, poking through ruins, listening for trouble, weighing risk against reward. The ARC machines don’t grandstand. They don’t perform. They just exist—huge, cold, and uncaring. When one shows up, the instinct isn’t excitement, it’s calculation. Can I slip past this? Can I get what I came for and leave?

That feeling—of being small, cautious, slightly out of place—is where Arc Raiders shines. It almost feels like what I was hoping The Forever Winter would be: a world dominated by incomprehensible machines, where survival comes from awareness and restraint. The difference is tone. Arc Raiders drops the oppressive dread and pitch-black nihilism and replaces it with something calmer, cleaner. Still tense, but breathable. Less despair, more quiet resolve.

The PvEvP mechanics (far from perfect) are there and keep the thing fresh, having you always on high alert but without the chance to trust and befriend players to go against the Mechanical enemies around the map.

Gunplay is solid without trying to impress you. Movement is grounded, unshowy. Combat is tense not because it’s flashy, but because mistakes matter. You lose time. You lose loot. You lose momentum. The game constantly nudges you toward smart decisions instead of heroic ones. Extraction feels like relief, not routine. Getting out alive with something valuable feels earned.

Visually, it’s restrained in a way I really respect. Clean lines, muted palettes, machines designed to be readable rather than ornamental. The human side stays deliberately anonymous, almost disposable. You’re not meant to admire yourself—you’re meant to function. That choice won’t land for everyone, but it reinforces the mood perfectly.

And yeah—this is the part where the unease creeps in.

You can feel the live-service framework humming beneath the surface. Systems that seem poised to expand. Loops that could easily tip from tension into grind. Right now, the game trusts silence, patience, and scarcity. If that restraint holds, Arc Raiders has something special. If it doesn’t—if seasons, metas, and engagement hooks start shouting over the atmosphere—this whole delicate balance collapses fast.

Still, in its current state, I’m more attached than I expected to be. There’s confidence here. A willingness to let players feel vulnerable, observant, and human instead of powerful.

Arc Raiders doesn’t beg for attention. It waits. And I really hope it keeps the nerve to stay this quiet—because that’s exactly why it works. 

See you topside, raider.


You can get it here: 

Maniac Cop

Honestly, Maniac Cop sat on my radar for years as one of those VHS urban legends—supposedly crusty, furious, off-the-rails. One of those movies that lives in whispered recommendations and battered tape sleeves. I figured I was in for a throat punch of sleaze and grit: sweaty New York streets, busted faces, the kind of cop flick your parents would confiscate on sight. But watching it now? It’s more polished than the legend—and weirdly, that’s what makes it interesting.

The ingredients are all there. You’ve got the killer cop: face half-melted, built like a truck, Robert Z’Dar looming as Officer Matt Cordell like a walking concrete block. The city looks right—overcast skies, wet-lit alleys, neon bleeding into puddles. The opening even plays mean, baiting you with a classic street-level scare before snapping a woman’s neck in cold daylight. It wants to feel nasty. But Maniac Cop never fully dives into grindhouse chaos.

Instead, it pulls back. There’s restraint in the action, control in the violence. Long shots, old-school pacing, a surprising amount of procedural DNA. Larry Cohen’s script treats the setup less like a slasher and more like a crooked-city paranoia piece: a killer in uniform, innocent cops getting gunned down by scared civilians, the system eating itself alive. It’s closer to a crime thriller with a supernatural infection than a splatter reel.

I went in chasing pure grit; I got mood.

TThe camera lingers. Lustig lets scenes breathe. The soundtrack leans toward synth tension instead of shock stings. You’re supposed to feel the dread spreading through the city, not just rubberneck at bodies dropping. Even the practical effects feel purposeful—there, but not screaming for attention. For a movie called Maniac Cop, it’s oddly careful.

There’s also real noir energy under the pulp. Bruce Campbell plays Jack Forrest as a man already halfway ruined—framed, compromised, exhausted. Laurene Landon’s Theresa Mallory has rough edges and weight, not just genre utility. Tom Atkins shows up as the kind of hard-edged authority figure you expect him to be… and then the movie casually tosses him out a window halfway through, just to remind you this thing doesn’t follow the rules you think it does. The characters are adults, messy, morally scuffed. No dumb teens, no cartoon heroics.

That’s the odd truth of it: Maniac Cop looks tougher than it actually is. The marketing promises pure grime, but the film itself is almost thoughtful, even a little tragic. Cordell isn’t just a monster—he’s a wronged enforcer, chewed up by corruption and brutality, turned into something relentless and empty. The slasher mechanics are there, but they’re wrapped in cynicism instead of cruelty.

It’s not toothless—but it’s not sleaze for the sake of sleaze either. It’s a midnight movie with a bit of pride. Rough enough to work, smooth enough to catch you off guard if you grew up hearing about it as the “dirtiest cop movie ever.”

Bottom line: Maniac Cop is an odd one. Not nearly as raw as I wanted—but cooler, stranger, and more controlled than expected. Worth your time, especially if you want to see what happens when VHS cult mythology meets a movie that quietly thinks it has something to say.

It’s not toothless, but it’s not sleaze for the sake of sleaze. It’s a midnight movie with a little pride—rough enough to work, smooth enough to surprise you if you grew up hearing about it as the “dirtiest cop movie ever.” Bottom line: Maniac Cop is an odd one. Not nearly as raw as I wanted, but cool in a way I didn’t expect. Worth your time, especially if you want to see what happens when VHS cult starts acting like it’s got something to prove.

Music: Acute - Hardcore Punk from Japan

ACUTE were one of those bands that feel like they shouldn’t even exist outside of a photocopied zine or a tape traded through five hands. Mid-80s, cold Hokkaido nights, everything recorded like the equipment was held together with duct tape and anger. That’s the charm. That’s the whole point.

Their tracks on “Nothing Action, Nothing Have” hit like a brick — raw Sapporo pulse, that northern distortion that always sounds a bit hungrier, a bit more cornered. Early ACUTE leans into that blown-out UK-82 chaos: Disorder through a cracked amp, sped up because winter’s coming and nobody has time to slow down. Later stuff? Pure Japanese thrash attack. They get faster, tighter, meaner. Like they figured out exactly what they wanted to scream and just kept sharpening the knife.

What I love about them is the bluntness. Anti-war, anti-authority, anti-fake-anything. No cryptic poetry, no layers to decode — just “here’s what’s wrong, here’s how it feels, now hold on while we hit the accelerator.” You look at their flyers and it’s the same vibe: handmade fury, black marker on grey paper, photocopied into oblivion.

The FOAD reissue (“Who Wants War”) basically preserves everything: studio takes, rehearsals, that unhinged Bessie Hall live set where the crowd sounds like they’re vibrating. It’s all cracked edges and speed and sincerity. A time capsule from a scene that didn’t care about legacy — they cared about getting the sound out of their systems before the cops or adulthood or winter shut them up.

Put it on late at night. Volume stupidly high. Let it sound like it’s tearing through the walls a bit. That’s how is supposed to be— not curated, not preserved, just alive and loud and gone again.

Fun fact, there's another hardcore punk band from Japan - founded in 2006 - that also plays hardcore punk and is called Acute.

Game Review: Dread Delusion

The world is broken. Its surface seethes with an undead curse, while humanity clings to flying continents in the sky. From mushroom forests to undead mausoleums, strange places and people await you. But will you find a way to heal this world - or seek power and profit for yourself?

 

My Take:

This one is a pretty special game for me. Dread Delusion is the title that pulled me back into gaming after a long break, and it reminded me why I ever loved wandering around strange, handmade worlds in the first place. It’s got that magic of indie-ish development — scrappy, imaginative, not afraid to be weird — and it hit me hard enough that I actually finished it. That’s rare for me; usually, once I feel I’m close to the end of a game, I drift away. But here it was different.

You can tackle challenges in ways that suit your character: fighting, sure, but also persuasion, lockpicking, or diving into forbidden knowledge. That freedom makes the world feel alive — you’re never just pushing through enemies, you’re shaping your own little path through this broken sky-realm. 

There’s also a solid progression system that goes beyond stats. Smithing and Alchemy let you tinker with your gear -

What really sold it for me, though, is the atmosphere. The world is full of oddball characters, half-ruined landscapes, factions with their own agendas, and plenty of little treasures tucked away. The retro 3D aesthetic isn’t just nostalgia bait — it builds this eerie, dreamlike vibe that makes exploration feel like stumbling through someone’s vivid memory.

If you grew up on classic RPGs from the early 2000s - i didn't - , this feels like the best possible continuation of that spirit: familiar enough to be comforting, but strange enough to feel fresh. For me, it wasn’t just a fun game — it was a reminder of why I like games in the first place.

 

Ode to gaming and other bits that make me cry

Growing up in a small town — like very small — in the 90s was kinda weird.

Most afternoons were made of dust, sunlight, and the sound of bicycle chains. I’d be zooming around on my trashy old bike, going up and down the same hills with no real plan — just me and a few classmates from elementary school. People I didn’t necessarily like, but we hung out because there wasn’t really anyone else. That’s just how it was.

Even back then, I felt like an outsider — and not just in the quiet, dreamy way. I got bullied a lot. Nothing cinematic, just that slow, grinding kind of bullying that wears you down bit by bit. Kids can be cruel in small towns; they notice difference like it’s a stain. Maybe it was my clothes, my family, the way I talked or thought — I still don’t really know. I just remember feeling out of place, like everyone else was playing a game I didn’t know the rules to.

My family was (and still is) poor, so I never had the shiny things some of the other kids had. But one day, I somehow convinced my grandparents to get me a Game Boy Color with Pokémon Yellow. That little grey-and-yellow screen basically burned itself into my eyes — but it also opened a door. It was my first real contact with videogames, and it felt like touching another world.

Then my dad came home one day with a Sega Mega Drive, and that was it. I was gone. Sonic, After Burner II, Jurassic Park — all those frustrating, beautiful worlds. I’d sit cross-legged in front of the TV, eyes glued to the screen while outside the mountains turned orange with sunset. The Mega Drive was already ancient by then — the PS1 had been out for years — but I didn’t care. It was mine.
I got my first PS1 years later, around 2013, as a hand-me-down from a cousin who’d outgrown it. It came with only one game: Colin McRae Rally. I played that thing for years. Same tracks, same turns, again and again.

And then there was my dad’s old PC — a yellowed monolith running Windows 98, humming like an old fridge. No internet, no upgrades, just this mysterious world of files and folders I didn’t really understand. I’d spend all my pocket money on PC magazines just to get the demo CDs inside. Jagged Alliance 2 (Demoville!), Doom, Age of Empires — all those tiny digital windows into something bigger. Later, my dad and I played Delta Force 2 and Half-Life together. Those moments were rare, and I still remember them clearly. With almost a tear forming.

Looking back, all of that feels impossibly far away — like someone else’s life. But it’s still there, buried under all the noise.
This post wasn’t meant to get emotional, but I guess it did. I just wanted to write about how much I owe to games — not just as entertainment, but as something that helped me connect, dream, and escape.

Movies will always be my first love, and comics probably saved my life. But videogames… they were my secret door out of that small town. They gave me a space where I wasn’t the weird kid, where I could win sometimes, where the rules actually made sense.

And I still think games deserve more than the noise around them — more than angry nerds shouting online. They’re art, just like cinema once was when it was finding its language. A mix of storytelling, sound, and movement — fragile and brilliant at the same time.

Recently, a game that reminded me of all that was Disco Elysium. It hit me in ways I didn’t expect — the writing, the mood, the loneliness of it. Then finding a community of people online who felt the same… even discovering two friends among them who I never thought played games at all. It made me realize that connection is still there — just a little more digital now.Maybe that’s what I’ve been chasing since then — connection, through any medium that could carry it.And in a way, I think that kid from the small town is still inside me somewhere, looking for that.

Maybe that’s why I keep finding comfort in strange games — worlds that feel the way I always have: a little out of place, quietly standing at the edge.

Game Review: PSYCHO PATROL R

 

Some games just get it. Psycho Patrol R looks and feels like it crawled out of a busted PlayStation dev kit and decided not to clean itself up. It’s all flicker, static, rust, and brain noise — a mech sim wrapped in bureaucratic despair. That’s exactly why I love it.

You’re piloting the V-Stalker, stomping through the dying guts of Pan-Europa, working for a police force that’s half-administration, half-religion. Every mission feels like a fever dream of propaganda, psychic viruses, and paperwork. The game doesn’t care if you understand what’s going on — it just dumps you in and lets the world rot around you.

The aesthetic hits like a brick. Harsh lighting, low-poly geometry, and menus that look like they’ve been photocopied one too many times. No fake nostalgia, no slick filters — just raw visual noise. It’s that perfect kind of ugliness that feels real, like someone actually bled over the interface. It’s not “retro.” It’s lived-in.

I’m not here grinding for unlocks or hunting for collectibles. I’m here because it looks like a nightmare I’d design myself — mechanical, claustrophobic, full of personality. It reminds me why I still get attached to games that don’t care about market polish or accessibility.

The devs, Consumer Softproducts, don’t make games. They build systems of controlled chaos. Their site reads like a fevered company memo from another timeline

They already proved their philosophy with Cruelty Squad: bright, grotesque, mean-spirited, and brilliant. Psycho Patrol R takes that same energy and channels it into something colder, heavier, more bureaucratic — a dystopia with paperwork and mech grease. It’s corporate hell as interactive art.

There’s no pretense of fun here, and that’s the point. It’s about mood. It’s about design as resistance. You either tune into it or you don’t.

Psycho Patrol R doesn’t want your approval. It’s a wall of static that hums at the exact frequency I like. The more it confuses, the more it feels right. It’s punk software — a broken mirror of everything AAA forgot how to be.

I don’t play it to win. I play it to stare at it and remember that not all games need to behave.