I don't usually like playing demos. Not sure why - I think investing any time in something incomplete sometimes just feels wrong to me. Demos are actually perfect for my attention span so I read some lists and tried a bunch of things from Steam's Next Fest. My experience has been largely underwhelming.

Here's a bunch of demos I didn't really like (or really didn't like) and why I didn't really like them.

Pepper Grinder has tonnes of potential. I like quirky platformers like Dandara and Flinthook, but something about Pepper Grinder just feels a little off to me. Maybe it's something I could get used to, but I'll see how much it is when it releases. Definitely one of the better ones on this list.

#DRIVE Rally is a very well-timed low-poly arcade rally game (the aesthetic is similar to art of rally, in some ways), but it seems to have binary braking (i.e. brakes are either off, or slammed on), the steering is super twitchy, and your co-driver is incredibly annoying. There's also some bits where the track forks that he specifically does not help you with, but then yells at you when you go the wrong way. This could be cool but at the moment it's annoying.

Berserk Boy is Mega Man, and it's a good Mega Man, but the combat is pretty one-dimensional and not very satisfying, and the first two bosses are identical except for the colour of their projectiles.

Balatro is a card game. One day I will get it into my head that I don't like card games.

Mullet Mad Jack is like if Hotline Miami was an FPS Japanese gameshow against robots. It reminds me of the movie Guns Akimbo for some reason. It's too difficult to distinguish the enemies from the walls so it's a pass for me.

Echo Point Nova is a bit Neon White-y, but the gameplay trailer makes it look way more fun than it is. There's a lot of mechanics here, and that makes the tutorial long and boring, and after a very short amount of time I was just done with it still being the tutorial.

Breachway is a card game where you play cards by dragging and dropping them onto spaceship animations. It made me miss FTL.

Rack and Slay is a top-down geometry sort of thing where you have to shoot pool and pot the balls except everything is weird. It could be cool as a casual thing, and I preferred it to subpar pool, but that's not really saying much.

Trash of the Titans looks like a cool pixel Final Fantasy Tactics. I say "looks like" because I couldn't actually figure out how to play it.

Raw Metal is a bit like Metal Gear Solid, except when you're spotted the game turns to a third-person brawler thing. I didn't like the stealth, and I didn't like the brawling, then I got shot by something I couldn't see, and uninstalled the demo.

Normal Fishing is a fishing game made by someone who has potentially only ever had fishing described to them. They may or may not have ever played a video game. Games are supposed to be fun.

Gatekeeper wants to be there for you if you like Risk of Rain 2 and Hades. I like both of those games but something about Gatekeeper felt really wooden and slow. It took me about 15 attempts to clear the first area of Risk of Rain 2, and 1 to clear the first area of Gatekeeper.

Artifact Seeker is another vampire survivors clone where all the women are impractically well-endowed. It makes me feel like a creep playing games like this, so I just don't. I seemed to do really well at this without trying, and then I died quickly and didn't understand why.

Never Grave could be quite cool. It has an interesting hat thing going on, which might work. But I don't get why it's ripped off so much of the Hollow Knight feel. And the first boss had an insane amount of health and appeared after about 3 minutes and I couldn't be bothered to deal with it. With a bit of balancing I'd play this again.

Arco is a quirky-looking tactical RPG that seems to have similar movement mechanics to things like Divinity, but it didn't have Steam Deck controller bindings and I couldn't figure out how to do anything so I bailed. Shame as I like Panic and the art style and tactical RPGs (even though I'm terrible at them).

Helskate is a skateboarding game where you play as some sort of demon doing skating and ugh that just doesn't work for me. Plus the controls are super jerky and twitchy and I need smoooooth for games like this. Hope the devs play Rollerdrome because that's the kind of controls I need from a game like this.

This stoked my nostalgia pretty hard. I worked in a phone shop right out of 6th form. I was terrible at it; not a closer, you see. But I have always loved gadgets, and have wanted to have something pretty much exactly like the iPhone since I was 9 years old.

As much as I love the iPhone (I know it's sad but I won't apologise), I do miss when phones were weird. I had so many cool ones:

• Nokia 3210
• Nokia 6600
• Nokia 6800
• Sony Ericsson P900
• Nokia 6310i

I had to get so many contracts to try all the phones I wanted. By the time I stopped selling phones, my credit rating was in absolute tatters.

Casey Neistat has this weird way to make anything a story. I have never been more inspired to make videos than when we were regularly watching his videos a few years back. I got burned out on him for whatever reason, but I love occasionally watching what he's doing now.

He has a particularly unique way of reviewing technology that I've always admired. So many reviewers focus on what tech does, and how that's an improvement, but Casey shows you what you can do with things by just doing it himself. When I saw this video in my list, I knew I was going to watch a video of Casey walking around New York wearing this thing and using it in ways that it's probably not currently intended (it's honestly worth it, if only to watch him trying to land a butterfly on a donut).

This is honestly the perfect complement to all the spec-heavy reviews like Marques' and Nilay's. Just a video of a master storyteller (I don't think that's an exaggeration) using a new tool to do what he does.

I feel like I would still love this guy even if I wasn't that interested in games. His presentation style makes me laugh so much, and his videos all look like they were super fun to make.

Some abrasive vocals for your Friday afternoon. I love this sort of thing.

Aesop Rock is usually as reliable as he is eloquent, but I haven't been as into his releases since The Impossible Kid.

I've been enjoying ITS a lot - it's a solid combination of beats, word-play and entertaining stories, which is what I want from an Aesop Rock record.

I was talking to someone about gaming and it occurred to me that I didn't post a game yet. Might as well start with one of my modern favourites.

I feel like Dead Cells set the template for the modern roguelite in terms of progression and the difficulty curve. There's essentially three parts of this game: the baby area, before you've maxxed out enough of the stats that you're actually going to use; the mid-game which is just training you to complete the "final" boss; then the post-game which is for people who have a far better attention span than I do.

I'm happy, as with most things in gaming (and maybe life?), to be good enough at Dead Cells to enjoy it. I can reliably get to the last area, and kill the Hand a lot of the time, but anything more than that just starts to feel like I'm playing the game just to play it, rather than because I'm enjoying it. I'm glad that stuff exists for the people who want it, but I can live with what I see as the core gameplay loop.

This does have a bit of a steep learning curve but it never feels cheap or unfair, which I think is super important in the early game, so that you can actually get established and not just feel like you're getting beaten up constantly like I do in things like Souls games.

This is a perfect example of why you should revisit music that you didn't enjoy first time. Dan recommended Future Islands to me ages ago and, for some reason, they live with Cursive in the Things That Are Associated department of my brain. Probably because Dan likes Cursive as well but I'm sure they were on the same label at some point or something.

I digress.

Future Islands make such an infectious brand of sad pop music for men my age, with my life experiences. They're like Bleachers or The Smiths, but for me. I like Bleachers and The Smiths, but I've never really identified with them in the way that I now do with Future Islands. Not bad for something that I really did not like five years ago. And, amusingly, Dan doesn't really like them any more either.

FFO: sad introspection, synths, dad caps and weird dancing

Super American, and a mercifully short first season. Stuff like this has a tendency to get dragged out and serialised and I'm glad this doesn't suffer from that (lookin' at you; Mentalist, Numb3rs et al). Decent story with some good twists and turns. Nothing too thinky going on.

There's going to be a couple of obvious and not-recent TV shows here (definitely didn't just write this to get the ball rolling in this category!) but whenever I think about my favourite TV shows, this is always so high on the list.

If you haven't already seen it, I suppose it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to convince you here, but it's the perfect period drama. The characters, costumes, and story are all absolutely wonderful.

The first time I started watching it, something about it made me uncomfortable and tense and I didn't get further than the first few episodes, but I watched it again on my turbo trainer and turned my unease into a calorie burn and ended up absolutely loving this show.

I love this sort of thing. This guy makes a different sandwich every day from (mostly) old cookery books. His videos are a couple of minutes long and he has multiple catchphrases. Top-tier routine-fodder. We watch his videos most days.

Love Audiotree and love Johnny Booth. Hope the latter makes it over to the UK some day.

Super intriguing story throughout, and I'll immediately move onto the next one.

The only criticism I have is that the prose feels very clinical and cold, and I can't tell if it's the translation, the author, or just how books are written in China.

A very, very long and slow burn. So detailed and beautiful and sad and evil. We had to watch it over two nights because I can't do a film like this in a single sitting, but that's just because I was sleepy and not because of any problem with the film itself. It is long but on immediate reflection I don't think you could edit it down in any significant way.

I enjoyed this a lot, but let's not pretend that it's anything more than Parasite for a western audience that doesn't want to read subtitles.

Consider this a freebie from your boy. If you want to enjoy this film again as an adult, watch it with a ten-year-old who's never seen it. I may live to regret showing this to her, but whilst we were watching she was so happy. Imagine being ten and learning that they made films that match your stupid annoying sense of humour. That's real happiness right there.

I don't think I like James Bond

The perfect end that I wish wasn't.

I like it, but it drags on a bit in the last act.

I love this.

No, I give up. I can't stand it any more. Maybe I'll come back later but this was making me actively angry by the time I put it down.

This is a bad movie, dragged out to make a really long bad movie. Normally I would avoid speaking so objectively about a film, and I hope this self-awareness will give weight to my opinion and save someone two hours.

The only redeeming element to this film is the art direction. The story is meandering and unengaging. Performances are hammy. It just doesn't work; and I really wanted it to work. I am so ready for a big budget sci-fi, but I guess I'm waiting for Dune.

Very beautiful, loved the soundtrack. I think there's a lot of metaphor buried in here that I wasn't quite able to excavate. Could do with another couple of watches, which I would have absolutely no problem with.

I liked it. Cheesy as all hell but I feel like that's the point. Solid ending. Probably not going to watch it again.

Hans Zimmer is the laziest composer in history omg. So much of the Pirates of the Caribbean music is in this film.

I love this sort of film.

I enjoyed this film a lot. I like films that are about characters and what they do, rather than some story arc. There obviously is a story here but it's very much a vehicle for the characters.

I read a review that broke it down as a ruling elite class crushing an uprising by pitting the oppressed class against each other to divide and conquer, and how that is an allegory for politics and society today. I like that a lot as a comparison, and I would love it if that was intentional but I doubt it somehow. Amusing how a film about liberation and empowerment lands as a tale of class oppression.

I loved the soundtrack. Been listening to it for a while anyway but it fits so well with the film. Especially Billie Eilish's song.

Cast was all amazing as well. It really comes across how much everyone enjoyed filming it. I thought America Ferrera and Margot Robbie in particular were brilliant, and I love Ryan Gosling as an airhead with too much confidence.

Oddly not as terrible as I expected. The first hour lays it out like The Core or Armageddon or something like that, and the acting is exactly as urgent and hammy as you'd expect. But actually the story is pretty coherent, all things considered. And the special effects are pretty amazing. The last thirty minutes were particularly enjoyable.

I will say, though, if you find deus ex machina annoying, skip this hard.

Tabitha and I watched Korra together and I enjoyed it a lot. Not sure why I thought I wouldn't.

I didn't realise this was M Night Shyamalan, but it is absolutely a film of his. Terrible dialogue, weird overacting, Chekov's guns literally everywhere. But it's silly and fun and it made me want to watch the animated series (yes I know I should've watched that first shush).

Netflix asked their picket-line-breaking AI to make them a Jordan Peele film with a hint of Black Dynamite and Sorry to Bother You's atmosphere and it could not be more obvious.

Still a great story, still really annoyed by how it's written.

I don't think I can really be objective about this or anything. This is like a cinema banquet. I didn't eat my snacks; I didn't drink any of my drink. Just sat there being carried along by the most filmiest film that has ever been filmed. It's all of everything: sound, visuals, performances. I loved it all and I would have happily seen it again immediately after a drink and snack break but instead I walked two miles across Glasgow because that's how far our hotel room is from the IMAX.

This is a strange movie but I think that's because it's kinda high-brow and I'm not really used to high-brow car films. I'm a Fast franchise guy, you know this by now. Baby Driver is your thinking boy's car film.

I think one thing I like about this film is that the stunts and chase scenes are mercifully short. It seems like the 2020 thing to do is have these uncomfortably protracted action sequences that honestly I'm just waiting to be over. Baby Driver has none of that. None. It's lean, it's got some good driving, it's got a goddamn contrived-as-shit backstory, it's got Jamie Foxx being unhinged as heck. I like this movie.

It does have something I don't like though: Kevin Spacey's shit-eating face I want to punch him so bad but realistically I'm not a fighter; he could probably kick my ass.

There are so many stars in this it's kinda strange to watch for the first time now. Even I got sick of saying "whoa it's ... from ...", and I love doing that!

I enjoyed this a lot. It's a solid premise with some cool "wait what just happened" bits of surrealism. Definitely going on my Friday Night rotation.

In my defence, we watched the TV show. I absolutely do not recommend watching this, but I did enjoy it.

This movie made no fucking sense at all. And I say that as a general fan of the series. They're getting more and more stupid and difficult to forgive blatant lapses in realism. They came after magnets?! Oh hell no. Magnets do not work this way.

There wasn't even that many cool cars in it. Sure there's a nice Noble and a new NSX and that '68 Charger is pretty wild but I need these movies to be a cornucopia of outrageous cars and this wasn't it.

It's crazy how much beautiful footage of volcanoes these two got. I really can't oversell it; they were wonderful photographers.

Another incredibly frustrating book/series. The philosophy, sci-fi, characters, and lore in general in this book are amazing and when I started out I could absolutely see how this spans seven books.

But, after a very short amount of time, I got really tired of the constant and unnecessary erotic undertones, and the obsession with all the characters having loads of honorifics that must be written absolutely every single time a character is addressed. I think, in a way, that it was the point that all these silly titles people give themselves are meaningless and largely completely conceited, but it just made this book really annoying for me to read.

I loved the underlying story so much in spite of how much the rest of it annoyed me, though, that I persevere...

Exceptional. Leans into the animation style so hard, and the payoff is pretty huge actually. Builds on the first in every way.

Does rather feel like it ends in the middle though. Not sure I'm happy about where it ends.

I feel like this could be a 100 book saga, with the amount of ideas here, and how they're all coherently stitched together.

I wish I could live for 2,000 years.

This was supposed to be the second book of a trilogy, but ended up being the final book of a duology, and it really felt rushed and lacking in solid ideas and direction.

The premise of this book is so weird that every time something happened in it, I had to think about whether it actually made any sense to me in the context of this new world that had been created. The fantasy side of it is so fun, and it reminds me a lot of games like Astral Chain and Gravity Rush, where some secret parallel dimension keeps leaking into ours (that sort of thing is very much for me), but the side of it brimming with New York stereotypes got old for me quite quickly. This didn't need to be a trilogy, in my opinion.

Blake Crouch is basically Andy Weir, if Andy Weir didn't know how to string a sentence together and didn't have an editor. Some of the prose in this book is absolutely awful, and completely ruins what would've otherwise been a solid story.

This book ruined my life. It's one of the most upsetting, bleak, and realistic things I've ever read. The fact that it was written in 1985 just makes it more upsetting.

An Andy Weir book, but a really enjoyable one.

Andy Weir writes sci-fi for fans of action movies. The same people would like The DaVinci Code, Comic Sans, and Coldplay if someone else hadn't already told them to hate it.

It's enjoyable, but it's nothing more than a shallow page-turner in a spacesuit.

All the tone and energy of Narnia without any of the religious idolatry.

So forgettable I read it twice by accident.

Another that I still think about a lot. A beautiful study of friendships, relationships, and what it is to be human.