Spot Reviews 10/31/25
Oct 31 2025
Splinter Cell: Deathwatch (2025) [+] Animated half-hour series on Netflix. Season 1 is 8 episodes and ends setting up season 2 though no announcement if there will be one. Set maybe after the video game, Fourth Echelon agent Zinnia McKenna (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) is wounded and on the run from enemy mercenaries. Somewhere in Eastern Europe with no allied assets Anna Grímsdóttir (Janet Varney) sends Zinnia to the only safe place nearby, the farm where a retired Sam Fisher (Liev Schreiber) lives… Has some really good action scenes (and some graphics deaths) and lots of stealth action which is very Splinter Cell (well, the latter is Splinter Cell, when I played the game getting into firefights usually got me killed). I also liked that the main bad guys are Diana (Kari Wahlgren) and Charlie (Aleks Le) Shetland of Douglas Shetland, a major character in the video game.
I Am the Secret in Your Heart (2024) [/] Taiwanese high school romance movie. Wang Hsiao-hsia (Moon Lee) immediately falls for transfer student Cheng Yin (Tsao Yu-ning) whilst her best friend Yang Zhong-you (Shou Lo) keeps secretly pining for her. At first Yin is indifferent to her advances until he realizes she's the childhood girl who befriended a lonely boy briefly before Yin had to move away… An ok movie.
Farming Simulator 20+ (2023) [-] This version of FS is mobile only and "free" as part of Apple Arcade (and there are other versions in the App Store). You drive farm equipment and run a farm. I couldn't get past the tutorial because driving a combine is tough. I accidentally unhooked the blades then couldn't figure out how to get back on since there is no good help. Also first person view not that good for my motion sickness. Maybe easier with a controller… oh, doesn't say it has controller support.
Hill Climb Racing+ (2023) [/] Physics-based side-view driving game. You have accelerate and brake controls and a nitro button if it's charged. It's mostly driving over hilly terrain (in various weather and road conditions) trying to go fast while not flipping upside down (though you can do full flips for bonus points), picking up coins and all-important gas. In between you can buy and upgrade vehicles and there are daily challenges and different game modes. I found this a fairly hard game though a good concept for mobile with limited touch controls.
I Am the Secret in Your Heart (2024) [/] Taiwanese high school romance movie. Wang Hsiao-hsia (Moon Lee) immediately falls for transfer student Cheng Yin (Tsao Yu-ning) whilst her best friend Yang Zhong-you (Shou Lo) keeps secretly pining for her. At first Yin is indifferent to her advances until he realizes she's the childhood girl who befriended a lonely boy briefly before Yin had to move away… An ok movie.
Farming Simulator 20+ (2023) [-] This version of FS is mobile only and "free" as part of Apple Arcade (and there are other versions in the App Store). You drive farm equipment and run a farm. I couldn't get past the tutorial because driving a combine is tough. I accidentally unhooked the blades then couldn't figure out how to get back on since there is no good help. Also first person view not that good for my motion sickness. Maybe easier with a controller… oh, doesn't say it has controller support.
Hill Climb Racing+ (2023) [/] Physics-based side-view driving game. You have accelerate and brake controls and a nitro button if it's charged. It's mostly driving over hilly terrain (in various weather and road conditions) trying to go fast while not flipping upside down (though you can do full flips for bonus points), picking up coins and all-important gas. In between you can buy and upgrade vehicles and there are daily challenges and different game modes. I found this a fairly hard game though a good concept for mobile with limited touch controls.