Some very mild spoilers for The Mandalorian

I have not been really following Star Wars since Disney took over, I think I saw one or two of the new sequels (they were forgetable) and I saw Rouge One (It's great, would even call it the most Star Wars Star Wars movie)

I had some time last weeks and I saw Andor and I was just stunned. Good to great actors, great worldbuilding, a bit on the nose but still engaging social critic and themes, an interesting and intense story based in gritty realism while still being very Star Wars. I think everybody who likes science fiction and/or spythrillers should watch it.
So I was like: oooooh so they finally found a way to do new and interesting stuff with the Galaxy far far away. Everybody says nice things about the Mandalorian, let's check that one out. It got 92% on RT so I'm shure it's nice....

I seem to hate it and it makes me angry that it turned out the way it did, because i still like a lot about it. It makes me sad that they botched it so badly.
Maybe having a main character whitout a face is not helping? so i need a robot to tell me what Mando is feeling? Pedro Pascal is actually doing an incredible job working with body language and voice, but I don't think it's enough to actually be able to salvage this dumpsterfire of an realisation. Or maybe they should have kept with Mando being an unrelatable asshole, and not make him a disney daddy?
And then they still show his face.... in the most anticlimactic way ever... why? just why do that? It makes me angry just thinking about it, how can you fuck that up so badly, that could be a series defining payoff, but no! They just waste it in the most boring and unconcequencial way ever.

Then there is the Rule of Cool or Why is Everybody a Badass?. Mando is cool, i get it. He has an amazing Look (obviously the helmet is crazy good). He has very interesting and powerful weapons. But then I he still gets mostly his as kicked by nearly everything and everybody all the time?? I mean why do you tell me with every character and all his design that he is a force of nature and than he gets his ass kicked by a fucking dinohead on two legs that looks like a joke and is a joke (I dont actually mind that, i like the design and the joke) I just makes no sense to me.
Nearly everybody else looks cool and is presented as a badass as well, there is just to much of it. there are no weak people, there are no hurt people, there are just badasses and cannonfodder.

Then there is the storytelling... It ranges from quite ok to fucking horrible. I mean, who thought it is a good Idea to NOT cut the motherfucking prisonship episode? It's some of the worst TV i saw in a long while. It does nothing for the overall story. it does nothing for the characters. It does nothing for the viewer. It does nothing for nobody. Its just full of bad acting, bad direction, bad and lazy set design, bad editing, bad jokes, and the worst storytelling. why did they leave that piece of shit in there? the whole series is worse for it. It makes me angry.

So I finally checked the wikipedia page and I understood. Jon Favreau.... Jon Favreau!!! I mean not all of his work is that bad. I liked Iron man and Chef, and I love Cowboys and Aliens (really! it's so bad it's good, but you can not expect differently with that name) I hated his Lion King.

I don't now where I'm going with this. I think I just needed to share my feelings about it. It's just so full of potential, there is so much they could have done with it. they could have explored so many themes and share so much lore... but they just fucked it up and everybody seems to like it, i dont get it.

/rant

so are the other Star Wars shows worth a watch?

I was playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with my kid the other day and it was a blast. Nintendo have really nailed this game, especially in the balance of accessible enough for beginners to have fun but hard enough for people to have a challenge too.

My other favourite game (although I haven't played it for a while) is Sega Rally Championship on Sega Saturn. This game has 4 tracks (one of which needs to be unlocked) and 3 cars (and again, one of these needs to be unlocked). The tiny number of cars and tracks means that you get to do the same corners over and over. This might sound tedious, but when you hit the corner just right you know it. You can get a sense of mastery over it. I've spent many hours playing games in the Gran Turismo series, and I really enjoy them, but fair play some of the tracks and cars are just shovelled into the game and you don't spend much time with them

In the first Gran Turismo the licensing tests were properly hard. They weren't messing around. Getting bronze requires people to read the manual and understand what the point of the test is. Getting all gold is an actual challenge for experienced players. I feel like the tests (at least, the bronze levels) got easier in later games. The UK soundtrack was small but pretty good.

My final mention is the Burnout series. I loved the crash junctions. I'm not sure the open world of Paradise was fun - it meant spending a lot of time driving across a map to get to the start line of various events. I feel the same way about many games - I'd rather just have a menu of levels and what I need to do to complete them (GoldenEye, SNES PilotWings, BlastCorps are all good examples) than have this stuff obscured by the open world. Burnout on the Nintendo DS was a genuinely awful game. I think Burnout Dominator was my favourite in the series.

So, what do driving games get right? What do they miss? What interesting game mechanics do you enjoy?