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Pop CultureApril 11, 2017

The Bachelor NZ Power Rankings, Week Four – The Intruders are here…

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Alex Casey tackles the fourth week of The Bachelor NZ, including The Others, an elephant and a dramatic injury. 

Honestly, put me inside an egg and soak me in horse pee for 100 days if this wasn’t the best week of The Bachelor NZ so far. In his own words, Zac’s whole world has been turned upside down, he’s been blown out of the water, there’s a spanner in the works, the goalposts have shifted, he’s been thrown a curveball and there are three completely new cards in the deck but he’s just going to play the cards he’s been dealt.

In short, there are three ENTIRELY NEW women in the game and it is cause for A MODERATE SENSE OF ALARM.

BECAUSE NOW EVERYONE IS MAD AT ZAC, WHO HAS TO BE GUILTY FOREVER

NO MATTER HOW WELL HE POPS A MANU

OR HOW WELL HE EATS AN OLD EGG SOAKED IN HORSE PEE BECAUSE THIS IS FEAR FACTOR NZ SUDDENLY

AND WE DON’T EVEN HAVE SAVAGE FRIGGIN’ NINA TO ‘AVE A LAUGH WITH ANYMORE!!!

Much like the cheap cocktails that once resulted in me gently holding a monkey’s hand thinking it was a human in a Koh Samui nightclub, the drama came in absolute BUCKETS this week. But who will reach the top of the slippery rock of love? Let us press go on our in-flight injection seats and find out.

1) Lily

Like Annie, plucked from the plague-ridden dustbowl of economy to go and sit with Zacky Warbucks in business class on their flight to Thailand, Lily continued to charm. She reclined her seat, she wore her fishnets and she tried to steal Zac’s watch. I’m just sad this didn’t happen:

But the moment Lily shifted to the business class seat in the power rankings was when Zac returned her sexy lil flirty-questions-on-thigh trick back to her at the cocktail party, resulting in this weird Memento move. 

Bloody oath.

2) Sarah

Zac was impressed with Intruder Sarah’s “eloquent” pin dive, and she squirrelled away a rose faster than you can say “Viarni 2.0”. Also she’s a fucking under-30 who owns a home so probably time to give her an OBE on a bed of smashed avo and be done with it?

3) Hannah

Hannah and Zac bonded like spaghetti to a Prime Ministerial pizza base this week, as they found common ground in their sporting pasts, their similar life stages and their matching cursed medallions that will surely unlock a black hole when connected.

On their weird quad bike date, Hannah latched onto Zac’s back like a Koala (be careful imo) before giving him a creepy slow back tickle in what has to be one of the top ten funny shots of the series.

She got a big slopper of a kiss and a flaccid hibiscus flower (clearly the intern forgot to bring the rose), so Hannah is safe as houses till David Farrier busts her illegal tickle racket.

4) Claudia

There was an elephant in the room this week, and I’m not just talking about the lovely décor.

Claudia needed to get it off her chest that she… had added stuff to her chest. She revealed that the last time she was in Thailand she had a boob job, to which Zac barked “I TOALLY RESPECT THAT” before doing a massive manu straight to heaven.

5) Karina

The second of The Intruders, Zac described law student Karina as “dream girl beautiful,” a phrase he hasn’t uttered since the last time he saw the beautiful hull of a kayak crashing through the crest of an Orewa Beach wave. Karina is composed AF, confident in jandals and somehow makes bare feet seem like a glamourous date option. What kind of sorceress…

6) Viarni

Tfw you were the frontrunner the whole time but now Lily has absolutely slayed her way to the top out of nowhere and there are three new women who Zac seems to like a lot and you aren’t even allowed to eat your bodyweight in cheese and bread to make yourself feel better.


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7) Rosie

Zac took Rosie on a single date to a romantic Thai waterfall this week, bounded up the rocks like an overly-excited Labrador and demanded that she follow him. She’s not the most co-ordinated of the bunch – weird for an ex ice skater? – and slipped and hurt her knee. I don’t know, the date was about as exciting as corn on the cob.

8) Vanessa

The final of our intruders, Vanessa is an only child who has been married before and looks more like Amy Schumer than Ally to Dunst or Dom Bowden to Slender Man. She’s clearly taken the Matootles memo of wearing lucky orange, donning both the dress, the top and the orgy of giant fish on her single date.

But is she nice? Seems like… no

Please let the producers keep her around long enough to #disrupt #the #narrative but not so long that she does another comedy special because nobody needs more of that.

9) Molly

Like any regular human, Molly did NOT take the news that there were intruders in her house very well at all. Pray for mole imo.

10) Bel

Bel is simply not okay.

11) Ally

As much as I admire those who devote the literal skin off their backs to The Bard, I have a feeling that Ally’s free lawn meditations have got to be coming to an end soon. 

12) Jess

After her fusspot rejection of almost every delicious Thai ingredient in the cooking challenge, I think it might be time for Jess to make like the ends of my hair and… split.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

We are being subliminally advertised to by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

Who wore it best?

Return of The Mike?


These power rankings are brought to you by Lightbox, home of the amazing Bachelor-inspired drama UnREAL. Take a peek behind the curtains of reality TV by clicking below to watch:

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Pop CultureApril 10, 2017

The latest NZ made indie games to drop some bitcoin on

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The games industry here in NZ is taking off and there’s now all manner of small indie teams putting out fun wee titles for your pleasure. Liam Maugren was recently in a room with a whole bunch of them and here’s what he reckons your next purchase should be.

Last weekend, Auckland played host to New Zealand Indie Arts Festival Chromacon. There was so much great Kiwi talent in the illustration, comics and animation scene that I felt both creatively inspired and hopelessly inferior to everyone around me. Luckily, there was also an indie videogame section to keep me distracted from my own existential crisis.

I got to play five games at the Chromacade, varying from fatties fighting in zero G to augmented reality fitness.

Swordy

Made by Frogshark

A hearty alternative to button-mashing, this thumbstick-swirling couch multiplayer game channels the childish joy of grabbing a giant bat and swinging it around with wreckless abandon. Once you pick up your weapon of choice (sword, axe, club), you can choose to stab, swing, or hammer throw your way through your opponents’ flesh. Swordy proudly embraces the derp physics from games like Surgeon Simulator and Gang Beasts, giving every game a loose and chaotic feel. It wouldn’t take long to convince three mates to give this game a swing and has every chance of being this nation’s most iconic – and most ironic – way of deciding who’ll be sober driver for the night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDPLcPuNmpI%20

Titandrum

Made by The Húskarls

This Media Design School team did some simple math: Super Mario Galaxy + Super Smash Bros = a very excited Liam. That’s Titandrum in a nutshell, and it has buckets of promise – but still has a way to go to fill a bath tub.

You play a mannequin-looking fellow with an odd head and a beer gut, fighting other players around planets. You can gut slam, jump kick or seismic toss opponents off the planet and even arm bear traps to set them up like a tee-ball. You’re even able to jump to other orbiting planets to get away.

In its current iteration, the combat still feels a bit jagged. Players often stand still when hit, only flying to the screen’s edge when they’re really low on health. This means battles start with players standing in the same spot hitting buttons and hoping they’re not the ones to get dazed. Refinements will do this game wonders however, and is one to keep a keen eye on.

Untitled Giant Fruit and Running Game

Made by ARX

ARX, which stands for Augmented Reality Exercise, wants to revolutionise fitness. Holding their prototype controller and wearing the AR glasses, a Minecraft-like island with gigantic floating fruit appeared around me. The goal was to shoot as many fruit as I could. I just needed to look at one of these GMO monstrosities and jump to fire a block bullet.

Now if you were to put my fitness level on a scale of ‘Gerry Brownlee’ to ‘Sonny Bill Williams’, I’m roughly a ‘Dai Henwood’. A bit of jumping wasn’t going to put me in cardiac arrest, so it’s hard to know how effective ARX will be from just this game.

It was also in VERY early stages. The jump-to-shoot mechanic felt a bit cumbersome since I was likely to shake my aim away before an actual bullet fired. The image projected from the glasses also felt less like AR and more like VR at 50% transparency. So there’s still a lot of work to be done, but if ARX finds the right mechanics to make ARXercise fun, they could be making mega money in a few years.

I also tried a run-on-the-spot game which made me look as stupid as it sounds. Them cardio gains, though …

Grabity

Made by Team Ninja Thumbs

This is the most refined game I played at Chromacon, one that does side-scrolling multiplayer shooters like TowerFall and Crash Commando proud.

It’s a typical deathmatch setup, but the guns are sort-of magnets that can pick up and fire rocks and barrels lying around the map. Objects fired at you can also be deflected by an object your holding, making for some intense stand-offs. Do you take the first shot and risk leaving yourself exposed or do you wait for them to make a move and pounce? It’s deceptively simple but clever in its execution.

I would also like everyone to know that I was an absolute beast at this game. I crushed my enemies, and even though half of them were under the age of ten, they will grow up knowing the face of their superior.

DOGO

Made by Pixel Barons

Another deceptively-simple-but-bloody-clever multiplayer idea, DOGO puts the player in control of numerous platforming characters of the same colour. Your goal is to convert other players’ followers by jumping on their heads. The most people converted within the time limit wins, or if one player does a complete hostile takeover.

This mechanic of stomping your beliefs onto others like some Super Mario Scientologist leads to some incredibly enjoyable chaos. Even if you’re down to one person against an army of unconverted, a game can instantly swing back into your favour with a few good jumps. To keep the gameplay varied, the levels have their own unique twists to them. The one I played started off simple enough before everything flipped upside down and players could Pac-Man their way from the bottom of the screen to the top.

This is easily the best faith-based game I’ve ever played.


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