No Man's Sky: Explorer's Guide

If you can see through the cloud of hype and rage that the internet has generated around No Man's Sky and you have dreamt of exploring strange new worlds, then you might find a lot to enjoy, but where do you start? Helpful tips abound below fellow explorer!

Keep an eye out for our No Man's Sky Review in Issue 13 of Niche: Treat Your Geek!

Planet Scanners and Building Types

Looking for things to do or aiming for something specific? Then keep an eye out for stumpy little planet scanning doohickies, they have an orange beam of light shooting out the top and require Bypass Chips. Accessing one of these will give you four options of building types to scan for and you can use them as many times as you like, provided you have enough chips.

See the breakdown below:

Monolith – Alien Monolith or Plaque – good for learning languages

Colonial Outpost – Manufacturing Plant or Operations Centre – home to new blueprints (including rare atlas passes in ops centres)

Transmission- Transmission Tower, Observatory or Beacon, eventually leads to crashed ships, alien ruins, or an outpost with a sentient species.

Shelter – Shelter or Drop pod – basic building to hide from the elements or a place to upgrade your suit inventory – for a price.

Be Prepared

Before setting out on an adventure be sure to pack appropriately. Once you’ve repaired your ship you will probably be looking to set out and explore but it’s a good idea to be prepared. If you’re sticking on the planet try to keep hold of a stack of zinc or titanium to replenish your hazard protection should you need it. You’ll also need to power your life support and multitool so take a stack of oxide, carbon is easy to find but plutonium is much more efficient. This should leave space for anything rare or valuable. You mostly won't need to carry carbon or iron as they can be found pretty much anywhere. If you’re heading into space always have a ship slot full of plutonium and one of thamium9 to make sure you can power your engines, if you can’t find thamium planetside it’s abundant in asteroids. You should also have enough to recharge your weapons and it’s a good idea to have a stack of zinc/iron/titanium to replenish your shield (which you’ll need to do manually) if you get attacked. Once you have charged one of your systems make a note to collect more of the required resource and stay topped up. Warp cells are handy to have but I try to avoid using them all at once in case I find a ship I want to swap to so that I don't waste any engine charge.

The Atlas Path (no spoilers)

If you want to add a bit of story and guidance to your adventure then keep an eye out for some of the wreckage when you first start, there’s a sizeable orb with a red ooze inside it, you’ll know you found the right one when it asks you to follow it.

Flying in Atmosphere

Once you’ve located a place of interest you’ll be able to see how far away it is or at least how long it will take to reach at your current speed, which can be a little confusing as you might think things are getting further away as you slow down.
This is particularly obvious when you first enter the atmosphere as your ship travels much faster in space even with basic engines (that’s physics for you). If anything is around 5 minutes away at full boost you might want to consider climbing into orbit to gain speed and then accelerate towards the ground, don’t worry you won’t crash, the game won't let you.
If you’re heading somewhere even further away then head up until you can activate the pulse drive, I’d recommend aiming a little above the marker you're aiming for so that you don’t get any planetary interference until you are directly above your target. It takes a little skill to judge that point as the marker will disappear below you but pull it off and you’ll feel like an ace pilot.

Jetpacking Across the Universe

At first the jetpack feels a little lame, a short boost directly up doesn’t help out much, but there are two tricks you can use to get more out of it.
Firstly if you want to get higher, scale a large cliff or resource pillar, move as close as possible and walk into the wall, then boost the jetpack, keep the button held in. You’ll make it to the top because the game seems to recognise that wall as a floor and your jetpack recharges as you climb, you’ll get much higher than just boosting through the air.
The second tip is harder to master but will really speed up your exploration, start sprinting then hit the melee attack (R1 on PS4) and immediately activate the jetpack, if you have a clear run you’ll boost forward, gliding through the air much faster than sprinting. It seems the momentum behind your punch carries you forward, not sure on the physics of that one but it's a welcome boost.

A Place for Everything

To make your resource gathering more efficient and enjoyable you’ll need to keep an eye on your inventory. Luckily once you can't carry any more you can hit the Triangle button to send items to your ship.
A little hint, each slot in your ship holds 500 units, your suit slots only hold 250. To maximise your usage, only send resources to your ship once you have over 250 units of it. For things like warp cells and the green trading items, I like to keep them on me to free up the larger ship slots.
If you need to recharge equipment pick from your least useful resource or one you have a smaller amount of so that it frees up a slot sooner (of course keep hold of the materials you are saving for upgrades). Sending items to your ship is very useful but be careful, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve sent things back only to need them seconds later (stupid radioactive storms).

Boom!

Once you get the grenade upgrade, install it. Not so useful for combat but great at breaking down reinforced doors, mining 300 Iron in seconds or for breaking out of caves.

Like a Leaf on the Wind

There’s not been many games with space flight for the last one or two console generations but I do not remember them being as skittish and sensitive as in No Man's Sky. You might find things much easier if you turn down the flight control sensitivity in the options. I have mine set to 30 and now I can actually shoot things.
If you still find your ship to be uncontrollable it might be because you’re travelling so fast, hit the brakes, make sure distant stars look like dots and not streaks, and try again. Unless you want to feel like an ace pilot pulling off risky high speed manoeuvres…

Ain't no need to watch where I'm goin'

I'd also recommend that once you get to your second system, check the map and hit square on your first system, this should help you see how far you've come and make it back if you ever want to... in the current version of the game it's pretty difficult to back track

On-Screen Tips

You may feel a little lost at first, particularly trying to discover, install and fuel your warp drive as you may have to go to the space station and back to the planet a few times without that being particularly clear. Keep an eye on the bottom right of your screen for tips on where to go next.

All Da Elementz

Resources come in 5 major groups, Oxide, Isotope, Silicate, Neutral, Precious. You’ll learn how to find them as you play, possibly needing to rely on plant life for your first planet, like I did.

Isotopes – Carbon; most plants, trees, mushrooms, Thamium9; Orange flowers or most small asteroids, Plutonium; red crystals, sometimes found in/near caves.

Oxides – Zinc; yellow flowers, Iron; pretty much everywhere, Titanium; yellow crystals, rare asteroids, sentinels.

Silicate – Platinum; blue flowers, Heridium, Chrysonite.

Neutral – Aluminium, Copper, Nickel, Gold, Emeril, Iridium

A bunch of the above elements appear as large mettallic lumps or pillars such as: Aluminium (silver crest), nickel (rounded column), Copper (tinted rounded column), Heridium (black obelisk bluish streaks), gold (giant gold nuggets), Emeril(similar to gold but slightly green). You can also find green crystal formations of Gold or Emeril.

Some elements are more likely to be found in certain environments, such as Chrysonite ( a blue crystal) on extreme cold planets, other exotic materials can only be found on extreme environment planets too.

There are items to find too, most come in various containers but things like Albumen Pearls, Gravitino Balls and Vortex Cubes require you press square to pick up, and they can’t be scanned, they also happen to summon sentinels, so be careful.

It's all Greek

Upgrade levels for equipment aren’t a simple “level 1” or “MKI”, instead we have Greek letters Sigma, Tau, Theta and Omega, which stand for higher level upgrades in that order, oddly not the order of the Greek alphabet. My Greek is a little rusty so it took me awhile to figure that out, mostly by looking at how expensive the upgrade is to build… but also internet, so helpful.


Check out part two for more! Or use the tags below to find our other NMS content.

Any questions, leave them below!

Lego Avengers and the Fall of Marvel's Cinematic Universe: "Get a pic, Do a Blog, Heroes are over with!"

A new Lego Marvel game came out in January this year, you might have read a review by some handsome fella…(Niche: Treat Your Geek Issue 13). Playing through that game with nigh on 300 characters (not counting DownLoadable Content) you get some sense of the scale of the Marvel Universe, even without the X-men, Fantastic 4 and Spider-man.

The thing is, having all these characters in one place highlights a few disconnects, a few cracks in Marvel’s grand Cinematic Universe.

The first thing you might notice is the absence of any characters from the Netflix series’. Now I wouldn’t expect the target audience for Jessica Jones to be the same one as a Lego game, but would a few alternative costumes have caused any kind of problem? Marvel may want to keep some separation between its family friendly content and the darker stuff, but how far does that go? If it extends to the movies, what is the point in having a shared universe if these characters can never meet? I’d love to see the Netflix Defenders show up in Infinity War, but I'm starting to think it’s unlikely.

The problem trying to tie the TV shows to the movies extends further… you can see it in the game… Agent Coulson gives you some hints while exploring and there’s a bunch of Agents of SHIELD references. A retired Agent Carter also gives you a good number of missions where she remembers a time when she had that very fine hat, complete with references to her TV show. Some of these are subtle inside jokes, but others could leave players wondering “Are we supposed to know who/what that is?”. This highlights just how much backstory the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) already has, yet so much of it is inaccessible to the movies. People already complain that a slight ex machina plot-hole in Age of Ultron was filled by an episode of Agents of SHIELD.

On a related note, the whole cinematic universe is becoming massive and Marvel is doing a good job spanning different movie genres. But at what point does the whole thing become so wide and varied that fans only watch their favourite characters or favourite genres? I'm sure this is already happening to some degree and it makes the whole team up movie balancing act that much more difficult. When Infinity War begins will movie-goers need to have seen 100 hours of MCU content to make sense of it? Or just the previous Avengers movies?

You’ll also see characters from each of Marvel’s current Disney XD cartoons, it seems to be the reason for including characters such as Red Hulk and A-Bomb, (one or two Guardians of The Galaxy characters also make an appearance but these are comic book versions, not from the film or cartoon) and a few others that seem like slightly odd inclusions even considering the vast comic book history of the Avengers. There are versions of Nova, Luke Cage and Iron Fist with at least one of them seemingly based on the Ultimate Spider-Man version, White Tiger also makes an appearance and even shares a voice actor with her animated counterpart which makes it even stranger that there’s still no Spider-Man, just his team. (UPDATE: A free add on has been released featuring the webbed wonder, it's awesome but then they cant just add DLC to the movies)

The Spider-man problem extends to the movies. Now there is a deal with Sony to bring Spider-man into the MCU but this emphasises the accessibility problem, adding an extra layer of movies for fans to follow and it still remains to be seen how cordoned off the Sony properties will be. There's also the chance that the Sony led films don’t hold up to the appeal and quality of the Marvel Studios movies, alienating more fans from a considerable slice of the shared universe. It’s great to see Spidey amongst other Marvel characters but it’s still to be seen if this partnership will be smooth sailing or not.
What would this mean for other properties? If Fox ever gave up the rights to Fantastic Four and X-men, this could be everything fans have dreamt of but it could make the whole shared universe concept pretty unwieldy. By the time those rights revert to Marvel the superhero movie bubble may even have popped anyway and I’d expect Marvel to start utilising some more obscure properties to branch even further from the so called super hero genre than they already have. I mean we’ve already seen traditional superhero action movies, the big event team ups but also a space opera, some World War II action, a political thriller and a heist movie. Im still hoping for a Thor movie to go high fantasy rather than the Dr Who stylings of Dark World.

The other worry is that with such a large chain of films, is the MCU only as strong as its weakest link? Would one complete stinker of a movie torpedo the entire Universe?

This massive shared universe is a great achievement but as a fan I can see some of the drawbacks and challenges, some of this worries me and I feel like I see the first cracks appearing before the MCU collapses under its own weight.

But then again, from another perspective the MCU is the strongest it has ever been with a massive breadth of characters and some pretty distinctive/unique ones on the way (Black Panther, Dr Strange, Captain Marvel). There’ll be something for everyone spanning several genres, the state of the team-up movies and the universe as a whole may become less important as people focus on the parts they enjoy, and I'm not so sure that’s a bad thing.

And for those that say they are tiring of Marvel's cookie cutter approach... here's a picture of some cookies... all the same shape, but so many delicious flavours.

Macaroons count as cookies right?

How Civil War makes Age of Ultron a Better Movie

Captain America: Civil War (CW) performed well at box office and pleased fans and critics alike. It actually put the latest Big Event Marvel Movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron (AOU) to shame… but one thing you might not have noticed is that CW actually makes AOU a better movie. Granted this would mean watching films over again and out of chronological order, but as a Marvel fan that was probably going to happen anyway, wasn’t it?

The major conflict in CW is between Iron Man and Captain America, the breakdown of their relation provided an emotional core to the film (“He’s my friend…”) but seeing this play out adds context to the events of Age Of Ultron. Civil War also puts more weight into these friends’ feelings, as overall I think it handles characterisation much better. If you take all this with you when you watch AOU  again, you start to notice the bond between Cap and Tony more and you dread what’s coming. It also means that anytime in the film that they disagree you get a flash of that future as AOU borrows the emotion of CW.

People had problems with Black Widow in AOU, big problems. Personally, I felt I understood her and how she would have at least believed she had feelings for Banner… I did think we had moved past damsels in distress though. In CW, Natasha seems to to be back on form and she has a clear bond with both teams, illustrated by callbacks to her appearances in Iron Man 2, Captain America: Winter Soldier and Avengers. This bond allows her to see the argument from both sides and apart from Tony she’s the only sign that Iron Man’s team has a conscience/doubt about what they are doing. Bearing this in mind AOU becomes a transformative phase for Black Widow as she struggles with the monstrous things she has done in the past and looks for a reason to fight going forward. I could even go as far as to say her relationship with Banner was just a reflection of, or a metaphor for, how she sees herself, the Hulk leaving at the end of Age of Ultron becomes a new start for Nat.

Civil War lends a personal cost to the events in Sokovia, the fact that it in part prompted the accords shows how serious the situation was… yet there didn’t seem much time spent on this in AOU, you kind of assume that everyone survived and an already, mostly ruined down town disappears off the map but the world is saved, so no problem… seeing the future lets you see it in an all new light. It would have been a powerful moment to see the Avengers fail at saving even one person, the events of Civil War try to make up for this.

Having an extra film -full of content means we get to see more of the characters, naturally, but CW is also filled with little in-character touches (like the ones we saw in Avengers) and I wish we’d seen more in AOU. An extra two and a half hours of time with our heroes does mean we know them better and care for them more than we did before Age of Ultron, taking that with us means we see more rounded and familiar characters in the film (AOU) than we did the first time. On a similar note, these little touches also add to our picture of the team dynamic for the previous film.

I’m deducting points for this next one: Even through all the trauma and guilt that Scarlet Witch faced in Civil War, she didn’t seem to be thinking of her brother… it hasn’t been that long and there’s no sign of how she feels about losing him. Maybe she knows something we done and maybe we can pretend he’s still alive based on this “evidence”.

Watching Civil War you get more of a look at Tony Stark's character, and you see some themes that might not have been obvious before. CW highlights Tony's attachment to the team, and how much they mean to him, it's even clearer that he thinks of them as family... all of a sudden the vision of dead Avengers that Stark sees in AOU becomes more powerful and you can see how it could have made him panic and act irrationally.
Civil War also gives us a look at Tony's family, and he admits that he is still trying to cope with their loss, bearing this in mind and looking at other MCU films you can see that Tony has attempted to fill that void by becoming dependent on several different things, always replacing one with something new. In the first Iron Man movie he uses women, until his feelings for Pepper, a near death experience and discovering his weapons are sold to terrorists put things into perspective, then in Iron Man 2 he turns to alcohol rather than facing the problem. Iron Man 3 and things are slipping as he's dealing with his insignificance in the vastness of the universe. He focuses on his suits until he realises that isn't the answer and blows them up, he still calls himself Iron Man, maybe playing hero adds to his self worth and having Pepper seems like enough. Then AOU happens, he's terrified of losing his “family” and blames himself, and no matter what he has to be the one to put things right... this family bond is clearer after viewing CW. After abandoning Pepper to go play hero and nearly causing the end of the world in Age of Ultron, Civil War sees Tony with nothing left, except from that family and now he'll do anything to keep it together, even blindly agreeing to the Sokovia Accords and refusing to recognise that Cap is on a different mission. Once you know how much Stark depends on the Avengers, AOU makes more sense... an already fragile man sees that he is going to cause the end of the one thing that keeps him going... he might try anything to protect it.

There you have it, just like the Avengers themselves the movies are all stronger when they stand together.

Think of anything I've missed? Maybe you disagree? Let me know in the comments, and for more Marvel Content, including our Civil War Debate, check out the Marvel label/tag and our other blog posts!

Heads Up: Marvel TV on Sky Boxsets, NOWTV and Virgin Media

Following our review of Marvel's Agent Carter in Niche: Treat Your Geek Issue 12, the entire first series is now available through several providers. So if the review piqued your interest or you're looking for something with a unique aesthetic and Marvel flavour, it's now easier to go check it out!

If you fancy giving Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. a second chance, you'll also find seasons 1-3 available, just in time to get caught up before season 4 starts in September (for the US at least).

Niche Plays: Con Man; The Game

Fresh out this week, there may be a few of you wanting to give this free mobile game a try.
Based on the mini series of the same name this is a game featuring geek icons such as Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk and a few other familiar faces.



The game takes a familiar  mobile genre of building up a business adding stalls and keeping customers happy and reskins it in all the geeky goodness of conventions. Essentially, this is a comic con management simulator/tycoon!

Finally YOU can choose the extra wide aisles, hold the cosplay competitions indoors and ensure there are plenty of refreshments... not that I'm thinking of any particular band of intrepid con reviewers.

Maybe this could be the mobile game to break my Avengers Academy addiction, stay tuned for a full review.

Have Your Say: Games as Art

Thanks to some downright beautiful games lately (Valkyria Chronicles, Unravel), I've been thinking about this age old debate.

I'd like to know which games you would consider as art, from photo-realistic vistas to simple stylised graphics, from finely crafted narratives to meticulous level design; what have been your stand out games?

 I'm looking for a discussion but to get us started I'm going to put forward the Trine franchise, there's something about the fantastical backgrounds in these games that take me back, it could be the covers of several fantasy novels, or some half forgotten concept art but the style is magical and somehow unreal,

I still find myself lingering in certain areas long after I've completed a puzzle. Plus anything that riffs off of Lost Vikings get's my vote.


Do you have a favourite example?

Leave a comment and the best ones will find their way into the magazine... see your name in print!

No Man's Sky X Space Dandy: Cold and Alone, Baby!

 For those not familiar with Space Dandy the anime was reviewed back in Issue 7 of Niche: Treat Your Geek and both seasons are available on Netflix. Anyhoo, Dandy is the perfect guest writer to bring you misadventures in No Man's Sky, the space exploration game from Hello Games.

Stories from No Man's Sky featuring Space Dandy: he's a dandy guy, in space. He combs the galaxy, like his pompadour, on the hunt for aliens. Planet after planet he searches, discovering bizarre new creatures, both friendly and not. These are the spectacular adventures of Space Dandy and (without) his brave space crew... in space.

------------ Transmission Incoming ------------

Huh?... wha?... well this is... inconvenient. Must have been some night, wakin' up on this cold, frozen planet. No sign of QT or that free-loading cat... it's quiet but I'm missin' a ship, this rust bucket certainly ain't the Aloha Oe. I've been through worse, sure, but there better be a BooBies on this planet, baby!

Some blob said it would help if I followed the way of Atlas, but the only way is the Dandy way baby and man this planet is crawlin' with unregistered aliens, I can upload 'em for credits, no registration centre needed, scanner's damn better than that ol' bucket of bolts too.

There's a butt load of plants and shiny rocks here, luckily I was once a master survivalist AND a leading starship engineer before becoming an alien hunter, there should be enough here to survive and get that ship running. After single handedly taking care of some particularly aggressive looking rocks and trees, I had what I needed to blow this joint!

Found a freakin' space station in orbit, somethin' oddly familiar, can't shake a feelin' I'm about to get electroshocked by some yellow mouse. Kudos on the giant orb though.

Some dude on the station told me of a way to get the hyperdrive up n'runnin', just as I was considering the impact this tech could have on my hairline an emergency signal came through. Finally, signs of potentially hot life, it has to be a babe in distress, they all want Dandy baby!

Heroically blastin' back into atmo, I headed for the callin' beauty in my... dude, this isn't the ship I came in on!? Must have picked up a new one, no worries, booty awaits!

Well, this is a disappointing outpost, definitely not BooBies. 

I dashingly announce myself “Dandy is here, baby!”. 

Gah!... no babes! … no booty!... some severe looking guy, calls himself Lt Tug, didn't ask how he got that name. Anyways, now Dandy has the final piece of the hyperdrive puzzle, baby! BooBies here I come!

------------ Transmission Complete ------------

We're expecting future updates from Dandy in the future (duh)! Feel free to share your No Man's Sky exploits and failures below!

As this Dandy travels the cosmos you might see his discoveries within the game, follow him on PS4 as Real_Space_Dandy and while you're there, check out the Niche: Treat Your Geek PS4 Community (search for us under the community tab of the PS4 menu).

Please note Space Dandy and No Man's Sky are properties of their respective owners and not owned by Niche. Article intended for entertainment purposes only.

Niche Plays: Incoming Transmission...

As I'm deep into No Man's Sky and working on the review, you might have noticed there's no "Niche Plays" this week.

At least not yet, we might have another guest lined up... stay tuned.

Cartoons Are For Kids: East vs West

Think about your favourite anime shows... how many of those would you say were appropriate for kids? or directed at adults? Now do the same but for the more local animations, I say local, anything with a UK/USA/western origin... how do they compare?

I might not have the widest experience of anime but I feel like you're much more likely to find a mature anime than any western animation. I see anime such as Attack on Titan or Steins;Gate and they're full of adult themes, real emotion and developed characters... then I see things such as Family Guy and South Park and... well, you start to get my point (hopefully).

Animation for grown-ups still seems to be difficult for western creators/mainstream audiences, perhaps there's still a perception that "cartoons are for kids". Even these more adult themed series have a certain immaturity and tend to rely on a degree of shock value. I can't even think of any that have a particularly high standard of animation, the art is used to create the controversial rather than the fantastic.

I'm not trashing all animation spawned from western culture, there's plenty of Disney productions that are designed to appeal to both adults and kids, even the American Dads and Bojack Horsemans of this world have their niche and their dedicated/justified fans. I just cant help but think that we are missing an opportunity to create fantastic worlds and far fetched (but believable) stories that wouldn't work in live action, at least not without a massive budget.

On balance I am aware there's plenty of anime that rely on giant boobs or gory action and more than a few that don't reach the mature artistic heights I'm expecting from western studios.

I've admitted I may have a relatively narrow experience compared to some of our readers, so I'm more than happy to accept counter arguments or examples. I'm sure there has to be something out there. Leave a comment and let me know.

Is This The Greatest Lemmings Game Ever?

I've recently been playing Lemmings Touch on PS Vita, but I started to notice something, the same basic formula keeps coming back. There's a version of lemmings on nearly every platform, maybe with updated controls or a slight graphical boost, but the one I really want to play has disappeared.

People have been using the same eight lemming skills for decades now, it's about time for a change.

Bring back Lemmings 2: The Tribes!

The same gameplay that has survived the test of time, but the only game in the franchise that I remember having story elements; unite the tribes, complete the stone tablet and save the world... it added an extra incentive to save as many lemmings as possible, and not just scrape though with a lone survivor and move on, like I usually would.

Each tribe had its own theme, this included the terrain of the level, the look and sound of the lemmings and the super catchy background music. It helped to keep the game fresh, plus if you got stumped on a level you could switch to another tribe and see how far you could get with them.

The thing I really miss though is all the other lemming abilities, being able to laser through ceilings, fire bows and arrows, run, leap and pole vault over obstacles, pouring glue, filler and sand everywhere was always fun too. I'm not sure I ever got the hang of the likes of Super Lem and the hang-glider but being able to blow lemmings and environmental objects around with the fan tool added an extra level to the gameplay. There were also more dynamic hazards. A Westie dog in the highland levels and one of the space levels featured a Walker (last seen in my retro review in issue 9 of Niche: Treat Your Geek) , both attacked your lemmings as they walked past.

This brings me on to another feature sadly absent from recent iterations, sandbox levels! With so many new skills to master and the fan mechanic to get to grips with the game provides practice areas with no goal to reach, each level allowed you to pick whichever skills you want and then go test them out, you could perfect the timing of your pole vaulters or just see how many dumb ways to die you could find.

Sine then the Lemmings franchise has experimented with other gimmicks, revolving stages, motion or touch controls, 3D (graphics and stereoscopic viewing) but never have I seen it innovate like it did with Lemmings 2. I'm afraid any new game is going to become a case of "oh no, not more lemmings". I cant think of any other franchise that has missed this kind of opportunity. I want a new game to innovate by being like the old game! Is that too much to ask?

Do you have any fond lemming related memories? Maybe you know of another game that cut features as the franchise went on? Let me know in the comments, or share the article and let's bring back the tribes!

Noob Reviews: X-Files (Season 1)

Hey, do you like procedural crime dramas? Maybe some of those paranormal myth busting programmes? What if somebody combined the two?

X-files plays out a bit like a backwards Jonathan Creek, after much investigation it's discovered that there isn't a clever explanation at all and it is in fact a monster/alien/government conspiracy. It's almost like someone had been watching Gravity Falls, travelled back in time 20ish years and created a more grown up version.

The first series is getting dated, even more than some niche staffers (BURN!), horror elements and special effects don't have the impact I expect they had first time round. On the plus side Molder and Scully are younger and somehow still crush worthy despite the best efforts of 90's fashion. Their relationship and the growing alien mystery keep things moving even through some of the weaker "monster of the week" type episodes.

Recommended for watchin' with no lights on, while dans la maison...

...And I did not know that song referenced Sailor Moon, apparently it's got the boom anime babes....

(Awkward pause as I realise half our readers only know Barenaked Ladies because of The Big Bang Theory)