Live your best weekend with our weekly roundup of the hottest albums, movies, games and apps
The Sims hit Star Wars, get The Chase quiz on your phone, check out the best motorbike movies and let Vika and Linda soothe your soul: we’ve got your weekend covered.
SmartDaily
Don't miss out on the headlines from SmartDaily. Followed categories will be added to My News.
GAMING
THE SIMS 4 STAR WARS: JOURNEY TO BATUU, with Alice Clarke
Overall: *** 1/2
Available now on: PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One Price: 39.95
Reviewed on: Microsoft Surface Book 3 Out now.
ALTHOUGH you can’t go to Disneyland from Australia right now, that doesn’t mean you have to completely go without visiting Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. Well, as long as you’re OK with only having your likeness going as a Sim, and there not being any rides.
Star Wars: Journey To Batuu is the latest Game Pack for The Sims 4, and it is wildly different to all that have gone before it.
It’s not The Sims first foray into Star Wars: there’s been some free outfits and decorative items since EA acquired the Star Wars licence, but this is the first time The Sims 4 has gone to a fully licensed location.
Being a Game Pack, it’s placed about halfway between a Stuff Pack and an Expansion Pack for activities. There is a whole new world you can visit on holiday, but you can’t build a house and live there as you would in a neighbourhood.
There’s plenty to do in Batuu outside your Sim’s usual life: join the resistance, learn to cook, build a droid, get a lightsabre and generally explore. There’s no simoleons here, but you can still make friends with strangers and (occasionally, if you’re lucky) stormtroopers by repeatedly making terrible jokes. You can go on lots of related, themed missions and even build sims with a penchant for exploring in the create a sim, but Darth Vader won’t be coming to Willow Creek. What happens in Batuu, stays in Batuu.
But the whole time I was playing, it just felt like I was in a different game. EA has been criticised for not doing as much with the Star Wars licence as fans expected, and this feels like an executive said “well, we’ve got to do something”. Having a Star Wars themed location immediately feels like you’re playing self-insert Star Wars fanfiction. That’s not a bad thing, I certainly used the Vampire expansion for Carmilla fanfiction, and magic for Wynonna Earp and Legends of Tomorrow. But they’re open ended enough that you can do anything. Such branded content really limits play, and feels out of the spirit of The Sims.
Bottom line: Star Wars fans will love it, but for general Sims fans: this is not the Game Pack you’re looking for.
APP TO DATE, with Jennifer Dudley Nicholson
READLY
$14.99/m, iOS/Android
If you’re a big magazine fan, this app could save you a lot of money and a lot of space. As its name suggests, Readly offers plenty of reading material — it gives users access to more than 5000 magazines for a monthly subscription price, and that includes plenty of Australian titles, such as Marie Claire, Who, and The Australian Women’s Weekly. Users can nominate their interests to get recommendations, and quickly access their downloaded faves.
EDISON MAIL
Free, Apple iOS/ Google Android
Messages are like that Smash Mouth lyric — emails “start coming and they don’t stop coming” — and the Edison Mail app is designed to help you regain control of them. It will let you compile multiple accounts in one place, show you what it deems to be high-priority messages, let you unsubscribe from lists in a tap, and automatically sorts out your bills, packages, and subscriptions.
REFACE
Free, Apple iOS/ Google Android
If you’ve seen your friends’ faces appear in unexpected places lately, there’s a big chance this app has made it happen. Reface uses advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence to achieve the most superficial of technical feats: make it look like you starred in Iron Man or a UFC fight. New videos are uploaded daily into which you can insert your own selfie, and subscriptions are available if you tire of the ads.
THE CHASE
$2.99, iOS/Android
Whether you’re a fan of The Shark’s SMARTdaily quizzes or you just miss your pre-pandemic pub trivia, this app will get your brain ticking over again. The Chase Aus tralia app works just like the TV show on which it’s based, except it cuts out the ad breaks and banter. Players face a quick round of questions before facing off against a randomly selected expert, from Supernerd to Goliath, and must beat them in a playoff to claim virtual winnings.
WORLD’S END CLUB
$7.99/m, Apple iOS
This game feels like Scooby Doo meets The Goonies on a field trip to the apocalypse. The new Apple Arcade adventure follows a group of 12-year-old Japanese kids who encounter an accident during a class trip and wake up to a puzzling battle for survival in which their choices decide their fate. This 2D side-scrolling game is much more charming than you might expect of an app.
THE MOVIE MICRO BINGE, with Leigh Paatch
WHEELY GOOD
Feel the need to tear up some tarmac on two wheels from the safety of your couch? Here’s where to go to stream yourself some motorbike magic …
WAYNE
Rent only
* * *
This enjoyable documentary on pioneering Australian motorcycle racing ace Wayne Gardner is a fitting tribute to a bloke who rode as fast as he bloody well could, and had a blast while doing so. Gardner slowly ascended through the ranks — cheating death, courting luck and flouting convention en route — to become top dog in one of the most dangerous competitive sports on the planet.
THE GREAT ESCAPE
Stan or Rent
* * * *
Fact: the late acting great Steve McQueen was a total motorcycle nut.
Fiction: the true story on which this ripping WWII adventure was based did not involve any motorcycles whatsoever. So McQueen had a word in the screenwriters’ ears.
End result: one of the most iconic images in movie history, as McQueen pilots a Triumph TR6 Trophy over a barbed wire fence with the Nazis on his tail.
THE WORLD’S FASTEST INDIAN
SBS on Demand
* * * 1/2
In 1967, retired NZ mechanic Burt Munro (Anthony Hopkins) ventures to the US with his vintage 1920 motorcycle to break the world land speed record. Charming feel-good fare saved from a sickly sweet demise by a deceptively strong performance from Hopkins. Best scenes highlight Munro’s unorthodox modifications to his ride’s engine, which include the use of door hinges, bottle corks and paperclips!
NEEDING MORE?
THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES SBS ON DEMAND
BIKER BOYZ AMAZON OR RENT
TT: CLOSER TO THE EDGE DOCPLAY, STAN
TUNE IN, album reviews with Cameron Adams
VIKA & LINDA – SUNDAY
* * * *
We’ll look back on Vika and Linda Bull’s Sunday online gospel sessions as one of the salvations of iso. After an ARIA No. 1 with anthology Akilotoa, they’ve recorded vintage gospel tunes to take you to church when you press play. Paul Kelly joins for In the Land Where We’ll Never Grow Old and Kasey Chambers wrote the soul original, Shallow Grave. They also make Bridge Over Troubled Water sound fresh. Even if you’re an atheist or sinner, this is an instant mood boost and sonic purification.
PAUL EPWORTH – VOYAGER
* * * *
The producer/writer behind classics by Adele and Florence creates a cosmic prog-dance concept album. The title track is an intergalactic, instrumental house/trance epic up there with The Orb. The vocal guest list is immense: Kool Keith on the sci-fi soul of Distant Planets, Lianne La Havas is floating in outer space on 22nd Century, Jay Electronica and Dave Bayley from Glass Animals steer the space funk of Love Galaxy while the stunning Space Inc’s cosmic disco, with strings and all, is like an interstellar Pharrell Williams.
TRICKY – FALL TO PIECES
* * * 1/2
Last year UK sound innovator Tricky was devastated when his daughter, Mazy, died, aged just 24. This album is, understandably, dark and full of grief. With Polish vocalist Marta Zlakowska, it’s unusually short, with minimal songs having great impact. Thinking Of is gloomy synths. I’m In The Doorway and Fall Please are twisted pop songs (new ground for Tricky), while Hate This Pain, the first song written after his daughter passes, is a brutal real-time document of a father’s loss.
HAIKU HANDS – HAIKU HANDS
* * * 1/2
Local trio Haiku Hands are like early Bananarama with Peaches, Charli XCX and Nina Hagen subbed in. There’s a refreshingly anarchic electronic spirit on this debut. The Chic-flavoured ‘70s funk grooves on Jupiter are wildly infectious, Eat This Bass fires up DIY punky beats — bass is the fourth band member. Sofi Tukker guests on couture banger Fashion Model Art. Super Villain’s a monster perfect for when they can return to big crowds, balanced out by moody indie ballad Car Crash.