Looking for some excitement and adventure this weekend? You’ve come to the right place.
Welcome back to another installment of Off the Radar, a column where we uncover the best shows, movies, music and games you should be checking out with your two and a half days of respite.
Here’s how it works: Week after week, I test a TON of products – everything from fantastic-sounding headphones and Bluetooth speakers, to the latest and greatest TVs and video game consoles. While I’m writing these reviews I consume a lot of content. (I know, I know, it’s a hard job but someone has to do it.) And rather than hoard all those great shows/movies/music/games, I want to share all those recommendations with you.
This weekend should be all about breaking away from the norm and, if you have a free hour or two, going out on an adventure. To that end, all of my recommendations this week are adventure themed – Raiders of the Lost Ark, Uncharted The Lost Legacy and, ironically, a band called Adventure plus loads more of completely undiscovered electronic music.
So, not sure what do this weekend? Watch Raiders, play some Uncharted and then go out there and explore this massive, mysterious planet we call home.
Watch: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a crash course in adventuring that everyone needs to take at some point in their life. Well over three decades after its cinematic release, the film remains an action blockbuster of the biggest proportions starring a younger, rasher Harrison Ford, the loveable rogue Karen Allen and John Rhys-Davies well-before he donned his dwarven gear for the role of Gimli in The Lord of the Rings.
Said simply, even after 30 years and one not-so-great sequel Indiana Jones remains the epitome of adventure.
And heck, even the act of watching Raiders is an adventure. Since the film can’t be found on the traditional shores of your Netflix queue, you’ll have to venture elsewhere to find it.
Here in the US, that spot is the less well-traveled Amazon Prime Video app on Roku, though those in the UK might have to turn to even less traditional sources like Google Play Movies and TV to get their Indie fix.
Here’s the good news: When you’re finished with Raiders, Amazon is also playing host to both the film’s sequels, The Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade, plus the made-for-TV movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (I'm kidding, I'm kidding. The Crystal Skull wasn’t that bad.)
You can stream Raiders of the Lost Ark right now on Amazon Prime here in the US, or on Google Play Movies & TV in the UK.
Play: Uncharted The Lost Legacy
Keeping with the adventure theme, this weekend’s video game recommendation is Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, a standalone game set in the Uncharted universe that’s every bit as good as the main games, even without the series’ lead character Nathan Drake.
The game officially came out Tuesday, and the staff here at TechRadar has fallen head over heels for it. Our AU editor Stephen Lambrechts used words like beautiful and wide-open to describe the game in his preview that ran back in July, while our UK Home Entertainment editor Jon Porter equated the game to an extra verse from your favorite song.
My take on Chloe and Nadine’s spin-off adventure is that Naughty Dog took a risk on releasing a game that didn’t star the familiar faces in the franchise – and that’s fantastic. Taking characters out of Drake’s shadow and giving them an adventure of their own will only breathe new life in this series.
Uncharted The Lost Legacy is available now on PS4 and can be downloaded via the PlayStation Store or purchased on Amazon
Listen to: Electronic music on SoundCloud
2017 has played hosts to some great albums – Imagine Dragons’ third album Evolve has been getting a lot of play, Lorde ventured into the topics of hedonism and love in Melodrama and Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN works when played both forwards and in reverse.
But, instead of focusing on one of those already famous superstars this week, I thought we’d go off the beaten path to see what sites like SoundCloud (the equivalent of the audio world’s vast, untamed badlands) had to offer.
Without high expectations or a solid game plan of where to look, I spent time this week just digging through SoundCloud’s vast library of electronic music, starting with artists like Adventure (particularly befitting for this week’s column) and Jauz and then finishing with one of my favorite artists of 2017, Marshmello, who just dropped a new collaboration with Khalid called Silence.
The song mixes ambient overtones with subsonic bass and a driving melody, and the result is just undeniably catchy. If you need a song to rock out to at the end of a long day of adventuring, this one’s it.
Marshmello’s latest single, Silence, is available to stream now on SoundCloud
That’s it for this week! Like what I'm laying down? Disappointed by my picks? Send me some feedback at Nick [dot] Pino [at] Futurenet [dot] com.
