A Good Day To Try: Showdown Effect Free Weekend

Have you ever wanted to dive out of a window to avoid an explosion, while throwing a sword at a ninja? I tried it once but landed badly and ended up with a nasty crick in my neck. It's the kind of antic that might look amazing when performed by a sinewy star of the silver screen, but my body just isn't made for that kind of showboating. Even my beard and the confetti in my hair weren't cushion enough to break the fall. Perhaps that's why I enjoy playing an action movie archetype in Arrowhead's multiplayer murder 'em up, The Showdown Effect. My own feeble frame remains safe, even as my avatar slices, dices and explodes. If you've steered clear but have an interest, now is the time to try. Free this weekend and currently discounted to £1.99.

I'd quite like to watch a decent action movie tonight. Preferably something relatively new rather than digging back through the eighties again. It's dangerous to dig in the eighties - I end up finding Human League CDs and that's an entire weekend gone in a haze of eyeliner and cocktails.

A couple of months ago, I was on a twelve hour flight, I'd read everything I'd brought in my carry-on luggage and I'd seen most of the films available on the tiny, glitchy screen crammed into the seat in front of me. I made the terrible mistake of watching some of Olympus Has Fallen. Fifteen minutes in I felt like my brain had been punched so hard that it had turned into an angry jelly. I couldn't finish it and yet, on the same flight, I did finish the latest Die Hard. That was morbid curiosity, which probably makes it worse. I spent an hour and a half staring at the twitching corpse of cinema, transfixed. Monstrous.