Jamie Dalzell - Writer, Critic & Journalist

Jamie Dalzell - Writer, Critic & Journalist "Wanderlust will be my undoing..." | Writer, Critic & Award-Nominated Journalist | Follow For Poetry, Rhymes & Writing

Ever since a digital athlete first set foot on a virtual pitch, sports videogames have been big business. It took a retu...
13/04/2026

Ever since a digital athlete first set foot on a virtual pitch, sports videogames have been big business. It took a return to cricket and, in turn, cricket’s many videogames over the summer for me to realise they’ve also become… incredibly dull.

Multi-million dollar development budgets? Motion capture? Big, back-of-the-box features? They make for great headlines, but few games have ever truly captured the blood-pumping, heart-thumping adrenaline rush that is sport at its best.

For that, you just need two buttons, impeccable timing, and the impossible odds of Stick Cricket.

Link in the comments 👉

I’ll hold you ’til the sun has set, and all that’s left are silhouettes...
02/04/2026

I’ll hold you ’til the sun has set, and all that’s left are silhouettes...

If Unreal Unearth was my album of 2023 — and it very much was — then “Unknown / Nth” was its devastatingly apt highlight...
11/02/2026

If Unreal Unearth was my album of 2023 — and it very much was — then “Unknown / Nth” was its devastatingly apt highlight: a song that soon became the soundtrack to a year spent simply wanting to be loved, to be seen, to be *known*.

It would be more than a year before I listened to Hozier again, braving the most familiar of swine at Spark Arena for reasons both wretched and divine, searching for something close to… absolution? Deliverance? Recompense? I wasn’t quite sure.

What I’m sure of now, looking back, is that a lot can happen in a year. You can grow. You can heal. And you can watch the man responsible for the song that shook you to your fu***ng *core* perform it live and find it just… doesn’t hurt anymore.

Or, if you’re Hozier, you can earn your first No. 1 single and be named Billboard Comeback Artist of the Year despite never actually, truly going away. It turns out some people really are better unknown, but Hozier? He isn’t one of them.

Link in the comments 👉

I can’t do it, guys. I just can’t do it. No matter how hard I try, I can’t stay mad at this ant. She really has tried he...
10/12/2025

I can’t do it, guys. I just can’t do it. No matter how hard I try, I can’t stay mad at this ant. She really has tried her best, you know. She’s hauled grass planks; she’s flailed, fought, and parried; and she’s skittered through the undergrowth at pace, delivering me to safety *almost* as many times as she’s gotten me killed. She’s a chaotic mess, then. But she’s my chaotic mess, dammit!

I didn’t expect to care *quite* this much about Grounded 2’s new mounts — or Grounded 2 itself, for that matter — but that’s just one of many surprises I stumbled on during my time among the sticks, stones, and shrubbery of Brookhollow Park.

Thoughts 👉 www.jamiedalzell.com/videogames/grounded-2-a-boy-and-his-bug/

For you, I would have swallowed the sea
25/11/2025

For you, I would have swallowed the sea

Shine so bright you make the stars jealous
23/11/2025

Shine so bright you make the stars jealous

Thoughts from my notes app in November
19/11/2025

Thoughts from my notes app in November

These clear skies are hard won
17/11/2025

These clear skies are hard won

I can't quite shake the feeling people will forget about Thunderbolts*. In-universe, and out. In many ways, it feels lik...
06/11/2025

I can't quite shake the feeling people will forget about Thunderbolts*. In-universe, and out. In many ways, it feels like one of those "You know what I haven't rewatched in a while?" kinda films. One of those "My favourite might actually be..." superhero flicks. A "You know what was actually pretty good?" suggestion in a ranking discussion amongst friends some years from now.

That's... assuming they knew it existed in the first place. If box office figures are anything to go by, there are likely plenty who don't. But then, I can think of few things more fitting for a ragtag group of wannabe heroes than being eternally unsung.

So it's forgettable, then. But in this era of Marvel, I'll take forgettable. I'll take 'fine'. I'll take a fun, frolicking, found-family road trip of a film. Does it move us much closer to whatever the end of the Multiverse Saga holds? Hardly. Do I care? Not really. It's messy. It's makeshift. It's ramshackle. It's a side-story, then — a novella of a film, if you will. And it might just be the best thing Marvel has produced in years, even if its fate, like its heroes, is to be forgotten.

Thoughts 👉 www.jamiedalzell.com/movies/thunderbolts

And when he comes, we will prattle on like old friends
05/11/2025

And when he comes, we will prattle on like old friends

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