Category: Reviews

This magic hour is cherished by photographers and filmmakers for the quality of the warm natural light that enhances images with a dreamy, nostalgic glow. It’s a fleeting moment that many visitors find inspiring, as it casts our world in a transient beauty that’s perfect for creating emotive imagery. 

– The Magic Hour Destination Guide description

It’s taken me a couple of visits to The Magic Hour in order to write about it – the first being a brief hop in mid-June, and the second at the end of the month; ergo, I’m hoping this piece doesn’t arrive shortly before the region gets a make-over – if it does, my apologies to Six (SixDigital), the region’s creator, and to those visiting and expecting to find it as described here.

Six – along with Justice Vought – is one of the talents behind the former Oxygen region designs, which I wrote about in 2019 and again in 2021, a place which had a deserved reputation for being thoroughly photogenic. The Magic Hour is in a similar vein in this regard, offering beach-front setting backed by tall hills up to which the landscape climbs, the entire setting rich in opportunities for avatar and landscape photography.

The landing point sits midway between the east and west limits of the region and is tucked back toward the northern foothills as the start their climb to the off-region mountain adjoining them. Taking the form of a small beach house facing south towards the open sea, the landing point sits close to a large pool of clear, fresh water, the home of koi carp watched over by red-crowned crane. Beyond the pool, within its little island reached by a tree trunk bridge is a small house. I believe this might is a private residence when occupied by Six, so please keep that in mind when visiting.

The southern waterfront is a mixed affair, partly sandy, a little scrubby and partially rocky, its western extent a grassland headland partially ringed by a breakwater. It is home to a stripped lighthouse, the grass around it well suited to grazing. On the eastern side, a low sandbar points out into the sea, the home of the wooden frame of a summer house, the wall and roof shingles yet to be placed (if they ever will be), the dedicate folds of net drapes instead providing a mottled shade for the sofa, tables and planets within.

Between the sandbar and the lighthouse, four slender fingers of rock point outwards from the shore, thin breakwaters made from large stones worn thin by the sea so they now resemble rough-edged that have been loosely stacked out into the water like thin strands. between the last of these and the lighthouse headland, the shingle and rocks have built up into area of shallows, several large grey boulders rising from the water like petrified sealions.

Inland from the lighthouse stands a small wood. It surrounds the ruins of a chapel which in turn contain their own secrets and sense of fantasy. Beyond them, a waterfall feeds the land where deer and fae folk might be found.  A trail from here winds through the tress and down to where the grass rolls back towards the sands on which the landing point sits, presenting a pleasant walk between it and the chapel.

This is a simple, relaxing setting with multiple places where people can sit and contemplate or talk, or which lend themselves to photographs. As well as the deer, water birds and horses are to be found, while am ancient stone gazebo holds another little touch of fantasy and a further place to sit.

Finished with a gentle soundscape and environmental settings in keeping with the ide of an early morning, The Magic Hours as a quiet, somewhat enchanting visit.

SLurl Details

• The Magic Hour (Versus Falls, Moderate)

It’s been just over a year since I last had an opportunity to visit an iteration of Hera’s (zee9) Blade Runner-esque region designs. On that occasion Blade Runner Future Noir was the attraction, with its tight focus specifically on Ridley Scott’s seminal visual interpretation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (see here for more); so the time was about right for a new iteration of the setting to emerge from Hera’s imagination, and sure enough – up has popped Blade Runner, Brutal City ,2060. Encompassing the familiar whilst offering some tidy little twists and turns for lovers of science fiction (and potentially obscure TV series of that genre), as well as other references, it is again a highly visual environment which spreads the Blade Runner elements more broadly, folding into it elements of Blade Runner 2049, whilst also drawing on 2012’s Dredd.

Once again leveraging a Full private region with the Land Capacity bonus, this build is perhaps the most explicit Hera has designed on the theme, in terms of overt sexual references and elements of nudity – so those of a sensitive disposition, be warned! It is also possible that, as with many of Hera’s builds the setting’s presence in Second Life might be short-lived – so if you are interested, then a visit sooner rather than later is recommended. Should you opt to drop in, be sure to use the local Shared Environment, and to enable local sounds. In addition, higher-end graphics quality is recommended for the full visual effect and, for those not running a PBR viewer, ALM must be enabled.

As is common with Hera’s builds, a visit starts at a landing point removed from the main build. Here it takes the form of a subway passage with vending machines, one of which will teleport you to Brutal City, the other of which will provide an informative introductory notecard. Taking the teleport to the main setting will deliver you inside a subway car that’s just arrived at a station -another familiar Hera touch, and one I like in her designs as it genuinely gives a sense of arrival somewhere. Ignoring the crime scene, stepping off the carriage offers various routes “up” to “ground level” – which you take is up to you.

The “ground level” itself initially appears to be the familiar grid-like mix of roads (both “street level” and “elevated”) interspersed with buildings climbing up into a murky sky through which a familiar advertising airship appears to creep, surrounded by a backdrop of other tall buildings to give added depth, with everything awash in neon and advertising.

Perhaps the most obvious references to the Blade Runner franchise take the form of some of the static vehicles sitting on the roads – police spinners and cars resembling Deckard’s decommissioned spinner. There’s also the edge-of-region bulk of the Tyrell Building  – (as was, given this is not 2060, its towering bulk carries the logo of the Wallace Corporation from Blade Runner 2049). The latter still have interior elements to be explored, albeit on a smaller scale, perhaps then pervious iterations.

However, none of this should be taken to mean there’s nothing new to see here; Brutal City offers an engaging mix of ideas together with a skilled re-use of elements from past designs that give it an sense of the familiar whilst also being new; that time has in effect continued to move forward within the setting, and it has naturally changed even whilst absent from the grid. Thus, we are not so much visiting somewhere new, but re-visiting a place once known but now revealing its new look and feel.

As to the more Dredd-leaning elements awaiting discovery, I’ll let Hera explain:

As in the Dredd movie the mega blocks are run by gangs. In Brutal City there are 3 Gangs: the Neo Punks, a sort of mixture of traditional cyberpunk with a love of Matrix black added in; the Metal Heads, kind of cyberpunk bikers and the Psycho Delics, Cyber hippies. This was really just an excuse for me to make the ground floors of the 3 Mega Blocks in Brutal City into gang block parties. The Blocks were given names of well know heavenly other worlds, probably as some in joke between the architects who knew they would become anything but heavenly over time.  Paradise was taken over by the Neo Punks, Valhalla by the Metal Heads and Nirvana by the Psycho Delics.

– from the introductory notecard on Blade runner Brutal City 2060

The exits from the subway will bring you to street level fairly close to the north entrance of the Paradise Club, with one of them also just across the road from where the Valhalla rears itself skywards (and I should probably mention here that don’t be in too much of a hurry to pass through the subway’s tunnels – you might miss the door to a really cosy little jazz club – and it is not the only door leading to what might otherwise be hidden from view). Nirvana sits a little further away, perhaps content to keep a little distance between itself and the looming presence of the Brutal City Police Department headquarters as it shoulders its way up into the sky. Widening at the top to offer a spinner landing pad patrolled by a drone looking like it might have escaped the Terminator franchise and bristling antennae, the BCPD building seems to glare down on both Paradise and Valhalla in a stern warning. Like the clubs, the BCPD building can be entered and explored.

All three clubs clearly share the same architectural heritage, as Hera notes; each with a party space overlooked by tiers of internal balconies rising upwards to provide access to residential apartments. While I cannot be 100% sure, I think they might also share a heritage with Hera’s last Blade Runner design, as their interiors appear to be a skilled re-working of the interior she used for the Bradbury Building. Either way, they also share similarities in club layout and features – which might perhaps give rise to further rivalry between them, members from one gang accusing those from the others of “copying” them.

Another location visitors to Hera’s past builds might recognise the Snake Pit. Once again, Zhora Salomeis not present (no surprise, given Deckard shot her), but her presence is perhaps marked elsewhere in one of the clubs. Here the Snake Pit sits within the Dram Palace, a glitzy upmarket retreat – although I could help but feel that howsoever well the barman has packed himself into his tux and dicky-bow, his is nevertheless the adult love-child of Jason Statham and Woody Harrelson 😀 .Which actually, far from being an insult to the man should actually encourage patrons to feel safe should members of any of the city’s three gangs drop in a decide to get a little rousty!

Throughout the entire build there are lots of touches and elements which help cast a broad net as to what might be discovered during a visit. The BCPD building, for example, once again hosts the Rekall-style armchairs seen in Total Recall 2070 (a series that lived far too short a life), whilst  screen at the front desk displays data on one Takeshi Kovacs (Altered Carbon and as played by Joel Kinnaman and the – again short-lived – Netflix series), while the metro cabs on the the street have a sense of the Johnny Cabs from 1990’s Total Recall.

Also along the streets one might find a noodle bar similar in nature to the one Deckard was seated at in Blade Runner, whilst a newsagent kiosk might be found selling the likes of Cinefantastique (the 1982 edition celebration both Blade Runner and Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan), Metal Hurlant, Starlog, what looks like Empire magazine, copies of the LA Times from 2019, all among many others (I liked the Deckard magazine series with Gaff’s famous quote as he leaves Deckard in the rain towards the end of the movie, “It’s too bad she won’t live. But then again, who does?”

These are far from the only nods (I’ve not mentioned the return of the Friends Electric store (a nod to Gary Numan?) and its stock of electric sheep, for example),  but then, discovering them is all part of the fun – and there are probably those I wouldn’t recognise, even if they stepped up and introduced themselves to me 🙂 . That said, one of the potentially more recognisable homages is not to any sci-fi franchise or setting, but to a physical world location – architect’s Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67, here given a more downcast design; one which can be explored thanks to its network of connecting communal spaces, even if the apartments themselves are just façades.

All of which makes for yet another visually and aurally engaging visit – so, make the most of the time the setting is here and go pay a visit!

SLurl Details

• Blade Runner Brutal City 2060 (Themyscira, rated Adult)