the occasional post

I kept adding to this list up until December 21 this year.

Alien: Romulus

Romulus brings the Alien series back to its roots: Spacers trying to survive with a xenomorph on their ship. David Jonsson’s performance as the Andy the android is the real standout.

Arcane

Arcane is gorgeous. Season two follows at least three connected storylines, and they all landed for me. I appreciate when a story ends well.

Astro Bot

Astro Bot is the most fun game of the year, the most beautiful game of the year, the best game to play with a five-year-old of the year, and the best use of the Playstation 5 Dualsense controller of the year. The developers stood on the mountaintop, looked back at the history of capital-G Gaming, nodded, and Made a Game.

They were not trying to force players to reflect on the nature of ludonarrative dissonance. They were not trying to offer a gritty critique of capitalism. They were not trying to put the player in the shoes of the world’s greatest legend or offer unlimited control over playstyle and story choices. They were trying to create a seed that, when watered by attention, turns into fun. And they succeeded. Astro Bot is purely, essentially, a Fun Videogame. It is so refreshing to experience as someone who has been gaming since Super Mario Bros. on my older cousin’s gray Nintendo.

It’s the clear pick for game of the year is what I’m saying. I loved every second of it except for that lava square challenge level.

Balatro

Balatro is fun. It’s easy to get hooked on the mobile version, which you can get free through Apple Arcade. I became minimally addicted for a few days then stopped playing entirely once it became clear how the rest of my time with the game would go.

Blade and Sorcery Nomad 1.0

My favorite VR game left beta this year. The full release adds a story mode, but I still find myself in the sandbox mode almost every time I pick up my Quest 3. Most of my time in the headset is spent in the Blade & Sorcery arena, stabbing enemies to their bloody deaths in the 3 vs. 1 progressive mode.

Civil War

My personal movie of the year, Civil War is a journalism story tilted toward speculative fiction. When it came out in the spring it seemed like audiences and critics either expected or wanted something more overtly political out of Alex Garland at the time, but the complete lack of specific policy presented in the film will allow it to remain relevant into the future.

And look it’s also part of the point of the movie that the protagonists don’t seem to care at all about the politics of the titular civil war, but at some point you do have to pay attention to the stories you watch and figure these things out for yourself instead of reading articles written about the loudly shared opinions of various social media weirdos to help you decide how you feel about The Thing You Just Saw.

Conclave

Actually this is my favorite movie of the year! I watched in late December so it’s my last edition to the list (hopefully).

You don’t need to attend 12 years of Catholic school to appreciate Conclave as much as I did, but a background in the dogma of the Church and papal succession does help highlight the comedy. It’s everything I loved about The Young Pope (except the surrealism) squeezed into two hours.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

I’m noticing a trend toward low pressure, low commitment games on my list this year. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is one of them.

In DD2, fast travel resources are rare, leaving a diegetic wagon system as your only way to get around without taking a long walk to wherever it is you need to be. There are randomly generated orcs and trolls and griffons along the way for you to fight. Sick of swords? Ready to wield magic or a bow? Change your character class in any city or town.

It all adds up to a game that invites you to play it however you want, and change it up whenever you start to get bored. And it’s all attached to one of the best human player character creators of the current generation.

Dune 2

I’ve read Dune more times than I’ve counted. More times than I’ve read any other book. Denis Villeneuve and his team are doing the story justice.

Fallout

I’ve been playing Fallout games for many many years. The show nailed the tone and told a good story, which is enough! It doesn’t have to do more than that.

The First Omen

I went to Catholic school from preschool through high school, so a part of my psyche is keyed in to this religious iconography in ways that can be advantageous to me as a viewer of something like The First Omen or The Young Pope (or Conclave, which I watched after I wrote this blurb and cut the rest of what I had to say here).

Fortnite

Fortnite pushed out Overwatch to be my primary live service battle pass-style game this year. The questing system is finally at a point where I can get enough XP to get whatever rewards I want out of a season solely by aiming to complete one daily quest a day, and all the weeklies along the way. I find myself in each match having no motivation to win, instead playing to slide 200 yards and kill three enemies with an assault rifle while traveling between two specific landmarks. Or something like that. It’s different every day, which is part of what makes it fun.

Apart from Zero Build Battle Royale, I’ve had loads of fun in the Festival and LEGO modes this year, especially during the Metallica season and in the brand new Brick Life game, where farming dailies for xp is easier than it’s ever been. The recent changes to the Crew pass system are also a promising sign for dedicated players heading into the new year.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

Frieren surprised me. It’s the story of a (basically Dungeons and Dragons) adventuring party’s elf mage, who’s starting to outlive the rest of her friends as she takes on her own apprentice. The main story is engaging and the flashbacks tying that current thread to what Frieren learned from the heroes of legend are genuinely moving.

In A Violent Nature

Horror as a genre is unique in that every few years something truly fresh will come along and embrace tropes in new ways. In A Violent Nature did that in 2024 by slowly, very slowly, following the killer in a slasher movie. Real horror fans, absolute perverts for the genre I mean, people who have Seen It All, already know what the unwitting teenagers are up to during these stories. We can figure that half of the movie out on our own. This movie proves a masked killer’s trudging journey through the woods and under the lake has the potential by now to be much more interesting.

The Incredible Hulk

I don’t have much to say about this other than that Hulk’s current run is better than it’s been since Immortal Hulk ended. It’s Hulk with a focus on horror (as illustrated above), and so far it’s working!

Technically this one started in 2023, but I read through Marvel Unlimited so I’m on a delay.

Infinity Nikki

Look I don’t know what to tell you. Infinity Nikki just came out a few days ago and already I’m obsessed. It’s everything I love about a good gacha game with absolutely none of the pressure.

Games like Honkai Star Rail or Zenless Zone Zero (see below) hook me by dangling cool new characters in my facing and strongly encouraging me to grind hard for the resources to buy a chance to get them. It’s all a big grindy gamble unless you’re willing to spend real money. You can see that as a bad thing, or you can acknowledge the fact that the whales effectively buy the game for everyone by dumping enough cash into it to make the free to play model worthwhile to fund near AAA development.

There’s no temptation to grind like that in Infinity Nikki, though, because the only things you’d get for it would be dresses. What you’re left with is an extraordinarily chill open world to explore, collecting stars like Mario 64 and booping baddies with your bubbles along the way.

Interview With The Vampire

I was a big fan of the books and movie when I was in high school, so when the new series hit Netflix this year I had to check it out. It was much, much better than I expected.

Little Kitty Big City

Probably my five-year-old daughter’s pick for Game of the Year, Little Kitty Big City begins with a cat falling from the top of a skyscraper. You play as the cat, wandering the neighborhood around the building, completing simple tasks for the other animals in the area and collecting dozens of hats on your quest to climb back to the comfort of that little apartment.

You can trip anyone you see in this game. Anything they’re carrying, a bagel let’s say, they’ll drop. You can steal the bagel and run away. It’s fun. The cat animations are slinky and smooth. The main game only takes a few hours, but you’ll likely spend more time than that exploring the city and collecting adorable hats.

Longlegs

Longlegs is a serial killer detective story with a little occult sugar on top, leaving it in a sweet spot between scrutable and supernatural. I expect to rewatch this movie a few times.

Megalopolis

Megalopolis introduces itself to the audience right in the title card as a fable. You have to adjust your approach to the film as soon as you see that or you risk missing out on everything that makes it fun. Saying Megalopolis doesn’t make sense is no different than arguing that a tortoise could never beat a hare in a footrace.

This was my favorite movie theater experience of the year, by far.

The Penguin

The Penguin is just really good serial television. It holds up to the source material (the best modern Batman movie), enhancing its universe and teeing up an eventual sequel while telling an entire start to finish story. This is what I like from TV.

Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket

Pokemon TCG Pocket makes card collecting easy. The art is gorgeous and you get so much for free (two packs daily) that it’s completely unnecessary to spend any real money on the game. The simplified battle system is also a blast for anyone looking to play a quick game or two with your spare minutes.

Rebel Ridge

Rebel Ridge is not copaganda. I’m not spoiling anything when I say any cops in this movie who may eventually Do A Right Thing only do so under extreme duress.

The Rise of the Golden Idol

I’ve saved this blurb for last because I’m not sure how to do justice to how hooked I got on Golden Idol’s return. It’s an improvement in every way on the excellent point and click murder mystery that kicked off the saga, and it’s free for all Netflix subscribers.

Each scenario offers the player a view on a fatal diorama. You click around on the people and items in the picture, collecting evidence in the form of words and phrases. At the bottom of your screen are the clues, which are full of holes until you plug them with the appropriate words and phrases from the scene. Once all that’s assembled you get a panel, almost entirely filled with blanks, that you piece together using your clues to describe what happened.

It’s complicated enough to make you feel smart when you figure everything out. It’s also supremely weird and perfect for long or short phone or tablet sessions.

Shogun

Shogun presents a perfect season of television.

Shrinking

I don’t think Shrinking is particularly good honestly. I enjoy the comedy but the drama tends to fall flat for me since the characters are 75% cartoon. I don’t like that all the characters know each other intimately and only hang out together in locations and combinations that don’t seem to be based on any factor of realistic human interpersonal relationships.

And still I watch every episode as soon as it comes out every week. Sometimes it even makes me cry. Plus Derek may be the best guy in any current streaming show.

Slipping Away

Tim Heidecker put out an album about being a dad who plays guitar and has some trouble finding inspiration and time for creative endeavors. It’s very for me.

Slow Horses

Slow Horses season four came out in 2024, but I watched the whole series over the course of a few weeks in October. It’s a consistently tense and entertaining spy thriller that efficiently tells an overarching story within its perfectly paced, self-contained seasonal arcs.

Stardew Valley 1.6

Stardew Valley got a little better this year, unfortunately for me. I had no plans to start this game again but here I am in the middle of a no-crop run on a meadowlands farm. There’s 1,000,000 ways to customize your character and I somehow, accidentally, made the exact same dude I made in my first playthrough.

I don’t know who I will marry yet, so I’m giving everyone flowers all the time.

Trap

Josh Hartnett is undeniable in Trap, the Girl Dad Movie of the Year. It’s GDMotY because of its subject matter, obviously, but also because the director cast his own daughter in the role of basically Taylor Swift, which is a wild thing to do to your daughter if you ask me but good for them.

True Detective: Night Country

The only mistake this show made was explicitly inviting comparisons to season one. If you ignore the spirals and the Carcosa connections you’re left with a fine creepy murder mystery season to add to the anthology series.

Ultimate Spider-Man

I’m loving everything about the new Ultimates run, especially Jonathan Hickman’s Spider-Man and Peach Momoko’s beautiful X-Men.

The Valley

Vanderpump Rules season 11 was terrible, boring reality TV. The Valley was the winner this year. It has Jax Taylor and Kristen Doute, characters who may one day be on reality’s Mt. Rushmore, along with some new wealthy couples as they all work through family and friendship problems with the level of drama and immaturity you would expect from a Bravo show. It’s VPR with grown ups.

Wind and Truth

I’ve been waiting for this for a long time and honestly I have some complaints but The Stormlight Archive has been incredible and it’s a blessing to get some closure on the first half of the planned 10-part series.

X’s

It always feels very good when one of your favorite bands releases a new album and it turns out to be very good.

Look, I don’t like writing about music. I don’t believe it’s useful. My options are to offer similies, comparing the sounds or tones or themes to concepts that could be more easily captured in writing (or to more popular music I might expect the reader to be aware of already [disgusting]), or I could talk about genre. I can not as a word writer and instrument player reason myself into doing either of those things when I know intellectually that anyone who’s read this far and is curious at all could type “Cigarettes After Sex Xs” into their search engine of choice and listen to the whole thing for free. You know what I’ll even do that part here’s a link. Enjoy!

Zenless Zone Zero

ZZZ is definitely the least relaxing game on my list this year. Combat is a fun way to spend a few minutes in a mobile game. The characters are colorful and the animations are slick. The sci-fi setting is more appealing to me than Honkai Star Rail, which I ditched as soon as ZZZ came out.

But the TV segments are a slog and the pulls probably won’t be generous enough to keep me playing long-term as someone who does not ever pay real money into gachas.

3 Body Problem

As a huge fan of the books, I was happy to see Netflix pour money into this adaptation. The changes so far have been inoffensive, streamlining the story in mostly interesting ways. I’m looking forward to the rest of it.