It has been another year! Jeez this one went fast. I didn’t feel like I did a lot and yet also a lot happened. I wrote a book chapter (out soon!) and another paper and made an entire video game (also out very soon!). I got massively into a new card game and participated in a strike once again, made steady progress towards my PhD and went to Chicago and Worcester and got a fellowship.
And yet I only wrote, uh, one single blog… This one. So, yeah I could have done better on that front. But hey, let’s get to it. If you’ve seen one of these before, you know the bit. I’ll be going through all the things I discovered during the year and talking about why they were cool. It’s written in chronological order so you can follow along my year, loosely.
Saint of Bright Doors - Vajra Chandrasekera (Book)
Strongly recommended by several of my twitter follows, and an absolute sweep at the fantasy book awards season. And yep this book is all that. An absolute masterclass of fiction, blending fantasy, sci-fi, and mythology into an indescribable genre-blend, but all stringed up in a very personal, needle-sharp narrative. It is a book about trauma, revolution, corruption, science, and legacy and also a book starts with where the main character, Fetter, losing his shadow and also his mom trained him to kill his dad who is the pope of a new religion, and chapter 2 starts with Fetter going to therapy.
It’s bigger and bolder than most books and it feels ridiculously unique and unlike any book I've ever read. I did not think it had any chance of tying its many threads together and yet its ending might be the best 4 chapters of a book I’ve ever read.
Read this book.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth - Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio (Video Game)
A wonderful sequel to what continues to be one of the most exciting franchises in games. I was initially less excited for the Hawaii setting than the expected return to Tokyo but it turned out to be a fun distraction. I never finished it and from what I hear it sounds like the story doesn’t quite come as well together at the end as one might hope but the characters are still just such a treat to spend time with it doesn’t really matter.
How Ryo Ga Gotoka [spelling] puts these games out so quickly and so resolutely is something to be studied in an age where games only get longer and more expensive. The Yakuza series (and its many spin-offs) continue to be efficiently made and remade into packages that reuse a ton of the same assets yet always feel fresh.
Helldivers 2 - Arrowhead (Video Game)
What a surprise, eh? Remember how little the world thought Helldivers 2 was gonna matter?
I did not actually play a ton of Helldivers 2. This is mostly here because the surrounding community narrative and live events Helldivers 2 did during its first couple of months was spectacular fun to watch, in a time when I am writing a PhD about live-service games in an age where live-service games are increasingly derided and failing (oh, we’ll get to that). Helldivers 2 felt like a spark, not really of anything new because most of what it does has been done before, but wrapped in a modern package and sold efficiently. Their refusal to break character as players continued to break expectations was a ton of fun to see play out.
Blue Lock - Eight Bit (Anime)
As both a fan of sports anime and soccerfootball this seems like a lock-in for me. Yet I’ll say that I did enjoy it and had a good time but I don’t know if I love it. I love sports anime that take their sports seriously and while Blue Lock definitely cares about football I can’t help but feel its conceit about ego just isn’t what football is. At least to me. I miss the focus on the team. And while what Blue Lock might ultimately be doing is undermining its premise intentionally, which would be neat, it isn’t quite landing for me with the same heights as something like Haikyuu!!.
Sunderland ‘Til I Die - Fulwell 73 (Documentary Series, Netflix)
Being disappointed by Blue Lock made me look for more sports narratives and I found this documentary series on Netflix, which inspired the more well known “Welcome to Wrexham”. It’s about Sunderland football club, who were relegated out of the Premier league. The series starts with this air of “let’s see them win back their glory” and, uh, spoilers for a 2017 [?] football club story, but they very much do not. Instead, this documentary becomes a fascinating look at how a football club is integrated into a city full of people who have less and less of a future to look forward to. It becomes more of a story about margin-city communities left behind by modern capitalism, wishing for times of olden glory [link lol] long past.
C2C (DJ group)
Recommended by a friend, I am a bit amazed I had not heard of these guys yet. Heavily sample-based funky music is exactly my jam and this is some good stuff. Don't have a lot more to say, just give 'em a listen if you somehow missed them like me.
The Atlas Complex - Olivie Blake (Book)
The conclusion to the Atlas trilogy finally came out and it was still a blast of a read. This conclusion still lacks a bit of the sharp focus the first one had but I enjoyed it more than the second, which sometimes felt meandering. This doesn’t, and the adventure in this one is good fun from beginning to end.
Fallout - Geneva Robertson-Dworet & Graham Wagner (TV Show, Amazon Prime)
Oh my god, I didn't even expect this to be good. But this good?
This might be, no joke, the best video game adaptation ever made. And yes, I hear what you’re saying, what about Arcane? The Last of Us? As an adaptation, they all pale in comparison. Those had an easier job adapting their source material than this. Arcane cheats. Last of Us doesn’t have to. The Fallout TV show is the first time I’ve watched a game adaptation that felt like it understands playing the game. Fallout nails the feeling of how Fallout feels to play. Its humor is spot on and its characters are brilliant and it understands what makes the games good. From the very first scene I realized this show had the stuff. It managed to make the most predictable scene of the bombs dropping engaging, and with every episode after, I kept being stunned how enjoyable this show was.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 - CAPCOM (Video Game)
Dragon’s Dogma got a sequel? Dragon’s Dogma? The niche, esoteric RPG that didn’t have fast travel?
Hell yeah it did and it still doesn’t have fast travel (sort of) (it was also a sort of before, too). And the best part is the sequel is still very much a Dragon’s Dogma game, with unclear quests and no waypoints and no fast travel and damn cool monster battles. It is one of the few open world games where travelling the world actually feels like you are going on an adventure.
I kinda got away from it (you’ll see why) but I respect this game a lot for just being itself once more.
Rhystic Studies (YouTube Channel)
Saying this is a YouTube channel about Magic: The Gathering betrays it greatly. More than a mere channel talking about Magic as a game, Rhystic Studies looks at Magic as an object of study. He approaches it with the same dedication and sense of purpose as someone studying a PhD (I should know) and it shows in his presentation, his care, and his attention to detail. Covering Magic from all angles of investigating the art (using his literal PhD in art history), to its competitive stories, to its themes, and its production history, each video is a fascinating insight into the 31 years of history of the most well known card game in existence. If you even have a tangential interest in Magic, it is well worth a watch.
3 Body Problem - The Game of Thrones People (TV Series, Netflix)
I have several friends who have read the books and recommended them so when this show was announced it seemed like a good entry-point. I wasn’t really sure what to expect but hoping it was at least a competent sci-fi show, and it definitely is! The first half I think is quite strong, but it falters a bit in the second as it kinda seems to run out of immediate steam and begins setting up for a next season. But the core premise of the story is very cool and I enjoyed my time with it.
ANIMAL WELL - Billy Basso (Video Game)
I got a little less enthused about Animal Well than I expected. It very much read like a new Outer Wilds/Fez-like with a simple game hiding a much deeper level of puzzles to uncover. And it does! And it is cool! But I think I just didn’t click with its logic in the same way I have some of those other games and I kind of got a little annoyed with it before even getting to the cool stuff and even when I did I never fully got on with it. I appreciate it a lot and would recommend it, but for some reason it just didn’t quite click as much as I’d hoped it would (The future entries are to blame also).
Destiny 2: The Final Shape - Bungie (Video Game Expansion)
Oookay. So. This was the first of the June Triple Threat. It is no secret that Destiny is important to me. A lot of my PhD work is about Destiny, I have played it consistently since 2018 and made a lot of friends and memories because of it. It is also no secret that Destiny was having a rough patch throughout 2023 and the first half of 2024. Community sentiment was at an all-time low and it felt impossible for Bungie to recover after the (first wave, ugh) of layoffs.
The Final Shape is the greatest expansion in Destiny history. Just a complete homerun. A spectacular campaign that delivers on 10 years of storytelling with its most personal, poignant and awesome campaign to date, culminating in a spectacular raid that is one of its best. It was a ton of fun to see Destiny conclude in this way, and while we’re currently in another (expected) slump I am curious to see what happens next time they send another swing our way.
The Three-Body Problem (and the sequels) - Cixin Liu (Book Series)
The TV show did get me to read these books finally, though, so that’s something.
It took a long time! These books are big!
At first I was very distracted by how different the first book is from the show, with pretty much the entire plot taking place in China with Chinese characters instead of the very British focus of the show. Yet when I got further than the show did I enjoyed the books decently. Many of the criticisms about them are valid, the characters are often barely functional and the story is much more concerned with the plot, yet when that plot gets to talk about what Cixin Liu wants to talk about it is a very fun conceptual sci fi story with some ridiculously expansive concepts that are super fun to think about. The Dark Forest is one of those sci-fi concepts that is so crunchy I am surprised it is not already everywhere.
Shadow of the Erdtree - From Software (Video Game Expansion)
The second of the June Triple Threat! I don’t know if I have a lot of new to say about Erdtree. It’s more Elden Ring. It’s spectacular. I never finished it because it was buried deep in the middle of June and I got distracted and it is definitely not a DLC you can easily dip in and out of. But the [shadow keep level] is one of the best levels From Software have done, so that alone is worth the price of admission.
Shōgun - Rachel Kondo & Justin Marks (TV Series)
Shogun is a spectacular TV show. Few TV shows are crafted with such tremendous care, with its attention to detail and research oozing out of every frame. It’s a slow and plodding show yet every conversation is sharp and tense and beautiful. It quickly reveals itself to use its White Guy in Japan storyline to be a show about the politics and power of translation, ending up focusing more on the woman translating than the man being translated.
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail - Creative Business Unit 3, Square Enix (Video Game Expansion)
Aand there’s the last of the June Triple Threat. That’s right 3 (THREE!) huge expansions all out in the same month. This also meant I basically played nothing else for the entire summer haha.
Dawntrail is… pretty good! Not the best FFXIV expansion, and had a very hard job of being the next one after Endwalker and it definitely had some problems having to set up an entirely new storyline that couldn’t really revolve around the same set of characters as the previous. That said, the last third is still pretty damn neat and I had a mostly good time with it.
Ice - Kashiwa Daisuke (Album)
A new Kashiwa Daisuke SURPRISE ALBUM?!? I didn’t even know about it before it was out?! What the actual flying frick?? And it’s GOOD?? It’s SO GOOD. It’s Kashiwa at my most favorite flavor, focusing on elegant melodies in classic orchestrations yet filled with electronic, glitchy and creative details, creating something altogether new, smashing genres into symphonies.
EBV is one of the best tracks Kashiwa Daisuke has ever made. At a “breezy” 20 minute playtime, covering at least 3 different genres effortlessly, it opens on an atmospheric scene and flows through upright bass and breakbeat to end in a post-rock-y finale that roars and roars.
Tracks to give a listen: I recommend listening to the first 3 tracks (algo-Rhythm #2, Ice, EBV), that’ll give you a good idea what this is. (And if you like any of that, you should listen to Kashiwa Daisuke. He’s the best.)
Smile :D - Porter Robinson (Album)
Porter Robinson’s third album is a third Porter Robinson Album. By which I mean it is entirely different from the previous two. Actually it’s a lot more different than Nurture was from Worlds.
And… it’s definitely less my thing. More pop-punk, more bubblegum, more cheerful, less roomy synths and electronic soundscapes. Some of the songs are even ballad-y.
But hey, there is still some good stuff in there. Mona Lisa is fun, Is There Really No Happiness is a banger that could almost fit on Nurture, and Cheerleader is just a great pop song, regardless of my tastes. What’s more, though, what I love most about Porter Robinson is he has fully allowed himself to make whatever he wants and he is clearly doing so, and I respect the hell out of him for that.
Tønder Festival Special (Festival)
My parents took me to a folk music festival in the summer! And while it is definitely not the kind of thing I would ever have gone to on my own and plenty of the music wasn’t what I would listen to on my own I had a pretty good time. It’s always fun to see music live and the vibes of Tønder were undeniably great. And while it says “folk” on the tin, what that means is pretty expansive at this point, going from country to blues to traditional Scottish folk music and everything in between. Their slogan “Handmade music” is a good descriptor, as they care more about the quality of play than what genre it fits in. And I can get behind that.
So here’s some highlights from what I saw:
Jiggy: Best show of the festival for me. An Irish-Indian folk fusion band that played everything from traditional Indian instruments to bag-pipes and they just went ham on them. An absolute party. Check them out, and see them live if you get the chance.
Julie Fowlis: Best known outside folk music for being the voice on the Brave Soundtrack (apparently!), this was the concert I realized the many similarities between electronic music and folk (ask me about it sometime). Her voice is incredible and she had this ability to sing so quickly it sounded like she was performing live vocal chopping. Also, she brought out a surprise bagpipe at the end to stunt on people.
Kellie Loader: Not my kind of music in general, but here because her concert was incredibly touching. A newcomer, her first time at the festival and she was so touched by her reception she broke down crying at the end.
Peatbog Fairies: Shoutouts for applauding the Danish audience for showing up to dance at 11am in pouring rain. Was a fun time.
Jaimee Harris & Mary Gouthier: A folk/country duo who seemed to just vibe around the festival, showing up at a range of concerts and each time they elevated it.
Elephant Sessions: What I have probably listened to most afterwards despite not seeing them at the festival lol. Their show was cancelled due to bad weather, but their albums immediately grabbed me with their chill electronic dance vibes orchestrated with live instruments (and then also some actual synths). I considered putting these in their own spot, because they deserve a listen.
Deadlock - Valve (Video Game, eventually)
I would like to report a murder. Deadlock crash landed into Concord’s release window like a truck through a greenhouse. And it did it without a single piece of marketing. The store page is still the most barebones thing you’ll see. You can’t even download the game without an invite. People weren’t allowed to talk about it. And yet Deadlock, Valve’s new MOBA-shooter hybrid, completely stomped into the scene by just being so good people had to talk about it. It is immaculately designed, and because of Valve’s philosophy of treating this public alpha like a constant playtest, it is changing all the time. It is a bunch of familiar ingredients, mixed together and tuned close to perfection.
It’s been my multiplayer game of choice the last half of the year and I’ve enjoyed it a ton.
...Pour one out for Concord, though. Feel bad for all the devs there.
In Waves - Jamie XX (Album)
“All you children gather round. Eh!”
I’ve enjoyed parts of Jamie XX’s house-funk jams for a while now, and the singles for this album were exciting. And it’s bloody good fun. Not all of the tracks are even hits but enough of them are great listens that I’ve been jamming to this for a while now and keep coming back to it.
Tracks to give a listen: All You Children (“eh~!”), Breathe (ooh what a vibe), and Treat Each Other Right.
UFO 50 - Mossmouth (Video Game...s)
What a wonderful little thing. 50 new, vibrant games for an “unreleased” retro console, presented with little preamble or explanation. It is rare today to open a video game and have no idea of expectation of what to find, and this game gives me that feeling of being a kid and seeing a game you had never heard of in the store and just giving it a whirl based on the cover alone.
Not all of the games are hits but most of them are at least interesting enough to give a spin. And if you don’t like one, there’s 49 more to check out.
Play Nice - Jason Schreier (Book)
After two stellar overviews of video game development stories, Jason’s Schreier’s newest book is a more focused, comprehensive look at a single developer. That developer being Blizzard, one of the most fascinating developers in the industry, leads to a very interesting read. Covering the full timeline from the early 90s[?] to the Microsoft buyout (and Activision’s in-between), it covers a long history of a boys club of friends making games struggling to become a company and the many difficulties that entails, to the fight over a culture of quality and experimentation in the face of a publisher wanting to deliver more and faster.
Netrunner World Championship - Null Signal Games (Card Game Tournament)
As a casual Netrunner player who had mostly been playing with friends yet was starting to get into the game and its competitive scene more, the announcement that the World Championship in 2024 was in San Francisco, a mere 50 minute drive from where I live, I knew I had to go, regardless of how it was going to go.
And I did horribly! I only won like 6 games across the two tournaments I participated in (Standard and Startup), a total of 19 games played. And yet it doesn’t matter because I had an absolute blast. The Netrunner community continues to impress with its joyful, welcoming and positive people, everyone one of which I played against was kind, helpful, and happy to be there. As a game, Netrunner also continues to impress, as the more I’ve gotten into its competitive aspects it just continues to feel deeper and more expansive, contrary to how other card games tend to feel more limiting in competitive settings.
Metropole Grid (YouTube Channel)
I’m cheating a little as I discovered this much earlier, maybe even last year, but I really started to get into it this year and it culminated around Netrunner, hence it is after. This is a Netrunner YouTube channel, and it is one of the best channels of this kind I have seen. Andrej, the man running it, is insightful, fun, engaging and great at explaining the game and always willing to teach and help folks in his chat. It has been a regular occurrence that I’ve put on his streams in the background even if I was not paying attention to the gameplay just because it he is a fun person to listen to. He reminds me a lot of Day[9], which is genuinely some of the highest praise I can give.
I will also shoutout Neon Static, another Netrunner channel. It's also very good!
Metaphor: ReFantazio - Atlus (Video Game)
I remember when it was announced the Persona team was working on a “fantasy” game I both got excited and uncertain what it could possibly be. How could they translate the perfect juxtaposition of Persona’s high school drama with its supernatural dungeon crawling into a world that was entirely supernatural?
Well, I was a fool to worry. Metaphor: ReFantazio feels like Atlus with their shackles off. The gameplay, removed from its expectations of Persona fusing and weakness systems is booming with expressivity and playfulness, and its narrative free from following high school schedules and storylines is free to be something altogether unexpected and fresh, with a story that still continues to surprise and excite me (I’m not as far as I’d like).
Smile :D LIVE - Porter Robinson and Band (Live Concert)
Ever since 2014 I’ve wanted to go to a Porter Robinson concert. For the longest time, the closest he got to where I lived was London, a 2 hour plane-ride away. (And in the perfect irony, he then went to Denmark after I moved to the US, in 2022.)
So now, finally, in 2024, it happened. I am a little sad it is for the album I like the least, but I still had an absolute blast. It was a 2 hour tour de force of his last 10 years of music, played with a band playing his new stuff and reinterpreting his old. The show was a joy from start to end and it went by in a flash.
Hearing the synth riff from Fresh Static Snow played on electric guitar, the live singalong of Unfold, the League of Legends parody of Everything Goes On, it was all so great and I am so happy I finally got to see him live.
And yes, the video in the link is the exact concert I was at (not recorded by me).
Factorio: Space Age - Wube Software (Video Game Expansion)
Factorio has been a regular mainstay in my games with my nephew for a couple of years now so we were eagerly awaiting this expansion. So far we haven’t even gotten to the part of it where it actually “new” yet, but it is still more Factorio and still great.
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke (Book)
Several years late to this one after it won a bunch of awards a couple years ago, and even though I've actually owned it for a while. For some reason I thought this book wasn't quite for me? The early parts felt a little too much like a stranger wandering alone around a mysterious, Piranesi-esque house for a whole book and I wasn't sure I was in the mood to read that. Turns out, that is not at all what this book is. Pretty quickly, there's dialogue and tension and a very core mystery at stake and it is much more of a dark academia thriller than I expected. Once I got into it, it was a fast read and it is very good! Feel bad it took so long now!
Dragon Age: The Veilguard - Bioware (Video Game)
I have a complicated relationship with Dragon Age. As a large, well-realized fantasy RPG world I should love it, and there is a lot about Dragon Age I love but I have never gotten the fervence of the series a lot of other people have. It’s good, rarely great. Yet, I’m all for Bioware making single player RPGs again so happy to see them do that here. And when this game gets going, it is good. I’m just not sure I’ll stick with it. The combat is not grabbing me at all, and the pacing is a little strange. However, Bioware’s character strengths are still showing and when they get room to breathe it is a good time.
Terrible name though. They should have stuck with Dreadwolf.
Arcane Season 2 - Riot & Fortiche (TV Series, Netflix)
I am very sad I don’t like Arcane’s second season as much as many people. It’s still on here, I still liked it. But I unfortunately have to say that I have really soured on it as time has gone on, with the last two episodes really not being what I wanted out of the show.
This season would have much benefited from more time, either a third season or longer episodes in this one, as it overall felt like it had too many things to move through in too little time, and it ultimately ended up in a place that didn’t feel like the ending to the first season’s sociological storytelling, instead focusing almost entirely on the conclusion of the relationship between two of the characters, with the rest of the conflicts wrapping much too neatly and quickly for my taste.
Arcane continues to be one of the most visually impressive animated things on the planet only rivalled by Spiderverse and this season was no different with inventive and clever style-changes and its intense amount of detail in every frame. I just wish I left it a bit more positively. Oh well, I still have season 1.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chronobyl - GSC Game World (Video Game)
Despite all odds and a literal war on the developer’s homeland, STALKER 2 released. And it is so undeniably more STALKER it is remarkable. The world is unkind, your weapons jam, the first enemy you face utterly demolishes you, and each character you talk to is suspicious and untrustworthy. And it is also one of the most atmospheric games you will play, a thunderstorm feeling unlike any other game in its utter totality. The nights are dark and scary and the daylight is pitch perfect and gorgeous. It’s great.
Doppelganger - Naomi Klein (Book)
I stumbled on this book in a bookstore and was intrigued by its premise. Naomi Klein, a well-known leftist political thinker, started getting publicly confused with Naomi Wolf, a feminist-turned-alt-right fearmonger. At first she was mildly annoyed by this confusion but over Covid she became obsessed with trying to understand how her “doppelganger” could have turned to such extremism. Naomi Klein uses this initial curiosity to dissect so much of the strange world we exist in today with such a sharp precision it is haunting. If you struggle to understand how otherwise “sensible” people have turned into anti-vaxxers and alt-right nationalists, this book is a fascinating read.
1000xResist - sunset visitor (Video Game)
I kept hearing buzz about this game all year in narrative game circles and I finally got around to it at the end of the year. 1000xResist is a difficult game to describe succinctly. It is mostly a visual novel, yet its use of 3D spatial navigation is very important. It effortlessly navigates between high school relationships, an alien invasion, immigration, family, revolution, faith, and so much more in a package that nevertheless is roaring with creativity and spark. Every hour feels like a new idea is thrown in about how to present the story as each chapter jumps backwards and forwards in time, jumping between scenes at a moment’s notice. It is one of the most confident narratives I’ve played in a long time. At times it reminded me of Arrival, Night in the Woods, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Tacoma, and 3 Body Problem, all at once, and never once does it feel like it is biting off more than it can chew. Every choice feels curated and crafted to precision and the story hurdles forward at a breakneck pace while simultaneously leaving plenty of space for poignant, hurtful, and caring dialogue.
For narrative folks, an absolute must play.
And there we have it, the end of 2024. It was a... year! Personally, a pretty decent one for me, felt I learned a lot and made good progress on that PhD I somehow need to finish soon. Yet it was also the last full year of that PhD so I did also enjoy the quieter times and being able to truck along without worrying about the future. Next year will be a wild one, almost no matter what happens. We'll see you next year for what will likely be a very different one of these! Maybe!