I actually thought, when gearing myself up to do this, that it’d be super embarrassing if it turned out I hadn’t written anything since the last “Best of” list. Then I checked over and oh yeah, I did four different posts, including a very intense one on male and female mystery writers that I’m still super proud of. I do wish I’d done more–I have a post percolating on cults that I still am hunting down some quotes for–but I’ve been doing more stuff with short-form videos reviewing books, which has been frankly more successful than this blog.
Still. I have thoughts about what my favorite games / movies / books of the year are, so here they are!
GAMES
Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
While I’d played the first two games, read the first three anthologies, and watched the first season on Netflix, (even cosplayed as Geralt a few times) I’d never actually played the third game. I’d started, once, long ago, but got horribly stuck at a quest involving retrieving a druid’s pet goat, out of a sense of just how much sheer stuff there was to complete.
This year I returned to it, motivated by a student who claimed to be playing the game (He quickly stopped). The game, of course, is ten years old now, but barely shows its age, at least to my untrained eye. And while it does have a truly dizzying amount of quests to complete, each quest is interesting, unique, and has its own little drama.
Storywise, I think the game has weaknesses–the mid-game battle of Kaer Morhen is more narratively exciting and a more natural climactic end battle than the messy collection of skirmishes that makes up the end game. I also think the way to achieve the “best” ending could be better telegraphed, and there’s more than a few storylines that simply don’t make sense. The message, too, I can’t agree with, as it seems to be expressing “all gods and religions are terrible and so are people, the best solution is to be a killer badass with magical powers”, which isn’t very inspiring and is flat-out inapplicable to most people.
Gameplay-wise, though, the game does an excellent job of making you feel like a professional monster-hunter in a depressing, war-torn world. I found myself wondering if CD Projekt Red had been inspired by the Thirty Years War, or any of the other numerous conflicts that have stretched across Poland in their long history. Combat is diverse and exciting, and the lore is rich and fascinating. It’s clearly a game crafted by fans of the original fantasy series, and if nothing else, it gives you a taste of distinctly Polish culture.
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Game developer Atlus is famous for their bizarre dungeon-crawler / urban fantasy series Persona, and to a lesser extent the Shin Megami Tensei series. Metaphor: ReFantazio feels like some ideas they’ve been wanting to try for a while but haven’t been able to fit into the pretty clearly-defined game series.
Metaphor drops you into a fantasy world of Euchronia rife with political machinations and social drama. You play as a nobody–a member of the reviled Elda race, absolute lowest in the stratified world–sent as a messenger from the dying crown prince. The king is dead, and as his last act, he has put in place a magical election, where the one whom the people trust will become the new heir. You and your band of disaffected followers must find a way to rally support across the kingdom and win the various competitions of the royal tournament–all as a ploy to get close to the front-runner, Louis, the man who poisoned the prince and killed the king.
At least, that’s how it starts. It’s like 47 Ronin meets Seven Samurai meets Kagemusha, and my main gripe is that Atlus can’t quite give in to a purely democratic conceit where an ordinary person wins the crown. But the story is really quite compelling.
Gameplay wise, it’s a bit… rougher. The grind is real in this game, and while I loved it, I never actually beat the final boss, which had practically five different stages to him (also, the bosses in this game are bizarre, they literally base them off Hieronymous Bosch paintings.) But I loved exploring the world, getting to know your companions, and maximizing my levels, so I’m calling it one of my top games.
Book of Hours
I mentioned this in another post regarding Hidden Gems of the Summer Sale, and I was going to write another post about it (sometime) about how well it captures the allure of elitism and books and (even) cults. It’s a surprisingly engaging game for something that’s literally just about reading books and exploring a house–and doesn’t even do that in 3D.
Part of this game’s appeal, if I’m honest, comes down to the art. It’s a very pretty game. Part of the game’s appeal also comes from the lore, which it drip-feeds you in fascinating fashion–hence the blog I want to write. But another part comes from a very addictive gameplay cycle where each day can bring new discoveries, new powers, and new potential endings.
Book of Hours is a fascinating game, though I can’t claim to have unlocked even a tenth of what’s contained in it. It’s a very fun game for people who want something more off the beaten path.
MOVIES
Superman
Superman is a tough hero to get right. And I had particular doubts about James Gunn, who I’m actually sort of ambivalent on, introducing Superman AND Guy Gardner AND Mr. Terrific AND Hawkgirl in the same movie.
I was happy to be proven wrong. Superman was easily the most fun, and most heartfelt, movie I’ve seen in the theater in some time. It welcomes much of the old campiness of Superman–his robots, his fortress, his journalist background, and his earnestness, which honestly is the part a lot of adaptations have veered away from. It feels more like a genuine throwback to the old Christopher Reeves superman films than any other film has since.
I can’t agree with everything about it (which I get the point, I disagree with Pa Kent’s take on parenthood), and I’m not sure how to feel about it’s take on Jor-El. But… not for nothing, I liked seeing the beatdown on the xenophobic technocrat responsible for inflaming wars overseas with a war criminal.
Fantastic Four: First Steps
Fantastic Four, similarly, have often been done wrong. Spot-on castings and major production values have failed them in the past. And it seemed dubious that Marvel could come out of their slump while simultaneously adapting one of the most iconic and simultaneously challenging stories in their canon–the Galactus saga.
Yet Fantastic Four, likewise, was one of my most enjoyed movies. It wasn’t as fun as Superman, but it was remarkably human and, at the same time, fully embracing the fantastical. Not a lot of movies can pull off a man in a giant headdress the size of the Chrysler building, but they did it. Pedro Pascal does a brilliant job of a damaged Reed Richards struggling with his own genius, and Vanessa Kirby is a revelation as his wife Sue Storm.
The only thing is that it convinced me that Marvel has no idea what it’s doing with its “larger universe” right now. After a post-credits scene in Thunderbolts that raised all sort of questions, Fantastic Four answered none of them and just provided a meaningless tease about a villain that didn’t connect to anything.
TV SHOWS
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
Interesting detail with translations: Apparently depending on how this title is translated, the anime might be called: Frieren, the Slayer (e.g., the title the legendary elf mage is given by the many demons she killed during her time with Himmel the Hero), or Frieren: After the Funeral (a reference to how much of the anime is about time passing and people dying as Frieren remains young).
The anime initially seems like a very familiar setup, a typical elf mage with a hero’s party, just having saved the world from the demon king. Yet the very first episode makes it clear that this is about the aftermath, as Frieren struggles with watching her mortal teammates grow old and die around her. And it quickly becomes clear that this is an anime focused on something very different.
The world is not in danger in Frieren. There are no stakes, nothing that needs to be done urgently. Rather, it’s an anime about the passage of time, and treasuring moments while they happen–precisely because they pass so quickly and are gone forever. And true to that message, the animation is beautiful, chock full of tiny glowing details that insist on being lingered over. It’s a remarkably thoughtful, chill anime that invites contemplation.
Cloudward Ho!
To help my students come up with ideas for their short plays, I got a subscription to Dropout, formerly known as CollegeHumor, a streaming service that specializes in short sketches and improv routines. Which meant I had access to the other thing they’re known for–Dimension 20, the series helmed by Brennan Lee Mulligan serving as Game Master to players navigating various tabletop games.
I certainly haven’t watched all of them, nor do I plan to (Neverafter is proving a difficult watch), but Cloudward Ho!, an adventure set on steampunk airships in a fantasy realm, was exactly the sort of world I was primed to enjoy, and I had deep satisfaction watching the adventures of Maxwell Gotch and the crew of the Zephyr as they explored the mysterious land of Zood and its fantastic mysteries for the better part of three months. Each one of D20’s Intrepid Heroes is at their zaniest, and Brennan’s worldbuilding is at is most complex and mind-bending. The puzzles and intrigues were great fun to watch play out, and the battles were exhilirating. To anyone interested in DnD or similar tabletop games, it’s a complete joy to see.
BOOKS
Tress of the Emerald Sea
I consider myself a fantasy buff, yet I’ve never read Brandon Sanderson. This probably has something to do with my crippling Imposter Syndrome.
Well. After my school book club selected Tress of the Emerald Sea, I’ve now read him, and I have to say that Sanderson is a remarkably literary craftsman. I’m not sure I’d call him an artist–the book wasn’t particularly emotionally stirring or profound–but his command of language, humor, and description, to say nothing of the diverse and imaginative world he described, was absolutely pitch-perfect. He clearly is someone who has the art of writing well-mastered, and I look forward to reading many more of his works.
Speaking about this book specifically, the characters are fun, the plot is engaging and surprising without being confusing, the world is absolutely fascinating and keeps you guessing at every turn–and it’s all described in prose that is simply a joy to read. Tress is a great book and by far one of my favorites from this year.
The Inheritance Games
Book clubs seem like a lot of annoying work, and often involve you reading books that you have no interest in / actively dislike. The plus side of them is that sometimes, those books that you’d assume you’d actively dislike actually wind up being really interesting and engaging.
Exhibit A: The Inheritance Games, the latest YA novel series, requested by a high school freshman for the student book club, with a premise that would make me roll my eyes out of my head–ordinary teenage girl mysteriously inherits massive fortune that four absurdly good-looking brothers were expecting to receive. Inheritance comes with a puzzle that she needs to solve, and also, naturally, death threats galore from the jilted family, and also, naturally, steamy tension from at least two of the brothers.
However, remarkably, the first book is really quite good, and I legitimately read through the entirety in one sitting. The wish-fulfillment premise is fun, of course, and the different puzzles and mysteries keep you guessing, especially with the clever way the book is structured to keep interrupting one plotline with a different one, making sure that all the plot threads are in constant tension.
The later books start to drop off, and by the time I got to The Brothers Hawthorne I was bored enough to call it quits, but, the first one is genuinely gripping and engaging reading–like a murder mystery without a mystery. Highly recommend.
The Help
My sister is always trying to get me interested in things, and I unfortunately, am always trying to be the too-cool older brother unable to see the humor in Nanny McPhee or Merry Christmas, Eve. Somewhere like ten years ago, she mentioned this “very interesting movie” she’d seen, called The Help.
“Oh hm, really?” I think I responded, grunting through her summary of the movie’s depiction of southern housewives and their colored maids.
Then this year I saw the book in my classroom library (I think one of the ones my ex-girlfriend donated after she had to get rid of her own library) and decided to give it a shot.
It’s good. It’s very good. It helps that there are three separate plotlines at any point, so that just as one seems to be cooling down, it can suddenly hit you with a huge curveball with one of the others that you forgot about. The story very deftly weaves personal relationships with the larger social problems of the time, portraying a complex interwoven world buried in the heart of the South. And while nothing truly horrific happens, it doesn’t shy away from the darkness of the time either, yet still presents hope for a better future. It’s a very encouraging book to read.
Project: Hail Mary
This book got recommended to me by the science teacher, who would only say that I should know as little as possible about it going in. I in turn recommended it to my father, since it’s by Andy Weir, writer of The Martian, which I knew he enjoyed. My dad also enjoyed it, and passed it on to my brother, who also enjoyed it.
Suffice to say, it’s a very engaging read. And I have to agree with the science teacher, the less you know, the better. All I do feel comfortable saying is what’s revealed in the first chapter: A man wakes up in a room with two dead bodies and no memory of who he is or how he got there. As flashes of his memory start to come back, he needs to explore his surrounding and figure out where he is and what happened.
There’s a movie coming out, if you don’t feel like reading. But I do think the book is worth the effort. More sci-fi than the Martian and yet still remarkably grounded in real-world science, Project: Hail Mary is an engrossing read that sticks with you.
The Solomon Code 