2024! The year I vowed I would post on this blog more often, posted exactly one (1) time, and then dipped.

In my defense To my credit, and really to most everyone’s credit, 2024 was…its own special kind of hell. Not even touching the enormous ever-encroaching (or here, by the time I publish this) elephant in the room, 2024 saw the misery the end of 2023 brought me and mine and said…hey, let’s turn the screws a bit. Health issues - with my family and my own - work stresses, home stresses, life stresses. A whole year fueled by nonstop cortisol coursing through my veins. Terrible, awful, would not like to experience one like it again. But, uh, not getting my hopes up. Again, for obvious reasons.

So, to 2024, good riddance. Begone!

Anyway, let’s get rollin’, and get the quick and dirty one out of the way.

Games I Finished In 2024

Okay, that's a nice little graphic of games I managed to finish this year. Is it everything I played? Oh, heck no. I dabbled with a lot of games, so let's check out "The Dabblers"...

The Dabblers

That might not even be all of the games I dabbled with! Just what came to mind.

Now to write about some of these, but first...

Apart from the year having been disastrously stressful, a big part of why I didn't keep up with writing about the stuff I finished is because...I didn't like doing it? I mean, I thought I would!

A huge, influential part of writing about games, unfortunately, comes from my childhood of reading magazine reviews. While some were certainly creative, you had a lot that followed a rigid format. Say what the story is. Say what you do. Does it look good. Is the music good. Controls. Complain about bugs. Wrap up. Or whatever! Y'know. It's a really boring way to write about things, and doing it again and again and again...nah, nope. Can't do it. Won't do it. Maybe that makes me bad at critique, but honestly...maybe not everything deserves a full, thorough write-up.

So, with that said, there is no way I am going to write about each and every single thing in either of these lists, I'm just gonna write about the stuff I liked, or didn't, and maybe just particular parts. That's good enough for me, I think.

The Best Thing I Played (and Finished) in 2024

Originally I was gonna give this to Dragon Quest III: HD-2D Remake, the game equivalent of a big bowl of chili so good you forget your kids' names, but I feel like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown got short shrift this year, and the studio behind it an exceedingly raw deal.

I won't go over it too much, since I wrote about it in my one other (only?) 2024 post, but Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (hereforth PoP:TLC) is such an immensly satisfying game to play, all-around. The game is gorgeous, the controls are insanely tight, and every new area is immensly challenging but entirely doable, with patience and persistence.

My only complaints I had about the game the first go around (the weird AI voice, and the sudden omission of one of the antagonists) were addressed post launch - the stited AI little girl voice of a floating, glowing eye was replaced with a, uh, neurotic British man voice (???), and that missing boss fight wound up being its own entire 3-5 hour, incredibly difficult $5 (!!!) DLC.

Surely, even though it came out so early in the year, surely PoP:TLC's quality would shine brightly and grant it a follow-up? Well, no. The team was more or less disbanded, and moved onto other projects, a follow-up pitch denied.

So, y'know. Too good for this world, but exactly good enough for my top-spot.

The "Game Equivalent of a Big Bowl of Chili so Good You Forget Your Kids' Names" Award (or my #2/#3 pick)

Okay, I did need to write a little bit about this here. While I was losing hope this game was ever going to come out, I hemmed and hawed about whether I should play the ugly mobile port on Switch of Dragon Quest 3 first. Dragon Quest 3's reputation is tremendous, and I worried that if I played the new version, I'd probably never go back to any of the earlier versions.

Well, that's probably true, but I am glad I waited. 

There's really not much to write about the mechanics of Dragon Quest, or even the story (though the story here is very good, and the decision to release this before the remakes of I and II baffles me) - they're simple but incredibly enjoyable and pleasant. And I think that's what made this the perfect game to play heading into fall. It is, to use a grossly overused term, "cozy" - while it is possible to fail (and you certainly will, if unprepared), the consequences aren't that dire. Put simply, it's Comfort Food: The Game.

And given what an absolutely emotionally dire time this thing came out, it was a much-appreciated respite.

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake - it's good! Play it! But play the I&II remakes first, please, oh god, the final act payoff of 3 is so much better for it if you do.

The Best Game I Mostly Played in 2024 but Finished in the Early Days of 2025 but I Will Forget to Write About it by the End of 2025 so Let's Talk About It Now

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle wasn't really something I was anticipating to be good. The movie franchise itself hasn't seen a good movie since 1989 (this year's Dial of Destiny was an especially awful way to see the series off), and while I enjoyed MachineGames's Wolfenstein games, I felt they lacked a certain something of that Starbreeze DNA you saw in The Darkness and the Riddick games.

Thankfully, I was wrong to worry. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (I'm just gonna call it Indiana Jones) is far more of a first-person adventure game than the first person shooter fare the Wolfenstein games are. I think it was nine hours before I fired a gun, as I was leaving the first main area, which speaks to two good qualities of the game - first, the three main hub areas of the game are massive, crammed with secrets and puzzles and side quests worth seeking out. Second, while you're free to try to play the game as a traditional shooter, it's far more enjoyable to engage with the robust first person brawling (after all, Indy only shoots that one dude in Raiders!). The soundwork for hitting Nazis and fascists upside the head with all matter of improvised weapons (hammers, guitars, flyswatters, toilet scrubbers, a big honkin' sledgehammer, the works) is so incredibly good that it feels disappointing the handful of times you find yourself in a situation where you need to shoot your way out.

Kudos to them adding a much kinder stealth system to Indiana Jones than what was in their previous games - it's fairly easy to make a run for it and wait out searches before resuming sneaking around.

The story is great, with characters like Gina, your Italian underground reporter companion, and the antagonist Voss being particularly good. The late, great Tony Todd is fantastic in his own enigmatic role in the game, and it's damn shame he's gone. And while I have a few complaints here and there, Troy Baker does a more than adequate Harrison Ford impression.

In the same way it's a shame Prince of Persia got overlooked for coming out at the start of 2024, it's a shame Indiana Jones got passed over in some ways coming out in December. It's excellent and I can't recommend it enough (at least if your computer can run it - it got dicey with mine, here and there).

The "They Don't Make Games Like This Anymore (Except I Guess They Did Here With This One) But They Should" Award

Otogi Katsugeki Mameda no Bakeru (as I imported it on Switch earlier this year), or just Bakeru (as I rebought it on Steam a few months later) is such an incredibly pleasant throwback to a type of game it feels like they just don't make anymore. The plot is nonsensical, the visuals are clean and colorful, and the platforming and combat is simple and to the point. It's also just juvenile enough in its humor that it tickles what feels like a forgotten era of the late 90s/early 2000s.

I still haven't finished this one because it's frankly a lot to take in, but each session I do play, a few levels here and there, feels like a nice little treat. 

The "Game With a World You Just Know Smells Crazy" Award

I can't believe I took this long to play Blasphemous. I guess I was afraid of it being difficult (and it certainly is!), but the world and atmosphere of Blasphemous is without equal. Just this crushing, depressing world of rot and decay, of sinners thanking god for whatever horrible manifestation of punishment has befallen them, whether that's a gigantic boy with a decrepit old man slowly emerging from his chest, or the old man who maintains the ossuary gradually being overcome by dust. It's disgusting and fascinating and (in some ways literally) incredibly fleshed out. I don't think I'll soon forget it.

It's also worth noting that playing the game with anything other than the Spanish vocals would be to rob yourself of some excellent old men voices. Those trilled r's...just do it. Switch it over in the options. Trust me.

The "Game That Kept Me Sane When Contractors Were Going In And Out Of The House For Two Miserable Hot and Dusty Weeks" Award

Dorfromantik is so good. God what a good game. You just slap down tiles to soothing music and little nature noises, trying to build out a small little world while satisfying certain goals (a town of this many tiles, a road of this many, etc). Eventually you run out of tiles and can just spin the camera around, marveling at this small piecemeal little world you've made, little trains and boats milling about.

It's very relaxing, and goddamn did I need that when I had dudes stomping around and hammering shit left and right. Also the AC died one of those weeks, so I think it helped, hearing water sounds, a little bit. 

Look, you take any placebo you can get.

The "Game I Should Have Spent More Time With And Can Probably Play Til I Die And Never See It All The Way Through And That's OK But Dang I Would Like To Finish It" Award

UFO 50 almost seemed like it was never going to come out, until it suddenly did. And it's great! But I've played (and I mean just barely dabbled with) less than a fifth of the game's 50 offerings. 

I just...I gotta beat Barbuta. I can do it. Once I do that I'll move on. But I can't let Barbuta beat me...

The "Nice Short and Sweet Games" Awards

The Exit 8, Platform 8, and Dragon Ruins are all fairly short games. This is just an award to those three to say that, hey, thanks. I liked that, about them.

Dragon Ruins runs a little longer, just by nature of being a dungeon RPG, but as those goes it's an incredibly brisk experience. The spartan retro graphics are nice, the music is incredibly moody. You keep going in and out of the dungeon to explore it a little more fully each time, to level up, to take on the handful of bosses, before the final boss itself, and...it's done. Maybe a few hours, tops. You can go in and do it all again, with a higher difficulty, but nah. It's good. 

The Exit 8 and Platform 8 are both clever little horror games about spotting anomalies in looping areas, trying to evade either death or to end the loop. You eventually learn how to handle or spot each scenario, make your way through, and...that's it. You're done.

More short stuff like these, please!

The "So Earnest And Honest In Its Approach That It Far Exceeds Expectations" Award

It would have been so easy for Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore to have been a joke of a game. "Haha, remember those Zelda CDi games? Remember YouTube Poops? We made one of those, haha." But Arzette is not only a love letter to those CDi platform games, but an incredibly robust and well-made one that is genuinely funny.

I streamed the game with a sort of "haha let's check this wacky thing out" and wound up completing it in a single sitting (so it also gets the above award, congrats to Arzette), but I don't think I would have done so had this been an ironic shitpost of a game. It is absolutely a labor of love to a goneby niche of game, and I can't wait to see if the team will follow it up.

The "Games Don't Need to Be This Long" Award

I don't want to dunk too much on Spiritfarer. I think, after spending a month and some change doing some caretaking myself, it captures something about that experience that you just...can't really understand until you're there. It's a labor of love, but it's exhausting. You can try to reap your own reward of it, tell yourself you're doing a greater good, but it can be draining, and sometimes makes you resentful of the very person you're trying to help as frustrations arise, even when you know it's not their fault.

The spirit animal companions in Spiritfarer exhibit this a T. You meet them, and are charmed by their personalities, and get to work trying to ease them among your misfit crew of passengers. You help them with their unfinished business, feed them, the works. And gradually, the conditions that befell them in life manifest in death. Mental illness, physical illness, dementia. They get frustrated, and in turn so do you. And then, eventually, inevitably, the time comes to part with them.

I think, in that way, the repetition of the game works. This constant juggling of harvesting ingredients, cooking meals, tending to needs, trying to keep everyone happy, with little focus on yourself. That works.

But damn it's a lot of work and I think it took me 40+ hours to finish it. Games don't need to be this long.

The "Games Don't Need to Be This Long Because I'll Get Tired of It Before I Ever Finish It Even Though It's Consistently Pretty Damn Good Throughout" Award

This isn't really a fault of Fallout New Vegas as much as it's my experience with every Bethesda game like it. Skyrim, Fallout 4...I guess those are the only other ones I played, but the point stands. There is so, so, so, so much in this world to do, to see, to find and interact with, that you can spend dozens of hours doing everything but the main quest line and never see an end to it all. Steam says I spent 80 hours in this thing. That's over three days! I'm still not done with it!

For what it's worth, New Vegas has the distinct advantage of Actually Having Good Writing and Good Characters, so it makes what was kinda tossed out there as a side game so much more than the "main" titles released before and after it.

Will I ever finish it? Maybe. Hopefully. I just gotta decide if I wanna go with House or Yes Man...damn...maybe I'll wait til next year...

The "Maybe You Can't Go Back, Maybe" Award

Gundam Breaker 4 and Dragon Ball Sparking Zero are by no means bad games. But I think my excitement for them was rooted more in capturing the fun I had with these series in the past than anything else. That wistful flailing grasp at times of youth gone by.

Well, also, maybe it's just that Gundam Breaker 3 and Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 are better games. Maybe it's just that.

Most Disappointing Thing I Played in 2024 and Maybe Ever, Possibly Ever

Oh god I wanted Endless Ocean: Luminous to be good. I wanted a chill and relaxing game about swimming around and seeing cool fish and sea animals. And I guess, maybe, that's what I got. I just didn't expect it to be so damn anemic.

You spend most of Endless Ocean swimming around aimlessly, dragging a cursor around Panzer Dragoon style, scanning fish. The huge maps will have something like seven "glitchy" fish you need to scan, that upon doing so summons a rare creature that you can see and scan for your database. Finding those seven needles in the ocean sized haystack takes a good hour, at least. And your reward of sea creature is...randomized. So it's entirely possible to spend a whole hour triggering their arrival and have one you've already seen come along.

I would be fine with it being boring, honestly. I can handle boring. I just can't handle it wasting my time. I'll do that myself, with better things, thanks.

The "Maybe I Don't Like These After All" Award (or The Year I Gave Up on Playstation)

I'm picking on Spider-Man Miles Morales here because it's the main one of these I played, but I think I'm "over" Sony's big, flashy, somewhat meatless single player offerings. Miles Morales is a game I've played (and enjoyed!) before, but upon replay...I dunno. It's big, it's beautiful, it has exciting set pieces, but outside of that, it's just...mediocre. Maybe I'm good, on this sort of thing. Maybe this is a big part of why, four going on five years into the PS5 life cycle, I've got no desire to grab one.

Well, there are a lot more reasons than that, but that's a pretty good one.

I guess it's fitting that this year, when all the various platforms and services did their data based "wrap-ups," my Playstation wrap-up was met with an error. "You have to have played at least 10 hours on a PS4 or PS5 console." Whoops! Not sure I even turned it on this year.

Anyway, this award is slightly disingenous - I'm having a great time with Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on my computer (even if it seems like the big rift setpieces are going to kill my poor PC where it stands), and I will likely place my hand on the lit stove to see if it's hot when Spider-Man 2 comes out on PC, and probably be right back here writing about how it's more spectacle than substance. I just...I gotta know, I guess...

Also I will always go to bat for PSOne, PS2 and PS3 stuff. That Playstation stuff I stand by. They should do more of that, I think.

The "Best Thing I Got or Did as Games Go" Award

This is the year I basically decided to just go with PC. I got a Steam Deck as a thanks for my caretaking earlier this year. I upgraded my PC a little bit. I'm good, now. I can enjoy stuff at home and on the go. PC gaming...thank you.

Okay no more game stuff (for now)

I'm tired of talking about games, but I think I hit the big ones. 

Now for other stuff.

Best Movie I Saw in 2024 That Wasn't From 2024

Kamikaze Girls is so, so, so good. God what an entertaining movie. To say it's a story of an unlikely friendship between an utterly misanthropic gothic lolita fan and a tough but insecure delinquent is...it's selling it short. It's so incredibly frenetic in its direction, in its surreal visuals. I was grinning like a fool beginning to end. It's a hoot. Seek it out.

Best Movie From 2024 That I Saw In 2024 But Thought Came Out in 2023 For Some Reason But I Guess It Says It Came Out in 2024 Right There So It Was 2024 After All

I don't know why my expectations for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga were so low, why I counted George Miller out. Maybe it was the, y'know, entire decade since Mad Max Fury Road, maybe it was thinking Anya Taylor Joy doesn't really look anything like Charlize Theron. Maybe I'm just sick of the prevalance of origin stories (no, I don't need to know how Han Solo got his name, or his blaster, or the Millennium Falcon, but there's a whole movie that's slightly better than it ought to be to spell it all out and rob the character of any mystique).

But I was a fool! You never count George Miller out. Furiosa is a pretty damn entertaining movie, even if you never consider the movie that canonically follows it (there's actually a kinda awkward shot at the end where they try to sort of bridge the end of the movie into Mad Max Fury Road, and...y'know, Anya Taylor Joy really doesn't look anything like Charlize Theron).

For a movie that went through development hell, the end result is pretty damn good. Anya Taylor Joy is suitably stoic throughout and does a hell of a job with the action sequences, but I particularly kinda loved Chris Hemsworth's bizarrely whiny, utterly inept villain Dementus, nasally voice and huge prosthetic nose and all.

It's too bad it was considered a box office bomb, because this likely means the end of the line for the Mad Max franchise, but at least George Miller got to let it go out on a good one (god, imagine if the series ended with Beyond Thunderdome...ugh...).

Best Movie I Actually Bought In 2024 That Came Out in 2024 But I Was A Huge Baby And Didn't Watch Until 2025 And Even Then It Took Me Six Hours Across Two Days Because I'm Squeamish

The Substance...holy moly. If you've got an iron stomach and can handle some pretty horrific gore, I can't recommend it enough. If this thing doesn't win anything from "the big awards" then it can at least have my dubious honor here. It rules, I can't stop thinking about it. It goes places I can't believe it went. They don't make 'em like this anymore (except I guess they did, here, but you know what I mean).

As Far as I'm Concerned, the Only Thing Streaming in 2024 That Was Worth A Damn

The original Ranma 1/2 is a bonafide classic, whether you're talking about the manga or the first anime adaptation, but this year's remake (which hews closer to the manga and carves out the filler) is just so damn enjoyable. I dunno why I keep Netflix going, but this made it worthwhile, at least.

Best Book I Could Have Partially Internalized And Learned Valuable Lessons From But I Didn't Finish It And Now I Gotta Re-read it Because it's Been Too Long

Some of the stuff in here hit me like a ton of bricks but I was very tired and stressed out when I read it...maybe in 2025 I'll try again. But I do dig its very conversational approach!

2025's Ten Pledge

My friend Rudie said I ought to do a pledge of ten games I wanna try to finish, no matter what, in the following year, as goal setting. He goes over it himself in his own year in review that you can read here.

Anyway, I dunno about games, but I've got some ideas.

1. Ys Books I and II: Always meant to play the Ys games, may as well start with the start and get bumpin'.
2. Yakuza 4 Remastered: A big part of wanting a Steam Deck was the lofty idea of "I'm going to play every Yakuza game, in bed." I didn't even accomplish that! So this year, let's make it happen. Yakuza in bed...
3. Control: I'm constantly dipping my toes in Control and dipping back out, but in 2025, I wanna see it through. It's extremely cool! I should do it!
4. Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin: Another one I've attempted many times before, just gotta focus and keep going.
5. Atelier Marie: I bought a whole bunch of those damn Atelier games and haven't even barely started any of them. So here we go.

I dunno, there's more I could do there, but let's swerve a little, with five different ones.

1. Want For Less: I've got stuff. Getting an iPad didn't make me a better artist. Getting a new pen didn't make me write more. I don't need new things. I just need to focus and enjoy what's here. So on that note...
2. Practical Needs of the Present: It's going to be a rough year, if not years, plural. I enjoy my distractions, shoving my head in the sand as much as anyone, but I want to, y'know, be there. For my family, for my friends. Things are whatever, people and life are fleeting and ephemeral. Priorities, y'know?
3. Self-Improvement: I guess this is typical NYE Resolution material, but honestly, I would like to. Beyond even just the usual "lose weight" or whatever. I just want to feel good, in my own skin, about myself, and do what I need to to get there. Exercise, therapy, learning new skills. It's easy to lay in bed and be sad and miserable, but it's just not a great way to live.
4. Read a Dang Book: I gotta...it's embarassing how little I read (I mean, I read...trash, on the internet, constantly, but that ain't reading, that ain't enriching).
5. Meet Folks: I've mostly shied away from the world the last few ye-...uh...decade, maybe. It's not great. I'm anxious, I stumble on things I wanna say, but I gotta try this year to muscle through it. Even if I can't bring myself to meet new people, I want to be there more for the friends I have.

I think that's it.

If you've read all this so far, thank you. I hope this year isn't as bad as I'm afraid it will be. I hope everyone fares well. 

Take care of yourselves, out there.