2024 Things
Another year has passed and I write to share what I’ve experienced, mostly good, some not that good. More or less the same rules apply as before: It won’t cover everything because I’d be here all day. I’m talking about things that stuck out to me, that I feel are worth me writing about. Things unfinished I’m not going to talk about as much because I don’t like recommending stuff I haven’t seen through to the end.
Games:
(games will be ordered in the order in which I played them)
I finished like 13 games that I hadn’t played before this year and I feel pretty good about that pace all things considered. I built a spreadsheet somewhere in the middle of 2023 to track what I own, what I don’t, what I’ve started, what I haven’t, what needs a restart, etc. Really great tool to help me be intentional about focusing on games and getting through them.
mundaun
A spooky game with some slightly bothersome stealth mechanics, mundaun is all about the vibe and the game’s interesting embedded mechanics (inventory, use of brewing coffee to give you a bigger sanity bar, that sorta thing). I should’ve written about it back in early 2024 when I was playing it so I had more to say, instead I’m working off recollection almost a whole year later. But that also leaves me with mostly positive memories. Hiding from hay monsters while navigating the world in the dark isn’t really engaging at all after dealing with troublesome mechanics. So that first couple nights of the game are frustrating. However all the details zooming in on photos where you hear things, the presentation of creepy nights as you open or close windows or see the man with the hat from far away but then he’s not there up close, those things are fantastic. The story, the world, the audio design, are all top notch and, like one other game on this list, you’ll find yourself saying “we need more games like this that feature aspects unlike anything you’ve ever played before.” In this case, mundaun comes from a Swiss developer. And its charcoal art style is uniquely unforgettable.
Dead Space Remake
Playing Dead Space remake this year not long after playing the System Shock Remake last year was such a good call. I think the best remakes are ones that make you say “there’s actually no reason to go play the original now” and come out for games like the original System Shock; a game so old the concept of mouse movement didn’t exist yet. For Dead Space this felt weird because, as far as I could experience, the original Dead Space was still very playable. Sure it was a mid-gen release for consoles but outside the well-documented vertical synch issue on PC, the original Dead Space wasn’t some massively outdated game riddled with bugs or design flaws. So why would I say Dead Space Remake is a good remake? Well, because it’s just a massively improved version of the original in almost every way. It maintains the almost constantly increasing sense of dread the original gave players by way of making its safe zones less and less safe, increasing the sensation that the Ishimura’s systems are struggling more and more as you play the game.
The seamless level design is one of the rare cases of modern AAA level designs not feeling hamstrung the way a game like the Jedi series or God of War do: You’re not corridor squeezing as a replacement for a loading screen so much as spending time traversing a wide corridor that might or might not spawn enemies on you this time around. Or you just take the tram, a free standing loading screen that doesn’t feel slower or faster based on load times (I do appreciate how this game does a lot of its loading so that once you’re at the main menu the game feels fully loaded). Tram rides are also not a constant necessity for exploring the game, so you don’t feel like the game is constantly shoving you into those tighter spaces to load more of the game. This is the version of the Ishimura I dreamt of as a teenager, a structured experience given room for semi-dynamic scares and simultaneously meeting out its internal consistency the way System Shock games (and Prey) have done in the past. There’s still scripted spooks, and they’re great. But because the Ishimura is so corridor-focused, the load times are stellar while the game can get away with not actually forcing the player down to a thumbstick press. The story and gameplay expansions are also fantastic. A useful Flame Thrower, who would of thought?! I feel like it’s a bug but there’s this thing in this remake where if you enter some rooms, the entrance/exit doors into that space that you didn’t enter yourself are already open (most doors are always closed in this game) and usually once you catch a glimpse of the doors they’ll close in your eyeline. Bug or not, it creates a tension in this game that I haven’t felt for a while now and the remake has proven itself a worthy entry in the dead franchise.
Spider-Man 2
Following the line of fulfilled wishes, Spider-Man 2 is the actual Spider-Man 3 movie a younger me wanted. While Spider-Man 3 is a weird campy experience, its production issues are pretty well known at this point: Raimi wanted to make it more about Peter, Harry, and Sandman. But Sony pushed for Venom to be in it. The result was a mess. Here, Marvel Spider-Man 2 manages to have the multi-villain trick going on again just like the first game, but you can see it coming a mile away. The Venom aspect of the game is on the cover while Kraven was advertised all over the game. Unlike the movie Spider-Man 3, Marvel Spider-Man 2 had a planned Venom story. It’s naturally a much better setup.
The main plot is, more or less, what you want out of a story like this, the needled threaded in a way that feels better than we’ve seen before. How this game took me by surprise was in every single Miles quest. It’s insane how good his story actually works through this game. There’s definitely some plot convenience nonsense happening near the end but that’s such a minor element in a wider game that’s clearly playing up passing up the torch to Miles. What makes you want that torch pass comes through Miles’s quests. His character represents the embodiment of the “friendly neighborhood Spider-Man” character one hopes for in this sort of fiction. Quests involving ordinary citizens are given so much more room to breathe in this game and are less about citizens reporting crimes as they are about human beings needing some help or just needing someone to talk to. It’s about life, death, and love. We’re all too familiar with stories where the hero becomes a villain of sorts and the other hero has to save the main hero. But Spider-Man 2 is the one where you do the saving, you feel the desire to fix things and maybe knock some sense into Peter. And it’s all the more satisfying because of it. And when the game goes full Venom mode it’s as over-the-top as video games can allow for in some fantastic ways.
Just, please, redesign that ugly Adidas suit at the game’s climax for Miles. It’s awful. We all know it.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Not necessarily one I’d recommend that much. The first 25% of the game I played I tried playing it a bit closer to a normal Wolfenstein experience and had a good time. And then it started looping more and more, areas repopulating the way it is designed to and I started losing interest. I beat the game but its last boss fight is just boring as can be and the game itself, while earnestly fun, isn’t what anyone was truly interested in from a Wolfenstein standpoint: It’s a miniature Borderlands. The biggest saving grace is the game’s level design (outside sewer maps). Arkane helped develop the game’s map design and the verticality and detail really shows. I’m excited for what MachineGames cooks up next but this one-off experience is rather mentally throwaway in a series that has otherwise been so intentional.
The Outer Worlds
I finally, finally got around to Outer Worlds. And its DLC. I had attempted two different runs of this game. The first run got me over to Monarch but I stalled out at some point exploring that planet’s open world section. My second run was stopped shortly as my graphics card had somehow gotten worse at playing the game and I couldn’t get a stable framerate on it, must’ve been aging poorly or something. Either way, I finally did it. And while I think Noah Gervais makes some really great points about the game’s predictability and the ways in which it struggles to escape its own comparisons to modern Fallout, I still really enjoyed most of my time with the game. Everything about the combat is just as throwaway as Wolfenstein: Youngblood but in entirely different ways. However the characters, the world, the history, the backdrop, it’s all pretty good. Tacoma does do this sort of future capitalism idea better because Outer Worlds fails to drip itself in Capitalistic Irony well while Tacoma is instead painting a picture through a smaller lens and providing a story of hope within a jaded and cynical system. But that didn’t stop me from liking the debates at play across the first two main planets. That didn’t stop me from liking everything going on in the Groundbreaker and its past. I didn’t expect to like Pavarti and Ellie so much but I really did. The third planet Byzantium was appropriately scaled down after Monarch being so big but definitely feels like aspects of the story there were entirely rushed. For the planet that’s all supposed to be about the high society you really don’t see much of it.
Playing the DLC Murder on Eridanos right after Monarch and Peril on Gorgon right before the end game felt so thematically appropriate. Murder on Eridanos might be where the game shines its brightest, taking advantage of RPG, conversation, and observation aspects in ways that let these types of games shine so well (it’s where Outer Worlds feels closest to New Vegas). A murder mystery at the center of it all is also so gripping. It’s all really well done. Meanwhile Peril on Goron, while a little lengthy, taps into something much more important to the overall story of The Outer Worlds, so much so that I’m actually surprised it’s not the climax of the game. The stats needed to get the best ending in that DLC are absurd. But the destination at the heart of it is a much better experience than the nothing-walk that the last chunk of the main game is.
Shadow of the Erdtree
I don’t want to dwell on this one for long because I have spent too much time in Elden Ring over the past 18 months. Don’t be trickled by that phrase “DLC”. This game is very much so “Dark Souls 7” to Elden Ring’s “Dark Souls 4, 5, and 6 in one package.” Shadow of the Erdtree is great. Despite Elden Ring being the driving force of what we experience in Shadow of the Erdtree, I can’t help but look back on the 60–100 hours I spent in Shadow in a much greater light than the 200+ hours I spent in Elden Ring. The discovery aspect of Elden Ring on a first run is incredible and there’s a very interesting world there. But that world is only more interesting in Shadow of the Erdtree. That gameplay is only more varied and supports build variety better in Shadow of the Erdtree without filling so much of that time in far too many caves and less interesting worlds and dungeons. At the same time, we wouldn’t have these expansive setups without the original game’s foundation. It’s also a DLC most people will struggle to enter on a bum rush through the core game (one of the few advantages for me was that I finished Elden Ring back in early January so I didn’t feel the need for a fresh save to prep for the DLC, anyone else would and that sucks). The map is maybe the one fatal flaw in this “DLC” as it struggles to handle this design of verticality in a way that was pretty easily addressed in the main game. And yet Shadow of the Erdtree manages to be (outside its ending and a few sticklers) rigorously good throughout. And just like after finishing Elden Ring back in December of 2023, I never want to think about Elden Ring again. I want FromSoft to explore the stars next. I want them to get away from fantasy grounds. And I want the next game to be the size and scope of what we’ve seen before Elden Ring happened. Not for many reasons more than just that I like having time.
Chorus
What a cool take on the dogfighter genre. It’s a semi-open game where you’ll traverse and explore about four larger space areas that are filled with quests and encounters but entirely from the 3rd person dogfighter space perspective. The hubs are all cool and big enough to have dynamics that make them exciting. The quests are mostly fine except for the ones that fill up dead time between large travel jobs. They’re basically brief stops and really offer nothing interesting to the player and unfortunately start looping more and more as you wrap up more of the game’s main quests. That constant appearance of brief quests or enemies made me feel like the game didn’t trust me to enjoy just flying about its vaster spaces without something to shoot every five minutes. A sad thing in a game so beautiful honestly. Meanwhile the mechanics are also really solid with a sort of mystical power to you and your ship that allow you to pull off cool stunts across fights. The “ship build” elements aren’t that deep, pick what you like and what help you overcome the game’s challenges. I think all this game is missing is some more flight challenges. The game gives you some really great tools that provide specific in-flight maneuvers that make fast shifts really fun, but you only use it in tighter high-speed experiences so often. The largest weak point, unfortunately, is a story that is steeped in almost too much lore that the player is carried through without enough background for it. I wouldn’t call the lore or writing bad so much as just we’re inundated in it in a game that doesn’t have enough breathing room to fill it into a game like this. If you miss stuff like Starfighter, Rogue Squadron, and the like, don’t miss this one.
Kenzera: Tales of ZAU
I think you should buy this game if you love Metroidvanias or if the aesthetic of the game interests you. It’s one of those games where I genuinely think you won’t find many games out there like this with this setting. The mythical storytelling present is really unique and worth putting the game in the native language with subtitles. I can’t say I was crazy about the more complex execution of some of the core mechanics here; dashing, for example, moved too far past enemies you’d try to dash through to avoid attacks, getting hit knocks you back in annoying ways as the game gets harder, and the time between hitting lethal pitfalls and starting again is maybe just a smidge too long. But the earnestness of this game and its message from a developer who lost his dad and is trying to reconcile that, yeah, I know that feeling. This is one of those developers that struggled to keep the lights on financially and then the game got a lot of hate for having a person of color on the cover or the developer trying to share his culture with the world so you’d help some people who struggled for unreasonable reasons if you bought this one.
Hyper Light Drifter
I finally beat it. I had two prior earnest tries in this game like The Outer Worlds. A good time. I liked it. Not a lot to say outside that.
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened
At this point I’d recommend a Frogwares game to anyone with a passing interest. Sherlock Homes: Chapter One had some truly frustrating bits in its “scenario recreations” and I wasn’t fond of the vague conclusions you’d arrive at, but it still had my recommendation last year. The Awakened I feel even more comfortable urging you to grab and experience. For starters it’s not open world. This is a series of chapters where you have smaller semi-open map hubs and each hub lets you explore out some smaller investigations in addition to your main case. That means there’s no combat encounters, no “pick an outfit for disguise” stuff, and next to no city exploration investigating in the way that that takes up a great deal of the last two Frogwares games (collectibles in The Sinking City were great, but not in Chapter One). And while there’s definitely something cool about how those games let you tap into the city in so many ways (maps, talking to people to gather info, digging deeper), enough of those mechanics are retained here and even given better tutorials so you’ll have a better time puzzling through things. Normally after each miniature hub you’ll progress into a story-focused larger investigation that gets complex with each new area of the game. One middle game investigation involves recreating a violent incident across two floors of a mansion and it’s just the best. By not being locked into one larger city this time around you get to see several unique areas in the game instead with great dynamics. Unlike Chapter One, The Awakened won’t leave you grasping at straws for which of the two potential answers is the right one, except where it counts (this is, after all, a Cthulhu mystery). The best improvement they’ve made here has to be the Mind Palace, smartly color coding different types of evidence so players can put it together and comprehend what type of evidence is missing when your deductions are rejected.
The presentation aspect of this game is so much better too, each new chapter presenting itself with a fantastic sense of foreboding, the scenery shot in such stark ways cut against the title cards that introduce it. The story works out really well too. There’s one or two moments where I felt like I wanted more but then I checked out the art book for the game and found an entire section in the art book dedicated to showing you what the devs (from Ukraine) have gone through with the conflict with Russia, including family members they haven’t found yet. This company has been through the ringer for the past decade including a legal battle over The Sinking City where they probably weren’t getting most of the sales money for three years until the start of 2024. To know The Awakened is an entirely crowdfunded project and that The Sinking City 2 will be crowdfunded the same way is an impressive feat. This team is efficient at what they do, even with this newer engine of theirs and I look forward to putting some cash towards their development of this next game in 2025.
Amnesia: The Bunker
I kind hate games like Amnesia: The Bunker. Or so I thought. I’ve never been a fan of “monster roaming” scary games like Outlast or Alien: Isolation (I tried to, I played something like 15 hours of Alien: Isolation). At the end of the day there has always just something really bothering about these games to me. But I love Frictional titles. They’re one of the most consistently “I liked it”-level devs for me. And The Bunker was reportedly a big success and really well done. So getting to this game was inevitable. Leave it to Frictional to make me finally like one of these types of games.
Approaching The Bunker like any prior Amnesia game with an immersive sim twist is just enough of what I needed to push through these types of experiences. I don’t know if there was any one particular aspect that helped me through it or if it was moreso a combination of the elements at play. The map. The tools at your disposal that you’ll find more of as you keep playing. The desire to explore out more and more of the map to get the story. Frictional’s interactivity and your greatest tool: Your brain. Outsmart the beast. Hide. Distract. Evade. It’s comforting to know that this type of game does really well with the same type of market that loves Resident Evil games (less the action-ones and more 1–3 and 7 and 8) because hopefully more people will give more Frictional titles a try and see they’re still the king at this corner of the horror street: First person. Kinetically grounded. Vulnerably terrifying. It’s really good and just when you’re reaching the right levels of confidence in this game you’ll dive into even scarier experiences. One in particular that sets up the endgame is just the absolute worst. It creates the same sort of frantic nerves that the sewer section in Amnesia: The Dark Descent provided.
Resident Evil Remake (not finished for now)
I didn’t finish this one and won’t this year. I picked it up post-Amnesia: The Bunker because part of me wondered how well I’d enjoy this now that I found something to like about this type of game through The Bunker. And it was great! I sunk close to 20 hours into the game in a pretty short time span. There’s something really satisfying about exploring every room and mapping it out and figuring out the intricate puzzle that is this game’s mansion. It is long though and so I wasn’t ready to commit another 10 or more hours getting through this game. Besides, there was “Bloodborne at home” to play.
Lies of P (not finished yet)
Yeah. Instant winner for me, even when I played the demo I could feel it right away. You should play Lies of P if you like Bloodborne and/or Sekiro. It is harder. It does have aspects that are a tad more punishing than some Souls games (on par with Sekiro basically). But so much on the table here is an improvement over a lot of normal things in Souls games now. The improvements to the Souls designs and formulas here are consistently so good that part of me wants to even recommend you play the demo if you like any single Souls game. It’s that fresh and different and unique. It’s not all perfect. I’m also not done with the game. But I think my urging you to try it despite not being done with it speaks to how strong a title this game is. I definitely have Bloodborne bias. But I think I can leave this recommendation with these two simple ideas from the game. 1) You can change the hilt and blade part of every weapon to mix and match them to create unique styles of play and plays of style. 2) This is the first game ever (not just souls-game) to have a durability system that I actually like and it feels well implemented as part of the gameplay experience.
Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals
Oxenfree is my jam. Teenage drama amidst a radio frequency horror experience that also deals with time loops? Awesome. But Oxenfree 2 is interesting because it’s not that (a teenage drama). It focuses on a different age range for the character drama (opting for people in their middle to late 20s-ish? Older?) while they’re following the antics of some teenagers that are involved with these time loops. It definitely makes the experience feel a little more bland compared to the dynamics of the teens from the first game. Partially because you’re just adults now so you’ve got some years and responsibility on you. But also because it’s just you and one other person for the game’s duration and it feels like the dialogue between the two of them is really awkward. Absent at times even. Honestly the player character Riley isn’t routinely confronted about what’s happened to them and what is happening to them. Alex had people regularly around her in the first game to confront herself with the things that haunt her but in this Riley just regularly sees visions of the future and converses with characters there. The thematic point makes sense but the emotion isn’t given a lot of weight honestly because the dots aren’t quite connected in the ways that make this as compelling. It’s hard to feel as invested in it when Riley’s conflict isn’t even apparent.
Oxenfree 2 has definite improvements! You get sign posts that conversations will carry on from one map load to the next, which is assuring in a way prior games lacked. There’s radio frequencies that have different people to check-in on and that’s a nice way to provide more characters without having to model them or have them all doing something on the map (having to choose who to take with you in Oxenfree did feel a little limiting if you wanted to see it all, here you’re guaranteed some experiences so long as you explore thoroughly). I like the Night School Studio approach to these type of games so I’m here for it, but it’s currently hard to tell if this sequel is stronger than the original knowing half of the mystery already. The half-way twist is really great though and the spooks are done in a genuinely more exciting way than they could’ve been able to back in the day. It just felt so deflating to barely know what my main character was struggling with emotionally while she mostly kept quiet about things for most of the game. By the time the end game decisions showed up, one main character didn’t even say anything until I was pretty confident about my decision. Oxenfree is built to be played more than once though so part of me wants to see what’s out there in a second run of this game as well. I’d recommend this if you really loved the first and want more of the spooky vibes, but if you’re new, go play the original first, Night School are great at their craft regardless.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (very unfinished, very dedicated to finishing it)
I’m so glad this game exists. Half-Life: Alyx in 2020 was of incredible importance to me, a moment I had been waiting for from Valve for 13 years that I had mostly given up on because Valve had moved on from who they were in the past into something else. That’s why Alyx, incredible as it is, didn’t feel like a sequel (I mean, it’s not, but in more ways than just when a story takes place). S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, on the other hand, is truly a sequel to a game 17 years later that I never even felt hope for. I held on to the possibility that Valve would come around for more of what I loved in Half-Life until I couldn’t anymore. The story of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 before its announcement is as lost to time as the Zone is to the world. The active development of the game has been told online in a fantastic doc I’d recommend you watch to 1) understand what the dev has gone through and empathize with them and 2) to comprehend what frame of perspective that can provide you before playing this game. But there’s a longer story involving this IP, the studio behind it, and the lineage of games that cropped up in the wake of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl that is harder to find now. Raycevick’s video on Metro 2033 and Last Light covers a fair chunk of it if you want to dig deeper but there’s more out there. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. having a full fledged massive sequel like this could’ve gone the way of Disco Elysium (and it seemingly almost did). In that story, the original developers were completely disbanded by fate and time and capital, and several other studios popped up in the original studio’s death, and all laid their claim that they were the next studio that would build something worthy of the comparison to the original. But GSC Game World’s founder’s brother and wife picked up the ashes of the company after so much fallout across the 2010s, made some more strategy games, and assembled and revived this franchise and delivered this sequel of a game.
Much like Lies of P, I’ve got some hefty bias for a game called “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2” coming out and existing. It’s not some sort of a revelation, but I never needed it to be. The original game’s revelation was its incredible dedication to being something different in a scene that was so blandly becoming the same. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. maintains the formula that no one else out there could figure out, makes some modern changes, and grows the game to what technology can permit in scale and scope today. It ups some challenges in ways I love. The devs put out a day-one patch that fixed a lot of issues and since then the devs have put out even more patches to fix and tweak more of the game.
So long as GSC Game World remains safe it looks to be that this company is going to continue helping this game be stable, beautiful, and polished. I realize I’m not saying too much about the experience of the game and that’s because these Eastern European developed games get a reputation for being broken, janky, and (by association) terrible. This game just isn’t that for me. I’ve experienced some stuff like you would in a Bethesda game but not THAT MUCH in 25 hours. What I have experienced…is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. A game set in a world that feels alive around you. The very earth groans to swallow you whole in this rusty, cold, stormy landscape created with a massive passion by people who grew up in admiration of their home country and one of modern history’s most horrific disaster stories. It’s a game that I expected it to be but never believed in my wildest dreams that it would happen given the state of everything surrounding S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as a franchise. I should’ve known better really. The Ukranian spirit is stronger than the Zone.
Music:
(for flow reasons, music here is arranged basically by rank of music I thought were the best to the “worst”, but it’s good stuff don’t worry, don’t forget this is out of things I listened to)
Jon Hopkins — Ritual
Ritual is just perfect? It really doesn’t need more explaining than that. It’s a simple concept given form: A therapeutic meditation session depicted through an everchanging, growing, evolving musical soundscape that just builds and builds until it ends on poignant piano. Jon hasn’t stripped things back this well since his debut album Opalescent, which wasn’t really “stripped back” so much as just “simple”. And to contrast Bo Burnham’s “original does not mean good” joke, simple never needed to mean boring or bad. And Ritual proves that statement again 23 years after Opalescent did but in the way Jon Hopkins makes music today. One honest listen is all you need to comprehend quickly how this is, without a doubt, an S-Tier release. It’s so good I don’t need to explain it any further.
wavedash — Tempo
This was the one that took me by surprise. My friend Chris introduced me to wavedash a few years back, they had opened for or performed at Porter Robinson concerts and had an album called “World Famous Tour” I listened to. It was all right for me, didn’t change my perspective or anything. But “Tempo” fundamentally works differently for me. Their sophomore album is one of the leanest, meanest 35 minutes I’ve heard in a minute and I think why it works so well for me is two-fold. For starters, the style of music varies from a sort of high-spirits disco house in the first half cutting over to brash and wild hard dance and dubstep in the back half. The instrumentation, sampling, and pacing are detailed, slickly introduced, and quickly discarded often within 3 minutes or less. This allows the group to take you through an assortment of 12 tracks and give each track breathing room if appropriate (see: SKYFALLING and U Dont Know How). The dividing line between styles in music is clearly delineated in the first half (the house half) with track titles that are a mixture of upper and lowercase letters while the back half (the dubstep, the hard dance, the wub wubs) being in all caps for each title. You know the energy being brought just by looking at the titles. And then there’s the other half of the equation: Nostalgia (maybe?). Tempo is out in 2024, a decade after the year I started broadening my style horizons by picking up releases from Monstercat. The label was no doubt in its big heydey around then with tons of artists getting their real start there (Marshmallow would be getting releases like “Alone” there two years later, Noisestorm’s “Crab Rave” two years after that). Tempo feels rooted in that eclecticism we were seeing in varieties of music back then; Harsh. Varied. Quickly cut. DJ party music. Tempo doesn’t need to be more than that. It manages to be a little more than that by playing with style and format in some delectable ways. It and the next album were easily my most listened to albums this year, worthy of something like an A- out of me.
Porter Robinson — SMILE! :D
I love nuance. And yet I feel like I can know where people sit on this album based on their opinion of one song: Year of the Cup. Porter, in promotional material, called it the best song on the album. I saw him write that, and I felt locked into the wavelength of this album’s meaning and vibe so well, because I too felt it was maybe the best song here right next to Russian Roulette. Most I’ve talked to, however, disagree, they don’t like the flow interruption from the interview clip and can’t fathom this album standing up against Porter’s priors outside a few stellar tracks. I, however, love Smile (sorry, SMILE! :D). The reason I love Smile is three-fold. Reason 1: Despite my unnuanced take on other people’s feelings about the album, I love the album BECAUSE it’s all about the nuance. Porter said this album came about when he tried to make something meaningless, nihilistic, something overblown with detachment and then the lyrics written presented something else going on that he needed to finally say. Year of the Cup is the litmus test for whether or not you can look past the facade and catch onto Porter trying to talk to you. Can you appreciate a beautiful piece of music that is draped in elements that don’t usually jive with a stereotypical Porter Robinson song? Year of the Cup is pushing against the expectation grains. I saw him perform it live and he sat on a giant fake blue solo cup. He strummed his guitar with an endlessly brooding expression similar to his look in the song’s music video. In interviews he talked about how he hates that people purely see him as wholesome. Year of the Cup is Porter Robinson’s “Problematic” (another Bo Burnham reference today I guess) wherein he gets his apologies out before the world can hate him and simultaneously discusses substance abuse, artistry, and the gap between audience and performers. The question posed at the end of “Year of the Cup” is if the contents of the cup is anybody’s business or not; but if you remember the horrible stories of Porter’s bad behavior across the song, as Porter loops “the answer was obvious”, it’s hard to imagine any other answer.
Reason 2: This album is just a phenomenal change up. SMILE is bursting with new influences for Porter, but mainly emo and indie rock bands. “Cheerleader” is an emo boy band slam dunk. “Knock Yourself Out XD” is a hip hop grand entrance. “Is There Really No Happiness” is Keane with a little less piano. It’s easy to feel across the album and for the millennial crowd that there’s this fantastic late-pass retrospective for Porter (who didn’t get into a lot of this music until recently, apparently). Reason 3: It’s the first album where it feels like the album landed in Porter’s target zone and I love that sensation here. With WORLDS it felt like he regurgitated things he was trying to run away from and was too scared to embrace what he was doing so well at the time to at least mark it in his history. It was the successful debut he was ashamed of and didn’t need to be. The trick worked but so much of what Porter is addressing at times on this album deal with the terrible place he was in during WORLDS and there’s an inescapable aspect of that being the start of his album journey, both in real life and in the album. Nurture is really good but oddly paced in the back half, the tragic reality of an album built through the difficult process of writer’s block. The album tracks even got shifted a few times before coming out. It’s got amazing songs but struggles with that whole cohesion equation. “SMILE! :D” though? Fully formed. Complete. Unstoppable. Porter laid this one all out on the floor and it feels there’s not an ounce of hesitation to show it all. It sounds and feels like Porter hit exactly the target he was aiming for once he realized what he needed to talk about this time around. And I love it. There’s nothing like an emotionally present creation, and Smile is in that space.
The 2024 House Album Roundup
I complained to my friend Michael that I need more good trance albums out again. We get trance albums but it’s definitely a genre struggling to find strong ground here in the modern electronic music era. House albums though? No shortage of them right now honestly and they’re all pretty solid. Not even in this listing you’ll find new albums this year from Tinlicker, Dosem, Ben Böhmer, Nicky Elizabeth, the yearly Anjunadeep Compilation, and on and on. Dosem’s album nearly made the “let’s talk about it for a paragraph or two” cut but there’s three specific ones that stood out with a lot of strength that I’ve gotta bring up. Oddly enough, it’s in the embrace of some of the strengths of trance albums (or just good electronic music albums in the past) that provide these next three albums such a bump in their experiences.
Luttrell — Life at Full Speed
Luttrell has a pretty immaculate album record. When Lane 8’s melodic house was first being coined “back rub dream house” I didn’t expect Luttrell to actually run with the idea but his sort of grungy basslines slithering alongside the varied textures and instruments in his albums have really run the gamut for listeners. Meditative and peaceful moments (May 25th, Find Me, Fill My Heart) contrast against odd and interesting introspection (Quiet Even Dark, Lucky Ones) and occasionally allow for bombastic club room monsters (Out of Me, My Friend the Sun, Snoop Dawk). His albums have been a well balanced package every time. And yet, he has never been this good before. I hope Life at Full Speed is as transformative to the scene and to Luttrell as fatherhood has become for him because this one is exactly what we need to see more of out of electronic albums in general. An impressionistic intro cuts into the heart of the album with the second track as the title track propelling the album into its heart, each track afterwards carefully considering how to pace things right from what came before and what’s coming after. It doesn’t always need to be a mix album to be good and this album proves it. The atmosphere of tracks like “French Bulldog”, “Make U Happy”, or “Space” sell the sort of joyous new experiences Luttrell is seeing through his child’s eyes that this album is all about. It’s still a Luttrell album, but it’s deeply woven with a wealth of human experiences that have been missing from most trance albums lately. Don’t miss this one, seriously.
Lane 8 — Childish
Similarly inspired by watching his kids grow up, Lane 8 nearly stole the long built up thunder Luttrell had been generating by releasing this album a week before Life at Full Speed. And yet, it’s great that these two albums came out at the same time, they wonderfully put you in the mood for each other. The only way I can describe Childish is with the phrase “Back to basics.” In a lot of ways Childish sounds like what a Lane 8 album would’ve sounded like if he never made “Rise” the way he made it. It has the approach to music that he was flirting with on his earliest singles like “Be Mine” or “Every Night”. Playful. Simple, but not lacking depth or a fantastic sense of progression. “Higher”, “Merry Mary”, and everything from “Say the Word” onwards are a must listen on this one. But overall this album’s bedrock is a sound Daniel has been venturing away from in a pursuit of some larger artistic expression, yet this sound speaks louder than any album he’s made yet, just like Luttrell’s.
Eli & Fur — Dreamscapes
This one is a great “sum of its parts” album where I’m not entirely sure I felt a cohesion here that makes an unforgettable experience. But the flow of the album is great anyways and boasts a larger track count. Eli & Fur have been in this game a long time so the tracks are good, but this time the album is focused with its soundscape start to finish. Dreamscapes really starts to shine in how nearly every single track feels single-capable (and a lot of these songs did come out as singles). Eli & Fur are also experimenting in great ways here. “Insomnia” is a pretty dirty darker house track as strong as “Pegasus” from last year. “Monsters” explores some fantastic breakbeats as a change-up for the team. In fact, breakbeat and an enjoyable chilled vibe is a really welcome presence on this album in a few places. Tracks “Golden Eyes & Tears” and “Missing You” are such an awesome formula change-up while still retaining the duo’s strengths. Meanwhile tracks like “Love Again” brush against the more poppy big house sensations for larger stages. It’s a fantastic collection of tracks showing all of Eli & Fur’s strengths start to finish, including new ones. And more singing on it this time around! I feel like their vocals in the past have sometimes been hidden more as samples instead of full on verses or hooks and I far prefer what they’re doing on this one.
Nox Vahn — The World Keeps Turning EP
I have less to say about this EP than I do about Nox Vahn in general. This is another killer EP from a guy who keeps releasing stellar tracks every single year. I’d recommend this one for tracks “Don’t Think About It Too Much”, “When I’m With You” and “The World Keeps Turning”, but in general this is an artist crafting some really specific emotive soundscapes each year. This year went dark and I’m looking forward to what Nox Vahn cooks up next year. Hopefully he’ll make it to Detroit soon.
Myon — Silence is Underrated
A beautiful chillout EP. Apparently Myon produced this record to help him with his insomnia so he can drift off to sleep better, and you can definitely catch that sensation as each track sonically becomes more and more mellow while retaining some sense of sounds. Richly textured with truly colorful pads and synths. I’d take several more of these from Myon in the future if this is the sort of non-club setting music they can put out. It’s hard to find stuff like this that I latch on to so I really loved this one.
Mat Zo — Disco Boy & Blueish Yellow
More fantastic single work from maybe my favorite name in someone who would probably hate to be called an “electro house” artist but I feel like he’s been striking something perfect between “house” and “electro” over the past three years.
OCULA — Lost Horizon EP
Before Lane 8 announced Childish, this was, in a way, the Lane 8 album I was waiting for this year. Just a fantastic 4-track experience that feels like a mini-mix set, featuring a nice complete variety of melodic club sounds but not overly complex. It feels like having just 4 tracks put OCULA under pressure to build something really specific and it feels great as a result. An easy listen that carries 20 minutes so well.
Runner-Ups
I love Hybrid Minds so their debut album “Tides” is worth checking out if you asked me. Darren Tate has a beautiful album “Metamorphasis”, it wasn’t completely memorable for me but I enjoyed it in its release month. Kyau & Albert and Ferry Corsten both released albums that serve as decent track collections, “All in Good Time” and “Connect”, respectively.
Movies/TV:
I didn’t watch a lot of new stuff this year in the public commercial arena of television and film. The stuff I like is pretty boilerplate most of the time honestly. I really wanted to play and finish more games because my backlog there got stupidly big after PAX and the crazy year that was 2023. So, here’s a rapid fire of recommendations:
-Godzilla Minus One (saw it in theaters last year in December, it’s perfect)
-The Haunting of Hill House (finally saw it just recently, I think I love Mike Flanagan cinema in general, after Doctor Sleep and then this it feels like he’s always going to be up my alley)
-Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (the actual best Mad Max story, the fact that Furiosa screams “give it back” is a chef’s kiss of retroactive confirmation of what Fury Road is about at its heart)
-Haunt Hounds (I just promote most Olan Rogers projects, the man helped me propose to my wife so I’m just eternally grateful)
-The Acolyte (watch it for some amazing fighting choreography if nothing else
-Fallout is good, it toes the line just right
-Adventure is Nigh (never thought I’d get into this but the remaster of the series on Second Wind is great and Jack really knows how to make a fun adventure for YouTube that’s not stupidly long)
-Dune Part Two (much better than the first, great watching in conjunction with each other, the ending framing makes me really confident in Dennis handling the third film because he gets it)
-The Thing (perfect)
-Alien (also perfect?)
-A Quiet Place: Day One (I think I liked this one better than the sequel)
-Judas and the Black Messiah (great movie, what a ripoff that award was)
-Lady Bird
Books:
Saga Book Three — Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Saga book three is, in a word, devastating. This series was already a revelation in science fantasy comic fiction long before book three hit shelves. Fiona Staples’s art is unmatched. Brian takes us on a series of pivotal events this time around and by the end you’re left wondering how it’s going to continue. But continue it does, as of writing this we’re in the middle of “Book Four” releases and I can’t wait to get my hands on the finished copy.
The Witcher — Blood of Elves & Time of Contempt
Last year I didn’t write about reading the first two Witcher books (The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny) but I did talk about how much I enjoyed season 3 of the show. It struggled at the start but at its height it managed to be exactly the sort of thing that makes this franchise great. And then this year I got to read the two books that make up seasons 2 and 3. Blood of Elves was good but definitely struggled with finding a way to reestablish concepts that were loosely structured in the two prior books. Time of Contempt, however, has fully shed its pre-saga skin and morphed into what feels like Andrzej Sapkowski was initially crafting. Time of Contempt is a blast to read. The very lengthy chapters are at a constant simmer until the war breaks out and then it is a rapid boil. It’s The Witcher at its best and while it’s not a great entry point in the series, it’s as rewarding as all the other best Witcher moments when it comes to espionage, political moves, and action fantasy. There is, however, a moment near the end that has become gravely controversial and casts the entirety of the series in a pretty dark shadow for me, I had no clue it was a thing until I read it. In short: There’s a sequence in this involving sexual assault.
I had to dig around a lot to try to grasp all the possible opinions of it and this book’s writing about female characters. A lot of people seem to suggest that the framing of the SA scene as well as how things are generally translated in the whole book were poorly done and thus leave a lot to be desired. Others seem to take a stance of “once you read the other books you’ll understand why that is there” (which I kinda of get, knowing what I know about the character and their role in the wider Witcher story). However, this would have been a book that had three more entries released across the next four years at its initial release. I can’t imagine critics at the time saying “wait till later, you won’t feel as angry about it” because they didn’t know yet what was to come. People would’ve been upset. Some people do seem to come to the consensus that Andrzej Sapkowski is just a bad writer for female characters. I don’t think my book criticism is particular strong so if he is it’s probably getting over my head. Personally the passage involving the dark subject matter wasn’t written in any way that felt careless towards the victim or gratuitous in how it was discussed. It is empathetic, and it is in theme with what the book is chasing after. It is an uncomfortable read for a page while not being graphic. The sequence of events afterwards, however, removed from an understanding of the wider Witcher story and what is to come (which again, I kind of know about having played Witcher 3 and watched the shows and consumed video essays), could be taken to mean something almost opposite of what should be implied after an SA sequence involving a key character. Quite a few people seemed to take the writing after the scene as an implication that the person who was assaulted was fine with it but I find that to not be quite the case. The fact that it’s unclear to readers is definitely alarming. I’ll be blunt: Sexual assault or rape in fiction should never be endorsed or given a positive perspective. In the bubble of not knowing where this series of books goes I can immediately see why people would think the writer was endorsing it. I’m roughly confident he wasn’t, but you’ve been warned.
Spider-Gwen 0–4
The more I think about Spider-Gwen the more I really like it, maybe more than Miles comics. The Miles Morales comics quickly get tangled up with annoying multi-verse stuff, making Miles’s residence as a character feel like a back seat to exploits with the Marvel franchise instead of someone with his own problems to be given spotlight (outside some specific really good arcs). Meanwhile, Spider-Gwen’s first series of issues and crossovers feel properly balanced between an arena of wider happenings compared to the more prevalent and important forefront of Gwen’s very challenged life. The Robbi Rodriguez art style has this incredible angular look going on and has a lot of fun with colors that lend it a noir look even though it’s not in black and white. But what really sticks with me even months after the last time I read an issue is that deep down the first major arc of Spider-Gwen comics is kind of about police violence. The outset of the series is that Gwen went too far with her powers and killed Peter Parker (The Lizard). That’s her “great power, great responsibility” moment. And her dad’s the chief of police. It hits the nail on the head of problems surrounding super hero comics and power fantasies clashing with the way we romanticize the institution of police as heroes when they so regularly take power into their own hands. Sure, Watchmen is better at this than Spider-Gwen, but it’s still good. Spider-Gwen’s first set of issues up through Long Distance and the Miles Morales crossover volume are all really good. Spider-Women is kind of worth looking at as a decent crossover too. The first run of her character eventually encounters the usual “problems implemented don’t have an easy way to unravel them later”, which is where we get Predators but supposedly the follow-up volume Gwenom is really popular so I look forward to reading that when I get my hands on it. Either way, I really appreciate the debates this goes into at the outset. It is this push and pull Gwen has between recognizing that she has a problem where she’s in love with the power she has and choosing to atone by living a life in service to others and keeping that power in check. Sure that runs into the usual problem of any narrative like this: “Keeping your power in check after doing a crime is not justice”. And it’s true. Kind of like in real life. But at least it’s confronting the debate routinely and regularly across those first several books. It’s great. Don’t sleep on it.
The Ballot and the Bible — Kaitlyn Schiess
If you’re religious I’d recommend it. It’s a tougher read in the first half as several sections can feel pretty academic. But it’s an important read for American Christians to comprehend the historical ways people have utilized scripture for good or ill. Some sections in the back half will surprise you!
Dune Messiah — Frank Herbert
I’m honestly not entirely sure how I feel about this one. I don’t dislike it. I enjoyed the more political espionage stuff going on throughout the story. I know this one was written in response to people not really grasping that the original book was meant to be a warning about characters like Paul. I definitely like these books and what Frank Herbert was doing with Paul in this one metaphorically. It’s also interesting in how so much of this one’s plot uses perspectives of those plotting against Paul. Mainly I read it to get an idea of what Denis Villeneuve is up against in the third and final movie he plans to make.
How Far to the Promised Land — Esau McCaulley
This one was good but I didn’t expect it to be this good. Esau McCaulley writes this book out of two striking moments in his life. The first was the death of his estranged father and having to write a eulogy for him. The second was being at a talk panel and being asked “What’s the most racist thing you’ve encountered in your life?” and deciding to not answer the question that day. In this book Esau shows you how that question can’t be answered so simply. He will walk you through his family history to frame a history of people no longer slaves but victims of poverty and cycles of addiction and violence that still kept young kids often trapped within it if not outright murdered routinely. It’s also stories of profound humanity from that same family, seeking justice or finding ways to provide grace and mercy to those who would often not deserve it. By providing family stories grounded in their emotional experiences, Esau helps shed the usual conversation about systems that have routinely made black lives difficult and what to do about it. This isn’t one of those books that follows a common set structure. This one is about people, families, it brought me to tears in ways I wasn’t expecting. Don’t sleep on this one.
The Hivemind Swarmed: Conversations On Gamergate, the Aftermath, and the Quest For a Safer Internet — David Wolinski
The Hivemind Swarmed is an oral history from a group of informed (and sometimes uninformed) voices spiraling across a docummentary-style series of conversations with the origin point being Gamergate. If you know what Gamergate is, you can imagine what sort of a book this is and you might be misled. If you don’t know what Gamergate is, but have exposed yourself to the amazing and terrible things you can encounter on the internet, you still can imagine what sort of book this is and also find yourself surprised where it goes.
This one I’ll admit some bias on, I was introduced to this author through an interview series he was (and still is) doing called No Don’t Die. Eventually he and I started exchanging e-mails because I thought what he was doing was rad (I still do) and we had a couple calls and our conversation got saved on the site. The conversations David and I had back in 2016 were helpful for me to talk about some things that had bothered me about spaces on the internet for a while and were reaching a new boiling point that year. When he and I talked about it back in 2016, we both knew it was something we saw in Gamergate. When he had finished his book around 2018 or so and we touched base again, it was clearer the problems I brought up in that first conversation was more rooted in something broader. David’s been asking questions about this vague and diverse issue for over a decade now. And The Hivemind Swarmed is a book that provides conversations from key perspectives about the things David and I talked about those days but in a more focused and structured way.
I thoroughly recommend it. While it starts off discussing Gamergate itself each chapter helps paint the broader picture of problems so many of us are aware of but struggle to pinpoint on any one thing if we get into nitty gritty conversations. The standout feels like Chapter 3 wherein it opens on the Atari Founder stating that they often take claims about sexism in the industry with some skepticism followed up by a quote from another person saying how that founder will never change. Chapters 3 and Chapter 6 offer a variety of perspectives around and from women and how the internet and video game companies and culture have impacted them in these negative ways, but doesn’t make a spectacle of them sharing stories. David isn’t here to really talk much in this book in fact. He’s asking questions. And you’re reading the answers.
It’s also a fairly quick read compared to other books out there so don’t hesitate!
The Devil in The White City — Erik Larson
This one’s pretty well known so I don’t feel the need to go too in-depth about it. My mom read it, told me about it, I asked to borrow her copy, it’s great! It’s a crime history about two people in the late 1800s: One an architect that designed the World’s Fair and how that came about, the other a serial killer that used the World’s Fair as an opportunity to kill even more people in a systemized fashion. Erik has such a fantastic way of telling history it is no wonder people tried to turn this into a miniseries, but the book does it so fantastically you really don’t need anything else. Worth reading if you like this sort of thing.
If you like this sort of thing, I also did similar stuff for the below years and I’ve linked to them.
2019
2020 — This one’s a sort of journey log/awards thing
First half of 2023
Rest of 2023
