2016 was a year of transitions for console gaming. With at least one – possibly two – machines on their way out and another pair going through significant physical changes, there was a lot on offer for owners and prospective owners of the five main dedicated gaming consoles alike this year. Because it’s fun to do so, I will now rank them once again. Exclusive games on each were plentiful, helping to draw lines in the sand between the consoles, but I’m also counting versions of non-exclusive games that I feel are different enough from their siblings to warrant a mention. Needless to say, new versions of existing hardware weigh heavily as well.
. -◊-◊-◊-◊- VR BEST OF 2016 DISCLAIMER This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s strange. Fun, but strange. Respectful disagreement is very welcome. -◊-◊-◊-◊-
.
5. Wii U
(LAST YEAR: 3rd)
At the start of 2016 there was a pervasive feeling that the Wii U was on its last legs, but we had no way of knowing just how barren the year would be for the ailing console. Its relatively bare schedule of major releases throughout the year only kicked off in March, and though Pokken Tournament turned out surprisingly well, a slightly-tuned HD remaster of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess wasn’t exactly the kind of release to attract new buyers (even if that remaster was pretty damn good). Then April marked the death knell for the console, as that brought with it the combined disappointment of Star Foz Zero and the announcement that the Wii U’s successor – then codenamed NX – would release in March 2017. From then on, only three first-party games came out on the platform at all. Admittedly, Paper Mario: Color Splash and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE were fantastic, but that simply isn’t enough to make a year worth celebrating, sadly. Onward to the Switch, then?
Wow, five years of listening to K-Pop. I’m not sure how to feel really.
When I first discovered the increasingly wide genre back in 2012, talk of a “five year curse” was prevalent – the idea that K-Pop groups, especially female ones, seem unable to stay together for much longer than half a decade. And though the supposed rule has hardly been exact in its application, 2016 is sure as hell going to be remembered as a year of falling dominoes in the world of K-Pop groups. In the same year that the Brown Eyed Girls celebrated an unprecedented full decade without a member change, the likes of Miss A, Kara (for real this time), 4Minute, Rainbow and 2NE1 – all of whom were in top form when I started out – bit the dust. Other big acts lost important members (B2ST) or finally shuffled off to their mandatory military service (Bigbang), in the process well and truly solidifying the shift in Korean music generations that arguably started in 2014. The landscape is now almost unrecognisable from the days of Gangnam Style.
Of course some things never change, and history is bound to repeat. Though there are more successful soloists, more acoustic guitars, more rappers and heavier EDM beats around than ever before, K-Pop’s affiliation with cutesy girl group concepts returned in a big way in 2016 – especially among mid-tier acts – with barely a trace of the often-tacky “sexy” stylings of the last few years. And while we’re on the subject, it’s kind of a cool novelty to see each of the Big Three Korean entertainment companies bringing a properly successful female group to the table at the same time. That arguably hasn’t happened since 2012, at the tail end of the Wonder Girls/SNSD/2NE1 glory days. Now we have Twice/Red Velvet/Blackpink, and they have cute/weird/cool covered quite well respectively.
But I’m not here to write a dissertation; I’m here to count down my top 15 favourite K-Pop songs of the year, and there are a lot of different kinds of tracks to cover. So let’s do that, for the fifth time on Vagrant Rant.
No more than one song from a group/solo/collaboration can be eligible for this list, and it only takes into account songs that have a corresponding music video and feature Korean language lyrics. Every aspect of the release, visual and otherwise, is considered, but overwhelmingly the audio comes first.
. -◊-◊-◊-◊- VR BEST OF 2016 DISCLAIMER This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. Music is a very personal thing and if you actually agree with me 100%, that’s strange. Fun, but strange. Respectful disagreement is very welcome. -◊-◊-◊-◊-
.
15. Last Dance – Bigbang
I hope you’ll allow me a sentimental entry to kick things off.
Bigbang may be a YG Entertainment act, and true to their label they tease fans regularly with releases that don’t actually release for months or years after they are first mentioned. But they’ve been around in some way or another, without any real hint of breaking up, for ten years, and the gigantic quintet has given us a lot of fine memories. So on the eve of their mandated military service they released, alongside two other pretty decent songs, this heartstring-puller, and its emotional impact feels earned. Last Dance gives Bigbang a contemplative track that feels rather, shall we say, final, particularly alongside its brooding MV. There ain’t nothing wrong with it musically, though, providing plenty of Bigbang staples like growling Daesang/smooth Taeyang vocals, a bassy T.O.P rap and a soaring chorus that ends with a definitive full stop. Good luck to ’em. .
It’s all good stuff from here on out. Well, in my opinion anyway.
Every year in videogames is eventful, and looking for patterns around these events is something I’ve grown to enjoy a great deal in recent times. Looking at trends – which, for the purpose of this list, are positive or at least neutral – can help us better remember a year in gaming as more than just a collection of months, and maybe even get a glimpse at where the medium is going. Here are five I thought worth mentioning from 2016.
. -◊-◊-◊-◊-
VR BEST OF 2016 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s strange. Fun, but strange. Respectful disagreement is very welcome. -◊-◊-◊-◊-
.
5. JRPGs Are Back!
Here’s an easy one; it’s only what I spent most of my blogging hours this year covering, after all. Likely due to a combination of simplified game delivery channels, crowdfunding culture, a YouTube-boosted nostalgia wave, a set of opportunistic smaller publishers stacked with localisation specialists, and the likes of Square Enix/SEGA trying frantically to get their act together, the Japanese role-playing game is currently more prolific than it has perhaps ever been. Players looking for a mechanically satisfying grind with zany characters and a narrative to match are refreshingly spoilt for choice whether they gravitate towards PC, consoles, mobile or dedicated handhelds (especially dedicated handhelds). Want examples from 2016? I’vegot youcovered.
Negativity isn’t all that much fun to write about, at least for me personally. But there is something cathartic about it, and it can theoretically help us improve on things. Apparently people really like reading about it too, because this annual list always seems to attract quite a few views. So here we go with the top ten most disappointing developments in 2016 entertainment media, at least to me.
There are some spoilers in this year’s list, so proceed with caution.
. -◊-◊-◊-◊- VR BEST OF 2016 DISCLAIMER This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s strange. Fun, but strange. Respectful disagreement is very welcome.
Some videogame/movie spoilers follow. -◊-◊-◊-◊-
.
10. No Man’s Storm
I don’t know what’s more disheartening about the whole No Man’s Sky debacle – that it failed to live up to the expectations set by the general gaming public, that its unclear whether those expectations ever really came from the game’s marketing itself, or that its development team, Hello Games, did nothing to clarify what the game would actually be like in the lead-up to its release. The whole ordeal ultimately came down to a series of unsavoury smokescreens and I’m sure other people’s lists would feature the game much higher up. I didn’t end up playing very much of it though.
It’s been an insane year, this 2016. The fifth year of Vagrant Rant has barely registered as something worth talking about, sadly. The year has been so busy, in fact, that this short post letting out some of my blog-related frustrations will make up roughly 6% of my entire 2016 output to this point (bet that was nerdier than you expected). A far cry from even two years ago, when I churned out virtually ten times the amount. But then what passion project doesn’t have to change a bit to adapt to our adult lifestyles?
A past version of me would take this turn of events a lot harder than the current one. Full-time work at a place far from home has cut into my free time so substantially that devoting the same energy as I once did to writing about games, movies and such would leave me without any time to actually play/watch. Yet I cannot abandon this site – writing is too cathartic for me and this collection of personal opinions represents too much of who I am. And I definitely can’t abandon this year-end string of countdowns, because they are way too much fun.
2016 was pretty strong all-around for the three main strands of media I cover on this site. There seemed to be far more blockbuster movies than in 2015, and while some were high-profile failures others really hit their mark, particularly where animation was concerned. K-Pop had a strong year even amidst a suite of big industry changes, mostly because its sounds are coming from a wider range of sources than ever before. And as for games, well I’ve had to pull in a repeat of last year’s expanded Top 15 to try and fit them all.
Let’s go for another round.
. -◊-◊-◊-◊- VR BEST OF 2016 DISCLAIMER This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s strange. Fun, but strange. Respectful disagreement is very welcome.
That’s right, I didn’t forget about this little project – Quarter 3 was just such a relative non-event for JRPGs that I decided to combine it with Q4 and bring things home strong. With one day to spare…
Q3 of 2016 really could have been a big one for Japanese RPGs. With Final Fantasy XV and Persona 5 originally slated for release in the third quarter, July-September was in danger of relegating the remainder of the year to relative obscurity. Yet Persona 5 only came out in Japan within this window (I realise we knew this a long time ago, but it’s still a bitter pill), and as for FF XV… Well, it was delayed again. This pair of facts, combined with the ongoing absence of smaller yet nonetheless exciting titles like Cosmic Star Heroine, left us with a decidedly lighter period of releases. At least for me personally, this allowed me to give more time to other games, most notably an old, highly revered classic. But then we reached Q4, and received two very heavy hitters alongside a decent selection of smaller but far from insignificant titles, leaving us with a lot to talk about. Let’s get stuck into the second half of 2016 in Japanese role-playing games.
.
WHAT I’VE PLAYED
Releasing in mid-July, before my very late Quarter 2 summary went up, the much-anticipated Square Enix title I Am Setsuna promised to prove a number of things – not only that the notoriously ambitious company is capable of shipping games on time, but in doing so that it might better cater to the tastes of some of its oldest fans through gameplay-first experiences. An admirable goal to be sure, and while they may have pulled it off for all I know (opinions I read/heard were genuinely mixed), ultimately all that the snow-covered, piano-scored exercise in melancholy did for me was remind me that I never did finish Chrono Trigger back in the day, and I should probably fix that.
Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t just drop I Am Setsuna straight away. I played the first two to three hours and enjoyed the instant sense of atmosphere the visuals and music provide. And yet with each and every Chrono Trigger-esque enemy encounter I was reminded more and more of how much I enjoyed the SNES gem when I initially tried it on DS seven years ago. Fast forward a few months and I finally did finish Chrono Trigger in late October. I loved every second. If I have time (highly unlikely) I might write about that experience one day. It’s not all that relevant on this page though, so for now I’ll just say a hearty thank you to I Am Setsuna and move on.
And so it is, dear reader, that we find ourselves here. Here at the dawn of what will be – for better or worse – a new cycle of Nintendo being Nintendo. The impending Switch console has the attention of the gaming world for now, and all the bad news has yet to come. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling for yours truly – one of bubbling excitement, of mildly tempered hope – but one in which I will gladly bask for the time being, if only because that feeling seems to be my number one most reliable source of blogging motivation. And would you look at that – the Switch will be Nintendo’s twelfth (let’s scratch the Virtual Boy) eleventh major videogame device! Yes, a nice, round top ten is ripe for the typing. How good.
I will now attempt to rank the ten major home/handheld Nintendo consoles of yore according to my own personal feelings about them. Yes, this will be a different list to your own, dearest reader. That’s OK. It is not an easy thing at all for a Nintendo tragic such as myself to see some of these wonderful machines placed below others – go ahead, try it – but I have struggled through it anyway. It’s probably worth mentioning that I haven’t owned all ten of these pieces of hardware, but I sure have played a significant portion of the game offerings they brought to the table through various re-releases and chance adventures, so I feel comfortable laying it out for your perusal. I’ve taken physical design, hardware refreshes, game library, nostalgia and all the usual good stuff into account. Here we go.
.
10. Nintendo Entertainment System
Australian Release: 1987 My Favourite Games:Balloon Fight, Kirby’s Adventure, Super Mario Bros 2
Yes, the one that started it all is down here. The main reason is a boring one: The NES’ games don’t tend to hold up as well today as other later Nintendo titles, as by necessity they are visually and conceptually basic. Having said that, the very best of the NES crop represents some of the most satisfying, mechanically tight challenges to be found anywhere in videogames, not to mention some technical wizardry when it comes to working within memory limitations. Of the two-and-a-half consoles on this list that I never owned, this is the one whose game library I have sampled most widely, thanks mostly to things like the wonderful Wii U eShop games NES Remix 1 & 2 and the recently released NES Classic Mini console, and particularly in this bite-sized format there is a great deal of fun to be had with NES gems even for the less skilled gamers among us (e.g. me).
-◊-◊-◊-◊-
Starring: Margot Robbie, Will Smith, Jared Leto
Director:David Ayer (Street Kings, Fury) Rating:M
-◊-◊-◊-◊-
Well OK then.
As the first DC Comics movie of a post Batman v Superman world, Suicide Squad had a bit of heavy lifting to do. It had to prove that this dark and morbid (well, compared to Marvel’s) Warner Bros shared universe is capable of having some fun. It had to introduce a handful of characters that will no doubt be important later. And in a superhero-drenched blockbuster movie climate, it had to justify its existence by doing something different. Its success in these efforts is… limited. Which side of the “character vs plot” scale you tend to lean towards will probably be hugely influential in how much you enjoy the chaotic movie.
Wow, these days it’s like I blink and suddenly I haven’t blogged in a month.
Then Pokemon Go comes out and suddenly I haven’t blogged in two months…
Well would you look at that, we’re already well into the second half of the year. This of course means it’s (well past) time for part two of my 2016 JRPG Report, a look at the second quarter of the most insanely populated year for Japanese role-playing games in recent memory. If you missed Quarter 1, click on over here.
I mentioned this last time, but Q2 was indeed noticeably less intense for JRPG fans than the opening three month period. I was able to dabble in most of the notable releases within the genre this past quarter, even taking into account the dense explosion of quality triple-A videogame releases that defined May. I even managed to finish one or two along the way, in a manner of speaking, which was nice. The biggest JRPG-related struggle I faced this time around was that of classification – I came right up against that nebulous chestnut of a question “What makes a game a JRPG?” on more than one occasion.
.
WHAT I’VE PLAYED
I’ll get to perhaps the most controversial of these classification conundrums shortly, but first, to the game that contextualises it. Stranger of Sword City launched on Playstation Vita in late April (It was also supposed to release on Xbox One as it did in the US, strangely enough, but no such luck for Australians), a first-person dungeon crawling game with punishingly difficult moments and beautiful sprite-based artwork. In many ways I found it to be a more visually striking, mechanically deeper version of Demon Gaze, a dungeon crawler I had enjoyed far more than I expected back in 2014. This makes sense given they come from the same developers, but it was good to see nonetheless. Though I only played enough of the game to get a good grasp of what it is, I am glad I did, and I’d recommend it to any Vita-owning JRPG fan looking for a substantial challenge. The finely detailed art style pops off the Vita screen to make it even harder to escape the game’s punishing grasp.
Now Stranger of Sword City is a first person dungeon-crawling RPG (a subgenre that in some circles is simply shortened to DRPG), and Q2 of 2016 featured another such game – a Playstation Vita exclusive to boot. The game was not developed in Japan, but exhibits enough JRPG elements that I believe it deserves to sit in the same camp as Child of Light and South Park: The Stick of Truth, themselves Japanese Role-Playing Games in all but country of origin. The wonderful game I’m referring to is Severed.
Developed by Canadian studio Drinkbox games, Severed ‘s clever blend of strategic, fairly unique combat, fun levelling mechanics, morbidly oppressive Aztec atmosphere, eye-catching visuals and focused story make it well worth playing for the JRPG-inclined, and if you don’t have a PS Vita, the game is allegedly coming to 3DS and Wii U very soon, and has just recently launched on iOS devices. Don’t miss it.
Had to sit on this review for a while to give it some thought, and that ended up making it a long one.
-◊-◊-◊-◊-
Starring: James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac
Director:Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) Rating:M -◊-◊-◊-◊-
.
Well, it turns out that couldn’t last.
The X-Men movies continue to exist, for better or worse, as the only discernible remnant of the superhero movie scene pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe. The way they have always done things sits somewhere between DC Comics’ macabre big screen blockbusters and the MCU’s lighter escapades, boasting an embarrassment of riches in the character department to mine for both humour and drama. When the movies are good, they feel like giant middle fingers to the critics who think there are too many superhero movies kicking around these days. When they’re bad, they tend to become the easiest targets for said critics, as at their core they tend to feel extraneous and disposable.
X-Men Apocalypseisn’t a bad movie, but it is the worst X-Men film since X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and as an X-Men fan first and foremost within the superhero movie realm, that stings a little.
