Posts Tagged ‘five’

31 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Movies

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

Superhero movies are dead; long live superhero movies.

They will be back – and soon – but for this brief moment in history, we had a real spicy year for varied cinema.

For reasons that may have made themselves apparent in yesterday’s list, I didn’t quite have as much 2024 free time to devote to spontaneous cinema adventures as I had in previous years. This meant at several points throughout the year I was more sensitive to early movie reviews than usual, and ended up completely missing the likes of Moana 2, Alien: Romulus, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Joker: Folie à Deux, and all three of the new Sony Spider-Man spin-offs. If a sharply positive or at least mildly interesting review did not come across my feed for a new movie and/or a friend didn’t reach out to see it, more often than not I just moved on.

I still reached bang-on 30 new-release films watched in 2024; these are my ten favourites.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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10. The Fall Guy

A supremely silly yet triumphant time at the movies, ascended stuntman David Leitch and his team of action veterans bring abundant life to one of the most underrated – and unlucky – films of the year. The Fall Guy features plenty of real-life spectacle with a wink or two at the camera, elevated by a Sydney setting that allows for much more than novelty: all the tourist-y hallmarks of the city, as well as some of its lesser-known quirks, are used to their fullest to stage pretty crazy sequences. But the best thing about this well-made gem is its cast; Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, and Winston Duke are all fabulous, but every scene shared by Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt is electrifying. Hilarious, adrenaline-charged fun.

9. Deadpool & Wolverine

Speaking of winks at the camera, the single comic book movie to make it on here does so because everything maligned about the recent Marvel Cinematic Universe movies works incredibly well in the context of a seasoned fourth-wall obliterator. It’s kinda hard to stick the well-worn “too many jokes, weird stakes, unimaginative villains” MCU tags on a movie starring Ryan Reynolds’ already-iconic interpretation of Deadpool, especially when Hugh Jackman plays his even more iconic Wolverine mostly straight as a foil. That pitch makes for a solid core, but the inventive – and pretty impressive – action scenes add plenty of gravy, and the myriad extended cameos not only land on multiple meta-levels, but give us some of the most memorably camp MCU performances in years.

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30 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 15 Games

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

Look, I know I tripped over myself to emphasise repeatedly just how good 2023 was as a videogame release year, and I stand by that; it really was an all-timer. However, while that year had a real “something for everyone” vibe going on amongst its treasure trove of big-budget heavy-hitters with huge review scores, 2024 was arguably just as good if viewed through a narrower genre lens. If you’re a fan of RPGs – especially if you partake in the Japanese variety – the sheer onslaught of quality that hurtled past you this year was every bit as crazy as in 2023; maybe even more so. The more mainstream western genres did show up by the end, thanks largely to a resurgent Microsoft/Ubisoft double act (which was nonetheless blunted by the late delays of Avowed and Assassin’s Creed Shadows respectively) and a very important EA release, but the weebs of the world will likely remember this one for a long, long time.

I must also give a shout-out to the general cadence of the releases this year: I wasn’t truly overwhelmed by the volume of releases on my personal hype list at any point throughout the year, but from mid-January to yesterday, I was always playing something good.

Of the fifteen games that make the 2024 list, only a third were developed by Western studios, and only one of those is American. That latter stat may be an all-time low for this website, but not simply due to the Japanese gaming heartland’s banner year: China and Korea also took larger chunks out of my playtime pie chart than ever before, and I certainly wasn’t alone in that experience. We’ve also got two “reimaginings” on the list – otherwise known as re-releases too ambitious for last week’s countdown – and one of the longest honourable mentions sections ever.

What we don’t have, unfortunately, is Dragon’s Dogma II, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero (a few dragons going about this year), Another Crab’s Treasure, Visions of Mana, Warhammer: Space Marine II, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Lorelai and the Laser Eyes, Tekken 8, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, UFO 50, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble, Star Wars Outlaws, Marvel Rivals, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, The Plucky Squire, Metal Slug Tactics, GranBlue Fantasy: Relink, 1000xRESIST, or Mario & Luigi: Brothership. All of these games were either on my wishlist, briefly owned, or even started by me throughout the year, but fell victim to the relentless passage of time, soft reviews, and/or the always-rolling videogame release calendar, preventing me from reaching the five-hour playtime threshold I use to determine eligible games. There’s also no Palworld or Hades II, because we’re still miles away from a year with a dry enough schedule to convince me to break my personal rule against games with some form of “early access” tag.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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15. Another Code: Recollection (NS)

Released at precisely the wrong time for a whole community of Nintendo fans reeling from the news there’d be no Switch successor till 2025, Another Code: Recollection was largely dismissed when it squeaked out at the very beginning of 2024. You could argue a slow-paced double-bill adventure game throwback was hardly going to set the charts on fire anyway, but I think it was still rather unlucky, because the striking comic-panel art direction that drives the ground-up reimagining of 2005’s Another Code: Two Memories handily reinvigorates a DS cult classic two decades on, leaving many obtuse quirks behind to ensure the game’s devotion to both atmospheric puzzle-solving and unsettling mystery help it stand out from its fellow Switch exclusives.

The move from snappy stylus controls and once-unprecedented kitchen sink gimmickry to proper third-person 3D exploration and fully-voiced cutscenes means puzzles have been changed and/or completely removed, the time between brain-teasers is noticeably longer, physical layouts have been shaken up, and some of the creepier touches have been sanded down. But the more lively, believable environments in the 2024 release help tie together the game’s overall story in an arguably superior fashion, delivering twists with a pulpy watercolour flair and sticking the landing under a clearly modest budget. As the credits indicate, this is very much a “based on” angle from developer Arc System Works, taking inspiration rather than instruction from the original.

And those drastic changes don’t just serve the first game: the previously Japan/Europe-only Wii release Another Code R not only makes its worldwide debut here, but the story continues unbroken from the Two Memories save file and uses all the same UI elements, producing a near-seamless end result. The second reimagining in the package sacrifices puzzle density for plot even more than its predecessor, but with a cast so large that it feels like Game of Thrones in comparison and some truly heady Black Mirror-esque sci-fi ideas along for the ride, it’s justified in doing so. The fabulously-titled Recollection may be of modest means, but I have never seen anything in the vast realm of videogame revisitations use an approach quite like this, and it deserves a nod at the top of this list.

14. Helldivers II (PS5)

An entire book could be written on the life and times of Helldivers II – and I wouldn’t be shocked if that does actually happen one day – but the occasionally scandalous mismanagement of the game’s trailblazing Steam-on-day-one release strategy, not to mention the odd parasocial relationship built afterwards between players and developers of the game, is not enough to negate the crazy amount of fun I had spreading managed democracy among the fictional planets of Helldivers II in the early part of the year.

Among the legitimately countless tales of failed online multiplayer titles across all of 2024, the fact that one of the only real success stories came from a comparatively small team that made a brutal top-down twin-stick shooter on the PS Vita back in the day just warms my cynical heart. The fact it launched at a significantly lower price point than, I dunno, random example, Concord – with much fewer opportunities for microtransactions to boot – is hilarious. Helldivers II feels magnificent to control, looks far better than its relatively low resolution settings would suggest, and only kicks you down in a way that you quite literally asked for when you knocked that difficulty up a notch.

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29 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 K-Pop Albums

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .

This is one of the hardest intro paragraphs to write each year, because it’s the list most intensely personal to my tastes, and yet is often the one that lasts the longest, as it tends to get the most attention late into the following year and beyond. Most years all I can really point out is the pattern of album types making the list each year, so here we go:

Oh my word; the boys sure did come out to play in 2024. Seven of the ten total albums on this sub-divided page (honourable mentions aside) and all five of the full-album entries come from male acts, which I’m pretty sure is unprecedented. In addition, for the first time ever there are no girl groups on either of the two top fives. I don’t know why that is; I wasn’t trying to do that as I worked on the lists. It just so happened that I liked more of the lads’ work throughout the year.

Predominantly English/Japanese albums don’t count for this page, so Rose’s much-hyped rosie won’t be here, but it’s pretty good – and you should also check out Milena’s Foggy if you enjoy relaxed R&B.

1-3 tracks = not eligible

4-7 tracks = mini album

8+ tracks = full album

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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MINI ALBUMS
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5. ACT – Kang Daniel

Kang Daniel’s 2024 EP puts its MV track in the crucial third track slot, which is such a rare move even this far into K-Pop’s globalised album production era that I had to take notice as soon as a mate recommended ACT to me. But it turns out it’s no quirky, showy play: that very song, the catchy bounce and double-keyboard drive of Electric Shock, needs a full track’s worth of distance between itself and opener Losing Myself, which is simply one of the best B-sides of the year and was at risk of overshadowing the lead single. That chorus build-up and the chaotic ensuing breakdown takes over any pair of headphones, threatening to collapse upon itself with a gloriously cacophonous breakdown. The rest of the EP is no slouch: soft harp vibes contrast with crunchy garage beats to beautiful effect in Chung Ha duet Come Back to Me, and closer 9 Lives turns up the bassy synth as Daniel proudly declares he’s “leveling up”. I’ll say.

4. The Winning – IU

Another *ahem* winner of an EP from one of the most reliable artists in the business, IU not only makes The Winning sound effortless, she gives off the unmistakable vibe that she’s enjoying every note. Trademark wispy vocals saunter through Holssi over the kind of offbeat backing not seen since her Chat-shire days, and the way everything harmonises together should not come as a surprise – but it still sounds so fresh. Immediately afterwards comes Shh.., one of the most indulgent songs at its conservative BPM level I have ever heard. Jazzy, sassy and fabulously supported, the track has the gall to end with an acting segment even though the EP is nowhere near over – which still works because Love wins all starts real soft. That’s an IU power ballad, though, so you just know it’ll be swelling with sheer orchestral scale soon enough – and it sure does. If anything, the opening and closing tracks are the most vanilla of the package, but of course they’re still produced and performed to the highest standard.

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28 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Gaming Moments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

I sure hope you like JRPGs and visual novels – or at least appreciate their existence – because this list is positively teeming with them. Come to think of it, there’s an overall theme of Japanese theatricality running through a good 70% of this thing, so strap in if that’s your speed. Japanese or not, these specific moments from 2024 videogames stuck out to me for all manner of reasons; a couple for their challenge, a few for their spectacle, a couple for their immediately evident significance within a wider franchise, a sprinkle for their shocking turns, and a handful for sheer novelty.

Just be warned that, naturally, there are some real gnarly spoilers ahead – and some of them come from several dozen hours into pretty long-ass games.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW!

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10. The Frozen Ocean – Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

The stunning art direction of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown ensures its world impresses whenever you enter a new area: from cascades of jewel-encrusted sand waterfalls to grimy pitch-dark caverns and towering citadels, the imagination of the team behind the great Rayman Legends clearly had a lot of ideas stewing during their decade-plus away from the relative spotlight. But there is one locale in the game so striking that I actually gasped once I realised what it was attempting to depict.

As our hero Sargon approaches the easternmost edge of the map and looks out to sea, a towering wave comes into focus, and the wide-lens scrolling effect soon reveals that it isn’t moving. Cue a morbidly beautiful sequence made up of traversing airborne ship debris and weaving through static airborne enemies that ends in a thunderous crash as Sargon reanimates everything all at once, bringing a hail of enemy attention down upon him. Art direction meets game design at its finest.

9. Chocobo Gold Cup Finale – Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

If you haven’t played the truly gargantuan Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it might seem outright odd to see a moment from a sidequest as my singular favourite. Alas, Rebirth’s weaknesses are tied up in its unavoidable middle-chapter identity lacking both the twisty novelty of its predecessor and (hopefully) the emotional release of its successor, while its strengths lie in the kind of properly-integrated open world wonder Square Enix has been trying to recapture since the PS1 days. That extends very much to the sidequests, many of which only unlock in a particular region if you have met and helped the relevant characters in a prior locale.

So long story short, I was rather fond of the underdog-slash-family-trauma Chocobo racing story that spans essentially the length of the entire game if you keep up with it. The unexpectedly heartfelt reappearance of VII Remake’s Chocobo Sam only added to the bittersweet satisfaction of its finale.

But that isn’t what pushes the sidequest over the top for me; no, that’d be the real-time realisation I had on the final lap of the final race that my chosen Chocobo’s unique hovering ability wasn’t just for gliding across rough terrain Mario Kart shortcut-style. With the smarmy shonen-style villain just ahead of me, I decided in the desperation of the moment to try and find out if she could also glide across wide-open pits like the one just before the final turn. To my immediate shock and fist-pumping glee, she absolutely could, and Cloud pulled out in front right at the very end of the race to initiate a shower of confetti and one of the most satisfying renditions of the FF victory fanfare I have ever experienced.

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27 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Movie Scenes

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

We’re already into the second half of the 2024 countdowns, so let’s get serious.

The spoilers usually get fairly perilous around this point, but only three of my ten favourite movie scenes this year could reasonably be called climactic ending sequences – and only one of those actually contains a final shot. I can’t quite draw a common pattern through them otherwise: we’ve got a fair amount of tension, some gritted teeth, a bit of action and some comedy thrown in too. A pretty fun year, I’ve got to say.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

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10. The Car – Deadpool & Wolverine

For all its strengths as a fourth-wall-shattering comedy, Deadpool & Wolverine does bring quite a few memorable action scenes along for the ride. The opener single-handily brought *NSYNC back into relevance (well, for people who didn’t already have Bye Bye Bye on their workout playlists – hypothetically), and the side-on bus brawl against an army of Deadpool variants both sends up one-take battles and exists as a perfect example of one. My pick would be the set piece that takes place between those two, where the two title characters have it out inside a run-down car. Not only do you get plenty of creative moves due to the cramped space, but the inciting incident is a seething Hugh Jackman monologue that briefly reminds the audience just how good of an actor he is.

9. Vault Escape – Inside Out 2

In an otherwise admirably-balanced film where even the funny scenes are also tugging at the heartstrings a bit while working hard under the surface to set up a ton of necessary exposition as naturally as possible, only one scene pushes the comedy level all the way forward the whole time. And sure, what may have been a hilarious surprise was partially spoiled by trailers – especially the presence of a YongYea-voiced generically edgy videogame hero from the PS1 days locked away in Riley’s conceptual vault of shame – but for me the funniest part was mostly unspoiled: a direct-to-camera children’s television pastiche known only as Pouchy. I was laughing uncontrollably at every frustrating pause bemusing the main cast in the background.

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26 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 5 Game Consoles

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Console, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

If you believed the online speculation roar, it was supposed to be the year of the next Nintendo console, with strong whispers of an upgraded PS5 machine swirling amidst potentially exciting new hardware developments from Microsoft as per those juicy 2023 leaks. While things didn’t quite turn out according to the hype sheet, 2024 was still a fascinating year to write this list. Well, for the current-gen consoles anyway. Get ready for a wildly unbalanced personal ranking based on which console’s 2024 presence negotiated its year of terrible PR with the fewest stumbles. Uh, yay?

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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5. Xbox One

LAST YEAR: 4th

The top three are pretty wordy this year, so I’ll give the aged-out Xbone about as much attention as Microsoft did this year: it was a fun, often unpredictable console to cover over the years, it got a few new games in 2024, but this may actually be the last time I count it on this top five list.

4. Playstation 4

LAST YEAR: 5th

The biggest 2024 event for the PS4 may just have been the sensational May news story from Sony that revealed fully 50% of Playstation gamers still play on the PS4, despite the fact that virtually all PS exclusives have abandoned the machine by now. The pandemic and its chip shortages may have indirectly assisted the eleven-year-old Playstation 4 by turning the successful purchase of its successor into a pricey flex for a couple of years, but thanks to the low graphical requirements of the world’s most played games and the ever-shrinking size of generational tech leaps, the widely-loved slanted box just keeps on trucking. It may have been a quiet one by this list’s criteria, but I say well played.

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25 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 15 K-Pop Singles

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, K-Pop, Lists, Music. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .

I may have celebrated a decade of K-Pop appreciation a couple of years ago on this site, but 2024 marked a less glamorous – though no less important – milestone for me: it has now been ten years since a slate of Korean label drama that felt no less than calamitous at the time knocked the proverbial scales of fandom off my eyes and I began to listen to K-Pop without loyalty to specific groups, or without even really taking into account music videos until a song or album had already lodged itself in my brain. So basically how I approach the hobby now.

2014 also brought about enough real-life situation shifts that my curated sources of new K-Pop dried up for the majority of the year, and I had to rush my countdown; despite a few time-honoured bangers at the top, that 2014 Top 15 list is still the playlist I repeat the least in my personal listening time. Though nowhere near that dramatic, 2024 at times felt functionally similar: indefinite podcast hiatuses, changes to curated public playlists, and simple differences in the people I see regularly had me scrambling to do a lot more of my own legwork than usual to find the songs I liked.

But 2024 is not 2014; there are a lot more decent tracks around these days and an awful lot more sources to recommend them.

To make this list, a song has to either have a music video or be the clear lead release from its album or EP. To clear up increasingly blurry fringe examples, only songs containing Korean lyrics count, but you should still listen to H1-Key’s Thinkin’ About You and from20’s Demon. It’s also worth mentioning that much of this year’s playlist is defined by simple audio elements produced well, so I recommend the best set of headphones you’ve got.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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15. APT – Rosé feat. Bruno Mars

We are immediately stretching technicalities for this first inclusion, as the relentlessly catchy single-word repetition coursing through the chorus of viral worldwide hit APT seems both too basic and yet too significant to ignore with my “inclusion of Korean lyrics” eligibility rule. So here it is, in all its irrepressible ear-worminess. The song starts with a crunchy beat that doesn’t overcomplicate itself, and Melbourne’s own Rosé is having so much fun it’s infectious, but the track isn’t much to write home about until Bruno Mars appears to add those famous ad-libs and then triple the impact of the chorus with some of the most satisfying harmonies of the year. By the time the bridge arrives APT is firing on all cylinders, and it has solidified itself as one of the most successful western collabs in K-Pop history.

14. Funk Jam – n.SSign

There’s some interesting distortion echoing around the background of the verses in this one, but the core appeal of the song is simple. In fact, it’s so simple that the title – and the pivotal chorus line – pretty handily tells you everything you need to know: you’re listening to a funk jam. It’s not a world-changing funk jam, but it still slaps pretty hard. In the ongoing race to find the worst K-Pop group name of all time, n.SSign put in a strong effort when they debuted last year, but none of their early music moved the needle in quite the same elite way until the boys boiled it all down to a simple keyboard / guitar setup and started messing around with blues-y sliding notes.

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24 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Movie Characters

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

For our first dip into cinematic countdowns this year, we have a real eclectic mix of villains, protagonists, and a weirdly high percentage of villain-protagonists. It’s perhaps a bit of a light one for memorable comic relief, which traditionally is well-represented here via cameos and supporting cast members, but maybe that says something about the kind of focused film we were able to enjoy repeatedly throughout 2024 as big-ticket ensembles were few and far between.

While not as spoiler-heavy as the next movie countdown, sometimes I do need to spoil plot moments to talk about why I find certain characters so compelling, so tread lightly.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW.

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10. Kid – Monkey Man

Man, I just love this shot (so did Monkey Man’s marketing team, naturally). The film’s unnamed protagonist doesn’t talk a whole lot, and a significant portion of what might be called his character arc amounts to getting beaten up a bunch, but the astonishing behind-the-scenes story of how Dev Patel and his team got this grimy revenge fantasy flick made is so ludicrously lined with hurdles and pitfalls that it can’t help but come through in the writer-director’s own determined, unwavering lead performance. It’s a wonder to behold, and if it wasn’t so believable Monkey Man would probably just go down in history as yet another John Wick clone.

9. Gambit – Deadpool & Wolverine

I still can’t believe this happened. In a movie that already features a Chris Evans fake-out and an audacious, suspiciously prophetic Wesley Snipes one-liner, Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Feige set straight yet another controversial superhero take from X-Men Origins: Wolverine by putting a properly comic-accurate Gambit on screen – from inherently silly purple headgear to heavily exaggerated Cajun affect. Like, they actually did it. They even cast Channing Tatum, which arguably only works as a joke in a movie so reliant on pummelling the fourth wall that it fully expects its audience to remember that Tatum tried to get a Gambit movie off the ground many years ago. I say “as a joke” because Tatum is clearly so excited to be there that he makes the character work anyway, both as a card-throwing badass and a reliable source of comedy.

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23 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Game Re-Releases & Expansions

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

That’s right, last year’s experimental combined list is back for a sophomore appearance. 2024 was hardly the year to drop the double-barrelled concept, sprinkled as it was with plenty of quality remakes, remasters, and expansion content of all flavours to challenge the year’s full-on new releases for quality. This year I can even properly balance the lists at five entries apiece, and I don’t even have Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred, Starfield: Shattered Space, Fantasian: Neo Dimension Eastward: Octopia, or Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven on there! What a world.

And here’s the thing: I don’t have Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, either. Yes, I know, I know. I know! I’m disappointed in myself too, but it just turned out to be one in-depth RPG too many; I got back to my 2022 Game of the Year a week or two late thanks to a pretty busy time in my life, and then soon discovered that despite completing the game I hadn’t even entered the optional dungeon required to access the new content, let alone beaten it. On top of that, my co-op partner for a large chunk of the base game had also lost access to his character. My heart sank, I picked up something else, and just couldn’t find the slot to go back to it.

Even without Shadow of the Erdtree, however, this evenly-divided list of ten entries still features no less than six RPGs. Yeah, it was that kind of year.

Just like last time, the first mini-list only includes re-releases that don’t aim to fully “reimagine” their source material; essentially any entry within the first five categories from this article count, while contenders within the last two are saved for the main list at the very end of the year. Parentheses indicate the platform on which I played each entry.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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RE-RELEASES
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5. Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance (PC)

2024 was Sega’s best year for videogame releases in decades, perhaps ever; this is the first of about a dozen mentions the Japanese publishing veteran is going to get in the lists this year, after I already dedicated an entire article to the team’s 2024 efforts, so strap yourselves in.

The original Switch version of SMT V was already a fantastic semi-open-world evolution of a legendary series, but the crisp menus and smooth traversal were crying out for just a little more performance, so this multi-platform release years later is just what the doctor ordered. The neatly-optimised PC version is perfect for Steam Deck play (or indeed for my AyaNeo Air 1S), especially now that you can save the game anywhere – at long last!

But of course that’s not the main reason Atlus released this edition of the game: an entirely new story route transforms the experience for returning players and provides a more colourful challenge for newcomers, following the time-tested Atlus tradition of videogame re-releases that pack in enough new stuff at every level to defy simple categorisation. The game still loves to make you regret going into a fight unprepared, but fresh tools and abilities level the playing field enough that you feel like you can take on whatever nightmare lies around the corner. In any other year, this kind of game would have been the flagship Sega RPG. But this, unfortunately for SMT V:V, was 2024.

4. Dragon Quest III: HD-2D Remake (NS)

I do not know what delirium-inducing substance has been slipped into the coffee of every single marketing department at every single major Japanese publisher this year, but here’s yet another great JRPG with yet another awful title. Someone at Square Enix was clearly huffing internal jargon fumes, terrified of any possible ambiguity, and looked at only the key art of the FFVII remake team down the hall without actually playing anything.

Luckily, this wonderful revisitation of Japan’s favourite entry from Japan’s favourite RPG series seems to be selling anyway, because it is as close to a warm hug as a JRPG can be for those of us who grew up on turn-based random-battle grinds. Convincing people why the Dragon Quest games are so compelling has been a struggle ever since XI converted me to a series apologist in 2018, but the simplest explanation remains as true for III HD-2D as it was then: the game’s confidence in the strength of its original, very old-school mechanics shines through via some of the most polished presentation in the business.

The Octopath Traveller / Triangle Strategy projects may have introduced and refined that so-called “HD-2D” aesthetic, but it has never looked this colourful or this vibrant before. The series is also clearly over its controversial attitude to stubborn MIDI soundtracks, because the rearranged orchestral score is simply stunning. These significant overhauls work alongside the small ones – like the ability to see your party in between battle turns or the way the menu messages seem to have a voice of their own – to both cushion the game’s more stubborn habits and enhance its time-tested strengths. Bring on the next two awfully-titled entries.

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22 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 5 Disappointments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Games, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

So that was a bit of a turbulent year for entertainment media, huh?

I don’t do an annual “top news stories” list, because year-to-year there’s no guarantee there would be enough to even make one; it would also be kind of difficult to rank their impact when certain headlines seem outwardly positive while so many others skew negative. But wow, it sure would have been fun to tackle one in 2024. By the end of March alone there was already enough content to knock out a solid top five, as the three main videogame console manufacturers had already provided more than enough twists and turns.

For now, the standard disappointments format will have to do, which means only stuff that undercut some form of my own personal expectation counts. Hey, if ain’t broke…

The list is once again a top five this year, so I’ve tried to group each entry into some kind of common trend wherever it makes sense. Let’s get this out of the way.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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5. This is Getting Ridiculous, Ninty

I just have to squeeze in a really personal whinge here. Even though Nintendo were guilty of moves much more worthy of other people’s disappointment shortlists this year, I’ve been following the company for so long now that nothing really gets my hopes up enough to shatter them these days – except the ongoing absence of the Nintendo Switch successor console in any official capacity throughout 2024.

The death by 1000 cuts started early: all the way back in January those sensational “internal delay” reports broke, suggesting the machine was planned for release this year but was pushed into 2025. Widespread assumptions that the house of Mario wouldn’t have enough games to fill out another year without a “Switch 2” were gradually proven wrong – and definitively so in a stellar June Direct – but even as the year rolled on and the system’s absence proved those January reports more likely every day, all the hype-fuelled YouTube channels and outlets turned their attention to the possibility that at least we’d see an official reveal this year… Right?

But things got real weird in the year’s second half. When Nintendo crammed a Museum Direct AND an unprecedented double-feature Indie World / Partner Showcase into the final week of August, a console reveal in the traditionally blockbuster September seemed almost guaranteed, but instead we got tumbleweeds; even a set of credible hardware photo / render leaks didn’t expedite Nintendo’s plans. Then came the weirdest October in recent memory: a new Nintendo alarm clock, a sort-of-secret online playtest for a mysterious multiplayer game, and a new mobile music streaming app each came out of nowhere and released almost immediately. Nintendo was trolling fans at that point.

I’m usually an absolute glutton for videogame console speculation, but by November I had well and truly checked out. This disappointment was largely self-inflicted, I admit, but whatever chaos was going on behind the scenes, the Big N’s marketing machine well and truly knew what it was doing.

4. The Wrong Kind of Aussie Film Nostalgia

It’s been a little while since living in Australia has felt like an outright disadvantage for active cinema movie-watchers, but 2024 had me feeling like the old days had returned on at least two oddly similar occasions throughout the year. To be fair, the second instance was a bit more worldwide, but it still formed a nasty pattern from my perspective.

Around April, the latest in a weirdly rapid-fire line of pulpy Guy Ritchie action flicks was set to release, and despite the relatively poor reception of his recent work I was still keen to switch my brain off and enjoy the unique brand of banter he so regularly delivers. But after release date listings all over reliable sites mysteriously vanished one day with no explanation, it was weeks until my friends and I were able to get any answers as to why The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare was not showing in any cinemas, despite Ritchie’s last effort making its slot on time as expected. Apparently it was a weird Amazon deal that wasn’t made massively public in Australia, and a couple of months later the movie unceremoniously hit streaming services. Just what a silly bombastic WWII movie needed. Yay.

Then in September came something even more drastic: I saw (and enjoyed) trailers for George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s much-hyped Oceans reunion Wolfs more than once in cinemas, and marked its late September release date on the calendar. Just one week before that very release date, chief bankroller Apple announced that the movie would no longer receive a cinematic run at all, going straight to the Apple TV+ streaming service instead to help boost subscribers. In terms of late rug-pulls, I’d never seen anything quite like it, but the gambit appeared to work, resulting in huge early watch numbers. Soon enough a major consequence came to light: director Jon Watts revealed he dropped plans for a sequel as a direct response to that exact big-screen backflip. Tell ’em, Jon.

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