Posts Tagged ‘worst’

26 Dec

Best of 2021: Top 5 Game Consoles

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2021, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

In all kinds of ways, 2021 was a tired, drawn-out sequel to 2020; a reminder that the rollover to January 1st each year is ultimately pretty arbitrary. But while there was arguably more room for optimism in some parts of life this year, just try to get yourself a PS5 to see how little has changed in others.

Indeed the first full year on the market for Sony and Microsoft’s new machines was slower than some might have hoped, both in getting stock to people and in releasing mind-blowing exclusive games; this kept their last-gen siblings well in the conversation all year. But the experience of using each console did improve substantially, and Nintendo predictably bounced back strongly to keep them on their toes.

This is how I would rank the current five major consoles (disregarding PC and mobile) in order of the impressions they made on me in 2021.

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VR BEST OF 2021 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. To agree with me 100% is beyond unlikely. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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5. Playstation 4

LAST YEAR: 1st

It feels pretty weird having the Playstation 4 at the bottom of this short list, especially after a show-stopping 2020 when the sales titan ushered in its much scarcer successor with a powerful final salvo of acclaimed exclusive games. But even though the lack of PS5 availability has funnily enough made the PS4’s 2022 look mighty tasty – as plenty of next year’s Sony headliners will land for the last-gen machine as well – 2021 will still enter the pages of history strangely blank.

In terms of games not available on Nintendo or Microsoft consoles, the PS4 got a simultaneous release of Kena: Bridge of Spirits alongside the PS5, and received a down-port of uneven PS5 launch title Godfall nine months after the fact. Spider-Man made his promised Sony-exclusive debut in Marvel’s Avengers as DLC, but that’s… it? The only actual 2021 PS4 exclusive of any note I can find in the data is Chicory: A Colorful Tale, which was thankfully extremely well received, but I’m drawing a blank on anything else worth mentioning (EDIT: less than a week before I published this Chicory came out for the Switch and no longer counts, oops). The champion console also received essentially no new firmware features, although I doubt many people were expecting any. So, uh, bring on 2022 I guess.

CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE LIST

25 Dec

Best of 2021: Top 10 Movie Characters

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2021, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

What a line-up of scene-stealers we had at the movies (or, you know, in our homes) in 2021. That probably has a fair amount to do with all the delayed 2020 flicks that crashed on top of this year’s cinematic plans, but you analyse the hand you’re dealt, as it were. This is yet another year without any protagonists on the list, but that’s just the way it shakes out more often than not. The human focus of a film’s story doesn’t tend to capture my attention quite like the good old extended cameo or enjoyably hammy villainous performance – or indeed both at once.

This list is rarely the place to find in-depth plot spoilers, but it’s still worth being careful if you consider yourself behind on major blockbusters this year.

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VR BEST OF 2021 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. To agree with me 100% is beyond unlikely. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

Spoilers may follow.

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10. Luisa – Encanto

Encanto is packed with super-powered characters that get very quick introductions (this is a Lin-Manuel Miranda work, after all, so the words-per-minute can get a real workout) and then have to fight for character arcs while staying under a Disney animated movie runtime. So it makes sense that the character with the most physically apparent power – and the solo song with the most words in it – would present the best opportunity to kick off the movie’s themes of familial expectation. But my word, do her voice actress Jessica Darrow and the entire animation team run with that opportunity. Luisa is consistently entertaining to watch and “Surface Pressure” is a throwback to the golden age of chaotic Disney visual storytelling within a musical number.

9. Cipher – F9: The Fast Saga

That’s right: the main villain from the eighth Fast & Furious movie appears in the ninth one trapped in a giant glass case for most of the runtime, wearing a bowl cut, and is still more memorable than John Cena’s primary antagonist in this one. That might be because Charlize Theron is allowed to have a lot more fun than Cena – whose comedic timing in at least two other 2021 movies proves how wasted he is playing the stoic, burdened younger brother of Dominic Toretto – but also because she commits to looking and sounding even more cartoonishly evil than she did in F8. The degree of ham in her performance is a perfect fit for this franchise, so it’s a shame she won’t be coming back for any more movies.

CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE LIST

24 Dec

Best of 2021: Top 15 K-Pop Singles

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2021, K-Pop, Lists, Music. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

This was somehow my tenth year following the Korean music industry, but not all of those years have been the same in terms of interest levels – as you may know if you’ve read any two or more instances of this top 15 list in the past. Sometimes I’m all-in for most of the year; some years I do a big catch-up binge every three months or so, and some years I do all my listening in a dense, borderline-overwhelming chunk at the very end. After an exhausting 2020 where I was back on the week-to-week release grind for the first time in ages, it turned out 2021 gave me a new listening pattern: almost nothing for the first half of the year, then a gradual ramp-up from July onwards.

This meant I got to skip a fair amount of the garbage-wading of last year, and perhaps this year’s list isn’t as authentic as a result; maybe it won’t last as long when I listen to it later. But right now it feels light and fun and I’m digging listening to it on repeat as I write this. On that note, as always it’s worth mentioning that this is always audio-first thing for me: I had seen precisely four out of these twenty-five music videos before I started formatting the list.

It’s also strictly for songs that have music videos and feature at least some Korean language lyrics, disqualifying fantastic songs like Adoy’s Baby. I recommend turning off the YouTube subtitles if they end up automatically playing for you on this page; I’ve just never thought they added anything worthwhile to K-Pop, but that’s a matter of opinion of course.

However, only your best headphones are allowed while you’re here.

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VR BEST OF 2021 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. To agree with me 100% is beyond unlikely. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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15. Beautiful Beautiful – ONF

I daresay a whole lot of people around the world looked to K-Pop for an injection of positivity in their lives, and so I can think of no better way to start this playlist than with a relentless dose of just that. Mid-tier boy group ONF’s breezy Beautiful Beautiful uses a basic 2010s pop template to great effect with a sticky main hook that kicks off the song and comes back with verve time and time again, briefly stopping before the last chorus for a lovely harmonious pseudo-in-the-round session that I wouldn’t mind to hear revisited in a longer form. It’s hard to mess up a backing track like this, but ONF’s vocals elevate Beautiful Beautiful to the next level.

14. BEcause – Dreamcatcher

The year after dropping what I still think is the young decade’s best K-Pop album, Dreamcatcher returned to making powerful standalone title tracks with BEcause, which is nominally a summer track but sure brings plenty of the dark sonic elements that are often associated with the colder months. Opening with suitably creepy nursery rhyme vibes brightened up by Leez and Ollounder’s world-class production, it’s not long before the track is going harder than the operatic pop-rock outfit has for a couple of years: Punchy chants, strangely satisfying note slides, double-time breakdowns, an ethereal piano bridge; this is quality vintage DC and I’m here for it.

CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE LIST

23 Dec

Best of 2021: Five Special Awards

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2021, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

It’s been ten years of this and I finally have a small window to talk about TV shows. Kinda. Marvel and Disney made sure of that. So as you’ll soon see we have not one but two new special awards in 2021, alongside three returners. I have no idea which ones will be here next year and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The category I felt worst about cutting to make room was Best K-Pop rookie, but I just wasn’t following the industry for long enough this year to give a decent account of that one (for the record, it probably would’ve gone to Purple Kiss). Let’s get stuck into the standalone good stuff.

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VR BEST OF 2021 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. To agree with me 100% is beyond unlikely. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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Best Third-Party Game Publisher

Square Enix

I know I hit them pretty hard at the pointy end of this year’s disappointments list, but that was largely because of how good Square Enix’s game releases were this year. Beginning 2021 with a meaty JRPG on the level of Bravely Default II, especially at a time when almost no other third parties were showing up, put them in the early driver’s seat, but then… well, the months went on and still no real competition. Remember how the only new multi-platform games on physical shelves before May were Nier Replicant and Outriders? Yeah, both Square Enix.

Even when the other heavy hitters came out to play, neither the Western or Japanese publishing arms of Square were ready to put the cue in the rack. The long-awaited Neo: The World Ends With You delighted fans as a huge part of the JRPG July festivities, joined in that genre this year by SaGa Frontier Remastered and another surprising Yoko Taro joint in Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars. The PS5 appearance of Final Fantasy Remake Intergrade drew massive praise, with its fantastic new story DLC in tow. Five of the company’s six planned Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters launched on PC and mobile throughout the year, each to promising general reception; then in quick succession came absolute narrative gems Life is Strange: True Colors and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Even a release as disastrous as Balan Wonderworld couldn’t mess up a year like this.

Only Capcom and Bandai Namco gave this title any real competition in 2021: the former with hugely successful brand-new Monster Hunter and Resident Evil releases; the latter absolutely bringing the quality with shock (Scarlet Nexus), reinvention (Tales of Arise) and high-value horror sequels (Little Nightmares 2 and House of Ashes). EA did put out unexpected wins in Knockout City and It Takes Two, but missed the mark on Battlefield 2042. Ubisoft failed to impress with a mix of flops and delays, Bethesda isn’t a third-party publisher anymore, and it sure wasn’t a good follow-up year for Activision-Blizzard, now was it?

Oh that reminds me, I only forgot to mention that 2021 was absolutely the year of Final Fantasy XIV, which not only released its titanic expansion Endwalker this year but is now the world’s most actively played MMO. It even needed to suspend all purchases earlier this month to try and give the servers a break. I honestly don’t think I’ll ever see a 12-month period this dominant for Square Enix ever again in my lifetime.

Runner-Up: Bandai Namco

Best Indie Game Publisher

Devolver Digital

This one was truly spicy in 2021, without a clear leader but plenty of worthy contenders. No major indie publisher from last year’s round-up failed to release a game that caught my attention this year, so ultimately I can’t help but feel we’re all winners in this world where cool game ideas are boosted to the top of the pile by smart marketing support.

Chucklefish bears the first mention, because they actually brought a game this year – and that game was the absolutely wonderful Eastward. They do seem to be going for quality over quantity still, but I’m totally fine with that if they keep spotlighting and releasing games at their current level. Team 17 seemed to fall off the radar slightly despite quite a few releases, but those releases did include Greak: Memories of Azur and Narita Boy, the latter of which I played quite a bit. Curve Games (formerly Curve Digital) brought crunchy graphical showcase The Ascent to the world and so cannot be discounted.

But the big four of 2021 pushed this one to the wire: Raw Fury released noir adventure Backbone and unwinding toy-builder Townscaper as strong support for their long-awaited headliner Sable, which launched with rough performance on some platforms but soared to critical success regardless. Annapurna Interactive and Humble Games both came mighty close, the former with the triple-threat Twelve Minutes, The Artful Escape and Solar Ash among others; in fact if the ridiculously cool Neon White had made its 2021 release date Annapurna may just shot up to top spot. But Humble well and truly held its own after an amazing 2020 by snuggling up to Microsoft with a suite of winners that all game to Xbox Game Pass day one: Dodgeball Academia, The Wild at Heart, Into the Pit, Unsighted and Unpacking are all so good -and so different from one another – that the publisher’s name should arguably have appeared under all the XGP ads running everywhere this year.

But after a classy, diverse, powerful 2021 display, Devolver Digital deserves to take this one. From solid shipwrecked platformer Olija to surprising free mobile sequel-ish thing My Friend Pedro: Ripe for Revenge to absolutely bonkers shock spin-off Minit Fun Racer, Devolver embraced their modern status as the deranged cousin of the stuffy triple-A elite with a line-up that didn’t skimp on quality; they fully leant into the hype around Loop Hero and Inscryption, neither of which disappointed once they released. But there can be little argument about what was their crown jewel this year: Isometric roguelike Death’s Door is the closest 2021 got to a Hades in terms of sheer word-of-mouth energy, and it was all Devolver’s to reap.

Runner-Up: Humble Games

CLICK HERE FOR THE REST OF THE LIST

21 Dec

Best of 2021 Intro

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2021, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

A year of two halves: That’s how I’ll always remember 2021.

Down here on the east coast of Australia, we were fortunate enough to open the year with almost six straight months of false security in this post-2020 world. As our North American and European friends weren’t quite in the same position, new release movies were rather difficult to come by – and those debuting on US streaming services didn’t always match up 1-to-1 with our offerings. What’s more, the starved extrovert in me was very keen to make up for lost time, and it turned out one of the routines of my life that made way for the extra social time was (most of) my Korean music listening.

As for videogames, 2021 was positively grisly for people with free time in the early months of the year; between January’s Hitman III and May’s Resident Evil Village the triple-A videogame needle barely moved for the home console crowd. Although the picture for Switch owners was definitely more consistent, the widespread game delays 2020 had promised all seemed to hit at the same time, leaving very little in their wake. Luckily, more room opened up for some unexpected gems, but a legendary half-year it was not. Even this blog stayed dead-silent for almost six months.

Then 2021’s entertainment media came alive, just as the lockdowns came back with a vengeance down under. The PS5 actually received a couple of exclusive games, the Switch enjoyed a fabulous JRPG July, Bandai Namco and Square Enix unleashed some real surprise gems, and Xbox Game Pass enjoyed a sustained watershed moment with a full handful of the best-reviewed games of the year. Two summers of pent-up American blockbusters started to hit movie theatres and streaming services in earnest, and they kinda haven’t stopped since. I slowly picked up the K-Pop again with the help of some unexpected new friendships, and it turned out I had missed some pretty good stuff.

It’s a tired observation these days, but you really would be forgiven for feeling like you lived two years this past year; I certainly feel that way. But I promise these next ten countdowns will not focus purely on that bountiful second half: We’re looking at all of it.

Regardless of how many lists you click on, I’d like to thank you for joining me for Vagrant Rant’s 10th annual year-end countdown celebration!

Oh yeah, I kinda buried the lead there.

Ten years. Wow, there you go.

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VR BEST OF 2021 DISCLAIMER

The following lists represent my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting them as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is beyond unlikely. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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30 Aug

Revisiting The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword – In High Definition & High Detail

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Switch, Wii. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Yep, we’re doing this again.

Ten years. Wow.

It has somehow been (almost) ten years since The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword hit the flailing, ailing Nintendo Wii to a chorus of crickets. Essentially the last major release on the console, there was already a mighty stack of factors going against its success before November 24th, 2011 rolled around: The Wii had endured an extremely light year after a banner 2010 that already felt like a celebratory send-off, as Nintendo pivoted first to launching and then to saving the fledgling 3DS; the game required the purchase of the Wii Motion Plus attachment in order to work with its ambitious controls; and perhaps most tellingly, the lightning had left the bottle for the casual Wii audience and everyone else was playing Skyrim.

Yes, Link, it’s true.

This left a smaller audience than Nintendo would’ve liked to pick up its latest 3D Zelda extravaganza, the endcap to a year-long celebration of the series’ 25th anniversary. Skyward Sword sold in the millions, but for a game five years in development and an install base as record-shattering as the Wii’s, it was nothing short of a disappointment. The day I started writing this it still held the record for the worst-selling 3D entry in the Legend of Zelda series (Edit: Switch sales may have changed this by now). And despite an initial wave of critical acclaim customary for a Zelda game, the reputation of Link’s motion-controlled escapade took a sharp downturn before long and stayed down for years. After all, who wants to dust off their horrifically outdated Nintendo Wii and buy an extra controller attachment just to challenge the notoriety of a finicky, linear, repetitive, excessively hand-holding game in *ugh* standard definition?

omg ewwwww

Five years. Oh no.

It has somehow been (just over) five years since I put out what is still the longest singular piece of writing I’ve ever cobbled together in my lifetime: A 10,000 word behemoth on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (Edit: Um, about that…). Inspired by a decade of mixed personal feelings, lengthy conversations with friends, and triple-digit hours of watched YouTube content on the strengths and weaknesses of the game; the post ended up perhaps a touch unwieldy and yet oh-so-cathartic. Thanks to a bucket of alternate perspectives and a highly underrated Wii U remaster, I had never felt so assured that – despite its flaws – um, I liked the game, actually.

And I’d be OK never writing another word about it.

The last thing I was thinking as that project slowly came together was “I’m setting a template here and I definitely want to put myself through this again.” And yet you know where this is going, because you read the title: It’s Skyward Sword’s turn. But this time around, dear reader, we’re not investigating if years of Zelda franchise evolution and some neat nips and tucks have improved my sentiments towards an inconsistent videogame; we’re seeing whether my third favourite Zelda game of all-time (behind only Majora’s Mask and Breath of the Wild) can possibly still hold such a lofty position after it has been exposed to a decade of stiff critiques, a lack of clear historical identity and a radical reinvention of the entire franchise in its wake.

Challenge accepted.

But we are going to try our very best to do it in less than 10,000 words this time, probably (Edit: We failed, and we failed hard). Regardless, this one will need a beverage or two to get through; at the time of writing Skyward Sword is the last 3D Zelda game to release on a second console, and rest assured I have no intention of leaving stones unturned. Whatever it will cost.

You guessed it – we’re in for another long one.

(I’m going to go ahead and re-purpose a paragraph from the Twilight Princess post because it fits too well this time, and kinda feels poetic too)

Be aware that this post contains a huge amount of spoilers that get steadily worse the longer you read – worth mentioning if you haven’t played the game before. All you need to know if you’re a Skyward Sword newcomer is that yes, I believe this HD / portable release is definitively the best version of the classic title, and yes, you really should play it. If you really want to read on, continue at your own risk, but you should know that what follows is so exhaustive that you may not even feel like you need to play it by the end. But maybe play it anyway?

HERE WE GO: Click here to regret your choice to click here.

1 Jan

Best of 2020 Closer

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, Misc. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Well now I guess we’re in 2021. While that isn’t magically going to solve all of 2020’s problems, it will reset the multiple arbitrary counters in my mind and allow me a little while to play/watch/listen to things that don’t absolutely have to go onto a pile for consideration towards the next annual countdowns. It sounds silly, but that feels like a massive load off at the moment. I hope the calendar reset has, in some small way, made you less stressed as well.

Anyway, here’s all the good stuff from last year:

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1. Top 10 Disappointments

2. Five Special Awards

3. Top 15 K-Pop Singles

4. Top 10 Movie Characters

5. Top 10 Game Consoles

6. Top 10 Movie Scenes

7. Top 10 Gaming Moments

8. Top 10 K-Pop Albums

9. Top 15 Games

10. Top 10 Movies

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31 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 10 Movies

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Just one more day of 2020 left, so it’s perhaps fitting that this series of countdowns ends with the list most affected by the year’s defining pandemic. Finding good new movies in 2020 was a tall task throughout most of the year due to the ongoing game of film studio chicken going on overseas, but streaming services did just enough to hold us over with their own exclusive releases until the flurry of bigger-name films began to hit around mid-to-late October – only accelerating from there. For a long stretch of the year I was seriously considering reducing this list to a more casual top five, but in the end I was just about able to scrape together a full list.

A quick thing I realised while finalising this list: I saw way fewer movie trailers this year than any before it; and while that probably means I missed some movies I might’ve checked out otherwise, I really think it improved my actual watching experience for quite a few of them. Just a thought that came to mind as I was grabbing trailers for this page.

Anyway, it’s time to put 2020 behind us.

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VR BEST OF 2020 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. To agree with me 100% is an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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10. Onward

It already feels like years since I watched Onward – 2020 will do that to ya – so all that really stands out to me about it when I look back is that amazing finale. But the rest of the movie is still worth checking out; it’s basically Pixar’s take on a road movie, and even if that well-worn comedy hi-jinks structure feels like a bit of a waste of a really cool fading-magic-world setup, Chris Pratt and Tom Holland give spirited vocal performances backed by Marvel chemistry to keep things engaging. The mythical supporting cast is also good fun to watch while the movie prepares its pile of emotional bricks. Whenever Pixar sets its sights on a family unit, you just have to watch your tear ducts.

9. Mank

This one feels weird to talk about, because I can’t really tell you much of what Mank is trying to say as a story, and I’m sure plenty of old-school Hollywood references soared right over my head; ultimately my enjoyment of David Fincher’s latest film comes down to every layer of production except the deepest ones. The shot composition and period-apt transitions are on-point; the first of two jazz-soaked December 2020 scores by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (there’s an utterly weird bit of trivia) is just fabulous; and not only is every performance excellent, there’s proper variety in the work of each major player. Lily Collins and Tuppence Middleton steal scenes on opposite ends of the patience scale, Charles Dance commands the movie on the strength of his reaction shots alone, and of course Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried take turns making themselves at home within every frame. A case of style over substance that works for me.

Click here to bring the year home

30 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 15 Games

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Ah, 2020 – you came, you saw, you reduced us all to the last shreds of our sanity. But my word; you sure gave us some incredible videogames to fill the time.

This past year brought the interactive goods like it was 2017 all over again: the genuine power behind Dreams’ boundless player expression; the frenetic flow of Doom Eternal; the absolute ton of new content in Persona 5 Royal; the revolutionary VR jaw-dropper Half Life Alyx; the shiny systems sandbox of Watch Dogs Legion; the viral push of Valorant; the unreal ambition of Microsoft Flight Simulator‘s return; the grand scale of Immortals: Fenyx Rising; the unlikely success of long-awaited sequels Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, Spelunky 2 and Streets of Rage 4.

We had gorgeous remakes like Resident Evil 3, Demons’ Souls and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2. We had acclaimed games with laser-targeted niches and actual budgets, like Wasteland 3, Star Wars Squadrons and Nioh 2. We had strategic gems like XCOM Chimera Squad, Gears Tactics and Othercide; amazingly fresh indies like Spiritfarer, Carto, Paradise Killer, The Pathless, Bright Memory and Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin; hugely successful spin-offs like Minecraft Dungeons and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. And of course, we had the one and only Cyberpunk 2077.

That’s just the stuff that didn’t make my list.

To qualify a game for this top fifteen I need to have played it for more than five hours and/or finished it, unless it’s multiplayer-focused. That disqualifies a lot of good stuff that I was enjoying but stopped playing early due to interruptions, such as plenty of the games I just mentioned but particularly Ikenfell and Sakura Wars. I also cannot use a 2020 re-release of an old game on a new platform unless I didn’t play the original release at all – This last point means some of the best games released this year (A Short Hike, Pikmin 3 Deluxe, Dragon Quest XI S – all of which you should definitely play) cannot count.

Without further ado, these are my fifteen favourite videogames from 2020. Parentheses indicate where I played each game.

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VR BEST OF 2020 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. To agree with me 100% is an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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15. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (NS)

2020’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons really could have gone anywhere on this list; anyone who got involved in that initial two-month wave of communal playing could tell you that as long as it’s got new content to offer, this is less a game and more a daily life activity on roughly the same level of necessity as brushing your teeth. As a result some people will have this in their number one spot while others may forget to even think about it in the GOTY conversation – and so using it as an introduction of sorts to this list just feels right.

I’ve been playing the Animal Crossing games for almost two decades, so I’ve seen plenty of games in the series get away without adding much shiny new content. Though it’d be easy to see New Horizons as simply another addition to that legacy when looking at the right screenshots, the genius of this one is that it takes the opening moments of most Animal Crossing titles and essentially makes them the endgame of this one. You build up day-by-day from a desolate island with a mere campsite to a bustling remote town with a host of diverse facilities – all with the help of a clever new crafting system – and then eventually you get to terraform the island itself. The secret of Animal Crossing has always been about self-expression, but New Horizons takes the concept through the stratosphere.

14. Genshin Impact (PS4/Mob)

This is a weird one, because I played Genshin Impact for eight hours on its PS4 launch day (my laptop was being repaired at the time), then checked in daily over a couple of weeks for no more than the login bonuses, tried the mightily-impressive (sadly cross-save-incompatible) mobile version for an hour or so, then never went back to it. But I just can’t not have it on the main list; this game may be a confusing pitch blending the gacha mechanics of standard free-to-play mobile RPGs with a distinctly skin-deep Breath of the Wild approach to environment design, but in its moment-to-moment gameplay it is something else entirely. It plays more like an action RPG with on-the-fly elemental mixing mechanics that – bizarrely enough – remind me of Starlink: Battle for Atlas. Its cast of characters bring vastly different playstyles to the table and slot into the story interchangeably without consequence – or emotional investment. Genshin Impact somehow feels like both the shallowest and deepest game I played in 2020, and I’m still trying to reconcile that in my head.

Two down, thirteen to go – click here

29 Dec

Best of 2020: Top 10 K-Pop Albums

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2020, K-Pop, Lists, Music. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

When you’re locked down at home or the studio, you can write some pretty good tunes. That’s the message the K-Pop industry (and its satellite subgenres) sent to album fans all over the world in 2020. It was an embarrassment of audio riches this year, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say I listened to a higher percentage of it than in any previous year (thanks again to the great Stankpop community). But I think I’ve proved my point that the state of K-Pop album production is in a better place than it was half a decade ago, so I won’t open the floodgates for honorable mentions like I did last year. Music is of course intensely subjective, but know that every single record on this page comes with my enthusiastic recommendation.

And yes, this is where the SM boys ended up; thanks for asking.

1-3 tracks = N/A

4-7 tracks = mini album

8+ tracks = full album

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VR BEST OF 2020 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. To agree with me 100% is an utterly bizarre coincidence. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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MINI ALBUMS
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5. Maria – Hwa Sa

The first MAMAMOO soloist to put out an EP I’ve enjoyed the whole way through, Hwa Sa’s big collaboration-heavy year unleashed Maria as its crown jewel. Brazenly self-reflective in a way not attempted by too many K-Pop group members, Hwa Sa uses her English name as a motif repeatedly throughout the seven tracks, letting in just one featuring artist – DPR Live – on penultimate Salsa-tinged track I’m bad too. The bounteous strings and piano on soaring spiritual closer LMM really sit with you after the mini album is done, feeling like an emphatic answer to the question posed by the diary entry of an introductory track; WHY is the big industrial centrepiece that helps get you there, though, and there’s more sardonic fun to be had within the shifting beats of the Zico-produced Kidding.

4. Jackpot – Elris

Shifting gears to something far fluffier and more energetic; Elris’ fourth mini album is a surprisingly great sugar hit with some serious crunch on hand to substantiate things. The introduction is a brilliantly-constructed 75-second build that might make you wonder why so few producers get their own intros so wrong – it slots right under the title track with ease and improves it out of sight. But the delightful carefree chorus of the headliner isn’t even close to the best thing on the EP, as the three ballad-free follow-ups absolutely fly by. This Is Me is a harmony-rich dose of old-school K-Pop energy that’s honestly just a better song overall (which someone behind the production must have realised, because there’s a well-produced dance video for it). But if the bass and vocals are the star there, Like I Do announces its intention to fill your headphones with delectable bell-chime treble from its first moment. Final track No Big Deal is the mini album’s secret weapon, letting the vapours of its celestial pre-chorus sprinkle over an aloof hook with minimal backing. Colour me mad-keen for the next Elris package.

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