Best of 2024

Something I didn't expect this year is how big of a fan of the Yakuza series I'd become. At the start of 2024 I had not played a single game in the series. By the time it wrapped up I had played through seven of them. While the games differ throughout the series, the overall gameplay is typically open world with a main storyline and ample side missions ranging from small chores to totally off-the-wall quests.

Infinite Wealth continues the Like a Dragon storyline in Hawaii. The whole environment is beautifully rendered and feels lived in by its residents. You never feel like you're wandering a desolate map with nothing going on. You'll often hear brief conversations, experience the occasional burst of rain, see people going in and out of stores. There's even a mechanic that grants you points for simply saying hello to people and building friendships through a mock social network. The gameplay perfectly complements Ichiban Kasuga, the protagonist of Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Infinite Wealth. He's personable, affable, infectiously joyous.

While RGG could take the mechanics of the first game and slop together a sequel for a quick cash-grab, they make every attempt to ensure this game is more polished than the last. The battle system is more diverse and rewards you for not simply spamming actions to move on, the environment is fresh, the characters feel like some of your closest friends. Infinite Wealth has done a wonderful job of embracing a new era of characters and worlds while honoring and furthering the legacy of previous games.

Before this album I hadn't listened to much of Porter Robinson's discography. Sure, I knew some of his biggest tracks like Shelter, Musician, and Get Your Wish, but there were no albums I had listen from start to finish. I was hooked on this one almost immediately with the intro track Knock Yourself Out XD followed by other great songs like Cheerleader, Russian Roulette, and Perfect Pinterest Garden.

The album is fun, it's catchy, and the more melancholy tracks are evocative and so well-written. Porter uses themes of nostalgia—the feelings of being a kid, things being simpler, your world being much smaller—but he also recognizes lingering on nostalgia can keep himself and others from living more fully in the present.

On a lark, I bought a ticket to see a show of the SMILE! tour. Mostly figuring that it would be a good time and he'd back up some great songs with amazing visuals. I underestimated it considerably. It was fun, inspiring, and felt more like a celebration than just watching a performer. And Shelter was phenominal.

At some point the beef between Kendrick and Drake seemed to completely transcend rap and seep into the greater pop culture. What ironically started out with Drake calling Kendrick one of the "Big Three" is not at all where things ended by summer.

Kendrick and Drake went back and forth with a series of diss tracks, but—for me—no track this year was as memorable as Euphoria. While it's maybe not going to be a stream-favorite like Not Like Us this track is 6 and a half minutes of great flow, lyrics, and bite that continued well after the beef faded out.

This song really turned me back onto rap for the rest of the year and made the surprise drop of GNX that much sweeter.

I saw Dune in theaters and didn't re-watch it at any point before Dune: Part Two. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't like it had been something I lingered on for a while afterwards. I wasn't counting the days until Part Two was released.

When Part Two did come out, I saw it the same way I saw the first—in IMAX. And, wow, this film impressed me. Obviously, part of that is due to some conclusiveness to what had been set up in Part One. But, everything felt more polished—the dialogue, the characters, the cultures and worlds. It felt even more ambitious than the first and the stakes so much higher.

I wanted more after it was over. I could've watched an entire movie solely about the Harkonnen's and what Giedi Prime is like. I would love to see Villeneuve continue to explore these extremely unique worlds. And, now, I am counting the days for Dune: Messiah.

Though they aren't new, LLMs are becoming more accessible and useful to the larger public. Sure, they still have hills to climb and battles to win: the lingo is complicated, there are ethical and environmental considerations that need to be factored in, but if you think they're a passing fad you're in for a rude awakening. They're just too useful and dramatically improve computing experiences for people.

Here's a personal example: My daughter recently bought a watch that had a Musical Notes app. But it didn't use musical scale (C, D, E, F, etc). Instead, it used do, re, mi, fa, etc. She wanted to learn how to play Happy Birthday, but I figured turning to Google would make this a multi-step search process. I didn't even know what this alternative structure was called (it's Solfège apparently). So, I opened up ChatGPT and asked 'how do I play happy birthday, but using do, re, mi, etc instead of notes?'

It gave me a nearly instantaneous, no-bullshit response that didn't require me to filter through sponsored links or sites gaming SEO terms and descriptions. There were no websites with endless cookie banners. No newsletter signup requests. No ads. Just the answer I wanted. And if it wasn't totally accurate, so what? It was a no-risk first run at a problem.

It gave me what the web hasn't in years—a direct answer with no strings attached.

I can earnestly and honestly say that I don't think I've enjoyed a game more in the past ten years than Yakuza 0.

I was first introduced to this series through, oddly enough, videos of Dunkey playing it and relishing in both the seriousness and goofiness.

Tonally, this game has everything. You'll be wandering through the streets of Sotenbori as Majima, reminiscing about the past and being a prisoner within the city and the find yourself in the middle of a substory carefully delivering a pizza to a woman in an alley. You'll be leading a blind woman away from the Yakuza—darting between buildings and protecting her if you're caught. And then you'll spend seven hours customizing a toy car to beat eight year olds in pocket circuit races.

I've never played a game that had me laughing so hysterically and genuinely sobbing throughout the story.

This being the first Yakuza game I had played I had no background on any of the characters in the story. They were completely fresh to me, and even when I played subsequent games in the series it continued to enrich the world and the characters from Yakuza 0. I could easily go back to that game and see more from Kiryu, Majima, Nishikiyama, and Kazama that I didn't catch the first time.

I cannot possibly recommend this game enough. Now please rise for the national anthem.

I can't tell you exactly when this will happen. But you should prepare for the fact that it could be a couple...definitely no more than two years.

Even watching this alone I audibly gasped when that line was said.

Aniara is a Swedish movie I've had burrowed into my mind all year long. Embarrassingly enough, I picked this movie on a whim because I thought it had a cool movie poster in Letterboxd.

It's about the Aniara—a massive ship escorting thousands of passengers on a luxury voyage from Earth to Mars. A trip that is estimated to be three weeks long. However, on the way, the ship is struck by space debris and to save the life of everyone aboard the crew is forced to eject the fuel—sending the ship floating aimlessly in the void of space.

I really enjoy watching horror movies. And I don't find that many genuinely frighten me—but this movie scares me. Being alone, adrift in space, with virtually no idea if you'll ever be rescued is horrific.

In the movie, Emelie Garbers plays the "Mimarobe" aboard the ship—an individual who guides others who use Mima, a computerized meditative device that seemingly exchanges anxieties, fears, and troubles of people for peaceful imagery as an escape. At the beginning of the movie, most people have no desire to participate, but the need for these sessions increases dramatically with the disastrous news about the Aniara.

As the ship gently floats throughout the vastness of space the passengers must find ways to create food, water, find a means of rescue, and live together aboard a tiny bubble in the universe.

Like I said on Mastodon, I understand if it’s not your thing, but Vylet Pony is consistently making some of the most interesting music out there today. Her confidence to not let any aspect of her identity shame her is the reason she is putting out the most authentic and vulnerable songs of any indie artist today.

Vylet is somehow releasing two albums this year, with completely different sounds, subject matters, and themes. Maybe you don't like both of them—hell, maybe you don't like either of them—but I admire how she is consistently putting out creative works she believes in and genuinely loves.

"I Was The Loner of Paradise Valley" is a mixtape so it might not have the cohesiveness of her other work, but this has a wonderful blend of soft electropop and subtle aspects of dubstep and hip-hop.

Lyrics from this album have been really inspiring for myself throughout the year. Like many other years, 2024 had no shortage of difficult times and stressful events, but this album in particular has been a bit of a quiet anthem during it all.

If you're waiting for me to give up you might be here a while.