I’ve got something a little different for you today as I look to wrap up 2023 and the first (calendar) year of this blog. My brain is still feeling like applesauce after that backlog article, but I do want to put up some sort of reflection on 2023, so I’m gonna try something a little different. I’ve got some nice chill tunes on, a cup of coffee, and I’m just gonna kinda stream of consciousness my way through this article and put it up with minimal editing. Consider this a more casual and cozy kind of Cult Classic today. But before I get to all that, I do want to take some time to say one thing.
Thank You All so Much
While the idea had been floating around in my head for a few months, I ultimately started this blog up largely on impulse back in July. I’ve not talked much about my past history with writing here, but it ended in pretty fantastic fashion. After a few years freelancing and bouncing from site to site and topic to topic, I got picked up by what has now been fairly called out for being a shitty and exploitative content mill. Over my years working for them, I got to meet and work with some really incredible people, got to write for some cool local independent blogs, contributed to an extremely fun and dearly missed zine, and even got articles picked up by big national outlets like ESPN and Sports Illustrated. But I also did all that working deep into the AM hours almost every night while also juggling my full-time job, losing my mind doing the social media self-promotion thing, and just generally having a pretty bad time all around. I also got to see my articles get covered in ads for online sports gambling scams, while I never made a single cent. By the end I had burned out hard and had all the passion for writing squeezed out of me, so I called it quits and never thought I’d look back.
Except, I did kind of miss writing after a little while, especially for those early days when it was just me, a blog, and a small following.
I was a bit afraid when I started this all back up that I’d somehow find myself trapped back in that rat race chasing increasing readership while also squeezing all the pleasure out of this. So far, I’ve thankfully totally avoided that. A large reason for that is that I’ve gotten such a great reception from the few Discord servers where I’ve put links to my work up at, so I thank you all for engaging with my weird thoughts and for all the great feedback. Especially on that last backlog article. My favorite things to write have always been when I take something relatable (horror movies, sports, videogames) and use them as an analogy to write about something a bit deeper and more human. I’m really happy with how that one came out and that all you readers received a weird little article about my battle with an anxiety disorder masquerading as an article about videogames so well. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all. You rock.
My Favorite Things of 2023
So I’m not going to do any official lists or anything, but I do want to just quickly touch upon a few of my favorite things this year that I otherwise haven’t yet written about. I just wrote a huge article all about lists and (spoiler alert) you’ll be seeing a big ole list from me come out in parts over the next year (more on that in a bit). I’m list-ed out for the time being, so please enjoy me just kinda rambling on a bit about some stuff that I really liked this year.
Movies and TV: I’m honestly really behind on movies from this year. I still want to go out and catch Godzilla Minus One and The Boy and the Heron so I can’t talk about them yet. But I do want to call out a movie that seemingly came and went with little fanfare, and that’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. I don’t know why I haven’t seen more people talk about this one, but this is up there with Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse as one of my favorite animated movies of all time. Mutant Mayhem is very clearly heavily inspired by Spiderverse, especially in art style, but damn man, this movie has so much heart and soul for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. As a child of the 80’s/90’s, I was contractually obligated to be obsessed with the Ninja Turtles as a child. That said, there’s really been nothing since that period that has excited me about the Turtles at all, outside of maybe the recent Shredder’s Revenge game. Mutant Mayhem though proved to me that there’s more to the Turtles than just nostalgia. Actually framing them as dorky-ass teenagers goes such a long way to giving this version of the turtles actual personality outside of their catchphrases. Awesome soundtrack, incredible art, ton of heart, just a huge recommendation from me all around.
On the TV side of things, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off really surprised me in a great way. I love the graphic novels and the movie, but I didn’t really follow much about this anime adaptation prior to it’s release. And I’m glad. There’s a twist here (which certain neckbeardy corners of the internet are upset about, and I will once again direct them to go touch grass), but that twist makes this so much more interesting than I ever expected it to be. I can’t really talk about it much because of spoilers, so I’ll just say, if you’ve enjoyed Scott Pilgrim stuff in the past, go give this a chance. Just don’t be a grognard about this not being a straight adaptation, meet it where it’s at, and you’ll find something really cool.
Games: I’ve written about Street Fighter 6 enough this year that I don’t need to write more about it here. It’s simultaneously one the deepest and most accessible fighting games ever, so if you’ve ever been curious about the genre, this is absolutely the time to check things out. Outside of SF6, I will say that I’ve not yet properly had a chance to write about my actual favorite game of the year, and that’s this year’s remake of Resident Evil 4. It legitimately blows my mind that Capcom both made this game in the first place (remaking what is arguably one of the most influential games of all-time is a tall task), yet alone that it came out this damn good. This Resident Evil 4 obviously is not as impactful as the original (it simply can’t be), but honestly if you strip away the historical context and impact, I think this is overall just a better game than the original. And that’s wild, because the original Resident Evil 4 holds up and is still a blast to play. Getting into the groove of this game’s combat is almost meditative. Scrambling through your weapon inventory, blasting hordes of enemies with whatever remaining ammunition you have, while timing parries and getting melee attacks in just feels transcendent. And Capcom somehow made this game fit into the more broad Resident Evil world a bit better by leaning more into the horror than the original one did, yet so much of the goofy charm and humor is still here and it somehow doesn’t clash. To yet again hint at a future project, I will be writing more about this in the future, but if this one slipped your attention because of other releases like Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur’s Gate III and the like, it’s really worth going back and checking this one out.
On the indie side of things, there were two big standouts for me. The first was Slay the Princess which is one of those games that is just almost impossible to write about without spoiling. As I very much don’t want to spoil it, I’ll just say that after finishing it, I talked my wife’s ear off about how much she needed to play it because I so badly wanted to discuss it with someone. She walked away from it calling it (and I quote) “one of the best, most emotionally affecting games I’ve played in a really long time” and I completely agree with that assessment. It’s a very quick to play visual novel, but it’s been a long time since I’ve played a game that presented me with as many interesting choices or as intriguing of a mystery as this one. It can, at times, go to some extremely disturbing moments of horror, but oh man, what it winds up actually being at the end is just something so affecting and incredible. If you have the appetite for something that has a handful of truly disturbing moments yet is ultimately very heartfelt and touching, this is a must play. And also something I will be writing more about, with spoilers, in the future.
(I’m building hype for a new project next year, if you can’t tell, you’ll see in a bit.)
The other indie is Dredge. Dredge is a mashup that I never knew that I needed. It’s a cosmic horror fishing game with the inventory management puzzle from Resident Evil 4. This is one that falls into the “intensely my kind of shit but doesn’t really seem like my kinda shit” because I generally really don’t like fishing mini-games in games. Thankfully, the fishing system here avoids all the tedium and monotony that is usually present in fishing games and winds up being really quite satisfying and addictive here. And the horror is surprisingly well done, especially considering that this is a fishing game. There’s been some DLC that came out recently that I’ve not had a chance to play, but I’m very eager to dive back into this one, pun unintended. This is one of those things where I’m pretty sure you’ll know if it’s your kind of thing just from this write-up, so if it sounds interesting, give it a shot.
Other Stuff: Back when I still worked in an office, I’d start my days off by going and getting coffee with some friends and leisurely easing my way into my workday. Since moving to full-time work from home, that’s been hard to recreate. In an attempt to find a new morning ritual, I’ve been sitting down to do a daily crossword and swap times with those same friends now that we are no longer in the same place. The problem with that is that I don’t really like the New York Times crossword all that much. It’s very… geezer-y… for a lack of a better word. You ever play Scrabble with one of those people that will play a word like “qi” and then get pissy when you try to play a word like “fugly” and start rules lawyering you with a dictionary? Yeah, the NYT crossword is kinda like that guy (I’m never playing Scrabble with you again, John). Thankfully, Polygon has recently launched an alternative puzzle site called Puzzmo and I’m loving these puzzles. There’s none of that AER and OTT crosswordese bullshit that fills the Times puzzle up. I’m yet to come across a single awful gimmick puzzle or rebus. If you’re a fellow geriatric like me, check it out. This has very quickly become my crossword of choice, and some of their other puzzles like Really Bad Chess and Flipart are quite fun, too.
State of the Blog
A few quick house-keeping items on the blog itself. After some reflection and thought, I’ve decided that I’m ending the The Games I Played In… series. As I’ve mentioned multiple times in that series, I’ve been struggling with finding a format that makes writing that manageable as it currently it just a huge time sink. One other thing became clear to me as I kept writing it, though. I just don’t really enjoy writing reviews. This is something that came up before in my freelance writing career when I was reviewing horror movies. Once I start reviewing things and slip into that critical mindset, I find it much harder to engage with media on an emotional level. I wind up finding myself becoming a touch more cynical, a bit more detached, and a bit more hyper-critical. Given that I really enjoy writing about media from a more personal level, this is kind of a problem.
This became much more clear to me over October when I found myself writing more about games and media without the “review” pretense. I found myself enjoying writing more and being much more happy with how things came out overall. So, with that now very clear in my mind, I think it’s time to put this series to an end. While the structure and rigidity was nice when I was first easing back into writing, the time commitment that goes into that article is really preventing me from writing more things like the backlog article, so it’s time to say goodbye to it.
But fans of this series should fear not! While this series will not be continuing after this month, I am going to put together a public Google Spreadsheet or something similar that will work as a gaming journal of sorts. In that, I’ll keep track of what I play, whether I recommend it, and some extremely brief thoughts and notes as I’ve really enjoyed having a log of what I’ve played. I’m going to aim to have that available by my return article in January and will link to it at that time.
Speaking of that return article!
Looking Forward
As I’ve been writing about games, I keep finding myself describing games as being “one of my top games of all-time” or something along those lines. After writing this so many times, that phrase started to stand out in my editing because of just how often I would say it. And that got me thinking, what are my actual top games of all time? If I sat down and actually come up with an ordered list from 1 to 100, what would it look like?
Well, I did that. And over the next year, I’m going to be writing about those games. All of them. I’ll obviously be chunking them up into groups, but I do intend to write about why I love each and every one of the games on this list. The memories they’ve left me with, the nostalgia I have for them, where I was in life when I first played them, all that good stuff. Putting this list together has been a really fun thought experiment, and I look forward to sharing the list with you all. Until I do, please enjoy this little taste of what’s to come:
Recognize anything there?
Wrapping 2023 Up
So yeah, that was 2023. I’m glad to be writing again. It’s been a ton of fun getting back into this, and I’m glad that you all have either found this place or been interested enough in the links that I’ve dropped at various places to check it out and keep coming back. Before I peace out for the holidays and enjoy some time-off to relax, I just want to thank each and every one of you again. I hope you all have a happy and calm end of year, enjoy whatever holiday or holidays you do or do not celebrate, and I’ll see you all again in 2024.
Until then, please enjoy one final highlight from the year 2023, our newest household addition, our cat Mona. Catch you all in 2024!
Adorable, isn’t she?
The Cult Classic 
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