The Winners of 2025

So with the year 2025 over, and a new course in progress. I don't really have much to talk about. The work is going slower than I'd like. I accidentally deleted my entire Fort project, so things aren't amazing. They are so much better than they were at the start of the year. It's no longer do or die. It's just do.

In fact that's my problem. You shouldn't rely on negative thoughts and emotions to propel you in life. Even if it does produce good work and high art, using negative shit kills you in the long run. The work needs to be from dedication and routine. But man is it hard to set a routine when you have everyone coming to visit and it's the holidays and travel and gifts and and and all of it.

So in a pitiful attempt to keep the routine, I'm writing this blog post, and turning it into an end of the year list. I used to do this every year after the year ended, and tell people about the games I played and loved. So here it is in written form.

My game of the year is Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. I don't think it is a perfect game by any stretch of the word. It is arguably worse than the first game. But what it does do so much better than the first, is make itself approachable through its wonderful graphical design, streamlined combat, new perks, and systems that invite the player to interact with the game. Instead of being a lightning rod for things to happen to you, which is prevalent in the first game. There isn't a time where you don't have a royal quest or some clear duty to be performed.

In fact, it's when you lose sight of those clear objectives that the game begins to drag. There is no thieves guild, no legendary animals to hunt, or gwent cards to collect. Pretty much the only content in the game ties directly into the main story, which makes it more impactful, but if you are making a medieval simulator, then you should let players enter churches and open shops outside of paid DLC.

This disconnect can be felt in the crime system most of all. It's the best in gaming, bar none. If you steal something from a chest, an NPC will notice and hunt for you. They use player sounds and things like checking if doors are open to find the player. It never feels unfair, even if you are found out days in game time later. You will interact with this system throughout your play through. Basically anytime you need to get an item for a quest, you will have the option to steal it instead of buy it. It's incredibly well done. Which makes it hard when the rest of the game doesn't feel as well done. For example, the crime system makes these NPCs feel very aware of the world, but then instantly lose that awareness when you pass a skill check with the same guard, using the same skill, playing the same voice line. Making the skill check harder, changing the voice line, making the guard recognize the voice line if they choose the same skill check, these are just a few of the ways around this problem, and not terribly hard to implement.

So far it sounds like I'm very negative on the game, but this kind of criticism is only possible on games that attempt to raise the bar and make no mistake that KCD2 has raised the bar for what an RPG can be on its crime system alone. But then you have an adult, well told, historically accurate-ish game that dares to ask the player to listen and use their fucking head. Simply listening to directions, and trying to find locations based off of them, is more difficult and more rewarding while being far more enjoyable to play, compared to Skyrims "turn this dial" ass puzzle where the genre is currently stuck at. That's a low bar, but this game kinda teaches your real world skills by asking these players to follow navigation directions. I'm hardcore if you wanna find north, you have to look at the sun and find it from there. This gets easier, and of course there are ways around finding your direction, like asking a local NPC for directions. But what game in today's world, dares to ask the player that. Granted this is hardcore, but if you want the challenge of finding chamomile for a potion without map.markers, you can choose it. If you don't, then you can play regular mode and it will feel a bit more guided but still, ask the player to use their damn noggin. Not to mention the lore of this game is just real life. When you pick an herb, the sage looks like real life sage. When you ask a priest about the local politics, it doesn't launch into some horrible analog for real life religions that feels so antiquated. It tells you about life in that region as it really was and that is just great. Because you aren't a noble, some dialogue choices are best not responded to because your opinion doesn't matter. Which you would only realize if you were paying attention. Not paying attention penalizes you, does it really affect things in the long run? Unfortunately no. But it does penalize you, and encourages you to pay attention and not just skip the dialogue, which elevates the dialogue and your connection to it. There's ways of talking out problems that don't involve the skill checks I knocked on earlier, but rest assured they are pretty and cross-relative. As in sometimes having a super high drinking skill will help you when talking to a priest. Sometimes being book smart will help you avoid a fight. It's wonderful, and feels like there are no wrong moves when picking perks and paths, just different play styles. This is the historical fiction game that Assassin's Creed could be if they dropped the modern day setting.

My thoughts for improvement would be allowing us to role play in politics more. I wish you could pick which king you truly support in this game. Even if the quest stays largely unaffected, implementing a choice such as the witcher 2s choice in its civil war would play out so nicely in this world, as well as encourage multiple playthroughs without blocking too much content to one playthrough or another. But this is just a wish. The game is truly amazing as it is, and the type of game that will raise the bar with other big studios. It's shown there is a real appetite for these style of games.

That is why it's my game of the year. It doesn't pander. It feels fresh and new and like it's challenging what a game can be, even if it does fall short in some areas.

Now I'd like to talk about my movie of the year 28 Years Later. Again this is not the best movie that came out this year. This is my movie of the year, the one I liked the most. But to tell the full story of the 28 years later you have to go back to 2008 when a movie called Doomsday came out. Doomsday is a bad movie. You shouldn't watch it. But if you did you'd find out it's basically 28 Years Later but bad. So just watch 28 Years Later. But you need to understand that I loved this bad movie as a kid. So seeing it done right, was just amazing.

So why do you even make this movie? A sequel to a movie made over a half dozen years ago. A franchise that has technically ended twice. What story is there really to tell? Well to me, the story of these movies has always been about rage. It's "the rage virus" after all, and its infected don't move like the slow moving dumbasses other zombie shows reach for. These guys are fast, and hunt and one drop of blood is enough to kill you. Contrast this with shows like walking dead where they can wear the skin of zombies and not get infected. It's not zombies, and it's not a series where "the real monster is people," no it's the zombies and these are people with serious flaws just doing their best. Even if they do become slightly monsterish. People do good and bad things and in the end they carry on.

So the first movie takes on the digital era, and the rage that comes with living life in the modern world. For the first time everything is being recorded. Every interaction people have is starting to become important, and it's driving everyone mad. The movie has a general theme and it resonates the most out of the three, probably because it's trying to say the least. We wake up with Jim, wondering where all of the noise and people are. He wanders through the normally busy streets of London, with them empty. That's scary. You don't need 10,000 zombies muddling about and dead bodies everywhere. The chaos of modern life has gotten so normalized that its absence frightens us as much as any infected chasing someone through the street. That does happen and it's thrilling and wonderful, but what draws us in is the lack of society. The rest of the film builds on this through the volatile nature in which the virus spreads. Everything Jim does will get him killed now. Simply touching blood, something all over the place in most zombie movies, will infect him. He goes on to meet a woman, a man struggling to raise his daughter in the hard world, and then soldiers who decide to get crazier than the infected themselves which comes close to "humans are the real monsters," and becomes less effective as it goes on and gets more generic. Then we have 28 Weeks Later and boy, does this have a lot to say. It's the war on terror baby, and you better believe that now, for some reason, America is nation building in England instead of Afghanistan. It goes full on zombie movies, and feels like a bland and uninspired sequel that was made to cash in. I think its treatment by the third movie, and the fan base, towards the second movie shows how much it failed to resonate with people.

28 Years Later leans towards the first movie. As with most media these days, years are all about fascism and its rise. But it goes out of its way to first show the appeal of racism and machismo. The world is a terrifying fucking place. There are things in the woods that hunt in packs, and will run your down and eat you. All the creature comforts you're used to are gone. Not only that but your mom has fucking brain cancer. It's the real antagonist of the entire movie. Shockingly relatable and human within a movie that has a pseudo medieval society that could be described as junkpunk. I ADORE how there are a bunch of idiots out there who will think this movie is about zombies. People who can't realize why they would make an infected pregnant. How actually the society on the island could be morally grey. That a husband can love his wife, despite sticking it to the teacher when he is drunk. The opening itself highlights this hypocrisy with the church becoming an infection point. Jimmy's whole vibe is built to fit this theme of hypocrisy. Ralph Fiennes character is a Doctor who build a fucking bone temple and seems to love killing people. But instead of engaging with these characters on a human level, most people just say "how can the good guy do a bad thing? This movie is fake and gay." Which I love reading online.

Then of course there are the film bro intellectuals who hated all the weird medieval life shit, and thought the ending was a nonsensical mess. Which it was. The film deliberately suckers you in with the burning of Rebecca Ferguson and the wonderful coming of age tale. For both the boy and his father. So when the flipping jimmies start chainsawing infected necks open and jumping off cliffs, the tonal shift completely nukes any feelings of warmth you had for the picture. I think that is brilliant. In an age where every movie gets a sequel, it's nice to see a movie made with the forethought to set up a sequel. Even if it made the first movie worse, people don't care anymore. They want something to be so bad that the first will become a "cult classic," on reddit threads in two years. Perfect for discourse precisely because it is so divisive. Allegedly the sequel is good enough for them to green light a third movie before its release. Which is crazy, and I think it speaks to taking a wild swing. For letting things find their audience.

As film moves beyond film, movies will need new mediums and the public's relationship to it needs to change. In the same way that they used to be interspersed with news bulletins because that is where people got their news. In 2025, People want a reason to leave the house any a reason, they really just need to be able to afford it, and if you are smart enough to realize that 10 hour HBO show would work better as a movie or a series of movies, why shouldn't they film a movie and its sequel back to back under roughly the same budget? It would be cheaper than a streaming series. You can build hype by releasing the first movie on streaming, to a singular partner that will want the sequel simply because people are rabid for anything new to share with the community over. The result is a micro fandom that you can stand up in the space of two years, and my hope is that it will become more common as streaming shows become worse. It helps that 28 years felt new and different to go along with this new and different release structure. My movies end on cliff hangers, many set up sequel bait, but they've always relied on a promise, a promise that has been broken so many times audiences have given up. 28 Years Later can't break its promise. Its cliff hanger and response are a part of the same package. So now every fan of 28 Years has spent the last year theory crafting and hyping the sequel, which from the studios eyes, is the same line item as the original movie, and that is HUGE in the business. They did have separate budgets, but instead of giving a director 100 million dollars for a movie that demands studio interference, runtime reductions, and character development to be cut. You get 2 $50 million movies that synergistically feed off each other, released quickly enough to capitalize on hype of the instant-gratification culture of the go go 20s. The artists get more time to see what works and what doesn't, and let their stories breathe in a way that these 3.5 hour long epics deserve.

Update from Post Bone Temple: I was horribly wrong on the idea of bone temple doing well. It wasn't as good as the first, it was crazy and interesting and I think it will stand the test of time very well, but you can see the difference between a genius like Danny and Nia DeCosta, Danny did something different, Nia made a horror movie, at least stylistically. But this is coming from someone who really enjoyed the iphone bullet time shots, and infrared shots of the first. Moreover, I think that using modern music was fun and story relevant, but Young Father's soundtrack on the first really worked to elevate the whole movie. I still think Bone Temple was a better movie than Furiosa, which is a film it's getting compared to online, mainly because it cost 60 mil, and not 160 million.

The best retro game I played was Pokemon rocket. Man, I love this game. Again, I can find fault with the overtly edgy dialogue and gameplay, but it is simply a joy to play a Pokemon game that balances around a real human being in control. It's so refreshing to have to work to take down a trainer. Having a real risk when you lose a battle because you lose so much money. Then there is the story which is a wonderful satire at its best, and a bad Newgrounds forum post at its worst. There are always so many "what ifs?" when it comes to Pokemon. Something about the integration of these mythical creatures into cool Japanese life is idyllic to think about. So pushing these what if questions like, "Do they eat pokemon?" "What are people doing with Slowpoke tails?" etc. This game engages with all of them, sure it's not canon and shouldn't be taken as such, but it does keep you entertained during its story, despite its occasional edgy dialog. It also adds the stealing mechanic. It's an idea so tantalizing it's been there since the manga, and the hero even does it in Pokémon Colosseum. In Rocket it is wonderful to be able to straight up steal that shit. It has everything that you are looking for in a Pokemon game. An interesting mechanic/gimmick with stealing. A story that is passable, and at least has some out of pocket dialog like a child loving shorts or an old man spying on a gym full of women. You do a few double takes. But most importantly, the game is balanced for people that do not eat crayons. I'm not saying Pokemon is easy, Kanto in Gold, Route 110 May, and various Elite 4 members are pains. But this is consistently challenging that makes you think more. Item use, team comp, and move lists need to be changed in order to take this game on that feels great. Getting beat by Red at the start of the game is perfect, and such an unfair fight it makes you want to kick his ass. There is a reputation system that I think some people may hate, mainly because to play the game you have to get negative rep, but that bars you from some things So you feel like you are getting punished for playing the game, by the game. But it does do it enough to get you to engage with the bounty/rep regain systems so I ended up enjoying it. It's a game about being a bad guy, you are going to have to be a bad guy and suffer the consequences for being a bad guy. It's not a pirate game where you are "a freedom fighter," or some morally grey stance. You are team rocket, you are stealing people's cherished pets from them and using them to hurt other animals. You aren't good and unfortunately we had to leave it to ROM hackers to get this most simplest of spin offs. 30 years of pokemon and I'd say at least 18 of stagnation. Thank god for ROM hacks.

I meant to post this in December, then Jan, and now Feb. But hey, it's getting kinda more frequent right?