Best Of 2024
Published on .Making lists is fun. It's one of the reasons I love using letterboxd, backloggd, and album whale. But I haven't made one of these for this blog in a long time and since I've decided to make and effort of writing more here, it was a good way to get back on it.
So these were my favourite game/film/music/show releases of 2024. The lists have no particular order.
Games #
I played a lot of games in 2024, but only a handful were actually released this year. I guess the journey to be more of a "patient player" is ongoing.
1. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth #
Ridiculously massive and oh-so-fun. It's easily my favourite entry on the series so far. I started playing it right after it released and only finished a few weeks ago—both because I took my time, took breaks, and jumped to other games in between.
I didn't even dig into the Sujimon (Pokemon-inspired) and Dondoko Island (Animal Crossing-inspired) side-games! Who knows how long it would have taken me to get through those.
The jobs are hilarious, the battle system is a blast, and the side-stories are as crazy, creative, and emotional as ever. I specially love that it's a Japanese RPG where the main cast is made of grown-up adults and besides the hilarious insane special moves and abilities in battle, it's a pretty grounded story.
It's the complete package.
2. Astro Bot #
Absolute joy and nostalgia turned into a modern 3D platformer. Just by looking at the previews of this game—and based on the excellent previous entries in the series, Rescue Mission and Playroom—I knew Astro Bot was going to be special. It was pretty much what I expected: a wonderful, creative, funny, super fun, optionally challenging, and ultimately rewarding experience. Specially as a fan of PlayStation and its history and legacy, to which the game pays a lot of homage to. A certified classic.
Here's my review of Astro Bot on Backloggd.
3. Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown #
The best Metroidvania that I've played since Hollow Knight. You can just tell the game was made with lots of passion and attention to details. The combat, exploration, puzzles, and platforming are fantastic and super rewarding. The setting is intriguing and captivating and the story and characters were engaging enough to keep me motivated to move forward. I really hope this team gets the chance to follow-up on this amazing entry. If not, at least I have the DLC as an excuse to revisit it.
4. UFO 50 #
A staggering achievement in the indie space. It's 50 "NES-scale" games—meaning, these are full-blown games at a level similar to the ones originally released during the NES lifetime; these are not "mini-games"!—but exploring either new ideas or variations of the premises from the games of that era with a more modern twist, all packaged and presented as a collection of a fictional console from that time.
At the moment I haven't even played all of the games yet (I've played a bit more than half of them) and even though not all of them are my jam, the ones that I've liked are really, really fun and engaging. Some could have been released as standalone games and they surely would be well received on their own. Lots of the game have "couch" multiplayer modes as well!
These are my favourites so far, in "chronologic" order by "release date": Ninpek, Magic Garden, Velgress, Attactics, Avianos, Bushido Ball, Block Koala, Camouflage, Campanella, The Big Bell Race, Warptank, Porgy, Rakshasa, Pilot Quest, and Seaside Drive.
All in all, UFO 50 provides insane value in many ways and is without a doubt one of 2024's gaming highlights.
Films #
These last few months of the year have sadly been devoid of film-watching. I think I've watched maybe 3 or 4 films in total in the last 3 months! I know there's a lot of great stuff that I've missed from the last quarter of the year. I just hope I get to catch up on them sooner than later.
1. Dune: Part Two #
I've watched this film 4 times - 3 of those in the cinema. It's definitely my favourite film of 2024. Here's what I wrote about Dune: Part Two on Letterboxd. It's a highly rewarding experience, visually and sonically stunning, and ever more grandiose in scale. Peak sci-fi, specially paired with Part I.
2. Inside Out 2 #
I loved the original one, and was frankly doubtful about this "unnecessary" sequel. In retrospect a sequel was inevitable; given the critical and commercial success of the original, the potential of exploring the mind of an older protagonist as a premise, and the state of Pixar (or Hollywood in general), a follow-up was a no-brainer. And oh they pulled it off. I watched it with family in a movie theatre in Seattle while visiting my sister, and we all ended up crying by the end. The depiction of anxiety was cathartic.
3. Challengers #
A sweaty, steamy blast. Reznor & Atticus' feverish soundtrack completely elevated the whole thing.
4. Alien: Romulus #
After the disappointment that Prometheus (incredibly hyped, still good, but not great) and Covenant (plain bad) turned out to be, I was actually looking forward to a new promising director taking over and I'm quite happy with what Fede Alvarez delivered. Romulus has some intense set pieces and surprisingly great character moments. A few things stood out as tad unearned and perhaps treaded familiar grounds, but it's overall a fantastic return to the universe of Alien.
Music #
I feel like this year I didn't go out of my way to discover new music nor dig into new releases from my old favourites. The few ones that I did spin and enjoy (like King Gizzard's Flight b741, Frost*'s Life In The Wires, Billie Eilish's HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, THUS LOVE's All Pleasure, and Childish Gambino's Bando Stone and The New World) didn't really grab me enough to put them on my list.
But there was one album that came out of nowhere and instantly hooked me, so much so that it's the only entry on my list.
1. Blood Incantation's Absolute Elsewhere #
I had never heard of this band at all, but I suddenly saw some buzz around this release from metal-heads in my social media spaces. Finally, it was one of Mike Portnoy's posts on Instagram, which recommended the album and—more importantly—featured the cover artwork, what prompted me to give it a spin for the first time. Seriously, I loved the album cover artwork from the moment I first saw it and now I feel it perfectly captures the atmosphere and tone of the music therein. It's a true musical journey which jumps between death metal, electronica, psychedelic rock, and progressive rock, in both an elegant and intense package.
This is also the album that finished the dominance that King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard had over my music listening the entire year.
The year of King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard #
The reason I didn't have time to discover almost no new music from 2024 was because I invested it all in discovering the music from KGATLW (which was effectively new to me).
Even though I first listened to KGATLW in 2023, it was actually this year that I really got into them and became completely enthralled by their insanely expansive discography, their music creativity, their work ethic, and their overall output. It was just so much fun and so rewarding to try and dig into any of their twenty-something released albums and discover what genres and which crazy, ambitious ideas they decided to tackle on each of them.
Funnily enough, their one proper new music release this year - Flight b741 - didn't really vibe with me that much; "Le Risque" was the only song from it that I've kept in my constant rotation.
However, lots of their previously released albums completely took over for the vast majority of my 2024. In no particular order, these were the KGATLW albums that decorated most of my time throughout the year:
- PetroDragonic Apocalypse: incredible concept album from start to finish. It's a thrash and progressive metal album with a classic, vintage, raw sound. The first album from them I listened to.
- Butterfly 3000: an electronic pop/rock outing filled with uplifting and catchy hooks. Just feel-good tunes here!
- Nonagon Infinity: 9 buzz-filled punk songs, all connected, and forming a never-ending listening cycle. One of my most played.
- Polygondwanaland: intricate, progressive, and highly creative. Crumbling Castle might be one of my favourite songs ever.
- Infest The Rats' Nest: another thrash concept album with even rawer energy and more garage sound.
- The Silver Cord: full-blown psychedelic electronica.
TV Shows #
Finally, these are the highlights from shows on streaming platforms.
- Shōgun: excellent from start to finish. Fascinating, memorable characters and an alluring, mysterious plot, all delivered with incredible performances and technical prowess.
- Arcane: among the most stunning animation work ever, and filled with memorable, complex characters, but with a tad disjointed story as it went on. While not as sublime as Season 1, it's still a technical and storytelling benchmark.
- Fallout: The Ghoul stole the show. A surprisingly funny, twisted, and gripping story. Got tired of the old-time music pretty quickly but the rest of it was a total ...blast.
- Dandadan: came out of nowhere for me, and from the first minutes of the first episode (that intro!) I was entranced. It bursts with style and charm.
- Kaos: such a disappointment that this was cancelled so quickly after premiering! While it did have a couple of rough moments, I thought the overall setting of "ancient-greek mythology characters in the modern-day world" was an interesting, fresh premise that was nicely executed. What a shame.
- X-men '97: I wasn't even that big of a fan of the original show (except for that opening theme of course!), but the premise of a follow-up more than 15 years later was exciting, and '97 came in and utterly surpassed any expectations I had. Great animation but specially fantastic characters and emotional moments, and the setup for Season 2 makes the wait all the more hard.
- Baby Reindeer: the fact that this is based on a real story is just wild and heartbreaking. A tour de force by the leads and a crushing, riveting story.