2024 hopefuls

i'm done pretending like i get through all the stuff on my to-do lists, so here are some things that would be cool to poke at!

HELLO

wanna jump ahead to a category? i made a table of contents! i learned this for you!

i also linked trailers to each non-book thing in the images provided! go on, give 'em a click!

(GAMES TO START)
(GAMES TO FINISH)
(BOOKS)
(MOVIES)
(SHOWS)

GAMES (TO START)

paranormasight: the seven mysteries of honjo

friend of the blog, bryan ochalla (who has just posted their favorite games of 2023 list, upon which this game is featured! check it out!), recommended this one to me not so long ago! it looks right up my alley! i dare not look anything up about it. really feel like i missed an incredible opportunity to play this during the fall, but alas... there is another autumn coming up this year, i heard! a spooky visual novel that keeps you on the edge of your...

elechead

cute-looking puzzler! i think i would like to play this at work. this strikes me as a game i would love to play at work. i don't know how to explain that. or if i was visiting my grandparents' house for the weekend. very simple gameplay based around magnetism, which... seems untapped? feels like the nes aesthetic that it seems to be aping, because i can't think of that being a "gimmick" outside of that era. or at least, in an interesting way.

signalis

resident evil in space with lesbian androids. that's all i should have to say!

i wanted to play this so many times this year, but knew i would have to Sit Down to play it, and that i would want to be engaged enough that i get spooked. alas—i did not make the time for it, despite starting it twice. seeing that tarkovsky-esque opening made me realize i was playing with st. elmo's fire. i don't want to wait for october to boot this one up, but i feel like i'm going to need a depressed weekend to really dig my heels in.

stray

people i know and love have begged me to play this, and i want to. you get to be a cat in a dystopian future where FLCL androids are just walkin' around! i wanted to do that before i knew it was a game. this could be a really big year for me.

pentiment

seems like a very me game (and i talked about wanting to play this last year...) and i would like to play this. who knows if this is the year! i don't—i might get really into knitting and finally destroy all my electronics. that's a better world for me, if i'm being honest.

roadwarden

i've heard a *lot* about the writing in this game, and i would really like to see if it's the cut of my jib. people who i know enjoyed disco elysium, one of my favorite games of all time, said that its writing paralleled that. they are trying to do *very* different things, and i always get cagey when games folk talk about "good" writing, but... i want to believe that we are finally getting to a point where we can get "Good" "Writing" from games, more consistently.

angeline era

as a big fan of the duo behind anodyne, anodyne 2, and sephonie, i am really intrigued by their zelda-like! the music is, as always, catchy and ethereal, and the bump-slash combat of ys makes me really intrigued. very thankful for melos han-tani and marina kittaka and the ejrpgs (emotional journey role playing games) they make.

lies of p

i don't know! i heard "bloodborne but pinnochio" and i came running!

"otogi katsugeki mameda no bakeru: oracle saitarou no sainan!!"

quite a mouthful, but suffice it to say that this is something exciting from team members behind the original goemon games? basically a collectathon game, like super mario 64 or banjo kazooie with a caroonish patina of historical japan (not sure which era... rather play it safe). i saw someone post about it on twitter and immediately bought it. it looks really smooth and like a good time. it's not in english, don't know if it ever will be either, but i am still chasing the high of when i stumbled upon minna de mamotte naito 2 or, as it was later translated, gotta protectors for the 3ds. gameplay so addicting, graphics so crispy and sweet that it didn't matter that i had no idea what the heck it was saying! feel like this is the closest i can get to being a kid and picking up a game that was just beyond my ken in terms of understanding what it was "about," but knowing that i liked how it "felt." maybe this year i can recapture that magic.

24 killers

the trailer got me feeling all sorts of feelings that i couldn't parse. looks like moon, more than most games that claim to draw inspiration from moon! and perhaps most importantly to me, it gave contact (nintendo ds) vibes. i know nothing about it beyond what little i allowed my brain to soak up from that trailer and the fact that many game developers i enjoy have been keeping their eyes on the development of this game for some time. looks good! i like the bones. feel like i could make a home in those bones.

void stranger

initially, i thought this would be a banger cave noire successor for me (cave noire is one of my favorite rogue-likes, you owe it to yourself to try it out some time... i wish i would write about it). it turns out that that's only really in the visual design of the thing. the soundtrack is very toby fox-ish, the visuals cave noire-y, and... well, solomon's key gameplay? seems like a crunchy little puzzler, and will be the perfect thing to warm the cockles of my steam deck's fan.

dungeon encounters

i got an oled switch earlier in 2023 in anticipation of tears of the kingdom, and while i knew that oled would make a huge difference for my portable experience with many games, i didn't know which ones would Pop in a way that would make me think about them during odd-hours. this one's been in my docket for years now (2021!! what the hell!!), but i think i finally have the tool to do it justice. i've noticed with a job like mine (hs english teacher) that at the end of the day, i often cannot sit with anything too heavily narrative-based. i just need some cud to chew. i think this might be the perfect game to kick the year off with as the spring semester starts up and i ge tback into the nitty-gritty again. but maybe it isn't? at least it'll feel good to look at. at least it'll feel good to satisfy the ancient reptilian brain and fill in the boxes.

i would also be remiss if i didn't talk about the thing that many people did regarding this game's capacity for wanton cruelty and the ability to break its own rules, designed by one of the geniuses behind most final fantasy battle systems, hiroyuki ito, who often goes unnamed. i could explain it, or i could just link the tweet that says it all.

GAMES (TO FINISH)

cocoon

a puzzler about traversing dimensional spaces via marbles as a cosmic interloper beetle. i had a load of fun with this and then life got complicated. i can't wait to return to this world. seems like a quick one, which is just what the doctor ordered! but... again, would like my life to slow its roll for a bit. very good vibes, very nice to look at, and runs silky smooth. makes me wanna be a bug, a feeling most games only wish they could instill in me.

baldur's gate 3

yeah, yeah. i'm playing the big game. it's great on my ps5 and i want to date the goth chick. being single in your 30's is weird, so shut up while i'm trying to navigate this. it's a long one, but if my dedication to fire emblem: awakening was any indicator, there's little i won't do to secure the love of a goth (i miss you, tharja...). enjoying being mischievous, and also handsome—both things i do regularly, in real life, but it hits different when i can create tornadoes of knives and beat goblins into submission with salami.

citizen sleeper

whenever i'm having an employment crisis, i seem to gravitate towards text-heavy games that are pro-labor. when covid started and i lost my job as a substitute teacher (which, by the way, was an awful job), kentucky route zero was there for me, in all its magical-appalachian glory. i still think about the mines from act i, the bartender from the interlude to act iii... hey, check out krz. when i got my job as a teacher and was teaching a hybrid online/in-person class (which, by the way, was an awful job), disco elysium was there for me, on the hoarfrost coast of revachol. i still think about my stalwart companion kim kitsuragi, and my garishly offensive, talking tie... anyway, uhh, when i got let go from my job (or was told that i would be) at the end of the school year last year, i somehow gravitated towards citizen sleeper. in my bones i knew it was what i needed at the time. and man, did that game cradle me in my melancholy. being a teacher in america sucks right now, and i suspect it always has. but there was something comforting about having citizen sleeper, which is predominantly an examination of the gig economy, and feeling like i myself was being called in for these temp positions that asked much more than a professional could possibly give, then despite your best efforts shucking you with the chaff because "that's business, baby." like cs, every morning i was waking up with a random assortment of dice, whose values i could use to slot into various efforts around my classroom and office politics. for years i've been pretty good about work/life boundaries, and a lot of it is due to games like krz, de, and cs. i've been able to give a lot of that back to newer teachers (and, as i saw a lot last year, older teachers), and it's an invaluable thing, to me, to be able to watch some shit blow up at work, some effort gasp in vain, and think, "ah well, it's just a fuckin' job."

anyway, i would like to finish what i started in citizen sleeper. especially before my lost in cult tarot game is set to deliver sometime this year!

final fantasy xvi

yeah. i lost a lot of gas with this one. i don't not like it, but something about it hasn't grabbed me by the horns yet? like, thoroughly. there are moments where i'm like "dude... hell yeah, i want to play this forever." which evaporates at a moment's notice for... any number of reasons. they nearly immediately killed the character i was most interested in, which... sucked. had to pause and sip my whiskey alone in my dark kitchen over that. but when i played recently, i saw some wild stuff and saved right before a big event, in the hopes that that would stoke my coals the next time around! but we shall see. i would really like to finish this before i even tackle final fantasy vii: rebirth in february, but... while clive is a wonderful, brooding man in red, my true love is about to pop the lid off his coffin...

the legend of zelda: tears of the kingdom

here's the thing. i'm not going to finish tears of the kingdom this year. maybe not next year, either. nintendo has confirmed they will not be making downloadable content for the game (a decision i will respect, even if it rankles me, because they made some lovely extra content for breath of the wild), and as such it will be a While before we see another interesting zelda. rather than compel me to finish this game, this has made me wish to draw my time with it out even longer, as i did with botw. the only thing that could get me to hustle through this game in 2024 would be the announcement and release of a link between worlds sequel, dropping within the same calendar year.

tears of the kingdom is probably my game of the year. but for that reason, and many other sentimental reasons that i couldn't ever convey here in writing in any meaningful way, i will not rush through the rest of it for the arbitrary sake of "completion." if i've learned one thing about myself over the 3 decades i've been scrounging around on this dirt-ball, it's that finishing a game does not give me more enjoyment than engaging with the game on my own terms, when and how i want to. i'll wait for the urge. and the urge will come again. i know this because the other thing i've learned about myself over the 3 decades i've been scrounging around on this dirt-ball is that i love zelda games. and this is a zelda game, baby! awoooooooga!!!!!!!

BOOKS

i try to update my goodreads with reviews as often as i can, but... it's hard when the interface just sucks and it's hardly being supported anymore. but! look! it's here! and you can look at it and follow me!

library at mount char by scott hawkins

a friend of mine has been trying to get me to read this for a year. i'm going to read it, this year!

valor's choice by tanya huff

a friend of mine has been trying to get me to read this for years(!)! i'm going to read it, this year(!)! (sorry, ally)

ancillary justice by ann leckie

a friend of mine has been trying to get me to read this for years(!!)! i'm going to read it, this year(!!)! (sorry, shepard)

hyperion by dan simmons

a dad of mine has been trying to get me to read this for years(!!!)! i'm going to read it, this year(!!!)! (sorry, dad)

the overstory by richard powers

i told a book club that we would read this book for my choice, and then i never met up with them and it's been about a year. really want to read this, though! (sorry, book club)

ship of magic by robin hobb

i grabbed this on a whim at the friends of the library i've volunteered at for the last seven years because it looked like just a solid fantasy book. who can say. books can also ruin your life! it's happened to me before!

...

i don't have much to say about books that i haven't read yet besides the fact that i owe a blood-debt to people who have lent me books that i have said i would complete in a more timely manner than i have. i obviously have more to say with them once i'm done, but that's not the kind of end-of-the-year list that we're working with, here. this is a 2024 hopefuls list. in a way, i hope these books are good! in another way, i hope they hurt me as penance for the fact that i've dragged my feet for so long on reading these.

MOVIES

i have much better things to say about movies over at my letterboxd, which you should check out! i review everything i see as i see it, make lists, etc. the list here is going to be sparse because, if i'm honest, i'm just not good at knowing about what movies are on the horizon. and i am usually watching older movies, anyway!

perfect days

this year i discovered that i really enjoy koji yakusho as an actor—his performance in cure really crossed me up! and this was also the year when i realized that he was the dapper, egg-yolking yakuza from one of my all-time favorites, tampopo. i don't know anything about this film except that it's about carrying on in the midst of things. sounds good. i'm in the midst of things and would like to carry on, too.

dune: part two

so many people have come up to me in the last year to tell me that they watched the "dune 2" trailer (soon we will get messiah, my darlings... and only then you will know dune 2) to tell me "man that looks sick as shit." which, they're right! per the book, that's canonically when things start to pop off. while we don't have any nude oscar isaac's to look forward to (a large demographic that was initially drawn to the film, sight-unseen), i am excited about walken's performance as the padishah emperor and that elvis guy being a bulgy b&w buckaroo. also, i think i'm most excited about the scoring for this much more bombastic section of the text. hans zimmer's work on the previous film was [kisses fingers like a chef], so i'm excited to see what it's going to sound like now that dear paul has drawn the mantle of kwisatz haderach across his spindly frame (frame recognizes frame).

godzilla x kong: the new empire

the nice thing about this is that there's no pressure for this to be "good," thanks to the hard work put in by godzilla minus 1.0 earlier this year. you want to see godzilla go super saiyan pink in this? sure man, enjoy. does kong get a bionic fist? hell yeah dude, what else do you want? me? i want a training montage set to some butt-rock and a baby godzilla reveal. why can't we have it all?

SHOWS

scott pilgrim takes off

i liked the movie, the comics, and anamanaguchi's soundtrack for the game! more? sure!

delicious in dungeon

this manga was my favorite on-going series that i read this year! i aDORE these comics, and i am so excited that trigger is taking on the challenge of adapting the anime! i watched the first episode this morning with a bowl of cereal (honey bunches of oats with almonds and lactaid milk) and live-laugh-LOVED it. please, please check this one out—i KNOW this one is going to be good through-and-through, so this comes with my highest recommendations on my 2024 hopefuls list, which was not intended to have any recommendations at all, and yet... here we are. anyway, i love this lil gaggle of monster-gobblers, and with any luck (and if you have a pulse) you will, too!

for all mankind

i have heard from people in high places, and high people in places, that this is a show to watch. i wanna watch it! i have successfully acquired a friend's apple tv account. now i can watch this. i'm going to watch this show! can't wait to see... successful women in space. :)

blue eye samurai

i'm perhaps most mixed on this one. i watched the first episode, and there was some stuff that irked me about who gets an accent and some eye-rolly sequences in otherwise spectacular fights. i've heard there's some queer-baiting in it too, which... of course there is. nothing is simple, nothing without a price, etc. but hey, whatever. the animation is gorgeous and i really love the setting, so my mind and heart are open to having a thoroughly engaging or mediocre experience with this!

scavenger's reign

have heard nothing but rave-reviews for this since it dropped. i would like to rave review as well! i watched the first two episodes recently and can confirm: this is cool. love the colors here, so far digging the casting, and absolutely on my hands-and-knees for these creature designs. the monkey greys in particular have earned one of my biggest "Yeah, Dude"'s this year. it's hard to imagine where it's going, but i cannot fathom that it will lose me along the way.

yu yu hakusho (live action show, thing)

this might be the nail in the coffin for netflix, for me. my family's been talking about trashing it for a while, and with the price-hikes and nobody really tuning in year-round, it seems like the best thing we can do is take this mongrel out back and put it out of its misery. but before that... i have some work to do. there are some things exclusive to it that i would absolutely like to watch/finish. but i think that the live action adaptation of yu yu hakusho might be the last thing i watch on it, so that when i leave the platform with a bitter taste in my mouth, i can remember what it did with all that money, what it did to my darling boy, and maybe that will be enough to keep me from patronizing the platform ever again.

why are we adapting animated shows into gritty, live-action reboots? i know the real answer is, "it's for money." but there's another part of me, the part that is psychically linked to that first twitch in the primordial ooze, that says "there is Evil in the world." there's no science here, and i will be barred from the upper-echelons of academia if i pursue this inkling any further than on a blog that three people read once a year... but there is something Wrong in the universe, and for whatever reason it has chosen to manifest itself our our arts as lifeless "live" action reboots of things we once loved.

GOODBYE

and with that, i've completed one blog in the year 2024, which means i've hit my quota! i have planned some other things. who knows if i'll follow up!