2022 media list

Another year, another list of things that I interacted with in some way. This list is definitely missing some things, as I sort of fell off documenting what I was doing, and I mostly try to avoid listing things I didn't finish (and there's a good number of those). Bold indicates something that stood out, and I realize I bold too many things. My taste is just too good, I guess.

BOARDED GAMES

• UNFATHOMABLE: A spiritual successor to the much-acclaimed Battlestar Galactica board game, a hidden role game in which you are all cooperating to get your ship to reach its destination... but one of you is a traitor! This time it's Cthulhu-themed. Definitely one of the better hidden role/secret traitor games out there.
• IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD: This was pitched to me as "Seven Wonders but better" and that is pretty accurate. Drafting game where you build a sci-fi dystopia, it makes for fun tableaux and is a lot less arcane than Seven Wonders in its scoring.
• ON TOUR: Roll-and-write about mapping out your band's tour; the dice seldom give you what you want. The roll-and-write genre is great at providing bullshit, and this one is a fun one.
• INIS: Mythic-age Ireland: the game! Explore and control the titular island, unique drafting system for determining what actions you can perform in a round, lovely artwork. I'm here for it.
• DEEP SEA ADVENTURE: A simple little push-your-luck game about diving for treasure and dying because you ran out of air. Low-stakes push-your-luck game, which is always nice to have on the shelf.
• WINGSPAN: A tableau-building game where you collect birds. Lovely components, fun little game, this one is one of the board games that even non-board game people have probably heard of but it's really good despite that.
• ARKHAM HORROR CARD GAME: A cooperative deck-based character action game ft. Cthulhu monsters and story campaigns, I quite enjoyed this one and there are definitely opportunities for those who enjoy that sort of thing to delve in and build decks with wild combos and all that jazz.
• CONCORDIA (VENUS EXPANSION): This game ended up taking too long so we didn't finish it but it's kind of neat, you're a Roman merchant trying to do a bunch of trading.
• SPIRIT ISLAND: Pandemic, but the disease is colonialism. You are an island spirit trying to repel European invaders and this game absolutely slaps. Co-op and theming at its finest.
• VEILED FATE: Plays 2-8 players, which is a great player count, but at higher player counts it can be very... chaotic, and not necessarily in a good way. I still quite like this and think it has some interesting ideas, and at 6+ players it's a hidden role game without traitors and lying to your friends, so it's worth checking out.
• RAILDOAD INC: Another roll-and-write, this time you're building a transit network and it will be terrible. Good times guaranteed.
• BETWEEN TWO CITIES: An old favorite; you and your neighbor are trying to build a city, and so are you and your other neighbor. You win by being the best of everyone at the table at helping your friends. A great gateway game with a scoring system that is sufficiently easy to understand that it can feel very deterministic, which is why we also have...
• BETWEEN TWO CASTLES: Play is very similar but there are so many variables that go into scoring that you no longer feel pressure to make The Optimal Play.
• MASCARADE: Bluffing/hidden role game where you might not actually know your role right now, either! This game is a lot of fun and plays up to thirteen, though at higher player counts you may have a hard time making sure everyone is paying enough attention to make it fun for everyone.
• SORCEROUS CITIES: Build a magic city in real time! Starts out being pretty easy, but things get more hectic as things wear on and you find yourself just slamming down tiles and hoping for the best.
• FORMULA D: A racing game with something like a push-your-luck mechanic, this game is very silly but also pretty fun.
• CAPTAIN SONAR: Two teams each crew a submarine and try to blow up the enemy's sub; fun and unique but I've been bolding too many of these and I feel like I want to play it another time to really "get" how it goes.
• COSMIC ENCOUNTERS: A simple negotiation game where multiple people can win together, this one is pretty fun and there are a whole lot of powers each player could potentially have which means there's going to be lots of variety.
• BLOODBORNE: A tactical miniatures game inspired by the Soulsborne game, Bloodborne! It was pretty fun and apparently has a campaign mode and you know I love those.
• HADARA: Another civilization-based drafting game, this one had some interesting ideas, was possible to do well at on one's first play, and made me want to play it again. Can't complain about that!

VIDEOED GAMES

• POKEMON ALPHA SAPPHIRE: Gen 6 is my favorite gen and this game features the DexNav, the best feature in Pokemon history. A beautiful world to explore, and very close to XY in my overall favorites.
• POKEMON LEGENDS: ARCEUS: This is such a fascinating departure from the series. I found combat kind of a slog, but this game felt great, and was a welcome departure from the established formula. Far from perfect but this game is worth checking out for sure.
• SPLATOON 3: It is no secret that I love the funny squid game series, and this is one of them. It feels great, lots of QOL changes, I'm still playing it way too much.
• MONSTER HUNTER RISE: SUNBREAK: Monster Hunter Rise's expansion is very good, as it turns out! They're still putting out title updates with new monsters and new things to farm and I haven't delved as deeply as I usually would but if you liked base Rise even a little bit you should pick this up.
• POKEMON SCARLET: They put out two Pokemon games this year and that is too many. I really enjoyed Scarlet, but it falls short of being an amazing entry largely because it's very obvious in many areas that development was rushed; it's hard not to wonder what this game would have been like if it had been given more time.

NON-GAMED VIDEOS

• THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH: Joel Coen did a Macbeth! It's black-and-white and minimalist and it's pretty good and it also made some choices I found utterly baffling. Good times if you like our pal Willy Shakes.
• LINE GOES UP: Dan Olson of Folding Ideas releases an in-depth analysis and takedown of cryptocurrency and NFTs and why, exactly, they are as bad as they are.
• THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA: This was a lovely animation of a Japanese folktale (the tale of the bamboo cutter). Definitely worth your time.
• NAUSICAA OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND: A classic post-apocalyptic animation with some absolutely beautiful images and some deeply unsettling ones.
• KIPO AND THE AGE OF WONDERBEASTS: Still good on the rewatch! I was originally sold on it as a hopeful post-apocalypse story and it does not disappoint.
• HE-MAN: MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVELATIONS: Internet man-babies were VERY mad at this one but it is very fun, very clearly made from a place of love for the source material (to wit, the 80s action figures), and features Mark Hamill having an absolute blast as Skeletor. Did not expect to enjoy this this much.
• THE HIDDEN FORTRESS: Worth seeing just to understand what people mean when they say George Lucas ripped it off in Star Wars, but also this is a very good movie and you should consider watching it.
• POKEMON XY: It's the Pokemon anime; this one is mostly notable for making Ash be a character who is unequivocally skilled rather than winning solely by luck and determination. It has some good character arcs and moments. Worth watching if you think watching the Pokemon anime is a good use of your time.
• REDLINE: An absolutely buckwild racing anime with a lovely art style and just . . . I love this movie, you should watch it. It is hard to describe.
• DON'T LOOK UP: It's like if the pandemic was a movie (but I think it started filming before the pandemic was a thing and then maybe morphed in the telling?). This was clearly made from a place of deep liberal anger at the state of the world post-2016, and while that is cathartic it also sometimes feels like it doesn't have much more to say but "this sucks, huh?"
• JOHNNY MNEMONIC: Classic early cyberpunk bad movie featuring Keanu Reeves hollering angrily about how he wants room service. It's a bad movie but in a fun way.
• BLADE RUNNER: Classic early cyberpunk good movie, featuring some very good moments and possessing many different editions due to . . . reasons. I like this, but it sure does feature Harrison Ford being a little bit sexual assaulty.
• OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH: The gay pirates show! It's good. Tone can be a little weird sometimes, but that's a common comedy problem.
• STILL THE WATER: A beautiful slice-of-life film by Naomi Kawase about life in rural Japan; does feature some graphic scenes of goats being butchered, but this was a lovely film.
• TOKYO GODFATHERS: Probably the least Satoshi Kon of the Satoshi Kon films, I was a little nervous of watching this because one of the characters is a trans woman and I was worried it would be . . . less than sensitive. And while some characters are pretty shitty about it, this is a story about found family and treats the characters with kindness. And it's a Christmas movie, so you can watch it now I guess?
• THE BEFORE TRILOGY: Richard Linklater's trilogy, each movie taking place on a single day and set nine years after the previous one, about two characters who met by chance on a train and then hit it off. Very interesting character studies, and it keeps things ambiguous in a way which really works.
• THE OWL HOUSE: I love this show and it is a goddamn crime that it has joined the ranks of cartoons being cancelled for being too gay. Eagerly awaiting the conclusion.
• PAPRIKA: The movie everyone says Inception ripped off and Satoshi Kon's final film, this movie is a wild delve into the world of dreams, featuring his trademark ability to use editing and animation to really make things feel dreamlike and uncertain.
• THE RINGS OF POWER: Tolkien nerds are so, so mad at this series because it isn't Adhering To The Source Material but I'm super enjoying it. It's trying to comment on the source material in an interesting way while also just being very play-it-straight high fantasy with all the archetypes and tropes. 

THINGS WHAT ARE MAINLY TEXT

• PETER GAY'S THE ENLIGHTENMENT: A two-volume academic history of the Enlightenment; I got a little tired of pop history and wanted to really delve. It's an academic text but it's well written (and even occasionally funny) but also, like... you're reading this to learn, not for entertainment. It's good at that.
• THE BARU CORMORANT SERIES BY SETH DICKINSON: Too lazy to look up if this has a series name. This is good, stories about empire and the dismantling thereof featuring some characters who are just delightfully awful people. Did have a few moments where I had to pause and look directly at the camera, but that's forgiveable.
• TERRA IGNOTA: I love this series and did a full re-read pretty soon after the last book came out; it's still good, it turns out! Compelling worldbuilding and philosophizing and while the ending isn't what I'd call satisfying I don't think it's meant to be; it's unsatisfying in a way which invites discussion. 
• THE UNBROKEN: Another fantasy story about empire (it's a theme!!) but this one didn't really do it for me. It wasn't bad but it also didn't feel like it was saying much that was interesting.
• A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE: Still another story about empire, but this one is a space opera! Some fascinating worldbuilding and fascinating storytelling; I'm working on the sequel right now.
• THE HAPPY BUREAUCRACY: This is a series of novels by a coworker of mine and they are surprisingly pretty fun. Very inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, except set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the IRS survived the apocalypse and is still trying to collect taxes. Well-paced and fun.