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Category: Columns

AL’s 2023 Game of the Year

This year has been a banger year for video game releases. The quality of games that came out this year is incredible, and it made making this game of the year list damn near impossible for me.

I think it’s important to note that while this year was incredible for game releases, it was a hot garbage year for the industry and those who makes these games. This is incredibly unfair, and it put a damper on the year of really damn good video games. I’m just a small voice screaming into the void, but video game companies really need to do better than this.

As I said, I had a super hard time making this list this year, and I probably made about 50 shuffles in my list before I landed on this one. So despite all of my suffering, I’ve made a list, and you can see it here.

Me trying to decide GOTY this year

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AL’s 2022 Game of the Year

I am legitimately so happy about how amazing my top games were. There are two themes I noticed with my list: Square Enix had a good year, and we had a matchup in the top half of my GOTY list that is reminiscent of the 2019 list. I won’t even lie to you all. My top three shuffled around A LOT while I was finishing up this list, and I struggled so hard to pick which one got the top slot. After a lot of deliberation, listening to podcasts, and suffering, I finally went with the list we have here. That being said, all three of them are really phenomenal games, and I was really impressed with the games on my list this year…which it is worth noting that I finally broke my rule of 7 and have a list of 10 this year. :O

Without further ado…let’s GOTY!


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AL’s 2021 Game of the Year

It sure has been a year again, eh? This was an interesting year in games, and there were some fantastic surprises, some important rereleases or remakes, and several games with really strong narratives.1 I feel like this list isn’t truly surprising given that it is ME we’re talking about here, but it was still a lot of fun to play some great and oftentimes impactful games in this dumpster fire of a year. Check out the podcast here and Jared’s write up here.

Anyway, let’s get this party started! There will be spoilers behind the cut!

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AL’s 2020 Game of the Year!

Man. 2020 sure has existed, eh? It’s been a really strange year in basically every realm, and video games were not immune to this. Despite the oddness, I’m here to deliver my supplementary awards and my game of the year awards for 2020, and this time we’re back to seven. Here is the link to the SAC OVA podcast where Jared and I break all of this down too, and be sure to check his list out here. Without further ado, let’s do this thing. There will be spoilers behind the cut!

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Let’s Talk About Squall Leonhart

Loner. Emo. Cold. Unlikeable. Whatever.

These are some of the nicer words you’d find on the internet that refer to Squall Leonhart, the protagonist of Final Fantasy VIII. Meanwhile, I personally find Squall to be one of the most complex and interesting protagonists in a Final Fantasy game. 1 So what is it about Squall that is so fascinating decades after the release of Final Fantasy VIII?

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To Bloom New Possibilities: Atlus’s Hypocritical Portrayals of LGBTQ+ Narratives in Catherine: Full Body

While there was hope that Catherine: Full Body could fix the narrative issues from the original, it does the exact opposite. Catherine (either version), in essence, is a game where you play as a character who is -phobic and misogynistic, surrounding himself with others who mostly think like him. Vincent is sleazy, but we are encouraged to support his quest since he is the “hero” of the game. However, Vincent rarely learns that his behavior is abhorrent—the only time he has repercussions for his actions are in the “bad” endings of the game, and even then, there is no indication that Vincent would change anything about his behaviors.

Read the full article here.

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AL’S 2019 Game of the Year!

We’re back with another year of games and life under the belt, for better or for worse. I’ve played what could be considered a decent amount of games this year, and now I get to rank them! My list is, of course, the end all be all of games of the year lists. I will say, the games that I put as my top 4 could easily be GOTY. They’re all that damn good. So let’s get started with this GOTY train!1Also, be sure to check out Jared’s list here, and the SAC OVA podcast here.

Let’s do it!!
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AL’s 2018 Game of the Year

It’s a tradition now! 2018 has been a weird year for games, especially given how strong last year was. Despite that, I came up with the 7 games I had the most fun playing in 2018. Without further ado, I’m gonna give you my favorite games in a list format for your viewing pleasure. The podcast where we talk about our Games of the Year is here. Give it a listen!

https://media.tenor.com/images/b92634c8a7e4ea6af7fbe3731f4a7672/tenor.gif
Let’s get hype like Mari!

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Why I Quit Watching Persona 5: The Animation and FLCL: Progressive

I recently came to a decision–life is too short to watch bad anime. When every single week, you feel yourself either angry or embarrassed at having watched a show, it’s ultimately time to step away from it. This is what happened with me and Persona 5: The Animation and FLCL: Progressive. I tried to give these shows a fair shake in hopes that they could possibly be better than the original media they stem from. What I learned in the process, though, is that there is a level of bullshit that I cannot take when it comes to anime consumption.

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Ready Player One: A Review Reloaded

In 2016, I wrote a review of Ready Player One and why, as an avid video game player and a video game historian, I felt the story was a slap in the face. Since then, I have been caught up in my dissertation1, but with the recent release of the film, I felt that it would be a good idea to revisit my review. Back then, a younger, more innocent AL’s major complaints with the book involved the narrative of gamers needing to remove themselves from the system, as well as “minor issues” involving language and the need by Ernest Cline to tell us all the details of Wade’s masturbatory habits.

At one point, I was excited to read it since it seemed straight up my alley. I also admit that I was much nicer in my initial review than I feel I should have been. Revisiting the book with my pal Jared demonstrated to me that sometimes I am nicer than I should be. 2 However, with some time away from it and a revisit of the problematic writing style, the poorly written narrative, and the incessant references have solidified that Ready Player One is downright frustrating as both a novel and a supposed love letter to an era that I have spent the last seven years of my life studying.

While I no longer have the book to make specific references to it, I can say that a recent piece of satire nailed the insanely terrible writing style, as well as the annoying and at times pointless references Cline insists on throwing in at random, potentially as a Family Guy-style drive-by or more likely in an attempt to draw attention away from the fact that the novel is shallow and makes less sense than The Room. 3

I also regret the fact that I neglected to mention the horrible treatment of Art3mis throughout the book. Art3mis does an intense amount of legwork, logic, and emotional support in RPO, and in return, she is reduced to a couple tropes—Manic Pixie Dream Girl and The Prize™. In addition, Art3mis is continuously harassed by Wade due to his crush, often in ways that cross the line. She is also given a “flaw” by Cline in order to make her attractive to Wade (and readers) but not perfect, which again reduces her down to her desirability rather than who she is as a character.

Cline also clearly has never interacted with anyone who is Japanese in his life. Instead of actually doing any research on Japanese people and culture, he writes Daito and Shoto as ridiculous stereotypes. 4 This becomes especially apparent when Cline has Shoto use the word “seppuku” in reference to general suicide, whereas seppuku itself is a distinct form of ritualistic suicide in Japanese culture and history. There are other moments where this bizarre treatment of the two Japanese characters comes up, and they seem like half-hearted attempts at including them without doing any actual legwork to understand how they would speak and act in certain situations without reducing them to racial caricatures.

Many people assume that given my interests, I would be all over this film and the book. In reality, I find it difficult to enjoy the story and characters of RPO, and I think it reduces people who play video games down to really awful stereotypes that I cannot support.5 The protagonist is entirely unlikable and unrelatable. The writing style is bizarre to the point of irritation. These and other negatives are wrapped up into a reference-heavy and ultimately unrealistic dystopian video game universe6, and while on the surface it may seem like a fun romp, it turns out that it is a book that is stewed in toxic nerd culture in ways that ruin any potential it could have had.

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