The Other Bests of 2023

2023, am I right?I have a tendency to be pretty glum and dour about things so I want to make a point to highlight some stuff that I genuinely adored last year. Games, movies, shows, really anything that stood out to me as worth highlighting outside of my "official" best of 2023 list(s). Everything I'm about to mention made my 2023 better, even if only for a little while.

I had thought about doing a separate writeup for my favorite movies but, well, I often feel a bit, I don't know, pretentious and underinformed when talking about films (hypocritical coming from me, I know) and I don't feel like writing out my feelings about these (sorry), so I'll leave you with a barebones top 10 list. There were other movies I intended to get to but since I still haven't watched them there's no point putting this list off any longer.

10. The Boy and the Heron

9. Nimona

8. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

7. Evil Dead Rise

6. Godzilla Minus One

5. Asteroid City

4. The Holdovers

3. John Wick: Chapter 4

2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

1. Oppenheimer

Honorable Mention: Stop Making Sense

 

Now for the rest of the stuff I loved last year.

Project Zomboid

I feel like I should be including this in one of my (imminent) top ten lists, but I run into the limitations of my arbitrary categories. It's not an old game, despite being in early access for a very long time, and it's not exactly a "new game" either because it still hasn't had it's 1.0 release. There's a very good chance this may have topped whichever list it made it to though because, man, this game is good.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Had I not already played this game it could have easily ranked in one of my lists, but, alas, my arbitrary restriction that those lists need to be things I've played for the first time means it's relegated to here. Still, don't let that sell this game short. My categories are meaningless and this game is incredible. Please play it.

Neopets

I am so rich.

Back in July I sent a Hail Mary of an email to the Neopets support team to see if I could get my age-old account back. After a bit of an awkward month (I briefly had access then immediately lost it again) I was able to get back into my account and, boy, this takes me back. The website is slow, pages often won't load, and there wasn't much of value on my account to begin with, but seeing my bog-standard Yellow Lupe again after 18 years made me emotional.

Mad Men

I watched all of this show this year and I get why it's as loved as it is. It can be a frustrating watch andDon Draper may absolutely suck (at times) but holy cow is he charming. I greatly enjoyed my time with this show because at its core it was still just television. I'd heard this show get thrown in the same vein as other "premium" series and, yes, there are long serialized plots, but it's also mostly about individual episodic case-of-the-week sorts o' things. I love some good episodic fiction as much as the longer serialized stuff and this show has it all.

Doctor Who

I've spent most of this year cautiously optimistic about the new series of Doctor Who and I was not disappointed. Last year ended with a bold decision to fall back into some nostalgia-bait (so did this year, but I'll get into that) but the quality of the storytelling in these three episodes was good enough to justify the marketing stunt. We got three more episodes of David Tennant and Catherine Tate and I couldn't be happier. I'm not a huge fan of the way the third special ended (bigeneration seems like a mistake but I will say it's pretty funny that there are now two retired David Tennants just sort of still existing) but the Christmas episode was fun and Ncuti Gatwa already feels like he'll be a fun Doctor.

Star Trek

I still have a few gaping holes in my Star Trek knowledge but I've greatly enjoyed keeping up with the new shows they've been putting out lately. Lower Decks had a lot going against it before it began (it looked like just another Rick and Morty knockoff) but it's become one of my favorite shows because, yes, it is an irreverent cartoon, but it's also good Star Trek. Strange New Worlds, similarly, is also very good Star Trek. This show picks up after Season 2 of Discovery and, much like that, is honestly just so much darn fun to watch. Pike is an incredible captain and I can't get enough of him.

Team Fortress 2

After the hubbub around an "update-sized update" I decided to get back into TF2 this year, and while the summer update was neat I haven't played as much of it as I'd have liked. That said, I have spent quite a bit of time lately watching competitive TF2. I've never really gotten into this in the past, so this has come as a surprise to me, but I get it now. For context, there are two main kinds of gameplay on offer: Highlander is a 9v9 mode where each team has one of each class and it plays out like a highly-skilled game of TF2, unsurprisingly, but there is also a 6v6 mode that I find far more interesting to watch. This mode has a limit of 2 of each class (just one medic though) and typically consists of two scouts, two soldiers, a demoman and a medic, and the end result is a back-and-forth between both teams that feels a lot more like a "sport". Maybe it;s just because I've played so much of this game but I've enjoyed having matches of this on in the background these past few months because I can parse what's going on and it's cool to watch a game I like get played at such a high level.

The Venture Bros: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart

The Venture Bros. came back and had, for all intents and purposes, its finale. There's always a chance we could get more and I Want To Believe that we will get more, but if this is the end of the story it was a great way for things to end. Most important characters came back for at least a scene or so, we finally got some capital-A Answers for a few of the questions that have plagued the show since the start and it was all very funny as usual. I had no real complaints with it and it left things open enough for more so it gave me everything I wanted from a Venture Bros. movie. I do hope we see these boys again, at least one more time.

Critical Role

I tweet about it occasionally but I've been keeping up with this show and I still love it. It's longwinded and an absurd commitment (4+ hours every week, in perpetuity) but when it's good it's some of my favorite media out there. I used to listen to a lot of podcasts and this, essentially, combines the highs of longform narrative storytelling with the unpredictability and energy of improv comedy. It can be funny, dull, surprising, and genuinely moving and you never quite know how the story's going to unfold. I'm very glad I got my brother into this because he likes it as much as I do and it was nice for me to realize that, no, there really is something to it.

Dropout

College Humor started a streaming service a few years ago and I've been subscribed to it for years because it's been putting out some truly entertaining stuff. They've shifted into more unscripted/reality style content and while that might seem crass, the end result is fantastic with shows like Game Changer and Make Some Noise being the highlight of any week they may air. They also have a DnD show called Dimension 20 focused on fixed-length, semi-pre-ordained seasons that's a fun reprieve from the seemingly neverending campaigns of Critical Role.

Uzumaki

In October I read through Junji Ito's Uzumaki one afternoon and I highly recommend it. It's effectively a series of episodic short stories in a small Japanese town where a bunch of spooky stuff happens, with the connective throughline being that some sort of spiral shape is involved with whatever's going on. Its art is fantastic (and the little they've shown of the adult swim adaptation gives me hope they'll do it justice) and it has some nice progression. Reading this also made me enjoy the game World of Horror (something that didn't quite make The List) a fair bit more.

Scott Pilgrim

Reading the Scott Pilgrim comic was a sort of formative experience for me back in high school but I never fully vibed with the movie. I also only played a little bit of the game, but that was enough for me to grow a deep appreciation for "Another Winter" from the Anamanaguchi soundtrack. Anyway, late last year I decided to finally re-read the comic, and then re-watch the movie, in preparation for the new Netflix series, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. The new show is very good. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect but I think I like it more than the movie if only because it has a bit more time to breathe, like the comic.

Super Buff HD

Arena shooters have never really been my thing but Buff may have made me change my tune. This is an incredibly fun shooter that more people should play. Now, why isn't this on my top ten list? Well, I (sort of) know the developer of this and it'd feel weird to try to qualitatively rank it alongside my other favorites. It's good, though, and it's in good company. Just look at the stuff above it in this post! Just because it's not included in my "best games of the year" list doesn't mean it wouldn't have been able to make the cut.