15. DEATHLOOP (PS5)
Sigh.
Look, I want to love this game more than I do. I’m a huge Arkane fan, I love the story and aesthetic. But whether or not people want to admit it, “Deathloop” is very flawed. It pretends to be open-ended, but is stiflingly linear. The loot and gear system is too shallow to support the gameplay. You spend too much time in a menu that pulls you out of the immersion of the world. And enemy combat encounters become hugely repetitive.
Still! It’s Arkane. The story is fantastic. I love the protagonist. I love the combat (for a while). And it’s an ambitious game that goes for something. I always respect that.
14. DUNE (MOVIE)
I could not be more the target audience for this movie. I’m a Denis Villeneuve fanboy. I love big, self-serious sci fi. I went into “Dune” hoping to love it and I did.
But!
It is half a movie. It just is. It is the most brazen attempt to cut a story off before it was actually finished since Halo 2’s “Finish the Fight.” It just drops you into the credits like “huh?” I get that there was no way anyone was financing a 5 hour, bajillion dollar epic without testing the box office’s appetite for it first. So, if this was the compromise they needed to get “Dune” out into the world, I accept it. When “Part 2” comes out, it will make one incredible film. But for now, it’s incomplete.
13. LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (MOVIE)
Haters gonna hate.
People don’t like this movie and it didn’t make any money and you’re all wrong, it was great. It’s smart, scary and gorgeous to experience, especially in a theater. It goes a little hokey in the 3rd act, but so did “The World’s End.” It may be a little shy of perfect, but its good qualities are more than worth it. How can you turn your nose up at pure cinema like this?
12. KID A MNESIA EXHIBITION (PS5)
Late one night, wandering around on the PS5 store, I stumbled into this thing, a virtual art exhibit that was somehow “about” Radiohead’s new re-release of “Kid A” and “Amnesiac.” I went in pretty skeptical, but to my surprise, it’s haunting and beautiful. It really got to me, and changed how I hear music I’ve been listening to since high school.
11. CLARKSON’S FARM (AMAZON PRIME VIDEO)
A warm and wonderful reality show about Jeremy Clarkson–the famous and somewhat controversial host of “Top Gear” and “The Grand Tour”–buying and attempting to maintain a massive farm. The fun of the show is watching a cranky, set-in-his-ways amateur get schooled by Mother Nature. He curses and stumbles his way through it, he makes mistakes and pays dearly. But eventually, he starts to get the hang of things, and you find yourself rooting for him. He changes the farm, and the farm changes him.
10. MIDNIGHT MASS (NETFLIX)
A brutal, transfixing supernatural horror series about small towns, Catholicism, and pride going before the fall. I went in expecting an eye-roll-boring dunk session on organized religion, and creator Mike Flanagan definitely has a bone to pick there, but he’s also after far more nuanced targets. Like everything Mike does, there are insufferable monologues and wonky character moments, but the good stuff here is the best he’s ever done. There are episodes that grip you so tight it feels like you can’t breathe. Hamish Linklater’s lead turn should win every Emmy on Earth.
9. THE LAST DUEL (MOVIE)
Doomed.
This movie was doomed. It was never going to not bomb. I have no clue how you market “two toxic males duel over a rape allegation while a woman watches, powerless to affect events.” It’s not a fun movie. But it is an honest and powerful one. It’s not for me to say whether “Duel” accurately dismantles toxic masculinity and rape culture, but I think it really tried to, and that’s not nothing. I loved its tweaked use of “Rashomon” structure: accepting subjectivity, but still insisting on an objective truth that can and should be known. Ben Affleck is really funny (???). Jodie Comer is so on fire she probably burned a hole in the print negative. And Ridley paints one of his most gorgeous films ever, which is saying something.
8. NIGHTMARE ALLEY (MOVIE)
Another doomed flop, only this time I think the cast and crew knew it was going to flop, and made “Nightmare Alley” anyway. Why? Because they had a passion to tell this story, and that passion screams in every frame. I love this awful, twisted, gorgeous, horrid thing. It’s a cynical noir, yes, but it has a deeply held morality, a true sense of right and wrong. This is one of Guillermo del Toro’s best films, and one of Bradley Cooper’s too.
7. MARE OF EASTTOWN (HBO)
I think the “small town murder mystery with a very particular regional dialect” thing has just become a cliche–SNL definitely thinks so–but “Mare of Easttown” dodges that bullet by being too well written, too well acted, and too well shot to care. This mystery truly had me until the last frame. And I think it’s time to admit that Kate Winslet is one of our best actors.
6. TICK TICK… BOOM! (MOVIE, NETFLIX)
I hate musicals. I was kinda indifferent to “RENT!” I’m not really a fan of loose plot structures, or “slice of life” stories. So basically, nothing about “Tick Tick… Boom!” should work for me at all. But it all worked and I loved it, because if you’re good enough, you’re good enough. Quality trumps everything. Let the Andrew Garfield-issance begin.
5. THE FORGOTTEN CITY (XBOX GAME PASS)
Speaking of things I don’t usually like, I’m also really not a fan of games where you just walk around talking to people. Except apparently I am, because that’s all you do in “The Forgotten City,” and I couldn’t pry the controller from my hands. Saying anything about the story would be a crime, but it involves time traveling back to an Ancient Roman city to solve a murder… kind of. Imagine the most page-turning, riveting novel you’ve ever read. Now imagine playing it.
Also, this was originally a Skyrim mod. The story of how it got made is almost as good as the game.
4. HALO: INFINITE (XBOX GAME PASS)
I ate some crow on this one.
I really didn’t think the new “Halo” would work. The last “Halo” wasn’t great. The trailers for this one seemed meh. It kept getting delayed and losing people. The previews weren’t promising. I’d basically made my peace with the fact that “Halo” was past its prime, and couldn’t thrive in the modern marketplace.
Whoops.
Turns out, 343 aren’t about that. I don’t know who ate their Wheaties over there but this is the best “Halo” in a long time, and one of the best shooters I’ve played, period. The campaign isn’t revolutionary, but it does try some cool new stuff, most of which works. And the multiplayer is as tight, balanced and fun as any competitive shooter. It just feels good to play, there’s a smooth power to it. It’s right. Something about it is deeply right.
3. SUBNAUTICA: BELOW ZERO (ALL PLATFORMS)
SBZ is an underwater exploration game where you’re constantly pushing deeper and deeper into an alien ocean, testing the limits of your gear, expertise and nerves (the game gets seriously scary at times). I normally hate “survival” games, but every second of this one is fun. There’s a great story and a well-paced objective structure, but you can totally ignore it and go dive for crystals or fight monsters instead. And no matter what you’re doing, you always feel like no one else plays it quite how you do. There’s so many opportunities to make your mark on “Subnautica.” It’s a special experience.
2. THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (MOVIE)
Denzel as Macbeth. Frances as Lady Macbeth. A Coen brother directing. Thank you for your time.
1. HITMAN 3 (ALL PLATFORMS)
Quite simply one of my favorite games of all time.
You are deposited at an English manor. Or a nightclub in Germany. Or a French chateau. You have targets, somewhere inside, who must be eliminated. You set off into the level with no clue how that’s going to happen. But through experimentation, improvisation, and observation, you build a plan. Maybe this plan has pieces in it that the developers intended, or maybe it’s totally unique to you. Either way, you make mistakes, adjust, course-correct. And then, in one beautiful moment, it all snaps together. Suddenly, you become that guy who walks away from an explosion without looking. You glide across the level, every action timed perfectly, until your target is dead. Then you stroll effortlessly to the exit while the guards frantically hunt you in vain and poof… you’re gone.
Tell me another game that makes you feel like that.
SPECIAL MENTION: DEAD BY DAYLIGHT
Since this game didn’t technically come out in 2021, I wasn’t sure I could include it on this list. Then again, it is a live service game, so they’re always adding stuff. I don’t know. It gets confusing.
Regardless, no game, movie, show or piece of music took more of my time this year than “Dead By Daylight.” I am astonished at the brilliance of this thing. For years, I refused to play it, because I’d had a similar idea for a game and had tried (unsuccessfully) to get it made. When I saw DBD release, I admit I wanted them to fail, because I failed. Besides, asymmetrical multiplayer (one person v multiple people) never seems to work anyway. You can’t balance it well enough, it’s like making two games at once. And even if you succeed, you can’t compete with the brutal simplicity of other multiplayer games that just hand kids a gun and say “go shoot that guy over there.”
But five years later, there DBD remained, atop the Twitch charts. Mocking me. So finally, this year, I tried it. And about 300 hours later, when I finally made myself stop playing, I was forced to admit that Behavior Interactive had done the impossible: they’d made an asymmetrical competitive horror game work.
What I love about DBD is that, despite its copious gore (which I actually wish they’d get rid of), it’s not a violent game. This isn’t about shooting people, it’s about outsmarting them. You need to think like your opponent, consider their objectives and obstacles, and react. Huge chunks of DBD are spent chasing people around objects, trying to get them to just slightly over-commit to a line, or use an ability at the wrong moment. It all comes down to milliseconds. One false step, one ability fired too early, one juke in the wrong direction, and it’s over. When you face a great opponent, it can almost feel like a dance. I know that sounds stupid, but it does.
Thanks to a near-bottomless roster of killers (which I always play as) and survivors (who are the scourge of the Earth, and I live to destroy them), and a massive build/powers/skills system, DBD never gets old. There’s always more to learn. I think this one is going to be with me for a while. I said “Hitman 3” was one of my favorite games of all time. Here is another one.