ZombiePie's End Of The Year 2024 Multimedia Extravaganza! (Part 1)

Author's Note: Hello there! My name is ZombiePie, and I am a Giant Bomb forum and wiki moderator. Every year, I look at the various sources of entertainment I enjoyed and disliked and pit them into a battle to win my comical superlatives. During my awards show, games, television shows, animes, athletics, albums, board games, and movies all combat each other in a battle to the death! As such, my awards are more "special commendations" and are open to any medium I consumed during the last year. If you want my more "orthodox" GOTY list, here you go!

Additionally, you can expect to see classic and current works of entertainment vying for the top positions of each merit and demerit on this blog. Oh, and one more thing: there are SPOILERS in this blog! Remember that point before reading any of my justifications for each award recipient. Also, prepare your pitchforks as things occasionally get slightly "spicy!"

Best Use Of FMV - The Adventures of Down Under Dan

We are starting with a bang for this year's Multimedia Extravaganza! One of my most significant regrets regarding my presence on the site was my failure to reboot my "Quest for the Worst Adventure Game Puzzle" feature. While I have been playing adventure games on my Twitch account, converting my most memorable moments into written words has proven to be especially tricky. Nonetheless, when 2025 rolls around, I will have a write-up delving deep into The Adventures of Down Under Dan because this game warrants it. On paper, what you're dealing with is an indie game from Australia starring Australians circa 1995, making a shitpost parodying the Hollywood stereotypes about rural Australian life perpetuated by Crocodile Dundee. Your character replenishes their health by ingesting bugs, crosses rivers by leaping onto the tops of alligator heads, and wrestles snakes at least three to four times. From start to finish, the game is an edutainment title with sequences that lecture about how to disarm dingo traps or how to round up and sheer sheep at a pasture. All of this is presented in FMV cutscenes that sneer at their players who think this is how life works in Australia. There's even an omniscient narrator who chides the player with every in-game death or throughout significant cutscenes.

Yet, that's not the only way The Adventures of Down Under Dan is in on its jokes. On several occasions, the game openly mocks the typical structure of graphical adventure games at the time. There's an incredibly unforgiving and annoying puzzle where you need to help Dan leap across stones to summit a cliff, and if you are off by even a pixel, he falls to his death. You do this puzzle four times; there's no way around it. However, upon setting Dan up for his fifth attempt at the cliff, he claims he's tired of doing this part of the game and promptly leaps to the top, and then you never have to do that again. The entire thing feels like a family of amateur computer programmers who had fun making their first video game, and the documentation suggests as much. The only other game credited to PowerVision, the developer of The Adventures of Down Under Dan, is Trev to the Rescue, which stars the lead programmer's son going on an FMV-based, family-friendly adventure. When you discover a teleporter and help Dan check out iconic locations in Australia, you can tell the team behind it knew what they were doing. The camp factor reaches for the sky, especially when you start seeing cutscenes where they feel like the game's team is playing around with green screen technology for the first time. Unfortunately, it is an absolute chore to play, and there's a cave sequence that I continue to struggle with, even with two playthroughs under my belt. However, there's nothing quite like it, and even when it is utterly baffling, it's one of the most impressive sites to see.

Runner-up: Wrath of the Gods - Imagine for me, you have started your own adventure game company, and all you have is a cheap green screen and a few friends and confidants willing to support you in your first game project. Also, you have jumped into the adventure game crease about one year after the release of Myst, and with edutainment games also hitting a zenith. So, why not make an FMV graphical adventure game about interacting with the Greek gods, and all of the Greek gods look like they are wearing costumes from a Spirit Halloween store? That sounds GREAT! Also, because you can't afford great props for the mythical creatures, you have a few represented using toys that are animated using stop-motion and a few others that are straight-up sock puppets. That's exactly how things played out for Wrath of the Gods, and if you want to check it out FOR FREE, the developer's website with an educational version of the game is still up and running!

Best Old Game I Discovered In 2024 For The First Time - Breath of Fire III

Capcom is in a better place than where they were no less than four or five years ago. Even earlier, Street Fighter V wasn't setting the world on fire, and the Resident Evil franchise was in a weird place. Well, that's not a worry anymore, and with Capcom recently announcing that they have Kamiya back working on Okami 2 and plan to have a new Onimusha game by 2026, the time seems ripe for a Breath of Fire revival. Admittedly, Breath of Fire is a weird series in their portfolio, given that the first two games were released on the SNES while the third, fourth, and fifth games were only released on Sony consoles. Also, the series never was a big hit sales-wise domestically in Japan nor in the United States or Europe. Sure, the franchise has its share of stalwarts to this day, but even at its best, Breath of Fire never courted favors or attention like the Ys or Tails of games in the B-tier JRPG arena. This reality is a shame because the third entry in the series is remarkable, with its in-depth mechanical trappings functioning alongside a narrative that takes several shockingly dark and mature turns. Additionally, the PlayStation games have some baller-ass music and look great!

If you pressed me to pinpoint the best jumping-in point in the franchise now that I have the first four games under my belt, I'd turn to the third game. The first two feel prehistoric with how often they jump random encounters on you and involve more grinding than the third or fourth game by a whole order of magnitude. I have a few quibbles with the third game as well, and I hate how you can only assign Masters to party members at their locations. It also doesn't help that you can only check progress with Masters and re-assign learned abilities at rest tents. However, what you see with the third game is Capcom shooting for the stars, showcasing some of the then-best pixel graphics in the industry, and designing maybe one of the most underrated PS1-era JRPG leveling systems of all time. If you like your JRPGs to have malleable characters that can go in distinct directions and feel genuinely different as you level them, this is the game for you. Between the normal levels, jobs, and masters, you can have some fun toying around with every party member, and the depth of Breath of Fire III's systems is downright absurd. And lest we not forget, the game's story is straight-up metal, with the game's protagonist committing mass murder in the prologue and other, sometimes comical, acts of villainy being equally dark. It's a forgotten classic that I'm still shocked hasn't seen even the slightest bit of shine from this current incarnation of Capcom, though I am forgetting about the terrible Breath of Fire gacha games they released a few years ago.

Runner-up: Final Fantasy Adventure - A new entry in the Mana series graced 2024, and that inspired me to check out the game that started it all: Final Fantasy Adventure/Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden/Seiken Densetsu/Mystic Quest. While its naming convention is a bit of a mess, Final Fantasy Adventure still holds up to this day despite the massive technical limitations of the hardware it operated on. The game's world is enormous for an OG Game Boy title, and the real-time combat is miraculously well-programmed. The bosses are not exactly complex and instead utilize incredibly simple movement and attack patterns. Still, the hitboxes are fair but tight, and the game's item-based progression system makes every dungeon-based exploration effort feel rewarding. Whenever you get a new spell or weapon, you feel its usefulness almost immediately. There are some truly fun and engaging swings by Squaresoft in this tertiary romp worth revisiting.

Best New Character Of 2024 - Antonio Morello

For me, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was comfort food. While I am ready to recognize the game's limits and flaws, it still made me smile, much like a gloriously dumb popcorn flick would. Antonio is by no means the best new character we saw in a video game or movie this year; instead, he's the new character that stuck with me the most. Whether it be watching him fawn about American Jazz, giving Indy two thumbs up when he excitedly gets ready to help him with a part of his adventure, or delving into his past as a World War I veteran, he ultimately elevates what I consider the weakest level in the entire game. Don't get me wrong, the Vatican is a perfect tutorial level, but it's just that. The Vatican in The Great Circle is a simple environment where you can become acclimated to the game's structure and mechanics. It's not the most ambitious environment nor the most rewarding one. However, it doesn't feel like a tutorial level because Antonio and the other characters make it feel completely authentic.

Antonio is also one of the most effective characters of the year, as he perfectly sets the tone of the game he's in by laying out The Great Circle's stakes while also having fun from time to time. And the quips he has when he briefly accompanies Indy, especially when he balks at the times when Indy gets his hands dirty, are some of the funniest video game story moments of the year. The fact remains that Antonio is the perfect character to have during Indiana Jones and the Great Circle's first real level. Ultimately, it's the journey that counts, and Antonio plays into that. While The Vatican and its characters can be a bore with one too many stealth sequences, it leaves an impression. And I know I'm not the only one who wished that Antonio was accompanying Indy for more of his adventure, which to me speaks to how memorable he is as a character and how MachineGames didn't have him overstay his welcome.

Runner-up: Denzel Washington as Macrinus in Gladiator II - HOT DAMN, am I happy to see Denzel living his best life! After he headlined what felt like a half dozen Equalizer films, it's been a while since we have seen Denzel having genuine fun with a role. Gladiator II, overall, is one of the most shockingly good things from the year, all things considered. Ridley Scott is only a year older than Coppola, but he made a better dumb movie while spending an irresponsible amount of Hollywood money. But with Denzel Washington, this is the most unhinged he's been with a role since Training Day, and he ends up being the film's best part. Every anecdote his character tells goes one to two minutes too long. Every time he saunters into the frame of a shot, it's like he's trying to make the audience laugh with a bad drunken rockstar impression. Every time he's in a scene, he goes out of his way to chew through the scenery, even if it means he needs to out-camp two twink Roman Emperors or Pedro Pascal wearing the most comical-looking Roman armor and costumes. It's an incredible performance worth checking out if you are in the mood for a big dumb movie.

Best Use Of 2024 - Kendrick Lamar

What more is there to say about Kendrick's incredible use of 2024? Unless you are the most delusional Drake fan, he handily won the most prominent rap beef in the last twenty years. The fact that he kept hitting Drake with new material, track after track, has led many, myself included, to assume that he had his receipts and material ready to go months before Drake foolishly walked into his humiliation tour. And Kendrick knew what he was doing with each of his salvos to court a majority of the worldwide music-listening community to his side. Euphoria was his best technical rap with tightly performed lyrical verses, Meet the Grahams was his most brutal takedown and ensured Drake never had the moral high ground, and Not Like Us was composed to hit radio waves and thwart Drake where he typically does best: infecting the general audience with earworms. Honestly, it was INCREDIBLE to see Kendrick actually out Drake at his own game, all while murdering his character and self-worth to even grandmas at your local church. And as a full-time teacher, let me tell you that even twelve and thirteen-year-olds are quoting Not Like Us. Everyone on this planet knows Kendrick won this rap beef.

And yet, Kendrick's victory lap didn't stop there. Let us not forget that, among all the chaos of eviscerating Drake, he also managed to drop an entire album, GNX. On top of that, GNX wasn't some half-assed self-servicing musical effort. It was one of Kendrick's most straightforward and concise studio albums. It had plenty of bravado, especially considering that it annoyingly led to thousands of people shouting "MUUUUUUUUUUSTARD!" in public. It also reflected regional pride and showcased Kendrick's strength for warm storytelling. If that wasn't enough, Kendrick also has been tapped to be one of the headliners for the upcoming Super Bowl LVI halftime show. Kendrick continues his winning streak while Drake keeps getting strays. It's like poetry; it rhymes. And finally, let's recognize J. Cole for being the smartest person in all of this. He saw the smoke, realized he didn't want any, and publicly told everyone, "Yeah, I'm 40, have a family, and don't have time for this shit." Everyone who gave J. Cole a hard time for walking away from this owes him a MASSIVE apology.

Runner-up: Nico Hülkenberg In F1 - Max Verstappen took the Drivers' Championship, and McLaren snagged the Constructors' Champions, but my MVP for the 2024 F1 season is Nico Hülkenberg. Why? Despite not taking a single podium, he managed to take his Haas tractor of a car to Q3 a whopping eleven times! That's a testament to his abilities as a driver at the tender age of 39. Considering Haas has been fielding terribly slow and heavy cars since they arrived in F1 in 2016, and the 2024 season was no different, Nico getting into Q3 once, let alone eleven times, is a miracle. Furthermore, unlike his partner, Kevin Magnussen, Nico kept his season relatively clean and finished the year without incident or controversy outside his mechanical retirement during the 2024 São Paulo Grand Prix. And if you haven't seen him struggling to give a shit when Atlus found out that there was an F1 driver named "Nico Hülkenberg" and had him do an endorsement deal for Metaphor, you need to check that out!

Best Anime Of 2024 - Dandadan

Dandadan, or Dan Da Dan, stood out in what I would call one of the best years for anime this decade. After being hyped up for months, the anime adaption of the manga of the same name made a strong first impression. The show is downright funny, much like the manga it is based on. Sure, much of this humor is self-deprecating and at the expense of Okarun, but it ties into action sequences that often meld into the show's penchant for humor and tomfoolery. Those action scenes look incredible, by the way. The animation quality is impeccable, the backgrounds are lush in bright colors, and the supporting soundtrack keeps your blood pumping. But if the show were about tightly edited fights with testicle-based jokes only, it wouldn't have won my "Anime of the Year" award. I was enthralled by how the anime adaptation of Dandadan allowed its female leads to shine and relay their vulnerabilities and traumas as much as the show's main lead. Momo is an incredible smoke screen or red herring character that ends up outshining Okarun, though that is by design. Obviously, there's also Turbo Granny, whose dry wit is a bit by the numbers at times but does the job of giving the show some breathing room between the significant set pieces. And Okarun is a magnificent cipher, and the reveal of his origin story hit me particularly hard.

And like many, I was taken aback, though not completely surprised as I read the manga, at the anime's willingness to tackle the sadder moments and undertones of Dandadan. It did not pull punches with Turbo Granny's origin story, and like most people, episode seven fucked me up. I won't sit here and lie; that episode made me cry. Everything the show did with Acrobatic Silky and how it communicates in oftentimes excruciating detail why she is obsessed with Aira broke my heart. While Dandadan often rolls around in its comical action set pieces, it is a show that never loses sight of its heart; that tragedy has shaped each of its characters, including those only used for a single episode. Whether it be the many times the show relays Okarun or Momo's struggles with bullying or explores something even more heartbreaking, like what happens in the seventh episode, Dandadan works like clockwork in helping everyone explore and conquer their traumas, which makes it one of the most rewarding shows of the year. Yes, the first episode is a lot to take in if you don't know what you are signing up for, but if you get through it, I promise that you will be rewarded with one of the most glowing anime highlights of the year.

Runner-up: Delicious in Dungeon - It was between Delicious in Dungeon and Frieren for my runner-up, and I struggled with this. I ended up siding with Delicious in Dungeon because I found it far more rewatchable than Frieren and more well-rounded. It feels demeaning to call Delicious in Dungeon "cozy," but it is the best adjective to attach to the show if you find yourself trying to pitch it to a friend or passerby in an elevator pitch. Also, when the show forms its full party, it starts to shine with slow but deliberate character transformations that feel authentic and genuine. It might not be the most ambitious anime of the year, but it was the most comforting one.

Most Overrated/Overstated - Content Warning

It's now time for me to be more negative on this blog. With Lethal Company still managing to push out content updates and patches, which continued to drive interest in interactive, goofy, cooperative gaming experiences, Content Warning had a brief period where it felt like it was as big a deal as Lethal Company. My favorite VTubers were streaming it nonstop, and in that context, the game was a blast to watch, with people putting forward funny personas while getting comically murdered by monsters and hazards. Unfortunately, while I still play Lethal Company to this day, Content Warning fell out of my rotation within a single weekend. My core issue is that dying in Content Warning feels way more punishing and unfair than in Lethal Company. Also, total party wipes resulting in spelunking efforts to re-gather your camera and other materials often ruin entire campaigns on the spot. The game mercifully doesn't have fall damage, which is an improvement over Lethal Company. Still, I found myself rarely lasting more than two filming sessions in a row without dying, which constantly led me to lose items that I tirelessly collected to make my runs more tolerable.

Likewise, getting the right mix of people that are willing to lean into the concept of you being a group of dipshit streamers getting in over their heads trying to film monsters and mayhem for the views and clicks was so much harder than it was to get three friends to have a fun time chilling with Lethal Company. Content Warning doesn't really "work" if you don't have your entire party putting on acts or engaging in role-playing because the actual in-game streaming or filming of footage isn't in and of itself compelling. It's the commentary that carries the quickly edited video clips you watch at the game's cabin, which is another source of frustration with Content Warning. The in-game editor mostly does a good job of selecting the best moments from your cave-delving efforts, but it's not perfect, and there's no worse feeling than when you think you've had a golden moment that the game is bound to reward you with piles of in-game currency, only for the auto-editor to skip it entirely or the best parts. Finally, like many, it wasn't until AFTER I changed my temp files and the name of my folders that the game would even show me in-game videos in the first place. Overall, I found Content Warning to be more fun when I watched others play it rather than when I tried to give it a shot.

Runner-up: The Boys Season 4 - I almost had The Boys taking this award. As anyone who watched this season knows, it starts on the worst possible note with the sexual assault of a character being entirely played for laughs. For a show that has, up to that point, been one of the best parodies of modern superhero schlock, it was shocking to see The Boys revel in such a craven moment. It's also this season when it felt like the writing was starting to struggle with the analogs it's been trying to scaffold toward, especially given the current events that practically defined the year, which made swaths of this season more uncomfortable. Nonetheless, The Boys eventually found itself, with the final episode of the season being one of its most potent and important individual outings. And anyone who hated this season because it marks the point when the show completely diverged from the comics can stuff it; the ending in the comic series was the dumbest shit imaginable, and the comic series' plot twist with Noir is awful.

Best Meme Factory - My Deer Friend Nokotan

A raise is in order for whoever was in charge of My Deer Friend Nokotan's marketing campaign. Months before its first episode aired, people made thousands of memes about it, especially the "Shikairo Days Dance" animation. That dancing meme caught fire with virtually every community on the internet for weeks, whether the topics were about politics, sports, technology, Vtubers, or other forms of entertainment. The show's teaser trailers also showed that everyone who worked on it knew what they were doing. There were comically bad-looking CG deer as well as weirdly shot dramatic interludes. And they happily name-dropped that Wit Studio was working on it with the director of Himouto! Umaru-chan and the head writer of Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! tagging along as well. The marketing for My Deer Friend Nokotan did everything they could to hype up this show as the premier surreal comedy romp of the year and right up the alley for people pining for something that scratched the same zany itch as Daily Lives of High School Boys or Nichijou.

And then My Deer Friend Nokotan came out, and it was... okay. It wasn't bad, nor was it exceptional. In a workmanlike manner, it took the manga's first volume and adapted it with visual pizzaz. Now, I have seen some people call My Deer Friend Nokotan one of the year's biggest disappointments in anime, and that's pure histrionics. The core issue is that the source material doesn't get as cosmic in its surrealist sensibilities until the third volume. It's not until then that you get to what I would call "the good shit." Suppose the show gets a second season. Mark my words; there is plenty of material to work with, even after its whacky season one ending. In that case, it would be a better viewing experience for all involved. So, with that in mind, I viewed the anime adaptation of My Deer Friend Nokotan as a visual-based gag show and was completely satisfied. But I also get it if someone were to tell me that they didn't think the show lived up to the hype, considering how it was plastered all over social media and YouTube for what felt like an eternity.

Runner-up: Koseki Bijou - The brain rot is real with Biboo. She's become HoloLive's viral social media ambassador with some of the funniest clipped-out-of-context moments in Vtuber history. Fuwamoco and Cecilia Immergreen are more my style, but Biboo is the most natural entertainer at HoloLive EN. Even when you stare at her gawking at some broken bullshit in an indie horror game or interacting with streamer game bait, you can feel your brain cells rotting away. The way she continually gets under the skin of the other talents at HoloLive is her funniest attribute, and her Grindstone collaborations with Kaela are always worth clearing your schedule to watch, even if you feel like she's eating away at Kaela's sanity. So, go watch some Koseki Bijou, dang it!

Worst Puzzle - Bargon Attack's French Poem Puzzle

As mentioned earlier, I plan to revive my blog series looking at terrible adventure game puzzles. When that happens, you can expect me to delve into the world of terrible adventure games from Coktel Vision. Now, Coktel is a reasonably well-known name around these parts as they are the developers of Inca on the CD-i. Cue everyone's favorite pan flute solo! However, before they made terrible CD-i edutainment games, they were best known for making two things in the adventure game industry. One, they made a series of softcore porn graphical adventure games that showed actual tits and body shots that not even Leisure Larry would have considered doing in a million years. Second, they made some of the most brutal and inscrutable adventure games that frequently relied on the wildest triggers, with you sometimes needing to detect objects that are displayed as a singular pixel on your screen. I know some people, usually from Europe, profess having nostalgia for Coktel's Gobliiins, but I am confident in saying all of their games are complete pains in the ass to play. Even when it seems like they have a diamond in the rough in their hands that they just need to polish the slightest bit to make it into a presentable gemstone, they screw it up with instant-death dealing bullshit or the most inane pixel-hunts you will ever encounter.

Nonetheless, let's talk about the French poem puzzle in Bargon Attack! After dealing with your fair share of prior bullshit, your character ends up exploring a sewer that has an emerald shrine built by an alien race that has since gone on to conquer Earth. The most prominent statue at this shrine begins talking to you and eventually asks, "What colour is the vowel A, according to Rimbaud?" If that doesn't make sense, here's what the game is doing. Coktel is a French studio, and in France, a commonly taught poem in French middle schools is "Voyelles" or "Vowels" by Arthur Rimbaud. In the poem, Rimbaud waxes about what colors he thinks match various vowels in the French language, and for a while, memorizing and saying the poem by heart was a component of French public education. For the French audience Coktel originally made this game for, this puzzle is a cinch, and the fact there's nothing in the game to help you isn't that big of an issue. For everyone else, the fact they didn't localize this part of the game and failed to change the poem to anything, and I do mean ANYTHING, different, means that it is impossible to solve if you don't use a guide or have Google at your fingertips. That is, of course, unless you have 1800s French poetry memorized.

Runner-up: Escape From The Haunted House - Look at the screenshot above for a whole minute. That's an actual puzzle in Escape From The Haunted House. There isn't much documentation about this game or its developer, New Media Generation. The game is a 7th Guest clone wherein you need to explore a haunted mansion and trigger events by interacting with various pieces of furniture and objects in the mansion in the correct order. There are not a ton of "real" puzzles in the game, with most of the story only triggering if you know what room you need to inhabit at any given moment. Rather annoyingly, there are a handful of "secret" rooms that you can only make appear if you use a rotary phone and you need to use this device several times. When the game does provide a puzzle, it's your usual assortment of chess or tangram-based puzzles. However, the one above diverges from that norm and is one of the worst things I have ever seen. You need to make all of the four-sided bolts turn to have their numbered sides match those of their neighbors. As the circuit is massive, that's easier said than done, and given the number of possible moves, there's no easy way to calculate things mentally. Oh, and this puzzle is randomized, with a new assortment of numbers spawning whenever you walk away from the circuit in hopes of resetting it. I finally did manage to solve this, but it took me over an hour!

Best Example Of Addition By Subtraction - Metaphor: ReFantazio Not Having Romances

Even before the release of Metaphor: ReFantazio, I echoed a sentiment alongside many longstanding fans of the Persona series. I would greatly prefer if the franchise grew with its audience and would cut bait and switch from high schoolers leading its adventures to those in college or the early phases of adulthood. If and when that happens, I feel the series' social links and intimacy-related undercurrents would become much less problematic or awkward to watch. The attempts by the Persona writing staff to convey teenage intimacy and love have been "mixed" at best, and the series' penchant for exploring age-gap relationships is one of the worst pitfalls almost every game in the franchise seems to make. I swear to God, if Persona 6 has another relationship storyline between a minor and their teacher, I'm going to lose my shit because I think the community has been pretty clear with Atlus that the games would be far better if those moments didn't exist at all. Atlus, cut your losses and make the characters adults! Your audience has followed you through thick and thin, and they are only getting older! If Metaphor: ReFantazio proved anything, it's that teenagers are not the secret sauce to people liking your stories or character work. They can be grizzled war veterans or twentysomething goofy elves that like food!

But Metaphor: ReFantazio also proves something else regarding Atlus' worldbuilding. You don't need romances or character intimacy hooks in the first place! If you want to get thirsty about Hulkenberg or Stohl, you can do that on your own time. The party members have a mission to do, and they need to work together to get that mission done before they even get to first base, let alone go to Bone Town. And what did Metaphor: ReFantazio show to everyone despite excising romances? Those romance scenes don't actionably improve the sense of closeness you feel as you develop relationships with your party members. The memorability of the characters you encounter in Metaphor doesn't suffer because you never get to cop a feel or kiss them. And you know what? Not needing to worry about micro-managing relationships and mapping out which order you can chat up people in Metaphor was a relief. Given the nature of the game and the characters that lead its story, having people spar about petty love triangles would have felt entirely out of place, and I'm glad such contrived crap isn't in the game.

Runner-up: NBC's Handling Of The Summer Olympics - Do you know what's been driving me absolutely crazy when it comes to sports? Whenever there's a game between two teams that I assume would be on free television, it isn't. Whenever that happens, I have to repeatedly ask Google which streaming platform the game is on or if it's only on a sports league's streaming service. So, color me pleasantly surprised that this year, with the Summer Olympics, NBC spread the event's athletic competitions across its many television stations, but they rather plainly put everything on Peacock. They didn't hit you over the head with ads, nor did they lock you into a contract that proves impossible to unsubscribe to after the fact; every Olympic event was on Peacock with or without commentary. It was so plain and simple that it was genuinely relieving. Whether it be gymnastics, indoor cycling, or swimming, NBC put everything on Peacock, and at least typing things into its search engine wasn't laboriously slow or convoluted like it is with Netflix or Amazon Prime these days. There weren't a lot of hoops to jump through, and NBC was pretty honest: if you missed an event, they had you covered.

The "MOST" Ending To A Thing I Watched Or Played - The Penguin

Shit. The ending for The Penguin is BRUTAL, but man, does it do everything it set out to do. Before any of you ask, this first paragraph with this entry will avoid spoilers, and the second one will be completely concealed under a spoiler block because it gets into specific details about what happens in the show. When The Penguin first starts, you discover two recurring themes. One, Colin Farrell's performance is absolutely award-worthy, and his prosthetics are stunning. Farrell's commitment to the role and the realism of the crime-ridden streets his character inhabits sometimes make you forget that you are operating in a world where a man is running around in a black latex bat suit with his best friend being someone who runs around in red briefs over his blue pajamas. Farrell's take on Penguin feels like a mafioso crime boss that could justifiably exist in a Martin Scorsese film or pop up in an episode of The Sopranos. The second recurring theme is the sense of tragedy and melancholy you feel as you watch Oswald "Oz" Cobblepot turn to crime as his out from persistent harassment regarding his physical disfigurement. Throughout the series, there are moments when you feel like there's a redeemable person underneath Oswald's brutal front, even though we have already seen him engage in the most comical villainous efforts against his rivals.

Runner-up: Skald: Against the Black Priory - If you caught my standard GOTY 2024 list, you might have seen that Skald narrowly made my list. That might surprise most, considering the game came out and was met with mostly mixed reviews. However, I played the game after a few balance updates and the introduction of a new character class, the Bard. Presently, Skald stands as the most metal game of 2024. Though it initially presents itself as a dark and moody love letter to Ultima and Wizardry, you quickly discover that the forces of cosmic horror have contaminated the world of Skald. Seeing a troupe of classic fantasy RPG standbys excitedly sign up to rid the world of whatever evil is plaguing their land, only for them to regret doing so as they get consumed by horrors they never could have imagined, was a spectacular treat. The game's ending did prove controversial even among its defenders, but I love it as it plays into the roots of cosmic horror and the genre never having any perfectly "good" endings.

Best Balatro Card Of 2024 - Blueprint

Balatro is a game that took 2024 by storm and, for many, is a clear front-runner for their GOTY after they sunk hundreds of hours into it. I'm no different, having only recently crossed the 150-hour mark and presently have almost every Joker and every playable deck. Before closing out the first part of my multimedia extravaganza, I wanted to give props to the two cards that did me a solid during my many Balatro play sessions. The first was the Blueprint Joker, which copies the ability of the Joker to its immediate right. With late-game antes heavily relying on you needing to buff the levels of your played hands, multipliers, chip bonuses, and more, the Blueprint Joker helps make everything a bit easier, with you being able to double the effect of whatever strategy you currently have at play keeping your run alive. There are limits to the Blueprint card, as it cannot double passive buffs or one-time abilities, but it plays into so many hand types or playstyles that it is hard not to make a beeline for it whenever it crops up. Are you in a position where getting the minimum score isn't a considerable worry? Well, then pair the Blueprint card with a Joker that gets you money! If getting a required score is proving challenging, have Blueprint copy a Multiplyer-based Joker. Blueprint feels busted because if you know what you are doing, and unless the game messes with your Jokers' order, there's little Balatro can do to stop you.

Runner-up: Brainstorm - It's another Joker that copies abilities and makes whatever you are currently doing just a little bit better! The nice thing about Brainstorm is that it is slightly more resistant to Boss Blinds that play around with the order of your Jokers as it copies the effect of the leftmost Joker you have. Still, I give the nod to Blueprint because getting it to show up is generally more straightforward, and the same goes for its spawn requirement. The Cavendish Joker almost was my Runner-up, but getting it to spawn is incredibly annoying. Nonetheless, my most unstoppable run in Balatro had Blueprint, Brainstorm, and Mime all complimenting a single X Multi Joker card. It was great!