media round-up
Dec. 26th, 2023 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidewaysFinal round-up for 2023!
• After a fairly poor year for completing video games, Inscryption came swinging in at the eleventh hour and absolutely consumed me for a week straight. It's one of those games where I earnestly believe the less you know going in the more fun you'll have, so I will simply say the first 12 or so hours I spent playing were nail-bitingly edge-of-my-seat, shaking-various-friends-in-disbelief delightful and I would recommend it for that alone.
• Inscryption also introduced me to the genre of roguelike card games in general and, seeking more of the same, I picked up Slay the Spire and have been really enjoying it too! Wholly different aesthetic and no real narrative, but the gameplay is apparently just what I'm craving right now. I've so far cleared the three base characters and a Daily Climb, and am wrestling with the Watcher.
• Another eleventh hour winner: Scavenger's Reign finally came out in October and oh my god. Oh my god. I've never seen a piece of media that felt more like rubbing a CJ Cherryh book directly onto my eyeballs. An animated series based very loosely on an earlier short film, Scavenger's Reign follows three groups of survivors stranded on an alien planet trying to return to their ship. The cast is rounded and interesting, the themes are well-conceived and explored in reasonable depth, but what really sang out to me is a rare understanding of the enormous complexity and interconnectedness of a natural ecosystem. The creature designs are incredibly varied, and I don't think I've ever seen a work that so emphatically made me think, oh, this is what it would be like to be an alien in the Earth wilderness. Our biodiversity is so great it's difficult to reimagine in fiction; Scavenger's Reign might just have managed it. A caution to potential viewers, though: the body horror is fairly extreme and best compared to what you'll see in your average Attenborough insect documentary.
• Lori and I had a movie night to watch A Muppet Christmas Carol, after which she also introduced me to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. The former remains an amusing if inherently saccharine classic; the latter was weird as hell but deliberately so and I think they succeeded in what they were trying to do.
• Spirited (2022) is the other Christmas flick for the year, and it was... okay. The musical numbers and choreography are genuinely catchy and fun, but it needed to be at least half an hour shorter and it contained too much Will Ferrell for me, a person who does not care for Will Ferrell. (I'm sure he's a perfectly nice person, I just find his acting archetype grating.)
• After a fairly poor year for completing video games, Inscryption came swinging in at the eleventh hour and absolutely consumed me for a week straight. It's one of those games where I earnestly believe the less you know going in the more fun you'll have, so I will simply say the first 12 or so hours I spent playing were nail-bitingly edge-of-my-seat, shaking-various-friends-in-disbelief delightful and I would recommend it for that alone.
• Inscryption also introduced me to the genre of roguelike card games in general and, seeking more of the same, I picked up Slay the Spire and have been really enjoying it too! Wholly different aesthetic and no real narrative, but the gameplay is apparently just what I'm craving right now. I've so far cleared the three base characters and a Daily Climb, and am wrestling with the Watcher.
• Another eleventh hour winner: Scavenger's Reign finally came out in October and oh my god. Oh my god. I've never seen a piece of media that felt more like rubbing a CJ Cherryh book directly onto my eyeballs. An animated series based very loosely on an earlier short film, Scavenger's Reign follows three groups of survivors stranded on an alien planet trying to return to their ship. The cast is rounded and interesting, the themes are well-conceived and explored in reasonable depth, but what really sang out to me is a rare understanding of the enormous complexity and interconnectedness of a natural ecosystem. The creature designs are incredibly varied, and I don't think I've ever seen a work that so emphatically made me think, oh, this is what it would be like to be an alien in the Earth wilderness. Our biodiversity is so great it's difficult to reimagine in fiction; Scavenger's Reign might just have managed it. A caution to potential viewers, though: the body horror is fairly extreme and best compared to what you'll see in your average Attenborough insect documentary.
• Lori and I had a movie night to watch A Muppet Christmas Carol, after which she also introduced me to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. The former remains an amusing if inherently saccharine classic; the latter was weird as hell but deliberately so and I think they succeeded in what they were trying to do.
• Spirited (2022) is the other Christmas flick for the year, and it was... okay. The musical numbers and choreography are genuinely catchy and fun, but it needed to be at least half an hour shorter and it contained too much Will Ferrell for me, a person who does not care for Will Ferrell. (I'm sure he's a perfectly nice person, I just find his acting archetype grating.)
no subject
Date: 2023-12-26 03:48 am (UTC)Scavenger's Reign is on my to-watch list; you're the second person I've seen giving it rave reviews. I'm looking forward to checking it out!
no subject
Date: 2023-12-26 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-26 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-26 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-28 08:33 am (UTC)I liked Slay the Spire as well - I think I played it solid for a month or so? But then I stopped playing and didn't go back to it. I hope you're more persistent than me.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-29 03:36 am (UTC)It's not something that's sprung a large fandom on Tumblr, though, and that tends to be what spoils me for game details! Friends and DW are much better about passing along recs without ruining it.
I doubt I'll play StS to its fullest extent, but I'd like to at least clear all the characters c:
no subject
Date: 2023-12-30 04:32 pm (UTC)Yeah, I guess that's it. I get a lot less stuff spoilt for me now I'm not on there, and yeah if there's not the fandom, then that won't happen anyway.
That sounds like a decent goal.