Best/Worst of 2021

House rules: My end-of-year-lists may contain anything I came across in that particular year. That means the item itself could have been released some time ago. So the best movie may be a Buster Keaton film from 1924.

Best movie:
Dune

With Corona on an all time high, I didn’t watch that many movies this year. And although this is just half a movie and the old one from 1984 did some things better (really), Dune still takes the cake. As Dune was one of the most talked movies of the year, let’s rather move on to the …

Worst movie:
No Time To Die

Oh my god! What utter bullshit! A ridiculous plot! A lot of wasted actors! An unbelievably lame villain! A fierce warning for the next movies to not try to bind all the movies together! A movie so disgustingly bad that I needed a blog post to vent my anger and dissapointment (that post is only nearly finished, I will #laterpost this one)!

Runner up: F9
Somewhere around Fast Five till Furious 7 I actually defended the series. Those movies are at least fun. The Fate of the Furious was lacking, F9 is just insane. And not in a fun way.

Why would anyone spend money on these bullshit scripts? Wait, what, F9 made $726.2 million? No Time To Die even made $774.2 million? Oh, I see. I can’t even complain about these numbers. Cause I also spend money on this crap! Argh!

Best documentary:
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

I have very fond memories of the old Muppet Show episodes I watched as a child. Even though I didn’t know any of the American stars. Sometimes nostalgia kicks in and I read/watch anything I can find about The Muppet Show – and by extension: Sesame Street. If you share a certain fondness for whacky puppets then Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is worth your time.

If they ever produce a collection of old school Sesame Street bloopers I’d buy that in heartbeat. (Till then watch this.)

Best TV series:
Invincible 

Yeah Yeah. I know. Squid Game. Arcane. Inside Job (yes, really). But the winner is of course: Invincible.

Invincible is one of the very best comic series out there. When the TV adaptation was announced I didn’t want to set my hopes too high. But this is an incredibly well done adaptation. I even like the stuff they added. Can’t wait to see the next seasons. And, Amazon: Don’t you dare cancel this!

Best short film I stumbled upon while procrastinating:
Billy’s Ballon by Don Herzfeldt

Best Band:
Doomtree

Best new band, that is actually an old band, I am (a tiny bit) ashamed to say I did not know before: Doomtree. Shoutout to Philip Ackermann, cause I only found the band because of one of his posts on FB.

Feels like all of August I only listened to Doomtree, Dessa, POS, etc. But somehow I still don’t know what most of Doomtree’s songs are about. It’s always the beat I like most. Five seconds in and I already like this song:

Best music video:
Silk Sonic – Smoking out the window

Not the genre I listen to very often. I don’t even recall how I stumbled upon the video. But holy shit! This one drowns in smoothness! Everybody knew that Bruno Mars could sing. But where did Andersan .Paak come from? That guy is the funniest thing in the video. I also give him the Award for Best Theatrics. Just because of his »I wanna die« part I watched this video a dozen times. Hell yeah.

Runner up: Jogger – Nephicide

Another fine gem Spotify put in my Mix of the Week. The song is so good that I wanted to see the video. And the video is even better.

Worst music videos:
the last few Chvrches videos

This is really annoying cause I like the band. I like the music. But the latestet videos are just crap. You got Robert Smith for a song and couldn’t come up with a decent video?

Best video game:
Dead Cells

That was an interesting year in gaming. I »only« finished Obduction, Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, Tainted Grail, Refunct, Death’s Door, Call of the Sea, Hollow Knight, Elec Head, and The Last Campfire.
Because some German streamers started No Deaths Runs in Dark Souls 1 I tried that as well for a few weeks. My best result was beating the game with only two deaths (both Bed of Chaos, no DLC). But I didn’t expect to ever get this good. Praise the sun! Maybe I will try a Soul Level 1 Run next year.

Near the end of the year I started Dead Cells again. For the third time around. The first time I played this the game was still in Early Access. Yesterday I beat the boss for the first time. And it turns out that all this was just a really long tutorial for the real game. Man, I can’t get over all the stuff they put into this game. All the details. All the add ons that keep coming. I am impressed every time I start a new run. Although I don’t see me beating the game on 1 Boss Cell anytime soon [Edit: Nevermind, beat the 1 Boss Cell Run a few days later].

So, yes, Dead Cells. My game of the year.

Runner up: Hollow Knight (Ok, maybe Dead Cells only won because I just played it.)

Best graphics in a videogame:
Hoa

So cute.

Though I have to admit I didn’t finish this one. I got bored after around 2/3 of the game.

Best music in a videogame:
Tainted Grail – Battle song

It rarely happens that I notice music in videogames. Most of the time I am too busy not dying that I tune the music out. Katana Zero is one of the few exceptions. Turrican as well. But then Tainted Grail came along and after the first few notes I stopped playing (easy to do in a round based card game), just to listen to this track.

Worst Video Game Developer/Publisher:
Blizzard

This category only exists to complain about Blizzard. Man, I like (liked) Hearthstone. Classic Mode, Battlegrounds, Duels. But they just keep prioritising monetisation over everything else. I mean, ten bucks for a hero skin was always ridiculously expensive.

This year they added Mercenaries. And started with one of the worst gameplay showcases I have seen in a long time. After watching 45 minutes nobody had a clear grasp how the game was supposed to be played. Other streamers (who had played the game in beta) had to publish own videos to explain what was going on. The only thing that was clear: Blizzard wanted to push their frickin’ pre-order packs. As in: We don’t really care about explaning the game game mode, just shut up and buy stuff!

In summary: A big Fuck You to Blizzard’s managers.

I actually deinstalled Hearthstone for the time being.

So here is another one:

Best comics:
House of X / Powers of X / Dawn of X

Jonathan Hickman did an incredibly ambitious run with colliding universes in Avengers leading to Secret Wars. And now he is doing an even more ambitious relaunch of the X-Men. Moira MacTaggert is suddenly an interesting character (with powers). The mutants are getting their own nation island Krakoa. Xavier, Magneto, Apocalypse, Exodus, Mr. Sinister, Mystique & Sebastian Shaw are working together (more or less). Oh, and they are all basically immortal. Great ideas around every corner, some of them far away in space. Nice additional graphic design. Even the text pages add a lot to the world.
Can’t wait to see how this goes all to hell.

And finally …

The saddest image of 2021

Man, I bought Demon’s Souls in November 2020. I had planned to play this around X-Mas 2020. Now it is one year later and I still haven’t got a Playstation 5. Ok, I didn’t look for it as hard as other people. Then there’s Covid. But still, Sony got me exited for a console (and a game), they can’t deliver.

I am so pissed, I think I will skip this console altogether and wait for Demon’s Souls to arrive on PC.

Note to self: Don’t buy games before you got the console, you idiot!