Best/Worst of 2025

Stuff I liked. Stuff I despised. Just another list.

Monday, 05.01.2026 × Books × Comics × Movies × Music × TV × Videogames

House rules: My end-of-year lists may contain anything I came across during that particular year. That means the item itself could have been released some time ago. So the best novel may be a sci-fi classic from 1951.

Let’s indeed start with

Best novel

There is no doubt about it: Dungeon Crawler Carl (DCC) is the best book series I have ever read. Best novel of 2025 goes to Book 7: This Inevitable Ruin.

DCC is probably the most famous example of LitRPG, a literary genre that combines the mechanics of computer RPGs with science fiction and fantasy novels. Here’s a quick synopsis of the series: Aliens come to Earth for the next universe-wide televised Dungeon Crawl. The whole planet is quickly terraformed into a multi-level dungeon. Every human who enters the dungeon will fight for his life in an absurd world filled with fantasy creatures, traps, and items. Like any true RPG, this includes picking a new race, leveling, and hoping for overpowered items. Among those who enter the dungeon are our heroes, Coast Guard veteran Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut.

Yes, that sounds weird. Cause it is weird. But if you feel at home in nerd culture, this should be right up your alley. It has a bit of everything. Fantasy, Science-Fiction, interesting game mechanics, charming characters, politics, loads of mayhem and death, and some hilarious events. It is funny, sad, and entertaining. It is also a miracle how Matt Dinniman has managed to write seven books since 2020‽ The next one – A Parade of Horribles – is scheduled for 2 June 2026.

If you happen to have Kindle Unlimited, you can read the whole series there.

Best Movie

This year, I managed to watch 47 movies. Decent, I guess. I finally watched Casablanca (1942) for the first time. And I am pretty sure this was the first time I saw Jaws (1975) completely. Both because I am still working on that 100 Movies Poster.

I was quite fond of the horror movies Abigail (2024) and Weapons (2025), but I am giving Best Movie to KPop Demon Hunters (2025). Not because of the story, but because of the animation and the music. It’s energetic and entertaining. And it is hard to ignore the huge impact it had on release (at least in my bubble).

Huh, KPop Demon Hunters? What about Marty Supreme? One Battle After Another? No Other Choice? Or a dozen others? Well, I haven’t seen any of those.

Worst Movie

This one was a huge surprise for me, cause this award goes to: Sharknado. When I saw the trailer in 2013, I thought this would make a really good Trash movie for a lazy Sunday afternoon. The premise is bonkers but fun. I never heard anything good about this movie, but surely those people just couldn’t appreciate the crazy setting?

It turns out the premise is not the problem. It is everything else. The writer / director / producers must have thought: Well, if the audience buys the braindead plot, we can handle everything else in a braindead fashion as well. And that just doesn’t work at all.

Here are some big annoyances, with minor spoilers

The film opens on a boat. The whole sequence is irrelevant for the rest of the movie. But what annoyed me most was the little idiot who thought to steal some money and then flee. On a small boat! In high waves! Where did he plan to go?
There is one scene where sharks swim into a house. There is enough water for them to swim comfortably on the base level. But as soon as the heroes escape through the front door, there is no water on the outside.
These discrepancies happen a lot. Sometimes there is enough water for sharks to swim in. In the next scene, you see characters standing in the same area, in barely a puddle of water. Sometimes there is supposed to be a Tornado nearby, but the characters feel no wind at all.
At the end, the main character manages to shoot a shark with a small pistol from several hundred meters away.
The last scene with the main character and a big shark could have been decent, if they hadn’t added one seriously idiotic surprise.

I am ok with trash movies, but try to keep some logic/physics in scenes intact.

Most unfortunate missed opportunity movie

This was a hard pill to swallow. I like the novel The Long Walk a lot. I am not sure that the story is a good fit for a movie, but I was excited nonetheless. The movie is good for the most part. But then, as so often, they changed the ending and butchered a perfectly good story. The result is not completely bad, the movie somehow still got 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, but for my money, it boils down to the usual: Ignore the movie, read the book!

Best TV/Streaming series

With many series, I lose interest directly after the first or second episode. Stranger Things? Stopped after the pilot. Fallout? Stopped after the pilot. Severance? Stopped midway in the pilot. So it was quite a surprise that I actually binge-watched Foundation Season 1.

For me, the visuals, the epic story, and the Cleon clone dynamics are the best parts. I don’t know why some viewers complained about the time jumps; that is just another plus point.

I stopped after two episodes of season two. Cause I have decided to read the Foundation books first. At least the first trilogy. And of course, there are major differences between books and series. The books themselves would not make good TV.

Best TV/Streaming series to watch on the side

I hate cooking. I rarely watch game shows – except for Taskmaster and Game Changer. But I quite enjoy Culinary Class Wars.

Best Video game

I finally finished Returnal in January, but it was a tiny bit too difficult for my taste. The Lies of P DLC was pretty good, except for that shitty last boss. Blue Prince should have been right up my alley. But just like Outer Wilds, I stopped playing after two rounds. Somehow, roguelike puzzles are not right for me. I also like Fever Meme and Level Devil, but the best video game of 2025 for me is:

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. This one is on par with Lies of P. The game does a lot of stuff differently from other Soulslikes. You have a skill tree. You get Madness. There are tons of options for different builds. The level design is the best feature. Everything is connected. You can get lost. You can find a lot of hidden areas, enemies, and secrets. The level design feels even better than Dark Souls 1! I only had one complaint – enemies could combo you to death, but a patch solved this.

Status: 33 hours played, not finished! Cause then another gem entered my life, which surprisingly developed into the

Worst video game

Hollow Knight – Silksong has some glorious aspects: Great design, great animations, plenty of secrets, more secrets, and little details around every corner. The difficulty is maybe a bit too much, but manageable. I liked the fights against Widow and The Last Judge.

But Team Cherry added so many annoying game mechanics. I just hate to farm for money; this is just a waste of time. The runbacks to the bosses are unnecessary. The troll moments with some of the benches are not funny. And Bilewater is now my most hated area in any video game.

I can understand why people love the game; they somehow ignore the shitty parts. But a Game Of The Year this is certainly not.

Status: 90 hours played. I am near the end of Act 2. But then I decided to prepare for Act 3. And just lost any interest in Bilewater.

Too many parts feel like a big »Fuck you!« from Team Cherry to every casual who liked Hollow Knight. This game put a huge dent in my love for video games. (TODO: Finish my big rant about some of the game mechanics, after I finish the game.)

Best Comic

So, this year I’ve read around 72 graphic novels. Lots of Trade paperbacks (TPBs); some one-shots; some old Asterix comics from the early 90s, before I gave my collection to the next generation.

The best of the bunch: Batman: Killing Time by Tom King and David Marquez; Batman: One Bad Day – The Riddler by Tom King again and Mitch Gerads; and Absolute Batman: The Zoo by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta / Gabriel Hernández Walta. So yes, the Batman wins all three spots.

I am putting Absolute Batman: The Zoo at the top here. After all the What ifs?, Elseworlds, Ultimate, and other Timelines, I didn’t think that I needed just another new timeline / new universe. But this version with Bruce Wayne as a 24-year-old blue-collar civil engineer and Alfred Pennyworth as an agent of MI6 is much much better than I expected. Can’t wait to read more about this universe’s versions of The Joker and Bane.

Worst Comic

For every good comic story, there are a dozen bad ones. This year, I endured some lame The Flash TPBs; I don’t like any of the stuff with the Still, Strength, and Sage Forces. They are just a lame copy from the Lantern Spectrum. I also don’t understand the hype around BRZRKR. The only interesting thing is that it was created and written by Keanu Reeves and Matt Kindt. That part I understand. But the story is just utter bullshit. The 12 issues don’t even lead to a satisfying end.

But nothing was as bad as the absolutely underwhelming Spider-Man: Reign. Thirty years into Spider-Man’s future, New York City is under the control of Mayor Waters and his brutal city police force, »The Reign«. Both superheroes and supervillains are outlawed as »Super-Terrorists«. Can an old and fragile Peter Parker stop them?

Some say this story is »inspired« by Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. I go one step further: A lot of stuff is just copied and integrated into Spider-Man’s universe. The whole setup doesn’t work for me. Where are all the other heroes of the Marvel Universe? The art is meh. And the ending is even worse. How did this get a second series?

Most played song

Spotify’s recap tells me: 12,448 minutes streamed. 1,966 songs streamed. 302 different genres (that is, 302 of the weird sub-sub-genres on Spotify). Of course, I don’t know how often I listened to which song. But this one here was mentioned in my recaps for Spotify and YouTube, so I am going with: Declan Welsh and the Decadent West – Inaction.

And for the German ausdience I add the

Best new band I discovered

Spotify hat mir im September Deutsche Vita in meinen Mix der Woche gespült. NNDW aus Berlin, ein Deutscher und ein Italiener, da bietet sich der Name an.

Extrapunkte gibt es für die Vermarktung. Weil sich die beiden in der Regel in die 80er zurückversetzen. Die Videos sind schwarz/weiß, kombiniert mit altem Material. Es gibt sogar eine Pseudo-Doku. Ich mag es so sehr, ich werde mir ein T-Shirt bestellen!