I felt obligated to write some sort of year-end recap post despite feeling disconnected from the broader anime community so here it is.
Anime:
Much of my anime watching in 2024 was through groupwatches of series and movies that are at least ten years old. I enjoyed Jormungand season 1, the Little Witch Academia OVA and The Enchanted Parade movie, Log Horizon season 1, Magical Sisters Yoyo & Nene, Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, Noragami season 1, the Record of Lodoss War OVA series and Yona of the Dawn. Majestic Prince, the Toward the Terra TV series and Working!! season 1 were okay – watchable but not remarkable.
On my own, I watched the first episodes of Bartender Glass of God, Dandadan, Gods’ Games We Play and the Spice and Wolf remake last year but didn’t get around to continuing any of them, though I would like certainly like to in 2025.
Games:
- I started Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in early December and I’ve been enjoying the exploration and adventure puzzle moments (and taking pictures of cats and other things to earn points for upgrades).
- I completed PowerWash Simulator‘s career mode on PS5 and I’m playing through it again on Xbox and PC via Steam Deck, mostly while watching videos at the same time.
- I played through Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery over a couple of nights before it left Xbox Game Pass at the end of October. I liked its odd sense of humor but it felt like a not difficult adventure game with straightforward mechanics such as exchanging a series of items with characters that you obtained from other characters in order to progress.
- I played a bunch of TCG Card Shop Simulator on PC for about a week but I felt kinda burned out by the upgrade loop. It’s in early access and I might jump back in when it hits version 1.0 or as additional features are added.
- I played some of Cyberpunk 2077‘s DLC expansion Phantom Liberty and I might chip away at that more in 2025, particularly the Dogtown missions.
- I got into GTA Online for about a month and tried to avoid getting killed by griefers using rocket launchers or helicopters while doing missions to upgrade my nightclub.
- I started playing Infinity Nikki on PS5 in December and the interface and movement feels like Genshin Impact, though it has different gameplay elements such as outfits that enable you to catch bugs, go fishing, and groom animals for fur items.
- I tried out Zenless Zone Zero on PS5 when it was released in July. I appreciated its real-time action battle system and its street-style sensibilities but I haven’t gone back to it after about a week.
- I played a lot of MLB The Show 24 throughout the year (no surprise, I am a big baseball fan) and some Helldivers 2 in solo missions on PS5.
- I played a couple hours each of Tom Clancy’s The Division and The Division 2 solo and they were okay shooters. (I quickly realized why those are multiplayer-focused games during some of the shootouts…)
- I played a handful of hours of Dead Island 2 through Xbox Game Pass before getting bored of it.
- I started playing the Pokemon TCG mobile game and finally learned the rules through the in-game tutorials.
- Finally, I have pretty much lost interest in gacha games and battle passes after realizing that my time might be better spent playing other games and doing something else besides earning digital assets that are locked within a specific game/app. I do admit I was sad to see World Flipper to shut down; even though I mainly used auto mode during missions, I loved the character designs in that game. Similarly, I recall liking the variety of character artists in Fire Emblem Heroes and that might be one mobile game I return to every once in a while for its turn-based strategy element.
Archive project: I’ve wanted to migrate posts from before October 2014 back onto this current version of the blog by recovering them from the Internet Archive and fixing up the formatting. However, some of those older posts are very focused on news of the time (or kind of cringe) and I wonder if anyone would even want to read any of my decade-old posts.
I also want to roll out a re-design if and when I start posting more regularly.
