things i liked 2025

citizen sleeper 2 (video game)
i’m obsessed w the mechanics in this game. i keep going FUCK and describing to my wife that i’m so stressed out and having the best time. there’s a few things - text size is a little small, there’s a lot of lore that could greatly benefit from a codex, i switched to easy mode because i kept getting so Stressed it was ruining my life - but it’s an indie title and i expect several of those things can be patched, and even if they’re not - a little jank is the most minor concern in a game this good. it’s gorgeous, the writing slaps, juni’s my girl.

eusexua (album)
AND IF THEY ASK! U! SAY U FEEL IT BUT DONT CALL! IT! LOVE! EUSEXUA….. EUSEXUAAAAAA

the yeah yeah yeahs (mosquito + it’s blitz!) (albums)
i’ve never heard a yeah yeah yeahs song i didn’t like, so i decided to take the plunge and actually listen to their albums. uh, ya’ll heard abt these guys? mosquito has the ugliest cover art i’ve ever seen in my life, like i literally hate looking at it, but it opens with sacrilege and subway and both those songs go CRAZY.

padam padam (song)
i watched the finale of drag race season 16 and then didn't listen to any other song for a week. sapphira cristal doing this song as a vampire was inspired.

strictly ballroom (movie)
i’m a baz luhrmann stan but i’d only seen three of his movies so i wanted to expand my palette. this is the most baz luhrmann film normies can handle before they start getting scared, but it’s also just a solid straightforward film about how good it is to dance. i love baz luhrmann films because the villains in them always look at the camera and go “i hate love and art” and then they get their shit rocked at the end. hell yeah

abracadabra (song)
this song consumed the first half of my february. this is the only song i care about right now. thank you lady gaga for inventing art

boy clothes (song)
this song consumed the second half of my february. just kind of impeccable beat. i need it on drag race

of the devil episode 1 (video game)
THIS GAME IS FUCKING CRAZYYYYY. what if light yagami, reigen arataka, and phoenix wright merged into a criminal defense lawyer and then you put her in an intelligently written cyberpunk dystopia. the mechanics have swag and the art direction has yolo. a game written by people who give a shit and drawn by people with taste. also go play model employee.

severance season 1 (tv show)
YEAH OKAY this isn’t news to anyone. but severance is crazy good. i just finished season 1 with my wife - getting into ongoing shows is scary to me, because i like to know if things are good or not from the jump, but i was screaming and yelling at the season 1 finale, so hopefully season 2 lives up to it.

mayhem (album)
SO PUT UR PAWS ALL OVER ME! U ZOMBIEBOY!

ma meilleure ennemie (song)
i did not enjoy arcane season 2 very much (i thought season 1 was pretty good), and maybe this is because i have a jinx & ekko bias, but i thought this song was the highlight of the season. i’ve been listening to it a lot. reminded me how much i love stromae and got me to relisten to racine carree, which still fucks severely. it is fucked up that imagine dragons got to make a cameo in season 1 and yet stromae and pomme didn’t get to be at the party in season 2. could’ve been cool.

pillars of eternity 2: deadfire (video game)
i waited a bit to put this on the list, and at the time of this writing i still haven’t finished the game so maybe the ending sucks, but you know what? i’ve had a really good time with this game. in poe1 i promised hylea that i would return the souls that were lost to the children that lost them, and instead i put them back in the wheel of reincarnation. i never expected this to come up in poe2, and if it did, i expected her to say “i’m mad at you, but i’m putting it aside because the world is ending”. instead, she did say something along those lines - and then promised me she’d left a gift on my ship when i woke up, and i awoke to my boat being covered in bird shit, and two new items in my inventory (birdshit sails and birdshit deck). this is such a narrow set of actions to take, and yet the game had unique reactivity to them. thank you, pillars of eternity 2: deadfire. also xoti and tekehu are the loves of my life.
edit: finished the game. yeah full recommend. endings a little rushed but it wasn't bad. let's party

dead channel sky (album)
clipping has never released a bad album ever in their lives. mirrorshades pt 2 is a particular fave but all the songs are good.
edit: dead channel sky PLUS is even better, SOMEHOW?

scarlet hollow (game)
okay listen it's a replay, but it got a revamp this year and i found a bunch of new to me stuff so i’m counting it. please go play scarlet hollow. it really is one of the best games around.

virgin (album)
it's fucking good!

alien stage (webseries)
alien stage ended this year! it was crazy good! don't make a season 2! i don't want a season 2! every song is a banger. mizi and hyuna are my faves and in my heart they had a messy rebound phase with each other. they wouldn't. but also walk with me.

i wish (song)
ummm i saw an amazing digital circus edit that used this song and then realized that it’s maybe one of the best songs ever made

aaahh men! (song)
i’ve been on-again off-again with doja cat but this one really grabbed me by the throat. i’m not the only person who became obsessed after her snl performance of this song, but if you haven’t seen it - it’s *really* good.

occlude (game)
fun little card game! it’s super short, which is fine by me.

hundred line: last defense academy (game)
i haven’t finished this game as of this writing (i’m a measly 150 hours in) but i’ll count it anyways because it’s stupid big and also i’ve spent a lot of time enjoying it. the audacity of a game with 100 endings got me in there, in addition to featuring writing from kotaro uchikoshi, who is one of my favorite game writers. the thing is, with 100 endings, they can’t all be winners - but as much as the lows are low, the highs are *very* high. my favorite characters are hiruko and kurara, which means i spend a lot of time seeing my faves die.

road to empress (game)
get souped idiot.
(jokes aside. the scene where you go through four different failed endings because you want to save the princess’s boyfriend so bad. and then are forced to tell her there's no possible way to save him. is one of my top gaming moments of 2025. i can't bring myself to hate gaoyang no matter what.)

animal crossing (game)
my wife has been on an animal crossing kick, and i kept looking over and going oh… that looks pretty fun… so i bought animal crossing, five years after everyone else got into animal crossing during the pandemic. i don't really like cozy games, but i really like this one! it's nice that it feels like it has a natural “end point”, like there's points where you run out of things to do and have to turn it off and wait for tomorrow. it's very cute. i like making outfits for my little guy and decorating my island. maybe i actually like cozy games. maybe i need to give stardew valley another try.

pillars of eternity 1 (game)
it's weird to put this after poe2, right? but they recently patched in the beta for turn based mode, and my main complaint about poe1 was that i didn't like the combat (but looooved it in poe2) so! hey! i've been replaying poe1! it's really good! go play it!

fallout: new vegas (game)
i have not finished new vegas yet, but i’m coming to terms with the fact that video games are long and i'm putting anything that brings me joy on this list. i really, really like new vegas. this should not surprise anyone, because i have never met someone who played new vegas and didn't like it.

soul of sovereignty (game)
ggdg is maybe the best writer in games right now and i’m not joking.

press reset (book)
i read this on a cruise, because cruises get me to turn off my phone and read. oh my god the games industry is soooo fucked guys.

the tragedy of heterosexuality (book)
for the record i tastefully hid the cover of this book while i read it on deck, but jane ward approaches the subject of heterosexuality with a lot of empathy and care - this is not a book about how it’s evil or stupid or unenlightened to be straight, i promise. it’s really refreshing to read a feminist text that does not treat heterosexuality as “default”, that does not treat attraction to women as synonymous with dehumanization of women, and that imagines a future in which men and women learn to love what they have in common instead of fetishizing what makes them different.

nona the ninth (book)
my last cruise book! started it on the cruise, finished it when i was home sick with a fever. i really love tamsyn muir’s prose. i would die for nona, but i don’t think she’d let me.