This year, I think I'm going to split up my oaties post into two, one for games and one for films. I don't want the posts to be massive, especially since I'm going to continue the tradition I established last year of updating my all-time of-the-year lists along with choosing individual years.

I'll be honest: I'm not feeling great about the state of video games in 2025. I certainly missed some games that might change my opinion here—notable games I didn't get around to that I think I stand a shot of really loving include PEAK, Shadow Labyrinth, Of the Devil, and Kinophobia. I'll mention Despelote as well as a game I watched Eden play most of and thought very highly of. But on the whole, this year leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes me feel like a hater.

I always try to muster precise and thoughtful critiques of games I don't like, especially when I know other people feel differently, and that often means I'm putting myself in the position of thinking as much about the games I don't like as I do about my favorites. This year, though, it felt like I was endlessly pouring out criticism with only brief intermissions for auditions.

Many people, including numerous friends of mine, loved Blue Prince, Donkey Kong Bananza, and Hades II. I found all three of these flawed in ways that were actively repugnant to my design sensibilities. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them, but the fun I had felt like digesting content, that increasingly refined slurry of choose-three mechanics and the steady drip-drip-drip of unlocks. The failures, on the other hand, were born of deep misunderstandings of the player's perspective-in-the-moment—the very experience whose careful shepherding is what I find most compelling about the very best game design.

I was looking forward to Civilization VII so eagerly I took time off work to play it with Liz. It was so disappointing we abandoned it after two days. Even games I broadly quite liked, like Q-Up and Demonschool, were marred by notable design flaws.

That's not to say there weren't games I enjoyed this year, but looking back at them I'm faced with the horrifying realization that everything I really loved this year was a sequel or a spinoff. Fish Fear Me, Monster Train 2, Elden Ring: Nightreign, Death Stranding 2, and Hollow Knight: Silksong all remix or reinvent their source material to some degree, and I think they're all excellent. But the knowledge that none of them (nor Hades II nor Civilization VII) is fully original haunts me.

Game of 2025: Hollow Knight: Silksong

This is kind of a shoo-in choice, if I'm being honest. There are only three games I gave five stars this year. Nightreign is certainly my most played of the three, and (similar to my reasoning for picking Elden Ring as my game of 2022) exploring…

I'm a bit late to the party, but I was just linked Anthony Moser's poetic and impassioned evisceration of LLMs today and I think anyone who hasn't yet read it should do so. I cosign it as an articulation not just of my position on the subject, but of my emotional stance towards it as well. The techno-cultural nexus that we have recently taken to calling "artificial intelligence" is deeply corrosive, and we must not tolerate it. We must not give it air to breathe. When this all falls to an ignominious end, we must dance on its grave that it may never rise again.

all my friends are disowning me for saying I'm "playing a walklike" every time I go outside

is that if anyone were going to have a doppelganger with a spoonerized name it would be her. she's made multiple films about basically that. so while I'm not claiming that Swilda Tinton exists (although I'm not claiming that she doesn't) I just wanna say: it makes sense. it makes sense!

The first thing you gotta understand about the dead is that even if they manage to cling to the afterlife and retain a sense of themselves, they only have access to one verb, and that verb is "haunt". Without a medium like me who knows how to channel their voice and give them words, breaking all the glass in the kitchen is the only way to get your attention and making your friends foam at the mouth and chant gibberish is their best attempt at speaking to you. It doesn't mean they meant you or Samantha any harm. It's important that you understand that.

When you said who you thought it was haunting you? You were half right. The couple who sold you this house, the husband said his mom died here? Well, that's not strictly true. Turns out, it was his dad. And he has unfinished business that he wants you to deal with.

The second thing you gotta understand about the dead is that they don't really have the same concept of privacy that the living do. Or, it's more accurate to say that they can't. When that haunt a something, they more or less become that thing. Its spirit. Technically, its primary nooperceptual locus. Doesn't matter. Point is, if they're haunting a house, they "see" whatever happens in it. They don't even really understand anymore why that would be a problem. It's not personal, just a side effect of the consciousness shift.

So, when I tell you that your entity, the dad, saw you, um, become... transgender? Transition. Right. When he saw you transition, it's not like he was a living person looking in your window while you changed. He just knows because the walls and floors know. And apparently he didn't know, before you arrived. That that was a thing. That people could just... do that.

So. What he wants you to do is talk to his son and tell him that his mom was actually his dad, and get him to update the headstone. His name is Martin. Which, you know, it's hard for the dead to convey specific words. It's mostly just emotions and imagery, which is what makes my job so interesting. But this came through really strong. "Martin".

He seems pretty confident that his son will be cool about this, especially if someone who gets it talks him through what it means. And if he doesn't? Well, the third thing you gotta understand about the dead is that if you piss them off, they get mean. So let's hope that this guy is just happy to have gained a father from beyond the grave.

I enjoyed Bruno's post about the broad category he describes as "knowledge games" a lot, even if he allows the concepts of "genre" and "mechanic" to remain muddier than I would prefer^[1]. But my biggest takeaway was learning about the term "metroidbrania", which is so ridiculous I find it kind of fascinating. It suggests that "metroidvania" is becoming a term so divorced from any intrinsic semantics that it becomes a purely syntactic signifier.

Some of the games listed as belonging to this purported genre are almost luridly disjoint from anything that is typically implied by the (already broad to the point of near-uselessness) base term "metroidvania". I defy anyone to tell me what Her Story has in common with either Metroid or Castlevania^[2] beyond the fact that it is a video game. Some of the games do involve movement through a virtual space, but that's not the same as the distinctive many-keys-that-fit-many-locks pattern that the term implies.

But the fact that the term is silly isn't as interesting as the way in which its silly. It suggests that injecting a word into "metroidvania" functions as an affix converting it into a term for a genre of video games. It works much the same as adding "-ly" to an adjective to make it an adverb, or to use an example that's much more recent, adding "-gate" to a word to make it indicate a scandal.

As such, I propose that we standardize on this. Let us no longer argue about "roguelike" or "roguelite"; these games are now "looptroidvanias". The dual meaning of puzzle games will haunt us no longer now that we can say with full clarity "metroidbrania" or "tetroidvania". JRPGs are now "statroidganias", platformers are "metroidvaniups", and racing games are "fastroidvanias". Finally, to…

I referred to my trip to the Luis Buñuel film festival as "going to the boonies" one time and now I'm facing an excommunication hearing at the cinema society

the world yearns for novelty buttplugs that make funny noises when you fart. train whistle, duck call, kazoo. I'd do it myself but I lack entrepreneurial verve

what was the original one-button interface? that's right. the humble tummy

when you're young, you think: blowing out is the enemy of candle, so air must be the enemy of fire. but no! it is a lie it is a trick it is a ploy by SECRET LOVERS air and fire. they play their games to make you think it's safe to leave them to their smoldering affair. but beware