Kingdom Hearts III - A Happy Ending, Finally

We live in a year I'm told is called "2019". But you would never guess that playing Kingdom Hearts III. During the decade and a half wait since Kingdom Hearts II, we've jumped two console generations. Everything seems to have changed in gaming. AAA titles are now enormous open world leviathans. The big studios make multiplayer games with infinite loops built around loot and cosmetic microtransactions. The action-adventure genre is dominated by Souls-likes. Combat is now supposed to be punishingly hard yet sophisticated and precise. Kingdom Hearts III refuses to acknowledge that any time has passed. It is proudly a PlayStation 2 game on a PlayStation 4 disc.

You look back at all the hallmarks of gaming history and it seems like director Tetsuya Nomura hasn't played any of them. Dark Souls, The Witcher 3, Mass Effect, Skyrim, they've all had nearly no influence on the long-awaited final product here. Kingdom Hearts III's combat is floaty, button-mashing nonsense. The worlds are single-player, mostly linear, and lacking a galaxy of sidequests. Loot is not the goal, you barely craft, and there are definitely no microtransactions. Instead you jam on the X-button, beat up Heartless, watch a few cutscenes, and then break up the action with a minigame. You don't see games like this anymore, and I love that defiance of all trends that Kingdom Hearts III represents.

It was fitting that a game I cannot believe actually exists at all is one that is utterly inexplicable in today's AAA landscape. I've been waiting for Kingdom Hearts III for so long that the wait itself has become a fundamental part of my being. How many times have I complained in E3 posts about the lack of Kingdom Hearts III? Now that it is here, I feel like a whole phase of my life has passed. And considering the epic mountain of hype I build around Kingdom Hearts III, it seems inevitable that the game would disappoint. I waited eleven years for Versus XIII and got Final Fantasy XV instead. It's 2019, the Starbucks guy wants to be President Centrist, Tom Brady won the Super Bowl for the ten thousandth time, and Bohemian Rhapsody is about to win Best Picture. We aren't allowed happy endings.

Or are we?

'Dragon Ball Super: Broly' is Peak Dragon Ball

When I first started writing reviews ten years ago, Dragon Ball was a has-been. It had a place in history, but it had been long since superseded by younger, hotter shonen anime like Bleach. In 2019, however, Bleach is the has-been, and the Goku Renaissance is in full force. There are new episodes of Dragon Ball Super airing on a reborn Toonami, there's Dragon Ball FighterZ, there's Dragon Ball Z Abridged, and there's the All Systems Goku podcast. If you want fan or official releases, you are drowning in Dragon Ball #content. And the latest film, Dragon Ball Super: Broly has had what amounts to a major motion picture release and made millions at the box office. This is the greatest come-back tour in anime history.

I have been happy to see Goku and Vegeta put on new shows for the fans. But like an old band reuniting, they can play the songs but can they still rock when they were in their twenties? At some point you're just a cover artist of yourself. The previous movies, Battle of Gods and Resurrection F were fun little reunion shows. However, it never felt like the characters or the franchise were pushing themselves in any way. It isn't that I dislike the new Dragon Ball Super series, it just never felt relevant or important. Super is their retirement. I don't want to age-shame here, I'm glad the Saiyans are still in shape and can still work this late into their careers. But when you take away nostalgia, how much is left?

Dragon Ball Super: Broly is the first new Dragon Ball story that feels ambitious to me. I haven't been as excited about Goku since grade school. Broly doesn't push our favorite characters to new places.  Goku and Vegeta have done this a thousand times before and act like it. Luckily it isn't really their movie. And story isn't the draw here in Broly: The Movie. This is instead a grand showcase of modern anime techniques. Dragon Ball has never looked this good or been this experimental with its art design. The film's plot is just an excuse to watch nearly an hour of shonen brawling. This time, Toei Animation wanted to make the greatest Dragon Ball fights ever. They succeeded.

Ten or Eleven or Thirteen Good Games From 2018

This latest Best 10 or So Games of the Year List includes two JRPGs, one tactical RPG, one Metroidvania, one 3D action game, two platformers, two pretentious art games, and a Smash Bros. 2018 was not really a year where I branched out all that far in terms of my gaming interests. In other years I've put FPSs and visual novels and Souls-likes and competitive online games in my Top 10-ish Lists. That didn't happen too much in 2018. I did explore a bit and tried a roguelike and a Soulsbourne and a survival game. In the end Metal Gear Survive was the worst game I played last year, I decided Bloodborne was bad for me, and I got bored of Dead Cells. Not every experiment works out.

Instead 2018 was a year of going back to my bullshit. I bought a Switch this year, it made my life measurably better, and with it, I focused on my bullshit. I don't feel too much regret. I don't think this list is anywhere near as strong as the 2017 list, but 2018 wasn't nearly as strong of a year. 2017s don't happen every year. Maybe I indulged in too much comfort food last year and maybe I have a noticeable double-chin now and maybe I need to join a gym. It happens. 2018 was a stressful year for many people for many reasons, and you need a safety valve to find joy in your life. Maybe that safety valve is going back to your gaming bullshit and really enjoying a new Pokemon game. I can't help liking certain things.

What I do regret is the games I missed. This happens every year, inevitably. I was physically exhausted by the scale of most big AAA games like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. I was repulsed by everything I read about Far Cry 5. I actually never played the biggest game in the universe right now, Fortnite. Red Dead Redemption 2 just didn't seem like much fun. Other stuff like Monster Hunter World scared me by their size. Then there's other stuff I meant to play at some point and never found the time: Dragon Ball FighterZ, Ni No Kuni 2, Hitman 2, the new Gwent game, Donut County, BattleTech, and like a million other games. Finally there were a lot of other games that I've put off thanks to the convenient excuse of "I'm waiting for the Switch release". (See: Dragon Quest XI.) But let's not dwell on the regrets or the rationalizations, let's dwell on the good parts of last year.

So here's ten or eleven or thirteen really good games I really liked in 2018. Enjoy.

Ranking Every 2018 Movie I Saw + Top 15

This year I want to do things a little differently. It's always a tough question every year of whether I should I rank Top 10, Top 15, or even Top 20. How about this time we go balls-deep and do a Top 60? The traditional Best of the Best Top 15 will lie at the bottom of this post in its usual bloated many thousands of words glory. But before that, there's forty-five other movies to talk about. Plus, I didn't review of most of thhese besides maybe a tweet somewhere, so there's a lot of unfinished business to talk about.

2018 was a very good year for movies. We are still deep in the Late 2010s Horror Renaissance. People are going to get nostalgic for this era once it ends. I bet in 2040 we'll see a new Stranger Things set in 2018. Superhero movies still rule all of existence to a frightening degree. And it seems like the traditional Oscar Bait studio drama circle has totally dried up, leaving only things like Green Book or Mary Queen of Scots, which were too bland for me to waste my time seeing.

But the most interesting stuff seems to be how movies are distributed versus how they're made. Netflix is a monster that seems to grow ever more monstrous as time goes by. They don't even need to market their movies and somehow #BirdBox will end up trending almost immediately. It almost feels like Netflix is the new mainstream and actually going out to see a movie is some kind of rebellious anti-social activity. It also doesn't help that Netflix movies are still mostly terrible. Sometimes you'll get a Roma, but mostly you'll get things like the No. 60 on my list. Also let us not forget the failure of MoviePass. I don't know where movies are going, or where society is going. But even as the world breaks itself apart into chaos, we're getting good shit at the movies. I already told you what my Favorite Movie of the Year is back in the winter, so don't be too surprised

Sadly, it's a long way down to that No. 1. We instead start with the Worst Movie of 2018:

On Plagiarism, IGN's Filip Miucin, and Loving to Write

This past week there were two huge stories in the video game world. One was a damning piece by Kotaku's Cecilia D'Anastasio 'Inside the Culture of Sexism At Riot Games'. This is everything that journalism should be: cutting, exhaustively researched, and deeply important. I feel a natural tendency to support fellow writers in this age of "fuck the media" and "choose your own reality". GamerGate loves to target Kotaku in particular as some conspiracy house creating nonsensical hot takes. But this article is definitive proof they're wrong: Kotaku is doing some of the best work covering this industry. Great job, I'm actually jealous of it.

The other big story is a much more unfortunate one, and that's this shit with IGN. That's the one I'm devoting this entire post to. I just wanted to bring up the Kotaku article because not every journalist is the newly unemployed former-IGN Nintendo Editor, Filip Miucin. Miucin in a single review made IGN look bad and ruined his career forever. I've been obsessing about this case for the past few days, which you'd know if you follow my twitter. As somebody who likes writing, would die to have Miucin's former job, and wants gaming media to be improve, Miucin's stupidity (there's no other word for it) is deeply disappointing to me.

My first reaction to the accusations that an IGN Editor stole a Dead Cells review was to assume it was bullshit. It made no sense to me. The original review was written by a very small Youtube channel called Boomstick Gaming. Not knowing who they were I could see this as being some smear piece or just somebody misunderstanding the situation. As I said, I want to support my fellow writers and wanted to give Miucin the benefit of the doubt. Games media is accused of all kinds of things, and we need to band together. I watched Boomstick's video and for most of it still thought this was a mistake. A lot of the sentences were just standard things you write while making a basic review. However by the end of Boomstick's video it was clear this was not a coincidence. This was a big problem.