The Best of 2024 in Games and Media

This is what I watched, read, and played over the last twelve months. Some of it was really good.

Dec 31, 2024

This week’s update is a special post due to the pending new year. I’m on vacation and assiduously avoiding the news, so it’s time for the annual roundup of my year in media.

Like many obsessive nerds, I keep close track of the movies I’ve seen, the books I’ve read, the games I’ve played, and pretty much all the media I have consumed. So here are the unnecessary details and my picks for best of the year.

(Please note that this post uses referral codes in some of the product links which may provide Ludo Ergo with a small commission. I usually label them, but there’s so many links in this list, it really wrecked the flow. Proceed at your own risk.)

Film

This year, my biggest change in consumption was movies. In 2023, I had a full-time office job, and in 2024 not so much. So thanks to my beloved Alamo Season Pass, I saw 30 different films in an actual theater, up 36% from 22 the year before. (My all time record, set during the work-from-home pandemic year of 2021, was 45 showings of 42 different films.)

Here’s my picks for the best movies I saw in a theater:

Best film of the year: Dune: Part II
Runners-up: The Substance, MaXXXine
Best documentary: ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!
Best classic film: Wes Craven’s New Nightmare

I also watched 37 movies at home that were entirely new to me. Some of them are quite old or quite bad or both (shoutout to How Did This Get Made) but they’re still on my list. Highlights include that I finally saw Coco and it made me cry, and Conclave was so good I regretted missing it in the theater.

Television

I watched fifteen new TV shows this year on streaming services. I consumed the entire run of the show if it was available, or the newest season if it’s an ongoing series.

Best TV show I saw this year: The Expanse, seasons 1-6

I finally got to watch The Expanse after reading the entire book series last year. I highly recommend both versions. This may be the best TV adaptation of a book series ever… and it stood in stark relief to much more disappointing new releases (cough cough House of the Dragon cough cough).

Runners-up: The Penguin, Taskmaster seasons 17, 18

Books

I read significantly fewer books this year than I usually do, averaging about 1 every 10 days. That surprised me a little, because I assumed not having to go into an office would give me plenty of time to make a dent in my tsundoku, but instead I spent more time re-watching old episodes of Parks & Recreation, Taskmaster, and Law & Order.

Best new fiction: Polostan by Neal Stephenson
Best back catalog fiction: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Best new non-fiction: Our Moon by Rebecca Boyle
Best back catalog non-fiction: Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams
Best 10-year anniversary edition with new chapters and a celebrity introduction: Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It by some guy who needs you to buy a copy

Video Games

You also might assume that a self-employed, work from home writer would procrastinate by playing lots of video games, but my consumption of such dropped precipitously, dominated by just a handful of games that I obsessed over.

Best new game: Balatro
Runners-up: Tactical Breach Wizards, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Best back catalog game: Per Aspera
Runners-up: Northgard, Marvel Snap
Still playing compulsively eight years after release: Civilization VI

Roleplaying Games

This was a big year for tabletop RPGs. Dungeons & Dragons, the grandaddy of them all, updated its fifth edition ruleset after ten insanely successful years. And the booming popularity of roleplaying games in general has kicked off a new golden age of indie RPGs.

Best rules update: Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Core Rulebooks
Best box set: Mothership Core Set
Best new game: Triangle Agency
Best new nonfiction: Dungeons & Dragons – the Making of Original D&D
Best conversion: Grimtooth’s Old School Traps
Best art book: Homage to the Player’s Handbook
Did I mention the best 10-year anniversary edition of a D&D book with new chapters and a celebrity introduction?

Podcasts

I listen to a lot of audio, and it’d be impossible to pick a single episode, so per my convention in previous years, here’s an alphabetical list of the podcasts that I am currently subscribed to and regularly enjoying:

Behind the Bastards, Blank Check, Bonanas for Bonanza, Cautionary Tales, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Doughboys, How Did This Get Made?, If Books Could Kill, In The Dark, Search Engine, Taskmaster: The Podcast, The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, Threedom, Two Jons Dont Make A Right, When We Were Wizards

Music

Like most people my age (Old), I mostly listen to the albums that loved when I was growing up and developing my tastes. But I still occasionally manage to find new music that excites me.

Album of the year: Descartes A Kant, After Destruction
Runners-up: Mannequin Pussy, I Got Heaven; The Hard Quartet, The Hard Quartet; Blood Incantation, Absolute Elsewhere

Miscellaneous

Best comic book: Monica by Daniel Clowes. Runner-up: Animal Pound
Best YouTube channels: Jenny Nicholson, Tested, Defunctland, xkcd’s What If?

So that’s it for 2024. Here’s hoping that 2025 will bring us enough amazing media to distract and enlighten us amidst what looks like it will be an increasingly chaotic and difficult time. Have a happy new year, and thanks, as always, for reading.