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BEST OF 2016

Hello everyone! I've got a list for you. In fact, I've got SEVERAL. Introducing:

Doofcake's Lists of Best of 2016

Let's have a look at what wasn't an absolute disaster in 2016. Starting off with the most important list.

BEST MUSIC

#1 Kero Kero Bonito - Bonito Generation

Released just at the end of October, but I feel like in that short time, it's already my most listened album in 2016. I was pretty excited about Bonito Generation's arrival all the way up to its release and I'm glad that my excitement was justified. Bonito Generation is an incredibly fun album from track 1 to track 12. I'd normally have a hard time picking out my favourite album, but not this year. Bonito Generation is my number 1.

#2 Suiyoubi no Campanella - UMA

I was pretty excited for this album's release and I really love the direction Suiyoubi no Campanella went with it. They make strange music that makes me feel strange. Strangely euphoric. It makes me feel good. I’ve danced to Chupacabra more times than I can count. I love it!

#3 Daruma

Daruma is actually a compilation of sorts, but they released 5 volumes in 2016, Daruma volumes 5 to 9, and I like to think of them as one single collection, since they are all very similar and I always listen to them all together. Daruma volumes deserve a little special recognition from me. They're beautifully crafted strange loud music.

#4 Quentin Sirjacq - Far Islands and Near Places

The mellow sounds, soothing melodies and overwhelming feeling of beauty and peace. It’s super zen. Everything about this album is right up my alley and I don't think I could ever get tired of it.

#5 PC Music - Vol. 2

Would be incredible if they didn't make this a Spotify and iTunes exclusive. I can't buy it on iTunes! So I'm currently forced to only listen to it on Spotify. Anyway, PC Music is something I can't and don't want to explain. It is its own thing. It has almost spawned its own genre as other artists try to copy their style. It's awesome. Go check it out.

#6 TOYOMU - Imagining "The Life of Pablo"

Fun story with that one. Basically Kanye released his album on a platform that wasn't available in Japan, so this guy TOYOMU, who's a big fan of Kanye, got mad and made this album in a sort of protest. He looked up the samples and the lyrics Kanye had used in each of the songs on the album, and then created his own version of the Life of Pablo album with the same samples and lyrics run through TTS, without ever hearing the original songs. And the result... Well, in my opinion, the result is BETTER than the original album. I love it to bits. From the idea to the result itself, it's a masterpiece.

#7 Perfume - Cosmic Explorer

Yasutaka Nakata sure likes making BANGERS lately. This album is full of it. Sweet happy tunes coupled with loud banger instrumentals is my jam. Getting my body moving while also making me feel happy, euphoric even. Thank you, Yasutaka.

#8 Haywyre - Two Fold pt. 2

This album is COMPLEX. Pretty diverse songs here. Calling it banger would be wrong, although at times it kind of is. It's mostly actually very chill. I mean, one of the songs is basically funk. So it's music that you can dance to and it has a nice beat, but it's not LOUD and all up in your face. It's perfectly good music to just sit back and relax with some drinks.

#9 Charli XCX - Vroom Vroom EP

Produced by SOPHIE, who is one of the most prominent PC Music artists. Silly stupid fun music. I sure do like PC Music and I love SOPHIE so it was pretty obvious I’d love this album. Beep beep!

#10 General Mumble - Pollogamy

I like to think of this as Mumble's "best hits". It certainly includes most of my favourite tracks from him, if you exclude the entire PEGASII +- DOGGE AM album, but that was 2015. I actually reaaaaaaally love Mumble’s Vibe as well, but I wanted to limit the list to one album per artist. Can’t leave it unmentioned though.

Runner ups

David Bowie - Blackstar

The King's Parade - Vagabond

KANYE WEST - The Life of Pablo

Kikagaku Moyo - House in the Tall Grass

FAMM'IN EP

Astrix - He.Art

Overhead, The Albatross - Learning to Growl

Noisia - Outer Edges

There's a whole bunch of other albums from 2016 that I listened to, and I can assure you they were all great, but just didn't have enough of an impact on me for me to give them a shoutout.

But I do want to give a shoutout to a couple of singles from 2016. They're single! They deserve love too!

Harrison Fjord - Approximately 900 Miles - This was almost like me and my friends' summer hit.

Yunomi & nicamoq - Indoor keinara track maker - It's FUN!

And now I'd also like to have a couple of special mentions for music that wasn't released in 2016, but which I either found out about in 2016 or just listened to a lot in 2016.

Mura Masa - Lovesick Fuck - I'll be honest, I mostly listened to this a lot because it made the LEDs in my PC look cool. But it's a cool song without the LEDs too!

DNCE - Swaay EP - God damn it's good. It's just good vibes put into music.

Petit Biscuit - Sunset Lover - I'll be honest, again. I found out about this song through the best video of 3D tits I've ever seen. The editing on that video was stellar. Damn nice chill music too.

Kentaro Shimizu - Shitsuren Restoran - I listened to this song a lot last year and I listened to this song a lot this year. It's timeless.

Alright!! That's enough of music now. That was my favourite music in 2016. Applause *clap clap*

BEST VIDEO GAMES

Best Multiplayer Game of 2016

Competition was rough with Call of Dutys and Battlefields and whatnot all fighting to be the best multiplayer shooter this year, but the crown goes to

OVERWATCH

I don't think there's really any competition here. I know some people don't like it, but MOST people who have tried will probably agree it's the best multiplayer game this year, hands down.

I was incredibly skeptical of this game for a long time. Blizzard making a first person shooter? It's a TF2 clone? Has some MOBA elements in it? Pfft, it'll fail. Then they put out cinematic trailers, which of course aren't any sort of indication how good the game is, but damn the trailers looked gooood. Like straight up Disney. Still thought the game itself will fail. But then the public beta arrived and oh my dear lord, I couldn't stop playing it. It was the most fun I've had in a multiplayer game since GTA Online. Right. Well, the beta ended, and I thought I was burned out and done with it.

BUT OH MY DEAR LORD, I decided to buy the game because everyone else was playing it and now I am always up for a round of Overwatch. It's just, so damn well made. Sometimes incredibly frustrating when a cycle path gets in your way, but other than that, it's just... So damn well made.

Best Singleplayer Game of 2016

2016 was a FANTASTIC year for video games. It really, really was. So it's incredibly hard to pick out a number 1. So I'm going to pick out 3. Not in any order. They're all equally amazingly number 1.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst

It got a lot of flak for bizarre reasons. Most of the early negative user scores on metacritic were saying it's feminist propaganda, but... how? Why? What That aside, there is of course some criticism that is well deserved. The story isn't super amazing, especially since the beginning of the story is told in comics, sold separately. And a lot of the backstory is kind of hidden in texts and audio logs AND in the original game. So people who aren't hardcore fans of Mirror's Edge like me were probably incredibly confused by just about everything in the story. But Mirror's Edge Catalyst SHINES in the areas where I want it to shine. I don't play Mirror's Edge for the story. I play it for the gameplay and the setting. And both of those are huuuuuugely improved from the first game. The running feels a lot faster now, your movement has a lot more impact to it and you can get through enemies without fighting or just knocking them out in the middle of running, without having to slow down. The world building is a lot more fleshed out, they did a lot of work with the backstory. And the world is full of huge electronic screens and neon lights, with a lot of grimy areas. Visually, it's almost my dream cyberpunk world.

Gravity Rush Remastered

This game came out on the Vita already in 2012, but I didn't get to play it until the remastered PS4 version came out and I finally got around to buying it. I didn't know much about this game when I went into it. Just that you control gravity as the name implies and that people on the internet wouldn't shut up about how everyone needs to get it for the PS4. Well, those people on the Internet were right. That game ended up being incredible. It was a bit difficult to get into at first, especially once the skill upgrade screens popped up and the map filled with dozens of "challenge missions" that you seemingly had to undertake in order to get those upgrades. And if you know me, you probably know I absolutely HATE RPGs mainly because of the very same overwhelming skill screens. But I ended up only doing one of the challenge missions just to try it out and the skills were very straightforward and in a fairly small number, so it wasn't overwhelming at all! The gameplay was incredibly fun. You control gravity, but only in a very small radius so the gravity shifts only affect you. And you use this ability for traversal and combat. Already the idea sounds fun! And the execution was well done. Although quite a few times I did get a bit disoriented, but that's to be expected and the game had clever visual cues to help you understand which way is up. All of that exciting gameplay coupled with an imaginative world and a superb story made this game an incredible experience. BUT! The story leaves a LOT of things unanswered and sort of ends on a cliffhanger. I don't really like it when games do that, since you never know whether there will even be a next game, but thankfully in this case, Gravity Rush 2 exists and is already coming out right at the beginning of 2017, and I can't wait to dive into that world and gameplay again. When I said Gravity Rush was difficult to get into at first, then after a short while, I could no longer stop.

Titanfall 2

Perhaps the biggest surprise to me and I'm sure many others. I played the original Titanfall only in the beta and it didn't leave me much of an impression, so I didn't even bother buying it. When Titanfall 2 was announced, I didn't care for it much, but the mention of a singleplayer campaign piqued my interest. The idea of a Call of Duty-esque singleplayer campaign with giant mechs sounded pretty neat, but only so-so. The huge amount of praise this game got, especially for its singleplayer, made me jump on board to see what it's all about and... Once again, those people on the internet were right. This campaign wasn't Call of Duty-esque at all. It was better. Way better. Everything was perfect. The story has you form a friendship with a giant war machine. The gameplay is full of really fun and awesome feeling traversal and offers various methods of approaching your enemies. It has BOSS FIGHTS! I LOVE a good boss fight, which has become awfully missing from first person shooters. And Titanfall 2 had a boss fight every half an hour. Even featuring that sweet camera zoom on the bosses like in Borderlands. The titans all have their own set of abilities and you can choose a set to use at any time as well. Each one providing completely different gameplay. It's kind of like Overwatch. Yeah, actually it's totally like Overwatch. Each titan setup even has its own ultimate ability that you need to charge up. Fighting against soldiers on the ground felt like just fighting creeps in a MOBA, coming up against enemy titans is where the real fun started. The only problems I have with Titanfall 2 is that the campaign only took me 4 hours to beat, which may actually be a good thing, you don't want to drag out the game to the point where it turns from amazing to a snoozefest. And the other problem is that the game has poor sales, because not only did the game come out at the same time as two major shooter franchises, but the marketing efforts were also focused on EA's other game, so people don't even know much about Titanfall 2 to think to choose it over the other games.

And that's all the awards I have for video games! Though I should give a very honourable mention to the new Doom. This game does things very, very right. The only thing I don't like about it from the little I've played is the huge focus on animated melee finishers. The reason I can't really say much more about the game is because I simply haven't been able to purchase it yet. Not necessarily because I can't, but because I want to get a new graphics card first, so I can enjoy its glory with the best visuals and highest framerate.

BEST TV SERIES

Orange is the New Black

Took me completely by surprise. It’s a series about women in prison and I can’t stop watching. Each individual character’s story is so intriguing and has me cheering or jeering on non-stop. It makes me feel frustrated.

BEST ANIME

South Park

It's South Park.

Member when South Park was just ass jokes and swearing kids and Kenny getting killed every episode? I member. But I like this new South Park a lot more. Actually, I don't know if that's really fair to say. It's so different, you can't even compare it with the old South Park. They're both great. But man the last 2 seasons have been amazing.

Jokes aside. My favourite actual Japanese ani-may was probably

91 Days

It was slow to start, but when it picked up, it gave me a cliche riddled mafia story, which... was a good thing. For one I'd never seen something like that done in anime and the story, although full of cliches, was still original and exciting enough to have me hooked. And the way it ended took me completely by surprise. And that was also in a good way. One of the few anime series in 2016 that didn't end with "oh shit we have to end the series somehow, let's just stop trying and let the writer smack his head into the keyboard, see what happens"

BEST MOVIE

Sigh...

Bad year for movies. Prettttty bad year for movies. Most of the time I saw the cinema banners full of supehero crap and they all got really high scores too. It's been that way for quite a few years now. Don't people get tired of superhero stuff already? And that fad doesn't seem to stop any time soon.

EDIT: Originally, I named Zootopia my favourite movie of 2016 and also complained about remakes and reboots that were just pure fan pandering like those superhero movies. But I’ve changed my decision now.

The best movie of 2016 BY FAR is

Kubo and the Two Strings

The best movies, music and video games always hide behind all the popular stuff it seems. I had heard nothing about Kubo and the Two Strings up to its release and even when it was in cinemas I only knew of its existence thanks to looking up what’s currently running. What took my interest was a video on YouTube showing a little bit of the “making of” process of the film, which made me realise it’s a stop-motion film! Needless to say, I really wanted to see it. It’s pretty rare to see a stop-motion film these days.

The story is about a boy, Kubo, whose eye was stolen by his grandfather, so Kubo’s mother escaped to save him and they’ve been hiding ever since. Kubo goes out to the nearby village every day with his shamisen and magic to manipulate paper into moving origami characters, to tell stories of his father who was a mighty samurai fighting the evil Moon King. Of course, Kubo’s story doesn’t stay there, as his grandfather finds him and he has to escape once again. That’s where Kubo’s journey begins.

That journey was breathtaking. When I began watching the movie in the comfort of my seat, I thought I’d go and lie down on my bed to watch it, perhaps try and have a nap while I’m at it. But I couldn’t get out of my seat. The story had me so captivated that I couldn’t even bring myself to pause it to grab a snack. The story coupled with flawless stop-motion animation, which was done so well that most of the time you couldn’t really tell it was stop-motion, made the whole film experience magical. And it made me tear up numerous times, dealing the final blow with the ending and catching me in tears. Happy tears. Truly happy tears.

I wish more films were as imaginative and beautiful as Kubo and the Two Strings is. I’m sad that the film got seemingly very little attention, but I’m glad I decided to dive into it.

And I guess that's it! Thanks for reading!

Have a lovely 2017!

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