Emmett Watkins Jr

6. Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Performance and Grand National Tour

2024 belonged to no other artist more than Kendrick Lamar. His beef with Drake took over not just hip hop, music, but all of pop culture for the first half of the past year. He showed to everyone, especially casual and non rap fans, that the genre has a rich culture around it, and that culture is never worth sacrificing for mainstream popularity. Drake was the biggest symbol of someone selling out the culture for the embrace of the mainstream, so Kendrick did that culture a solid by making sure he was dead and buried, musically of course. And to add insult to injury, the release of GNX near the end of the year served as the final blow to Drakes ego, as it’s been Kendricks most successful album of his career so far, with the exception to DAMN.

Aubrey’s body has been cold for ages now, but that doesn’t mean Kendirck is planning to end his momentum. He’s set to perform at the Super Bowl this year, which would make him the first-ever solo rap performer at the Super Bowl. Even Dr. Dre was supported by Eminem, Mary J. Blage, and Kendrick when he previously performed. I’ll be glad to see him take the biggest stage in American entertainment, but I’ll be even more excited to see him during his following Grand National Tour, as I was gifted tickets last year as a 30th birthday gift! 2025 is looking to be another great year to be a Kendrick fan, as there is even heavy speculation that another album is soon on the way as well. Album or no album, however, the West Coast victory lap will continue for quite some time, and it will be just as fun to witness as it was in 2024.

7. Doom: The Dark Ages

There are two types of people: those who belive that Doom Eternal is superior to Doom 2016, and those who are wrong. Okay, I’m kidding of course, but there is a significant crowd that prefers the franchise’s reboot despite all of the added depth, features, and refinement of Eternal. On one hand, I agree with those folks, as I loved the reboot enough to platinum it, and put in dozens of hours into the multiplayer mode. But on the other hand, Eternal’s added difficulty by way of resource management makes the gameplay so much more engaging and rewarding, and the added focus on platforming embraces the old school roots of the series in a fun, new way. But, later this year, we will find out where id Software themselves sit on this debate, as the follow up, Doom: The Dark Ages, will release in 2025.

The reveal trailer shows a medieval setting full of the fast paced, run and gun action we all love. But it also seems that they’ve added both new weapons and new mechanics. There’s a wide-spread machine gun like weapon that grinds skulls into projectiles, a chainsaw shield to boomerang through hordes, and an iron flail to bash enemies with. But there also seems to be an added ground pound and even a parry system. This shift to more melee based moves is vastly interesting to me, as well as the mech sections and dragon flying sequences that were also shown. I don’t quite understand how it all comes together, nor do I know if the design of the game will lean into Eternal’s challenge or 2016’s more casual vibe. But either way, I will be there day one to see what The Dark Ages will hold for me.

8. Mickey 17

I like to think of myself as kinda in the now when it comes to cool, indie picks in media. That has sort of been the case when it comes to games, but I can’t claim this much anymore when it comes to movies. Looking back to my Letterboxd stats for 2024, I barely watched anything but the latest blockbuster or trendy art flick all year. But, back when I was more adventurous with my movies, I took a chance on what was a reach for me but was a massive hit with film critics: Parasite. That movie was so incredible, so expertly made, that I knew I would follow Bong Joon-ho, the director, down any path he would take in the future. Mickey 17 is that path, and it’s a weird one.

Robert Pattinson, whom I fell in love with during Good Time, stars as Mickey, an Expendable who dies various SciFi deaths only to be reborn for the sake of scientific research. But one day, one of these clones falls into bed to discover that they didn’t replace their prior self, but that their prior self is very much so still alive. This insane narrative hook, paired with the incredible Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collete, makes for a movie I am absolutely excited to make my entire personality as soon as I watch it later this year.

9. Eternal Strands

Remember Eternal’s Fenyx Rising? That game was an absolute delight. It took the combat depth of modern Assassin’s Creed and the world design of Breath of the Wild and blended them a package with more visual fidelity and smoother gameplay than the Nintendo Switch could have muster. I never beat the game, but I loved my time with it so much that it broke my heart to see it’s follow-up canceled a few years later. It seems that original IPs with vibrant worlds and Zelda-inspired just aren’t as marketable to wider audiences nowadays. Well, maybe that is not the case, at least if Eternal Strands has anything to say about it.

This new IP from Yellow Brick Games not only carries forward the vibrant world of Breath of the Wild but also the physics-based gameplay of that title. You can use elememtnal combinations to burn, freeze, and throw around enemies, similar to the elemental combos you could use in the Switch era Zelda games. But on top of that, bosses in the game are massive and encourage you to climb onto them, similar to Shadow of the Colossus. Sure, the artstyle looks like it’s pulled straight outta Immortals, but the combination of elements from some of the greatest games of all time, and some of my personal favorites, means that this game has massive potential. However, this is still a new game from a new studio, so I pray they can match expectations and deliver something great.

10. Graduating College

Hey so, earlier I said that I was gifted tickets to Kendrick’s Tour for my 30th birthday. Putting that together with this may seem…out of place. Well, I started college back in 2013, but I’m slated to finally finish my degree either late this year, or early the following depending on class availability. It has taken me a long time to get here, and while I have some blame for that, there are some external factors at play as well. On my part, school always came easy for me, but the older I got, the more I questioned the value of education when I knew so many, especially in games journalism, just work hard independently and establish themselves without spending tens of thousands of dollars. So, I started to become disillusioned with higher education overall, and Covid coming right as I had these doubts really made dropping out make the most sense it ever could.

But during those few years off, I realized that I need a plan beyond that. I was working at a grocery store, and was becoming more of a pillar within that store, but left after several years for a higher paying warehouse gig. I moved up from that low-level, very laborious position into working in the office after a few months, but even then I realized I didn’t want to play the middle-management game for the rest of my life, even though the benefits and pay at this new job is pretty good. Right now, I don’t feel fulfilled at my job, and while I’m fine with that, and even exsected, that to be the case as I age, I can’t let that be the case if I’m working there for 10-12 hours a day, or upwards of 14 when covering for a coworker. To squeeze writing, gaming, friends, family, sleep, and all my other loves and passions into that dwindlingly small window of time away from work is incredibly hard to do. The only way I can see out of that is through education, so, with motivation from someone close to me at the time, I went back to school at the top of 2024.

The last year of school has had just as many ups and downs as they did before I took my years-long break, and mostly for reasons outside of the school itself. But the difference is, despite how much the road has changed since I turned onto it, I can actually see the destination now. It’s still blury, but I’m beginning to recognize the shape of my future for the first time since the pandemic, if not my entire adult life. So, yes, I’ve been destracted and unmotivated throughout many college careers, and the world burning all around me the last decade hasnt’ helped. But I really feel like I can get out of this chapter of my life at least, and begin a new one. The old me has to die for the new me to be born, and while I will always be nervous about bulling the trigger, I’m starting to belive that I will actually spit out the bullet in the end. Now, if anyone has any summer internships, hit me up!