Of The Year 2015

This year I consumed a lot less wrestling and music and games and stuff than I have in years past for whatever reason. I think I spent a lot more time in silence worrying in 2015 than I did in 2012-14. Thanks to the worry, I'm going to just do a single post of all the things I liked/thought were important in 2015 instead of doing separate posts. Okay.

Future - DS2/Future & Drake - What a Time to Be Alive

Future's two masterpieces released this year proved him as the king of hip hop in 2015. Even though he was joined in the new release party by fellow weirdo rap-crooners Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan, and Fetty Wap, only Future's output could stand on its own. Nothing on either DS2 or What A Time To Be Alive is as weird as Thugger's stuff, as catchy as Quan's stuff, or as mainstream successful as Fetty Wap's, they're still more solid than the other dudes'. The biggest standout on DS2 was the Drake/Metro Boomin track Where Ya At, proving Drake's more traditional flow and Metro Boomin's minimalist trap beats serve just to emphasize how weird and cool Future's voice (flow and lyrics both) is. What a Time to Be Alive extends that great chemistry to a full length project. Drake was on a real tear this year (and last with 0 to 100 and his features on Believe Me and Grindin' with Lil Wayne, Who Do You Love with YG, and Tuesday with ILoveMakonnen) and despite me not loving If You're Reading This It's Too Late, he brought it on this project and doesn't dwell in Future's enormous shadow. It is a real good time to be a fan of the new Atlanta sound.

Harmlessness by The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die

I don't have much to say about this album despite it being my most anticipated album of 2015 as well as the album I listened to the most. I was disappointed initially upon release, expecting it to maintain the pop punk-y sound present on January 10th, 2014. Harmlessness is instead all over the place musically, showing a big step forward from 2013's Whenever, If Ever. Harmlessness isn't really an emo album in the same way Whenever, If Ever was, it covers way too much ground while still sounding as atmospheric as you'd expect from The World Is.

Beat The Champ by The Mountain Goats

So. This is some stars aligning business. A record by the band that was my absolute favorite in high school (that I still love!) about the form of entertainment I love the most in the world. JD is incredibly talented that he can write songs that feel so intensely personal to so many different people that are still about pro wrestling. When Los Campesinos! sings about kayfabe or heel turns, I roll my eyes, but never on Beat The Champ. Wrestling is an inherently tragic art form, it systematically destroys those who perform it, physically and emotionally, and The Mountain Goats capture this effortlessly. Whether its in one of the songs devoted to real life (and usually deceased) wrestlers like Bull Ramos, Luna Vachon, or Bruiser Brody, or the songs using the trappings of wrestling to describe the perils of life like Heel Turn 2 or the Legend of Chavo Guerrero, JD just gets it in the way he always has. JD understands the business in a way that's very rare in entertainers from other fields. Just look at the wrestling-based music videos that have come out this year. In The Legend of Chavo Guerrero video, the Mountain Goats recruited real life SoCal pro wrestlers Joey Ryan, Ryan Nemeth, and Ray Rosas (along with Chavo Classic himself) to star as territorial wrestlers in a clip that is for the most part authentically cheesy. Meanwhile, Frank Turner and Wavves, in their respective music videos, tried to represent pro wrestling as something that it obviously isn't. Something more legit like MMA in the Frank Turner video and something more seedy in a punk rock way in the Wavves one. Even the worst, most-cringeworthy part of the Mountain Goats video, JD doing his best CM Punk, sitting cross-legged in the ring asking if he "has everyone's attention now," comes off as way more authentic than the Frank Turner video which stars the actual CM Punk. Also Foreign Object is a really funny song.

Jay Lethal vs Jay Briscoe, title vs title, Ring of Honor Best in the World, June 19, 2015

The battle of the Jays was my match of the year this year. Other matches had a higher workrate, but this match had me completely invested in the story it told. I jumped out of my seat for every near fall, hooked totally by the drama. Given Lethal's body of work this year, there's a real strong argument to be made for him being the best wrestler in the world in 2015 and Briscoe, as usual, held up his side of the feud. Also check out the video hype package leading up to the match and Jay's promo the day before the show.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

As far as the actual gameplay is concerned, MGSV is as close to perfection as a video game can be. The sheer freedom of choice involved with every single encounter is staggering. Hideo Kojima perfected the stealth action game with The Phantom Pain and it is a shame the story and the greater trappings don't hold up to scrutiny as well. I'm not as down on MGSV's story as a lot of people are, and I actually very much enjoyed Kiefer Sutherland's more understated performance as Venom Snake more than Hayter's Naked or Solid Snakes, but it would be dishonest to say that the story wasn't disappointing, especially considering how good the greater story in Peace Walker was. In the grand scheme of things, my Metal Gear rankings go 2>5>3>PW>1>4 and, given MGS2 possesses one of the greatest narratives in the history of games, this is very high praise. Skullface is an engaging villain, Huey is a real piece of garbage in a believable way, and the characterizations of Snake, Kaz, and Ocelot, though simplified from their appearances in MGS3 and Peace Walker, are still top tier. But in the end, despite not having a bombastic Metal Gear-style story, the actual gameplay of MGSV is so head and shoulders above any other AAA game in recent memory that it is easily my favorite game of 2015. There's very few games that have given me the same kind of emotional experience as when you stalk through a town filled with enemy soldiers, quickly and silently knocking out and kidnapping each one, until that one guy you missed or forgot about stumbles around a corner, forcing you into a desperate, loud, lethal shootout until extraction. No matter how many enemies you face in MGSV, there's never a feeling of "I'm out of options."

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

I have a confession. As of 12/31/15, I've yet to finish The Witcher 3. I'm mopping up the rest of the treasure hunts and witcher contracts before I go into what I think is the final mission, although I thought I've started the final mission twice already, only discover dozens more hours of gameplay. The Witcher 3 is enormous. The world, divided into three play spaces, never feels repetitive though, in the way a Ubisoft or Bethesda open world feels. Every nook and cranny of the Continent feels handcrafted, unique, and lived in. From the swamps, battlefields, and farmlands in Velen, to the rocky islands in Skellige, to the massive city of Novigrad, The Witcher 3's world feels alive. After playing Saints Row 4, I decided I was done with open world games and after playing Assassin's Creed 4, I decided I hated open world games and would never play another. I'm glad I made an exception this year as Kojima Productions and CDProjekt Red put together works of art that together justify the existence of open world games. I've felt completely engrossed by the world and vibrant characters of the Witcher 3, including obvious standouts like the Bloody Baron and Ciri, in a way that I haven't felt with an RPG since Morrowind in 2002. 

Life is Strange

I have another confession. I also haven't finished Life is Strange. I have zero interest in the strange, apocalyptic weather or the scifi origins of Max's time manipulation power. All I care about in Life is Strange is Max's relationships with her peers. There's a scene in Episode 3 where, spoiler warning, Max returns to Chloe's house after breaking into the school with her and swimming in the pool in the gym. When the two wake up, Chloe puts on Lua by Bright Eyes and you have the option of having Max sit there on Chloe's bed, next to her, and listen to the entire song in silence. "It takes one to know one kid, I think you've got it bad." This one scene is the most real and authentic scene I've ever played in a video game. It certainly helps that, when I was Max's age, I was obsessed with that Bright Eyes album, along with Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, and, a few months later, the song I've Been Eating for You, but everything in that scene has happened to me:  Sitting silently next to someone you aren't sure if you're in love with romantically or not but still definitely want to spend forever with, listening to sad acoustic indie rock, and just thinking. Shortly after this, while Max gets dressed in Chloe's missing ex-best friend/girlfriend's clothes, a dialog option pops up where you can decide if Max kisses Chloe or not and in the seconds it took for me to pick that option, all the emotions and thoughts and fears that raced through my head irl every time I almost kissed a friend came back. That a video game can elicit the kind of emotion that even mature art forms like literature and film consistently fail at is a testament to DONTNOD's writing. The scifi story is bad and the lipsync is literally the worst lipsync I've ever seen and I haven't played episode 5 yet, but, in my opinion, Life is Strange is incredibly important.

True Detective Season 2

I decided to wait until after season 2 aired to binge watch it the same way I did season 1, so going in I was aware how much the internet loathed it. And, to be fair, it does have plenty of problems, mostly structural. The big bloody shootout midway through the show is especially egregious as it seems like a network mandated "you have to have something like the biker shootout this season." Its a nonsequitur. The direction over all isn't as dropdead gorgeous as season 1 as the loss of Cary Fukunaga is felt but season 2 is a completely different beast. My theory is that the people who hated season 2 are the people who were disappointed Cthulhu didn't eat Rust Cohle at the end of season 1. The performances are stellar, particularly how totally out of control Colin Farrell comes off, almost a less manic and sadistic Bullseye, and how cold and terrifying Vince Vaughn is. I would put the last episode of season 2 up against the best (non-Rian Johnson) episodes of Breaking Bad or the Wire or the Shield or any other higher-brow crime drama. 

Everything else

I should mention how much I enjoyed I Want to Grow Up by Colleen Green, the HBO documentary series The Jinx, the films Mad Max: Fury Road and Beasts of No Nation, the first half of season 4 of the Comedy Bang Bang TV show, Shinsuke Nakamura vs Kota Ibushi from Wrestle Kingdom 9, Brock Lesnar vs John Cena vs Seth Rollins from the WWE Royal Rumble, Mil Muertes vs Fenix Grave Consequences from Lucha Underground, Sasha Banks vs Becky Lynch from NXT TakeOver Unstoppable, Sasha Banks vs Bayley from TakeOver Brooklyn, and the good podcasts (My Brother, My Brother, and Me, The Best Show, Hollywood Handbook, and Comedy Bang Bang). I should also mention how much I hated Avengers: Age of Ulton, the second half of the Daredevil Netflix series, TNA Bound for Glory, and the Villanos vs the Psycho Circus from AAA Triplemania. I think there's room for a good old thinkpiece on the failed music game revival this year with Rock Band 4 and Guitar Hero Live but its New Years Eve, I'm already pushing this list as it is.