Best O' 2015

2015 was a huge year for me. I got a new job at Phil Collins Magazine, met a lot of cool new people, and moved to a New York City. But as all that was going on, I still had time to consume, and even create, some new media. Here are the best.

Best Video Game that Almost Made My Eyes Bleed- StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

Some other cool games- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Super Mario Maker, Splatoon, Her Story

Best Movie that Almost Made My Eyes Water- Creed


Some other cool movies- Mad Max: Fury Road, The Big Short, Anomalisa, Star Wars: The Force Awakens (the best Daniel Craig film of 2015)

Best Parody of the Best TV Show Ending of 2015- Don Draper Invents Pizza Bagels



Best Wholly Legitimate Phrase of 2015- Famous Star Wars Franchise Character Emperor Sheev Palpatine

Best Things I Wrote in 2015-

The Cards Against Humanity Tabletop Deathmatch Interviews

Valve’s Movie Brats: Inside the Source Filmmaker Community

Heroes of the Storm Review (or Why MOBAs are Bad and You Should Feel Bad)

Games to Go (Video Reviews of Cool Mobile Games)



Of Art and Oven Mitts: The Death and Life of Followers (a Postmortem on the Tortured Production of My Silly Student Short Film)

Four Years of 148Apps, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love iOS Games


Best Time I Spit On Camera

Stuff I Wrote in 2014

The end of 2013 was a turning point for me as far as my writing goes. I couldn’t be more grateful for the great response to my Kotaku feature story on the Chicago indie gaming scene, and my fantastic internship at PC Mag made my actual journalism school graduation six months later feel like just a formality. In 2014 I tried to keep that freelance momentum going and ended up writing a bunch of stories for a ton of awesome publications that, a few years ago, I never imagined I’d break into so soon. I think I did some of my best work in 2014, and it just so happened to fit in a nice, chronological, top ten list.

Best O' 2014

Obligatory Blog. Obligatory Awards.

Top 5 Games of 2014

5. Mario Kart 8

It’s the most beautiful Wii U game, it’s the best playing Mario Kart to date, the DLC is fantastic, and it dominated my free time towards the end of my college career. Too bad they ruined battle mode.

4. Transistor

I didn’t love Bastion as much as everyone else did. It was pretty and sounded nice but the style was incoherent and the fighting was dull. Transistor took everything good about that game and fixed all the flaws with a brilliant, creative combat system and haunting, ruined, yet still classy cyber world.

3. Bayonetta 2

Above all else, I am a fan of ridiculousness, and there was no other game this year that featured more, better ridiculousness than the continuing adventures of gaming’s favorite sexy librarian dominatrix bullet hair witch in Bayonetta 2.

2. Threes!

You can read my thoughts on why this is the best mobile game of the year over on 148Apps.

1. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

Still hate the name, but Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is the best entry in my favorite series so how could it not top my list, even if its 3DS counterpart doesn’t feel entirely necessary.



More after the break.

"Halt and Catch Fire" Pilot Review

“Halt and Catch Fire” is proof that no matter how many things a TV show has going against it, all I need to give it a chance is a premise that speaks to my niche interests. Sure it’s another desperate attempt by AMC to finally have another show that’s actually good once “Mad Men” joins “Breaking Bad” in the great channel in the sky. Sure the main character is just another hyper competent, amoral, successful, white male anti-hero. And sure the title is basically for no one. But how can I not watch a series about the early 1980s PC boom? I was willing to tolerate the TV movie cheesiness of Pirates of Silicon Valley so of course I’m going to watch this.

Best O' 2013

Another year over, another collection of media to judge…

Stuff O' 2012

2012 is almost over. Here's some stuff about it I liked.

Game O' 2012- Frog Fractions. Just play it. I hate this stupid spoilerphobic media culture we live in but to say literally anything about Frog Fractions besides "you should play it" would ruin it.

http://twinbeardstudios.com/frog-fractions

Movie O' 2012- TBD. I just haven't seen enough stuff to make this decision. Lincoln, Argo, Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, The Master, all great movies but with stuff like Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty still out there unseen I feel my opinion isn't fully informed yet.

Jam O' 2012- Skyfall Instrumental. It's a great song no matter what but the instrumental is perfect writing music for a top secret project I'm working on that may never actually turn into anything.

Show O' 2012- "Veep." Between this, In the Loop, and "The Thick of It," Armando Iannucci has proven that anything he makes about politics, no matter what country or position is targeted, will be brilliant and hilarious.

Book O' 2012- Books?




Pam Grier

Uh Oh Politics: Awareness

“What? Oh yeah, there’s like an election happening. It’s an important one too like the President or the Supreme Court or something. I guess I should pay attention this time. What?” – like half of America every four years.

Due to this predictable cycle of vague political awareness increasing throughout the country, everyone that can stand to make a few bucks always rushes in to capitalize on the general confusion. I for one think it’s fascinating.

Stuff I Did This Week 10/12/2012

Kingdom Royale Review

Pet Wars HD Review

Twin Peaks: The Abby and Brittany Story, Reexamined

Great Job!

Continuing this Jimmies theme, here’s a video that hilariously rustled mine when I first saw it a few weeks ago.

It’s from "Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule," a spin-off of "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" and it’s very much in line with the duo’s notoriously divisive style of comedy. Upon watching it a few more times however, it struck me how perfectly this sketch encapsulates what makes that humor work, in my opinion anyway.

Followers, It Exists

I'm writing a web show. Check it out.

http://www.facebook.com/FollowersNU

Stuff I Did This Week 4/13/2012

I wrote about this guy

and more

This Article is About Mad Men

Reviewing a Book about Game Reviewing

Fight Against Bullying with The Adventures of Timmy: Run Kitty Run

Freekick Battle Review

Magic Tree is a Fairy Tale Farm Sim

HeroesAndZombies Review

unlucky

Black Spider-Man

The following post was inspired by this amazing, hilarious video recently shown to me by a friend.

Coming Soon...

The next big thing for reals...

"Followers"






More news to come.

What's on the TV these days?

Ever since "Avatar: The Last Airbender" ended I’ve found myself unable to commit to another serialized TV show. As such, Netflix and the internet at large are my avenues for things like "Mad Men,""Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead." The few times I’m actually watching a television program on a television is for stuff like "The Daily Show" or one of the Matt Groening/Seth Macfarlane family of cartoons despite how bad they have become with the exception of Futurama. So naturally I’ve decided to use my blog to discuss and dismiss the current state of a media landscape I know very little about.

Comic cartoons and the movies they exist solely to promote

This summer saw the release of a lot of comic movies (and there are still more coming) and you know what that means, cartoons based on comics designed for coasting on the new found popularity the movies bring to a franchise.

Now while making cheap cash-in children’s cartoons based on movies is nothing new (see Beetlejuice, Ace Ventura and… Robocop) with comics it’s a little different. Because so many comic book movies come out and get sequels, I’ve noticed this strange phenomenon where a series will get created to follow-up on one movie, go through its run, and end before the next sequel comes out which then requires another series be made.

G Gundam Abridged Episode 1

Making an abridged series, for those of you who don't know, is the process of taking a show, usually an anime, editing it down and dubbing over the dialogue for comedic effect. The most famous of these is probably Yu-Gi-Oh The Abriged Series.

Anyway, a good friend of mine, known on Youtube as "TheHolyEpic" decided to get in on the action and make his own abridged series based on "Mobile Fighter G Gundam" (fighting robots). He collected the footage, edited it, and did the voices. But being the egotist that I am I've decided to post it here not simply out of selfless desire to promote my friend's material but also because I helped write the script.

Seriously though he did a good job. Check it out




Also, despite my feelings on Twitter, I do feel "obligated" (get it) to remind you guys that I do have one and It'd be cool if you followed @JordanWMinor

Hint: the W makes me more like Batman

Alien vs. Predator… vs. Starcraft vs. Game of Thrones

After that Transformers-fueled negative tirade, let’s talk about something do I like. This post is about three things I like actually and some of the amusing and surprising similarities between them: Starcraft (it bears repeating every time, an amazing PC real-time strategy game and one of my favorite games ever), the Alien vs. Predator franchise, and the show/book Game of Thrones which just ended its first season on HBO.

The Oprah Winfrey Network and a mini-Mind Dump

The new issue of Blackboard is out, Northwestern University's African-American student magazine, and if you go to Northwestern University, America's greatest university according to Gawker, like I do you should pick up a copy. And if you want a taste, here's my article about the strengths and weaknesses of the new Oprah Winfrey Network or OWN.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Plus clicking on links now opens a new tab instead of directing you away from the page. Thank Time for that.