Students share favorite 2024 releases

2023 was lauded as a great year for media and the arts, and it quickly became apparent that 2024 would be very much the same. From blockbusters to indie darlings, there’s been many movies and video games released this year that are already being hailed as modern classics. 

One of 2023’s top video games, Baldur’s Gate 3, continued to see popularity this year. Senior Ash Brackett said she liked how open-ended the game was. 

“I love choose-your-own-adventure games, and Baldur’s Gate 3 is so amazing with that. I have finished the game 5 times now and every time I take a different path, with different choices, and [each time] is more fun than the last.” 

Sophomore Amina Rechkemmer enjoyed this year’s remaster of Katawa Shoujo, a visual novel originally released in 2012, which explores themes of disability and self-acceptance. Rechkemmer said the plot “follows the life of a man suddenly stricken with disaster following a heart attack due to a rare condition. Due to the severity of his condition, he is forced to attend the Yamaku High School for disabled children, where he meets five girls with varying disabilities and learns to not only accept his own disability, but see past the disabilities of those around him and see them for who they truly are.

“Through following the emotional paths of each girl, he learns to overcome the time lost to his heart condition, helping the other girls overcome their own struggles in the process.” 

Social commentary was a major thread in many of 2024’s popular releases—from the indie horror game Mouthwashing, praised for its scathing criticism of rape culture and complicity, to director RaMell Ross’ film The Nickel Boys, cited by senior Sana Tabei as her favorite movie of the year. 

The film is a fictionalized account of the real experiences of African American students at the often racially abusive “reform schools” of the Jim Crow era. After reading the book of the same name upon which Nickel Boys was based, Tabei was excited to watch the adaptation. “It surpassed my expectations,” she said. 

Even still, the year’s not over—highly anticipated releases like Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu and the third installment of the Sonic movie franchise will be hitting theaters before the end of December. Maybe the last months of the year and the beginning of 2025 will have just as many excellent stories in store for us.