Robby Reviews the Year 2016
It’s New Year’s Eve! Once upon a time, this was my favorite holiday. Now…it’s not. Anyway, I did one of these Year-in-Review things last year, and it was kind of fun. I read, watched, and played a lot more stuff this year than last year, so this should be more interesting to write and read.
Books, movies, video games, and books are the things that I am ranking here. Nothing else matters, not even the presidential election. Like last year, I’ll give my top 3 picks for each category in no particular order, probably.
MOVIES
I saw a million new movies this year! But these three wildly stood out, so it was easy to pick them.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Unless somebody at LucasFilm screws up, a new Star Wars movie will be on my list for years to come. I liked Rogue One a lot, even more than last year’s The Force Awakens.
Don’t Breathe I mean, this was a great movie. A group of thieves try to rob a blind guy’s house while he’s asleep, and it’s awesome.
Hush This came out early in the year, so I almost forgot that it was a 2016 movie. I watched it 3 or 4 times for some reason. Aside from one or two creative liberties, it felt real and real scary.
VIDEO GAMES
This is going to be a little tough. I definitely played/finished more video games this year than last year, but a lot of them were not new. I beat Uncharted 1, 2, and 3 and The Last of Us, for example. But I only want to mention 2016 games, so here goes…
Headmaster Easily my favorite PlayStation VR game that I’ve played, I love this game. The motion tracking is perfect, and it is fun in both short bursts and extended sessions.
Overcooked Couch co-op games are kind of rare nowadays, which makes Overcooked even more of a gem. Ignoring that I don’t like playing at all by myself, playing it with a friend is amazing, even if it leads to frustration. I never finished it. That last boss sucks.
Zero Time Dilemma To be honest, I didn’t get very far in it, but I think it was because I chose to play through the previous game in the series, Virtue’s Last Reward, again right before it came out. Now that a few months have passed, I feel like I would get attached to it easier. It seemed pretty awesome.
MUSIC
Hanzel und Gretyl’s Satanik Germanik album that was supposed to come out in 2015 finally came out this year, so…oh wait, it didn’t. *sigh*
Dope – Blood Money Part 1 You read the review of this I posted, right? Yeah, it’s pretty good stuff, albeit a little strange-in-maybe-not-a-good-way too.
Die Antwoord – Mount Ninji & Da Nice Time Kid I semi-formally reviewed this album too already, so I don’t need to go into details. But as a longtime Die Antwoord fan, I can still say that this might be my favorite album of theirs.
The Claypool Lennon Delirium – Monolith of Phobos To be honest, I struggled a bit to come up with another great 2016 album, in my opinion. I can’t say I loved this album, but it seemed like a long time since the last Les Claypool thing that it needs to be recognized.
BOOKS
Yes, I read new books this year. Like, a lot. I think they were all good, but here are the top 3.
Michael Ian Black – Navel Gazing: True Tales of Bodies, Mostly Mine (but also my mom’s, which I know sounds weird) Much like with a new Star Wars movie, a new Michael Ian Black is destined to be among my favorites. If you’re not already a fan of his, I don’t think this would be the best book to begin with. As a longtime fan of everything he’s done, including all his books, this isn’t my favorite, but I enjoyed it a lot.
Amy Schumer – The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo I find Inside Amy Schumer to be funny, and Trainwreck was fine, so I thought I’d pick this book up. It’s sort of a collection of essays, much like Michael Ian Black usually does with his books. Pretty good.
Corey Stulce – The Union of the State Hey, I haven’t yet finished this book, but as a huge fan of The State, I doubt I won’t absolutely love this book when I am done with it. Even the title is pretty genius.
OTHER STUFF
So this year, I released my 2008 album Boobs, Butts, and Feets finally. But other than that not much from the Robby Suavé camp went public, especially music stuff. I’ve been working on a lot of music, but the only thing that got released was “Merry Effing Christmas,” a cool little tune that makes me laugh. I think I made a t-shirt or two as well. Hm.
2017 should be a much more prolific year for me. I’m not making any promises, but the plan is to release a new album of new songs and also Modus Operandi, an older album that has yet to be officially released. So yeah, that’s cool. I’m also considering polling my followers on Twitter and wherever else to see what they want. Watch out for that.
Anyway, how was your 2016? Leave a comment below or contact me however you want.