Best of 2025

Dec 26, 2025    

It’s the time of year for best-of lists. I consume my fair share of new media and entertainment, but as always, this list will focus on ‘first-time-for-me’ experiences of 2025.

TV

Star Trek Lower Decks Season 5 - In a year where I’d almost given up big-brand franchise media, the final season of Lower Decks was light, fun, and maybe a better Star Trek show overall than any of the live-action shows since Deep Space Nine. It is too bad it didn’t make it to seven seasons, but five ain’t bad.

Runner Up:

• The Residence

Tabletop RPG

Draw Steel - I run a rotating GM meetup group, so I was able to run and play in a number of new-to-me games this year. The standout read and play was MCDM’s Draw Steel. A deeply tactical game, players are faced with just the right amount of role playing, mechanical crunch, and decision making at the table, with downtime and character options away from the table to please a wide variety of players. I’ve run three one-shots, and each has convinced me that Draw Steel is top of my list for my next longer-form RPG campaign.

Runners up:

• Vaessen
• Pirate Borg

Movies

American Werewolf in London - One’s surroundings make for the best movie-watching experience. A great comedy in front of a sold-out, late-night college crowd is a different experience from a solo watch on Netflix. A buddy of mine hosted his 50th birthday screening of American Werewolf at our local movie theater. I had never seen it before. It was a hoot.

Runners up:

• Tenet
• Wicked: For Good

Books

Black Company - likely influenced by watching so many Matt Coleville videos, this 1980s fantasy novel hit differently. The grim portrayal of war and questionable morality in a fantasy setting stuck with me. I don’t think I’ll ever talk my friends into running an RPG set in a mercenary company, so perhaps it’s better to enjoy it in novel form.

Runners up:

• Murderbot Diaries
• The Mercy of Gods (The Captive’s War Book 1)
• Dracula

Comics

Delicious in Dungeons - it was the only new-to-me comic / manga I read this year, so I guess it goes here. The first half of the anime series triggered a read of the whole manga line, and it didn’t disappoint. The cooking schtick didn’t keep its charm for the whole series, but by that point, the world-building and characters kept me reading happily through to the end. 10/10. Highly recommended.

Video Games

Formula Legends - Star Citizen once again topped overall play-time for me this year, but a different sim can take the role of new-to-me game of the year. Mixing the right level of motorsport nostalgia and arcade racing, Formula Legends is a mix of racing simulation and Kart game, without the mushroom power-ups and jumps. The adapted homage to real-world F1 tracks sells the game to anyone who is a fan of the sport. I’m not an accomplished driving game player, and the game only offers gamepad support rather than a steering wheel, but this was as serious a racing game as I was up for.

Theater

Frankenstein - I have not read the original book, but the stage adaptation put on by the Shakespeare Theater Company in my town was a spellbinding and emotional production. Normally, my best show of the year is a comedy, but this one takes it.