by Adi Stein

I sorta think being an adult means looking back at the end of every year and thinking, “Well that was a bad one, huh.” And in many ways it was terrible and I am totally down to talk about our last free and fair election, the next epidemic that we couldn’t be less prepared for, the rise of antisemitism around the world, the impending water wars, and so much more with whoever wants.

But

That ain’t what this is for. These lists are about the positives. In deeply important ways, this was one of the best years of my life. My wife and I had our first kid and he’s the most delicious, chatty, giggly little matzah-ball boy I could have ever hoped for. It was also, undoubtedly, one of the hardest. My wife powered through an incredible, unmedicated birth (not her choice, she’d be the first to say) only to be almost immediately hit with a horrible bout of postpartum depression. I can’t believe I’m the first to write this or say it or experience it, but hold on to your butts: Being a new parent is hard! Through all the late nights, self-doubt, panic, and regret, I was comforted by friends and family, of course. But I also had some great video games, books, and movies to enjoy. I spent all of 2025 either preparing for this kid or taking care of him, and my end-of-year lists reflect this fundamental change in my personality. The media I engaged with this year helped me reframe my life, escape reality, connect with people I love, and grow as both a dad and a human. So get in a cozy chair, pour yourself a relaxing drink, and let’s talk about my favorite video games, books, and movies from this year.

Vidya Games!

Honorable Mentions: Fights in Tight Spaces, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Ball x Pit, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Remastered)

This game just feels good. It has a gorgeous art style, plays great, and genuinely has the best soundtrack of any game I played this year. Roguelikes have undoubtedly become my favorite gaming genre (see my #1 game this year) and this is a great one. Especially as a new dad with an unpredictable amount of free time, I could pick up this game and play for 10 minutes or I could sink into it for hours. Overall, The Rogue Prince of Persia lands lower on my top five because it is a little light on content, but what is there is so just much dang fun.

I am a huge Indiana Jones fan. Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite movie of all time. But I walked into this game with a fair amount of skepticism. Could they translate this franchise into a great video game? Was first-person the right choice? Could Troy Baker (the voice actor playing Indiana Jones in this game) really make me believe he was a young Harrison Ford? Yes, yes, and yes. The developers at Machine Games really understood the assignment. They somehow made the basic (and boring sounding) act of information collecting satisfying and fun, they nailed the casting (Troy Baker’s performance is largely indistinguishable from the original performance given by Harrison Ford in 1981), and man, that ending is pure Indiana Jones magic through and through. It’s the best Indiana Jones story since Last Crusade and is well worth your time if you’re a fan of the series.

Ghost of Tsushima was in my top five games the year it came out, and this sequel is an improvement in almost every way. It is one of the best looking games I’ve ever played, the mechanics further reinforces my belief that Sucker Punch has some of the best gameplay out there, and the open world is varied and exciting to explore. But perhaps the best thing about this game is how organic discovering the world feels. As you wander through the world it reveals itself to you. Whether it’s a small bird guiding you towards a secret, a tree in the distance indicating an unexplored cave, or one of the region’s citizens revealing a rumor they’d heard that leads to a side quest, everything in this game unfolds naturally. There were so many moments where I found something cool and thought to myself, “If I hadn’t been in this exact spot at this exact moment, would I have missed this thing all together?” Obviously the player is guided and pointed in the right direction, but Sucker Punch’s ability to hide that and make me feel like I was genuinely discovering the world on my own is pure magic.

I don’t think I’ve experienced such highs and such lows from a video game before. Now keep in mind, ARC Raiders is my first extraction shooter, a genre in which you’re constantly on the verge of losing everything. But man is this game awesome. The world is fascinating, the robots you’re fighting move in exciting and scary ways, and the playerbase is perfectly unpredictable, all combining to make a thrilling experience that continues to pull me in for more. This has become my go-to end-of-day game to play with my best friend and the hours we’ve spent with it have been critical to maintaining my mental stability. Swapping back and forth between party chat (where other players can’t hear us) and proximity chat (where other players within earshot in the game world can hear us) has yielded some of the most exciting and funniest moments I experienced in gaming this year. At the end of one match, for example, we were in a standoff with two other players who were blocking the exit to the map. We tried to talk them into a melee fight to the death. “Put away your guns and come out with your hammers.” When they didn’t accept, I offered the next most reasonable solution. “Put away your guns and I’ll come over and blow raspberries on your bellies.” Sadly, it didn’t play out that way and they ended up taking us down. I lost a lot of great gear, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is the friends you tried to raspberry along the way.

One of the best pieces of advice I received as a new parent was from one of my best friends and frequent gaming buddy, Sam. It was early on after my kid was born. I was struggling with the fact that I very clearly needed to sleep and that the only time for me to do anything that I actually enjoyed was while I should be sleeping. It was at this point that Sam said, “At this moment of being a new parent, self harm and self care are the same thing.” And so, we played. We played for hours and hours and it was exactly what I needed in that moment. What did we play? Risk of Rain 2.

Risk of Rain 2 is not a new game by any means. In fact, in a first for me, this game appeared in a previous end-of-year list (#9 in 2022). But this year it just hit differently. Sam and I put over 70 hours into this game together and it is the gift that keeps on giving. Especially in the early days of being a dad, we would stay up late into the night, breaking the game in new and exciting ways. The biomes, characters, weapons, and perks create what feels like an infinite number of variations and possibilities. The game is hard, requiring your focus and dedication, but only until you create a build that breaks and destroys everything. And those moments of breakage are among my favorite moments in gaming this year. Flying around the map at insane speeds because I have 35 of an item that makes me run faster or using a single jump to launch so high that I reappear from the ground beneath me or one-shotting an enormous boss because I’ve specced my character a certain way are all insane in the best possible way.

But more important than any crazy build or unmanageable number of enemies on screen is the fact that this game allowed me to connect and hang with a close friend at one of the hardest moments in my life. Yes, parenthood is incredible. Yes, my little guy is perfect. And yes, it’s so. fucking. hard. At my lowest point, I felt like I had ruined my wife’s life. Watching her wrestle with such intense postpartum depression made me feel like I had taken all of the joy out of the most joyful person that I know. And in that moment, as I was trying to take care of my family, the best way to take care of myself was to hang out with my friend and play video games. Hopping in that chat with Sam and booting up Risk of Rain 2 was how I put on my own oxygen mask this year. It’s the game that I kept coming back to and I’m so grateful for everything it gave me. Now pardon me while I strap on some Paul’s Goat Hooves and sprint into the void.

Readin’ Books!

Note: Like years past, this list in not in order of least favorite to favorite. It’s in order of when I read them.

Honorable Mentions: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, The Great Man Theory by Teddy Wayne, Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, Bitter Root Volume 1: Family Business by David F. Walker, Chuck Brown, and Sanford Greene, Harrow County Volume 2: Twice Told by Cullen Bunn, Tyler Crook, and Mike Allred

Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect by Will Guidara

Shout out to my mother-in-law for bringing this book into my life. It was one of the first books I finished this year and was, without a doubt, the most impactful. As someone who used to work in restaurants, it reminded me of everything I loved about that industry. The thrills and urgency as well as the pure joy that comes from making someone’s day special. And while Guidara’s experience is almost exclusively in the restaurant industry, he does an excellent job of framing hospitality as a universal good and giving readers the tools to bring it into their own careers. You do not have to work in restaurants to get something out of this book. I work at a non-profit now and I learned so much about how to improve my work from reading this. I can’t remember the last time I earmarked a book this way. No matter what your career is or where you are in it, this book is well worth your time.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

I ain’t never read a sexy book before but this was a damn fine introduction to the genre. Fourth Wing is the first in The Empyrean series by Rebecca Yarros (the second book is in my Honorable Mentions) and is essentially Harry Potter but gory and graphically sexual, so what’s not to love? The characters are compelling, the setting is unique, and the stakes are high. While Fourth Wing wasn’t the deepest or most insightful book I read this year, it was certainly the most fun.

The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro

I had one personal goal over my paternity leave and it was to finish The Power Broker and, by George, I did it. The Power Broker is Robert Caro’s 1974 epic about Robert Moses, the man who essentially built New York City into what it is today. Now I’ll be the first to admit that this was, at times, the most boring book I’ve ever read. Do I need to know the exact value of each bond sold to enable the building of every bridge in New York City? Absolutely not. At the same time, this book was also genuinely stirring. I will never forget the chapter about the residents of East Tremont in the Bronx and the ways in which Moses destroyed their beautiful community. Every time I am stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the FDR or West Side Highway, I will think about the deliberate choices Moses made to hamstring public transit and increase the city’s reliance on cars. And I have a newfound appreciation for the time, money, and manpower that went into all of the major public works projects that now define NYC. Robert Moses was a brutal, power-hungry, racist who could not have accomplished anything he accomplished had he not been born into a wealthy family that funded the majority of his adult life. Simultaneously, he was the definition of a workhorse who fought every day with everything he had for what he believed would make the city as great as possible. Some of those things were incredible and some of them were terrible. Both comprise an epic that I loved and could not, in good conscience, recommend to most normal people.

Harrow County Volume 1: Countless Haints by Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook

I grew up reading and loving comic books, but I stepped away from them once I reached high school. After my kid was born, I created a weekly habit of going to the comic book store and buying him books from the My Mighty Marvel First Books series (see the next section for more information about those little delights). As I would go week after week, I would ask the people working there if they had any recommendations for comics that I might enjoy. Zoe and I had just watched Sinners (again, see the upcoming section on my favorite movies of the year) and I learned that it was at least partially inspired by the comic series Bitter Root (which made it into my Honorable Mentions). From there I was able to hone my tastes, which ultimately led me to the Harrow County series. The first book in this series, Countless Haints, is awesome. It tells the story of a town that kills a local witch only for her to be reincarnated in the form of a teenage girl some 18 years later. The art is gorgeous, the story is exciting, and the book ultimately leaves you wanting more (which I would always prefer to wanting a book to end sooner). Warning, though: This is not a comic for the faint of heart. It is graphic and brutal. But in that brutality I found a thrilling story about a young girl doing her best to escape the burden of generations past. In that idea alone there is something to which we can all relate.

107 Days by Kamala Harris

Love her or hate her, Kamala Harris was given an impossible task. Did she nail it? Clearly she did not. But this account of her shortest-in-American-history presidential run is a real page-turner. I chewed through this book in about a week, riveted by Harris’s perspective on the impossible choices she had to make and the short amount of time in which she had to make them. She, unfortunately, has a bad habit of passing the buck. Nothing seems to be entirely her fault. That being said, this book gave her the chance to clarify her stances on a number of issues that she just did not have the time to dive into during her campaign and, largely, I agreed with her more than I thought I did (and that’s coming from a guy who voted for her and would have done so again even without reading this book). Ultimately this is Monday Morning Quarterback: The Book, but I’m game. Hindsight being 20:20 and all that, I have to believe that there are more people in this country than just Harris who wish that things had played out differently.

Children’s Books

Of course, this being my first year as a father, there were a lot of books for children read in my house. Let me just say this: Not all children’s books are created equal. But the ones that hit, hit hard. Whether you’re a new parent looking for a recommendation, an expecting parent building out a library for your future roommate, a family member looking for a good story for the newest member of the clan, or a friend in search of a birthday present for your pal’s little one, I encourage you to check out this list for some real bangers.

The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld

What a lovely little tale about how to deal with unexpected loss. Sounds heavy, yes, but it is a soft, gentle story told with beautiful art and friendly animals. This book is a cozy hug that highlights the different ways we can handle disappointment and is an easy recommendation for any kid’s library.

Tiny T. Rex and the Impossible Hug by Jonathan Stutzman

Two books on this list really made me laugh out loud and this was one of them. Tiny T. Rex and the Impossible Hug is a simple story about a small dinosaur trying to figure out how to give his big friend a hug. Problem is, his small arms are just too short. The ways in which he goes about practicing his form are hysterical (especially his attempt at hugging a cactus). It’s cute, fun, and just a darn good time.

Chooch Helped by Andrea L. Rogers and Rebecca Lee Kunz

Chooch Helped is an adorable story about the frustrations of having a little sibling, as told from the perspective of an Indigenous American family. The eponymous character is just a little dude doing his best. Sometimes his best is great and sometimes it’s frustrating. But that’s just what being in a family is. Chooch Helped is a cute and fun exploration of family dynamics that has earned its place in our bedtime reading rotation.

Grumpy Monkey by Suzanne Lang and Max Lang

This is the other book that made me laugh out loud. On page one we meet the main character and his name is Jim Panzee. I mean, come on. One thing I quickly learned when becoming a new parent is that there are so many children’s books about being in a bad mood. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is probably the most famous one, but Grumpy Monkey should be the new torchbearer. The art is dynamic, the characters hysterical, and it has a better moral than Alexander. It’s not just about a kid having a temper tantrum. It’s about knowing that sometimes you just have to be grumpy to get through being grumpy and that is okay. Even if I didn’t make a section just about children’s books, this would probably be in my top five this year.

My Mighty Marvel First Books Series

I have such fond memories of going to the comic store when I was a kid, getting a mystery pack of Marvel comics, and diving into the exciting world of Marvel superheroes. So when I happened across my local comic store and saw this series of board books I was thrilled. Most weeks I make the trek back to that store and get a new story in the series. I can’t say how much my kid likes the books, but I can say it’s a blast to revisit these classic characters and introduce them to my family. Sure my wife has a hard time reconciling with the fact that Hulk is a hero but also fights other heroes, but in the end this series is a great introduction for any family to this wild cast of characters. Excelsior!

Pictures (as Marty Scorsese would say)

Honorable Mentions: 12 Angry Men, September 5, The Substance, Superman, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale

#5: Nosferatu

I am not a fan of horror movies. Until Get Out, the scariest movie I’d ever seen was probably Gremlins. But I’m Robert Eggers-curious and this movie looked like too much fun to pass up, so I took myself on a date to my favorite movie theater in Great Barrington, The Triplex, and prepared myself to muscle through some “boo ahs,” as my sister-in-law would call them. And boy am I glad I did. This movie has scary moments, without a doubt, but I’d overall describe the vibe as something closer to dread than fear. Bill Skarsgård gives such an engaging performance in the titular role that I found myself actually getting more and more excited each time his monstrous character appeared in a scene. To be clear, Nosferatu is a gross, rotting, evil character with a voice like a boiling vat of tar, but all of those elements come together to draw the audience (and the other characters) into his orbit. Nosferatu sucked me into its world and I loved every minute of it.

#4: Princess Mononoke

I have not seen nearly as many Studio Ghibli films as I would like, so when I learned that Princess Mononoke was being remastered and rereleased in IMAX for a limited run, I jumped on the opportunity. I invited my brother who has a similar taste for stunning animation and the entire thing was a pure treat. I could have sat in that theater for many hours more soaking in Miyazaki’s art at that scale, listening to the film’s simultaneously heart-pounding and moving score, and wrestling with its complicated characters and their various motivations. There are no true villains in this movie. I understood fully why every character was doing what they were doing. It’s a gorgeous and emotional film and I could not be happier that this was my first viewing of it.

#3: Sinners

This was, hands down, by far the most fun I had watching a movie this year.

Incredible music: Check

Badass cast of characters: Check

Pulse-pounding vampire battles: Check

Evocative production design: Check

Sexy Michael B. Jordans: Check

And on top of all of that is a really thought-provoking story about White people trying to take everything they can from Black culture. And, frankly, you don’t see a lot of movies with that theme that are just plain fun. Sinners pulled me in with its score and thrills and its ideas kept me thinking about it long after it ended. If you’re one of the three people on Earth who hasn’t yet seen this movie, make a thing of popcorn and start it up to. night. Sinners rules

#2: One Battle After Another

One Battle After Another is the most 2025 movie of 2025. It tackles race, immigration, extremism, white supremacy, and authoritarianism but does so with a bizarre sense of humor. Don’t get me wrong. The aforementioned subjects are issues to be feared and wrestled with in the world of One Battle After Another. They are no laughing matter. But the ways in which they manifest are absurd. Sometimes absurdly scary, like concentration camps for immigrants, and sometimes absurdly funny, like the seriousness with which a bunch of old White dudes take their white supremacist “Christmas Adventurers" club. All of this is given full life by the best ensemble I saw in a movie this year. Every single actor deserves celebration, especially Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro, Teyana Taylor, and Sean Penn (playing one of my favorite movie villains in a movie since Colonel Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds). Over the course of this nearly three hour movie, I was taken on an alternatingly laugh-out-loud funny and gripping ride that did not let up until credits rolled. It’s a movie that I will gladly revisit for years to come and one I hope you check out if you haven’t already.

#1: The Brutalist

On the other end of the spectrum is a movie that I do not feel a need to ever see again but that I have thought about almost every week since I saw it nearly a year ago: The Brutalist. There’s a lot that has already been said about this movie and it received the recognition it deserved at last year’s Academy Awards (heck, it probably deserved a little more, in my opinion). And with all of that recognition and discourse, there is still one scene that keeps coming back to me. It’s an objectively simple scene: The main character, Jewish immigrant László Tóth, is driving home with his wife, Erzsébet, after a dinner with his employer, Harrison Lee Van Buren. They break into an argument about whether or not they are accepted in America because of their Judaism. In this scene, László unravels and begins shouting to Erzsébet, “The people here! They do not want us here!” After considerable time working with Van Buren on his design, László fully understands that his employer wants his work but nothing to do with László himself. This is taken to its most extreme earlier in the film when Van Buren rapes László on a trip to Italy, proclaiming that his people (i.e. Jews) deserve the persecution they have received. In 2025, this theme of venerating Jewish culture and craftsmanship while violently persecuting us at every turn feels far too familiar. Over the past year, we have heard powerful condemnations of antisemitism from leaders around the world while also witnessing the most consistent outpouring of violence against the Jewish people in decades. The arson attack on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home, the firebombing of Jews in Boulder, CO, the painfully recent terrorist attack at Bondi Beach in Australia, and the somehow even the more recent stabbing of a Jewish person in Crown Heights, NY while the attacker screamed, “Fuck these Jews,” and then yelled about how it would be okay if the Holocaust happened today; these are just a select few reminders from 2025 that it really does feel like the world “does not want us here.” So especially in the context of raising a tiny Jewish boy myself, the world feels fiercely scary. The Brutalist is an epic that beautifully and painfully makes the point that time after time, the world says that Jews have important contributions to make while simultaneously showing us its feeling that Jews deserve violence. It’s a message that has stuck with me throughout all of 2025. Fortunately, one of the many differences between László and me is that I have an amazing community of Jews and non-Jews surrounding my family and me. I hope that 2026 expands that group and, in turn, shrinks the power, size, and strength of the rising tide of antisemitism that we’re all living through.

Special Shout outs!

As if that wasn’t enough, there’s more! These three shows provided something special on top of all the great games, books, and movies I enjoyed this year. And the most joyful of them is entirely free on YouTube! So let’s close out this year with some great TV for all to enjoy.

In 2023 I gave my first ever “Special Shoutout” to Scavenger’s Reign, a gorgeous if borderline opaque sci-fi show with stunningly creative world and creature design. Well the folks behind Scavenger’s Reign got together with Mike Judge (of Office Space fame) and put out a far more accessible but equally creative new animated show: Common Side Effects. Common Side Effects is about a scientist named Marshall who discovers a mushroom that can cure any illness and even bring people and animals back from the dead. As a result of this discovery, Marshall is hunted by the government, hired guns from Big Pharma, and even rival scientists in an attempt to either destroy his discovery or hijack it for themselves. It is a fascinating show that highlights the absurdity of the American healthcare system while providing the most creative visuals I saw on TV this year. Strong recommendation for anyone interested in something a little out of the ordinary.

This show was a beautiful little gem that I enjoyed in the late hours of the night, waiting to scoop my boy out of his crib when he was just a few weeks old and feed him while his mom slept. So naturally I look back on Mr. Loverman with warmth and a smile, despite the fact that it is largely a tearjerker. Mr. Loverman follows Jedidiah Walker, an older Antiguan man living in London, as he wrestles with his homosexuality and the impact that coming out will have on his family. It's a profoundly human story about coming to terms with the truth of who you are and how much pain you’re willing to inflict on yourself and the people you love to show them that truth. It also happens to have a great soundtrack. This show was a real diamond in the rough of 2025 (and the early months of having a newborn).

My wife and I needed Taskmaster this year more than we could have possibly known. There is nothing we watch, either separately or together, that makes us belly-laugh out loud like Taskmaster. It’s a phenomenal show with a straightforward premise: five comedians compete in a series of absurd tasks and are then given points based on how well (or poorly) they did them. It’s very British and a pure delight. We took huge comfort in the fact that, at the end of the day, if we needed a good laugh we could always turn to Taskmaster. And the whole thing is free on YouTube so you really have no excuse. If you’re like us (and, frankly, the rest of the world) and could use a laugh, this show is just what you’re looking for. God bless Greg Davies and… Little Alex Hoooooooorne!

Well there you have it. 2025 is in the books. And movies. And video games. And TV shows. There was a lot to hate about this year for a lot of people. So much loss and pain and suffering. So much fear and anger and hardship. And I am lucky that 2025 also brought me so much love and joy. I hope that something on this list piqued your interest or at least took your mind off your problems for a little bit. Happy 2025 to everyone reading this. Let’s make 2026 our best year yet.

Gaming

Adi's Top Games, Books, and Movies from 2025

Vidya Games!

Readin’ Books!

Children’s Books

Pictures (as Marty Scorsese would say)

Special Shout outs!