With a new year come some New Year’s Resolutions – and like many fans of video games and anime, I have a massive pile of shame, when it comes to series that I’m trying to get through each year. So, I’d like to try to make a dent in that, and hopefully, a public resolution will help. So, these are my New Year’s Resolutions for 2024.

5 Video Games to Beat

In the spirit of My Life in Gaming’s New Year’s Resolutions, here are 5 games I’m going to try and beat in 2024. Many of these will be Joined In Progress games, but I’m going to try to beat these anyway. Some of these, though certainly not all, will be played on stream. I’m not being as ambitious as as Corey and Try of MLiG, as this is my first year trying to do this, and I’m going to try to pace myself.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns (Joined in Progress)

I’ve played a very significant chunk of the game on the Xbox Series X already, but now that I’ve gotten through the game’s New York arc this past year, I’m going to commit to definitely beat the game this year. I may stream some of it, even if I don’t do a Let’s Play.

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (Joined in Progress)

Jumping around to various RPGs for the Axe of the Blood God Pantheon Game Club has, I will admit, hampered my ability to keep up with actually completing games on my own. I think what I’ve come to realize over the last year is that the Pantheon is a marathon, not a sprint, and that trying to keep up with the games on each month’s Pantheon is a sucker’s bet.

Instead, I’m going to try to pace myself and consider playing each game in the Pantheon as a goal to be met over time – starting with the game I’m in the process of playing right now.

Citizen Sleeper

Citizen Sleeper is an RPG that is much more manageable in scope, and is a proper independent RPG title that has a more restrained scope that should make it easier to play. I’ll also try to do this one on stream, after I’ve beaten Halo Infinite.

Xenosaga Part 1 (Joined in Progress)

After having gotten my Retrotink 4K finally setup, I’d really like to take advantage of it to get through some of my PS2 and PS1 titles that I’ve picked up in the past.

Trails in the Sky: 2nd Chapter (Joined in Progress)

I feel like I’m most of the way done with this one, and the third game feels like a really solid fit for my Steam Deck, so I want to get this out of the way to move on the 3rd game in a more portable fashion.

Final Fantasy XIV (MSQ – Joined in Progress)

I’ve been hearing a lot of really good things about the story in the expansions in Final Fantasy XIV, and I’m really looking forward to getting to that content – and for that matter, getting to the true endgame content – working on my character, Crimson Son-nya’s drip, and this is something I can work on on the PC and PS5

5 Anime To Watch

I also have 5 anime series I’d like to try and get through this year as well, to clear some stuff on my watchlist. I’d taken part in an Anime Resolution at AniList last year – but I think making this a little more public might help keep me on top of things for my New Year’s Resolutions for 2024.

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water

Nadia is one of the series that plays a major role in Super Robot Wars X, providing the game’s big Capital Ship contribution. As the series is a big part of the history of Gainax, and the career of Hideaki Anno, and I own a physical copy of it, I’d like to get through this show. This is also one of the series on last year’s Resolution that I didn’t get to.

Freedom Project

Related to this (specifically creators I like), Freedom Project was an anime I picked up on Blu-Ray strictly based on the involvement of Katsuhiro Otomo on the project, and I’ve since never cracked the shrink wrap. I’d like to resolve that in 2023.

Technolyze

This was another of last year’s resolutions that I wanted to get to – this is part of the Anime cyberpunk canon I’ve been meaning to watch, but hadn’t gotten around to – and I’d particularly like to watch when it comes to working on coming up with an Anime Cyberpunk canon.

Betterman

This is the third of last year’s resolutions – I’ve picked up the Blu-Ray releases of GaoGaiGar and GaoGaiGar Final, so watching Betterman – a show I watched in part on TechTV back in the day and was not able to finish, and which I learned later was part of the GGG-verse. Now, the license for this has expired, so this is a less urgent work than the others. Hopefully, Discotek Media will pick up the series sometime this year, to go along with their other releases in the franchise.

Gankutuso: The Count of Monte Cristo

This is another of the series from last year’s resolutions, and one which I have a physical copy of, this time on DVD – I’m not sure if this will necessarily get a HD release. In any case, this is a show that I’ve wanted to watch for years, particularly for it being a reinterpretation of a classic work of literature, one which has had its own impacts on anime (notably Char Aznable in Mobile Suit Gundam). So, I’m interested in seeing how a classic work of literature gets adapted to science fiction in this way.

Now, I had two other unfinished works on my Resolutions list – and as Betterman is still unlicensed, if it doesn’t get rescued, or if I can’t find another reasonable way to get ahold of it, I’m going to go with as a backup pick:

A Certain Magical Index II

Part of the issue I think I ran into with last year’s picks is that I had more than a few picks that were particularly long in length (with Dunbine being about 52 episodes long) – so while City Hunter seems like a pretty good pick, it’s rather long. I’d say that Index II is a better choice.

So, for anime and video games, these are my New Year’s Resolutions for 2024 – I considered doing some manga picks, but the series I’m currently making my way through are longer ones, so I’m going to hold off on that.

Please support my Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor
Buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/countzero
Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor
Check out my Let’s Plays at https://www.youtube.com/@CountZeroOrPlays