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Qazi’s Disposable 2024 – Highlights

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With the conclusion of my entertainment round up in 2023, I outlined some vague plans for these twelve months – catching up on my library, buying some new tech and doing some more streaming. And so when I started collecting my notes filed under “Qazi’s Disposable 2024”, In all honesty I probably didn’t get as much done with my plans as I would have liked, but I’m still content with the year in entertainment.

Qazi’s Disposable 2024: Watching

Qazi’s Disposable 2024

In my round up for last year I mentioned that I never got around to Barbie or Oppenhemier, so I made a point this year to watch both and write my thoughts on the films. Scheduling a block of two days to watch the two films, I began with Oppenhemier and enjoyed the atmosphere and tension; less so the nonlinear storytelling which came across as a bit clumsy and unnecessary. Barbie, on the other hand, was a fun commentary on identity and self-image, but was light-hearted enough for anyone to enjoy it. I also took some time to watch Fallout, the Prime Video series based on the popular post-apocalyptic RPGs. Whilst I haven’t played the games myself, I enjoyed the dark humour and the contrast of the three main characters, but also the moralising and the depth of emotion in the scenes. Purnell, Moten and Goggins were a joy to watch, and despite being talked into watching the series I ended up looking forward to each of the episodes.

Elsewhere, I did more catching up on older films, and I think I explored both ends of the emotional scale. The Mike Judge film “Idiocracy” had been on my bucket list for a while and I finally rented it in June. A fantasy comedy which follows two individuals into a stupider future, it’s a brilliant commentary on our own sense of intelligence, and I enjoyed it so much that I searched around for somewhere to order it on disc the next day. The other bucket list film – on the other end of the emotions – was “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale.” I vaguely knew about the story of Hachikō and so I had a general idea of how the film would play out, but it still got me pretty choked up. It inverts your typical animal tragedy by framing the dog as the one continuing life after the passing of their owner, and even though it gets a little bit samey in the middle, the last half hour or so was genuinely moving. I figured that as I grew older I wouldn’t have the same emotional reactions to tear-jerkers with cute animals, but this film managed it.

I don’t have any massive regrets about movies I missed, but I can’t deny that I’m falling behind on a few long-running series. The third Sonic movie was being talked about this year and I still haven’t got around to watching the second one – meanwhile, there are around four Avengers movies now and I think that I’ve only watched up to Age of Ultron. Oops.

Qazi’s Disposable 2024: Listening

Qazi’s Disposable 2024

Conveniently enough, I’m drafting this article on the same day that Tidal has published my “Most Listened” of 2024, although its summary of the year’s music isn’t too surprising – I ended up listening to plenty of EPs and singles in 2024, and a lot of “high energy” genres such as drum & bass. Under Influence Records, Bungle continued to deliver some dreamy D&B vibes with things like the Black Waves EPs. Squarepusher made a return with “Dostrotime”, his follow-up to 2020s “Be Up A Hello” (I particularly liked the “Arkteon” acoustic pieces that served as nice interludes between the more intense tracks) and even the dubstep producer Sharks decided to pivot into a high tempo number with (checks notes) “watching everything burn right in front of me”. However, if I were to settle on one standout I’d probably pick something from the Bungle EPs, because each one absolutely dials into the kind of vibes that I enjoy in electronic music.

(Although it isn’t a genre I typically follow, I also need to give a special mention to the feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar – it’s been highly entertaining and captured the attention of all kinds of people who weren’t keeping up with the modern rap scene.)

I’ve also been revising and refining the sources of music discovery available to me – making regular visits to the Vision Recordings YouTube channel and their radio show (the show has a lot of exclusive early reveals and I often end up having to write myself reminders to hunt down tracks when they’re released for purchase and streaming), bookmarking the channels for Liquicity and Night Bass for my liquid and house needs, and keeping my one dormant X account alive just so that I still have a list of musicians, labels and DJs I can continue to follow. And of course, I’ve been insufferable on social media – filling Bluesky timelines and Discord channels with links to whatever tune has dominated my attention span on a given day. To everyone’s credit, I haven’t been met with any resistance and all of my mutuals and contacts seem pretty tolerant of my enthusiasm. The one thing that’s kind of remained dormant in 2024 has been my listening tech – I got some Marshall Mode EQ earphones in a sale, but that’s about it. Then again, not much is wrong with my current setup – I’ve generally covered my needs for home and portable listening. The only possible future purchase would probably be an optical drive for my desktop that actually works… but even then I have a dedicated CD player…

Qazi’s Disposable 2024: Playing

Qazi’s Disposable 2024

I was pretty excited going into this year. The inaugural Qazi’s Disposable 2024 article would have so many good things to say with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth being released and Metaphor: Refantazio finally making an appearance. What was more surprising, however, was that my favourite RPG was neither of these games. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth wasn’t just a riot from beginning to end – it’s probably provided me with the most fun over an RPG’s hour count since Persona 4 Golden. It filed the rough edges of the seventh game’s pacing whilst also making nearly every interaction fun and rewarding. The instant takedowns and pursuit of job skills made combat incredibly satisfying, the playground of minigames and side-stories managed to provide hours of distractions, and there are no difficulty spikes as notorious as chapter 12 in the predecessor. Did I enjoy it more than P4G? Not really, but in my mind – in my world of likes and dislikes – it’s one of the first games that’s comparable to P4G in terms of polish and quality. Tellingly, I’m already considering buying it again on Steam.

However, in a year without Infinite Wealth, Rebirth and Metaphor would still be remarkable achievements as well – one an extravagant celebration of FFVII’s world and characters; the other a stunning entry into the fantasy genre from a studio that leans more towards modern urban settings. Both impressed me to the extent that I’m already keen for news about the next game in the FFVII Remake trilogy and the next Metaphor game.

Finally, I was able to get around to some classics that I always wanted to play – I managed to complete Super Metroid at last (I enjoyed the adventure but I will never forgive how vague the in-game map is. I know that it’s nice to give the player room to speculate, but the map could at least colour-code the pink, green and orange doors on the map once I’ve seen them! In the end, I actually created my own map in Google Drive, but it’s likely to be full of errors…) and set aside four or five hours for Doki Doki Literature Club – the sugary-sweet visual novel which I… can’t really talk about. Just like Undertale, it’s the kind of experience you enjoy more if you know less beforehand.

As with most years, I wish I had more time to play more things, but I already have gaming plans outlined for 2025. Oh, and I didn’t play the Elden Ring DLC because I lent my disc to someone – so that’s why we haven’t covered it this year.

Qazi’s Disposable 2024: Streaming

I don’t have much streaming news to reflect on this year, save for one long-term project; I played through Final Fantasy V Advance on stream. I’ve streamed a few highlights from RPGs before, and I’ve previously streamed a full “Hero” playthrough of the charming Half-Minute Hero, but in terms of total hours streamed for a single game this is easily the most – 13 hours of stream footage over 16 sessions. I even streamed a separate window with the pages of notes I had written from a previous playthrough, so that I had something to refer to and so that anyone watching could see my inner madness. And although FFV Advance actually took more than twice that many hours to finish once the stream was done, I wasn’t going to broadcast all of my grinding. Personally I’m really happy with how much I was able to stream, and I have a more ambitious stream planned for next year…

Future adventures

As ever, I don’t know how much any kind of life stuff is going to affect me and the time I have to enjoy my favourite entertainment, but I’ll have some things lined up for when opportunities present themselves. For instance, I’d like to check out the new Monster Hunter but also get into a few older games, I’ll continue to grow my digital music library and look at more films to stream, and I’m considering some new hardware too. For now, I’ll just say thanks to anyone who has clicked on any of our articles this year, or followed us on social media – your support is always appreciated, and we hope you have a great 2025 planned. And while you’re here, don’t forget to take a look at Dan’s Disposable 2024 highlights as well.

Qazi’s Disposable 2022 – Highlights

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Preface: managing my expectations

When I concluded my round-up for 2021 on this site, I explained that I initially thought the year would be uneventful as we wait for 2022 to deliver. However, they’ve both been equally great – I had a lot to fondly look back on at the end of last year… and at the same time, there have been a few releases this year that I either lost interest in or didn’t have time for. That’s not to say that I don’t have a “Qazi’s Disposable 2022” highlight reel to talk about, however. Let’s begin.

Qazi’s Disposable 2022: Watching

Qazi's Disposable 2022

As with most years, my 2022 has been spent doing a lot of catching up. My Prime Video subscription – combined with a busy Blu-Ray release schedule – means that I’m rarely short of things to watch, and so my film highlights have included some recent physical media releases as well as the occasional curio that I’ve streamed. For instance, I finally surrendered to the hype and bought Encanto following its disc release on February, and even though you could tell where it was going, it was still a fun ride. The premise initially sounds quite outlandish, following the lives of a family of gifted individuals… however, the plights facing each member – concerns of meeting expectations, of expanding horizons – can be relatable. I also rolled the dice with The Matrix Resurrections – it worked well as a reboot and was more interesting than the second and third films, but it definitely went to some weird places. I enjoyed the moments of self-referential meta commentary, and of course the action scenes were immaculate, but at times it did feel a little bit self-indulgent. A far more successful evening with Keanu came when I finally watched the copy of Bill & Ted Face The Music that I’d been waiting on for months – most of the jokes landed well, prior knowledge of the other films isn’t compulsory and I enjoyed the way in which the narrative kept shifting focus between Bill & Ted’s adventure and the journey that their daughters were going on.

The curios I watched were more random and slightly trashy, and most of them were watched on Prime Video. For example, one of the last films I watched before writing this was Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Until now, the only Terminator films I had watched were the first two, and I had the feeling that sci-fi fans would probably want me to pretend that any other movies after the second don’t exist. Personally I didn’t think it was a disaster, but it’s definitely not necessary viewing. The T-X is an impressive machine but it doesn’t quite have the menacing presence of a T-1000. However, the time-jumped John Connor was likeable enough, and a spectacular road chase scene in the first half of the movie felt like a cute homage to T2’s equivalent. Also, I’ll give an honourable mention to the 2014 Riley Stearns film Faults; a story about a man hired to “deprogram” a daughter influenced by a cult. Whilst it was no classic, the premise and the performance made it very compelling to watch, and the fact that the two lead characters had various quirks and flaws gave the story some surprising levity.

Qazi’s Disposable 2022: Listening

Qazi's Disposable 2022

The first thing that came to mind in my music-oriented draft for the “Qazi’s Disposable 2022” document was that this was the year I dropped Spotify. Well, for the moment. Following the Joe Rogan controversy and community fallout, many people on Twitter campaigned to persuade people to use alternative streaming services, and the truth is that since February of this year I’ve listened to most of my music through Tidal. The algorithm hasn’t always been as great at recommending things, but I discover music through Twitter and Youtube as well, so as long as you find ways to help yourself, there’s no massive loss. Honestly though, it’s been pretty good at streaming the random bass music that I find out about on Twitter – the range of artists and labels is a lot broader than I initially feared.

It hasn’t been a big year for new releases but what was there was fine. After all, I can’t complain about getting a new Leftfield album in December – four months after seeing them at Lakefest, in one of the best live music sets I’ve been to. Outside of that, I enjoyed “Closer” by Noisia, as well as various EPs from Wilkinson, Logistics and more. Right now, the “Forms” EP from Bungle is probably my favourite release of the year, but Leftfield’s “This Is What We Do” is a very close second. On a more personal note, I also got hold of an actual CD player after years of listening to music on my desktop. The humble Bush CD-78B-BTFM boombox I selected is hardly going to make the walls shake with bass, but it’s a lot more convenient than using my PC for everything, and the added bonus of Bluetooth means that I don’t have to listen to so many tunes on my mobile.

Qazi’s Disposable 2022: Playing

Qazi's Disposable 2022

Paradoxically, this year in gaming was simultaneously extremely busy for me and somewhat quiet. At the time of writing I’ve only bought about three “games” that were actually released this year, with one being an expansion (Destiny 2: The Witch Queen) and another being a re-release on new formats (Persona 5 Royal). So it’s no surprise that the only brand new 2022 game I’ve played – Elden Ring – has overshadowed everything else. Even though my initial playthrough lasted just over a month, the experience stayed with me and made a lasting impression. What could have been a miserable time exploring an open world full of impossible encounters ended up being revelatory; defeat wasn’t a mere setback anymore – it was an invitation to explore elsewhere in the game’s open environment. Simply put, Elden Ring’s world shames the icon-filled maps of Ubisoft and Rockstar, whilst also feeling more refreshing than From’s earlier dark fantasy action RPGs.

A few months ago I also covered my experiences of a classic Square RPG on this site, with my belated look at Final Fantasy V Advance. I wasn’t expecting anything too mindblowing from the game – especially not after trying FFVI and Chrono Trigger – but I was pleasantly surprised by the depth offered by the job and ability system. With the power to take a learned ability from one job and keep it whilst learning a new job, a character can have several specialties (a thief who knows white magic, or a monk who can use summons) – and this opens up a lot of options during combat. It’s a lot more enjoyable than using jobs in something like FFI or FFIII, and although the story wasn’t that exciting, it made the gameplay frequently feel rewarding.

I’m expecting my gaming year to be more interesting in 2023, even without an Elden Ring on the horizon. I didn’t want to make too many impulse purchases this year, or end up with too many half-finished games – but it’s allowed me to fully appreciate the games that I have made time for, at least.

Qazi’s Disposable Miscellany: Streaming

Okay, it’s not exactly a conventional part of an annual round-up, but I did enjoy doing some more streaming this year. My setup has barely changed from before – most of my streaming is on PC only, with the help of XSplit and Twitch – and I’m still not ready to start offering voiceover or facecam just yet, but there’s something about the promise of streaming a game that incentivises a player to persist with it. The majority of this year’s streamed footage came from Final Fantasy III – a game that I gave up on many years ago, but managed to complete in June. It’s not really the best RPG I’ve played, and it can be a bit of a slog, but the way it was left unfinished had haunted me for too long. I’m glad that I finally have some closure, but I want to keep doing more broadcasts, and I definitely have one or two more streams in mind for the new year.

Moving forward

I already have some plans for 2023 – an endless backlog of films I want to watch, some gaming/streaming pet projects I have vague ideas about… and I’m sure that more new tech, in some form, is inevitable. 2023 could just be another year of me making up for lost time whilst catching up on old things, but I hope to cover some new experiences too. As always, thanks to anyone who’s read, shared or commented on our content, and we hope you enjoy the festive period and the new year. Also, make sure that you take a look at Dan’s Disposable 2022 for an alternative take on the year in entertainment.

FFV late impressions: the job centre

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The further back we go, the less I know. I was one of those casual types who barely knew what Final Fantasy was before VII, and ever since then I’ve jumped around the series to see if there was anything else that I missed when I was interested in other games. At least when I think of publishing FFV late impressions, I realise that I kind of had an excuse at the time. It was first released on the SNES (sorry, Super Famicom) in 1992 in Japan, and Europe didn’t get to see it until the 00s and (in the case of PSN and mobile) the 10s. I got around to playing the Game Boy Advance release earlier this year – honestly, it’s not a game that I knew a lot about and so it’s not like I was choosing to play it based on its reputation (unlike my FFVI and Chrono Trigger playthroughs), but I had heard a few good things about it. The game centres around our heroes vowing to restore order after the villain Exdeath shatters the elemental crystals in a bid for power. It’s your typical JRPG format of going from new town to new dungeon, obtaining more abilities and encountering new opponents, culminating in a showdown with the antagonist. Dungeons have some light puzzling and locked-door scenarios, as well as hidden routes to rare treasures – generally, it’s a comfortable RPG template that you can quickly enjoy without being bombarded with too many strange gameplay systems.

FFV late impressions – jobs and abilities

That said, one thing I took away in my FFV late impressions was that the implementation of the job system was more flexible than I expected. I don’t always like job systems in RPGs, because they put a lot of pressure on me to create a sensible range of skills and abilities across my party. I’m not that guy who sets up a team of four white mages, admittedly, but I do feel a certain amount of artificial pressure to “get things right” and not screw myself over in the late game. With FFV’s job system, each job allows a party member to equip certain gear and use special abilities in the battle menu – a thief can steal items from enemies, black and white mages use spells that cause elemental damage or support the party, and so on. However, each party member has a “job” slot and an “ability” slot; after using a job for long enough, the skills associated with that job are unlocked as abilities. This means that you can assign a skill as an ability and then start learning something else in the job slot – creating a summoner who has the thief’s stealing command, or a monk with magic capabilities.

It may seem like a small thing, but it blows open your tactical options – your four party members have their two slots to play with, and at the end of my playthrough I had 21 jobs available as well as the Freelancer (who has two “ability” slots and can wield any gear.) It’s a very different vibe from FFVI (where nearly every character had one “job” throughout the game) and FFVII (where “jobs” are essentially materia and anything goes), but FFV’s own freedoms and restrictions make it satisfying to try different combinations of skills to see what works. By the end of the game (for those curious about the commitment: 38hrs on the clock, with all party members around Lv50), my party was using four different types of magic (blue, black, white, time), controlling enemies (beastmaster), defending against attacks (knight), using summons (summoner) and dealing huge physical damage (with the monk’s “barehanded” ability.) It’s like working with eight party members, but it adds a tactical edge because you still only have four “actions” in your turn.

The grind

The jobs don’t save the game from the usual RPG hurdles, however. I can’t summarise my FFV late impressions without saying that there is still grinding, there are still plenty of random battles, and there are some miserable encounters if you’re not suitably prepared. Towards the end of the game I was being battered by more status ailments than I could deal with in my turns, and so I had to train up someone with time magic to help myself. Also, the random battles can be a nuisance when you’re also finding your way around a dungeon (although gear such as the Chicken Knife – which makes the party auto-flee an encounter and will discharge powerful attacks after fleeing enough battles – make navigation a bit smoother.) As much as I like this game’s jobs and abilities, the later games excel in the moment-to-moment business of dungeon exploration.

FFV late impressions – where to go

FFV late impressions

In late 2021 Square Enix released the “Pixel Remaster” of Final Fantasy V – I don’t know if it’s a particularly good remaster, but there should at least be options if you’re keen to play this but only have modern hardware. I played the GBA game and it was generally fine, but I have no knowledge of the other versions to compare it against. I don’t know if I’ll look even further back through the series history another time, but I’ve enjoyed this entry. If you have any fond memories of Final Fantasy V, don’t forget to leave a comment below.

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