Good Content: April and May 2023

Hello and happy Pride Month! June is obviously the best month to talk about the content I enjoyed from [checks notes] Easter. Oops. Listen, I’ve been sick for the last couple of weeks and before that I was busy actually consuming all of the content I am about to call Good, so this is horribly late but with any luck I’ll be able to get things back to normal from here on out. What is normal? I don’t know! We’ll figure it out!

Here’s some stuff I liked this spring/early Summer.

Share Good Screen

Persona 4 Golden

I touched on Persona 4 Golden being a bit of Good Content back in March, but I went absolutely feral for it as the story reached a fever pitch going into April.

At face value, Persona 4 Golden is a High School Life Sim/Pulpy Detective Novel/Turn-based RPG hybrid; you do your homework, you track down a serial killer, and you hit demons in the face with a folding chair. But deep down, it’s a game about hanging out with your fictional buds, building relationships so they grow as people and become better fighters.

It had been almost a decade since I’d hung out with my buds in P4G’s Inaba, and coming back to it was fascinating. I got to watch my favourite characters grow again, and — because you only have so much time to do things in a single play through of a Persona game — I got to make new buds, in parts of the world that I didn’t even know were there in my first run.

When I finished P4G in 2014, I felt like I couldn’t go back to it without ruining that first experience; I had enjoyed myself so much that the feeling of coming back to it felt strange, like the same magic wouldn’t be caught that second time. I was right; knowing the story beats does make the game feel a little different (and how did I not realise that character was the killer the first time?) but there’s still so much to discover that I can’t rule out taking myself back for a third run. Catch you in 2032, P4G?

Persona 4 Golden is available on PS Vita, PC, Switch, Xbox Game Pass, and PS4

The Eurovision Song Contest

So I called it: one of my favourites for this year won Eurovision, and it was the one that was always going to do it. From the first time I heard Tattoo, Loreen’s victory at the contest proper felt like a done deal, but I told the people I planned on seeing Eurovision with that I thought it wouldn’t win the popular vote. And with a performance as utterly barmy as Käärijä’s up against it, why wouldn’t Finland win over TV audiences all over Europe?

The issue, of course, is that this was the first time since the current voting system was introduced where the Contest’s professional juries entirely overruled the popular vote. The fact that about 150 jury members could overrule a TV audience of 180 million people, combined with the convenient timing of Sweden’s win — they will host next year’s Eurovision in the 50th anniversary year of ABBA’s victory — set conspiracy theories ablaze, and it’s the first time where gripes with the Contest’s voting had substance beyond the usual bloc voting/punishment for British government policy cries.

Conspiracies aside, this was a better Eurovision than I could have possibly imagined. Hannah Waddingham was the best co-host since Petra Mede, the first semi-final contained an interval act that brought me to tears, Daði Freyr finally got to be on stage at a Eurovision final, and Waddingham and Graham Norton treated the jury vote satellite links with the kind of open contempt that only a British Eurovision could do. Liverpool were, by all accounts, incredible hosts. The only thing that felt a little rough around the edges, funnily enough, was the music: Loreen and Käärijä won the jury and televotes respectively by landslides, because the rest of the pack honestly didn’t hit the standards they set.

The Renaissance World Tour

It’s been 20 years since Crazy In Love blasted its way into my ears. I’d heard of Beyoncé, of course — Destiny’s Child had been a key part of my music channel-filled childhood — but Crazy In Love is where it all kinda clicked for me. Beyoncé was barely in her twenties, but it’s always seemed like she was destined to be a star; the incredible vocals and chart-topping hooks of her first decade as a solo artist gave way to a decade of culture-defining concept albums that went harder and deeper than anything before.

10 years ago, when her self-titled fifth album surprise-dropped on iTunes, I wasn’t even the biggest Beyoncé fan I knew. I loved her most popular work, sure, but she wasn’t quite the fit for where my tastes landed. A friend introduced me to the likes of Drunk In Love and Flawless, and I just got it. I knew that the moment I could afford to, I’d have to see her on tour.

What an incredible time to do it, too. Last year’s Renaissance was an album of pure joy; a love letter to her queer fans, a celebration of black queer culture, and a reminder that Beyoncé is still an artist at the height of her powers. The tour that supports it is a two-and-a-half hour assault on the senses, with high camp visuals, astonishing outfits, a whole ballroom scene, and the greatest live vocals I have ever heard. I was in awe, moved to tears, and saying “oh my god” every few minutes — and that was before seventy thousand people stopped singing along to Love On Top as the horns to Crazy In Love kicked in. My night in Cardiff with Beyoncé was hands down the greatest moment of my life — and reader, I have been proposed to.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Tears of the Kingdom is a fascinating game. It does exactly what I think everyone who loved its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, wanted: more Zelda, with quality of life tweaks — and gives players new ways to do absolutely ridiculous things. There is no sole Zelda experience anymore; each player finds things at their own pace, solves puzzles in different shrines at different times, and can wait hundreds of hours before hitting the beats of the game’s story.

GameSpot’s Kurt Indovina — probably the best video guy in the mainstream games press right now — put it perfectly: it’s a single player game that feels like a multiplayer experience, like we’re all kids at the school yard sharing secrets, discoveries, and inventions.

In fact, you know what? Go watch Kurt’s video. I’m gonna go play more Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available on Nintendo Switch

Share