Brad Shankar’s Favourite Things of 2025

Normally, I’d begin my latest annual “Favourite Things” post with some attempt at reflecting on the state of the world and the key role that art played in reconciling it all. But honestly, what else is there to be said, really? We all know 2025 sucked.

And so, I’d rather just get right into some of what I loved most this year. From a deeply moving family drama to an utterly bizarre but surprisingly sharp deconstruction of masculinity, 2025 provided me with some particularly powerful artistic experiences. Here’s what affected me the most this year.

Favourite game: Baby Steps

Two hours in, I hated Baby Steps. Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch and Bennett Foddy’s literal walking simulator’s deliberately clunky traversal mechanics, in which you alternate between pulling the triggers and moving the analog sticks with varying degrees of pressure, were driving me crazy. And when I seemingly had to overcome an insurmountable boulder to reach the top of a cart to obtain a cup for an NPC, I eventually just quit the game.

But after reading Polygon‘s excellent review from Giovanni Colantonio (easily one of the best writers in games media), I was encouraged to give Baby Steps another try. And sure enough, the game soon clicked with me, and not just because I realized that the cup quest was actually one of many optional and irreverent side activities. No, Baby Steps ended up profoundly resonating because I realized it’s about me. Indeed, I saw more of myself than I’d like to admit in 35-year-old overweight manchild Nate and his journey to discover self-worth. With 2025 marking the first year of my 30s, I’ve been reflecting on life quite a bit, and during that time, I’ve seen so many of the people I grew up with getting married, having kids and getting their own places — all while I’m still single and living at home. Those recurring comparisons create an almost overwhelming sense of self-consciousness and, by extension, feelings of inadequacy.

Nate goes through something similar in Baby Steps. After being teleported from his parents’ basement mid-Netflix binge, he’s forced to navigate this absurdist landscape to ascend a towering mountain. It’s a journey made even more daunting not just because he’s out of shape, but because of a crippling lack of self-worth. And as you trek along, you come across all kinds of self-assured and chipper figures who make life look so easy, from the intrepid hiker Mike to a group of decidedly hung half-naked anthropomorphic donkeys, all of whom are constant reminders, in his eyes, of his inferiority.

But eventually, you realize that these pressures are self-imposed. During that aforementioned cup quest, nothing in the game told me I actually had to do it; I simply felt compelled to take it on. And when I later see cutscenes in which Mike or the donkeys effortlessly ascend a dilapidated staircase, mud-covered hill or an entire slippery, cragged and winding mountainous trail, I feel that same compulsion. Again, this is despite the fact that no one is forcing me to do anything.

This is where Baby Steps‘ core gameplay has a far deeper meaning beyond simply overcoming something “mechanically difficult.” Unlike most games which feature an open-world just for the sake of More Content™, Baby Steps uses this framework to enhances its themes. If you’re ever struggling on a particular section, you can simply can take another path, and you’re not “lesser” for doing so. On many occasions, I simply walked around and found another way forward. These alternate routes were still tricky, but, at least for me, they felt more manageable.

Perhaps these would be considered “easier” to others, be they Nate’s NPC companions or even other real-life players, but even so, why should that matter? Everyone has their own mountain to climb. We all have similar destinations, even if the paths we took to get there are different. Besides making literal the metaphor of taking life “one step at a time,” Nate’s journey is a powerful examination of masculinity and societal pressure. Your worth isn’t defined by what others are doing; it’s what you do that matters. Every step, every slide, every tumble — those were ours, nobody else’s. Like Nate, I have value for confronting my insecurities and keeping on. We all do.

Baby Steps is available on PS5 and PC. For more on 2025 games, check out the rest of my overall top 10 and Canadian-specific round-up.

Honourable mentions: Consume Me, Donkey Kong Bananza, The Séance of Blake Manor and Avowed

Favourite movie: Sentimental Value

Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) in Sentimental Value. (Image credit: Neon)

After seeing Sentimental Value at TIFF, I quickly declared it not only my favourite of the festival, but my favourite of the year. I loved it that much. A couple months later, I finally got to rewatch it, and I 100 per cent stand by what I said.

Above all else, co-writer and director Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World) just gets the messy nuances of the human condition in a way that feels so raw and emotionally true. While I knew going in that the core story of a young woman having to confront her estranged father would hit close to home, I really admire how much more there is to the film. Themes of self-hatred. Longing. Regret. Aimlessness. Sisterhood. Intergenerational trauma. All of this is brought together through a stirring meditation on the power of art and magnificent, awards-worthy performances by Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning.

I watched more movies in 2025 than in any other year, but Sentimental Value is the one I keep thinking about. Masterpiece.

Honourable mentions: Sinners, One Battle After Another, Homebound and Marty Supreme

Favourite TV series: Andor

Cassian (Diego Luna) and Bix (Adria Arjona) in Andor’s second season. (Image credit: Lucasfilm)

Tony Gilroy’s Star Wars saga is everything I love about dramatic storytelling. It feels not only like an essential rebuke of the cheap fan service-first mentality that’s plagued the galaxy far, far away in the Disney era, but also, more importantly, of the ever-rising tides of authoritarianism. As someone who finds Rogue One aggressively mediocre and couldn’t care less about Digeo Luna’s Cassian Andor in that film, I still can’t believe that his eponymous show made me care rather deeply about him. In Season 1, that was because of his relationship with his mother, and in this second and final season, that’s through his tragically ill-fated romance with Bix (Adria Arjona).

But impressively, Andor made every member of its cast of characters feel compelling. The familial sacrifices of Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen and Genevieve O’Reilly’s Mon Mothma in their respective private and public thorny dealings with the Empire. The (not at all U.S. Republican-esque) pitifully sycophantic — and not at all U.S. Republican-esque — attempts of Kyle Soller’s Syril and Denise Gough’s Dedra to move up within the Empire. Vel (Faye Marsay) and Cinta’s (Varada Sethu) involvement in the horrifying Ghorman Massacre.

And best of all, these are really just ordinary people. Not Jedi or Sith. Not prophesied heroes. Not royalty. Not infamous scoundrels. They’re the “little guys” you’d find on all sides of a given war. This makes for an incredible drama series in its own right that also happens to enrich Star Wars as we come to know it. Now that’s what a reckoning sounds like.

Honourable mentions: The Studio, Task, Pluribus and Severance

Favourite podcast: The Town

The Studio was very close to dethroning Andor as my favourite show this year due to how blisteringly funny it could be — something sorely needed nowadays. Since film is my second great love after games, the Hollywood send-up from Vancouver’s own Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg honestly felt tailor-made for me. For that reason, I was also really glad that The Studio got me into The Town, the podcast hosted by entertainment journalist and two-time guest star Matt Belloni. While I was familiar with his work at The Hollywood Reporter and, more recently, Puck, it was Belloni’s fun role in The Studio‘s outrageous drug-fuelled escapades through Vegas that finally led me to start tuning in.

What I love about The Town is that it’s such a fascinating look into the business of Hollywood. Anyone can talk about why they like movies, but few unpack the intricacies of Tinseltown with Belloni’s level of insight. Some of my favourite episodes so far include his discussions with legal experts about Netflix’s ongoing bid to acquire Warner Bros., his chat with Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini about Hollywood’s burgeoning interest in anime films and Blumhouse boss Jason Blum’s refreshing candor about the failure of M3GAN 2.0. All of this, in turn, has given me a greater appreciation for how the hell creatives even get anything made in Hollywood. As Nicole Kidman might say in an AMC ad, The Town “makes movies better.”

Honourable mentions: My Perfect Console, Virtual Economy, Play, Watch, Listen, Script Apart

Favourite activity: Travel

“Are you not entertained???”

I normally try to avoid repeat picks from previous years, but I can’t not talk about my record travel in 2025. According to the ever-handy travel tracker app Flighty, I had 48 flights this year, which works out to just over 150,000km flown across over nine days total of flight time and nine countries and territories. I absolutely don’t take any of this for granted and I’m beyond grateful.

There were so many incredible trips this year, but some of my highlights:

And while it didn’t involve any airfare, I have to give an honourable mention to TIFF. I got to attend as media this year for the first time ever, and it was a truly amazing experience. The daily commuting to Toronto to see 22 films in total and attend three red carpets, all while balancing regular MobileSyrup work, was absolutely worth it. You can read more on my favourite TIFF films in this breakdown.

If nothing else, 2025 was an exercise in gratitude for me — not only for all of these opportunities, but for those who support us. There are a lot of disingenuous people online, especially in some media circles, so it truly means a lot to know who has our back. (Special shoutout to Intel Gaming’s wonderful Kimi Arquines on that front.) To everyone who’s sat down to read something I’ve written, sent over a word of encouragement, or taken the time to speak with me (especially the many talented Canadian developers I’ve had the privilege to interview) — thank you, sincerely.

Happy New Year, all!

Image credit: Lucasfilm/Devolver Digital/Neon