It's that time again! Work is winding down the Christmas, so we have time to think about bullshit like "hmm, what were some good games this year?"
My Top 15
1. UFO 50
I got Nintendo Switch Online at around the same time as I bought this and ended up spending so much more time with this collection than with the Nintendo classics. UFO 50: even better than the real thing!
2. Pacific Drive
Going for road trips in an old station wagon while spooky shit happens? That’s just my kinda thing right there.
3. Animal Well
A game with a lot of fun mechanics, unexpected moments, and eggs.
4. Star Wars: Outlaws
A nice slice of the Star Wars universe to lose yourself in for a couple weeks.
5. Exo Rally Championship playtest/demo
Yes it’s a demo, but I played over 20 hours of this thing and loved every minute of it.
6. The Brew Barons
It’s Porco Rosso/Crimson Skies but also you’re running a brewery. The gameplay was fun, but there was something about the look and music of this thing that struck such a perfect mood that it elevated the whole thing into something really special. I already feel nostalgic for it.
7. Indiana Jones & The Great Circle
Indy game of the year.
8. [ECHOSTASIS]
I like stories about AIs going crazy and this is a good one of those plus it has some really innovative first person shooter-puzzling.
9. Sonar Shock
System Shock 1-inspired indie immsim/surhor that does a lot with a little. I found it inspiring. If I ever try to make an immsim this’ll be the template.
10. Crow Country
Just a perfect lil survival horror package that anyone is sure to enjoy.
11. Batman: Arkham Shadow
The VR Arkham game isn’t as good as the best of its predecessors, but a lot better than you’d expect!
12. Teardown: Folkrace DLC
Playing a small time crook who finances his demolition derby racing by doing heists is such a potent combination. The only thing letting this DLC down is the lack of content. I want more of this! A lot more!
13. MS Flight Simulator 2024
Improved on its predecessor in a lot of ways and the career mode had me hooked for a good week despite a lot of jank. Still wanna get back to this.
14. Lorn’s Lure
Starts off with some great exploration and platforming and then keeps re-inventing itself with every new level.
15. Arctic Eggs
Fun and unique egg-flipping gameplay paired with Umurangi Generation-esque presentation and writing. What a package!
Honorable mentions:
Parking Garage Rally Circuit
Grunn
Phantom Spark
Fallen Aces
Still Wakes The Deep
Stalker 2
Disappointments of the Year:
Expeditions: A Mudrunner Game
Steamworld Heist 2
Star Trucker
Conscript
I was HYPED about all of these at the start of the year and they just ended up disappointing me in one way or another. SHAME! SHAME!
Ok now tell me what your faves were while the Steam sale is still on. I will buy EVERY GAME YOU MENTION!
Ok, maybe not. But I'll think about it.
Our previous Best Games Of The Year lists
2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010
After looking into my purchases, it would appear that I've only played 2 games released in 2024: Tekken 8 & Tiny Glade.
Of the two, I'd rate Tiny Glade higher due to a lack of aggressive monetization.
Felvidek
Unusual soundtrack and artwork. Reminds me old soviet cartoons from 70-s. But it's done on RPG Maker which is a bad decision for such a short and swift story.
10. Into the Radius
VR Stalker with a granular level of weapon interaction. Might’ve been higher, but I haven’t put enough time in yet.
9. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
More Fromsoft at a typical insane quality level.
8. Madison VR
The most afraid I’ve ever been while playing a video game.
7. Grunn
Curious gardening sim with a horror twist and then a speedrun twist.
6. Animal Well
Mysterious and beautiful puzzle platformer showcasing a singular creative vision. Amazing sound design.
5. Legendary Tales
Fun, tactile swordfighting combat in VR, with good ’70s dark fantasy vibes.
4. UFO 50
At least a few of these 50 games alone could go on this list, and the soundtrack is an achievement unto itself.
3. Astro Bot
Every dang level put a huge smile on my face. And then they put out a Christmas level where you can dive into a pool of sleigh bells.
2. Balatro
Brilliant, tight game design with beautiful graphics and hypnotic music. It got overmarketed as being addictive, but the truth is that it's deep and challenging and very winnable if you're good enough (I'm not).
1. Anthology of the Killer
Dreamlike in the purest sense, horrific and comforting and hilarious and poignant all at once. Of all the games I played in 2024, this is the one I’ll remember most.
Honourable Mentions
Arctic Eggs – the best Dadaist egg-frying sim ever
Selaco – great shooting and graphics let down by confusing level design and pacing
Tomb Raider Remastered – I guess I’d only ever played TR3, so this was two new games for me!
Horizon Remastered – I finally finished this game, and it was pretty good
I want to still play:
Indy, of course
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.2.
Nine Sols
Indika
1000xResist
Threshold
Metro Awakening
Behemoth
Alien: Rogue Incursion
Felvidek
Best game I played that wasn’t from 2024:
PaRappa the Rapper – I should’ve played this when I was a kid. As an adult I felt a retroactive sense of nostalgia, and now these songs are burned into my brain. The flea market frog is the best.
For some reason I don't like brawlers unless they have some sort of silly license, like the old Simpsons or TMNT arcade games. Double Dragon and Renegade and whatever have always bored the hell out of me. So I was somewhat surprised that Digital Eclipse's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita's Rewind, a game in a genre I don't like with a license I don't care about, is probably the best new game I've played this year. I haven't spent much time with it, or anything that came out in 2024, but from the short bursts I've played so far it has probably the tightest and least cheap feeling combat I've experienced in this type of game. So that's probably my GotY so far.
Some other potential contenders once I get to spend some more time with them are things I picked up to play handheld since I finally have a Switch: Tetris Forever, Raiden NOVA, Epic Mickey Rebrushed, Shredder's Revenge, BG&E 30th Anniversary, and PoP The Lost Crown. I think the only 2024 PC releases I've touched have been Top Spin 2k25, which people seem disappointed with because it's basically Top Spin 4 with a fresh coat of paint (I'm ok with this because I could never find a copy for my PS3) and WRC 2024, which is DLC for a 2023 game that I didn't bother with because it seemed meh but now that I've done a few stages just seems like Dirt Rally 2.0 with a WRC license, so not Richard Burns Rally or even WRC 10 driving-wise but still ok if you like rallying. I've always found the DR games enjoyable enough, although I thought they peaked with the beta physics of DR1 which seemed less floaty. Especially now that I drive a 300hp turbo AWD car like an idiot on uneven asphalt and gravel a fair amount, I think RBR is still king with WRC10 being the peak of the last gen and WRC24 feeling the best of the modern Codemasters games, with the caveat that I think the original physics from the beta of Dirt Rally were better. But anyway, it's not bad or anything.
2024 games that I don't own but will at some point: GI Joe Wrath Of Cobra, M&L Brothership, LoZ Echoes Of Wisdom, and the Thousand Year Door remake. And Princess Peach Showtime because YOLO. So all stuff I want to play handheld. PC was a big miss for me this year I think, like most years without a big Arkane or Obsidian release. Oh yeah, the Robocop game was this year IIRC, and while I've only played the demo I have the full release now and will be getting into it at some point soon. (Nope, it was last year. So I guess there weren't any PC games I care about this year? Weird.) I'll probably play Indy when it's hit $5-10 during a black friday sale in a few years.
I missed the biggest Switch release of 2024, i.e. Stilt Fella, but that was from the heady days of pre-covid when stilts and fellas weren't old hat.
Last edited by Jason Moyer; 24th Dec 2024 at 21:48.
I love these "best of" lists, but I never have much to contribute, as I hardly ever buy games unless they're at least 50% off. There are exceptions for that, but even if I'm excited about some upcoming release, I have no trouble at all waiting for a year or two until I actually play the game. For example I bought Alan Wake 2 almost a year ago, but still haven't got around to playing it...
Nine Sols and Little Kitty, Big City may be the only new games that I've played in 2024 (thanks to XBox Game Pass), but I feel that neither of those deserve my prestigiuos GOTY award, even though both are pretty good.I wanted to play the new Indy game too, but decided to give Kingdom Come: Deliverance another playthrough before the sequel comes out, so that'll have to wait until 2025.
You know, I haven't actually played that many games from this year looking back on it.
The ones I actually played through to completion were even fewer.
So this isn't really a "Best of" for me, more a "Wot I have actually played this year"
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Started out really strong, and is Machinegames doing what they do best, with their almost-but-not-quite Imm Sim form of game design.
People are comparing it to Assassin's Creed and other such games, but as previously noted, I find it most heavily resembles earlier Starbreeze games; the Riddick ones in particular.
However, it does outstay its welcome, and in all honesty, could have done with being a little more linear.
But it could serve as an excellent template for other similar games exploring aging IPs with aging (or even dead) stars; it's a much better Indiana Jones story then either of the last two movies.
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 3
It didn't set my world alight, but it was a great game to play over the course of a weekend, and a good follow up to the original. It feels weighty and looks spectacular, and the swarm technology is incredible.
I'm just fed up with 40K games that start with Space Marines vs. Xenos, which then pull the curtain back to reveal it was Chaos all along!
I've always been more of an Ork fan, and we don't get enough videogames from their PoV.
I'm also aware that this was designed with the single-player being little more than an extended tutorial, with the main meat being 3-player co-op, but none of the usual TTLG crew are playing it.
Similarly...
Helldivers 2
The big success of the year, which is doing a lot of interesting things with Games Master driven gameplay.
I picked it up and played a few missions single-player, but again, this is really meant to be played in a group, and I think only one other person from here is playing it (faetal maybe?)
So it's just sat there languishing in my pile of shame.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Despite seemingly the entire Internet hating this game (thanks to Neanderthalian GG2.0 clickbait shenanigans), this really impressed me, and I had a grand old time with it. Not one of the best games ever, to be sure, but still a good Bioware game, and a satisfying conclusion to one of the main story threads in Thedas.
I hope they continue to make games in the series. Dragon Age took a while to grow on me; I can't stand Origins gameplay and graphics, although the story's pretty good, and I skipped 2 entirely.
But with Inquisition and this, I feel it finally began to feel like an established world, and them getting back to a more Mass Effect style of gameplay made me realise that that's the kind of game they really feel comfortable with.
Dragon's Dogma 2
Another one that starts strong, but unfortunately loses focus incredibly quickly, with the latter half becoming a mess story wise, and repetitive with not enough monster variety.
A massive shame, as the bones of a stupidly fantastic game are there. The "Endgame" is also a real slog; it's an interesting idea, but just a chore to play through.
It really needs a Dark Arisen-style expansion, and to be honest, should have had that monster variety from the very start.
It's also incredibly easy to become stupidly overpowered after a while, where nothing presents a challenge any more, which isn't helped by monsters in NG+ being exactly the same strength they were during your first playthrough.
Very pretty and fun before the novelty wears off mind you.
Guild Wars 2
The game got a new expansion in August, Janthir Wilds, which started strong, but has rapidly dipped in quaiity. Their new way of releasing new content really isn't landing well with the players, and class balance is continuously jumping around like Zebedee on crystal meth. Story has also dipped massively in quality, despite the initial two maps being some of the best they've made in years.
Thankfully, this dip in quality has served to sever the game's current grip on my attention, so there is that.
MMOs are incredibly needy, greedy games, demanding ALL of the players' time.
Thank Goodness You're Here!
Very funny love-letter to the North of England, with some fatastically abstract humour and great jokes with very long tails. But it's a once-and-it's-done kind of experience and more like a traditional point-and-click, which isn't really my cup of tea these days.
Good for the laughs though.
Game I loved but that isn't finished yet:
Gloomwood
Excellent stuff, and managed to draw me in a lot more than games with a lot more visual fidelity. A great reminder of how to do interesting things with limited assets and a strong core design. The most Thiefy thing since Thief 2.
Game that isn't from this year but that I still played massive amounts of:
The eternal Dwarf Fortress
DF is the game I return to over and over, and is simply one of my favourites of all time. The simulation is so deep and surprising, and designing & refining working industries, machines and defense systems never ceases to entertain me. For emergent gameplay, it's probably the best game out there.
Games on Steam Deck that are keeping me sane during the Christmas period at the Parents':
Untitled Goose Game
Charming, funny, short and sweet.
Doesn't outstay its welcome, and is obviously created with love. The goose itself is perfectly designed, with phenomenal animation and character. And much like "Thank Goodness You're Here!", very British. But also like TGYH!, it's a one-shot, and there's very little reason to replay it.
But the experience of being an avatar of chaos is delicious.
En Garde!
Just started and gotten up to where the demo finished, and it's outstandingly pretty and charming. Drains the Deck's battery worryingly quickly though.
Temple of Doom & Last Crusade are excellent movies. There are no Indy movies after them.
That's how NG+ worked in the original as well, you were expected to increase the difficulty level manually for NG+.Dragon's Dogma 2
It's also incredibly easy to become stupidly overpowered after a while, where nothing presents a challenge any more, which isn't helped by monsters in NG+ being exactly the same strength they were during your first playthrough.
Yes. Furthermore, this is easily my game of the year.
I've never been that into multiplayer games, but I'm borderline obsessed with this.
Most fun I've had gaming in a long time.
Hit me up any time if you fancy trying a harder difficulty mission (and the associated upgrade materials).
Last edited by faetal; 26th Dec 2024 at 21:40.
Alright, 2024 is over. Here's my list:
Shadow of the Erdtree - More Elden Ring is a good thing. This didn't disappoint, and at times surpassed the original. The exploration was the best part.
Conscript - Sorry henke.This was an amazing game made by just one guy, who really put his heart into it. Kind of a mixup of Resident Evil and NES Metal Gear. My type of thing.
Dread Delusion - Pretty cool laid back retro RPG with funky colors.
Metro Awakening - Best VR game this year. Scary, intense, and thick with atmosphere.
Animal Well - I still have so much to do here. Great combination of simple gameplay with complex game spaces. Nifty unique visuals too
Astro Bot - Only PS5 game I bought or played this year. So creative, so fun. You can forget you're an adult for a while.
Children of the Sun - I love me a good sniper game. This one was one of the best I've played, great fun with lots of primary/secondary challenges.
Riven Remake - Man, I've waited for years for this, in one form or another. Definitely lived up to my expectations.
Indy Jones & The Great Circle - It's like you are Indiana Jones, taking part in one of his movies. Fantastic job by Machine Games.
Intravenous 2 - Bought it on a whim, hated it initially, but grew to love it (once I sort of figured it out). Tons of replay value here. It's Hotline Miami with the option of going full stealth.
Close but not quite:
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
Pacific Drive
Batman Arkham Shadow
Mouthwashing
Threshold
Top 5 Thief FMs:
Mysteries of Tolham/Lord Taffer (TG) - Only for diehards, great exploration and lots to do. My favorite this year.
Winds of Misfortune/skacky (TG) - Yeah, another skacky city mission with big tall buildings, ho hum. But of course, it was amazing and such fun to navigate.
A Thief's Training/Snake (TG)
Rogue's Lair/vegetables (TG)
Nest of Vipers/nicked (T2)
I'm glad you liked Conscript, Renault.I liked a lot about it, but the checkpointing and clunky combat ultimately put me off it. When I died yet again and knew I'd have to trudge through 15 minutes of game just to get back to the same difficult combat bit I said "fuck this".
Started playing nicked's Nest of Vipers FM last night btw. Great mission.![]()
1. Caravan SandWitch: Casual driving between points of interest and then exploration by foot with some climbing and side quests. Also, some people freaking out about the game on Steam makes me like it even more, because I'm simple like that.
Other games of note in no particular order:
Year Unknown
Desolatium
Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley
Botany Manor
Echostasis
Repunk
I thought I'd previously posted this, but obviously not!
A late entry for me, as I bought it after Christmas: Stalker 2
I waited for it to settle down a bit after a buggy release, and it's still pretty buggy; I've had more than one bugged quest, and one gamebreaking one that I had to use UETools to fix.
But bugs aside, it's a remarkable game.
It's refreshing to be playing an open world game that does things its own way and is less interested in hand-holding.
The exploration is the star here, with something remarkable hiding behind or below seemingly every hill.
The "combat" as it stands, I could take or leave, especially against the mutants, which are more of an annoyance than a challenge. Bloodsuckers in particular are just irritating, and the fights against them always, always devolve into me cramming myself into a corner and waiting for them to come straight at me, which unfortunately is the case for a lot of the mutants.
But at the same time, while this is infuriating and lacks nuance, the intensity of the encounters gives the game something I think it would miss if they were more "gamey".
And this lack of "gameyness" bleeds into other areas of the game, serving to always keep the player on their toes, as they're always working with incomplete data. There's no list of unlocked blueprints or the items they apply to for example, meaning you never know when something might be upgradeable, which in turn means it's always a pleasant surprise when you discover you can upgrade something.
I bounced hard off of the first game, as I bought it and tried to play it on release, when it was unplayably buggy.
But I now see what all the fuss is about. Stalker 2's a great experience, and more importantly, one where you're playing an everyman and not some super-soldier whose destiny is to save the world.
One more annoyance (as we tend to be most critical of those we love the most):
There's an awful lot of things in the game that are locked behind story progression, and in the spirit of incomplete information, the game doesn't tell you this. So you can spend a significant amount of time trying to get to a stash or artifact, only to do a search and find out you can't access it at your point in the game. When this happens, it rips apart the otherwise ever-present feeling of player freedom the game gives you.
It's evidently the year for very cinematic games that have you basically walking through the dev's story, with a fair amount of time travel and/or anomalies along the way. Alright, here's my top 10:
1. Stalker 2. The old atmosphere is back. Remember they aren't glitches; they're anomalies.
2. Animal Well. Every two years or so there's a perfect indie platformer, and this year it was this.
3. Indy and the Great Circle. I don't like the concept so much, but it's as close to being in an Indy movie as you're gonna get, and has fair gameplay for what it is.
4. 1000 x Resist. A walking sim; less gameplay and more a nice interactive mechanic for progressing the story done in a slick way. The storytelling delivers, and the world it builds was fascinating to me; may help if you care about society & culture etc. in Asia/China, or anyway an expat Chinese view on it. Also definitely a commentary on the covid era.
5. Indika. Cinematic & dark in a bleak Russian countryside following a compromised nun. What's not to love? Also a bizarre mix of hyperreal and retro pixel.
6. Outbrk. Tornado hunting. It's getting some hate in the forums for the bugs and sparse world south of the horizon, but it's evidently an obsession for people like me growing up in heartland America with tornado alerts every year and driving around country roads. Not for everyone, but if you'd love those things like I do then you'll love this; and there is a puzzle to it, as you have to predict where the tornado alerts are going to be when you get there, the route you should take, where to stop, and when to go. The cloud and weather sim & visuals are top notch. Great build up as the storm gets increasingly unhinged as you approach your mark, and having a live tornado traveling nearby you is appropriately terrifying, exciting, and humbling.
7. Pacific Drive. Bringing Stalker back to its original home in the US. Bang up start! Driving part and the atmosphere & world were best. The grinding wore thin quick though.
8. Warno. Cold War goes hot RTS wargame. They say it's not for singleplayer and some people don't like how it abstracts things, but I really love it. Looks fantastic & I like how slick and smooth it plays for a war game.
9. Nobody Wants to Die. Easily the best & most cinematic cyberpunk noir experience I've ever seen in a game. The gamifying of the detective work is a little over the top and task-list dependent, but follows the theme this year of really interesting mechanics carrying the story forward.
10. MiSide. I don't know why I got wrapped up into this game. You get dragged into a J-dating sim in your phone and do a lot of gimmicky mini-games. But you're dealing with the world like you would if you were really in a real video game, I mean exploiting the code, bugs, AI going rogue, and version updates from the inside, etc. I had a really similar game concept before, so I was really interested in seeing how this game dealt with the same concept; since I hadn't seen another game really give it justice (cf. Stanely Parable). Surprisingly mind bending.
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Here's a list of other games I liked played or watched enough of a let's play to have an idea, in a rough order of preference:
Technically 2023 games that felt like 2024 games (last year was a better year for games for me): The Brew Barons, The Bed We Made, Shadow of Doubt, Chants of Sennaar
MS Flight Simulator 2024
Senua's Saga: Hellblade II
Nine Sols
Crypt Custodian
Astrobot
[ECHOSTASIS]
Thank Goodness You’re Here!
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
Felvidek
Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum
No Case Should Remain Unsolved
The Rise of the Golden Idol
Astro Bot
Fallen Aces
UFO 50
Threshold
Mouthwashing
Frostpunk 2
Nuclear Nightmare
Just Crow Things
Tactical Breach Wizards
Neva
Dune Imperium
Exo Rally Championship (demo)
Tiny Glade / Dystopica
Silent Hill 2
Balatro
Hades 2
Satisfactory
Last edited by demagogue; 5th Jan 2025 at 16:02.
RE: Outbrk. I've played a bit of the somewhat similar Tornado: Search & Rescue, which was a neat but pretty janky. Sounds like Outbrk might have better gameplay. If there's one genre I wish AAA would tackle it's something like this. Imagine a tornado chasing game on a AAA budget!
Huh? Noooo, Brew Barons came out March 1st, 2024, according to Steam. And that's when I got my KS backer key as well.
Ah, I looked all of them up independently since sometimes things released on early access, etc., and that came up 2023 for some reason. But anyway if we're going by the Steam date & it's a 2024 game, then Brew Barons would take the 5th spot for me. I was pretty absorbed for a month by it.