Hey I got this one out almost on time! 2024 was a pretty great year for games yet again. While I didn’t play as many of the big AAA releases, there were so many fantastic games out of smaller studios. I could easily have added another ten games here and felt good about including them.
As per usual, games or dlc released this year are eligible, early access is not.
Showing 1-10 of 11 items
Marking the first time my personal GOTY has aligned with The Game Awards, Astrobot is a title that deserves every accolade it has received. From a PSVR proof of concept to a PS5 tech demo, the franchise has come a tremendous way. At face value, Astrobot seems simply like a PlayStation take on the Mario formula. While accurate, the comparison is honestly somewhat reductive. It nails that frame perfect platforming that makes Mario so compelling, while heaping loads of PlayStation nostalgia throughout the experience. Every level has some theme that makes it stand out from everything else, nothing ever feels repetitive or stale. There is a sheer joy associated with Astrobot. Many levels had a dumb grin on my face from start to finish, and captured a simple joy of gaming I don’t think I have experienced since I was 12. If you have a PS5 you owe it to yourself to play this game.
*Released out of early access in 2024 2024 was a year of factory games, and Satisfactory was one that finally got a 1.0 release. Satisfactory became feature complete with this update, adding in some light stort elements and the fully fleshed out alien tech that had been marked as a work in progress for years. If Factorio is a game about purity of function in a factory game, Satisfactory is about purity of form. More than any other game in the genre, Safisfactory encourages you to make factories and structures that are actually beautiful to look at. There is something about the first person perspective that really gives a sense of immersion to the feats of engineering you put together. Satisfactory doesn’t work on the same scale as some other factory games, but that is okay. Enemies exist but are obstacles to exploration rather than threats of base destruction. Resources are unlimited. These things all lower a lot of the stress you might otherwise find in this genre, and make the road to the end a very fun experience.
*Space Age DLC Speaking of factory games, Factorio also had a major release with its first (and only) expansion releasing this year. Factorio is the progenitor of this genre of games, and Space Age adds a tremendous amount to it. Base Factorio takes place on one planet, ending with yoy launching a rocket to escape the planet. Space Age picks up from here and gives you four additional planets to discover and build factories on. Every planet has its own technologies, resources, and logistical challenges. To give some context to the scope of the expansion, the base game has a speed run achievement for finishing in 8 hours. Space Age’s achievement is 40. You won’t be making the beautiful structures that you make in Satisfactory here, Factorio is inherently a game about practicality. If you loved Factorio, Space Age will give you more of that. If you didn’t like dealing with the enemies, pollution and other adversaries the game produces you may not find it quite as compelling.
As one of the world’s longest running MMOs, it amazes me that WoW continues to make my list with basically every expansion. The War Within is a strong opening to the new Warcraft story arc that will be taking place over the next several expansions. The design philosophy here follows very closely to Dragonflight, leaning much more towards single-charter exploits through a linear adventure, don’t expect to see the additional forms of character progression that we have seen since Legion. You also won’t see many choices that will encourage you to play through the same content with alts, there are nothing like Covenants here. For many players, this simpler return to form will be a welcome change after the complexity of modern WoW. Others might find it oversimplifies things or limits choice too much. Personally while I like those elements, I really enjoyed my time in TWW. Production values, visuals, music are all some of the best in the MMO genre even twenty years later.
The second of the FF7 remake trilogy, Rebirth expands the scope of the first game to encompass a lot more of the open world that comprised the middle chapters of the original FF7 story. Much as Remake, the game is awash with nostalgia that just brings me back to those days of playing the original FF7 on the PS1, and there really isn’t much more you can ask from the game. Yet it delivers more, with probably the best form of action-combat the series has enjoyed. It manages an engaging and fast paced action system still feels like you are playing within the classic ATB system. As one would expect for the open world segments of a FF game, it also has a wide array of side activities. At times you might wonder if the bame had any kind of editor, because it just keep going and going. In terms of amount of content for a game, I don’t think many single player games have had more. While some of it does end up feeling like filler you always have the option to simply not do it. Narratively, the game skews pretty close to the original game, though it does set up some new elements towards the end game that may have series veterans scratching their heads. While I would have liked the game to lean more into the diverging storylines that Remake embraced, I can’t deny I had a good time with Rebirth and am excited to see the final entry.
Speaking of remakes, Persona 3 Reload takes the very well loved Persona 3 and gives it a Persona 5 style coat of paint. The graphics are redone from the ground up in the P5 style, but more importantly a lot of the quality of life improvements from the later games have been implemented. For example, you can actually control your own party in Persona 3 Reload. In the original game, you were beholden to the whims of your party AI; this would sometimes result in total party wipes that could set you back hours. For people who loved the original Persona 3 and played it multiple times, it may be hard to recommend another 100+ hour playthrough for this, but for newcomers who may have entered the series at P4 or P5 and have been wanting to check out what the older games were like, this is a brilliant remake.
I don’t think I need to explain anything about Balatro as I am fairly certain everyone on the planet has played it by now. If you haven’t, go download it on any platforms that exists to play video games. It’s a roguelike card game about making poker hands. It is so simple in how it is put together, but it works brilliantly and is a great way to spend 10-20 minutes on a run. It is exceptionally rare I ever recommend mobile as the best way to play a game, but Balatro really feels at home there.
The sequel to the dystopian city builder Frostpunk, Frostpunk 2 focuses much more on a society-building simulation rather than an individual city. The scope is a lot grander here, but the same type of hard choices will plague yoy. Do you want to have children risk their lives working in the mines to increase productivity before winter? Maybe you will risk your city getting sick by using questionable food additives to stretch resources further, or instead ask for the elderly to leave the city voluntarily to save food. Frostpunk 2 is a game all about making these kinds of really tough choices and living with the consequences of your actions. It is maybe a bit easier than the first game, but it is far from a forgiving experience.
*Released out of early access in 2024. A lesser known title that released this year, V Rising takes the survival box formula to…vampires? In V Rising you are a vampire working their way up the power hierarchy of the region. Build a base, turn it into a vampiric castle, and slowly work your way through a series of bosses to get stronger. V Rising captures the successful survival box formula very well, but it also pairs it with a surprisingly in depth Diablo style combat system that is every bit as fun to engage with. While I have never engaged in multiplayer servers myself, some people also swear by the PvP elements present in those worlds.
Still Wakes the Deep is a very tight narrative-horror game set on an oil rig off the coast of Scotland, when somebody drills too deep and awakens eldritch horrors. This is a narrative and light stealth focused horror experience as opposed to a combat oriented one, as you explore the rig to find out what happened and get out. The game features some of the best realized voice work of any game I have played, and every actor there deserves recognition. I played this game early in the year, and despite many games higher ranked getting cut from my list, Still Wakes the Deep has persisted throughout the entire year.