by beachthunder
There were a lot of games I would’ve liked to get around to this year, but just didn’t - particularly, a handful of Game Pass games that I’ll have to play when I’m next on the Game Pass juice.
Before I get to the main list, here's some games I played that didn’t make the top ten:
Forgive Me Father 2 - It didn’t quite crack the list, but this was a big improvement over the first Forgive Me Father. The real standout here is the surreal, organic gun designs. Some of the coolest weapon designs I’ve seen in any game.
Balatro - There was definitely a point in time where I would have put this at the very top of my list. But, then I kept playing and playing and playing and playing and playing for over 800 hours. Eventually, the enjoyment evaporated, and the only thing left was me and my neuroses. Sure, I had a great time to begin with, but then the last 100+ hours were largely just miserable; like a parasite clawing into my head and hijacking my brain.
Doom + Doom II: Legacy of Rust - I suppose this would have been on my list if it wasn't 'just' an update/expansion to a 30 or 31 year old game. Legacy of Rust probably skews a little too hard, but it’s still great, some cool new ‘official’ monsters and weapons (and other stuff). Maybe at some point I’ll have a go at making some maps with all the new additions.
Anyway, here’s the top ten list! Backwards!
I was skeptical when this originally got announced. It felt like a sequel that absolutely did not need to be made. But now that the game's been released and I’ve played through it all, well, I still don’t think it needed to be made, but I do think that it's absolutely worth playing.
Other than the incredible visuals, the one thing that really stuck out to me is how good a job it does at sleight of hand; the way it morphs from one scene to next is brilliant and seamless (unless you're using photo mode to look for the seams). I don’t think I’ve seen any other game pull off visual trickery this effectively.
As you might be able to tell from the title, this is a game that’s very much inspired by System Shock. It’s pretty rough around the edges, despite (or because of???) that, it’s a very absorbing and atmospheric immersive sim.
I had such a great time playing this…well, up until <major plot point> 2/3rds of the way in. For the most part though, I thought the game was excellent: a wonderful visual style, great voice acting, and a fun array of weapons & abilities.
[gif of a heart-shaped locket opening up and displaying “Spider Rosa, my beloved” alongside a picture of her].
A pleasant 2D, open-world puzzle game. It isn’t actually all that similar to the 2D Zeldas, but it still gives me those Link’s Awakening vibes.
There’s a lot of genuinely great stuff here, but the main thing that brought it down for me was unnecessarily long animations, particularly when travelling between areas. But, I dunno, maybe that's just a me issue and not a huge deal for other people.
An engrossing puzzle-based metroidvania filled with lots of ‘hm’ and ‘oh’ and ‘aha’ moments.
It does away with the typical loadout you’d normally expect from a metroidvania and swaps it out for mostly toy items - there’s a bubble wand, a slinky, firecrackers, a yo-yo. Lots of fun little toys!
*turns towards camera* But seriously, kids, this is just a video game; in real life, firecrackers are absolutely not a toy! *turns away from camera as if nothing ever happened.*
Ahem, where was I? Oh, right, This game's pretty good, and still very much worth playing even if you don’t plan on diving into the vast depths of optional content. Anyway, I think this is one of those games where the less said about it, the better.
David Hellman's art is beautiful, the writing’s delightful, and there’s some fun puzzle mechanics that never overstay their welcome. This feels like something a lot more people should be talking about. It’s excellent and, sadly, it seems to have flown under a lot of people’s radars.
Firstly, I’d like to give thanks to our lord and savior, Into the Breach. Your divine eminence has guided us into a blessed era of minimalist turn-based tactics games.
Not only does this game play great - with lots of clever synergies between all the different character abilities - but also, the characters themselves are excellent. Each of the characters has their own distinct, fleshed-out personalities with well-thought out backstories. There’s a lot of hilarious writing, but it also knows when to be serious.
Just everything about this game feels so creative and lovingly crafted.
If you said to me that my third favourite game from 2024 would be an MMO, I'd say “first of all, that is a very weirdly specific thing to predict”, but then I’d probably say, “actually, it’s not even an MMO anymore, so you’re wrong, hypothetical person”.
So, yeah, if you are reading this right now, this game is no longer an MMO. The MMO features were pretty light anyway, it was mainly just a shared world where you could see other people standing around and solving puzzles. This lasted for about eight months and then they shut down the servers. Thankfully, this didn't mean the end of the game completely - it's still purchasable and playable, you'll just never see another person in-game.
It never really needed to be an MMO anyway, but I still had a bunch of fun just flying around, striking poses, and chirping at other people.
A lot of the puzzle types are just filler (there's several kinds of hidden objects, annoying mazes, Superman 64-esque ring flying, etc…), but there are some genuinely fantastic logic grid puzzles. Before I played this, I assumed most of the puzzles would be throwaway, procedurally-generated things - but, nope, hand-crafted logic grids with clearly a lot of thought and care put into them.
I picked the game up during the brief window when they were giving it away for free. When the MMO side of the game got shut down, I felt really guilty for not paying any money for it. I honestly wonder if this might've been better suited as a free-to-play game?
Anyway, as you might be able to tell, I really enjoyed my time with Islands of Insight. It was a truly unique experience, and I’m glad I got to experience it when it was populated with other people.
A real fresh take on both word games and dungeon crawlers (well, as fresh as a game about a party of zombie adventurers can be).
Initially, I was a bit wary about playing this because I’d heard it was a Typing of the Dead-esque dungeon crawler. Which, to me, made it seem like the game was mainly focused on speedtyping. And to be fair, it kinda is, but you can also set battles to turn-based - which was perfect for me - I'm a hunt-and-peck typing type of person. Gross, I know!
One of the first things people are going to notice about the game is the narration by the titular Cryptmaster. There’s a seemingly endless amount of bespoke voice lines (I have been assured that no AI was involved).
The narrator really does such a great job. It's honestly such a blast typing in all manner of stupid nonsense and seeing how the Cryptmaster sarcastically responds.
If I were to nitpick anything about the game, it’d be the name. “Cryptmaster” sounds so painfully generic. If you just heard the name, you’d never expect anything even remotely interesting. But, I don't know how much I can really fault them; it's not like I can think of anything better.
Technically, this is fifty standalone games packed into one executable, but, really, all of it feels like a single cohesive whole. I'd say a large part of that has to do with the unified colour palette. There's also a lot of similar motifs and characters shared among the different games, and not to mention the overarching narrative/lore that can be teased out through each game’s text descriptions.
They really did a great job of making this feel like it popped out of an alternate 1980s. It truly feels miraculous how consistently good this whole package is. I might even call UFO 50 one of the Seven Wonders of the Video Game World (please don’t ask what the other six are - I haven’t thought that far ahead).
Anyway, I went and made a top ten list (lists within lists!) of my favourite UFO 50 games - this time it's a forwards list:
So, what about the other 40 games? Let’s just say they’re all equally tied for 11th place :)
Okay, that's not true, but I don't think I have it in me to rank all 50. Also, a lot of the games I didn’t even complete (some of them are exceptionally hard!) But, I still tried to give all of the games a fair whack.
There were a handful of games I really wasn't a fan of. But, if nothing else, I'll say that every game has something interesting to offer (well, maybe not Block Koala, but everything else besides that).
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