by lnvis
Top 3 Games of 2024 that didn't come out in 2024:
1. GeoGuessr
2. Need for Speed: Most Wanted Pepega Mod
Honorable Mentions:
- Balatro
Game that deserved better:
- Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown
Haven't played yet due to waiting for either patches or a port:
An puzzle game where you're on an island with 10,000 unique puzzles to solve, and that number is not an exaggeration. They are spread over 24 different types of puzzles, so there's a lot of repetition here. Quantity truly over quality, but I had a good time gradually solving about 500 of them. I would have played more but my save was deleted whenever they converted the game from an always-online MMO to a single player experience.
This game is only fun once you use CheatEngine to give yourself unlimited money, and if you don't you're going to have a terrible time going through mobile levels of grinding. However once you're past that, this game has some of the best drift physics I've ever played.
A slow Early Access rollout got in the way of me spending more time with this game as it got old quicker than I would have liked. Regardless it's a great way to tell whoever in your friend group is a terrible liar, and only gets better with friends that you know really well.
I had some great friendlies with Tekken 8, and those close matches always gave me a quick burst of adrenaline that not many other games can. At the end of the day though, I'm just not a fighting game person so I fell off of it hard once I got to the ranked levels where I genuinely needed to start putting in more time than I wanted to get better.
It hurts to have Hellblade II this low, but there's not much to the sequel. It finishes strong but the first Hellblade finished significantly stronger in a way where I don't believe a sequel was necessary, and diminishes the place where Senua is at come the ending of the first game.
This game deserves going in blind to, as it's unsettling nature and incredible sound design should be experienced without any knowledge beforehand.
The only good "climb up" game that also has co-op. With a unique twist where you're always physically tied to your teammates and workshop support with a level editor, there's a good time here for a weekend.
I love cats so much, and I'm going to play your game if a significant part of it involves a cat.
You're not going to find many people more into college football than me, and I've been waiting 11 years for this game. However after the honeymoon period for one of the most anticipated sports games of all time wears off, you'll realize there isn't much here to offer. Don't get me wrong, the actual play to play is fantastic and more in depth than NCAA 14. But it's missing more features from previous entries than I wish to write about, and while the presentation (other than the commentary) is better than it's ever been, all that's leftover is a barebones but solid foundation that should have looked back and remembered what the games used to be first and foremost.
I'm usually not a fan of hero based shooters, but Marvel Rivals is the exception. I'm also not a huge Marvel fan, but I think my enjoyment of this is carried a great deal by a familiarity with the Marvel IP. The similarities to Overwatch here really are written on its sleeves, but if you're going to take something from another game in your genre you better take it from the best. Rivals also got me to play the healer role which I've never been one to play in any type of multiplayer game, and that's purely because every character plays exceptionally well and is relatively easy to learn. I've never been more satisfied with the hitmarker and its sound in a game, and that's odd to say. The honeymoon period for this hasn't worn off like it has for CFB25, so we'll see if it does months from now.
After over a decade of nothing but Prince of Persia remakes, mobile games, and VR experiences, Ubisoft has gotten around to making one of the better games of the series. I wasn't quite as grabbed by The Lost Crown like others were, but that's not to say it's anything but fun. It's a great Metroidvania with a user friendly map and a combat system that allows you lots of freedom to handle any fight whichever way you want.
What's not to love about a fast paced shooter with an aggressive soundtrack, great storytelling, and great voice acting? For the type of speedrun games as these, you've got to nail the moment to moment gameplay, because that's what the core loop is built around to keep players repeating the same level over and over again. And boy, does I Am Your Beast nail that. The hitboxes for headshots seem bigger than they should be, so it makes you feel like a badass when you nail that headshot that you didn't think was going to connect. My one negative towards this game was that I did not enjoy most of the side objectives for each level, which are required to progress past a certain point in the story on more than one occasion. So I had to go back and complete the ones I disliked the least, and even though they weren't challenging, they did break up the flow for me a little. Besides that, I Am Your Beast is a satisfying speedrun game that I loved the few hours I spent in it.
I haven't played a bullet hell since Godstrike in 2021, so I was more than looking forward to getting back into one. Minishoot Adventures is the type of game that I don't think I've ever experienced before, with it being part bullet hell and part Metroidvania. And through all that it finds a way to somehow mesh cozy and bullet hell together well.
If this list was ranked solely on playtime, Destiny 2 with it's final true expansion would easily be number 1. After the disaster that was Lightfall, many including myself had worries about Bungie sticking the landing in what would be the culmination of 10 years of story. But Bungie did exactly that. The Final Shape is one of the best Destiny expansions ever from both a gameplay and story perspective, and it's everything I could have asked for as the conclusion for The Light and Darkness saga.
Destiny 2 is still a live service game though, so what do you do once you've done closed the book on a decade of storylines? Well, you scrap the bottom of the barrel to find whatever is left. With all the layoffs at Bungie and leadership changes, Destiny 2 at the start of 2025 is in a rough position right now as it bleeds out more players than it ever has, and I can't fault any of those that decided The Final Shape was the perfect point to stop playing. Destiny 2 however is still one of the best playing shooters available and I'll be here until the wheels fall off.
If you weren't already a fan of Dragon Age, Veilguard wasn't going to change that. I know what I'm getting with current BioWare games, and that's what I want. While it's an overall improvement over Inquisition in my opinion, it falls short in what is also does best; the combat. The difficulty of the combat leaves a lot to be desired where you can just steamroll everything immediately from the start. That's a side effect though from the deep build variety the skill tree and loot provide to give you a multitude of options that haven't been as present since the first Dragon Age. Even if it's too easy, Veilguard gives you that feeling of a power fantasy that your party in lore should have.
We aren't coming to Dragon Age for the combat though, are we? I believe your companions in Veilguard are the best in the series. They are all written well with a weight to their loyalty missions that's more than just your normal revenge story. Their banter back and forth progressively changes as they spend more time together in a way that seems realistic. Veilguard is the first Dragon Age where I was looking forward to going through every companions loyalty missions, instead of just most of them. Even though the side stories don't expand upon many of the factions they're built around, the main story dribbles in the right amount of nostalgia and new beats that it ends in a way which should satisfy most who enjoyed the ride leading up to it.
I'm sure most of us were confused whenever Bloober was given the green light with a Silent Hill 2 remake. Coming off of The Medium didn't instill much confidence that they could handle the task. Well how the tables have turned haven't they? Bloober did exactly what they should have done in this remake by leaving alone what worked in the original and changing that which didn't. The visual presentation and sound design are unmatched, being able to recreate that stress and uncertainty around every corner that I felt when playing it on the PS1.
I didn't expect to enjoy Dragon's Dogma 2 as much as I did, purely because of the first game. While I enjoyed Dark Arisen, it ran horribly (I played it on PS3) and was jank as hell. And to a degree, nothing has changed here in the sequel. I'm really not a fan of the way that quests can just permanently fail thus cutting off even more quests, but thankfully I never ran into that in my playthrough.
It's that freedom however that kept bringing me back to Dragon's Dogma 2. Whether it was grabbing onto a Griffin and flying away from my pawns because I have to know where it'll take me, or chucking my healer off this cliff cause she won't shut up, the interactivity with the world itself leaves open so much room to discover something new you haven't before. The entire Pawn mechanic is what carries this game for me, because there is just something so cool that I can't properly put into words about hiring other companions that were created by real players. I carried the same rotating cast of 10 or so pawns throughout my entire game because whoever all was playing was going at the same pace I was. I don't know who y'all were, but I appreciate y'all.
Look at that picture! You're fighting a Megalodon basically. Yakuza/Like a Dragon is just stupid, and it's great. I've been playing this series since it's debut on the PS2 as I was lucky enough to come into news of it at the time, and I've loved them all ever since. Any sort of mafia or crime stories are my go to in any sort of entertainment, and they are plentiful here. However with a weaker main story than Yakuza: Like a Dragon caused by some plot points that don't make sense, Infinite Weath was the first point in the series where I started to wonder how many times RGG Studio can go back to the well. Hopefully forever, because I'll keep coming back to these games for the cast of characters that I've spent over half of my life with.
I don't believe I've ever had a game make me belly laugh in the first 30 seconds like Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip did. It's dry humor accompanied by awkward pauses feels like it was made specifically for me as I could not stop laughing the entire time I was playing. Driving around this small taxi with nitrous while Terry keeps a deadpan straight face is comedic gold, and I would strongly recommend anyone to play this if this sounds like your type of humor.
I was thinking of falling off of Indiana Jones after a few hours in, but I'm glad I read others reiterate the point that it picks up later. And boy, it sure does! Video games have a well documented history of terrible games built around a movie license, but The Great Circle is not like the others. MachineGames nails the feel of those movies in how they don't take themselves too seriously with its comedic timing accompanied by breath taking set pieces that always go wrong leading to an action packed escape. There's so many small things that add up here as well, such as lighting your torch or using your whip to sweep every enemy that comes your way straight onto their ass. It's just a straight satisfying game to play that will make you laugh at all the right times.
Take Sony out of Astro Bot and all the related IPs and you've still got one of the best platformers ever. Whether you look at it's ever so tight controls, the relaxing soundtrack, or how adorable it all is, it all comes together in a perfect package where every level so seamlessly plays out in a way that no other platformer ever has. No level feels too long nor too short. Nothing is holding your hand cause it needs to tell you where to go since you can always see where you need to go next. Team Asobi has really struck gold here with the Astro Bot series by taking a near dormant genre of its time and bringing it back with new life like no one else could.
The way to my heart will always be a great souls-like game. WuKong is that and so much more cause it's not a traditional souls-like despite how this game is tagged in game stores or talked about online. You don't ever lose any form of currency or "souls" when you die which results in this being one of the more friendly games in the genre. No matter what, you will always progress. I'm not saying a game like Elden Ring is doing anything wrong, but there's a level of stress that's in Elden Ring that just isn't present here outside of boss fights, and you can look as that as a positive or negative.
Regarding the bosses, here are easily some of the most thrilling and engaging boss fights I've ever seen in a game. The linear level based design of WuKong allows for massive set pieces in those end fights which led me to mouth "holy shit" more times than I can count leading into those fights. Not many times will I see a second or even third phase of a boss where I'm getting progressively more engaged into the fight due to how the bosses dialogue changes or the cutscene plays out between phases. I usually just want it to be over, but not here. Everything in WuKong is so "extra" that the combat seems almost cartoony, and I mean that in a good way.
The combat is so aggressively fast paced with its combo system that it allow for some very satisfying burst damage once you start taking advantage of stagger windows and stuns. Planning out when to use your skills in each boss to maximize your damage, and also when to lay off attacking so you can get that stun off right before the boss casts the next attack is more satisfying every time you're doing it because it feels like you're beating the game at its own game.
Even though at times I wished WuKong was just slightly more difficult, nothing could have diminished the time I spent with the best game of 2024.
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