2024 Game of the Year

This is going to be a very difficult year to make a top 10 list. I played a lot of good to very good games this year so whittling that down to a top 10 is going to be more difficult than most years. Also, picking my No.1 will be tricky because, while there were a ton of great games, none have clearly set themselves apart. My goal is to have things finalized by end of January since I still have a few indie games I want to play.

There is a lot I love about Metaphor, but i ultimately felt that the actual battles were often frustrating and not as fun as previous persona and SMT games. The overall story, visuals, vibe, characters were great, but the gameplay left me feeling a bit off. Thus, Astro Bot is my game of the year. Astro Bot is just pure joy from start to finish. I don't feel as bad about the whole "this game is a commercial for Playstation" thing as most others, because I really doubt that anyone will be making a new Dark Cloud or Legend of Dragoon or Okami (Uhh, I'm being told that they are making a new Okami!?!) any time soon.

Unicorn Overlord is the game that if I had played more of it, it may actually have ended up at #1. Even having only got about 70% of the way through it, I loved the team planning/building, the overworld meta game, and RTS style battles a ton.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a ton of fun. They innovated on the Metroid-vania formula while also making something that does feel like a Prince of Persia game. Absolute shame that this game wasn't more of a commercial success.

Crow Country! Congrats on being my *Indie Game of the Year*! Crow Country does a great job of being a clear homage to the PS1 survival horror genre, while managing to tell a story that feels different than any of the games that it is referencing. Coming to understand what "the numbers" mean and what is really going on underneath the theme park is truly haunting. Would love to play more games like this, but I believe it will be difficult to create something this good.

Paper Mario TTYD might be my favorite game of all time. It is certainly in the top 5. This game is full of such incredible writing and is just a joy to experience. The remake changes up just enough to improve the flow of the game, but otherwise keeps the original intact. (Fun Fact: I picked this game up in while on a trip in Japan and there it is called Paper Mario RPG. Neat!)

I have played every game that Dontnod has made and have enjoyed them all to some extent. I would consider Banishers a follow-up to Vampyr, a game that I enjoyed quite a bit for its interesting system of deciding who to consume for power at the cost of societal stability. Banishers' system of deciding how to handle various hauntings is not as dynamic as the system in Vampyr but makes up for it with stellar writing and charictarization. The relationship between the two main characters is fantastic and you really feel the weight of the *big decisions* that you make throughout the game. Can't wait to see what the next action game followup is from Dontnod.

FF7 Rebirth would be way higher on this list if not for two main flaws. First, I was completely on board with the remixed story of this game all the way through to the Ancient Capital. I liked the bits with Zach and Aerith, I really liked how things played out at the big materia pyramid. Everything went of the rails at the Ancient Capital. I could probably write a whole piece about how poorly the events there are conveyed to the player, but to keep it short, the game does a terrible job of showing you what is happening, even if the end result is about what I expected. Second big issue is that for as good as the combat system itself is, some of the encounter design is not very good.

1000x Resist is a modern work of art. This game should be taught in a Literature class in schools. I was blown away by how the real life events and themes tied in to the crazy sci-fi story. I know that this game must be even more impactful if you are an immigrant, especially an asian immigrant, but even as a *American White Guy* I really understood that this game was *saying something* with the personal relationships that our main girl has with her parents and classmates. Combine that with the haunting alien presence and their mesmerizing method of communication and you really have something special. Only real issue with this game is that some of the spaces were too difficult to navigate and lead to me giving up on some of the optional conversations that I would have loved to have. Hair to hair.

There are about 3-4 games that were in contention for my #10 spot on this years list. So to make it easy on myself I chose a game that is actually 50 games. For real though, UFO 50 is a collection that I didn't know how bad I wanted it. The idea of taking 50 years worth of game design experience and going back to the tech and scope of an NES is fascinating. Some of the games are absolute powerhouses of design. Some of the games are tedious. Some are charmingly simple. Some are funny. Some are inscrutable. All of them feel so full of intention and design that it makes every single one of them worth trying.

2024 was a really good year for me both in terms of playing video games and in life. You could make the argument that 2024 was my *best year ever.* I got to go to Japan for the second time. I am as happy and healthy as I have ever been. I got to play a ton of great games. Hope 2025 can continue the trend.

Peace!