AtheistPreacher’s Favorite Games of 2024

I’m doing something slightly different with my list this year: I’m going to list games in the rough order that I played them (one might say an autobiographical ordering), rather than picking a ranked order. That’s simply because I was having trouble coming up with a ranked list that I felt good about. No one game (or couple of games) stood out to me as head-and-shoulders more enjoyable than the others. Moreover, a lot of my favorite stuff was actually DLC for existing games rather than newly released games, and it always feels a bit weird to rank DLC higher in a list like this.

Which is not to say that this was a bad year for games. By the time I’d finished putting it together, I realized that it was actually a bit better than I’d thought it was. Some of that may be the extremely packed first part of the year, games that I’d had time to forget even released in 2024. Hence, while in past years I felt like I might have been stretching a bit just to find ten games to write about, this time I came up with fourteen without breaking a sweat. And most of them either came out this year or had major DLC drop.

So, here we go, starting with early January!

Lunacid

If there’s one thing that I’m a teensy big smug about in the world of gaming, it’s that I was obsessed with From Software way, way before it was fashionable, before all the Johnny-come-latelys who jumped on board with Demon's Souls or Dark Souls. Specifically, their King’s Field games (the very first games they developed) are some of my very favorite games of all time, up there with Resident Evil 4 and some of the Monster Hunter games. And much as you’d think that a lot of that love these days must be nostalgia-based—and undoubtedly some of it is—the King’s Field games and RE4 are really the only games that are two decades old that I still find myself going back to with some frequency.

So I was naturally delighted when Patrick and Cado of Remap ended up deciding to finish a playthrough of King’s Field: The Ancient City that they had started back with Waypoint, and that I ended up helping guide them through for a couple of episodes. Finally my absurdly deep knowledge of an obscure first-person action RPG came in handy... it was my time to shine! (I was particularly delighted by their reaction to seeing the secret “King’s Map”)

What does this have to do with Lunacid, released at the end of October 2023? Well, believe it or not, Lunacid is a King’s Field-like. Yes, those are a thing now. And after finishing up King’s Field: The Ancient City, Patrick and Cado ended up playing through all of Lunacid as well, giving me and the half-dozen other King’s Field obsessives on the planet the content we were really looking for. And they even gave me a shout-out near the beginning of their first episode, which was fun to hear.

Anyway, of course I then had to play this game for myself. The King’s Field inspiration is quite explicit. And while nothing can match the originals through my nostalgia glasses, Lunacid was a pretty neat little game, packed with retro goodness and secrets galore. The combat didn’t feel quite as weighty as its inspiration, but then, that’s probably because it was moving a good deal faster. And the endings were really something. Not a bad way to start the year.

Helldivers 2

I’d had my eye on Helldivers 2 ever since the first trailer in May 2023, since I had enjoyed the first game and was interested to see how it would play going from an isometric perspective to 3^rd-person shooter. When it was finally released, I got sucked in hard. The design was just brilliant all-around, all the great stuff from the first game brought back and integrated into the new viewpoint flawlessly, a truly-top tier cooperative shooter, buoyed by its trademark razor-sharp satire. I played it really hard for a couple months with my friend group, even through all the early server woes.

Then, for some reason, after a month or two, I just... kind of abruptly fell off it? I’m not quite sure why, but for some reason I suddenly felt I was done. My friends and family all went on playing it without me, while I moved on to other things. Perhaps I just get tired of multiplayer games faster these days, I’m not sure. Anyway, I still admire the heck out Helldivers 2, even though I’m not sure I’ll ever go back it. Even after I stopped playing, my brother kept me somewhat updated on how the game was progressing, and I continued to be impressed by the passion and transparency of the devs, even through the whole PSN debacle.

Balatro

As seemed to be the experience of so many others, for me Balatro kind of came out of nowhere. I bought it soon after release on Steam and had a great time playing it, mostly electing to play the deck that had only two suits for easy flushes. I ended up logging 45 hours in it and, if memory serves, beat all but the top two blinds and unlocked all but about a dozen jokers. The game didn’t have quite the tail for me that it’s clearly had for a lot of people, as I mostly didn’t play it after the first month—though I did recently buy it again on iOS. Finally a game that might actually supplant Solitairica as my go-to time-waster phone game!

Dragon’s Dogma 2

I had really adored the first Dragon’s Dogma back in day, and in the end I think I liked the sequel almost as well. Though it was never, for me, going to have the power of the first game’s ending (given that it tried to pull the exact same surprise that I’d already seen), the story and gameplay on balance were largely superior. I’m also simply delighted that a game like this got released in 2024, since it goes against so many of the currently ascendant design trends. There was a lot of talk about “friction” in gameplay surrounding the discussion of DD2, for good reason.

Anyway, I wrote a blog on DD2 (my first of the year), so if you want my full thoughts on it, give that a read.

Persona 3 Reload

I actually started to play Persona 3 Reload before any of the previous three games I listed above (it was first on my list of most anticipated games for 2024). However, in each case I ended up putting it down in favor of those other games. That I let myself be diverted away certainly says something.

I really wanted to like P3R. P3:FES on PS2 had been my first entry in Atlus’s venerable Persona series, and at the time I remember thinking that it was one of the greatest games I’d ever played, full stop. And even though I later ended up being on #TeamP5R, P3 still held a special place in my heart. Nonetheless, though I did enjoy it (and particularly loved the now fully-voiced social links), it didn’t quite live up to my lofty expectations, and even left me looking back at the original in a somewhat different light.

I had multiple beefs with the new game, but my primary one ended up being the way the main story was structured. Specifically, until the final three in-game months, it was almost completely lacking in urgency and purpose. The dark hour was largely a mystery, none of the individual monthly battles carried any particular sense of urgency, the fights were against anomalous, faceless monsters, and it wasn’t even clear exactly what would happen if your team just... left things alone. More apathy syndrome, I guess? Even walking around the dorm between the mandatory boss battles, your team often didn’t seem that concerned about it; they’d just say something like “I guess we should be prepared to fight that next big shadow in a couple of weeks, huh?” It all felt very routine and rote and aimless after the first several monthly boss battles, just fighting these big shadows and seeing what happens next.

When you compare that to P5, the difference is quite stark. Not only did P5 provide bespoke dungeons rather than randomized ones, but there was a clear villain for each palace, and clear, specific consequences for what would happen if you failed to steal that villain’s heart in time. Each one had its place in P5's larger narrative, but they were all individually urgent and relevant to some particular character, usually a teammate. And an actual embodied villain is always more compelling than a faceless shadow or disembodied thing.

That’s a pretty big narrative handicap for P3 to overcome in relation to P5, and the only way it could do it was to lean on its individual Social Links harder. I do remember thinking that P3 had the strongest set of Social Links/Confidants. After re-playing it, it still might (close and very subjective call, really), but by the very nature of how these work—in which you can stop spending time with someone for literally months and come back to it as if it was only days later—they’re still not really a substitute for the narrative urgency P5’s palaces provide.

Ultimately, while I appreciated all the things Atlus did to modernize P3, the fundamental problem with the central narrative wasn’t really fixable without throwing much of P3’s identity out the window. In that sense, I can admire that P3R turned out to be as good of a game as it did. But it doesn’t change the fact that I see it as pretty flawed, and I enjoyed it much less than I’d hoped.

Remnant 2

And here’s the first game that’s on the list mainly for its DLC. The base game was released in mid-2023, but it came with a “season pass” that was set to include three major expansions. The first was released in November 2023, the second in April 2024, and the third in September 2024. I enjoyed the heck out of all of them because it was more Remnant 2, and Remnant 2 was really frickin’ good (it was 2^nd place on my list last year, behind only Hitman). The passion of the devs seeps from every pore of Remnant 2, from all the many, many, many bespoke secrets to a dizzying array of equipment that is some of the most creative I’ve ever seen in a game like this. E.g., there are something like three hundred rings in this game, and none are incremental upgrade copies; each is utterly unique in its effects.

If I have any complaints, one is that I wish the DLC had been new biomes, instead of modular expansions to existing biomes. I would have liked, for instance, to see a return of Corsus (a swamp world) and Rhom (a desert world) from the first game. I also wished that the Boss Rush mode that they released with the final DLC had been a little more compelling; instead it mostly turned out to be pretty uninteresting when compared to the survival mode of the first game. Nonetheless, Remnant 2 is perilously close to all-time classic status for me, something I was reminded of when I played through all the main story again with a new friend around the time the new DLC hit. I just don’t have much that’s negative to say about it.

Hades 2

Hades 2 came out and was about as good as I’d have expected it to be. I’d come late to the party on the first game (I didn’t play it until the year after release), but when I finally did get around to it I fell for it as hard as everyone else. About the worst that can be said about Hades 2 is that it feels inessential, since the first game was basically already perfect. We didn’t actually need a sequel, but I’m still happy enough to have one.

I played the game hard for the first couple of weeks, but have yet to play it again since the first major content patch and adding in the final weapon. Some of the changes, like taking charge attack slow time off the cards, and removing the axe’s block (my weapon of choice), make me a little nervous. I must also say that I’m slightly disappointed that it seems harder in Hades 2 to get buy with a purely ranged build than it was in the first Hades with the bow, spear, and shield. But minor quibbles aside, it’s still Hades, and it’s still great.

Diablo 4

Season 4 of Diablo 4 was released in May (roughly a year after the base game’s release) with the title “Loot Reborn.” And much as had also happened with Diablo 3 after a year, they managed to fix a lot of the game’s problems, making loot more interesting and removing a lot of the game’s pain points, including item management and potion crafting, while adding more meaningful endgame activities. It was the subject of my second blog of the year, and again, I’d encourage you to go read that if you want my fuller thoughts.

I will say that, in part because I got so busy with work and with other games, I have yet to play D4 since the expansion hit that contained a new class. Truth be told, I’m not super-pleased that they once again fundamentally changed a whole bunch of systems for the expansion, including changing max character level from 100 to 60, which essentially screwed up all my Eternal Realm characters and made me feel like much of my play time earlier had been for naught. Nonetheless, I’m sure I’ll get around to giving it a try eventually, and I expect I’ll enjoy it when I do.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

I know I said I’m not ranking this list, and I’m not. Nonetheless, I had to have a ranking for the GB Community GOTY voting, and for that, I did end up listing this as my #1. Fact is, I am very much one of those people who just loves the Soulsborne titles to death, and so pretty much any time they put another one out, even if it’s just a (very) large DLC, it’s probably my #1 game of the year.

This is not to say that SotE was perfect. In particular, the whole system of picking up “scadutree fragments” to up your power within the DLC area felt like a failed experiment, as it encouraged running past stuff to level up more rather than just engaging enemies at whatever level you were at. The subsequent patch that changed the scadutree benefit from a linear scale to bunching more of the benefit into the earlier levels certainly helped there, but I don’t think that the whole system needed to be there in the first place.

Also, no foolin’, the final boss of the SotE DLC is some real bullshit. I remember thinking when I first fought her that Malenia was overtuned, but now, having taken the opportunity of the DLC to finally play ER on NG+ (and NG++!), I can confidently say that Malenia now feels like a chump compared to the new DLC boss. I just don’t find him remotely fun to fight, it felt like blind luck when I finally managed to beat him on NG++.

But From Software remain about the best in the biz in their art direction and the sheer weighty atmosphere of their titles. There is nothing quite like exploring a new From Software game world for the first time, and SotE was no different in that regard. Minor complaints aside, it’s another worthy addition to From’s catalog.

Deep Rock Galactic

I put this game on my 2022 GOTY list, logging around two hundred hours on it on PS5. Then, this year, I made a new friend, and the first game we decided to play together was Deep Rock. He didn’t own a PS5, so I ended up buying the game on Steam on sale for $10. Unfortunately, the Steam version doesn’t have cross-save with PS5, so I was forced to start all over again in terms of my unlocks. However... I ended up putting another two hundred hours into this game on PC. Deep Rock remains deeply excellent, either for multiplayer or just for chillin’ solo while you second-screen a TV show, which is something I again found myself doing a lot. If for some reason you’ve still yet to try it, trust me, this one’s very much worth your time.

Crusader Kings 3

Here’s another game that was on my list last year. Even as someone who’s normally not into grand strategy, somehow I can’t seem to stop playing CK3. Perhaps it’s the social sim aspect of it that hooks me in a way most other games like this just don’t.

This year, the specific thing that excited me was a DLC released on September 24 titled “Roads to Power.” This added a number of new features, but the flagship one was an entirely new government type: administrative. Instead of the feudal system of emperors, kings, dukes, counts, and barons, administrative governments instead focus on powerful family houses and governorships, with a greater focus on intrigue and plots. I’d actually been waiting for something like this to happen ever since the game released, since CK2 had had something similar, albeit simpler.

That DLC has not disappointed me. I ended up playing roughly 80-90 in-game years of a new game, and had as much fun with it as I’ve had previously. It’s one of those games that’s almost impossible to stop playing once you’ve gotten back into it; the temptation to keep playing just a little longer, until you realize you’ve unwittingly stayed up all night, is strong. I did finally put it down so that I could check out Metaphor: ReFantazio, but I’m sure I’ll be back to it at some point, possibly soon.

Metaphor: ReFantazio

Atlus gave us an abundance of riches this year with both Persona 3 Reload and Metaphor: ReFantazio. If I had to pick one of the two, I’d take Metaphor, as evidenced by the fact that, after finishing it, I immediately played most of a NG+ on the new, unlockable highest difficulty setting. It was definitely a good time, and nice to see Atlus break out of some of the more baroque long-standing Persona series mechanics, streamlining them in a way that’s probably for the best. I do wonder how many of those streamlining choices will end up making their way into the inevitable P6. I guess we’ll see!

Despite how much I liked it, I had my qualms. The discussions around race seemed really half-baked, perhaps not unexpectedly, developed as it was by Japanese folks who exist in a less racially fraught country than, say, the United States. And the story overall, while adequate, never really blew me away... I found more interest and joy in the individual character stories than I ever did from the main narrative (though unfortunately it backslid from P3R in not fully voicing those individual character stories). I think the writers believed that some of their narrative devices were more clever than they actually were. Finally, in my last game-related blog of the year, I laid out some fairly unorganized thoughts on why I simply didn’t find its fantasy world as compelling as the Persona series’ modern Japanese high schools.

Pixel Puzzle Collection

From mid-November to mid-December this year, I busied myself with replacing all my major electronic devices. As a part of switching phones, I sorted through all my apps so I could ditch the ones I knew I’d never actually use. In doing that, I ran across the Konami Pixel Puzzle Collection, which I’d installed years ago after hearing Dan Ryckert rave about it somewhere, but then promptly forgot about. I started to play it, and pretty soon I was hooked. It basically feels like Minesweeper but without any bombs or fail states, and I've always enjoyed those kind of logic puzzles. It’s reached the point now where I’m setting alarms on my phone so I can play each new "boss puzzle" as soon as it’s available (they’re on a 3-hour cooldown). I’m currently sitting at just under 60% puzzle completion and look forward to continuing to play this thing for a while, possibly even after I complete the whole thing.

If for some reason you’ve never tried this thing, you should. It’s free, and while there are ads, they’re not bad by the standard of free phone games. They don’t even monetize the hints, which I’d have thought they’d do. No complaints, I think it’s actually the first phone game I’ve made a point of playing even when I’m just hanging out at home.

Path of Exile 2

While PoE2 will eventually be released as a F2P game, it began a paid early access period on December 6, and I decided to jump on in; it was good timing since I’d just gotten my brand new monster of a gaming rig set up. Overall, it’s... fine? I have genuinely enjoyed my time with it so far, having played all of the six currently released classes through the first act, but it also feels like a game that is stubbornly holding onto design sensibilities from around 2010 that I’d hoped they could move on from. E.g., for some reason identifying items is still a thing, and, inexplicably to me, character names are required to be unique across the entire playerbase, essentially assuring that you’ll never get to use the name you actually want (e.g., in the case of my Monk, I basically gave up and tried naming him “PunchyPunchMan” only to find out that name was also taken, and ended up going with “PunchyPunchGuy”. Sigh).

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts about this game as I have a chance to play it more and as EA progresses (and hopefully reverses some of these last-decade design trends, though I’m not holding my breath there). But even though I haven’t played a ton, it was good enough to be the last game on my chronological list here.

EDIT (a late addition!): Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

I did end up playing this one enough in the second half of December to say that it definitely belongs on my "Favorites games of 2024" list. Rather than put it onto next year's list, I figured I may as well just add it to my 2024 one.

Currently I've completed all of the first area—the Vatican—and am about halfway through the second area (Egypt). It's a neat game! I do have a fondness for the movies, and it feels like they really nailed the wonkiness/cheesiness factor. I particularly love the extremely unrealistic, exaggerated thwacking sounds they use for the punches, straight from the films.

I've never played a Wolfenstein game, so my closest analog for the style of the gameplay is Dishonored. It's really pretty similar, I'd say, though it is much less self-serious and more open-world. In fact, I was surprised the extent to which it's a fairly open sandbox, I was expecting something significantly more linear. But I like that. The combat is a bit ho-hum, but that's fine since it's not really the focus, the slapstick element carries it enough for me.

One failure is that some of the UI, particularly with the notes, etc., seems really bad. If you're going to have a bunch of puzzles that require multiple notes to solve, they should at least be easy to switch between; even better would be a way to get them on the same screen.

Still, I find myself running around getting most of the extra collectibles just because I'm enjoying being in the world, which is a good sign. I can see getting bored with the fetch-questy nature of it, but I'm not there yet. Knocking out Nazis with shovels just keeps being a fun time.

A final note—My most anticipated game of 2025

I figure I may as well end with the game that at the moment is clearly my most anticipated game for next year, and that I technically did play a bit of this year via its open beta in late October. It’s Monster Hunter Wilds, because, yes, I am one of those hardcore Monster Hunter people, been playing those games since Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (still a delightfully goofy name!) on the PSP, and don’t plan on stopping now. And there’s good news for me on this game on a few fronts.

One is that a dev update from just a few days ago clarified the ways that they’re planning to un-screw-up the Lance. When I played the open beta a few months ago, they’d drastically changed the moveset to the extent that it hardly felt like the same weapon, and after many complaints, they went back to the drawing board and seem to have fixed the problems that I and others were having with it (though there's no way to really be sure until I try it for myself).

The second is that I’m planning to buy the game on PC, where it will benefit from the power of my newly acquired RTX 4090, and also my brand new 55" Samsung S90D TV, which I plan to plug into the PC via a 15-foot HDMI cable. I’m not much of a graphics snob, but it’s gonna look awesome! Or at least I hope it will... I believe it’s the same engine as was used for Dragon’s Dogma 2, which had its own performance issues. Anywho, it should actually make full use of my new PC which is otherwise grossly overpowered given that I’ve stuck to 1080p monitors.