As of this writing, 54% 58% of respondants to Mnemogenic’s poll say they don’t complete even a single game in the average month, which I can only interpret to mean everyone here is still getting through Death Stranding (2019).
With that in mind, let’s talk here about the REAL best games of 2024. Mine is Red Dead Redemption II. Diary entry forthcoming.
I’m not sure it’s Game of the Year, but the game I have the most fun playing over the past year remains Lethal Company. Even after some 2024 updates, it remains the rough-edges multiplayer experience that creates a lot of mayhem out of a simple premise. Get loot, be scared by monsters, try to communicate with players, die, watch them struggle to salvage a run. Whenever I get to play this game, I am ecstatic.
Funnily enough, I think the single game I played the most this year was Death Stranding Director’s Cut. I finished the game feeling conflicted overall. Mechanically, I love almost everything about it. The amount of focus it requires to walk in this game is pitch perfect, incredibly so. When you’re engaged it feels trivial, but almost any time I would look at my phone or turn to talk to someone in real life, Sam would immediately faceplant. The fact that almost everything you carry around with you takes up real space, and the systems they devised to work around that are also very smart. I loved all that: planning my route, deciding how many ladders to take, taking on just a few too many deliveries and then carefully wending my way through the bleak and unforgiving landscape.
What I didn’t like was all that Kojima stuff. You know what I mean, all the cameos, inscrutable monologues by people with stupid names. There was some cool stuff there, and normally I don’t mind it but in this game it felt really at odds with the moment to moment gameplay and it always intruded. I had the realisation that perhaps this was how Sam feels as well, just wanting to go out and deliver packages but people keep talking at him endlessly - whether that’s intentional or not it ultimately doesn’t matter, I just never wanted to deal with it.
However, for me I think 2024 was a year of short games, minigames and game collections. I have a list of currently 55 games I finished in 2024. Sounds like a lot, but most of them were short and I charitably included every UFO 50 game I’ve beaten so far in that list. Early on in the year I worked through the Playdate season 1 games. I liked a lot of them and I particularly loved Saturday Edition, which is probably the gaming highlight of my year. I am a sucker for old school adventure games and this one just landed for me. I blasted through the whole game in one sitting, wrapped up warm on a chilly Sunday afternoon and had a wonderful time.
Oh, I also got the platinum trophy in Yakuza: Dead Souls. No, I don’t want to talk about it.
FF7: Rebirth is still my game of the year, but I played through all of the King of Fighters games this September, and it ruled. That’s a great series and while the games are all different, every game has transferable skills and is based around the same core gameplay, so it’s kind of like one big game. The pixel art is truly timeless and it delivers a really classic fighting game experience that’s pretty grounded.
Forspoken was a real highlight and one of the games I put the most time into this year. The world design and parkour, the gameplay, and visuals are a real spectacle. Some of the dialogue and character writing is a bit much, but the underlying lore ain’t bad! It sucks that Luminous Productions was shut down after this because they had a ton of talent even if a lot of it was admittedly wasted.
Other games like Solar Ash, Before the Green Moon, LIVE A LIVE, Link to the Past, and Phantasy Star IV rounded out a good year in video gaming for me!
I intentionally focused primarily on new games this year, but I did enjoy some preexisting games.
I started the year getting to the final boss (and the giving up after 50 attempts) of Elden Ring. Have you heard of that one? it’s pretty good, I guess.
Probably the best thing I played this year was Pizza Tower? I really like modern sidescrolling masterpieces.
Probably the game I put the most time into this year was Street Fighter 6. Want me to play a game? Put Guile in it.
I also really enjoyed 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Burnout Paradise Remastered, and Wolfenstein: The New Order
My favorite game of 2023 played in 2024 was probably Marvel’s Midnight Suns.
My favorite pre-2023 game I played in 2024 was probably Wolfenstein: The New Order.
My older game surprise of the year was Retro Game Challenge.
My favorite board game, two years running, was Wingspan.
gotta be mansion of hidden souls for the sega cd
I think I go Tactics Ogre for PSP, is it poor form to do a game I’ve beaten before.
I was so struck by how meaningful the choices you make throughout the narrative are, and how easily you can miss something, feels so militant compared to what RPGs give you these days.
From an art and design perspective it is my two favorite guys Matsuno and Yoshida just absolutely freaking it cover to cover.
I really appreciate that the true path is the one that makes you make some yucky decisions and there isn’t some perfect pacifist route.
Really really lovely game.
If I can’t put one I did before than my GOTY is Parasite Eve.
Yeah this is on my list for sure. The proximity voice chat really shines in this game when your group has to split up. Leads to a lot of memorable moments. Really wonderful way to spend time with friends.
In a similar vein I really enjoyed Tower Unite this year. It’s basically Diet Second Life, where the main event is a huge plaza area with tons of mini games where you can earn in-game currency (there are no microtransactions). My friends and I all got really into playing bingo and Texas Hold ‘Em at the casino. You can also invite people over to your condo, which you can customize with the aid of the Steam Workshop, where people have uploaded thousands of 3D models. My friend made theirs look like an authentic 2005 basement, complete with empty soda cans and scattered DVD cases, where we talked and watched anime on the TV.
Let’s see, I think the three big, older games I played this year were Death Stranding: The Director’s Cut, Hitman: World of Assassination, and Baldur’s Gate 3.
I felt nearly the exact same way as @Kez about Death Stranding. If there were no cutscenes at all, it would be my favorite game ever. Walking around that world will always stick with me. I also had to mute my controller sounds because that crying baby was not cool.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is really good for what it is. I was kind of ready to move on by the time Act 2 started, but due to the good will it had earned near the start, I pushed through to completion. I was pretty relieved to be done with it. It’s really great for a big modern game, but I don’t think big modern games are my thing anymore.
I got Hitman: World of Assassination last holiday season through a mega sale from QVC, and that objectively funny way for this game to enter my life felt very thematically appropriate. This game is so goofy and fun. I loved the player freedom mixed with appropriately sized chunks of goals to accomplish. Incredible from start to finish.
Hitman: World of Assassination was my REAL game of the year.
My FAKE game of the year would be binge watching almost all of Vanderpump Rules with my partner and being glad they announced the cast won’t be returning because they’re all awful.
My real GOTY would be Planescape Tournament Enhanced edition. I’ve played it for the first time and I can’t add anything new to the overall conversation around it. I still haven’t decided whether I liked it more than Disco Elysium - but maybe ranking games like that is a bit silly.
Hey Arc System Works, if you’re looking for your next licensed fighting game…
Whoops lol I don’t want to edit it. Do they still make unreal tournaments? I’ll take a Planescape version of that please
Mine would have to be SnowRunner. I’m hesitant to admit how many hours PlayStation shows me having played that game over the past year and I still look forward to exploring more areas.
An honorable mention goes to Astalon: Tears of the Earth. I think of it as a sort of a modern (but not too modern) Legacy of the Wizard that’s fun to play instead of being incredibly difficult.
I really hope to chug ONE game released this year in the week before New Years, but right now my GOTY contenders are
Final Fantasy XV Pocket (likely winner)
Tunic
Jusant
Ashen
Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate
with Sonic CD as my “Best Classic Revisited” and Quake as my “Best Reappraisal”
this was a big 2023 year for me, because I got a refurb steam deck for dirt cheap (like $290 after shipping). baldur’s gate iii was the big one, since it simply Would Not run on my perfectly capable windows 11 i7-13900k 3080 with 32gb of ram and ample hard drive space, due to a cascading series of honk-ups between Intel and MSI and Larion. whatever. it ran fine on steam deck.
turns out that game is real good!!! it would eat whole weekends worth of freetime, but hitting a guy with my eldritch blast shotgun handbolts into a pit or off a ledge, that is a fun experience.
also SSX 3, I played a lot of that and we need to go back
Man, I’d really like to say Steambot Chronicles but i just realized I played that last year.
I think i may have to echo @Tradegood and say a game that actually came out this year, FFVII Rebirth.
It is time for us, as a society to admit that mini-game collections are good, actually (also everything else in the game is very good).
Michigan: Report From Hell, Sonic 06, and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth are also some pretty big highlights for me this year.
While Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is still absolutely my Game of the Year (as I talked about in the 2024 GOTY thread), I did spend plenty of time with a few somewhat older games this year, too (now edited with a handful of games I forgot I played this year):
I’ve also recently been picking at Persona 3 Portable, but I’m not especially far into it, and my thoughts are still too firmly in their infancy to have much of value to say here
If we’re just going by time spent, my GOTY was mindlessly and slowly scrolling through the “on sale” part of the Nintendo eShop, and occasionally making “I’d be a fool not to because it’s 90% off!” purchases. Just real scum-level activity.
Actual GOTY is I dunno Metaphor I guess.
I didn’t think I’d come close to beating as many games this year as last, but uhhh actually I’ve finished 44 so far? Surprisingly only one of them is from 2023.
Best 2024 game…in 2024…is still Nine Sols, which I talked about over in that other GOTY thread so I will spare no more words. Good game.
Best 2023 game? Well, I only played Blanc and the actual content of the game itself is perhaps less interesting than the fact that it’s a single-screen co-op game. I played it with my partner and we had a great time. Many games have been elevated for me simply by not being solo affairs.
Other than that? I played some real gems this year (Sonic CD, Panzer Dragoon, Star Fox 2, I could go on but really you can look at the list I linked) but the one that took hold of me is Racing Lagoon, a racing RPG where the customizable character is the car itself. I was really charmed by this game and how seriously it takes itself. The actual act of racing is pretty fun and I also enjoyed just driving around the various maps. Felt a lot like having the Micro Machines I always wanted as a kid. (My cousins had them and I so coveted them.)
That said, I did start Mother 3 a couple days ago so there’s every chance that will just dethrone everything.