2024 - A Year In Gaming

Last year was … a lot. In a lot of ways. But a good portion of the time I wasn’t decrying the imminent collapse of civilization, I played video games. Quite a few of them, as it turns out.  As has become my wont, I will list here the games I ‘finished’ in CALENDAR YEAR 2024. Again, underline and bold that first part - the games did not have to be released this year (and you’ll note quite quite a few of the games on this list *weren’t*).

A few honourable mentions to start with: these are games I’m currently playing (and enjoying) so you’ll see these on my 2025 list, but I’ll note them now so that you know they exist and are relatively worth your time: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024 - Microsoft Studios / Machine Games, on Xbox, PC and Gamepass), Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024 - EA / BioWare on Xbox, PC and PS5) and Astro Bot (2024 - PlayStation Studios / Team Asobi on PS5).

14. Hellblade 2: Senua’s Saga (2024) - Microsoft Studios / Ninja Theory, on Xbox, PC and GamePass: As some of you likely remember, a couple of years ago I rolled credits on the original Hellblade and was touched by the bold story and clever use of an unreliable narrator to make a touching revenge story into a treatise on the nature of mental illness. This sequel… isn’t that. It takes the things that made the original so intriguing (like the idea that you can never tell if what you’re experiencing is actually happening or in the main character’s mind) and sands the edges off completely, leaving it a straight forward, by the numbers hero’s journey. It’s not BAD. It’s gorgeous and the swordplay is interesting. And obviously I liked it enough to finish it. But it *is* a little disappointing.

13. Open Roads (2024) - The Open Roads Team on pretty much everything, as well as GamePass: My friends like to call out when they see what they consider a ‘Curtis Gsme’ - a story/narrative-heavy adventure, often starring a female protagonist dealing with the harsh realities of life and maybe some trauma. Well… this is definitely a Curtis-ass Game. From a lot of the team that made Tacoma and a personal Curtis Game favourite, Gone Home, this is a mother/daughter road trip game set in the mid-aughts starring Keri Russell as the mom and Kaitlyn Dever as the daughter, reconnecting before the daughter heads off to college. It’s sweet, the voice acting is great and there’s a real interesting motion-comic vibe to the look of it. It’s also wonderfully short, so it can be finished in an evening if you put in the time.

12. FIREWATCH (2016) - Campo Santo, on everything known to man, played on GamePass: Speaking of Curtis games, this is one that has been on my radar forever but it took me until this year to actually play. It’s a taut, gripping, twisty narrative with a likeable main character and, again, great voice acting. It’s probably fair to call this a ‘walking simulator’ but the writing and the different ways your gameplay choices can fold into the narrative gives it a longer shelf life than you would think.

11. Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars Remake (2023) Nintendo on Nintendo Switch: So here’s a thing you may not realize about me. Despite my unequivocal status as one of The Olds, I never really got around to playing this when it released in 1996. I got my PlayStation and then never really looked back, so this being the last Great SNES game flew right past me. This remake is incredibly faithful, except shinier and in HD. The granddaddy of the Mario RPG line shows its age quite a bit in places (though some nice quality of life improvements like auto save at certain points makes it much more palatable). The action-time combat mechanics show the gestation of what would be further honed and perfected in later games like The Thousand Year Door and the slightly goofy writing is a testament to the real joy that would come in Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. It shows its age, but is unquestionably still worth the journey and this is a very decent remake.

10. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (2024) - Nintendo on Nintendo Switch: This is the first mainline Zelda game where you actually play AS the titular Zelda. Which makes me realize they really should have called this game ‘The Legend of Link’ - seems like a missed opportunity. Less an action game than an adventure/puzzler, the gameplay involves Zelda being able to cast ‘echoes’ of various enemies, blocks, inanimate objects in the world to enable her to save Hyrule (and yes, eventually save Link’s ass for a change). In a lot of ways, this game seems to be a proof of concept for a further fleshed out sequel down the line which could potentially be phenomenal.

9. Brotato (2023) - Blobfish, available on everything, played on GamePass. My good friend Kerry is a huge champion of this game and encouraged me to give it a try upon its release on GamePass in early 2024. I was ‘not’ disappointed. What appears initially to be a relatively simple, low-effort Vampire Survivors clone actually has a shocking amount of depth and subtly includes roguelike elements to help it stretch its legs a bit. It also helps that my son absolutely *loves* it - the cartoonish (almost flash animation style) visual of your Rambo potato running around slaughtering aliens (with no blood to speak of!) while the numbers go up definitely hits that sweet spot in his pleasure centre. There’s obviously no story to speak of (and I’m a narrative-over-mechanics player) which stops it from ranking higher on this list, but make no mistake - the simplistic tone belies the depth that’s hidden beneath the surface here and is one of the most enjoyable auto-shooters I’ve ever tried.

8. Fallout 4 (2015) - Bethesda Softworks, available on XBox, PC, PlayStation and GsmePass. In April, Jonathan Nolan (of Westwood and Person of Interest fame) released one of the best tv adaptations of a video game I’ve seen. Less a direct adaptation (like the also-phenomenal Last of Us) but more a masterclass of taking an existing world and canon and telling your own story within it. The show could legitimately be called ‘Fallout 5’ and it wouldn’t have felt unearned. It was ‘so’ good that it drove me to go back and finally finish the one entry in the series that I had never rolled credits on (save for the MMO, Fallout 76). The opening half-hour of this game is one of the most interesting hooks ever in this now 28 year old franchise. The story has some peaks and valleys, but it has some of the best companions in the franchise and the setting of hollowed-out Boston, with the remnants of the revolutionary war beneath the surface is definitely a fun twist. It’s likely gonna be another half-decade (at least) until we see the actual Fallout 5 released, so the branching storylines at least give some options to replay this one in the interim.

7. Final Fantasy 7 - Rebirth (2024) - Square Enix, available on PS5 (PC coming in March). This game… I don’t know. Is it possible to say you have a love-hate relationship with a video game? Cause that’s me with the second game in the FF7 remake trilogy. There’s a LOT here that I love. The voice acting, the chocobo racing mini game (basically Super Mario Kart, except it’s cloud on a chocobo), the piano mini-game (a rhythm game where you play the iconic FF7 music on a virtual piano), the characterizations (Cid is possibly my favourite Cid in any FF game) to name a few. But there’s also just… so much cruft. This is an open world game that fails because of its openness. There’s too much useless junk to search out that has no real reward or purpose. And the character who drives you to do all this useless searching is annoying as hell. It’s just… a lot. And it also has one of The Worst Boss Fights In Video Games. Like, legit this would have been a top-5 game for me until that final boss. It drained me. Regardless, I’ll be there opening day to play the third one. I want to see how it ends.

6. Sea of Stars (2023) - Sabotage, available on everything, played on GamePass. Speaking of flawed JRPGs, sea of stars doesn’t have the big, mega-budget that FF7 has, but what it does have is a *lot* of heart. It’s clearly borrowing very heavily from Chrono Trigger’s palette and presentation, but it’s not fair to call it derivative. The story is kinda mid if we’re being honest (though I am a Garl stan - he is one of the most joyous and relentlessly ‘good’ characters in video games, an absolute delight) but the gameplay - in particular the combat (which is, no lie, one of the deepest, sharpest and most robust combat systems in any RPG I’ve had the pleasure of playing) - really carries that weight here to deliver an incredibly satisfying Nuevo-retro RPG that has me excited ones what comes next.

5. Life is Strange: Double Exposure (2024) - Deck Nine, available on PC, Xbox, PS5, Switch. This is one of the nicest surprises of the year for me. I had no idea this game was even in development, but during Not-E3, Deck Nine dropped a trailer for a new Life is Strange game … featuring the protagonist of the first game in the series! Cue all-caps screaming to my friends on Messenger and then five months later this game is released and, to my eternal gratitude, it’s legitimately good. Max has new powers this time around, so the game plays a little differently. She’s also all grown up now, and the way she speaks to her youth and the struggles with being an adult with Adult Problems gave real energy to her character. The game has done real inexplicable slow down, though (my guess is Deck Nine aren’t used to using Unreal) so that’s my only real issue. I can’t wait for the next one.

4. Dead Space (2023) - EA, available on PC, Xbox, PS5 and GamePass (through EA Play). What may seem shocking for an Old such as myself is the fact that I’ve never played the Dead Space series before trying this remake (after it was HEAVILY recommended by both my favourite gaming podcasts and one of my best friends). I’m glad I listened. This is one of the best-looking games I have ever played. Full stop. It’s photorealistic, atmospheric and creepy as all hell. The gameplay is absurdly satisfying, as well - chopping limbs off the xenomorphs, along with the little ‘squelching’ sound it makes just clicks the right part of my pleasure center, the voice acting is phenomenal and the story consistently hits the right beats. The only thing that’s heartbreaking is the news that EA has effectively shelved the series because of poor sales. Which, if you make a game THIS good and it’s still being shelved… kinda makes me sad and scared for the future of gaming in general, tbh.

3. Spider-Man 2 (2023) - Insomniac, PS5  - Hot (or not?) Take: The first Spider-Man for PS4 was the best spider-man game that had ever been released on any platform, ever. The follow-up featuring Miles Morales iterated on the original and made just enough helpful quality of life improvements. This full-blown sequel then took the best parts of both games (including both leads) and mashed them together into possibly the single best superhero action game I have ever played. It’s an absolute marvel (pun intended) in every way - from the instantaneous fast travel to the lighting quick combat mechanics to the absurdly satisfying traversal (including a new wing suit that literally lets the Spiders-Men fly through New York) this is the new standard-bearer for comic action. 

2. Balatro (2024) - LocalThunk, Available on quite literally anything - it’s like Doom. You’ll probably find a toaster running Balatro soon enough. Every once in a while a game comes out of nowhere, taps the zeitgeist and redefines what a specific genre of games can be. Balatro is, ostensibly, a poker-themed roguelike deck builder. You earn points by assembling poker hands, beat a certain number of points on a given round and advance. What it *really* is, is video game crack, distilled down to its basest level. You build decks and combos with the basic goal of breaking math. The first time you have a run where your build hits so well that your numbers go up so high that they literally become letters it’s like injecting heroin. For someone such as myself, one whom is much more narrative over mechanic to like this game as much as I do is perhaps the single biggest selling point I can give it.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023) - Nintendo for Nintendo Switch. I missed this last year (my god, what a year 2023 was for gaming huh?) because I simply could not fit a 140 hour adventure into my schedule. My PS5 dying mid-year this time around was a perfect excuse for me to dive in. The fact that my son loved watching me play certainly helped. This game is an absolute masterclass in game design. I have no doubt they’ll literally be teaching courses about it in the future. The fact that EVERY shrine, every dungeon, hell every PUZZLE seems designed to be tackled in 32 different ways breaks my brain. The building mechanics on top of the already rock solid open world foundation of Breath of the Wild gives you what I consider to be the best Zelda game I have played. Ever. And the ending is, without question, one of the most satisfying endings I’ve ever experienced in video games, period, forget just this franchise. A five star classic and the best game I had the pleasure of completing in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty-four.