Game of the Year:
Balatro
Once again, someone has found a great new run-based card game broken down into a sequence of challenge battles and a slowly developing deck (here primarily played via building out a set of Jokers that act as modifiers on the potential scores of hands you can submit using the cards you draw from a full deck). While every battle involves beating a score, the range of modifiers on each round give personality to each encounter and also the added layer of RNG to how you're building your current deck's optimal play style. Within the first 20 minutes, you should understand exactly why this game has taken the world by storm.Ongoing Game of the Year:
Zenless Zone Zero
It's been a great year for massive RPGs. Too many to play. But the ones I have felt offer the most compelling, funny, interesting, exciting stories and gameplay in 2024 are ones that seem to get instantly discounted from the conversation by a lot of gamers.At some point, I stopped playing competitive multiplayer games - no more Battlefield, Unreal Tournament, or Counter-Strike sessions; no RTS games taking an entire hour of a LAN to play through; and certainly no MOBAs draining your very soul. Especially in an era of online skill-based matchmaking and everything going F2P, there has never been a better time to play these games but I'm old and have given up trying. Without this glue to hold us together, the co-op/comp-stomp teams have also mainly fallen away too. And yet, I have played hundreds of hours online in the last year, in games that are also absolutely not MMOs in any meaningful sense - several of them do not even offer any multiplayer sessions, even just in the scale of a random 3-4 player quick-match co-op experience. These new not-MMOs have grown mainly out of F2P gacha/gashapon RPGs expanding beyond their East Asian phone roots.
What we have now are some of both the most expansive and biggest budget RPGs on the market ($100-200m projects that certainly count as AAA; equalling anything out of Microsoft, EA, or the likes), seamlessly played online, and monetised via loot boxes primarily for new characters every roughly three weeks (along with a battle pass upgrade subscription familiar to anyone who has played a modern multiplayer game). Fourteen years ago, I was complaining about paid tokens to unlock content in the base game of a $60 premium product. At the time I was playing Genshin Impact (intensely, for about six weeks), I considered the way these games were monetised as discounting them from the running for my top list. But in an era where every multiplayer game is constantly trying to sell me premium skins, I have softened significantly on the way these huge RPGs pay for themselves - which is just selling limited-run loot boxes to unlock the DLC characters that come with free new content every few weeks.
This is really where F2P MMOs have gone, for me. Less focus on anything like coordinated online raids, replaced with what is usually several end-game rotating challenges and at least one rogue-lite mode. Take the narrative content like bosses and add modifiers to keep it fresh. And that works best when your combat feels real good - which is where ZZZ excels. This is fast-paced stylish character action like you'd find in a Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, here refined around a three member party with quick swapping to launch combos and initiate parry counters (fighting game style). Not only does it feel so much better than Genshin (making it hard to go back) but the removal of a healer type forces action to be a lot more energetic. Honkai: Star Rail, being a turn based RPG, manages to differentiate itself (ideal for a quick session on your phone; also probably Hoyo's strongest narrative arcs - it's taken me about 250 hours this year to go from the tutorial area to the current episodic chapters and most of that has been pretty great) and Wuthering Waves definitely also gets closer to ZZZ, even if they do have healer classes (I think keeping it to a three player team rather than the four of Genshin also helps with rotations).
In contrast to many BioWare games or many other premium RPGs with paid DLCs that conclude the story, I've also never been asked to pay more to get the rest of a narrative beat in the ones I've played and their rapid rate of new content would make any traditional MMO blush. The cost of entry is almost entirely in how big these games are - the Hoyo model is a new point release every six weeks, adding two phases of new content that come with one new character per phase. Much of that is permanent rather than time-limited events, slowly building out the mini-games and storyline of the RPG. If you want to get the new character, you either have to be there for the phase or wait for a rerun of the banner but there are plenty of opportunities to collect several core teams without this and you also get a lot of free loot box unlocks during normal play. You absolutely do not have to pay to unlock anything unless you want to unlock everything (insert image of how many thousands of dollars of DLC a Sims, train sim, or Paradox game accumulates or even just the Fortnite store or any other multiplayer skin store).
Honourable Mentions: Honkai: Star Rail; Wuthering Waves.
Remake of the Year:
Persona 3 Reload
The first MegaTen game I ever completed was Persona 3: FES on the PS2, the complete edition that rolled in a rather disappointing extra chapter to the end of the excellent base game. I had played other SMT before that but it never hooked me to the point I'd finished these often grind-heavy titles. Since then, I've played most games in the various series even if often a few years after release but P3 still ranks very highly for me. I even replayed the PSP port (which was the "current" way to play this game on modern systems before this remake) at the start of the year, terrible AI upscaled images and all.What Reload offers that the PSP port could never get close to is a genuinely expanded version of the gameplay systems, while still retaining most of the narrative content that came before it, as you remember it (some of the PSP exclusives, like the female protagonist route, did not make it over). All backed with the modern UI style you expect from the Persona team who last worked on the P5 series of games. The characters are a highlight of the rendering and the (3D once more) backgrounds from the PS2 version are mostly upgraded, even if some of the lighting choices remove the dark corners of the original - almost certainly done to try and make the game look closer to drawn anime but I don't think it actually works that well. Atlus are masters of making odd technical choices and this game is no different, but at least a lot of it looks generally excellent if you ignore the (SSAO etc) horrors that a graphics debugger may uncover (never look under the hood of Metaphor if you want to sleep at night). Wish the TAA was better but also you can brute-force quite a lot here and it sure beats… forgetting to ship any AA solution at all until a post-launch MLAA patch.
Elsewhere Capcom continue to iterate on their old franchises and bring them up to the modern era and Bloober Team have hit their stride with a very difficult remake of Silent Hill 2.
Honourable Mentions: Dead Rising: Deluxe Remaster; Silent Hill 2 (2024).
Metroidvania of the Year:
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
I'm not sure I really loved this genre until the spate of "wide linear" games took the formula into 3D (Tomb Raider 2013 was a very important release, without which we may not have even gotten the newer God of War games at all, but also we need to appreciate how Metroid Prime led the way) and taught me why this stuff is so much fun. Previously, especially with those early games, I had felt the mandatory backtracking was a lot of busywork and this was long before you could look online to avoid becoming lost. Graphics were also limited enough that a lot of areas looked the same and lacked the individual touch that provides environmental storytelling today.Things have been going very well for the resurgence of Metroidvania games in recent years that are replicating what made those older games work and adding new quality of life features to make it even easier to love them. The Lost Crown even offers cloud-sync'd annotated photos that allow you to track stuff you've seen and want to return to later even if you're playing between different platforms. And this year we got a mix of new games and fleshing out the re-releases of old games that are not so easy to play unless you still had an old handheld around.
Honourable Mentions: Nine Sols; Castlevania Dominus Collection.
Briticism of the Year:
Thank Goodness You're Here!
A minimal adventure game (the verbs are pretty limited here) that's all about the joke and that joke is Britain. As with most comedy, this one will rely on if that lands with you. As someone who grew up in Britain more than anywhere else, I found more than enough to like about this absurd romp through a fictional Northern town, crafted in Yorkshire.Honourable Mentions: this is not a place of honour.
Retro Games of the Year:
UFO 50
Fifty games, all new but designed to feel like the exploration of the back catalogue of an old console (which never existed). I think this pick is actually a lot more divisive than something like the remakes Nightdive are pumping out because if you don't really play to completion older games then you'll probably spend ten minutes on a lot of these and not even touch the rest but a lot of the games offered here are full games with hours of gameplay. To really dig into everything being offered here then you probably want to be someone who semi-regularly goes back to play all the way through retro games.Honourable Mentions: Everything from Nightdive Studios.
Surprise of the Year:
Indika
This is probably going to be the first major release (their actual first release was a VR-only title some years earlier) of an up and coming Spanish studio. There is a confidence to this adventure game that indicates hopefully big things for the future, despite some rough edges. It's also a nicely skewed but comprehendable tale, where you're never quite sure what the limits of the fairytale world are in which this story of religious devotion plays out.Additional Commentary
Dragon Age: The Veilguard: Given I (re)played them in 2019, this series was at least fresher in my mind than for many. After a decade in the dark for BioWare, this does at least answer the question of if they can still put out solid games (even just technically). The cartoon characters here really work, along with cutting edge hair rendering and excellent noise patterns all over the place. Going back from trying to ape Skyrim has also helped cut the sprawling open zones back down to the scale of earlier maps in the series, along with a lot of callbacks to DA2 - feels like a lot of the team were possibly hired after becoming fans of that game and wanted to bring it back into the fold more strongly, even with this being a direct sequel to DAI. (I almost promoted it to the list above - a few more good character moments would have sealed the deal.)Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic: This hit 1.0 this year so it's a suitable time to say that if you ever wondered how the bricks get to the building sites in SimCity, to actually allow the houses to be built, this is the game for you!
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes: I really liked Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising (and the Suikoden series) so you would think expanding that world to rekindle the old series, led by the Suikoden creator before he passed away, would be a pretty easy win. And yet, I just couldn't muster the energy to keep playing this. I might circle back around to it in 2025 to give it another chance.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II: Seems to lose the actual spark of an interesting idea that the first game has for the narrative and also doesn't do anything to expand the mechanics. If you play it, it's just about the visuals.
Another Crab's Treasure: Really wanted to like this but I don't think the "fun" atmosphere really matches the mechanics that well. Reminded me of all the worst of old action platformer games that loved to kill you with a smile.
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU: Given the EA backing, this seemed to have a rather disappointing budget behind it. I'm sure the action is good enough for many but I didn't get that far as there were better Metroidvanias on offer even without going into my backlog.
Pacific Drive: I think I went into this expecting more of a narrative game and less of a rogue-lite. What I really liked about survival-crafting games like Subnautica was uncovering the story and, with what I played of this, I just never quite got there.
If I see credits soon… Ara: History Untold; Call of Duty: Black Ops 6; Frostpunk 2; Harold Halibut; Indiana Jones and the Great Circle; Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess; Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth; Little Kitty, Big City; Metal Slug Tactics; Open Roads; Still Wakes the Deep. (then I may move some to the above list and write about them more)
I know you called this a 1.0 release: Dragon's Dogma 2; Metaphor: ReFantazio; MS Flight Sim 2024; STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl; Star Wars: Outlaws. (but I will check back during 2025 to see how patching has gone)
Credits still distant: 1000 x Resist; Age of Mythology: Retold; Black Myth: Wukong; Caves of Qud; Creatures of Ava; Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake; EA Sports College Football 25; Expeditions: A MudRunner Game; Fear the Spotlight; Granblue Fantasy: Relink; GreedFall 2: The Dying World; Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 and 2 Remastered; Life Is Strange: Double Exposure; Lorelei and the Laser Eyes; Manor Lords; Mouthwashing; Path of Exile 2; Rise of the Golden Idol; Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance; Slitterhead; Space Marine 2; Star Ocean: The Second Story R; Tactical Breach Wizards; Unicorn Overlord.
I still don't own a PS5: Astro Bot; Final Fantasy VII Rebirth; Stellar Blade. (and at this point, if it doesn't come to PC, this is something to think about on PS6)
