Game of the Year 2024 Edition: Brought to You By the Power of AI (2025)

Darke GBF

Dec 30, 2006

The cold never bothered me anyway~

This year was insanely good. Plenty of games that didn’t release this year that I finally got to, and lots of awesome releases during the year itself. Might be the best year in memory. My top four in particular I could honestly almost rearrange in any order and be happy with it. Those four games were all so good that I had a really hard time ranking them, and the order changed multiple times over the year. I’ve been playing Path of Exile 2, and it’s great, but still rough around the edges. I think it’ll probably make next year’s list.

The Rest which didn’t make the list, in no real order:

World of Horror, Idol Showdown, Super Mario Bros Wonder, Palworld, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Ghost of Tsushima, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Bayonetta 3, Horizon: Forbidden West, Grimgrimoire Once More, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Kunitsu-gami, Path of Exile 2, God of War Ragnarok (really surprising, the sequel just isn’t hitting like the first one did), Slay the Princess: The Pristine Cut, Throne and Liberty, Anonymous;Code, Girls Frontline 2: Exilium, Warcraft Rumble, Rise of the Golden Idol, Nine Sols

Honorable Mentions:

Inkbound

I’m of the opinion that Monster Train is the second best roguelike deckbuilder out there, behind Slay the Spire, and I’d say it’s close behind. So of course I was going to get that studio’s next game sight unseen just because I know they know how to make that kind of game well. Inkbound is pretty interesting; it’s a turn-based battler that lets you execute abilities and reposition yourself while showing you visually what the enemies are going to do next turn, giving you an opportunity to move out of where they’re targeting their attacks. Conceptually I think there’s a lot to like about it and it’s got a good skeleton. The systems work well and reward you for good positioning and building your kit around certain things. The problem I ran into was that every run, regardless of class, started to blur together. Like the pool of abilities and artifacts was too small to meaningfully distinguish between them. In Slay the Spire, nobody is going to confuse a run on The Silent for a run on The Watcher. They don’t play even slightly similarly. Same with Monster Train and playing the Awoken as your primary versus the Stygian Guard. The gameplay for each is totally different. But Inkbound kind of homogenizes its runs with a pool of neutral abilities that you’re going to get multiple of on every run. It quickly gets boring when you work out what’s really strong, because you just…take it every run. The class-specific skills will be interesting for a minute, and the standout there is an orb-based hero that plays a lot like Orianna from League of Legends. But after the tenth run where you take teleport because it’s the best possible option for avoiding damage, you’re gonna be moving on to a different game. This might be one to revisit as they continue to update it with new content.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

20 minutes into this DLC, I was very much in “we are SO loving back” mode. The DLC starts off strong, with a boss that immediately tests you pretty well and lots of areas to explore. But the longer it went, the more my excitement waned. This DLC is honestly a mess. That’s not to say there aren’t things to like about it, but more that it’s clear From Software is running out of tricks, or falling prey to high expectations. I want to say the things I like about this DLC are the world’s visual and environmental design, which is easily on par with or better than anything they’ve ever done, and some of the new weapons – in particular the Dryleaf martial arts which were super fun and unique and let me flying roundhouse kick things to death over and over. I think a couple of the bosses are fun and fair (Messmer is the standout), and the story goes to some weird places that show Miyazaki still has his own unique creative vision. The good stuff above is why it gets an honorable mention.

But I think that’s where my pleasure with it ends. The world itself is barren of items to find. I got used to Elden Ring’s obscenely high extrinsic rewards for being completionist and exploring every inch of the environment, and taking the fine tooth comb approach to the DLC is only going to disappoint as you find a cool nook or cranny and discover that there’s nothing there, or even worse, there’s a loving smithing stone +3 waiting for you. It’s like they created this amazing world and then 1/3 of the way through filling it up with cool poo poo they just decided to ship it. The difficulty is as artificially high as anything they’ve ever made, and it’s extremely clear that they’ve reached the limits of difficulty they can create for a system where dodge rolling can avoid the damage of every single attack if timed properly, and an audience that can consistently do that one, two, three swings in a row. They have resorted to just making boss attack strings longer, and recovery/counterattack windows shorter in an effort to prolong fights and try and jack up the difficulty. It is clear that Sekiro or something like it is the path forward, with rock/paper/scissors defense, because people have just gotten way too good at dodge rolling. You need to have some attacks that need a different way of defense. Jumping, parrying, blocking, whatever.

Some of the bosses are just flat-out not fun, and I felt no satisfaction or accomplishment when I beat it. Just a vague relief that it was over. Looking forward to doing it in seamless co-op with some buds and jumping that rear end in a top hat out of revenge. Still, I fear that based on the sales, From is going to keep up their usual pattern. Whatever they make next will have even faster enemies if that’s possible, or the combos will be even longer with no counterattack window, or whatever. I think there was a lot of criticism of the DLC but sales numbers are still going to encourage them against innovating. All it takes is one game where it’s “too easy” to basically shed their entire built-in fanbase, and I know they fear that. I’m curious about what kinds of discussions From is having internally right now. How do they feel about the DLC? I wonder. It’s a little sad that an honorable mention got more writing out of me than anything on my actual top 10, but that’s how important Elden Ring was and how high my hopes for the DLC were.

Touhou Lost Branch of Legend

It’s Slay the Spire with some slight changes, themed around twowho. Some of the changes are interesting but I haven’t really had to engage with them much (the mana colors tend to not be as restrictive or require as much interaction as you would expect, because you’re usually building your deck around 2 colors anyway and you get SO much mana by the end including some rainbow that you’re not going to brick your hand even just playing cards without much thought). I don’t really have much to comment on regarding the theming… Touhou isn’t something I really mess with, so I’m in this one purely for the gameplay. But it’s pretty fun, if a little bit autopilot in how decks kind of come together and reach critical mass without much effort required. I’ve only lost one run so far, and it was to this game’s equivalent of the Heart/Neow. If you’re desperate for more of that kind of roguelike deck builder game, this one will hold your interest for a bit, certainly. The placeholder art for some of the cards (or is it?) is hilarious, too.

Holocure

I just want to point out that I had this game on my list two years ago. Are you guys seeing it now? ARE YOU SEEING IT NOW? It’s got Pekora in it now. Literally no excuse at this point. Just play it, bitch.

The Top Ten

10. Walkabout Minigolf
Still the top VR game with friends.

Seems like this one just has a permanent position on my goty list, since at this point my $500 VR headset is just a really expensive minigolf device, and it's totally worth it. I play enough of it with pals that it always ends up being some of the most fun I have each year. Calling each other names over voice chat, making fun of each other’s shots to destroy each other’s mental, trying to find the various foxhunt clues or hidden balls in each course, enjoying the scenery and thematics… it’s the ultimate comfort food with friends game. This year saw the release of a fair number of great new courses, including a Wallace and Gromit collaboration course, an 8-Bit Arcade, a garden habitat on Mars, and others. Mighty Coconut is a great dev and they put a lot of effort into these putt putt courses, often including entirely new gimmicks like turning your ball into a block of ice, or incinerating laser traps that will completely destroy your ball. This is the only game there is where I will buy every single dlc as soon as it releases, forever. I will always support them, because I always enjoy a round of golf with the boys. Except for the time the course rewrote the laws of physics to give my one pal a hole in one for no loving reason that was HORSESHIT gently caress YOU ALEX

9. Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2
Rise, son of Guilliman…

This game has a simplicity and a focus to it that’s great, and I think they REALLY got the thematic side of it, with the brotherhood and fight between the Imperium and the xenos/chaos correct. By the end of the game I really loved Titus’ new battle brothers and the camaraderie in the squad felt earned, as well as a plausible way for Titus’ character to respond given how he probably evolved as a person in the hundred years since the events of the first game. There are some incredible moments and fights, and I think the way they resolved the events of the game and the ending of the last one was better than I could’ve imagined. The final boss was mechanically fun and genuinely epic, and you can tell they took to heart some criticisms of the QTE boss that the first game ended with. I really want to see where Titus’ story goes after this, and I trust Saber to take it to new and interesting places.

That being said, the gameplay is just flat out not as good as the first, in any way, and I could not help but compare the two. I hate having to ADS if I want to hit anything further away than melee range with my gun. I hate tons of unavoidable damage coming in from afar while I get assaulted by enemies with shields in melee. I dislike the parry system and think parry OR dodge alone would’ve sufficed, and that animation locking into one or the other leads to frustrating moments. I dislike that your health bar never really recovers once it gets low, because healing stims are few and far between and the glory mode that lets your melee heal past the Bloodborne-style rally bar has such a long cooldown. I dislike that armor gets shredded like toilet paper and that replenishing it is secondary to the invincibility that comes with the execution animation. I dislike that a game so heavily reliant on glory killing glowing enemies in melee has a top run speed of 2mph. I think the flow of the gameplay is vastly inferior to the first and has too much friction, and I think they really could’ve streamlined it, as well as the sheer number of various bolters. This may all be rose-colored glasses from the first game, but I remember it rewarding aggression much better than this one does. The jump pack sequences in this game are pretty fun, but they were good in the first one, too.

Ultimately I didn’t expect it to be as good as the first, but my love for the first cant really be overstated. There’s a lot to like here even if I was hard on it, and the multiplayer is pretty fun and rides the line between simplicity and depth just competently enough to be enjoyable as well. It’s a good game, and I can easily say it’s worth a purchase. It’s not great like the first one was, though. I will be expecting more from Space Marine 3, which the sales seem to have already justified (and probably much larger in scope as a project).

8. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
It’s a little weird that the Great Fairy wants rupees.

They finally did it. They finally turned Zeldo into a girl. So loving sick of pandering to the modern audience. Whatever. Game is okay, I guess.

Honestly though I really enjoyed my time with this one. I hate the Breath of the Wild-era Zelda games, but I love 2D Zeldas and genuinely think the series is better in a 2D format. This one is technically 3D I guess because you can finally jump in a topdown Zelda, but it feels like a pretty comfortable addition to the control scheme. I like the mechanics of summoning things to fight for you, and there are a sufficient number of summons that you can really choose how you want combat to go. I used the spiny ball summons you get at the very beginning until it became clear they just weren’t really doing damage anymore. I liked figuring out how to get places, the puzzles, and the bosses were also a lot of fun. This would’ve been higher on my list, but I think towards the end of the game it does somewhat run empty on the bag of tricks (although the final dungeon does introduce one last interesting shakeup that I appreciated). I think a lot of Zelda fans probably didn’t care for this one, because a lot of the combat is going to consist of you running away from an aggressive enemy or enemies desperately trying to summon your own army to fight them, and that’s not what Zelda fans are used to. But I like that Nintendo was willing to try something a little new, a little different here. I hope we see more of that.

7. Warhammer 40K: Space Marine
The Codex Astartes does not support this acti-SHUT THE gently caress UP LEANDROS

Yes, the first one. After beating the second one, I needed to know if I was crazy or peering through rose-colored glasses. Because the whole time I was playing the sequel, I was thinking “the first one was better. The first one was this way, and I liked it better because of that, while the sequel is kind of messy.” I reinstalled Space Marine, booted that poo poo up, set it to Veteran difficulty (for parity with my playthrough of 2) and got to work. 1.5 minutes later I was dead, and thinking uh oh, maybe this isn’t as good as I remembered. Then I made it by that, and 15 minutes had passed, and we were so loving back. It is not an exaggeration to say that this may be the most loving back we have ever been, and I beat it in literally two sessions of play. Space Marine 1 is exactly the game I remembered it being, it does everything perfectly except the QTE last boss, and almost everything about its mechanical design is superior to the sequel. You might think it would be annoying to be vulnerable during executions, but honestly, it’s not even a problem at all. An AOE stun will usually give you enough breathing room to safely execute, and if it doesn’t, you probably didn’t need the heal to begin with. The jump pack in 1 feels even more powerful than the one in 2, and the one in 2 feels strong as hell.

The weapon arsenal is smaller, but I didn’t feel like anything from the sequel was noticeably absent. A bunch of bolter variants that I wasn’t interested in using anyway. I love how impactful the arsenal feels in SM1, especially popping heads with the stalker bolter. I had forgotten how amusing the orks as an enemy were, but also how much they suited the gameplay. If you had asked me before playing either game what my favorite 40K enemy faction was, I would’ve responded nids without even thinking. But orks are better in a shooting videogame like this. They feel satisfying to gun down one by one, whereas shooting into a swarm of nids feels unruly and not enjoyable, especially if there’s elites in there that you have to look for melee cues on. Space Marine 1 is a simpler game, but it’s also just a HELL of a lot more fun. I really wish Relic had been able to make their own sequel. I’m happy we got anything at all, but I cant help but wonder what if. Space Marine 1 remains on my top 10 games of all time. Maybe top 5. Only reason it’s this low on this yearly list is it’s a replay.

6. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
What's at the end of my blade?

Didn’t expect this one to be as good as it was. I’d heard it was top notch, but if I discard my nostalgia for Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, I think The Lost Crown is probably the best Metroidvania ever made. The combat is next level engaging, the locomotion is interesting enough to be a game all on its own (and a whole lot of this game is basically just the devs laughing at the cruel environmental challenges they’ve crafted because they know EXACTLY how mobile you are and what you’re capable of), and the story is even sort of interesting. The second to last boss was so fun that even when he killed me twice I was consciously thinking to myself “WOW, this is such a fun boss to fight!” That’s such a rare thing. If a boss is killing me, I’m probably mad at it. It’s a shame this game didn’t get even close to the attention it deserved. This game took a tired genre, revitalized it, put in a lot of passion and effort, and got their team disbanded for it. This game deserves to be played, even if the default skin for the protagonist has the stupid killmonger cheesepuffs haircut.

5. Evil West
Cowboys, vampires, and action.

The definition of a hidden gem. I didn’t even realize the game was two years old, makes me want to go back and see if anyone gave a poo poo in 2022 when it came out. Something tells me the answer is no. Evil West is a double-A action game made by Flying Wild Hog, the devs who made the Shadow Warrior reboot games. It plays like a mixture of Call of Juarez and God of War, reminiscent of a 360/PS3 era game. You are expected to shoot weakpoints to stop enemy attacks, juggle enemies with launchers, smash them into arena hazards or other enemies, do stun beatdowns on enemies before their buddies can close the distance to you, and dodge roll attacks while maintaining good positioning. The bosses and some of the enemy encounters in this game are very demanding in a way that rides the line on being oppressive. When you encounter a fight that seems downright insurmountable, and then learn how to keep track of everything going on while executing everything you need to do, it is immensely satisfying. The bosses feel incredible to beat, especially when I make proper use of my full arsenal.

This is the game I thought Shadow Warrior 2 and 3 could’ve and should’ve been. SW2013 is one of my favorite games of all time, but the sequels really just dropped the ball and felt like they were trendchasers. Evil West is Flying Wild Hog going back to the drawing board, asking what game THEY want to make rather than “what seems to be selling right now?”, how they want it to be, and making it without giving a poo poo about whether or not the masses will see the appeal. This game is going to be frustrating for lots of players, but anyone who encounters that first real boss, sees what it takes, and enjoys it is going to find a hell of a game waiting behind it. It’s on Gamepass, and I highly recommend giving it a look. This one flew so far under the radar I haven’t seen it discussed hardly at all.

4. Balatro
Too bad these chips are all virtual...

Insanely addictive, perfectly designed, smartly simplistic, and elegant. Dumped in 50 hours after launch, got a few gold stakes beaten, then let it sit for 5 months and picked it back up, only to play another 40 hours. It’s incredibly easy to just play another round. Pick a deck, go a stake higher, and see what the shop offers so you can get a run rolling. Discovering the Midas Mask/Vampire interaction early on was one of my gaming moments of the year, and made me literally cackle in delight as I felt like a mad genius for finding this relatively obvious but oh-so-disgustingly-broken combo. Among deckbuilder roguelikes, it has earned its spot in my top three alongside Monster Train and Slay the Spire. It feels like optimizing your play can deliver impressive results, and the decks and jokers are varied enough that you’re not going to get bored of the options available. LOTS of variation between runs, and while I’d still say Straights are a little too hard to build around for the level of reward they offer, and Flushes maybe slightly too easy, the game does a good job of offering a fair challenge. It’s a game I can already tell I’m going to come back to in years to come, especially with more content additions. I’d love a new mode like Texas Hold’em, or really anything the creator is interested in making.

3. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
I don’t give a poo poo about my limits.

I really should’ve written my thoughts on this one back in January when I beat it. It’s a little hazy now. What I remember is that 13 Sentinels was a really impressive piece of storytelling, wrapped around a shockingly fun and simple but satisfying set of gameplay mechanics with a coat of paint and animation that was absolutely gorgeous to look at. I never felt like the way the story was told was incoherent or didn’t work because of the order chosen, which is an accomplishment given how much this game references itself. I enjoyed every assault stage and did my best to satisfy the bonus requirements. The core premise of the story is intriguing, mysterious, has a ton of moving parts… it constantly had me asking new questions and added more elements that I thought for certain could not have a satisfying conclusion. At some point it had simply added too many threads to offer a coherent and satisfying ending. Then it ended, and all my questions were answered and I was completely content with it all, and I just marveled at how drat good Vanillaware is at doing what they do. I think 13 Sentinels is easily their most impressive work, although I personally connected more deeply with the gameplay systems they crafted for Unicorn Overlord. I cant wait to play Dragon’s Crown; I’ve got it bought on the PS4 and just waiting. I am officially Vanillawarepilled, even if Grimgrimoire was not good enough to make my list.

Bonus 13 Sentinels Personal Character Ranking
Rank 0: Sawatari Miwako
1.Ogata Nenji
2.Takamiya Yuki
3.Miura Keitaro
4.Minami Natsuno
5.Amiguchi Shu
6.Kisaragi Tomi
7.Gouto Renya
8.Fuyusaka Iori
9.Kurabe Juro
10.Sekigahara Ei
11.Yakushiji Megumi
12.Hijiyama Takatoshi
13.Shinonome Ryoko

2. Street Fighter 6
SIT DOWN, AND SHUT UP!

Fighting games have pretty much always been inscrutable for me. An undecipherable mystery that I’ve never really been able to engage with beyond a command-less surface level (except KI: Gold on the N64 where Sabrewulf’s inputs were easy enough for me to actually combo with). No seriously, I couldn't do a quarter circle forward on a standard gamepad if you gave me 10 tries at it. IMPOSSIBLE. After hearing how good SF6 was, and about modern controls, I thought I’d give it a try… but Modern was my backup. I wanted to do things the real way, or at least as close to real as I could get while being able to actually do it. So I bought a cheapo Haute42 hitbox controller off Aliexpress for like 40 bucks, and booted it up. And with some practice… I was actually able to do Shoryukens, and Hadoukens, and actually engage with the fighting game the way you’re supposed to, and it was amazing. With the help of a friend I really improved and was actually able to work my way to gold rank on the ladder by combining simple combos and reads with blocking – far beyond what I thought I’d be able to do.

Encountering the same people in ranked and having close matches where we adapted to each other and worked hard to eke out victories or comebacks felt like how gaming used to be. It felt almost local. There was a Ryu who I would say was probably about 10% better than me (and I was playing Ken so he was definitely disadvantaged) and while he took a majority of our matches, I felt like I learned a lot from him and was always happy for a rematch. Street Fighter 6 is a compelling package with a lot going for it, and I really, really enjoyed my time with it this year. I feel like I unlocked something that had been chained up behind a door for my entire gaming life, and that deserves a top 3 spot.

1. Unicorn Overlord
Ahhhh my hag witch wife…

My top four I agonized over. All four games are so close to each other it was genuinely hard to come up with an order. Immediately after finishing the last of them, my order had Thirteen Sentinels at the top and Unicorn Overlord in the 4 spot, but as time passed I actually wanted to shift Unicorn Overlord higher because of how addictive it was to mess around with squad compositions and gear setups in that game. Coming up with interesting squads was tremendously entertaining in a way that I’ve never really found in a videogame before. Trying to see if I could make a weird idea work instead of just cramming all my strongest characters into one ultimate squad made the game far more enjoyable, and really made it feel like I was using all these lovable characters I had added to my army. I really got sucked into the systems on this game and just couldn't stop playing it.

The story is relatively basic, but it has a lot of heart, and the characters are so numerous and likable that I really got invested in retaking Cornia. I never tired of the actual gameplay although if I hadn’t been constantly switching things up and making different squads I might have, and I think if you don’t enjoy the squad composition part of the game you’re not going to get as much out of this one. Playing on the hardest initially available difficulty helped a lot – the game is way too easy if you play on anything below hard, and I would strongly suggest you play on the hardest difficulty from the start if you’re anything above “utterly sucky” at strategy games. It’s very manageable on that difficulty even if you basically never use items, to the point where actually using items will again make most levels actually easy. I basically played it in a way that made it engaging but not overly punishing for me, and had a fantastic time throughout. Although the last fight for the true ending was a headscratcher and I had to brute force it ever so slightly because I had so evenly distributed power across my squads and you kind of need a super squad to act as a speartip to be able to make it over the finish line there.

Unicorn Overlord cemented me as a Vanillaware fan. 13 Sentinels was good enough to make me sit up and take notice, and Unicorn Overlord confirmed that the studio itself has a ton of talent and passion in their staff, and their artists are among the very best in the industry – especially on food. Seriously, the way they animate food in this game makes it look so goddamn delicious. The way the cheese steak sizzles in the pan, or the apple gelatin tarts jiggle, or the little movement in the yolks of the ham and egg galettes as the plate they’re on falls onto the table… Masterful.

I’m playing through Grimgrimoire Oncemore right now I finished Grimgrimoire Oncemore, and I cant wait to finally play Dragon’s Crown.

Easy Format Ranking:
10. Walkabout Minigolf
9. Space Marine 2
8. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
7. Warhammer 40K: Space Marine
6. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
5. Evil West
4. Balatro
3. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
2. Street Fighter 6
1. Unicorn Overlord

#?Dec 15, 2024 00:00

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