Don’t be fooled by the simple synchronicity of the headline above. We have selected our 24 favourite games from the past year every year since 2008. We reveal these beloved games across the month of December in the RPS Advent Calendar, each game behind a new door.
This article collects all those wonderful games and our writings about them in one place, for a post-New Year reading experience that requires you to click less.
As always, the list is composed by the Rock Paper Shotgun staff via vote and discussion. Any game released in 2024 is eligible, whether Early Access, 1.0, an expansion, or even just a game that has been substantially refreshed by a big update. The aim is to cast the net wide and celebrate what we’ve been playing and enjoying in the calendar year, rather than be tied down by technicalities of release dates.
The list is, also as always, not in any particular order, except for the last game, revealed on December 24th, which is our definitive pick for our favourite game of 2024.
Don’t see your favourite game on the list? It might not have made the calendar, but you may still find it celebrated by staff in their personal Selection Boxes.
Factorio: Space Age
Ollie: As I’m sure is often the case, Factorio was the game that got me into factory-building games. My first three or four playthroughs were faltering, agonisingly slow attempts to learn the language of conveyor belts, inserters, fluid dynamics, and biter defence. It took me about 400 hours before I got to the playthrough that I actually took to the end of the game. And since then, it’s all clicked. I understand what I need to do and when to do it.
And then Factorio: Space Age came along and turned everything on its head. In a conscious reversal of my previous experience, the first hundred or so hours went incredibly smoothly as I built up my factory in all the familiar ways. And then the moment I launched my first rocket, everything ground to a halt. Out there beyond the atmosphere, different rules apply. I thought I knew the language of Factorio, but it turns out I just knew the one basic dialect. With each new frontier, each new planet, I was forced to abandon much of what I knew and start fresh. And that made visiting each planet for the first time some of the most exciting gaming moments I’ve had for years.
Take the lava planet of Vulcanus, for instance. Here, there are no iron or copper deposits in the ground. You have to manually hit rocks to get tiny amounts of the basic ores, and slowly grow up to the stage where you can begin to pipe lava directly into Foundries to produce iron and copper by the beltload. Instead of water, you have sulfuric acid geysers which you can combine with calcite to create steam for electrical power. And you have to keep your builds compact, because you’re in a tiny safe space surrounded by the territories of gigantic, nigh-invulnerable worms called Demolishers which will kill you with a single touch.
Not strange enough? How about the spongy landscape of Gleba, where everything spoils into unusable gunk in a matter of minutes? Rather than starting with iron and copper, you need to harvest fruits, and combine them in organic machines that take no electricity but instead run on nutrients, like an organism. And if anything gets backed up, your entire production line will spoil into nothingness, which brings with it some of the most brain-bending new logistic challenges I’ve encountered in any factory game.
Or perhaps you’re after the oil-filled oceans of Fulgora, where lightning storms pummel the surface at regular intervals, and ancient ruins litter the landscape. In an ingenious reversal of regular Factorio rules, you have to start from the top of the tech tree and work your way down on Fulgora, breaking apart the high-tech ruins and salvaging processor chips and modular frames, then breaking them down further so you can get the basic building blocks of iron and copper. And all the while you need to build lightning rods to protect yourself from the storms, which can also supply your factory with potentially limitless energy if you can harness enough lightning.
Factorio: Space Age is gobsmacking in its scope and inventiveness. Playing it feels like playing several different factory games at once, all cleverly linked together, and each of which would separately be among the most interesting and satisfying games in the genre. It may be overwhelming at times, particularly on a first playthrough, but there’s also a level of focus on the player’s quality of life that is unmatched in any other game I’ve ever played. A thousand hours later, I’m still discovering wonderful little quality of life tricks that I can’t believe I spent so long playing without. I’m finding new ways to build, new ways to expand, new methods of slaughtering the indigenous lifeforms of the planets I must exploit.
It’s been a phenomenal year for factory games, perhaps the best ever. Satisfactory reached its full release, Shapez 2 was released, and Factorio: Space Age made it very clear that this game is still the king of the genre. I’d say you should set aside some time next year to give it a go, but really you might want to set aside the entire year.
Felvidek
Nic: Felvidek was the loveliest surprise of the year for me. Like pulling your hand out of your stocking to find a baby alligator chomping on your fingers but then becoming best mates for life, Felvidek hides a surprising amount of heart beneath its jagged exterior. Like getting your fingers bitten off by said baby alligator, Felvidek also makes you really want a drink, because hapless but stalwart protagonist Pavol makes being a wretched alcoholic seem both cool and fun.
Genre wise, it’s a JRPG. You can’t argue with me on this, because it says JRPG on the Steam page. Go argue with that. In actuality, the game is set in 15th century Slovakia, but you will do some familiar JRPG things, such as turn-based battling. That all progress here is based on equipment, and there’s no levelling up, might be an issue in a longer game, but Felvidek is a svelte four hours long – an absolute balm in a genre that’s given us a few brilliant though intimidatingly lengthy entries this year.
Really though, Felvidek’s brilliance is down to the story it tells, which has the feel of a very elaborate stage play. It’s both surreal and grounded in the medieval era, with bizarre demonic cults stepping on stage alongside internally conflicted priests. It’s both winkingly baroque in how convoluted and archaic some of the language is, but also quite chatty and matey in its two-man buddy comedy of errors. Alongside the occasionally deadly combat, it really does evoke a singular view of medieval life that’s deadly, goofy, and heartfelt all at once.
Tactical Breach Wizards
Nic: I’ve obviously spent a lot of words already this year yapping about how much fun I had with the turn-based puzzles of Tactical Breach Wizards, but I didn’t realise quite what an evangelist for it I’d become until I watched it get utterly snubbed at several awards ceremonies. Do they not appreciate dynamic difficulty based on how many optional challenges you want to go for?! Do they not see the value in a colorful cast with wildly different yet complimentary sets of upgradable abilities, and a lovely story to boot?! Do they not buzz – nay tremble – with delight about the end-of-level score counter purely there to tell you how many mooks you’ve molly whopped out of multiple-story high windows? I’d say “for shame!” but it’s clear they are incapable of feeling any.
It absolutely deserves recognition though, not least because of just how forgiving and inviting it presents itself to newcomers, while still offering enough crunch to satisfy the most hardened of XCOM Long War vets. I’m confident that anyone, even if this is their first tactics game, can enjoy finishing Breach Wizards. On the other hand, a lack of challenge can absolutely murder otherwise fantastic games. Tactics only matter when your back is against the wall, otherwise it’s just ‘choose your own route to victory’. But Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus this is not. While the demands to simply complete a level are permissive, it’s those optional challenges that really do turn each stage into a satisfying head-scratcher. But even better, there’s rarely ever just a single solution to these problems, and some of the plays you can engineer using your combined abilities make John Wick look like a drab accountant.
It’s the most fun I’ve had with a game all year, and it’s my personal Game Of The Year too. And if I know anything about my own opinions, it’s that they’re good ones.
Graham: I would have voted for Tactical Breach Wizards to be on the calendar, but I abstained since I am compromised by being friends with its designer, Tom Francis. Also because he beat me too many times at Dune Imperium this year. Instead, I will virtuously disclose that Tom also wrote an excellent column about game design for us back in 2018, What Works And Why.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
James: I wouldn’t blame anyone for being suspicious of Vampire Survivors-likes. Much like how the AAA industry tried to crowbar all their franchises into ropey battle royale modes a few years back, the success of VampSurvs has blinded an awful lot of eyes with glaring green dollar signs, leading in turn to enough shovelled-out autoshooters to clog up at least two Steam Next Fests.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor feels different, and I promise not just because it’s spun off from a co-op FPS I really like. But it is clever with how it borrows chunks of OG DRG to make a Survivors-like that’s genuinely fresh and distinct, presented with enough polish to make you forget it’s still in the wilds of early access.
Probably the best example of this is the mining. In DRG you can pickaxe and drill open the terrain to open new pathways or sculpt a cave to make it more easily defensible. DRG: Survivor, rather than plopping you on a completely flat, infinitely scrolling arena, surrounds you with rock walls and offers you the same opportunity. Need to juke a heavy horde? Bash a hole through the barrier and slip through to safety. Building for close-range damage? Cut a new tunnel and bait the bugs into your bespoke chokepoint. These caves aren’t just levels, they’re slabs of clay to reshape to your advantage – a whole new tactical consideration on top of dodging and shooting.
Digging, however, takes time, as does plucking valuable minerals – your currency for both permanent and run-specific upgrades – from the rock. This invites your insectoid foes, who can otherwise be outran in all but their fattest swarms, to close the gap, but then that may be worth it if you can just grab that last shining chunk of gold…
Moments like this, where you’re forced to choose between stopping to mine and potentially losing bits of dwarf bum to the encroaching crowd of mandibles, are a regular feature of DRG: Survivor. More importantly they bring a stakes-raising, leaning-forward-in-your-chair thrill that even the genre’s originator doesn’t deliver in such generous doses. At least not as soon as a run begins, anyway.
Vampire Survivors can be more fun in the late game, when you’ve amassed enough random magic bullshit to delete whole screens of monsters at once; you’re rarely that powerful here. But by more closely walking the line between victory and death, and by balancing your mining tools with the risk of stopping to use them, DRG: Survivor adds a compelling tension to its autoshooting, in a way that precious few of its contemporaries could even hope to attempt.
Dune: Imperium
Graham: Sometimes the best board gaming experiences are simultaneously someone’s worst, as one person’s stroke of luck or perfectly executed plan necessitates someone else having a wasteful time. I’ve been on both sides of this scenario and I don’t enjoy either: I want to compete and win, sure, but I want everyone else to have fun, too.
Enter Dune: Imperium, which seems to support swings of fortune and orchestrated comebacks more than any other board game I’ve played, leaving every player with thrilling decisions to make all the way to the final turn.
Officially licensed from the films I haven’t seen based on the books I haven’t read, at the top level Dune Imperium is about collecting more victory points than your three opponents. These points can be gained in numerous ways, such as by advancing along the influence tracks of four different NPC factions, or by winning military conflicts against other players. Your decisions in each round are enabled by the resources and cards you have available, and in each case involve playing a card to send an agent to a board space.
Bigger picture, your decisions are led by whether you’re going to grab the easy victory point available now, this round, or instead invest in your deck and resource-gathering in a way that will pay off during later rounds. This is what leads to every finale being tense. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pulled three or four victory points ahead by the mid-game, only to lose by two or three victory points when my opponent’s engine kicks in during the final rounds.
I have never been frustrated when this has happened. Instead it feels nailbitingly tense and eminently fair.
The Rise Of Ix expansion, also released this year, has only improved the game, adding new layers to every decision. There are now so many different ways to win a game that you can ignore entire systems, if you wish. No card shop, only tech progression? Go for it. Forsake water gathering in favour of spice and money? Perfectly valid.
It’s a miracle, given all these many systems, that I’ve never felt overwhelmed. I’m not an adept player when it comes to board games or multiplayer strategy, but Imperium limits my choices based on what cards are in my hand each turn in such a way that I feel I can hold onto a long-term plan, but loosely enough to still adapt when circumstances dictate.
All of which has made Dune Imperium a regular companion for the past six months. Every Sunday, my friend Tom and I catch up on a call, then fight over spice world for 90 minutes. Win or lose – and I lose more than I win – I am back the next Sunday, eager for more. As my friends and I age, move away, and our lives become busier, I’m only more grateful for such an easygoing source of competition and fun.
That’s probably what Dune is about, yeah? The real spice is the friends we made along the way.
Ollie: Graham’s repeated mentions of Dune: Imperium finally prompted me to try it for myself about halfway through the year, and yes, it’s marvellous. One of those rare games where the losses are as compelling as the wins, maybe even more so. I haven’t yet bought the Rise Of Ix expansion, because even the base game feels like it gives me enough options that I can disregard entire swathes of the playing field. I’m a tad scared of the effect Rise Of Ix will have on my life next year. I’ll just be sitting up in bed, half-delirious, my face lit the colour of sand by my phone or Steam Deck as I stubbornly refuse to repay my sleep debt.
I probably shouldn’t play this game with friends. Not the ones I want to keep.
Hades 2
James: I don’t know if I’d call Hades 2 a roguelike for people who don’t like roguelikes, because it is very, very roguelikey. And yet here am: just a boy who hates roguelikes, with all their for-the-sake-of-it difficulty and lack of respect for my time, and has nonetheless tossed Hades 2 enough advent calendar votes to now be writing its intro piece.
This is because regardless of its repetitious aspects, Hades 2 is just a bloody excellent action game: a ferociously paced dance of blades and sorceries that demands bravery and aggression as much as it does nimble-toed dodging. The breakneck combat of the original is subtly but satisfyingly expanded with AoE crowd control moves and a variety of charge-up attacks, making good positioning even more vital while letting you buy precious moments of space when the demons’ numbers advantage starts getting a little too numerous. Outside of a few bosses (who, questionably, slow things down with lengthy invuln phases), it’s electric stuff, even before your run gets deep enough to unlock the truly bonkers boons.
It also helps that the sting of a failed attempt is so easily soothed by fresh rounds of charming, mythical Grecian chitchat. Obviously I’d rather just win every time, but when I don’t, getting new lines of spirit-lifting banter from my allies almost feels like a consolation prize. These handsome boys, girls, and rock-singing sea monsters are, once again, the true stars, to the point where I’ll usually go for Hermes’ boons over those of other gods just to enjoy another burst of his delightfully quickfire exposition dumps.
We probably should acknowledge that Hades 2 is currently Not Finished™, and not in the usual early access buggy way, but in the ‘chunks of game and story are not there’ kind of way. Still! what is present works very well indeed, and it’s possible to complete and repeat the meatiest of its two main routes.
The Finals
Graham: I assumed my years of multiplayer shooting were behind me. That’s partly because I am now old and busy, but also because the modern form of the genre – namely rank-based matchmaking and battle pass unlocks – punishes my lack of time in a way older games, with their dedicated servers and smaller arsenals, did not.
Then I saw The Finals, and The Finals said,” all the buildings can blow up”, and suddenly I found the time. Here is a very particular “wouldn’t it be cool if” made real. Wouldn’t it be cool if a video game featured an entire city? Yes, take Grand Theft Auto and enjoy, my child. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could blow distinct holes in every wall, ceiling and floor until an entire building collapsed, but also this had tactical significance within a multiplayer game? Yes, yes it would.
Even aside from this spectacularly destructive environment, The Finals understands that chasing, being chased, and escaping are fundamental thrills. In The Finals standard mode, multiple teams of three are fighting to grab a cash vault, carry it across the map, and deposit it in a machine that then takes a short while to secure the funds inside. It’s the perfect setup, as players chase each other across rooftops, escape by exploding a hole in a wall, and then steal a cash vault by detonating the floor beneath it.
Modern shooter though it may be, both in its free-to-play battle pass and its arsenal of machineguns, The Finals also has the good sense not to take itself too seriously. Every fight is taking place within the framing device of a virtual reality game show, which only matters in as far as it allows them to introduce special events like meteor strikes or alien invasions. The Finals can be sweaty, as the kids say, with team work and class choices making a big impact on success during public matches, but it also feels playful and silly in a way that’s resistant to some of the more toxic elements of a playerbase.
The Finals held my attention through much of December and then January of this year, but perhaps more surprisingly it has managed to draw me back in the months since with some of its seasonal updates. One of them took place in a map set during feudal Japan, and sure, I absolutely wanted to smash those to bits. The most recent season added a fun new map and a less competitive progression system, which was most welcome.
I have always been a generalist when it comes to playing games, but I often think of shooters as my de facto genre of choice. In that sense playing The Finals has felt like a joyful homecoming – even if it’s ultimately blowing up that home one wall at a time.
Ollie: There’s a special joy that arises when backup plans work flawlessly in The Finals. Oh, your team jumped on mine and forced us off the vault with seconds to spare? It’d be a shame if we were to detonate the C4 we’ve placed all around the vault, forcing the entire thing to drop down a floor to the killbox we’ve set up underneath…
Edwin: I never managed to play much of this because it kept crashing my PC, but I did enjoy running over the roof of that big glass house in one of the launch maps. Also, shooting out the glass beneath people running over the roof of that big glass house in one of the launch maps.
Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown!
Graham: Indie developers have led a resurgence of metroidvanias in recent years, creating games like Hollow Knight that can challenge even the namesakes of the genre. As a major publisher, Ubisoft bring a budget that smaller teams can’t compete with, resulting in a 3D rather than 2D world, cutscenes, full voice acting, and many more bells and whistles.
Do these things matter? Not even slightly. Ubisoft’s take on the genre is great not because of their budgetary excess, but because they understand the fundamentals. The Lost Crown’s sidescrolling world map is vast and knotty, your gradually expanding moveset rewards mastery, and it offers a bountiful supply of combat and platforming challenges to overcome.
This is a Prince Of Persia game where you don’t play as the prince. Instead you are Sargon, the youngest member of the crown’s protectors, on a rescue mission. The prince has been kidnapped and taken to a mysterious palace where physicsy, timey-wimey magic has warped and twisted the environment.
What does that mean? Well, it means there are skellingtons whose attack patterns you must learn so you can block, counter and defeat them in swordplay. It means there are platforming challenge rooms riddled with switches and spikes and swinging blades. It means there are bosses to defeat and powers to gradually collect, letting you fire arrows, cast time bubbles, perform wall runs and double jumps.
This is not a cinematic platformer like the original Prince Of Persia, but all these elements make it feel like a modern reimagining of many of the same ideas. But whether you’re a long-term fan or a total newcomer, what matters is how The Lost Crown feels in the hands. By the end of the game you’re chaining together slides, leaps, blocks, arrow attacks to manipulate the environment and overcome tricky bosses and feeling great doing it.
All of which makes it the kind of game I wish big publishers would make more. Not because I want more cutscenes and voice acting, but because I want more games that know themselves this well and feel so good to play.
Jeremy: I have many feelings about how Ubisoft mismanaged Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. This is a game that suffered confusion and unfair reception from the getgo, as fans who were waiting for the still-in-development Sands of Time remake thought they were being sidelined. When The Lost Crown was released, it got blazing good reviews, including one from RPS, but it also emerged in the midst of a PR kerfuffle where a Ubisoft director said that consumers should get used to “not owning” their games. Finally, it was confined to the Ubisoft Connect store instead of Steam, and then sidelined itself a few months later when The Rogue Prince of Persia was unveiled.
Considering all of this, when Ubisoft announced that The Lost Crown team had been dismantled due to poor sales, I fumed and wrote something in the work Slack about sending a really good product out to die. Because The Lost Crown deserved better. From its exquisite Metroidvania map that kept me busy for months, to thrillingly tough bosses that clearly pull from the Soulslike pool, to a soundtrack that uses actual Iranian instruments, The Lost Crown is Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia revitalised for a new generation, updated with aesthetics, difficulty, and cultural considerations appropriate for 2024. The main hero might not be the fellow who originally ran through those dungeons on the Apple II, nor is he the guy who turned back time in 2003, but he is thoroughly and completely worthy of the Prince of Persia lineage.
The world deserves more games like this – more revitalisations of a series like this. PoP lives on with The Rogue Prince of Persia, which is great in its own right, but I will forever be dismayed that the Lost Crown seems to be, for all intents and purposes, a one-and-done. If you missed it the first time around, you have no excuse to not try it out on Steam for yourself, and dream of a better world where we’d get at least two more sequels starring Sargon.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
James: This is a game that probably shouldn’t exist. Over a decade of false dawns and scrapped builds. A modern FPS landscape that’s firmly multiplayer-first. Hacking attacks. Literal war. It’s a wonder that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 got made at all, and a minor miracle that it’s turned out as one of the most gripping shooters this year.
In all the ways that matter, it’s pure, classic S.T.A.L.K.E.R., a grimly atmospheric free-roamer where almost everything – sometimes including the ground you walk on – wants you dead. Much has been said about the A-Life AI spawner not working as intended, but it’s still no rare occurrence to get caught up in an unscripted men vs. mutants battle, or be rattled by the sound of distant shots as you creep through the dark clutching a nearly-empty rifle. And when the time to fight comes, the shooting is sublime: a compelling push-and-pull between the fear of falling to a few unlucky hits and the thrill of popping out from corners to land helmet-cracking headshots. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 might be constantly trying to kill you, but it’s really good at making you feel alive.
Even away from the action, there’s much to enjoy about simply wandering through the Zone, exploring ruins and prying artifacts from within its physics-breaking anomalies. There’s something oddly beautiful about this horrid old place, especially once its various regions become more isolating and its anomalies more dramatic. I blasted through the main questline in about 40 hours, and have since spent another 30 just poking around the Zone’s more well-hidden secrets.
It does have performance problems and a bugginess that matches that of the Eurojank-codifying original trilogy, but given the circumstances (see: war) I’m inclined to forgive anything that isn’t outright game-breaking. Also given the choice between another safe, clean corridor shooter or a big, bold epic that creaks and splinters under the weight of its own ambition… well, I know which one I find more interesting.
Edwin: These devs have absolutely been through the wringer. I’m happy they managed to reach the finishing line. I’m also delighted to return to the Zone. One of my fondest FPS memories, if that’s the right word, is of inching down the side of the power station in the original game. The sequel has the same corner-to-corner vibe and thankfully, hasn’t gone full survival game in the modern-day “build a wasteland condo” sense.
Arco
Edwin: I’m still struggling to decide how seriously to take Arco. It can look cartoonish and almost cuddly, with its gnat-sized characters hippity-hopping across luxurious, single-screen landscapes, and its taste for temples that look like buried, leering faces. The battling is freeze-time tactical positioning with bullet hell elements, set to swaggering guitar: it’s bouncy arcade fare with respectable intricacy. The dialogue can be quite quippy, as well: sometimes, it makes me think of Sword & Sworcery. But all that jollity goes hand in hand with stories about communities being slaughtered by invaders, about lingering mistrust and colonial cruelty and feelings of remorse that soak the Mesoamerican scenery like oil.
As a microcosm for this spread of tones, take the combat’s guilt system, which causes toothy spectres to materialise semi-randomly and waft insidiously towards you in real-time, while you pick abilities and set movement or aiming trajectories. You could read it as a harrowing commentary on ‘losing time’ to trauma, or a McCarthy-ish modelling of cosmic justice. You could also read it as an affectionate joke about both those things. The ghosts vaguely resemble the ones in Mario haunted house levels, though sadly you can’t immobilise them by gawping at them.
Arco’s battle system is by some distance its best feature. The splicing of freeze-time and bullet hell works so artfully you wonder that it hasn’t been done quite this way before. Each skirmish unfolds on a single screen map, and typically sees you either outnumbered or outgunned, which obliges you to position yourself just-so and deftly manage the cooldowns and energy cost of your various unlockable abilities.
The constraints on ability usage are such that victory often hinges on a single choice backed up by careful calculation. Make some space, or commit to a kill? Smash the boss with that big move you’ve been saving, or interrupt one of their attacks? Each playable character is a distinct operator with a florid but bracingly specific toolset – for example, a warrior who can build a multiplier with successive jabs, but lacks any initial ranged attacks. There are also terrain elements to make use of, such as plants that replenish your mana or spray lethal petals when struck.
The only thing I’m cool on with Arco is the quest flow. It’s all very go-to-A-and-fight-B, with a possible detour through cave C to flush out optional treasure D. It’s no worse than in any other pixelart RPG with an overworld/dungeon/combat arena split, however. And the world itself is engrossing, with its gargantuan forest slugs and touches of spaghetti western. Besides, if you’re weary of backtracking to questgivers, you can always pick the eventual destination and put your character on autopilot, which transforms the game into an album of mysterious places.
Mechabellum
Nic: Competitive games are hard and stressful, and competitive RTS games are hard enough to knock out a steel-plated reindeer, and stressful enough to make that reindeer wake up with PTSD afterward. Not so Mechabellum, which I reckon even a battered, traumatised reindeer would have a pretty good chance at being quite good at. Source: I am quite good at Mechabellum, and people often tell me my gaming skills are roughly that of a shaking, wounded reindeer. In those exact words.
This is no doubt largely down to the fact that Mechabellum doesn’t require the absurd reaction skills of a traditional RTS, because your mechs do all the battling for you, automatically. I believe I’ll call it an ‘autobattler’, then. Yes. One of my finer inventions, that. Your job, then, is to choose which robots you want, where you want them, and which upgrades you’ll give them to make sure they absolutely trounce your opponent’s.
The sensation of playing Mechabellum is similar to a tug of war. Both sides have access to the exact same stuff, so the name of the game is finding the weaker parts of your opponent’s battle lines. Maybe they’ve over-invested in swarm units on one side, so you plonk down a few anti-swarm toasters. You open up an entire flank, through which you can get to their power generators, severely weakening the rest of their force. It’s a heady, deeply satisfying chess game for people that think snipey robots are cooler than bishops, which is everyone I want to be friends with. I love it. It has cost me hours of my life. I will give it many hours more.
Balatro
Edwin: As with a lot of games I like, the genius of Balatro is that it’s secretly a horror game. The horror starts with the music – that endless 7/4 time signature loop of synth and drum, wafting over a swirled, synthwave backdrop. It’s at once lazy and inexorable, the kind of lounging, layered composition that gently puts one part of your brain into cryostasis while turning another part of your brain into a factory. Such terrible music. I listen to it constantly while working, walking, jogging, eating, sleeping and playing video games that aren’t Balatro.
Like a form of hypnotic preconditioning, the music readies you for a roguelite deckbuilding experience that is both maddeningly basic – it’s a series of math puzzles in which you try to beat a score – and also, an alchemist’s workshop of combinatory possibilities. The star elements are, of course, the unlockable Jokers, which apply all manner of eldritch buff or modifier over the course of a run – my favourites include Popcorn, which gives you a decreasing multiplier as you empty out the bucket, and Half Joker, which activates a multiplier when you play a hand of fewer than three cards. To the chimerical Joker combos, add deck and run modifiers bestowed by tarot cards, spectral cards, constellation cards and a selection of card materials, stickers and seals.
If the options are extravagant, they’d be nothing without the presentation. Balatro has nailed down a very specific balance of papery and pixelly that inspires nostalgia for both Magic: The Gathering and Windows 95. The Number Go Up element is hideously amplified by the joy of tearing open foil packets and the transgressive enchantments of defacing or ripping cards, as you slowly craft a deck capable of scoring 100,000+ points a hand. It makes the mouth water. Balatro! How I fear you. But there is always time for one more go.
Brendy: Fear is definitely the right word. I played the demo of Balatro to pieces when it first appeared, and from the moment I started flipping cards I knew how dangerous it would be to my time. After the full game was released, I played it enough to complete a handful of runs (flush tactics 4 life) and then I put it away. It’s too good. I can’t have it anywhere near me.
Graham: Balatro’s unheimlich mashup of poker, tarot and grander deckbuilding games brings to mind both Calvinball and Numberwang. The overwhelming thought when I played it was, first: what a lot of bullshit you’ve just made up, Balatro! And then, second: what a lot of alluring, brain-fizzing bullshit. Balatro meant to trap me. I uninstalled it after an hour.
Helldivers 2
Graham: Ever had a weird, funny friend who one day cut off his long hair, started wearing shirts, and put all his Warhammer figures away? He’s being “a grown-up”, he says, and – totally coincidentally – he’s got a posh girlfriend now. We all need to just keep our mouths shut until he realises for himself that she’s awful.
That’s how I thought about Helldivers 2. Arrowhead, famed makers of topdown, slapstick, friendly fire-filled shmups like Magicka and the first Helldivers, had shaved off the ‘rough’ edges that made up their personality. Now they were making an over-the-shoulder shooter like everyone else. Sony was their girlfriend now.
The first joy of Helldivers 2 was discovering that my fears were misguided. It’s remarkable how much of the studio’s personality comes through, from the slapstick, the friendly fire, the deliberately cumbersome controls that are just begging you to throw away your weapon by mistake.
The second was discovering that it hasn’t adopted so much of the live service grind favoured by its new peers. Yes, absolutely you can unlock weapons and cosmetics through play or via a real money battle pass or two, but your starting arsenal is basically as good as anything you’ll get afterwards. I played for dozens of hours with weapons I unlocked in the first five, and later unlocks usually just provided a brief novelty before I was onto the next.
Helldivers 2’s missions are also perfectly bite-sized. Each one drops you on a planet overrun with aliens or robots – in the way that any planet can be said to be overrun by its inhabitants – and you have a mission to transmit a signal, say, or destroy some big eggs. You’ll run about, blow your friends up by mistake (or on purpose) a few times, relive some scenes from Starship Troopers, call in an airstrike or five, and 15 minutes later you’re covered in egg goo and high-fiving your pal back on your spaceship. That means I’ve never felt like I’m falling behind on any kind of unlock curve and I can fit a Helldivers 2 session into my grown-up life perfectly well, doing a couple missions with a pal while the kid is asleep. In 2024, there are few blockbuster multiplayer games where that’s the case.
Sometimes, that friend? Fast forward a few years and you realise that the posh girlfriend is alright, really. She’s his posh wife now. And their dining table? Covered in Warhammer figures.
Nic: I waited a while to play Helldivers 2, and the thing that most surprised me about it was how simulation-y and physical it feels to play – a far cry from the arcadey horde shooter I’d imagined. The injuries. The way you need to pick and choose your reloads. The intensity of the fights. By making the actual encounters feel like serious stuff, Arrowhead allow the comedy to shine in other areas in the knowledge it’s much funnier to get hit by a drop pod if you’ve come out of an intense firefight. Truly genius stuff.
Edwin: I still love playing this game solo. It has all the ingredients for a great sandbox stealth game in the MGS5 tradition – I feel like all they need to do is tweak the spawning, but I’m sure it’s not that simple in practice. I’m also… interested in how they’re playing out the fascist forever war element as a live service metagame, inspired by table-top role-playing. I think we need to start reporting on it as though we were Automaton sympathisers, reporting Major Order failures as victories. Every good propaganda machine needs a subversive pirate radio station.
Ed: One of my favourite in-game ‘things’ of this year is the 380mm barrage, which bombards a huge area with earth-shattering shells for what feels like an absolute age. There’s something so immensely satisfying about watching it reduce a colossal machine fortress to piles of metal splinters by the time it’s finished. I also like calling it in on literally any objective (mostly small ones), just to really annoy my friends. I am awful, I know.
Brendy: You are evil, Ed. But it’s the kind of evil I like. I’m not as in-love with Helldivers 2 as a lot of folks, but I did play enough to appreciate the comedy of desperately diving away from your pal’s too-keen artillery barrage. Friendly fire in video games is always funny.
Animal Well
Edwin: Back before Animal Well’s launch, creator Billy Basso told me that he wanted his delightful, intuitive and mysterious 2D platformer to harbour secrets that would keep people scratching their heads for a decade. He’d even built the technology to maximise the odds of compatibility with much later generations of PC. Going by post-launch coverage, the game has already been emptied out, its guts rinsed of surprises by armies of needle-fingered wiki contributors. I guess it’s possible there are a few enigmas remaining, which Basso is keeping quiet about. It doesn’t matter, because to me, Animal Well will always be bottomless.
That’s simply because Animal Well is driven by symbols – dial-up telephones, bunnies, firebowls, sausage dogs, rolling mice heads, watchful crows – and symbols are open-ended. Which is not to say it’s wholly abstract. The festering seacave setting has something approaching an “ecology” and hints of a mythological past, perhaps even a flourish of autobiography in the choice of props. But it’s not a “built world”. It’s the product of dream (sometimes nightmare) logic and free association. It’s one of the old-school video game fairytales, like Zelda before Zelda succumbed to the weight of sequels, and became something of an episodic canon.
It’s also a brilliant metroidvania, partly because the base controls for movement are so simple and elegantly implemented, and partly because it avoids many of the usual metroidvania features. There are no unlock trees, no generic abilities like aerial dashes or extendable combos – no combat at all, in fact. Instead, you get cheerful toys like a frisbee, a slinky, or a bubble-wand.
Like most toys, these ones have myriad uses, and it’s up to you to disclose them by paying attention and playing with the concept – is the yo-yo just a yo-yo? The other animals are both obstacles and allies, in this regard, their hostile or accommodating or unreadable behaviour helping you glean the possibilities. They feel like loosely animated archetypes rather than straight portrayals of creatureliness, filling out the world in a way that is vital yet also mechanical and deathly. They are forever whimsical and powerfully strange.
Among Animal Well’s greatest discoveries is that reaching the credits isn’t game-over. There are items, tactics and… tendencies of the environment that threaten to break the rules and transform the game, if you carry on probing and delving. For all that, Animal Well remains graceful and easy to grasp. I’m very curious to see how future generations of player might respond to it. It might not harbour a decade’s worth of secrets, but it’ll definitely be worth returning to in 10 years time.
Brendy: I didn’t get too far in Animal Well. I gave up because of a difficult platforming bit, but up until that point I did appreciate the quiet sense of exploration and discovery that could be evoked with such a simple graphical style. Also, my cat kept chasing the little animal figures around the screen and that made me like the game even more.
Graham: By contrast, I did not get on with Animal Well. I did not find its moment-to-moment platforming and puzzling fun enough to persevere past its habit of sending you back to a distant checkpoint upon failure. I do enjoy looking at it, mind, so it’ll sit forever in a bucket alongside Rain World as an alien ecosystem I’d love to explore but lack the patience for.
Straftat
Edwin: Here’s a holiday project for you: install the base free edition of Straftat, find a sympathetic and comparably dextrous like mind, and try to play all 70 randomised maps in one go. It’s a game I can only describe by way of combinations: both arty-farty and a twitchy fragfest that hinges on mind-reading and listening out for footsteps. Both a wonderful duelling game based around on-map pick-ups, and an absorbing montage of gloomy aesthetics torn from elder Source Engine shooters, Soviet carparks and entertainment mythology at large.
The layouts are somehow both exquisite and disposable: you can burn through them all like popcorn, leaning into their borderline-gimmicky sightlines, or chew one of them over slowly, enjoying the ambience as you would the scenery in the developers’ previous single player exploration game Babbdi. The guns are irresistible, lending themselves to obvious playstyles. One map gives you a bunch of single-shot rifles and teleportation doors perched on exposed gantries. Another is a small maze of dour Backroom wallpaper abundant in laser mines, with a broadsword tucked away in a crawlspace. The 1v1 format creates a degree of intimacy that feels exotic today, more fighting game than FPS. People are going to cuss you out in the chatbox, but it’s sort of fun. Cosy, even!
Astonishingly, it’s all free, but you can show your appreciation by buying the Weapons, Maps and Hats DLC, which adds another 70 maps to the game. Plus some weapons and hats. I can’t wait to see what brothers Sirius and Léonard Lemaitre get up to for their third project. Maybe a town builder next? Or a single city block detective game.
Brendy: Cussed out in the chatbox? Not me! I played Straftat for 20 minutes one evening and faced off against a polite killer who uzi’d me to pieces many many times between frequent pauses to chit-chat about the game. I felt like I had been flung back in time to playing multiplayer Soldier Of Fortune on semi-abandoned servers via a questionable modem connection. But yes, Edwin is right. There is something pure and beautiful about these tiny maps. It was enough to make me go back and finally play Babbdi. Which itself took 40 minutes. That’s two amazing games scarfed down in a single hour. AND THEY’RE BOTH FREE. It is absolutely bonkers. What the hell are these fraternal fraggers drinking?
Graham: My favourite part of Quake, its sequels and its offshoots, Half-Life included, was not the games themselves but the culture that developed around them. As a teenager, I hunkered down on dedicated servers, IRC rooms, and messageboards, chatting with strangers and eagerly downloading the folk art these communities produced. That mostly meant user-made levels, and mostly crude, gimmicky, throwaway levels at that.
In fairness, the games themselves usually contained more than a few such levels, anyway. Crossfire, in Half-Life deathmatch, which featured a button that when pressed would nuke everyone on the map who failed to run inside a bunker before the door closed, for example, or Facing Worlds and 2Fort, which inevitably devolved into stalemate sniping battles, or the mirrored islands of Quake 3’s The Very End Of You. All of these maps were hopelessly imbalanced or borderline unfair, producing repetitive and occasionally frustrating experiences. They were also thrilling, dramatic, and often especially wonderful in one-on-one fights.
The trend of shipping a multiplayer game with a big jumble of levels and leaving the community to pick their favourites is long over. Today, developers favour providing either a single level as balanced as a football pitch, or they prefer to choose the level-of-the-moment themselves, turning modes and maps off and on to railroad the playerbase this way or that. Should anything imbalanced slip through the developers’ own testing, it’s quickly sanded down or sent to the attic to appease the sharpest edge of the playerbase.
Then there’s Straftat, which takes the pick ‘n’ mix to maximalist extremes by shipping with 70 maps and then letting you buy 70 more. These maps are all designed for one-on-one fights lasting just a few minutes at most, and so gimmicks, exploitable sightlines, and imbalanced killzones never have a chance to frustrate. They simply push the experience, one round at a time, into greater heights of panic and laughter.
As with all folk art, there’s something more honest about Straftat for its rough edges, in a way you don’t find in the heavily tested, metric-based design of modern live service shooters. It’s an ugly Trillian skin in a world of Apple white design. It’s a Napster download of blur_-_woohoo.mp3 in a world of monthly subscription streaming services. It’s a Glasgow teen producing happy hardcore tracks in a world of celebrity DJs. It’s a beige Compaq family PC in the corner of a carpeted upstairs landing, a Gamespy server browser, a dial-up modem connection, a download link sent to you by a Swedish man over QuakeNet. It’s pure nostalgia and completely forward-thinking. It’s Straftat.
Horizon Forbidden West
James: Structurally, Horizon Forbidden West adopts a fairly routine open-world setup, which I think sometimes gets lumped in with the kind of factory-produced map marker collectors one might associate with certain France-based publishing houses.
I also think that’s unfair nonsense. Top to bottom, HFW has been crafted with thoughtfulness and care, turning what might have been a passionless PlayStation cash-in into a masterclass in sequel-making. Take that open world itself. Besides being a gorgeous, handcrafted, vista-rich collage of biomes, distinct in feel as well as visuals, it makes a point to flesh out its people and places with meaty side missions. As often as these are punctuated by “Fight the robot dinosaur” objectives, the action is less about satisfying fetch quests and more about advancing character arcs or unravelling some new tangle of tribal intrigue.
Fighting the robot dinosaurs is also a pleasure in itself. Partly because of the beasts: I love the detail of their creaking carbon fibre muscles, or the constantly spinning chainsaw-teeth on some of the deadlier predators. Mainly though, it’s just because there’s something innately satisfying about peeling apart a futuristic mechasaurus with a bow and arrow. Forbidden West leans into this even further than Horizon Zero Dawn did, ramping up enemy aggression while adding a few new hyper-agile machines whose tricksiness encourages you to widen your toolkit.
(There’s also a new grappling hook, which I remember finding sadly underused in the base game when I first played it on PS5 in 2022. However, the PC version’s inclusion of the Burning Shores DLC means you can add its expanded combat applications to your repertoire as soon as you get enough skill points. My favourite: a wonderfully gratifying grapple-into-jumping-spear-attack combo that instantly became my go-to finishing move for damaged machines.)
At a time when trust in AAA games has been badly frayed by undercooked games, predatory monetisation, and storytelling that’s either barely there or tediously heavy-handed, maybe more big-budget works should watch how Forbidden West does things. It’s expansive without spreading itself too thin, confident without losing its sense of wonder, and perhaps most impressively, knows exactly when to drop the heartfelt drama scenes and when to send you off to do more cool backflipping robot hunter shit. Not an easy balance to strike, I’d imagine.
Abiotic Factor
Brendy: I haven’t played half as much Abiotic Factor as I have wished. Partly because it’s a survival game, that inherently time-sinky genre that wants you to worry about the poo in your gut even while you decorate your makeshift shelter. But also because of schedules. This game, you see, is best enjoyed with friends.
It’s basically a survival Half-Life parody. Imagine if you and a bunch of pals got recruited to work at an off-brand Black Mesa, with none of the proper qualifications, and now you’re all wandering about on your first day wondering if the office is normally this… corpsey. Something has gone wrong at the remote facility and you’ve now got to survive and delve deeper into it to find out what’s happened. Along the way you have to cook interdimensional mutant meat and stay warm by huddling up to battery-powered heaters at night. You may also choose to feed “co-worker”, the hungry man (?) who scuttles into your shelter late in the evening begging for scraps, muttering: “C’mon, we’ve all got larvae to feed.”
It’s funny and scrappy and it gives the survival genre a delightful new setting – not the expansive jungles and deserts of the outside world with all those familiar elements to battle, but the hideously tiled innards of a late 1990s shooter. There are tram systems and offices to sprint through, fearful of mutants and security mechs. And huge internal structures that make you wonder what the hell these scientists were up to. Although there are interdimensional “portal worlds” where the climate can suddenly whip up freezing snow. You might find some weird bees to keep, or fish to reel in, or creepy cultists to run away from.
I haven’t seen even half of what the game has to offer and I’m already convinced it’s one of the most fun survival games I’ve played since Subnautica. Now, if I can just find some time to poo with my friends…
Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree
Ollie: No matter where you delve or climb in the Land Of Shadow, wherever you point your camera, From Software’s mastery is evident. Elden Ring was an unforgettable, punishing pilgrimage through one of the most stunningly designed worlds on PC, and somehow Shadow Of The Erdtree betters it in nearly every way. The world you’re transported to when you first touch that withered arm is an Escherian nightmare of intertwining landscapes, a vertical labyrinth of connected regions. The new gold standard for open world environment design, and it comes from a DLC.
Like the base game, Shadow Of The Erdtree gives you just the barest, gentlest nudge in the direction of the main story if you want it. But the quantity of fascinating sights and sounds around you ignites an even stronger desire to just pick a direction, and let the game’s tentacular mass of memorable encounters slowly cuddle you to death. The Land Of Shadow is a place where you can spend a hundred hours and entirely miss whole swathes of the map. That’ll be offputting to some, but to me it’s an impressive testament to the world design. This is a truly ancient and complex place. The birthplace of a goddess’s people, before she ascended to godhood. The battleground of several half-forgotten wars, the ramifications of which will take dozens of hours of exploration and lore-gathering to understand. The Land Of Shadow does not know you or owe you anything, until you give it reason to.
The story is also tighter and more intriguing than Elden Ring’s familiar tale of growth from lowly Tarnished to god-slaying legend. The world itself is still packed with some of the most exciting lore in any game, but Shadow Of The Erdtree benefits from a more focused journey. From the start, you know that you’re following in the footsteps of Miquella the Kind – until now, probably the most enigmatic character in the game. Why, and to what conclusion, is a mystery which both you and several other players on the field are racing to piece together. It’s a carefully considered, high-stakes story about free will, revenge, despair, and the greater good. It answers some very longstanding questions about how the world and mythos of Elden Ring fits together, while also adding some fascinating new points of uncertainty and speculation. It’s marvellous, truly extraordinary worldbuilding.
Of course, the combat and boss fights themselves are still best-in-class. The unforgettable experiences of Malenia, Mohg, and Placidusax from the base game are joined by a series of grand new encounters, some of which I’d consider the most spectacular and gripping boss fights in any game I’ve played. Entirely new weapon classes and schools of magic are free to explore or entirely ignore as you wish. Organically unfurling, DLC-spanning side quests offer you more unforgettable journeys if you desire them. And a new roster of strange NPC companions make for some genuinely edge-of-your-seat-compelling moments of dialogue as you try to figure out who is your ally and who is an enemy waiting for the most beneficial moment to betray, strike, and further their own hidden goals.
Shadow Of The Erdtree further cements Elden Ring as not just the premier open-world game in my mind, but probably the single most engrossing journey that’s currently available to play on PC. I’ll likely play it through again every year until we finally get Elden Ring 2.
Nic: Good worms. The absolute best worms.
Ed: It’s super dense and at times, maybe a bit too dense. But I gotta respect its adventurous vibe, what with its jungles and twisting libraries and fields of eyeballs. I wish the base game had this level of weird. Also yeah, great worms.
James: I, uh, misunderstood the voting rules and didn’t think this was eligible. But if I’d bothered to check, this would get many, many James votes. I had no interest in playing Elden Ring beyond my professional obligations, but the sheer atmosphere of that opening ride into the Land of Shadow was so intoxicating, its call to adventure so loud, I decided to get off my colleagues’ save files and give it a proper go. 261 hours and two complete playthroughs later, my top game of 2024 is in fact Elden Ring, and I have Shadow of the Erdtree to thank. Slash, blame.
Jeremy: I had an interesting experience with Shadow Of The Erdtree, as I was one of the guides folks tasked with tackling all of the intricacies of this massive DLC, so big enough to be its own game. I also had only played a handful of hours of the original Elden Ring, which I’d hoped to run through prior to Shadow Of The Erdtree’s release, but never found the time.
Thanks to a saved game mod, I jumped into the new stuff a week ahead of release and immediately got stomped by those Furnace Golems and crossbow bolted a million times by the Blackgaol Knight. Thanks to my inexperience with the base game, I definitely felt like I was behind on the collective Elden Ring knowledge needed to progress through the DLC in order to write about it, and while all Souls games are an uphill climb in their own right, this one was a particularly steep trek.
But as is the case with most of From Software’s output, that grind of slowly getting better and more accomplished soon kicked in. Now, I can happily say that my Elden Ring experience is a fascinatingly lopsided one, where I’ve played the heck out of Shadow Of The Erdtree but not really touched the main game. And as someone who isn’t terribly keen on open world Soulslikes (this is what made me procrastinate on playing the base game, honestly), perhaps it’s good that I went about it this way. Shadow Of The Erdtree’s intricate map, with layers upon layers of interconnected bits and bobs to discover, is the stuff of a guides writer’s nightmare – but also perfect for someone like me who prefers tight environments and well-designed linearity to one huge sandbox. Someday I’ll go back and probably try to play through Elden Ring “properly,” but for now, I’m happy that I got to dive in DLC first.
And speaking of “DLC first” – if you’re like me and wondering how to get by in those beginning hours of the Shadow Realm… hey, I wrote a guide for that!
Graham: Soulslikes: like roguelikes, but for cowards. (I have not played Elden Ring or Erdtree.)
Threshold
Ed: Threshold is a short psychological horror about working a shift atop a lonely mountaintop borderpost. Told through a first-person perspective, your first port of call is to meet Mo, whose shift you’re swapping into. But first he shows you the ropes, since you’re new to it all.
First off, the air is very thin, which not only makes it hard to breathe, but more efficient to write things down on pen and paper – speaking is for amateurs. Onto the job. Notice the train that blazes past the post? You’re to keep that running at the “expected pace” by blowing into a whistle whenever you see the lights indicate it’s, well, not running as fast as it should be. To keep it running at the expected pace is to keep the water flowing through the border post at a nice level.
Blowing into the whistle forces air out of your lungs, though. So Mo tells you to bite down on an air capsule that shatters in your mouth and causes you to spit blood on the dirt. He shows you around the border post: where the ticket machine is to get more capsules… and that’s about it. He glosses over words scrawled in blood and the inconspicuous outbuilding and why you’re even doing your job in the first place. What’s on the train? Who knows.
And so, you’re to continue where Mo left off. But since Mo leaves, you’re given a bit of autonomy to explore the post between train whistles. It is, essentially, a game about poking and probing. Find a thing, use your mouse wheel to equip it, then take it to whatever object may interact with it. Slowly, steadily, you’ll uncover things about the border post you probably wished you didn’t know…
… and that’s about as much as I can say without spoiling things for you. Just know that the shift and the sounds of the whistle and the urgency of it all will entirely consume you. I haven’t been so engrossed in something in a long time, and so entirely aware that what I was doing was totally absurd. This is a compact horror game you’re obligated to play now! You read this piece, which counts as signing a “must-play” clause with your eyes. Sorry.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Ed: Technically Yakuza 8, that follows on from Yakuza: Like A Dragon (technically Yakuza 7), Infinite Wealth follows Ichiban Kasuga and his pals to the sunny shores of Hawaii for the first time in the series’ history. And my goodness, what a lovely place to be. Expansive. Sandy. All bolstering Kasuga’s laidback attitude and sunny demeanor, despite the circumstances he finds himself under. Those circumstances? He’s off to find his mum, who is – I won’t spoil – wrapped up in the typically intricate set of Yakuza-led drama you’d expect from Rya Ga Gotoku Studio.
Sure, you’ve got improvements to the turn-based combat, letting characters move like pro-bowlers and knock enemies down like skittles as you press the “hit them” buttons. Renewed dungeons make level gates a little less stubborn. And levelling personality traits leads to unlocking new jobs, with friend-bonds now leading to extra moves – everything intertwines a bit better, and makes for a more motivating reward loop as you go about Hawaii smacking goons.
Really, though, Infinite Wealth is so special because of two things: 1) it is a wealth (of things), 2) it’s a tale for fans new and old (particularly old).
I mean “wealth” in the sense that Infinite Wealth contains multitudes. An Animal Crossing-esque island you can furnish and cultivate, eventually turning it into a tourist destination whose economy sustains itself and is entirely separate to the main game. There’s also Sujimon, a minigame take on Pokémon that lets you collect weirdos you’ll fight out in Hawaii and beyond, before you send them to fight against other teams like you’re a Temu Ash Ketchum. Not to mention the plethora of substories and minigames, all of which will veer you from a cry to belly laughter.
Running alongside Ichiban’s tale is Kiryu’s, which is rather more tragic on the face of it – he’s got cancer and he’s been given only a few months to live. You’ll flip between playing Ichiban and Kiryu throughout the story, with Kiryu’s perspective being sad, yes, but also rather wonderful. Not only does he lean on new friends for the first time, he, alongside you, rediscovers past relationships with Kiryu’s many acquaintances over the years.
Besides all the minigames and the fighting, some of the most exciting moments lie in these reunions. In seeing how former friends have grown up, what they’re up to, and how they’ve enriched Kiryu’s life and vice versa. For new fans it’s a way of learning about a legacy. For old fans, these heartfelt moments are a reminder of the power of the mighty Yakuzaverse.
As I said in my review, thank goodness for Yakuza.
Nic: Yakuza games have always had such a delicate balance of serious, heartfelt crime drama and absurd whimsy. It’s what makes them so special. On reflection, I think Infinite Wealth has decided to very much follow the whimsy at the expense of the more intense storytelling I love the series for, but the result is still an unbelievably charming RPG I was genuinely sad to see end.
Crusader Kings 3: Road To Power DLC
Brendy: Yes, it’s an expansion, not a full game. But this add-on to everybody’s favourite historical bastard simulator changes the strategy game in profound ways. Enough to basically merit a whole new way of playing for a life or three.
The standard way to enjoy a blast of Crusader Kings is to inhabit the body of a small time Earl, or a lowly Duke, and work your way to kingship through subterfuge, diplomacy, and warfare. Or to start as a big emperor and try your best to stop your realm from falling to pieces. But Roads To Power adds a new way to start your life – as a complete nobody, with neither title nor calling, free to roam the world. As a landless adventurer, all kingdoms are just stops along the road, a mere roadside ambush away from one another.
And there will be plenty of ambushes. You’ll need to hire mercenaries as escorts. And you’ve got to stock up on provisions, or take (sometimes dodgy) contracts from actual ruling classes just to get by. Along the way you’ll gather followers – French peasants, Welsh knights, Italian drunks – often far friendlier than the sly councillors and custodians of a king’s court. Even though travelling from place to place is the big appeal here, there’s nothing stopping you from focusing on one big country and becoming a rebel leader with enough of a following to eventually stake a claim of your own on a vulnerable province.
But I haven’t played like that. For me, it’s more fun to see the world. To take an Irish rastabout from the bishopric of Armagh, through the middle east, all the way to China. It is astounding how many people need to die to keep one reckless Gael alive on the road. What’s more, Crusader King’s inheritance rules remain intact. So not only did I make it to China with that character, there’s also nothing stopping me from living as his daughter, and travelling all the way back to the Emerald Isle. What say you, wanna come with?
Shadows Of Doubt
Brendy: I laughed a lot playing this immersive detective sim, which saw a 1.0 release this year. You play as a wandering gumshoe responsible for solving crimes in a greasy cyberpunk city often plagued with rain, fog, and snow. On paper, this means arriving at a murder scene, gathering bullet casings, taking fingerprint samples, and pocketing suspicious notes, then neatly questioning the deceased’s known associates until you discover a suspect who matches all your evidence. Once known, you can arrest them yourself, or just call the local police to come and do it for you. All in a day’s work.
Except that’s never how it goes. More likely you will find yourself scanning every mailbox in a hallway for the hundredth fingerprint, or dodging bullets from the security turret in an insurance company office following a bungled break-in, or freezing half to death in the vents of a vast and complicated high-rise apartment building after trying (and failing) to find your way into a suspect’s home. Shadows Of Doubt is not a power fantasy about being a crack detective, it’s a role-playing delight where you steadily learn how to be a slightly less shit detective than you currently are.
A big selling point of the sim is that its cities and people are all randomly generated, and that murders will happen intelligently and systematically, one after another. Absolutely anyone could be the next murderer, and they all have their own detailed identities and schedules. They go to work, to the bar, to the diner. Every person on the street has an eye colour, a shoe size, a number in their bank account (positive or negative). You might solve one crime in a day, while others will take you so long the criminal will end up killing again.
This makes it a massively ambitious game in terms of its design, and it doesn’t always feel as organic as it might like. Every NPC interaction has the same repetitive questions and answers, for example, and patterns in each killing mean that they too can be repetitive in a way that breaks the illusion a little. But even with those problems (and the many bugs) it still managed to send me into fits of laughter, and offered enough variety for many nights of playful confusion and revelation. The minute you find that crucial document, or discover that hundred-and-first fingerprint that matches the one on the murder weapon – that’s when it all comes together and you excitedly mutter under your breath: “gotcha!”
Graham: I have solved precious few cases in Shadows Of Doubt, but it hardly matters. Murderer to catch or not, it’s fun simply to investigate its downtrodden populous, to map all the data of their lives and pin it to my corkboard like a conspiracy theorist in need of a theory. Where so-and-so works, where they live, who they’re dating, the diner they eat at, all of it gathered by hacking computers and breaking into businesses. It’s the fun of poring through Dwarf Fortress’s generated histories, or being Adam Jensen and reading other people’s work email as you crouch behind their desk. They might not be a killer or a crook, but they could be one day – or so I tell myself, when I spot an office worker leave the building and decide it’s time to follow someone new.
Black Myth: Wukong
Jeremy: I am half Taiwanese and spent most of my 20s living in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Therefore, Sun Wukong and the rough plot of Journey to the West is ingrained into my consciousness in the same way that someone growing up in the UK or US might read tales of King Arthur as a kid. And while there have been many games inspired by Wukong’s journey across China to obtain scriptures and evolve into Buddhahood, there are none that have done it with as much panache and flair as Game Science’s Soulslike.
Black Myth: Wukong doesn’t actually put you in the role of the Monkey King – rather, you’re the Destined One, a quasi-descendant who might be capable of harnessing Wukong’s power one day if you collect all of the McGuffins he left behind after a failed revolt against the Heavenly Court. In order to obtain these McGuffins, off you go on a mission across six tightly-designed chapters, which aren’t open-world but are still damn big. Along the way, it’s boss after boss after boss, all of whom you’ll smash with your staff, a facsimile of Wukong’s famous Ruyi Jingu Bang that extends to thunderous heights by the end of the game if you play your cards right. Oh yeah, and in the final chapter, you can ride on Wukong’s flying cloud too – hi, Dragonball fans.
There was a lot of controversy prior to Black Myth: Wukong’s release, mostly because the devs said misogynistic claptrap on Sina Weibo that reached the wider internet thanks to an IGN report. Also, there were guidelines that told streamers not to criticise the Chinese government, mention COVID, or indulge in “feminist propaganda” when playing the game. Game Science received justifiable amounts of criticism for these scandals, and Black Myth unfortunately became a flashpoint for both tankies and folks on X who love to rally behind “anti-woke” games that they think are being unfairly “censored.”
All of this headache-inducing stuff made me not want to like Black Myth. But as I continuously upgraded my staff, fought all manner of grandiose enemies inspired by Chinese mythology, and wrote walkthroughs for the game’s six Chapters (allow me to shamelessly plug our comprehensive Black Myth walkthrough hub), I couldn’t help but be bitten by the wonder of seeing a story I had grown up with realised in such a thrilling manner. This is a very good Soulslike (invisible walls aside), and it’s all the more impressive considering that it’s Game Science’s first major release. Any criticism behind its development is valid, and I sincerely hope the devs avoid indulging in sexism prior to releasing sequels. But that said, this is a Journey to the West worth taking, and when I think of how I used to draw pictures of Wukong as a 12-year-old, I gotta admit to feeling a certain degree of pride when I see the worldwide acclaim that Black Myth has achieved.
Nic: I only played enough to fight about three bosses, but what bosses they were! I think there’s a real cleverness and vision to realising that boss fights are such an integral part of what makes FromSoft games so exciting, and spinning that out into a full game – especially one with such fluid combat – is a neat trick. Also, the move where you scurry up your pole to avoid ground attacks is an instant all-timer.
Ed: It’s made me interested in Chinese mythology and Journey To The West, and I think that’s really neat.
Our favourite game of 2024: Mouthwashing
Brendy: At the beginning of Mouthwashing, you click buttons in the cockpit of a spacecraft and intentionally steer it on a terrible collision course. Everything that happens afterwards to the five crew members aboard this long-haul cargo ship is your fault. It’s a short game, only 2-3 hours of walking around spaceship corridors and chatting to the various misfortunates who’ve survived the crash. A troubled medical officer, a disgruntled engineer, a naive intern. The food is running out and everyone is constantly bickering. None of this will end well.
But at least there is a cargo hold full of mouthwash! The jolly advertising that punctuates the game adds a lot of dark humor to what is, ultimately, a truly grim space tale about complacency, entitlement, and resentment. As some members of the crew get drunk on the alcohol-high content of the menthol mouth cleanser, others try simply to come to terms with the heinous events that have unfolded. And, as it turns out, some of those events happened before the ship even crashed.
This is one neat trick of the game. It flips back and forth in time, pre-crash and post-crash, filling in details of the crew’s relationships and their lives. Before the crash, the captain (your character) seems under pressure, but ultimately optimistic. It’s hard to see why he would crash the ship on purpose. After the crash, you play as co-pilot Jimmy, who now has to keep the crew alive.
That includes feeding the injured and incapacitated captain his painkillers. Because, ah, the captain was in the cockpit during the impact and is now missing all his limbs. He is burned beyond recognition and covered in bandages – his monocular face the striking visual mascot of the entire game. If there’s one thing that consistently unsettles me about life aboard the Tulpar (and there isn’t just one thing) it’s the groans and sobs of the captain as he lies there unable even to speak.
I don’t want to spoil any more of the story. I’ve done that already in a massive post about the characters. But if you value good storytelling and dialogue in games (and if you don’t mind a few traditional psychological horror game sequences of running from a monster made manifest by your own sense of shame) then you should put aside your holiday cheer for a little dithered dread. Look, I’ll help, don’t sweat it. Go on, play the game and don’t worry about the turkey or the pudding or the family or your friends. Never mind all that.
I’ll take care of it.
Ed: I like the idea that throughout this horrifying tale, there is only one guarantee: everyone on board has minty fresh breath. Every waft of mouth air? Like the smell of a local Subway, if Subway replaced their southwest chipotle sauce with Colgate Total, and their hearty italian bread with some footlong synthetic fibers.
Nic: Turns out, the actual Silent Hill 2 remake was only the second best torchbearer for Silent Hill 2’s legacy this year. That’s all I’ll say!