Best Games OF 2024

I actually played a decent amount of games this year, though many of the games were old and the games I did play from this year were pretty short and small, with the switch now about to be discontinued and the ps5 finally reaching the stage where it might start getting games, though probably not

2024 has been a weird year where a lot of the games seem to be very small in scope. But I feel like I say that every year. Nintendo have mostly been putting out smaller titles or remakes since they are saving big stuff for the switch 2. And sony and Microsoft seem to be unreleasing stuff by either cancelling games after releasing them or closing down studios after spending millions on the games.

Like last year I will go over many different games based on different criteria and then at the end give my top games of year, but this time ítll be slightly different,

Starting with honourable mentions the games I thought were ok but had issues that really annoyed me and make them worse than they needed to be

First up is persona 3 reload, I love persona 5 but this game just didn’t wow me as much as that game did, certain aspects are similar but it just feels like a lesser evolved version of 5 with less shit to do and more annoying stuff to go through, obviously that makes sense because it came out before but this game came out this year and I don’t care.

The other game is Zelda minish cap, for years ive heard nonstop praise about how this is the best 2d Zelda, but now ive actually played it, I really don’t think it is, its not bad but there are so many things about it that annoy me like the trading sequences with the stones, the confusing back and forth quests where you have to go get a item then go back and forth without them telling you what you actually need to do with it, I got stuck multiple times where the game didn’t actually tell me what I needed to do, along with the dungeons not being that crazy I don’t think it comes close to link between worlds but ill say more in my full review when I get around to that in about a billion years.

Another game is  the Plucky squire which had a unique gimmick of being able to go from 2d to 3d kinda like super paper mario but not at all really because the way it does it is completely different, at first I thought the gameplay would be like Zelda considering the main character is in a top down perspective and uses a sword but in reality the gameplay is nothing like Zelda with you mostly talking to characters and doing teleportation based puzzles by reacting to the book and changing parts of the story to progress, the game is very hit and miss with it being fun at times but incredibly slow and boring at others, it would be nice to just get a normal 2d Zelda like game without any weird sidesteps but every time it seems to have to go in a direction that makes it completely different to what I would want

And the last game is battle for bikini bottom rehydrated, another game people don’t shut up about and I have to say completing this game is not worth it, playing it normally without getting every collectable is fine enough, but there are so many annoying ones you have to get to complete it and the reward you get at the end is complete shit, very much like mario sunshine in where playing it is fine enough and completing it is a complete waste of time, also a lot of the voices sound nothing like the original characters and I thought that was very jarring.

Now for honorable mentions, games I liked but for various reasons didn’t make it, first off is

Boomeroad which is more of a tech demo than an actual game but its basically this weird hoverboard game where you use a boomerang to fly across the world, it was released along 2 other games as part of this dev program by bandai namco, so im not sure if this will get remade as a bigger game or if its just a one off but I hope it does because I like the idea and would play more of it if they made it a full game

Last year I talked about mamede no bakeru from good feel which actually got an English release this year aswell as a pc port which was surprising but we actually ended up getting another game by them this year and a mario game no less, well kinda, princess peach showtime is a very short and sweet game with a lot of variety its another game I haven’t had time to finish yet but each level is very unique with you wearing different costumes that completely change the gameplay, its kinda like a mini game collection with each level showing off different gameplay mechanics, my favorite level is one where you are a nina and have to hide from enemies in a Japanese dojo kinda place. There are also these detective levels where you have to solve puzzles which im not too big of a fan off, either way there are so many different levels that even if you don’t like some there are so many there will probably be one you like, the variety makes it so you don’t easily get burnt out on it and the levels are very replay able with them offering many collectables.

Lastly I want to talk about Indiana jones which only just came out so I couldn’t get too far in it but from what I played it lives up to expectations, it feels as close as you could get to a video game version of the movies with enough story elements and game elements to appease both mediums, I will say the game is a bit too easy with enemies not being hard to kill unless you manage to get a load of them on you at once, and getting around the world is a bit annoying with you having to do a lot of back tracking since the teleportation system is kinda crap, but overall im having a lot of fun with this game and have been doing most of the side content due to how engaging it is.

Now for the final 5 these are the games I liked the most this year

At number 5 is arzette now when I said I wanted a 2d Zelda like game they did actually make one but by 2d Zelda they meant cdi Zelda, when you compare arzette to wand of gamelon it probably is better which is not saying much but the game is still very good, the music is amazing the story is interesting, the feeling of the crappy cutscenes is there but calling them crappy is kinda irrelevant since the cutscenes were the best part of the cdi games, either way I found the game to be fun while offering callbacks to those games which wernt so fun, they even have a hotel mario bonus mini game, the only thing ill say is the game is a bit short with it only taking about 4 hours for me to finish but I didn’t mind it that much considering that’s how long most games used to take to finish and I like short games anyway since it means less filler.

Number 4 is raincode, I have never really got into visual novels but raincode is a game that’s interactive enough to be enjoyable, the visuals are also nice with a unique anime cyberpunk style, the game is about being a detective and solving crimes by weird methods, the gameplay is pretty simple with you just choosing the right option without too much thought, its still somewhat challenging but nowhere near the level of something like ace attorney where you have to pick a random item without a clue what the right one is. Along with the music being very nice and adding to the atmosphere  

I have a confession to make, until this year I have never beaten mario 3, you can now leave the video, of course I played it a lot but never managed to go through the entire game beating every level without using save states or the warp whistle, and its pretty good, idk if its my fav mario of all time I still feel like I prefer mario world and control wise the nsmb games feel better to me but in terms of level design most of the levels are pretty great aside from a couple stupid ones, the game is definitely a lot harder than mario world but atleast they give you unlimited continues with the castles being destroyed permanently, something that mario 2 does not do for no reason and makes it way worse to play.

playstation has had a pretty rough couple of years most of their games have been coming to ps4 and the one game that was only available on ps5 came out on pc, but finally this year they managed to get 1 game to prove that ps5 has games and that game is….. concord omg this game is so great the character designs are on par with mario and im just kidding… its not a ps5 exclusive, Astro bot is the first game since ratchet and clank rift apart where I actually had some fun playing a ps5, its by no means perfect the game relies a bit too much on collectables and only really the final level is actually difficult, but the levels are great fun to play through with them containing many references to playstations long history, they also have these themed levels where they take an existing playstation franchise like uncharted or god of war and make it work within Astro bot which I thought was pretty cool, overall this game is simple fun and I hope it sends a message to sony that simple is what people want not these overly expensive cinematic movie games.

1 now for my game of the year, which may or may not be a surprise is Zelda echoes of wisdom, its no secret that I have not been a fan of the current Zelda trajectory but this is the first time in a while where a Zelda game actually feels like Zelda, its not perfect of course the dungeons have serious issues and its still using the same link to the past map again but its actually really fun and even though the puzzles rely on the echoes a lot I still find them engaging and fun to solve even when they are simple and easy, it’s a massive difference to totk where I didn’t find the puzzles fun at all to solve and were mostly tedius garbage that I just had to get through, echoes of wisdom also has a lot of cool minigames and side quests that make it fun to 100% especially considering there isn’t too much content to find, though some of the collectables are a pain and I had to look a few of them up, all in all im just glad we got another Zelda game that I was excited to play and can look back on with good memories, now we just need a good 3d Zelda aswell.