What's your 2024 GOTY? (+ 2024 games thread)

[Term]

What's your personal GOTY for 2024?

Also, 2024 games in general. What other new games did you play this year? Anything exceptional? Anything slip under the radar that you want to highlight? Any favorite characters, moments, music, etc from 2024 games? Was it a good year for gaming?

I have a few underrated ones I'll post about later but my GOTY is UFO 50:

Save 15% on UFO 50 on Steam

UFO 50 is a collection of 50 single and multiplayer games that span a variety of genres, from platformers and shoot 'em ups to puzzle games, roguelites, and RPGs. Our goal is to combine a familiar 8-bit aesthetic with new ideas and modern game design.

store.steampowered.com

It's 50 full sized (by 80s standards) games, conceptualized as an anthology collection from a fictional 80s developer. But they're not "bad on purpose", they're not even bad on accident (except CombatAnts). Nearly every game in the collection offers some kind of new take on its genre & there are many I would've been happy to buy standalone. Velgress, Valguard, Warptank, Party House, Rakshasa, Vainger, Mortol, Rock On Island, Magic Garden, Campanella 1 & 3, Camouflage and even Mooncat are games I could easily have seen myself buying standalone, and I still have a handful of games I want to play more of, even after 100 hours in the game. They even took the time to create fictional developers who can be seen recurring in the credits of the various games, some with stories of their own to be pieced together as you play. I should warn you that that stuff isn't the focus but there's meat in it for anyone that finds that intriguing. It's an immense accomplishment and I guarantee you can find something you're interested in here.

 

[Super Crab Deluxe Turbo X]

This was an excellent year for games and the only way I could see someone disagreeing with that statement is if they very specifically love western AAA games lol

I've played enough stuff that I can easily make a top 10 post, but I'm going to wait until the new year rolls around since there's still stuff I haven't got to yet. Number 6 will surprise you or whatever clickbait thing you're supposed to say

 

[KeplerElectronics]

UFO 50 didn't grab me immediately, and I actually ended up steam refunding it the first time I bought it, but I'm glad I gave it another chance. I'm not sure it's my GOTY since it feels difficult to call it a game due to the compilation aspect of it. I don't think any of the games on their own would be my GOTY, but as a package it's definitely more compelling. Regardless it definitely makes my top 10 releases of the year.

Current favorites in UFO 50 are Pilot Quest, Warptank, and Pingolf. I keep trying to beat the first Party House mission and failing miserably, but it is kinda fun even if I haven't figured out the strategy yet.

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Selaco is 100% my GOTY. It's an FPS made in the GZDoom engine, but with a bunch of modern improvements like hires UI elements and voxel based objects. It feels retro and modern at the same time, kind of like Shovel Knight. The music is awesome, the visuals are incredible, and it's really, really fun.

It's technically still in early access (with only 1/3rd of the story completed), but the first chapter that's been released is meatier than some whole games. I think I spent 20 hours on my first playthrough hunting for secrets and doing the optional bonus challenges. Current speedrun times are somewhere around an hour, but a straight-shot casual will probably take 10-15 hours first try.

Despite the early access nature of the game, the only crashes or bugs I've experienced have all been my fault from attempting to mod the game. Kudos to the devs for encouraging modding as well, the lead dev Nexxtic has helped me debug my mods a few times.

Selaco is very good, and the devs keep improving what's there too. You can replay the campaign with a ton of different modifiers (including a brutal mode that rearranges enemies and item pickups). There's a whole new "Special Campaign" that includes random enemy encounters, item rarity, and even wild upgrades. On my current special campaign save, I have a rifle that launches plates. There's also a diagetic cookie-clicker type game you can play in-universe after unlocking.

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[GlitchyPSI]

balatro

i'm a simple person

 

[Super Crab Deluxe Turbo X]

okay so that top 10 list isn't coming right at the start of next year. i do still want to write it, but the more i think about it, the more i hate excluding games i know would be solid contenders just because i didn't get to them soon enough. (this thought was mostly prompted by me knowing i'm not finishing metaphor before the end of the year lol)

I want to shine a big spotlight on Shadow Generations, though. What you might think is just a bonus thing to get you to buy Sonic Generations again is actually just the best (internally made) Sonic game in 23 years. If they keep cooking and put out a full-size game like that it'll probably outright be the best Sonic game ever. idk where it'll land when I do that actual list, but I massively recommend it

 

[Scott]

i don't have a definitive answer atm but the one i've definitely thought most about is Shadow of the Erdtree (i know i know) which may or may not count depending on your definition. but the best parts of it are so good that i straight up haven't stopped thinking about them. npc dialogue will come to me for no reason and every time I hear the final swell in Those United In Common Cause i'm pushed to the verge of tears. playing a new Souls game at launch, before everything is discovered and before everyone argues at length about What The Lore Definitely Is For Sure (the opposite of how you should approach the story in these games imo, but i digress), is one of my favourite rituals.

factoring all that in, it seems like it should be a no brainer. but there were actually so many sick games in 2024 that even though I can wax poetic about how SOTE made & still makes me feel at its best, I don't know that I could easily give it the top spot. there was also

Crow Country, that I love for its atmosphere, and for reminding me of the survival horror classics that helped define my taste without just being a retread of those games' most famous moments & themes

Unicorn Overlord, that I love for Vanillaware's trademark, absolutely zero misses whatsoever artstyle, and for its highly customizable combat system combining two of my favourite things (FF12 gambits and Ogre Battle squad composition), even if it tends to be somewhat easy

Metaphor: ReFantazio, that I love for its quite frankly insane battle theme, its large cast of great characters, and how it gives those characters pretty fair and consistent relevance in the story, something it does much better than persona 5* (*i have not played royal and it's honestly been so long that this opinion may as well be uninformed but idk that i have the time to give royal a fair shake)

Kunitsu-Gami, that I love for reminding me of when Capcom was dropping games like Dead Rising or Lost Planet. for being wholly unique, overcoming a couple tedious design decisions with its style

Slitterhead, that I love for reasons similar to Kunitsu-Gami. for being a PS3 game out of time, with gameplay that is truly unlike anything else I've ever played even if it's rough around the edges, with the best Akira Yamaoka soundtrack since Silent Hill 3

Skald: Against the Black Priory, that I love for its retro CRPG aesthetics, for being "grimdark" without relying on complete edgelord interpretations of the term, and for its surprisingly enjoyable party members

Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, that I love for its (and the SaGa series as a whole) near complete disregard for JRPG convention, how it allows you to freely go about and tackle bosses & quests in whatever order you see fit (and sometimes having the order you do things in be reflected in dialogue), and for having a solid main story when that is decidedly not the reason you'd play a SaGa game

Dragon's Dogma 2, that I love for even existing, as I am maybe the world's most biased person when it comes to this series. even when it can feel like a sidegrade, its combat, the pawn system and sense of wonder I felt when I explored it the first time were more than enough for me to come away happy. plus the Sphinx encounter/riddles were very very cool

and Ys X: Nordics*, that I love for trimming down the playable characters after IX, giving Adol a single companion to really build a dynamic with, and as a result ending up with one of the more compelling narratives of any Ys title when this is yet again another series where stuff like that usually takes a backseat. sea combat and traversal is rather barebones but I still found it enjoyable (once you get out of the tutorial and get to move a LOT faster)
* (they have since announced a "Proud" version of Ys X that will have a bunch of new stuff, and as such I would maybe not recommend buying this unless you really REALLY want to play it right this second, but you've been informed)

i'll echo crab's statement and agree that you really can't say it was a bad year unless you didn't even try to look for stuff outside of the AAA bullshit space. there's still a handful I have to get around to before I start assigning actual numbers and placements to anything, but i think it was definitely one of the better years of late.

Spoiler

this initially started as an elden ring post because i was listening to the OST and then i kind of just started typing shit as it occurred to me. it took an almost embarrassing amount of time. thank you for reading my blog