Is it just us, or has 2024 been… light, in the world of video games? A few huge releases, sure, the usual tide of remasters and remakes, Calls of Duty (now on mobile!), and other such obligatory material. But relatively little in the way of “Holy shit!” moments, the ones that feel like someone is pushing the medium in fascinating new directions, or exploring new boundaries of play. (The fact that we get more news these days about studio closures than new releases probably doesn’t help that spirit of bold experimentation thrive.)
Which does have the effect of making the games that do stand out do so all the more. As is tradition around here, we’ve decided to mark the halfway point of 2024 by celebrating those games that actually got our hearts beating in its first several months. It’s a pretty eclectic crew, though, so instead of trying to bolt these very disparate gaming experiences into the numerical tyranny of a definitive ranking, we’ve decided to crib from the high school yearbook scene and go instead with the superlatives route. Here, then, are The A.V. Club’s favorite—or at least most something—games of 2024, presented in no particular order (except the last one, because we do still feel obligated to tell you what the best game of 2024 has been, in case you didn’t already know).
Best co-op game where “cooperation” often means saying “Sorry I exploded your head from orbit”: Helldivers II
Arrowhead Game Studios’ adrenaline-pounding action sequel has weathered its share of bad times since it arrived back in February, from a launch that was shakier than a drop pod getting aimed directly into a swarm of murderous bugs, to fan revolts after its masters at Sony tried to implement some draconian sign-up schemes to make the whole thing harder to access on PC. But none of it could obscure the pure chaotic joy of a Helldivers II mission that’s right on the verge of going either very well, or very wrong, depending on the bounce of a thrown beacon that’s just waiting to unleash an orbital laser strike on everybody’s heads. Few games have marshalled the sheer joyful power of explosions—or the comedy potential of friendly fire from those explosions—better, creating what is simultaneously one of gaming’s most tense, and funniest, experiences of 2024.
Best game we completed even though it objectively probably isn’t very good: Alone In The Dark
This was a tightly contested category, with Pieces Interactive’s celebrity-heavy remake of survival horror classic Alone In The Dark duking it out with Rocksteady Studios’ “One great idea for every six awful ones” comic book depression-fest Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. Despite being a little clunkier, Alone In The Dark wins out over Suicide Squad, insofar as its flaws—mostly some leaden performances from stars David Harbour and Jodie Comer, and the occasional bit of busy work or a dull boss fight amidst the scares—didn’t feel like they represented the slow death of gaming the way Suicide Squad’s obsessive focus on battle passes, seasonal content, and unceasing grind did. Alone In The Dark is competently made, has some neat ideas kicking around in the background, and doesn’t wear out its welcome: Not a masterpiece, but we’re also not mad we played it to completion.
Best game when consumed in 30-second chunks: Children Of The Sun
If we’re being honest, we bounced a bit off of René Rother’s supernatural sniper game Children Of The Sun, eventually being repelled by its incredibly grim aesthetics, mixed with an increasing level of difficulty that ultimately taxed us past the breaking point. But no game of 2024 has had a more satisfying basic loop, as your nameless, rifle-wielding protagonist scopes out a compound full of degenerate cultists, carefully picks her angle—and then unleashes a single bullet, which is able to refire itself again and again, every time it hits an enemy (or sets off a chaotic explosion). The result is a gleeful sort of ballistic pinball, as you attempt to wipe out a single compound in a single shot, creating the single most thrilling 30 seconds of gameplay we’ve experienced all year, over and over again.
Best game that will absolutely tell you to go fuck yourself: Dragon’s Dogma II
No game of 2024 has better captured that refreshing feeling of hostility better than Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma II, a game that is extremely comfortable stranding you, and your various hirelings, out in the middle of a monster-infested wilderness, gesturing vaguely to a town 20 miles away, and suggesting you get a move on before night falls and the really nasty beasties start coming out. Really, though, Dragon’s Dogma II is hostile to everything, whether it’s critics hoping for something slightly less esoteric than the 2012 original, or people hoping to be able to save their games without a long trek to a campfire, or those poor fools hoping not to permanently nuke one of its vast populated cities because they weren’t paying enough attention to the health status of their hired Pawns. The end result, coming at a time when games feel like they’re bending over backward to load players into a chute to endless monetization, is a breath of fresh, brutal air; an expression of “difficulty” that isn’t just about making the numbers go up, but about having the world itself be hostile to the concept of survival.
Best game that is all games, forever, unto death: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
How are we supposed to compress the entire experience of Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth into a single, blurb-style paragraph? The second game in the company’s psychotically ambitious Final Fantasy VII Remake project isn’t just a recreation of the middle-third of the 1997 classic, now blown out to 100-hour proportions. And it isn’t just an attempt to apply a new version of the company’s ongoing obsession with meta-narratives, time travel plots, and branching realities to one of the staple stories of gaming. And it isn’t just Square’s first real effort to stick its big, cartoonish Final Fantasy character boots into the genre of open-world exploration. It’s all those things, plus dozens more, delivering one of the biggest sheer doses of gaming content we’ve ever encountered in a single, over-stuffed package. None of which would matter as anything more than a back-of-box quote, except for this: When Rebirth is really firing—when it’s fleshing out its iconic characters into real, richly drawn, incredibly goofy people, or running players through the paces of its electric take on the tenets of real-time RPG combat—it’s genuinely as good as anything we’ve played from this company in years. It’s horrifically excessive, and a masterpiece of focus; not an easy feat to manage.
Best slow burn: Lorelei And The Laser Eyes
A slow, stylish descent into the realm of memory—as formed from math puzzles, Italian film references, and throwback PS1 horror game graphics—Simogo’s Lorelei And The Laser Eyes is one of the most wonderfully chill games of 2024. With gorgeous monochrome visuals, a delight at switching between artistic mediums on the fly, and a mansion stocked to the brim with puzzles, it represents maybe our favorite three days of gaming we’ve had all year, as our brains slowly picked away at the many mysteries lurking deep in an old, abandoned, possibly haunted European hotel. Occasional attempts to inject tension into the model are a bit hit or miss, but the basic vibe, of slowly following threads and unraveling problems, and the addictive sensation of epiphany when an (ultimately logical) connection slots into place, make this a must-play for puzzle game nerds.
Best game demo: Unicorn Overlord
Look: We do intend to some day go back and play the full game version of Vanillaware’s typically gorgeous strategy title Unicorn Overlord. How could we not, after its generous, massive, tactically fascinating demo made such a strong impression on us—more than a lot of full games that we played all the way through this year, for sure. An updated take on semi-real-time strategy classics like the Super Nintendo’s Ogre Battle, Unicorn Overlord invites you to play an extremely satisfying version of rock-paper-scissors with its varied units, each of whom acts automatically once combat starts. (Making for multiple strategic layers, as you have to both build squads to counter your opponents, and find the best way to program the actions of individual fighters, so that they can protect each other and target enemy weaknesses.) Even in multi-hour demo form, it’s compulsive, brain-devouring stuff: The only reason we haven’t pulled the trigger on the full game yet is that we’re hoping to get a little more done this year before disappearing into such an engaging abyss.
Best game that isn’t technically out yet: Hades II
We’ve already said our piece about how Hades II’s current “Early Access” designation doesn’t necessarily match what a polished state Supergiant Games has brought this sequel to, but suffice it to say that it’s one of the best games of 2024 before actually being “completed.” Building on everything that was good about the original Hades—the quick-moving, satisfying combat; engaging character arcs; addictive replay mechanics, and more—while also deepening both its story, and its play, Hades II might not reinvent the blockbuster wheel, but it is a pure dose of Titan-crushing fun. The addition of a new mana meter mechanic, allowing you to burn quickly recharging resources in order to score big effects, adds an extra level of thought to the fights, while the basic loop of accruing big godly powers to bring down big, mythic foes remains endlessly compelling.
Best game: Balatro
Apologies to Cloud, Lorelei, Melinoë, The Arisen, and every other character from every other video game of 2024, but the facts are clear: No shining story, no emotional moment, no incredibly dramatic climax has colonized our brains in 2024 half so thoroughly as Balatro’s basic premise of “What if poker was actually a good game?” Created by a one-person development team (known as LocalThunk), Balatro is a work of cunning genius, tasking players with building solitaire poker hands to meet increasingly high scores, supported by a series of increasingly ridiculous Jokers that alter the basic rules of the game. (Like, say, letting you build a flush or straight with only four cards—or creating a Joker that eats other Jokers, growing stronger with each one it devours.) Taking the thrills of gambling, and devoting them toward something a player can actually control, Balatro would be the ideal pick-up-and-play game—if we were ever confident we could stop ourselves from playing only a single game. It’s an incredible reminder of what one really good idea, married to the ideal look, sound, and feel, can do for gaming. We’re literally playing a game in between writing sentences of this blurb. We just can’t put the damn thing down.