10 video games I played in 2024
10. Unicorn Overlord
There's a world where Unicorn Overlord occupies a similar place in my heart as Vanillaware's previous outing, 13 Sentinels. It's a beautiful game and the autobattling tactics concept is deeply enthralling. I spent hours just tweaking the strategies of individual units. There were few things more satisfying in games this year than watching my finely tuned squads cutting through enemy formations with machinelike precision. But in the end, it's a beautiful game that left me feeling weirdly cold. The story and characters are quite shallow, as if Vanillaware was afraid of attempting something as narratively ambitious as 13 Sentinels again. Unicorn Overlord suffers for it. It's not that the story is just simple, it's boring. Odin's Sphere and Muramasa still managed to weave compelling stories about their characters despite their relative narrative simplicity. There's nothing to latch onto. As the kids might say, it doesn't have the juice. Sauceless even. No matter how interesting I found its combat systems or how appealing its artwork, I couldn't bring myself to truly love it.
9. Fear and Hunger 2: Termina
The Fear and Hunger games have always fascinated me from a distance. As someone who enjoys intentional friction in games, the idea of a game so explicitly hostile to its player was nothing if not compelling. Fear and Hunger 2 is probably just a bit too sadistic for me but I loved the tone of its worldbuilding. A sort of modern eldritch horror, like if the setting of Berserk entered the industrial age. That narrative tone justifies the game's hostility, but I couldn't bring myself to stick with it for long. I now understand its deeply fascinating allure though. There's an abyssal quality to Fear and Hunger. The cruel flavor of the game's world is supported by thematically appropriate writing that draws you ever deeper into it. One of the most memorable week or two I've spent with a video game.
8. Dragon's Dogma 2
They actually did it. They made another Dragon's Dogma. And it sure is Dragon's motherfucking Dogma, in all its mechanical depth and intentional friction. My life and work balance, being completely shot as it is, means I couldn't find the hours to devote to really knuckling down on DD2, but as a fan of the first, I sort of see it as this year's Armored Core 6. It's a deeply uncompromised game, fully committed to its vision of fantasy roleplaying. Every quest is an adventure in its own right, thanks to the various mechanical elements working in concert like clockwork.
The harried and frantic quality of Dragon's Dogma combat remains the game's greatest strength. There's always a bit of a slippery element to DD2's combat. While the combat itself is tight and responsive, the flow of the fighting is intentionally loose, unpredictable. An ogre falls over, a goblin is flung through the air, and your wagon smashed by an errant boulder. There's a sense that you're always kind of composing by the seat of your pants and that your initial game plan must always be poised for a last second improvisation. Where I think DD2 loses steam is a threadbare second act and a world not nearly as interesting as the mechanics that buttress it. While the overarching framework of the game falters more than you'd like, the game still shines in the small moments. I may struggle to recall the most basic plot beats, but there are journeys and battles in Dragon's Dogma 2 I will never forget.
7. Metaphor: ReFantazio
Metaphor is a good video game. It's well constructed, enjoyable to play, and it refines many of the Atlus RPG mechanics established by the SMT and Persona series. Nonetheless my heart struggles to love it. Metaphor does a lot of the right things, and it does them often, but at its core, its story and characters never really grasped me in the way Persona 3 and 4 did so many years ago. Persona's star was already beginning to fade for me with 5, and I had hoped Metaphor would be the change I was looking for. In some ways it is; I think Metaphor is a much better experience than a theoretical Persona 6 would be. I don't think it's a failing of the Persona life sim format, in fact seeing it succeed so capably in those aspects has me more convinced that the Persona format could be adapted to plenty of other settings and styles while still retaining that unique quality.
Where I think Metaphor falls apart is that it's simply not a very well told story. It attempts to grapple with the fundamental clash of governance's ideological goal of achieving a better world against the naked realities of what power actually means for most people. In aggregate, it mostly says the right thing but never enough and not nearly as loud as it should. The conclusions it does arrive at are insufferably naïve. For example, the game's twist that the fantasy world its characters look toward for inspiration is our own deeply flawed society is laughably rudimentary.
If nothing else, it's built on the bones of a damn good JRPG. The Archetype system allows you to break an already easy game over your knee, but it's fun to do that sometimes. The music is uncharacteristically inconsistent for Shoji Meguro but when it's good, it's really good. Heismay is probably my favorite character of 2024. There's plenty to like here.
Maybe that's why I can't help but wish for the version of Metaphor closer to the one I idealized. I do believe that fiction can inspire real acts of righteousness. That flights of fancy can allow us to picture a better world than the one we live in. That imagination is key to liberation. Metaphor gets close enough that you can't help but envision its ideal form.
6. Space Marine 2
I wrote about this game earlier this year, I'm not going to pretend like I have anything more sophisticated to say. Space Marine 2 is one of the greatest realizations of the 40k toybox in video games. There's something deeply entertaining about seeing your favorite toys brought to life with such visceral fidelity. It helps there's a legitimately great action game attached to it. In some regards, Space Marine 2 is the least ambitious game I played this year. But it's for that exact reason I hold it in such high regard. I tend to love media that perfectly accomplish their stated goals regardless of ambition. It shows an understanding of the assignment and the self awareness to achieve it. The game called its shot and nailed it every single time it stepped up to plate. An immaculate exercise in unrelenting violence.
5. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is by all accounts, a better game than Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon. It's more fun to play, better designed, and has more in that maximalist way that only RGG Studio is capable of. But I think as time passes, 7 is the Ichiban saga that will stick with me more.
I said last year that Like a Dragon Gaiden ended so strongly, it convinced me to place faith in Infinite Wealth's fraught premise. It's a bit of a shame then to see that goodwill not paid in turn. Infinite Wealth does so much right, it's such an enjoyable ride for much of its runtime. Ichiban is charming as ever, and his newfound friends are fantastic additions to this growing crew. This is a warm game, filled with a great love for the world and its characters. But at times, that love becomes cloying, and at its worst, frustrating.
It's a shame, I think there's a lot to love about Ichiban and Kiryu's stories in Infinite Wealth. Ichiban's compassion is so damn compelling. He's such a good dude, and you can't help but root for him every step of the way. You want to see him overcome all of life's travails. Not just because he deserves it, but because you know he'll always do the right thing no matter how much pain he endures. Meanwhile, Kiryu's solemn self reflection on his life's deeds is deeply enthralling. He's a character with real history felt by both its in-universe cast and its real world fans. What does it mean to have a life well lived. Can we ever truly be the person we've wished to have been? Is it too late to change?
There's no way around it, the ending of Infinite Wealth is disjointed, disorganized, and does a disservice to multiple of the plot's overarching themes. Forcing Ichiban and Kiryu to share the protagonist seat compromises both of their character arcs in ways that will be very difficult to course correct going forward. RGG Studio isn't above a necessary retcon to get things back on track, but with the Like a Dragon series more popular than ever, the newfound scrutiny may be too heavy to bear.
4. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
I didn't expect it to make it this far on the list. What little has been said of Kunitsu-Gami on the internet is that it feels like a PS2 game in all the best ways. I broadly agree with this assessment. I think more specifically, it feels like a previous generation console game because it takes a novel but relatively simple gameplay concept (a hybridization of character action and tower defense) and extrapolates it into all sorts of interesting gameplay challenges within that selective framework. At first, it's simple enough. Defend the obvious chokepoint. Then it has you defending two lanes at different elevations. Eventually you're managing a small army through the narrow streets of a medieval urban center with enemies crashing through walls, opening up unexpected vectors of attack. It's a very 2004 approach. No need (or resources) to reinvent the wheel every level as long as the fundamental pieces are still fun to play with. Kunitsu-Gami's appeal lies in the fundamental solidity of its game design. Where the progress comes from is the escalating complexity of its challenges and the tools you're given to address them.
I also think the game is simply very charming. It has one of the single coolest aesthetics I've seen in a video game in some time. Kunitsu-Gami evokes a much more ancient and primal depiction of feudal Japan. There's a mystic quality to its artwork and design that make it stand out from the usual Sengoku fare. The camera placement and rendering intentionally frames the game as a playable diorama, giving the experience a very neat toybox vibe. Your player character's fighting style is composed of elegant sweeps and dance like flourishes. Your shrine maiden companion is present in the background of your main menu where she animates in small but charming ways in response to your upgrades or unit selections. These are just some of the many qualities that Kunitsu-Gami quietly brandishes. It's the kind of game where every collectible comes with a nicely rendered 3D model viewer where you can ogle at gorgeously rendered traditional Japanese desserts, random fauna, and the enemy units. And god, the enemies in this game. The Seethe are 2024's coolest video game enemies. Gangly demons made of human limbs placed in all the wrong places, they're as eye-catching as they are disturbing.
Kunitsu-Gami is the kind of game I desperately want to see more of in 2025. I think the medium is at its best when you have studios making interesting swings like this. We should be allowed to make console sized experiments. Larger than your indie darlings but more realistically scaled than your AAA tentpoles. I don't need it to be the next blockbuster Capcom franchise. I don't need it to change my life. Sometimes I just want to have a good time, and Kunitsu-Gami is a very good time.
3. Shadow of the Erdtree
Yeah yeah, DLC, not a real game, etc. By hour count Shadow of the Erdtree accounts for like 12% of my video game playtime in 2024, so here it is. On paper, Shadow of the Erdtree is a well composed bookend on Elden Ring. Traditionally, the obligatory postgame DLC of any given Fromsoft game would serve as the thematic and mechanical capstone of its respective game. These DLC releases are the finely honed culmination of its game's concepts and challenges, often acting as the, "final test" so to speak. Shadow of the Erdtree plays that same role, but in execution, ends up exposing many of Elden Ring's inherent weaknesses.
What's here is deeply interesting. Shadow of the Erdtree does some great stuff with examining the cyclical violence of Elden Ring's cosmic powers. What little you get of Miquella's followers is some of the best writing Fromsoft has ever accomplished. The fate of Marika's enemies, themselves engaged in the imperial cycle of conquest and oppression, is thematically appropriate in both its tragedy and inevitability. But it's all too much. Mesmer alone could have supported an entire bespoke DLC on the back of his motivations and pathos. The Miquella stuff simply cannot meet the expectations set up by the base game. And don't get me started on the final boss, who I found more frustrating on a narrative level than mechanical. If you know, you know what I'm implying.
And really that's kind of the problem with Shadow of the Erdtree. It's too much of everything, and as a result, too little of anything. I can forgive Fromsoft games for not always plumbing the depths of all its inhabitants. I'd love to know more about Bloodborne's Powder Kegs. It's a shame we never get to meet Sekiro's Tomoe. But that's arguably the point of the Fromsoft style of storytelling. You're not meant to know everything, nor should you. But Shadow of the Erdtree attempts to elucidate on many of the setting's remaining loose threads, leaving many of them still incomplete after the DLC's conclusion. By all metrics, it's an excellent piece of content. But it lives in a world where it must be compared to Artorias of the Abyss and The Old Hunters. Historically, Fromsoft DLCs aren't just the allure of new stuff, they actively elevate the entire experience with their very presence. By comparison Shadow of the Erdtree is just more Elden Ring. More Elden Ring is good in the holistic sense but as an experience, it's a strange offering I still find myself grappling with months later.
But it added Dryleaf Arts. Midra is maybe the best boss fight in the entire game. I can't go back to a world without Deflecting Hardtear. 4/5 stars.
2. 1000xRESIST
I initially thought Mouthwashing would be the game I cheekily call this year's Signalis, on account of its PS1 horror inspirations, but turns out it's actually 1000xResist. It may not have the aesthetic but it certainly has the sad lesbians confronted with existential ennui. This game is as good as everyone says, I don't know how much more I can add. If you are liker of stories in video games, you should probably play this one, it has one of the best I've seen all year. Somehow the game manages to simultaneously accomplish the task of exploring themes of generational trauma, revolution, preservation, language, and so much more. All within the framework of a really excellent sci-fi premise.
When people talk about how important it is that games have diverse voices, 1000xRESIST is the kind of game that I think best exemplifies why that's important. I'll cop to it, as a child of the Asian diaspora, there's a lot for me to latch onto with 1000xRESIST. I think it's important that we have works that can speak from such specific experiences. It enriches the kind of stories that can be told. To be clear, the game's story is obviously great on its own merits, but the specificity lends it a deeply personal quality that feels almost impossible to preserve outside the indie space. Not just for the aforementioned reasons but also the intense proximity of its themes. This is a game about Hong Kong. This is a game about the pandemic. It's unafraid to speak on recent wounds with an emotional nimbleness I think can only exist at the indie scale. I could make some comment about its merits as an actual video game but upon further reflection, I think a story like this could only work as a game. A game can in fact just be a sequence of incredibly well written and composed scenes.
1. Nine Sols
This is another game I've written about this year so I won't repeat all my points, but for me Nine Sols is the game along with 1000xRESIST that really illustrates why it's so important to play games from all over the world. Much of the game's narrative beats will follow familiar trajectories, but the details and sensibilities of them feel informed by Asian culture and spirituality in ways that distinguish it from its more mainstream counterparts. It weaves its themes at different scales in a way that coalesces into something sharply cogent. At a high level, the game asks you to question the inherent value of legacy and the monstrously high cost some are willing to pay to preserve it. On a personal scale, the game emphasizes the feeling of regret as one of humanity's most powerful motivators. That feeling can make you move heaven and earth. But we cannot change the past, no matter how bad we feel about it. That too, is legacy.
But look, there's a reason 1000xRESIST is up there and Nine Sols is here. Nine Sols somehow managed to do all that while being Sekiro's greatest protege. The combat in Nine Sols rips in exactly the way I like it as a parrying sicko. Precise and punishing, exceedingly so, because of its deceptive purity. There are no tricks or gimmicks to overcoming Nine Sols, merely the absolute comprehension of its challenges. Once you truly master Nine Sols, there are few games that make you feel as cool when you're running on all cylinders.
Just like last year, I must admit my list is partially fueled by spite. Good games get ignored all the time but the degree to which Nine Sols seems to have flown under peoples' radars is personally frustrating to see. In a year where people who are literally paid to play video games for a living are championing AI-generated slop, it's disturbing to see something as special as Nine Sols get written off as, "Chinese Hollow Knight for masochists and furries," by exactly the kind of white man you just imagined saying that. The kind of guy whose mental comprehension of video games stalled out at Quake II but has somehow been allowed to work in games journalism for 30 years. We no longer need these people to be the tastemakers and gatekeepers of good video games.
Of all the games I played this year, Nine Sols is the most wholly complete in its execution. It hasn't felt this good to play a video game since Sekiro. Its setting is one of the most interesting I've ever explored. Its tale of faith, family, technology, and legacy compelled from start to finish. The music, god the music. For me, this is about as good as a video game can get. It lays out its ambitions and then simply accomplishes all of them. Like the perfect boss run, Nine Sols is untouchable in a way that looks effortless. For anyone in the know, you can't help but be awed by their ability to achieve it.