My top 20 video games of 2024
Plus, my last on-air appearance of the year
2024 challenged the industry and strained my critical muscles.
I played more than 130 new video games this year. I rolled credits on 38 of those, from 90-hour RPGs like Metaphor: ReFantazio to 3-hour experiments like Arctic Eggs. I reviewed stinkers (Emio - The Smiling Man), mediocrities (Another Code: Recollection), diverting expansions (Alan Wake 2: The Lake House), overlooked indies (Love, Ghostie) and electrifying triumphs (Astro Bot).
Even though I pushed this list to the very end of the year, I still wish I had more time. I’m so close to finishing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which would have likely breached my top 10. I hope to marshal the brainpower needed to complete The Rise of the Golden Idol and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, the patience for Caves of Qud, the reflexes for Nine Sols, and the stomach for Mouthwashing. And those are just a handful out of dozens of games I wish to return to!
I’ll also note conspicuous omissions. I’m an obsessive card battler and recovering rogueliker, but my many Balatro victories didn’t add up to anything more than dispassionate admiration (UFO 50 faced a similar fate). Animal Well appealed as both a metroidvania and a 2D Outer Wilds, but I lacked the fortitude to persevere past its nominal ending. And while I’m all for the tomfoolery of Helldivers 2, it still fell far short of my preferred multiplayer shooter, Hunt: Showdown.
Enough chatter! On to the list:
Wildermyth’s worst campaign still bests most RPGs. After months slogging through Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader, my wife, bro-in-law, and I enjoyed this reunion with Wildermyth’s greedwagons and goofs — anticlimactic as its story turned out to be.
19 - The Jackbox Survey Scramble
A $10 party game in the top 20? I’m as surprised as you! Survey Scramble’s Family Feud remix has proved far more popular a household past-time than games of much grander scope.
18 - Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred
Blizzard deserves much of the hate lobbed its way, and now contends with stiff competition from Path of Exile 2, but this Diablo 4 expansion still delivered a dramatic story, sterling animation, and serviceable couch co-op.
17 - Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Although The Veilguard often disappointed me, I don’t regret the nearly 50 hours it took to complete. If only it had Inquisition’s knack for dialogue and societal complexities! To quote myself: “Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth has even higher highs and lower lows, but for all Veilguard’s predictable moralizing, BioWare still held my attention through its riveting conclusion.”
16 - Unicorn Overlord
Where The Veilguard fumbles its story yet aces the series’ evolution toward action, Unicorn Overlord succeeds at synthesizing classic Fire Emblem with Vanillaware’s incomparable style and passable strategery. But my foolhardy quest to romance its huge cast really thrust Unicorn Overlord into my top 20.
15 - The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Burdened by cumbersome UI and a disappointing climax, Echoes of Wisdom still delighted me through the majority of its 30-hour runtime: “While the game’s experiments aren’t quite as successful as Tears of Kingdom’s, Zelda has proven to be capable of shouldering the series that bears her name.”
Excuse me, Princess, but Minishoot’ Adventures outclassed you this year. I’m so glad I caught up with this pithy fusion of twin-stick shooting and top-down Zelda exploration.
13 - Home Safety Hotline
While HSH expansion Seasonal Worker muddled the original formula and undercut its horror, you should clock in for the base game: “Home Safety Hotline is easily one of the most imaginative and unsettling indie games I’ve encountered — and best of all, it’s short enough to play over a weekend!”
12 - Neva
Another year, another gorgeous platformer that’s a not-so-subtle metaphor for grief. One of the prettiest games I’ve played, Neva extends the “can you pet the dog” meme into a design pillar. One of your buttons is devoted to calling for your wolf companion. That action’s utility and meaning shifts throughout a game about protecting what’s beautiful in the face of unspeakable loss.
11 - Cryptmaster
An RPG I’ve described as landing “somewhere between Wordle and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing,” I can also name Cryptmaster as my wife’s game of the year. While I came to loath its trading card minigame, she and I will always be fond of the its titular narrator and its party of hapless undead.
10 - Silent Hill 2
I sympathize with the criticism that this remake sands off too many rough edges and artistic oddities. But as someone who primarily engaged with this new version, I was satisfied: “While its pacing lagged over the 16 hours it took me to complete it (twice the runtime of the original), Silent Hill 2 is easily the most disturbing and heart-thumping game I’ve played.”
If Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth contained itself to a tight 30 hours, it would have floated further up this list. Tiresome open-world questing and uneven plotting aside, Rebirth bursts with more charming character moments and bravura sequences than nearly any other game in the franchise.
8 - Thank Goodness You’re Here!
Nominally a puzzle game, Thank Goodness You’re Here! feels like waltzing through a compressed season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Not every gag lands, but it joyously overflows with inventive scenarios, bizarre animation, and preposterous acting (hats off, Matt Berry!).
This long-awaited gem from indie auteur Lucas Pope ensorcelled me: “it’s as absurd, gently inexplicable, and mechanically fresh as I hoped.” While $200 for a Playdate seems steep, the game used its weird hand crank so brilliantly that I can’t imagine Mars After Midnight translating well to any other platform.
I’ve called Another Crab’s Treasure “my favorite Soulslike since Lies of P.” It amplifies the silliness that FromSoft games have always humored and throws in plenty of its own ideas. Also, the bosses are bonkers cool — from a sumo crab who fights with chopsticks to an enraged queen who whirls around a tea infuser.
5 - Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
As predicted, SotE gets way better with friends. I liked, but didn’t love, the new area when I played alone on my Steam Deck. I absolutely crushed it when my buddies and I joined up to explore its every crevice and secret. The expansion’s scale and arresting imagery put nearly every other DLC to shame.
4 - Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Ubisoft’s bleeding, and no casualty cuts deeper than the dispersal of the crew that made The Lost Crown, a metroidvania with a screenshot mechanic so helpful that it should come standard in the genre. But I’ve many more nice things to say:
The game boasts cinematic parry animations as satisfying as those in the exquisite Metroid: Dread, rivals Ori and the Will of the Wisps’ thrilling traversal mechanics, bursts with platforming challenges worthy of Celeste and weaves actual Persian mythology into a setting nearly as compelling as Hollow Knight’s fallen bug kingdom.
3 - Astro Bot
Astro Bot was so deliriously fun that I slammed through it in four days to write a giddy review for WBUR.org that I later compressed into a NPR blurb. While I think it snatched a few too many Game Awards, I absolutely respect the GOTY win and applaud the team’s work: “Astro Bot might be a glorified advertisement for all things PlayStation, but it’s also the best Nintendo game Nintendo never made.”
2 - 1000xResist
Few games marinated my mind more than 1000xResist. On a surface level, it’s about cycles of trauma — from the pandemic, from quashed Hong Kong protests, from generational wounds passed from mother to daughter. But it’s also somehow more than the sum of these weighty parts. It’s a sci-fi thriller, a dystopian drama, a slyly comedic walking simulator. 1000xResist spins and twists as I consider it, and my admiration for the plucky artists who birthed it has only grown in the days since I put it down. Hekki grace, sister blue.
I wrestled with crowning Metaphor. It’s at least 20 hours too long. Its political commentary ranges from astute to toothless. But it’s just so goshdarned rad. I wanted to befriend every party member, savor every fantastical vista, ogle every Bosch boss, unlock every archetype, and crest every challenge. Metaphor is sophisticated, sincere, stylish as hell — and the apotheosis of everything modern Persona games have yearned to be.
Other Mastromarino Productions
I put this newsletter out appallingly late, but I’ll round up my pieces that aired during my vacation last week:
2024's best board games that won't get you mad enough to flip the table - My latest on-air appearance, in shortened radio form and extended podcast form! If I had more time, I’d have also mentioned Arkham Horror’s The Feast of Hemlock Vale, which lands close behind Arcs in my estimation.
'Squid Game' debuts a second season, three years after the initial phenomenon