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meggannn · 1 month ago

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Games I Played in 2024

I played a lot of games this year (finished 33 but dropped a few others) and thought I'd write up some quick reviews. Didn't include Metaphor Refantazio since I only played the demo of that (really enjoyed it though), but I did include Hades 2 since I put in 100 hours into it and I think it's pretty obvious I like it lmao. listed in chronological order of when I played it

Howl: Hate to start out with a game I dropped, but I was just really bad at the puzzles in this one lol. You play as a deaf woman who is immune to the "howling plague" which turns people into feral beasts, so she alone travels the land to help villagers and try to find a solution. Really neat concept, I was just bad at the grid-like puzzle system.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits: 3/5 Thematically it's maybe a story more appropriate for children, in that you play as a young woman charged with taking care of spirits who have moved on and looking after the environment, but the combat was hard enough that it felt more suited for adults, which made me kind of wonder what the target audience really was. Visually it's stunning, and it's got all the elements of a typical AAA game these days (collectibles, puzzles, zones to explore). I found the plot a little simple, like if Disney wrote the game and Pixar animated it, but the gameplay could occasionally get hard. I've never played a soulslike game before so I can't comment on whether it is appropriately challenging for a "soulslike," like some have debated.

Persona 5 Tactica: 4.5/5 I enjoyed this one! The gameplay feels like Fire Emblem strategy set in the Persona world, which can be a bit simple in the main story maps but gets increasingly complicated in the challenge/side maps, especially those where you have to accomplish an objective in one turn. The chibi art style might turn people off but this feels very at home with the main game's story and themes with two surprisingly fun new companions.

Venba: 4.5/5 What a surprise I like the cooking game about a family adjusting to life and dealing with Asian diaspora. I think it could've been longer because I was enjoying the recipes but it did make me cry. Phenomenal soundtrack too.

Eastshade: 3/5 The idea is that you're a painter and you can walk around an island and capture the scenery on your canvas to fulfill requests from locals. Unfortunately it felt more like Crafting: The Game which wasn't really what I signed up for but it's still a relaxing time.

Dépanneur Nocturne: 3.5/5 A short little game I picked up randomly. You go shopping at a convenience store late at night and find some weird things on the shelves. Unexplainable, cute, kinda fun.

Hidden Through Time: 3.5/5 A cute little find-the-items game with the ability to make your own themed maps. There was a lot of variety in the levels.

Yoshi's Crafted World: 3/5 I played this at May's when I was catsitting at her house lol. Cute time-waster for a platformer I'd recommend for kids but honestly got a little grindy at the end.

Hades 2: (Personal GOTY) 5/5 Though it came out in May, I played this pretty much throughout the year. It is in Early Access, but I truly believe this game has more polish and content than most finished games have on release, so in my heart it counts. Melinoë is a wonderful character, there's some real depth, heart, and humor to the writing, and the world has gotten even grander and denser than in Hades 1. The stakes are high in that she has to defeat an undying Titan over and over again to save her family, but the game still feels quintessentially Hades while also reshaped to fit Mel's character and journey. I feel like the team knows exactly what they want and what they're doing. Supergiant doesn't miss and I'm very excited to see what future updates hold.

Synergia: Dropped. This is a cyberpunk visual novel with robot yuri about an overworked detective who purchases a new household android for company. I ended up putting it down because the writing was... mostly fine, but when it stumbled, it felt very awkward and unnatural; I also realized the main writer was a man, which made some of the "oops, I have to sleep naked" lines coming from the childlike android feel fetishy at times. It wasn't constant, but it was prevalent enough to bother me. Still I've seen some wlw enjoy it anyway or even embrace those aspects, so what I don't like someone else might.

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie: 3/5 This one has a neat concept. Polly, the main character, is tasked with keeping balance between two worlds while juggling the desires of Glory, Bliss, Power, Chaos, Bond, and Truth, who are anthropomorphized characters you can agree or disagree with in their direction to lead humanity. The gameplay idea is that you can see the consequences of your choices branching out before you make them, which at times is really cool because it lets you plan what you want, but at times also feels like you're really just looking at the behind-the-scenes of the developer code lol.

Hello Goodboy: 2.5/5 I must've misjudged this one because I think it was either for real little kids, or it just wasn't translated well. It's a story about a kid and his dog in the afterlife. Felt approachable for teaching kids how to play a video game for the first time.

Hohokum: 3.5/5 At first I could not get into this for the life of me but then it clicked after a few sessions and now I think really fondly on this weird, abstract experience that is more of a toy than a game. I only mark it down because I found the map so damn confusing.

Pentiment: 5/5 No notes, full stars, going right up there on the shelf of "games I'd recommend to Disco fans." This game officially made me a Josh Sawyer fan. I didn't think I'd get invested in a story about 16th century Bavarian monks but I cried several times.

A Tiny Sticker Tale: 4/5 A cute puzzle game set around the idea that you can pick up stickers of items and people, and place them somewhere else. Nice for an afternoon!

Pyre: An excellent 4.5/5 that I look more favorably on in hindsight than when I was playing; I want to give it a 5/5 rating but something about the combat really didn't click for me. You have been banished from the Commonwealth after an unmentioned crime, and after finding allies, you discover you can guide them to partake in ancient rites that will grant ascension back into the Commonwealth one at a time (if you're successful). To earn everyone's freedom, you basically have to play basketball while juggling all three of your main player characters on the field, who all have different abilities and movement speeds, and I struggled with that. That said, the story is Supergiant at its absolute peak, and I think it has the best soundtrack of all their games, which is saying a lot. There's light character roleplaying, but the main choices are made for you in how well you play fantasy basketball: the game will move on whether you win or lose, and the story will adapt.

Landlord of the Woods: 5/5 I really enjoy Madison Karrh's games and Landlord of the Woods is no exception. It's a short puzzle game about finding a new job and showing up on your first day... except your job is a landlord to a community living in the woods who do not want a landlord. Lighthearted yet also creepy, ironic without being jaded, it's delightfully unique.

Insomnia: Theater in the Head: 4/5 A short narrative/puzzle game about a woman's struggles with insomnia. Really captures the energy of all the wild thoughts running through your head at 2am.

Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp: 3.5/5 Starting to show its age but I really like detective games where YOU have to figure out who did it. It is also fortunately not very punishing but you do have to think a little.

Roadwarden: 4/5 This gave me maybe the closest feeling of roleplaying Dragon Age Origins that I've had since playing Pillars of Eternity, just with a smaller budget and largely text-based. You play as a Roadwarden, who is charged with keeping the roads of a peninsula safe from monsters and bandits; but you have another job from your supervisors to see if the peninsula would be open to trade in the future, and would require new merchants and changing leadership. You can be a hero, an asshole, you can sell out the villagers, or quit your job and live with them... there are lots of small discoveries and connections to be had in this game.

Sarawak: 3.5/5 Another short little game, this one a literary mystery set in Oxford and Malaysia, about a woman investigating her parents' histories. I find myself really enjoying these small narrative adventure games as I get older.

Catlateral Damage: 2.5/5 Wish I enjoyed the "cats knocking stuff off stuff" game more, but truthfully it got a little boring after ten minutes.

Planescape Torment: 4/5 Clearly a long-beloved game for a reason, and I see how it inspired Disco Elysium. The combat is horrible and mechanics are old as balls, but the story and writing are top-tier. You play as a man who wakes up in a morgue after dying with no memory of who he is, and you have to hunt down your memories through the clues your previous lives have left you. But it's not a detective story, it's more about reinventing yourself and deciding who to be in your new life. The OG Harry du Bois, in a way.

En Garde! 4.5/5 What a goofy game! It's a quirky, funny action/adventure game that fully embraces the swashbuckling energy of fencing with a woman lead, which is a nice difference. The characters are flamboyant, the lines are overdramatic, and the game is very self-aware of its genre and embraces it. Found the enemy waves a little overwhelming at times but nothing insurmountable, it just has a lot of mechanics.

Robotherapy: 3.5/5 An interesting little premise about a robot that wants to be a therapist. The writing is fine, but occasionally weighed down by its need to be funny; still it's got a few interesting twists.

Lieve Oma: 3/5 A short story about a child who goes walking in the woods with a grandmother hunting for penny buns throughout the years. This kinda touched me because I never knew my grandparents well.

Hatoful Boyfriend: 4/5 Yes, I'm about a million years late to this game. Turns out the pigeon dating simulator is, in fact, really interesting, genuinely funny, and an absolute horror show at times.

Lego Horizon Adventures: 3.5/5 What the hell, it has Aloy shooting machines and Varl loving comic books and Sylens as a DJ. It definitely feels like it was made for kids who have watched for years over their parents' or older siblings' shoulder as they play the more difficult Horizon mainline games. I did wish it were longer and the gameplay a little more complex but I had fun with it.

stitch.: 4/5 Great little puzzle game where you group certain numbers of stitches together to form shapes with a truly INSANE number of puzzles.

Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery: 4.5/5 A short narrative adventure about an artist trying to paint "the finest scenery" with some simple puzzles. It reminded me a lot of Ghibli films, maybe not as polished but with some really heartbreaking twists and moments for me about inspiration, communing with your fellow artists, and also the passage of time.

Wavetale: 4/5 A 3d platformer about environmentalism and worker's rights that takes place in a flooded world with only boats to get around... until Sigrid discovers a supernatural ability to run/ride on water thanks to the help of a mysterious shadow. I didn't think this was going to get as deep as it did, and while I think it did go a little long, I respect the vision even if the platforming was kinda clunky.

Summerhouse: 3/5 Another game that's more of a toy than a game. You unlock different walls, windows, roofs, trees, people, etc. to build your house. I like the style of this one, just wish there was more of everything.

Between Horizons: (GOTY RUNNER-UP) 4.5/5 Hidden gem of this year! Despite having just a few things in common with Mass Effect 1, it reminded me a lot of that game (red-haired default female protagonist on a spaceship suddenly thrust into a position of authority and tasked with tracking someone down). It takes place on a generation ship deep into its journey when suddenly systems are sabotaged and rebellion looks like it's brewing. Stella, the new Chief of Security, has to find the culprit before the mission reaches a point of no return. REALLY good puzzles in this one imo, I actually had to pen-and-paper some stuff to figure out who did what.

Dungeons of Hinterberg: 4/5 Another hidden gem in which dungeons appear around the modern-day Austrian Alps, sparking a sudden wave of tourists and dungeon-crawlers to visit. Part Zelda and part Persona, you explore dungeons by day and hang out with friends and locals by night. The game questions us on if the tourism brought to a small town as a result of the magic spawning there is actually helping, or if the capital and greed it brings might change the village for the worst. The game is about 1/3 relationship sim, 1/3 combat, 1/3 puzzles; I enjoyed all three to varying degrees but I think the puzzles are the strongest.

Paper Trail: Another grid-based puzzle system I dropped (I'm noticing a pattern). You play as a young woman who runs away from home to go to college, and she can "fold" corners of reality to make bridges, connect landpaths, etc. Gorgeous environments and neat concept, I just struggled with it.

1000xResist: (GOTY RUNNER-UP) 4.5/5 Half of Tumblr should be playing this. It's a scifi game set in the distant future in which aliens have arrived on Earth and brought with them a devastating plague that kills most humans. A girl called Iris is the only person who seems to be not only immune but also now immortal, who is cloned/later clones herself throughout the years (first to study a cure, and then to keep company/create a new society). You play as Watcher, a clone created a thousand years later to record Iris's life, now known as the ALLMOTHER's, life, and ensure her authority goes unchallenged in a post-apocalyptic world. I can't even talk about it more without spoiling but it tackles authority and rebellion, identity, memory, bad friendships, generational trauma, modern Asian American/Canadian diaspora... If you enjoy any combination of the following you will probably enjoy it: Everything Everywhere All At Once, Evangelion, Imperial Radch, Arrival, Ghost in the Shell.

not included are my gatcha games lmao which are currently animal crossing pocket camp (og and complete) and fire emblem heroes

#video games #stuff

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blueeyedrat · 1 month ago

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Games I played in 2024.

Man, fuck this year. Here are some video games I felt like talking about, I guess.

(2023 ⇐ 2024)

ABZÛ

There are a few different throughlines to the games I played this year. One is that I delved deep into my backlog; games I picked up in a bundle or a Steam sale some 6 or 7 years ago but never found the time or the hardware for. There are a lot of them. Most of them were worth the wait. I've long since given up on the idea of playing every single game in my libraries to completion, but it's nice to have options.

Another throughline was seeking out shorter games. I've… had some trouble focusing on longer projects this year, so games that I could play in short bursts (like The Solitaire Conspiracy), complete in a few sessions (like What Remains of Edith Finch), or even a single sitting (like Dépanneur Nocturne) were useful for filling in the time. ABZÛ was the first, and ended up being one of the best. Simple but effective gameplay, immaculate visuals and music, and a lot of fish. It was only a couple hours long, but it was the best couple hours I played all year.

Pikmin 4

I played though Pikmin 2 several years ago and had a good time. Last year I picked up a used copy of Pikmin 3 at a convention on a lark, played through it, and had a good time. This year my brother got me Pikmin 4 as a gift, I played though it, and had an excellent time. There's a certain charm these games have that keeps bringing me back, and the most recent game showcases the best of all of them.

Splatoon 3: Side Order

Ahh, time sinks. I still play Sky on the regular, return to Animal Crossing every now and then, and even threw a bit of Eastward: Octopia into the mix. I completed many more loops of Cobalt Core, and more races in F-Zero 99. Over the summer I even found time for some long sessions of Civilization 6.

Splatoon 3 was another mainstay, but this year it reached the proverbial end of the line. The game is still around and I still play it, but like with Animal Crossing before it, the game has been "finished" in that peculiar way live service games are. What exists now will continue to exist, but everything they wanted to do with it is done. Thanks for playing, enjoy the reruns, see y'all in the sequel.

But if it had to end, the one-two punch of Side Order and the Grand Fest made for a good capstone — a well-crafted single-player challenge, and a spectacular you-had-to-be-there finale for the multiplayer side. I can say I was there at the beginning and there at the end, and I'm glad I was along for the ride.

Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers

Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart and its antecedents are a thing I've been vaguely aware of for a long time but never followed too closely, so the sequel was a welcome surprise. It offered an abundance of content and a robust single-player mode, and it's a free fan-made project, so I figured "why not" and gave it a try, and was subsequently hooked for a good month or so. Not everything clicked with me — it's way more mechanically complex than any other kart racer I've seen (I'm told that's part of the appeal, but I've never had the dexterity for it), and it can get frustrating very fast whether you're racing against the CPU or against other players. All the same I can't help but admire it. Ring Racers is a passion project that's as much a love letter to itself as anything that came before, and apologizes for none of it.

Patrick's Parabox

I'll always make room for puzzle games, and this was the standout of this year's lot. Sokoban games can range from "okay" to "clicks with me immediately and is an instant favorite" (Baba Is You et al). Parabox landed squarely in the latter category, occupying my brain for a good few weeks until I'd solved every last level. The different ways it layers puzzles on top of each other were fun to figure out, especially when it starts introducing new ways to "break" them, which it turn become additional layers of the puzzle. Highly recommended.

(Honorable puzzle mentions: The Pedestrian, Linelith, Arranger, Bonfire Peaks, 7 Billion Humans)

Epigraph

While Patrick's Parabox was the best puzzle game I played this year, Epigraph was the most unique. It's another game about deciphering a fictional language à la Chants of Sennaar or Heaven's Vault (which is to say, one that appeals to me specifically), but in a much more compressed form. The entire game consists of a single, very complex puzzle. You're given seven artifacts with undeciphered writing, and a couple paragraphs of notes to start you off, and that's all you get. From there, you have to unravel the language piece by piece, isolating individual words and phrases and meanings until you understand the bigger picture. That such a leap is possible at all is a testament to how well designed the puzzle is. Like I said last year, I want more games like this to exist.

One caveat: only being a single puzzle means there's functionally no feedback unless you've solved the whole thing, so if you've almost solved it, it can be difficult to figure out which part of your solution you need to fix. It's only a minor gripe that didn't detract from the experience overall; as it turns out, I felt the same way about the final puzzle of…

TUNIC

I've been sitting on this one for a while. It's consistently been at the top of my wishlist ever since it was announced all those years ago. I bought the soundtrack the day it came out, but I never delved into the game itself until this summer. Something about TUNIC always drew me back towards it. I knew it was a game I wanted to experience blind, and now that I've done so, it'll be a game that occupies my thoughts for a long time.

TUNIC, the adventure game, is good! A charming little title in the vein of the old Zeldas. Exploring the game world is fun and gives a very satisfying sense of progression, whether though finding new tools and weapons, opening new paths, or discovering hidden paths that were there all along. Fighting enemies and bosses is challenging, but not insurmountable. It does get kinda frustrating in the back half, especially the last boss. The built-in accessibility options make it much more tolerable.

All of this is tied together by TUNIC's central gimmick, an in-game manual pieced together page by page. Most of it is written in a script you cannot read, and it leaves you just enough information to intuit what needs to be done, but forces you to dig deeper if you want to learn the truth: TUNIC, the puzzle game, is a masterstroke. Much like all of those hidden paths and shortcuts, all of the information you need is placed in front of you even if you don't realize it. Decoding the cipher text, and understanding the meaning of the Holy Cross and the Golden Path (not even solving the puzzle, just realizing what the puzzle actually is), was the most satisfying thing I've done in a game in years.

TOEM

Some games are memorable for a particularly hard challenge, or a compelling narrative, or a perfectly crafted setpiece level. Some games are memorable because they're just really pleasant. No stress, no time limits, just vibes. Everything about this game puts a huge grin on my face — the music, the characters, all the places to explore and secrets to find and puzzles to solve. A week, a month, a year from now, I'll have a stray thought about TOEM, and my day will be a little brighter because of it.

I like this game a lot, y'all. Very much looking forward to the sequel whenever that comes out. Take a picture, it'll last longer.

(Honorable mentions from the archives: Storyteller, A Little to the Left, Freshly Frosted, Wavetale, Islets, Arranger)

Here Comes Niko!

While we're on the subject of pleasant games, this is another one I've been meaning to play for a while, and another one I enjoyed a fair amount. Looking back, TOEM and Niko! have a lot in common — vibe-centric games with 2D characters running around in a carefully crafted 3D world, carried by a charming aesthetic and cast of characters, with a core loop of travelling from town to town and doing various small tasks to make friends and help people out. The biggest differences are the genres (photography puzzle versus collect-a-thon platformer), the color scheme (minimalist and monochrome versus bright pastel)… and one more key detail.

I knew most of what to expect when I started, the soundtrack and the aesthetic and the platforming, but knew next to nothing about the story, which caught me off guard. Early on it hits you with a moment of "…oh," that lingers throughout the game as you learn more about what the protagonist is actually trying to accomplish. (At some point I want to write up a comparison of the narratives of Niko! and A Short Hike, but it'd be an entire essay in itself so I'll spare you the details.) I didn't go into Here Comes Niko! looking for pathos, but that's what it gave me and I think it was a better experience because of that. Kudos.

(Honorable mentions from the "I'll get around to this one eventually" list, that I got around to eventually: Going Under, Creature in the Well, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap, Sonic Mania, What Remains of Edith Finch, RiME)

Anthology of the Killer

The best game of 2024. Like, unironically.

This comes from another developer (thecatamites) that I've been vaguely aware of as someone who makes interesting niche art projects, but only really knew about secondhand from other people, which was still enough to put it on my radar. And now, I cannot get this goddamn thing out of my head. It burrowed in months ago and has lived there rent-free ever since. At some point I need to introduce my siblings to this game because I just need to talk to somebody about it.

Anthology of the Killer is a lot of things. It's a collection of nine short narrative games that have been released over the past few years. It's surrealist horror comedy, and dances between all of those aspects whenever it pleases. It's a satirical take on history and modernity and art. It's a story about death cults and pop music fads. It's about just trying to get by even as the world around you gets stranger and more violent, or as you realize that maybe it already was. It's crude and bloody, and gets away with it by looking like it was drawn in MS Paint. It's a game where I can say something like "Heart is probably the best overall, but Flesh is underrated" and not sound like I'm losing my mind. It's the most well-written game I've experienced this year, and possibly any year.

"Aren't the stars pretty? Isn't it a nice night? Do you think the world is basically good or basically bad?" "Man, I just work here."

Who knows. Maybe 2025 will be better. Just gonna keep spinning the wheels for a while, see if it gets me anywhere. See y'all next year.

#tunic game #toem #anthology of the killer #here comes niko #abzû #dr robotnik's ring racers #patrick's parabox #epigraph game #splatoon 3 side order #pikmin #bryan writes about games

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