My Favourite Games of 2024: #10–6
What’s this? I’m finally writing something here that isn’t a very introspective, personal thinkpiece? Honestly, I’m very proud of the other pieces I’ve published on this blog, but my original intent for this blog was to be a mix of those kinds of posts, as well as more regular musings about things I love and enjoy (surprise surprise, a lot of that involves video games). So you can still expect the sporadic, more serious post here, but I do very much have the goal of using this blog far more in 2025. Take it as a New Years’ Resolution, I guess — although dear god do I hate that term.
So what better way to kick that intent off than looking back at 2024, and some of the my favourite games that came out across the whole year. Call it a Game of the Year list, if you must. I get the vibe those are popular or something. Oh, and this will be exclusive to games that were released in 2024 — I’ll probably do a post about the ones that weren’t at some point, as there were a surprising amount of those for me in the past year.
First up, some honorable mentions that didn’t make this list for one reason or another. Remarkably, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 nearly squeezed into this list for me, despite me never being a fan of the series, and this being the first ever CoD campaign I completed. Alas, it was a surprisingly fun romp, but I just couldn’t put it on here at the expense of some stuff that ultimately left more of a lasting impact for me. There’s also two massive RPGs that I did not get to put enough time into: Metaphor: ReFantazio and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Ironically, it was for the same reason that I didn’t get very far into either — I spent the majority of the final few months of the year playing through the entire Dragon Age franchise from the beginning, for the first time. That’s a whole other post in itself, but naturally meant I only got to Veilguard in recent weeks, and have barely scratched the surface of it. Similarly, I’ve been leaving Metaphor for after my Dragon Age journey, when I feel I can really get stuck into it. Similar story with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, which I simply did not get far enough through, but immensely enjoyed what I did play. And finally, shoutout to Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, a truly weird, seemingly out-of-time new release out of Capcom, which I enjoyed dabbling in back when it first came out, but never truly sunk my teeth into.
10. Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail
“Tell me, my friend. Have you ever wished to be reunited with someone who has passed away? I have. I do. But I think… Above all else, I wish that they had lived. If only for one more day. One more day… A joyous one, if I could choose.”
So this entry may be cheating slightly, as it’s mainly here because Final Fantasy XIV took over a very significant portion of my 2024 gaming year. But hey, it’s my list and I can do what I want. Back in February, I got started on A Realm Reborn, and by the end of July, I had seen to completion the emotional rollercoaster of Endwalker, having truly fallen in love with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, and the wonderfully dense and detailed world created by Yoshi-P and his team. I have so much more to say about that journey (again, perhaps content for another blog one day), but suffice to say that Dawntrail had big shoes to fill.
Dawntrail itself has ultimately had a mixed reception. Some of that is down to the insincere and incessant ramblings of Gamers️™ who haven’t left their house in 30 years, but there are also some very legitimate criticisms out there. The Scions themselves go from being at the absolute forefront of the narrative for over 10 years, to largely ancillary companions for an entirely new cast. For many, the story lacked the emotional weight or investment garnered by the likes of Shadowbringers and Endwalker. On that particular criticism, I’d posit that Dawntrail was doomed to fail — it simply could never compare to what preceded it, expansions concluding a saga that had been built towards since the game’s inception.
But here’s the thing — I loved it. Is it the best Final Fantasy XIV expansion? As someone who still has each of them very fresh in my mind, absolutely not. But given the pedigree of those previous expansions, I don’t think it needed to be. It took us on an all-new adventure to distant horizons of Etheirys, inspired by the many facets of contemporary America, alongside the gorgeous, rich architecture of Mesoamerica. Not only were these new environments visually stunning, but they were complemented by some of the best ambient zone music in the game to date. Narratively, it juggled an overwhelming amount of new characters and threads, and while it dropped the ball in some areas, it still impressed me in its ability to tell deeply existential and meaningful stories, both on a minor and major scale.
And that’s not even mentioning where the expansion truly shined — its combat. Dawntrail is by far and away the best expansion when it comes to the combat challenges on offer. Hell, even the narrative solo duties were fantastic. But all three of its story Trials were fantastic (Valigarmanda being my personal favourite), and delivered potentially my favourite two dungeons of all time, in Vanguard and Tender Valley. And both the Arcadion raid series and the recently released Jeuno Alliance raid are not only fantastically themed, but also ubiquitously engaging and exciting to run — for the first time, as well as on subsequent re-clears. This is all expertly weaved in amongst a collection of updated, level 100 kits for each job, that almost all offer meaningful additions to already established rotations. I could go on about so many more specific details of Dawntrail’s combat experience, and while I acknowledge it’s not perfect (sorry Healer mains), it’s damn near close for me.
9. Helldivers II
“Incoming friendly fire! Dodge…or don’t. Your call.”
Realistically, I probably don’t have too much more to add on this than you would have already heard from many, many others, considering the absolute juggernaut that Helldivers II was at the start of 2024. The Starship Troopers-inspired 3rd person shooter absolutely took the world by storm in February, peaking at over 458,000 concurrents on Steam alone. And that number doesn’t even include PlayStation players, which I’d hazard a guess in saying were probably even larger, given the marketing push from publisher Sony. It was undoubtedly a bigger success than developer Arrowhead would have ever imagined, and I’m stoked for them.
For a lot of people, Helldivers II will be even higher on this list, and I don’t blame them. There’s so much to love here — the game oozes with expertly written military satire, which is weaved into literally every aspect of the game; from its menus, to the in-game store, to the simple fact that every redeployment you use is canonically just a brand new soldier dropping in to replace the old one. I’m sure it will spawn an academic paper or two in the future, if it hasn’t already. The fact that Arrowhead has managed to theme its external communications around the game as if they were in-universe is simply the cherry on top. It also has one of the most interesting, and potentially most engaging, live-service models of any game in that space, with a DnD-like Game Master pushing in-game updates depending upon player progress, but with the ultimate authority to override that progress for the sake of the overall narrative. It’s been a delight to see many continue with the game across the year, and that narrative evolve, to the point where they’ve now introduced their first new enemy race, the Illuminate, just under a month ago.
For me, Helldivers II was nothing more than a single month of pure joy. Naturally, I dropped off for other games (see: above), and when I tried to come back for the latest update, I realised that I’d had my time with the game already. But boy, was it the best of times. The shouts of exasperation, jubilation and then exasperation all over again as we mowed through innumerable bug nests and automaton factories, only to have the mission ruined by an errant bullet from one of your own turrets. The epic dives across the helipad to achieve the unlikeliest of extractions. Forgetting to tell my friend that I called in a 500kg bomb and seeing the inevitable chaos that ensued. The DDR-style stratagem inputs that I’m sure are responsible for thousands of swear words muttered across the world. So while my short summer fling with Helldivers didn’t blossom into anything long-term, it’s one I look upon with nothing but fondness.
8. Destiny 2: The Final Shape
“You’re my favorite. Don’t ever forget that.”
If I’d been writing this halfway through the year, The Final Shape would genuinely be featuring in the top three of this list. The fact it’s been knocked down so far was actually a surprise to me, but that should hold nothing against the quality of this expansion. For those of you that know me, Destiny 2 had been my ‘lifestyle’ game of choice for a few years now, but early into 2024 enthusiasm against me and my friendship group was inevitably waning. Waning so far, in fact, that Final Fantasy XIV took over that ‘lifestyle’ spot for a few of us. Destiny 2 had a rough year post-Lightfall, scrambling to make up for the shortcomings of one of its weaker expansions, in the midst of external pressures from new owner Sony, and the inevitable layoffs that followed. Player sentiment was at an all-time low, and the general vibe was that it would be near impossible for The Final Shape to deliver the fitting finale to a tumultuous, yet ultimately much beloved, 10-year story saga.
And yet somehow, against all odds, it did just that. In fact, it went above and beyond what many expected. For many, it is now their favourite Destiny 2 expansion ever, which makes the game’s, and Bungie’s, demise in the months since even more tragic. There’ll be time more to dwell on that, unfortunately, but for the sake of this list, I just want to focus on what an incredible accomplishment The Final Shape actually was.
Story-wise, it landed a ship that was missing a landing gear and many would argue barely survived take-off in the first place. The Witness, whilst a personal favourite character of mine, seemed to be an unwieldy choice for the final, Big Bad villain of the whole Light & Darkness saga. It didn’t have the long-term history of characters like Savathûn, and ultimately felt more like a nebulous concept than anything with an actual concrete personality. And yet over the course of The Final Shape’s eight missions, as well as the raid, we came to know The Witness on a much more personal level, uncovering a much more layered, nuanced character with its own feelings and doubts (quite literally embodied by the numerous Dissenters). And yet whenever questioned on these feelings, The Final Shape’s Witness is scathing and uncompromising in its deconstruction of not only the characters in-game, but the player themselves. It finally felt like a truly menacing character. And whilst Crow, Zavala and Ikora all had their starring moments in the narrative, we can’t act like the decision to bring back Cayde-6, once more voiced by Nathan Fillion, wasn’t an absolutely vital one to this story’s success. The fan favourite character wasthe emotional heartbeat of yet another of Destiny’s best stories, and ensured that the story reached its most satisfying conclusion. It could’ve felt like a cash grab pulling at our nostalgia — really, the whole expansion could’ve — and yet his return was treated with an impressive respect and reverance.
When it came to the environments and world design, an area in which Destiny has always excelled, this was that team at its absolute best. The Pale Heart location remixed, deconstructed and reconstructed some of Destiny’s historic locations into its own, Escher-esque conglomeration befitting of The Witness’ effect on that Big Orb in the Sky. A style that could have easily been seen as messy was expertly executed, and in some of its most surreal moments, I truly believe Final Shape’s environments are unparalleled across the gaming space. And this was all carried across into the raid, which was an absolute all-timer.
The whole raid, Salvation’s Edge, was a remarkable achievement of design, but it was the fourth encounter, Verity, that truly stands above the rest. Ludonarrative dissonance is one of those phrases that gets thrown around a lot in academic (and pseudoacademic) gaming spaces, and Destiny is very much guilty of it at certain times. But dare I say, Verity is possible one of the most spectacular examples of ludonarrative resonance we may ever see in a first-person game like this. Unpack its weird, shape-changing gameplay just a little bit and you’ll find an ingenious logic behind it all. To dumb it down to its basest elements, I personally feel like this encounter is the embodiment of the statement “Guardians make their own fate” that we’ve been hearing since the very beginning of Destiny. Not only are we ‘re-shaping’ the 3D shapes we are given at the start of the encounter by the Witness, but we also reject his denial of our progress in the Ghost mechanic, by banding together with our teammates to bring each other back from beyond the grave, despite The Witness’ best effort to put us there. I’m not doing it justice here, to be honest, and it’s a very surface-level examination of what I believe is a much deeper topic, but suffice to say, it’s incredible. The rest of the raid is superb, sure, and the final boss arguably one of the series’ best. But it is Verity that makes it truly special, and the way that the solution to its puzzle just clicks once you understand it is something I will never forget.
The future of Destiny may be fraught and uncertain, due to the incompetence of the people in charge of it. Which just makes it all the more incredible that The Final Shape is so damn good, and I hope we never forget that, whatever the future may hold for the series.
7. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
“Knowing that the people we love aren’t really gone? It doesn’t make it any easier to let them go.”
Similarly to Final Shape, at one point this year, this was by far and away my Game of the Year. On another day, it still might as well be. As you can tell at this point, Final Fantasy played a big role in my year, and that was thanks in no small part to this game as well. When I reflect on why it’s slipped to this spot on the list, I think I reflect on the fact that it took so many swings and maybe didn’t quite land as many of them as I would’ve liked. But ultimately, once again, I don’t want to dwell on that, as this is a list about celebrating games, and I still believe that this game is nothing short of a phenomenal achievement in big-budget game making.
Its narrative is simultaneously is strongest and weakest part. On the strong side, the cast of Final Fantasy VII remains nigh-unparalleled amongst decades of gaming history. And the interwoven dynamics of those characters from the original game is only expanded upon by the extra bandwidth they’re given in Rebirth. Even where story threads existed in the original game, they’re more often than not expanded upon by longer sequences spent with the relevant characters, ensuring that when the emotional punch-line hits, it hits as hard as possible — a particular shoutout in this area has to go to Red XIII’s expanded sequence in Cloud Canyon. Where Remake was Cloud’s game, Rebirth is unapologetically Aerith’s. She may not be the main playable character, but (understandably if you know where Rebirth ends) the entire game is focused around her arc as a character, after the revelations at the end of Remake. On a macro level, I’m still not entirely sure that arc works. That’s where the ‘weakest’ comment comes in — Rebirth’s story ultimately feels like an unfinished one, in a way Remake didn’t. We won’t truly know where this story stands until the final part of the trilogy. Zack’s presence feels like nothing more than one huge tease, particularly for Crisis Core fans. But once again, on a micro, inter-personal level, Aerith is the star of Rebirth. Her one-on-one interactions with Cloud in particular borderline converted me from #TeamTifa to #TeamAerith, and so much of it is down to a performance from Briana White that I feel may go criminally underappreciated in the years to come.
And on a gameplay front, Rebirth is the definition of excess. And yet somehow, I’d say that about 90% of it absolutely works for me. Initially, the Ubisoft-esque towers made me roll my eyes, but three zones in I had to commit to not 100%-ing future zones, for fear of never actually finishing the game at all. The Protorelic missions were a particular highlight, with an intriguing story thread throughout them all that made for a pleasant diversion from the often heavy, serious tone of the main plot. Queen’s Blood is absurdly good, and yes, better than Triple Triad. Even its surrounding questline is actually extremely interesting, rather than simply glorified set-dressing to the minigame itself.
With how much is actually packed into Rebirth, it would be easy for it collapse and fail underneath the weight of it all. And yet for every minigame or side mission that didn’t work, there were at least three or four others that did. That’s an incredibly impressive achievement in game direction for a game of this size, let alone one in a series that means so much to so many. All this stands without mentioning the combat in Rebirth, which iterates upon the fantastic ATB-based system of Remake and somehow makes it better, with the introduction of Synergy moves between party membrs adding an extra dynamic to battles that makes party balance more important than ever.
So how does Square Enix land this ship with Part 3? I don’t really know, but at this point, with how good Rebirth and Remake have been, I think they’ve more than earned my trust.
6. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
“Watch out for traps, they don’t care much for duty.”
Funnily enough, I had to decide between two Metroidvania games for #5 and #6 on this list. What could possibly beat one of the most critically lauded games in the genre this year? Well, you’ll have to read the next post to find out. In the business, that’s what they call a hook.
But seriously, I’m a sucker for a 2D Metroidvania — they’re my bread and butter, even though miraculously, I’ve never actually finished Hollow Knight… maybe 2025 is the year? Anyway, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has truly set a new standard for the genre going forward. It has slick combat, with an extremely solid parry to boot — as a parry appreciator, it’s in the upper echelon for sure. It’s got some of the best boss fights in the genre, too. But it’s in the ability progression and exploration that this game truly is the best in class. Yes, it’s mostly standard Metroidvania fare — go to a zone, see areas you can’t reach, go acquire a new ability, come back later. And yet it’s executed so well and seamlessly in The Lost Crown that I rarely, if ever, felt myself frustrated knowing I’d have to backtrack. The traversal is incredibly satisfying, so returning through previous zones never felt like the chore it often does. I don’t think this game is ever doing anything too revolutionary when it comes to the genre — well, except for the in-game screenshot feature that allows you to mark places on the map with an image. That simply has to be in every one of these games going forward. And yet I still find myself hoping that developers use it as a template for how to design a great Metroidvania game in the years to come. Even more so, because unfortunately Ubisoft disbanded the dev team behind it, citing an underwhelming sales outcome that was nothing but a self-inflicted mess of marketing and platform exclusivity.
Honestly, of all the games I’ve talked about here, I probably have the least to say about The Lost Crown, which may seem weird considering it’s ahead of all these other games. Its story and characters are forgettable at best, and the art style, while it has its moments, didn’t really land for me as much as I hoped. And yet, it’s here because it’s just an absurdly fun video game. It’s a video-game ass video game. You won’t get come out of it in a state of emotional introspection, but you will come out of it with a grin on your face. And sometimes, that’s all a video game needs to be.
Well, that was longer than I anticipated. I’m glad I pre-emptively decided to split this piece in two — honestly, I maybe should’ve even done three. But I hope it was an enjoyable read nonetheless, and I’ll see you for the top 5 in a couple of days time!
