Hello everyone! Would you like to know what my very favorite video game content is? It's Game of the Year discussions! Every December, I am CONSUMED by podcasts and articles about the best games of the year. I go “yay” when I see a game I liked gets mentioned. I go “boo” when a game I disliked gets mentioned.
It's real “normal person” shit.
But having to wait until December is lame. That's so far away, man! So today I will be offering up to you the five best games I have played in this, the first Fiscal Quarter of our Lord 2024. They are in alphabetical order so as not to give hints to my order for my future full list of Top Games of 2024.
Alan Wake 2
HOO BOY, Alan Wake 2 is one of the best games I've ever played. Everything about it connected with me on a level that few games have. I was drawn into and consumed by the narrative and story it was telling. The way the game feeds and hints at story beats to the player throughout the course of the game is phenomenal. Remedy treats the players as smart and deductive instead of like a baby needing to be fed.
The many areas of the Dark Place and in and around Bright Falls are a joy to explore every nook and cranny of. New protagonist Saga Anderson is an absolute badass. The setups for the greater Remedy Connected Universe are mouth watering and I will be certainly playing both future DLCs and every game Remedy releases from here on out.
Balatro
Balatro is a deck-building roguelike but the twist is that it's just normal playing cards and poker hands. There are no enemies to defeat and no rooms to explore. It is literally just playing poker hands. What could have been a drastically boring game somehow just WORKS.
The developers implemented a clever Joker system that provides dozens, if not hundreds, of modifiers for your cards and decks. Balatro does that thing that all good roguelikes do where you can stumble upon modifiers and cards that completely break the game in the best possible way.
Helldivers 2
FREEDOM. DEMOCRACY. SUPER EARTH.
Helldivers 2 is far and away my most unexpected hit game. In short, Helldivers 2 is a game in which hundreds of thousands of players go onto planets in groups of 4 in real time to defeat millions of bugs and/or robots to further the interests of Super Earth. The game offers dozens of weapons and abilities to mess around with. It's like a giant galaxy sized sandbox where you can just fuck around with a bunch of overpowered weapons.
The best feature of the game is surprisingly the community. Everyone is in on the joke. Everyone is roleplaying. The developers themselves are in on the joke and roleplaying. If you want to be a part of the biggest, dumbest galaxy spanning campaign, Helldivers 2 is the game for you.
Retro Bowl College
Retro Bowl College is an SNES-Styled college football franchise game for phones. With the EA Sports NCAA Football series making its triumphant return after a decade away, I've had the itch to play virtual college football and Retro Bowl College has scratched that itch.
You ONLY play on offense, but what's there is surprisingly fun to play on a touch screen. You can actually lead your receivers with passes, or juke out defenders when running. The in-between game stuff like recruiting and maintaining player happiness and GPA is FINE if not unremarkable. The best part of the game is the complete lack of microtransactions. It's just straight, pure college football goodness.
Tales of Arise
Oh wait, no THIS game is my most unexpected hit of the year. I don't play many JRPGs at all, but Tales of Arise has hooked me HARD.
The real time combat is surprisingly fun to play even though it is impressively dense. Building combos and balancing the party's abilities to use at the right time makes combat enthralling. The story has been a pleasant surprise as well. What starts as a typical “get a group together to save the world” has clever twists and story beats every step of the way. I don't want to say it “subverts expectations” because I have few JRPG experiences to compare it to, but I'm really loving what this game is doing. I'll absolutely be looking forward to whatever the next Tales game is.
