Despite everything, we still have video games. How about that? We have some special features on today's list, but first, the traditional rundown. Starting with...

10. Granblue Fantasy: Relink

You may not know the story of Granblue already... But trust me, you do. A young boy or girl, through an act of selflessness, happenstance, or both, gets special powers and is charged to save the world. Sometimes they gotta master the elements, sometimes they gotta find the seven relics. In the case of Granblue, we got themed elemental dragons to tame. It’s a dated formula for fantasy stories, but Granblue is now a ten year old franchise, so I’m willing to cut it some slack.

While I’ve never been a huge fan of the mobile game itself, the 2020 fighting game took the ninth spot on my list. Since then I thought it would be neat to play a fantasy adventure set in the world without all the gacha game nonsense, and this year, we finally got it. Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a classic JRPG experience, where you and your campy friends explore the world with bombastic abilities, a steady progression of levels, and the power of friendship. All very standard fantasy adventure stuff with an anime flair. It's all well executed, with impressive enviornments, a decent combat system, and an outrageous number of abilities to unlock during the 40-and-some-odd-hour journey.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink doesn’t do anything to break the mold, but it executes on what it is perfectly. The cast is large and varied, with an eclectic array of personalities and skills. The visuals pop, the colors vibrant and stark everywhere you go. The settings and environments are varied enough to remain intriguing throughout too, taking you from snowcapped landscapes to lush forests. I’m especially relieved at the steady progression — at no point did I feel it was necessary to grind like crazy or farm materials to advance. Given what the mobile game is like, that feels like a miracle.

Wouldn’t you know it though, Cygames couldn’t help themselves and shoved all the gacha nonsense in the endgame anyway. If you really want to, you can run the final battles over and over again to craft stronger weapons. These then gear you up to take on tougher versions of boss battles, or tackle post-game content. This all takes place after the credits roll, thankfully, so you won’t be required to do it to see the full story play out... And the standard forty hour adventure is worth the price of admission alone.

9. Helldivers 2

Are you a fan of Starship Troopers? Me too. There are Starship Trooper games out there, but trust me, this is really the one you’ve been waiting for.

On a surface level Helldivers 2 is nearly identical to the first one, just from a different perspective and with better polish — and yet, it’s amazing how far two simple changes go. The immediacy of an over-the-shoulder perspective heightens the danger, and also allows the team at Arrowhead to create enemies with more specific weaknesses than just “glowing spot on the back”. Likewise, the improved fidelity turns what used to be a casual, low-stakes experience into mutant bug vietnam. The first time you call in an airstrike, it is terrifying and incredible.

Right off the bat, Helldivers 2 sucked me in with its barely veiled nationalistic satire. The tutorial fills you with bravado, announces you're the best Helldiver the world’s ever seen... And then you see a whole field of other Helldivers getting the exact same treatment, all getting told their special, talented soldiers. Beautiful.

From there, it’s time to “liberate” other alien planets with your wide array of firearms, orbital strikes, and turrets. While you can do this alone, Helldivers 2 is absolutely meant to be a squad-based affair. Each Helldiver only has room for so much gear, so having a well-rounded squad fills gaps in the mission arsenal. The various enemy types force a need for wide variety; some are only vulnerable to explosions, others need precise shots to strike weak points. Hopefully you all brought the right tools for the job.

The real winner here though, is the ongoing support from Arrowhead. Everything happening in Helldivers 2 is part of a global conflict, and every successful mission advances the campaign for all Helldivers. This also means a constant addition of new unlockable weapons, gadgets, and stratagems. While all these things are presented like a battle pass, I appreciate how none of these "battle passes" ever expire. No matter when you jump into Helldivers, you can start unlocking gadgets and weapons on the page of your choosing. No forced scarcity, no scary timers artibtrarily removing things from a storefront.

If you’re looking to Helldive with a group of friends, you can’t go wrong with this one.

8. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Easily the most tragic title on the list, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown by Ubisoft Montpellier released early 2024... And to put it bluntly, no one bought it. The term “poor sales figures” defined every Ubisoft release this year, and Lost Crown was the canary in the coal mine. I’m here to say those sales figures are not emblematic of Lost Crown’s quality — it is the best Metroidvania style game to come out all year.

While it certainly fits the Metroidvania mold, Lost Crown layers on strong artistic presentation and key mechanical twists to make the experience special. The first thing I must mention is the memory shards, because they’re the kind of thing that makes you go, “how has no one thought of this before?” Nothing is more quintessential to the Metroidvania experience than coming across an unscalable gap or oddly colored door and knowing one day, you’ll have to venture back with a new gadget to advance. Memory shards allow you to snap a screenshot of the area in question and refer to it on your map later, which in any game heavy on backtracking, is an absolute godsend. This concept alone saved me much aggravation.

The combat is more robust than one would usually expect from a simple Metroidvania too, lying somewhere between the simplicity of an arcade brawler and a dense action game like Devil May Cry. Even before you get any fancy weapons or time magic, Sargon can angle his attacks up or down to get around an enemy’s guard, or even launch them high to render them helpless. All your new techniques have both traversal and combat applications, which makes each one doubly impactful on your journey.

What really puts Lost Crown on the list is the strong art direction. The character designs, cinematics, and stellar combat flourishes have an exceptional style. The backgrounds and environments are equally impressive, as sections of the citadel remain suspended in time, as if frozen mid-collapse. It makes for both a unique setting, and a handy narrative device to justify jumping around floating platforms.

Given the sales reception it’s easy to dismiss Lost Crown, but make no mistake, this is a quality release otherwise overlooked in an abysmal year for Ubisoft.

7. Metal Slug Tactics

This was, perhaps, my most hotly anticipated title last year... And the year before that. It took quite some time for Metal Slug Tactics to finally see the light of day. After several delays and radio silence I started to get nervous, but it's finally here and the wait was worth it.

Metal Slug has struggled to find footing since the end of the arcade era. It was the ultimate coin-munching, side-scrolling shooter, the definitive title found in every bowling alley and laundromat. But how do you adapt a fast-paced run-and-gun series where the difficulty lied in using the least amount of quarters into a modern strategy game?

Leikir Studio took the run-and-gun part literally, and built the whole game around it. Moving the full distance each turn rewards the player with armor to reduce damage and an equal amount of points to execute special moves. On the flip side, standing still makes you a sitting duck, liable to die in a single hit from anything. The stages themselves do an excellent job getting this message across as they usher you towards a single direction, and focus more on accomplishing a specific task over killing every enemy on the screen.

The real joy in Metal Slug Tactics comes from its roguelike formula. Each time a character levels, they take a new perk or ability. These perks often reward the merc in question with additional actions or movements when certain conditions are met. By the end of your run it’s quite possible to take out every enemy in a single turn from optimal, economical use, activating perks over and over again in an endless murder loop.

There’s definitely a learning curve here, as Metal Slug Tactics can’t really be played like similar games of its ilk. Hunkering down in an advantageous tactical position is actually bad strategy here. Once you get over that hump, it rewards your decision making in spades.

6. 1000xResist

The most narrative-driven entry on the list, 1000xResist takes place in a world beyond culture and identity. Humanity as we know it has gone extinct after the arrival of an alien race known as The Occupants. With them came an illness that caused humans to expel water through their eyes until death. One girl, Iris, mysteriously immune to this starborn disease, represents all that remains of us. After many years of cloning, The Allmother, the progenitor of them all, commands a society of her many selves. Years after our extinction generations of her clones live on, each serving a rather specifically named function in society.

The game opens halfway through the story, as the main character, Watcher, cuts down The Allmother. From there, you’ll return to the day Sister Blue was made the new Watcher and see what led to matricide.

There’s much I could say about the story of 1000xResist (and make no mistake, story is the only reason to pick this one up; there is no other mechanic to speak of besides some light platforming) but to me, its real power is in the subtext. The Allmother was once known as Iris Kwan, an immigrant from Hong Kong. Her identity and background is core to understanding who she was. However, by the time you reach the game’s present, every concept of a nation or background is stripped away, and all that remains is the Allmother and her clones. Humanity has homogenized into only a single woman, and the mere idea of other cultures, countries, identities, is all foreign to the Allmother’s many selves. It’s all in service of a story that has something to say about immigration and assimilation, and it does it all with an unbelievable level of nuance. So much so, I was stunned with 1000xResist’s subject matter from start to finish.

It’s an absolutely gripping tale with something poignant to say about the purpose of resistance and rebellion.

5. Unicorn Overlord

Vanillaware continues to be one of the most impressive small studios out there. Since their inception in 2002, Vanillaware’s employee count has never crossed the fifty person mark. You can feel the human, personal touch in every title, down to the hand-crafted detail in every art asset, and Unicorn Overlord is no exception.

Unicorn Overlord marks Vanillaware’s return to fantasy. The plot is something right out of Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics — Alain, a valiant knight from a fallen nation, must build a rebellious army against a tyrannical ruler, one liberated village at a time. In most J-RPGS, it’s very common to gather a new recruit or party member in each region, slowly building your little band of heroes. Typically, you end the game with six-to-ten weirdos ready to journey to the end. Unicorn Overlord took that formula as a challenge and said “what if that happened after every fight?”

By the end of chapter 4, you will wonder how you’re possibly supposed to manage so many units. By chapter 14, you’ll stop caring and realize there’s no end to the influx. The good news is unlike other J-RPGs, your party size isn’t limited to four or five of your cartoony friends — instead, you’ll assemble them into self-contained units and order them about the battlefield. The amount of customization here is off the charts. You can fine tune your units positioning and their internal logic on when to perform certain actions. As you advance, you’ll be able to put six people into a single configuration, and then command multiple of these units on the battlefield at once.

The real seller here though, is personality. Vanillaware’s hand-crafted artwork, from the environments to the character portraits, is exceptional throughout. Each unit has their own storyline to see play out, and the game is full of Fire Emblem-style support conversations between your eclectic cast. Their personalities shine through in writing, voice acting, and artistic presentation. With so many characters sharing the spotlight each of their stories is more of a small vignette than a full individual tale, but they do a good job portraying motivations, goals, and flaws.

If getting into the nitty gritty of a unit’s internal logic or the thought of managing many units on a field sounds overwhelming, I wouldn’t recommend Unicorn Overlord. For everyone else, it’s an easy sell on a game of the year list.

4. Astro Bot

Astro Bot is an absolute delight.

If you own a PlayStation 5, you likely played Astro's Playroom once, enjoyed the surprisingly robust tech demo, and moved on. At no point did I expect Astro Bot to get a full game, let alone be in contention for game of the year. And yet here we are, with a fully realized tech demo taking the fourth spot.

Astro Bot is the first game I’ve played since Ape Escape to use every part of a PlayStation controller. The speakers, vibrations, gyroscopes, and even the microphone all get used to varying degrees, and while this led to frustration at least once, it's otherwise successful at cranking up the immersion. Part of this comes from the presentation, where Astro quite literally flies around on a big Dualsense. Other than that, Astro Bot uses a wide variety of devices each stage that make great use of all features, be it the haptic feedback or even blowing into a microphone. Most of the time I found this more charming than irritating... Most of the time.

I am immensely impressed that despite the presence of thematic galaxies, every single stage within feels profoundly unique. There are few shared assets (aside from some thematically consistent bonus stages), and while the game reuses the various gadgets Astro Bot acquires, it finds new ways to iterate upon them and increase the challenge. In a rather... unexpected and strange comparison, Astro Bot solved one of my major complaints about Balan Wonderworld, in that these ideas compound on themselves as the game goes on instead of getting discarded.

This is all in service of celebrating PlayStation’s vast history. Everyone’s here, from easily recognizable figures like Kratos and Nathan Drake, to more obscure figures like Vib-Ribbon or Arc The Lad. Every galaxy ends with one world dedicated entirely to a PlayStation classic, which makes for a fun referential capstone to each zone.

Presentation and execution is where Team ASOBI really shined. Team ASOBI is not shy about showing off their technical prowess; many stages feature impressive fluid dynamics, massive landmarks or creatures, and a zillion tiny pieces of detritus to flick around. There’s also an impressive command of sightlines and scale, which ensures every world hides its most impressive set piece or mechanical twist until you stumble into it yourself.

Astro Bot captures all the magic of a Disneyland Dark Ride in every stage.

3. Silent Hill 2

I won’t lie to you — I am shocked this rated so highly.

The Silent Hill franchise already has a tragic reputation when it comes to remasters, and the initial trailers for this one did not impress. Take into account how Bloober Team’s previous games were more unintentionally funny than scary, and well... My expectations were so low, there was no pit deep enough for James to dive into.

Sometimes, it’s really nice to be wrong.

Silent Hill 2 (2024) captured the magic of the original game and then some.

By some miracle, Bloober Team managed to preserve the disconnected, dreamlike feeling inherent to the series. All the doomed characters assembled in this town usher from one tortured environment to the next, seeing impossible things and walking impossible routes to get there. Silent Hill follows the same non-euclidean route, falling down and folding back on itself. It all leads to an intentionally obtuse labyrinth, one which begins with a semblance of logic but eventually devolves into nonsensical architecture. It’s exactly as mystfying as it needs to be.

Speaking of obtuse design, the remake retains the same panicked, fussy swings and gunplay that exemplify what it would be like to be a normal dude attacking monsters. James doesn’t have any strong form — every swing is a wild haymaker with all his force behind the blow, and the game sells every hit with satisfying thunks and big screen shakes. Somehow, Bloober succeeded in making this style of combat enjoyable to play, definitely more so than the original.

I especially feel a need to call out the boss fights. Each one filled me with absolute dread, and even though I’d played the original, the remake managed to elevate every iconic encounter to new heights. The Abstract Daddy sequence made me take a breather to recover — both from shear terror, and from how the new execution better portrays Angela's traumatic past.

This all culminates in a powerful, haunting experience, one just as effective as its progenitor twenty years ago. It is, without a doubt, the strongest horror game to come out all year.

2. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

Leaving Midgar again twenty years later felt like coming home.

The first time I stepped onto the Kalm streets, now full of life and color, I nearly dropped the controller. When you observe the surroundings, the attention to detail is absolutely staggering. Every shop is immaculately crafted, every flower meticulously placed. I remember thinking “there’s no way Square Enix can keep this up,” and yet every city elicited the same response. Junon, Nibelheim, even the hovel under Junon. I wanted to live there, even for just a moment. I could imagine the day to day happenings in every city, the common sounds and smells. And somehow this continued, unabated, for eighty hours.

None of this would matter, of course, if the cast of characters inhabiting the world fell flat, but the performances and presentation are exceptional. Much has been said, and deservedly so, about Britt Baron, Brianna White, and Cody Christian (who play Tifa, Aerith, and Cloud respectively), but I have to set my highest praise on two others in Rebirth. Suzie Yeung as Yuffie perfectly embodies the brazen, egotistical gremlin, so much so I can hardly imagine anyone else playing the part. This is, I think, one of the harder performances to get right. It would’ve been quite easy for Yuffie to become an absolute cringe demon if not reigned in, and Suzie finds the sweet spot.

As for the other, John Eric Bentley as Barret gets a broader range in Rebirth than he had in Remake, as most of Barret's personal trials and tribulations happen here. Bentley not only crushes the more melodramatic moments on the low end, but sells the comedic beats as well. There are at least three major sections of Rebirth where Bentley’s performance had to stand alone, and stand alone it did.

Perhaps the greatest adjustment from the original is the increased focus on interpersonal connection. Cloud does very little alone now — any major event he once did solo, he’s now joined by members of the cast. In addition to giving these characters more to do, it provides more moments of connection. Cloud not only gets to know his little band of weirdos better, he also has more meaningful conversations and interactions with his found family. There’s a simplicity to the script I appreciated from start to finish, where nothing feels belabored. People say everything they need to in only a handful of words. Sometimes, they say enough with no words at all.

This increased focus on interpersonal connection translates to the gameplay as well. This time around, everyone gets an opportunity to play the lead and show off. Yuffie grapples around mountainsides, Aerith channels magic, and Red XIII scrambles along walls. Every character has a plethora of tag team combinations, called Syncronization Abilities, which pack a significant wallop. There’s more going on in their individual combat toolsets too, so much so that after 100 hours I still felt there was more to learn on everyone. The materia combinations become intoxicating; with a few simple steps any character becomes a powerhouse in their own right. While none of the main story felt particularly challenging until closer to the end, there’s plenty of bite to be found beyond the credits. There’s a whole plethora of challenging boss fights, and a hard mode waiting for real masochists.

Rebirth captured the original so well that I felt the same childlike wonder every step closer to Sephiroth. I’m eager to see what comes next as we finally close out this series.

1. Balatro

Never doubt the power of a simple, well-executed concept.

As I contemplated what game should take the top spot, I ran into a conundrum — most of the games I adored this year were remakes of beloved classics. Yes, the work done to bring them to life is substantial and impressive, yes, they are both mind blowing experiences in their own right... but both also had an existing framework to iterate upon. Even Astro Bot, while a nearly perfect game, has the entire history of PlayStation to draw upon in an endless gamut of references. So I asked myself, while I love these games, which game on my shortlist represents more of what I want to see in the industry?

And so, despite my reverence for all things narrative-driven, somehow we find ourselves here. A game made by a single person as a side project that somehow caught the attention of the entire world. Balatro is just that good.

Balatro, to put it simply, is roguelike poker. The goal is to make enough from a hand to advance to the next round, and the bar for each round gets higher and higher. By just playing normal poker you’re unlikely to get there, but fortunately, there’s a whole array of jokers to select that’ll help you break the rules. Want diamonds to count twice? There’s a card for that. Ever been missing a single card in a straight? Don’t worry, there’s a joker to make that missing number irrelevant. Heck, ever wished you could just somehow make a meaningless hand good? There’s a card for that too.

The end result is maybe the most addicting solo card game in history. Every run, you’re adding new cards to your deck, buying jokers, swapping things around, all in an effort to create self-perpetual, chip-generating hands. And when it works, it feels great to see that number climb higher and higher.

Presentation takes this one the extra mile. Balatro could’ve simply told you your end result, but instead, it counts each card individually, then counts it again. And again, if your jokers will it. And then the count gets faster and faster, until the numbers light on fire. It’s simple, but it all sends the message loud and clear — you did it right. You’re on to something big. And, if you really go big, eventually the game has to start counting in exponents. It’s simple, quaint, and genius.

Mark my words: Balatro will be my generation’s version of Window's Solitare. You won’t be able to find a phone, tablet, or computer without it.

Other Awards

Rather than my usual final categories, I thought I’d bring back a Tilting at Pixels classic. Since The Game Awards amended their rules this year, I thought, why not do the same? Please enjoy some new categories I made up on the fly. Why? Because the world is on fire so I’ll make my own rules now.

Best Game I Didn’t Finish and Wanted to Give an Award to Anyway

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

I have two strict personal rules regarding the top ten list — I cannot include games still in early access, and I cannot include games I didn’t complete. This leads to a situation where at the end of the year, I often spend the holidays doubling back to titles I left in limbo. For games like 1000xResist and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, it’s feasible to sit down and close out a half-completed save in a few nights.

For Infinite Wealth? Absolutely not.

In fact, I would say you should never be like me when it comes to the Yakuza games. You’re best off taking your time, following whatever lead strikes your fancy. Some of the best content in is always off the beaten path, triggered by talking to some NPC hanging out on the beach. Or you can wander into an arcade and kill an hour or two playing Sega arcade games, but within the confines of Yakuza.

Even though it didn’t make the list, I needed to take a moment and say if you’ve ever thought about playing a Yakuza game, you couldn’t go wrong here. Ichiban is an excellent protagonist to carry the mantle, and these games continue to be absolutely packed with content. In terms of a dollar to time investment ratio, Infinite Wealth could keep you entertained for half a year.

Best Performances in an Otherwise Terrible Game

Alone in the Dark

How many goddamn times is Alone in the Dark going to get remade? Can we accept this lineage is cursed yet? While Silent Hill and Resident Evil live their best lives in the modern age, Alone in the Dark flails around, dies, then goes dormant for seven years until another ill-fated studio decides to try their hand at a reboot. This time the cross fell on Pieces Interactive, and it fell hard; so hard, the studio closed a month later. There’s moments of promise here and there, but overall, this is a very bog-standard horror game with simplistic puzzles and weak combat.

However, by some miracle, Pieces got David Harbour and Jodie Comer to play the roles of Edward Carnby and Emily Hartwood. Casting professional television or film actors in games doesn’t always translate to success mind you, but this time? This time, it worked out great. David and Jodie do an exceptional job at their respective roles, so much so it's all that kept me going. Suffering through another combat encounter where my bullets felt like paper was always worth David Harbour interrogating another cagey maid or chasing some far-fetched lead like a deranged madman.

Game That Feels Like it was Supposed to Come Out Ten Years Ago (in a Good Way)

Granblue Fantasy: Relink

Granblue Fantasy: Relink is a great single player RPG adventure, despite the fact many of its design decisions feel dated. You and your crew travel to different regions full of different elemental topography to explore, bash goblins, and save villages.There’s not a lot of depth or nuance here, but sometimes, that’s exactly what you want. Just a group of good people doing good things, killing cartoonishly evil bad guys and monsters to save innocent townspeople.

Its design sensibilities, from the levels to the dialogue, all feel like they’re from a breakout title on the Xbox 360 in 2007. But you know what? Those types of games don’t get made much these days, and if they do, they’re live service games full of gacha pulls and an endless material-gathering rat race. It was nice to play something that felt like a return to the past, before every game had to be an endless nightmare of battle passes and pull banners.

There’s something very funny about a long standing gacha franchise becoming a normal anime fantasy adventure.

Game That Feels Like it Was Supposed to Come Out Ten Years Ago (in a Bad Way)

Foamstars

Remember when Battle Royales first became huge, and everyone wanted a piece of the pie? PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Fortnite, Escape from Tarkov, and even Call of Duty were all in an arms race to be the new definitive Battle Royale. And, in an effort to all one-up each other, they all came out within a few years of each other.

You know what’s not a good idea? To try to get in on the trend a decade later.

It is painfully obvious Foamstars is trying to eat Splatoon’s lunch, but the thing is, Splatoon already finished its lunch. The bell rang, it's off to the next class, and Foamstars is there wondering where everyone went, holding an empty paper bag.

It’s entirely possible Foamstars is a fun game, or does something unique... But no one will ever know, because the people who play Splatoon have already been playing it for two console generations. Godspeed, brave pop star inspired Foamstar soldiers. All four of you. We will play you into the foamy deep.

Best Game No One Asked For

Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore

Nobody on the planet hoped and prayed for a spiritual successor to the legendarily bad Zelda CD-i games, but Seedy Eye Software made it anyway. You beautiful, crazy bastards. I could kiss you, every last one of you.

I really don’t know what to say except they succeeded. Arzette perfectly emulates the busted, jittery art style, so much so I damn near felt like I needed to check for a LaserDisc player. Bravo, I say. Bravo. The industry needs more of this unhinged energy.

Best Game Nobody Played

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

One of the stranger releases this year, Kunitsu-Gami is a mix of action, tower defense, and real-time strategy all deeply steeped in Japanese mythology.

While not the most polished, it's certainly one of the more original concepts Capcom put out this year. Your active combat has some tight controls and simple combos, but you’re also tasked simultaneously with commanding units about the field to ward off evil spirits and seal torii gates. The creature designs and visual presentation are really exceptional, especially for a budget title.

(Be honest, you expected Concord to be here, right? Alas, it’s impossible to say if it deserved this award, because it shut down before I could even play it for meme purposes.)

Best Remaster

Dead Rising Deluxe Remastered

If you played the original Dead Rising, you might remember restarting the game several times before you made any progress. The original release took the “survival” in survival horror as a challenge, and every time you died, you either went back to your last save, or started the whole game over and retained your experience.

This created a huge pain in the ass of a game where the stakes were unbelievably high, as save points were few and far between. If you lost hours of progress, it became real appealing to just start the whole game over instead and try to put yourself in a better position. Take into account the whole world moves on an internal clock where if you don’t complete tasks in time you’re locked out of the entire story, and you’ve got yourself one punishing experience.

The Remaster preserves this style of play if you really want it, but by default, you can now play the definitive Zombie Mall Survival game like any other. The game checkpoints every time you load into a new zone, which means now the most progress you’ll ever lose is maybe five minutes. While the game still plays like the original (with some improvements to firearms), it looks unbelievably good for a nearly twenty year old game. The RE Engine continues to impress.

Worst Remaster

Lollipop Chainsaw: Repop

Just about every Suda 51 game is due for a remaster, and this year we got two. Both fell short. Shadow of the Damned: Hella Remastered is at least acceptable — most of the negative response you’ll see is more a critique of the game itself aging poorly than anything else. So how could one get worse?

How about adding new particle effects that actually make the game unbearably slow? Visually, I actually like the silly rainbow afterimage Juliet leaves behind. However, this effect also slowed down her heavy attack animations, which makes certain bosses and enemies either tedious or impossible to fight. Add in the licensing issues — like the absence of the song “Mickey,” which used to play on every super activation — and you’ve got a remaster that might actually make the original more desirable.

If I can’t decapitate zombies while Baby Tate blares, why am I here?

The “Wtf That Came Out This Year?” Award

Clock Tower: Rewind

I don’t know why WayForward keeps getting first dibs to release Japanese-only SNES classics in the states, but I’m here for it. If you’ve played the Clock Tower series before, you’re probably thinking of a Playstation game. However, there was an SNES title before that, which makes the one we got here actually Clock Tower 2 in Japan. Go figure.

WayForward finally delivered an official translation of this SNES classic, complete with a few other bells and whistles added on (including the ability to rewind to an earlier moment, as the title implies). This makes it the first release of the original Clock Tower in the US, thirty years after the initial release.

The ACTION 52 Award

UFO 50

Back in 1991, a company called FarSight technologies released an ambitious and unlicensed title for the Genesis and NES called Action 52. As the name suggests, it was a massive collection of 52 games compiled onto one cartridge, sold at an exorbitant (and probably extortionary) pice.

This year, Mossmouth asked and answered the question “what if Action 52 had been good?”

UFO 50 is a giant collection of fifty NES inspired titles, and the scope is absolutely staggering. While some are relatively simple, a surprising amount are fully realized games that will take twenty hours or more to complete. These games blend genres and tropes together in unexpected ways, such as the horror RPG Grimstone, or the strategy shuffleboard game Lords of Diskonia. Unlike Action 52, which was barely fit for human consumption, there’s something for everyone here.

Best Survivor Clone

Karate Survivor

I played three Survivor style clones this year, all of them great. League of Legends absolutely crushed it with their Anima Squad mode, but I couldn’t tell how much of my enjoyment simply came from finally having a way to play League without nine other people inventing new slurs in chat. Holocure! Save the Fans is a free game that’s been out for a while, and while quite good, it is packed full of Vtuber references that are lost on me. I have no idea why anything is happening, why the weapons are what they are, or what I’m even attacking — but, the addition of supers and precision aiming to the Survivor formula makes it quite fun to play.

In the end, I have to give it to Karate Survivor, largely because of an innovative approach to progression. Honestly, your first couple runs... Kinda suck. You can’t really do much except land a few ineffectual strikes. However, as you progress you don’t just increase stats, you unlock new methods to use the environment. Soon you’re throwing bottles, kicking chairs, catching knives, diving over desks. It perfectly captures the feeling of a classic Jackie Chan movie, and in doing so, sets itself apart from the plethora of Survivor-style clones out there.

The “We Have Overwatch At Home” Award

Marvel Rivals

Ever since Blizzard slapped a 2 in front of Overwatch and ran it into the ground, I’ve been on the hunt for a new shooter to tickle the same itch. Now we have Marvel Rivals, an absolutely shameless facelift starring Marvel characters. Normally I’d say aping another game’s style this egregiously is a recipe for disaster, not unlike Foamstars above, but Marvel Rivals picked up the hot iron Blizzard dropped when Overwatch 2 failed to perform. If Splatoon 3 had bombed and Nintendo had taken the servers for the other Splatoon games offline forever too, maybe Foamstars would’ve had a chance.

Whatever the cause for its success, Marvel Rivals gives me the same joy the original Overwatch used to. Shameless or not, Marvel Rivals is now poised for success. Now to see if it can stay excellent, or if it patches itself into oblivion.

Best Star Wars Experience for Anyone Who’s Sick of Jedi

Star Wars: Outlaws

If you enjoyed The Mandalorian, I’d say you owe it to yourself to check out Star Wars: Outlaws. Sure, there’s plenty of negative commentary out there (much of it accurate), but the positives make up for all the blemishes in spades. While the vast majority of popular Star Wars games focus on the iconic Spiritual Space Samurais, Outlaws instead has you laser-gunslinging and spaceship-blasting your way across the galaxy.

Along the way you’ll make many friends, and also get plenty of opportunities to betray those friends, who will betray you in turn. It’s all part of the Star Wars Scoundrel experience.

Most Anticipated 2025 Title

Holstin

The demo for Holstin is maybe the most “demoy” demo to ever demo in 2024, complete with the characters breaking the fourth wall repeatedly to remind you what you’re experiencing is more a proof of concept. Even the level select is a breakdown of which mechanics you’d like to experience, like a pitch deck for a presentation.

That said, just look at this.

The first time I drew a gun in the demo, I was floored. Everything feels like an old point and click adventure, but the seamless perspective shift reminds you otherwise. In a horror setting, this has potent and terrifying potential.

Best Horror Game To Feature No Monsters Except the Dark Truths Within Mankind’s Own Heart

Mouthwashing

There were plenty of traditional horror experiences this year, even other retro-inspired ones. Mouthwashing, however, is more reminiscent of movies like Sunshine or Event Horizon, where our true enemy is ourselves. Say hello to the crew of the Tulpar, who are now stranded in the far reaches of space. When the game starts, they all know they’re screwed. The ship has crashed, and all that’s left to do is circle the drain until they find out what runs out first — power, food, or sanity.

Mouthwashing excels at disclosing world-shattering information at a steady clip, the kind that makes you look back on the story so far in a new way. Forget just an unreliable narrator, the whole damn crew is unreliable in their own individual ways — some by choice, some by denial, and others because they’re literally bedridden and unable to speak. Whatever you think the story is gets upended over and over again as you bounce around in time, piecing events together in a twisted, tragic puzzle.

Unlike Listerine, this game will not leave you feeling refreshed. Excellent, horrifying, dystopian, and poignant. At the edge of the universe, no one can hear Curly scream.

Most Insane Lore Rabbit Hole I Fell Down

Shadow the Hedgehog’s Backstory

This is the same year a Silent Hill 2 remaster came out, and yet... Here we are.

I don’t even know where to start. The last Sonic game I spent any real time with was the first Sonic Adventure. Since then, I’ve dabbled in a few others — Sonic Mania, some of the driving games — but the grander narrative has largely been lost on me. When the Sonic 3 movie approached, I decided to dig in and see what I missed.

What I found made me feel like I was astral projecting into another reality.

(For those of you who played Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Adventure 2 this next part will be old hat, but please, just take a minute to imagine what it’s like to learn all this in the year 2024.)

Did’ja all know Shadow The Hedgehog was created in a lab? I sure didn’t. Did you know his only friend was a nine year old girl named Maria, who is also Robotnik’s Granddaughter? Again, not me. At no point did I assume Dr. Robotnik reproduced, let alone that his kids had kids. Did you know Maria had a terminal illness and the only way she could survive was to live on a space station? Yes? No?

And did you know when an organization hilariously called G.U.N. decided Shadow was too dangerous to be left alive, they sent assassins to the Space Ark and gunned her down? Did you get that? G.U.N., “the Guardians of the United Nations,” gunned down a little girl — who, I will remind you, is biologically related to Dr. Robotnik — in front of Shadow the Hedgehog.

Truly this was the part Keanu Reeves was born to play.

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And so now, I leave you, with all this cursed Shadow the Hedgehog knowledge. You'll need about a year to process all that... And by then, a new list will be waiting for you. In the meantime, someone please tell me it isn't worth looking into the backstory of every Sonic character to see if they're all this loony. Please.