I am going to reduce to the chase: 2024 has been an excellent 12 months for gaming. Simply have a look at the varied GOTY items that’ll be going up over this week and into the start of 2025: every of the writing group right here at VG247 has written three items – one about our precise GOTY, one about one thing that we really feel has been criminally under-rated over the previous 12 months, and one about one thing we’re actually trying ahead to within the new 12 months.
However there’s a price of residing disaster proper now. Most territories that play video video games are seeing residing prices rise and rise while wages stagnate. Video games are costly, they usually’re solely getting pricier.
With that in thoughts, I’ve requested the group to every write about one thing they have been taking part in this 12 months that is not truly from this 12 months. Many people have chosen to jot down about video games that we have picked up on a budget as a result of they’re getting on a bit, or downloaded as a part of a subscription service because the writer has relaxed limitations on licensing for them since they’re displaying their age.
I feel it is necessary to indicate some like to the backlog, particularly when many people cannot actually afford to choose up a brand new $70+ recreation per 30 days. With that in thoughts, right here is the complete listing of what VG247 has been taking part in in 2024 (that is not from 2024).
James Billcliffe remains to be taking part in… Frogwares
My most performed style this 12 months is Frogwares.
On the PlayStation Retailer, they promote bundles of The Sinking Metropolis, Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One and Sherlock Holmes: The Woke up for ridiculously low cost each time there’s a sale on. That equals 60-ish hours of gentlemanly intrigue, investigation and thriller.
As a set, it’s good: you get to play Cthulhu, then Sherlock Holmes, then Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu – what extra might you need?
Frogwares video games are nearly faultless in idea if not execution – a pulpy combination of atmospheric role-playing and exploration that’s unbeatably cozy, even when the sport’s alleged to be spooky. These are good, old school video games: designed to be vibrant and bold and shocking and, above all, enjoyable – even when the extra technical points can’t match as much as some larger price range releases.
Due to the standard of life enhancements launched with every recreation, I’d advocate taking part in them in launch order, beginning off with a bang within the squelchy open-world of The Sinking Metropolis, the place an aristocratic orangutan man welcomes you onto the dock and it simply will get weirder from there.
Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One subsequent is a delight with a surprisingly detailed open world and tons of fascinating and twisty instances to unravel, however the smaller-scale Sherlock Holmes: The Woke up is greatest to shut proceedings because the shortest, and most fashionable, entry.
Dom Peppiatt remains to be taking part in… Inscryption
So, I’ve simply wrapped up watching Rivals on Disney+, and it was one among my favorite TV collection of the 12 months. And that is not due to its raunchy intercourse scenes, not due to its diligent, poet-souled Irish lead actor within the type of Aiden Turner, and never due to David Tennant’s spectacular flip as a ruthless 80s baddie. No. I used to be obsessive about it as a result of, at no level throughout its eight episode run, might I precisely predict what was going to occur subsequent. The present deliberately toys together with your expectations and subverts tropes with deft ease.
I really feel precisely the identical about Inscyrption; a recreation that originally seems to be a bizarre hostage scenario in a log cabin with a mystical card recreation very, in a short time reveals itself to be one thing else completely. The sport is absolute insanity – literal and figurative, it seems – and side-swiped my expectations persistently. Not an hour of in-game time glided by with out me saying ‘wait, WHAT’ out loud, a giant labrador grin plastered throughout my face.
It is arduous to speak in regards to the finer factors of Inscryption with out spoiling issues, so I am going to hold this transient: I feel it is one of the subversive and attention-grabbing video games I’ve performed in years. A long time, perhaps. It is an inky black card-based odyssey that is half deck-building roguelike, half escape-room hell, part-Stanfod Prisoner Experiment. Daniel Mullins Video games – who you might also recognise from Pony Island and The Hex – completely perfected its craft with this one, and I am very unhappy I did not play it nearer to launch in 2021. I am very glad it is on PlayStation 4 and 5, and through PS+, no much less.
Connor Makar remains to be taking part in… Buckshot Roulette
This 12 months I’ve spent a number of time taking part in numerous multiplayer video games with some IRL associates in Discord, which breathed life into a wonderful indie that I had a number of enjoyable with some time again. You have in all probability already seen Buckshot Roulette! A shady, gritting spin on its Russian counterpart wherein you enter a recreation of life-or-death probability within the hope of snatching the money. It is a fantastic solo expertise. Then, actually final month, the fantastic Mike Klubnika dropped a multiplayer replace! If a recreation wins me over as soon as, it is nice. If it wins me over twice? Then it deserves a spot in articles equivalent to this.
Kelsey Raynor remains to be taking part in… Stardew Valley
Whereas 2024 has had loads of stellar releases, in addition to some I’d fairly overlook, there are a few video games from pre-2024 that I’ve been spending a very good portion of time with this 12 months. Specifically, Stardew Valley.
Stardew Valley was launched again in 2016, which I can’t fairly consider, and the updates for it haven’t stopped coming since. Simply earlier this 12 months, developer ConcernedApe launched the 1.6 replace. Yeah, the fella is meant to be arduous at work on Haunted Chocolatier, however folks like me have such an affection for Stardew Valley that ConcernedApe merely can not depart the sport alone for greater than 5 minutes. I can’t blame him, and it meant that after the replace hit consoles, I began one more run of the sport.
I’ve misplaced depend what number of farms I’ve began and deserted as soon as the Neighborhood Heart was accomplished. This time round, I’m decided to succeed in Perfection on my present save, however you’ll should examine in with me once more subsequent 12 months to see if I received any nearer to attaining that, as a result of that’s in all probability how lengthy it’s going to take.
What’s higher is that whereas I’ve been revisiting Pelican City, my associates have concurrently been grinding within the mines and foraging like their lives depend upon it. Evaluating our progress regularly (or celebrating every Prismatic Shard one among us finds) has been one of many ‘little issues’ that has definitely helped make an in any other case chaotic 12 months rather more bearable. I’ve a number of love for Stardew Valley, the fantastic neighborhood ConcernedApe has helped form, and largely, attending to share my love of this recreation with my associates.
Rebecca Jones remains to be taking part in… Honkai: Star Rail 2.0
You’ll be able to’t precisely accuse Honkai: Star Rail of being some neglected retro gem: it launched lower than 18 months in the past and has been one more extremely profitable gacha hit for developer miHoYo ever since. However we’re right here to speak in regards to the already-released video games that we liked in 2024, and there is no denying that Honkai: Star Rail – thanks largely to its stellar (pardon the pun) 2.0 replace in February – has match the invoice for me this 12 months. The Penacony chapter whisked the Astral Specific crew alongside the silver rail to their subsequent cease: a swanky diplomatic retreat at a faux-Jazz Age dreamland theme park with (insert shocked gasps right here) a sinister underbelly.
All the pieces about this newest storyline represented a formidable refinement on HSR 1.0, regardless of the launch model of the sport already being one among my favorite new releases of final 12 months. It was in order that good that I am not even mad we did not get many new hints as to March seventh’s actual id… though if my MVP amnesiac daughter might get her long-deserved narrative payoff when 3.0 launches in January, that’d be beautiful.
Mark Warren remains to be taking part in… Elden Ring
Psst. Whereas 2024’s not trying, I’ve received a secret to let you know. It’s a giant one. Actually not the type of factor you may have recognized about if you happen to seemed on the homepage of a sure web site in, say, July. , not that lengthy after a sure DLC got here out. I performed Elden Ring for the primary time this 12 months. Okay, so I cheated through the use of a mod that made me a residing god, as a result of I’m a coward, a wimp, a weakling, and undoubtedly not value your time.
However right here’s the factor – though I did that, I nonetheless got here out of my playthrough feeling like I’d gotten a correct understanding of why Elden Ring is the masterpiece folks (my coworkers included) have lengthy been telling me it’s, even when getting slapped up by Malenia’s not essentially my gaming cup of tea. Oh, and I’ve lastly given Fallout 76 a strive, in addition to the Katamari collection through the remasters. I’m undecided which is the higher factor about hoarding. Okay, it’s Katamari.
Sherif Saed remains to be taking part in… Diablo 4
Relating to ARPGs, I’m a person of easy style. If clicking on demons and killing monsters feels nice, and the dopamine hit of energy and merchandise acquisition is constant sufficient, you’re going to search out me taking part in quite a bit of whichever one among them delivers – and I in all probability gained’t cease speaking about it. At the same time as scarred because it was at its launch in 2023, Diablo 4 instantly delivered on the previous, and made an honest sufficient try on the latter that it was all I wanted for my curiosity to be sustained all through that 12 months.
Diablo 4 began off 2024 on a very bitter word, with what’s undoubtedly been its worst season but. We have been months off from the discharge of its first main post-launch enlargement, too, so to see my favorite ARPG run out of steam that early into the 12 months was alarming. No matter interior awakening befell at Blizzard in 2024, it has been liable for among the greatest content material the sport had seen but. Most of that work has been squarely aimed toward making a compelling case for the endgame. The complete construction of loot and itemisation was completely overhauled, and Blizzard later even turned your entire levelling system on its head. With nearly each season, a brand new endgame exercise can be launched; a brand new boss to battle for focused loot, or some much-needed high quality of life updates to maintain up with the ever-growing recreation.
Satirically, a number of that work has been extra impactful on the core recreation than the paid enlargement. Vessel of Hatred, nonetheless, I’m rather less scorching on. Judged solely on the worth (and quantity) of the content material it dropped at the sport, it’s a stable enlargement. The brand new Spiritborn class is extremely enjoyable, and brings a brand new type of play to set it other than the bottom 5. The brand new zone has enjoyable enemies, new endgame actions, and effectively, it’s a brand new landmass to gallop round in. Narratively, nonetheless, it was probably the most egregious waste of time I’ll have ever seen from a Diablo, effectively, something. There’s a stunning, and instantly obvious, drop to the standard of writing. The marketing campaign fails at establishing a risk value fearing or a spinning a story value following.
My grievances with that apart, all the work that went into Diablo 4 received me to complete most of the 12 months’s battle passes, getting a number of heroes into the endgame, and discovering new methods to get pleasure from my favorite ARPG. So right here’s to a different 12 months of making a brand new character each rattling season and discovering pleasure on the treadmill as soon as once more.
Alex Donaldson remains to be taking part in… Cities Skylines 2
Cities Skylines 2 was at all times brimming with potential, however when it first landed again in October of final 12 months it was a bit of a multitude – and that is me being extraordinarily charitable.
Within the pre-release interval I did not even discover the issues as a lot – taking part in for a restricted period of time, and on a pimped-out, cutting-edge rig, I simply acknowledged that this was a recreation pushing for a deeply granular degree of simulation that left CPUs burning scorching and PCs struggling – although I noticed its potential as a undertaking that’ll be performed for the subsequent fifteen years, not merely the subsequent two.
As soon as Skylines 2 was in additional folks’s fingers, nonetheless, it rapidly grew to become clear that this wasn’t simply teething issues – this was full-on edentulation. The enamel have been straight-up falling out. It’s possible you’ll suppose I am stretching the dental analogy to breaking level, and you would be proper – however know this: one of many issues that was breaking the sport and melting PCs was Skylines 2 rendering NPC’s enamel in graphic element even when the digital camera was zoomed out by miles.
2024, then, has been a 12 months of apology and enchancment. Writer Paradox Interactive has principally spent all of 2024 consuming a dump truck’s value of humble pie throughout a number of tasks, and in Skylines 2 that is manifested as a shed load of patches, free DLC, and an indefinite delay for any potential console model. Quietly, slowly however absolutely, that PC launch has been getting extra dependable and extra acceptable. And ultimately, I’ve performed a number of it – over 150 hours this 12 months. That is in all probability solely behind Road Fighter 6 and Balatro.
Video games should not launch as damaged disasters, and Paradox deserved the general public flogging it received for the state of Cities Skylines 2 at launch. However because it retains bettering, it inexorably edges nearer to being what it ought to’ve been: a worthy sequel to one of many best metropolis builders ever. I stay up for persevering with to examine in on it each couple of months in 2025.
