THE BEST OF 2024 - The Best GAMES Of The Year

      

- If you think it's tough keeping up with all the latest TV shows and movies ... try keeping up with what's new and buzzworthy in the world of videogames. It's pretty much an impossible task, and yet ... thanks to listening to podcasts like Triple Click, I constantly feel like I'm missing out. There's so much cool new stuff, all the time - especially in the world we now live in where there's an almost constant stream of interesting new indie games to check out. 

So let me talk about ASTRO BOT. I'll spoil my list below and reveal that Astro Bot is 100% my Game of the Year for 2024. It won GOTY at the Game Awards earlier this month. And it premiered to nearly unanimous rave reviews. And yet ... I still hear people talk about it with a bit of condescension. Why? Because the game isn't a 100+ hour behemoth that requires a black belt in gaming to master and defeat? Because the game emphasizes awe and wonder and delight and fun over grimdark storytelling and endless lore? Because it's a 3D platformer in an era when the genre is less popular and considered somehow less-than? 

Honestly, I think the games industry needs way more games like Astro Bot. Games that provide escape without taking over your entire life. Games that are simple yet challenging. Games designed to make you feel something. Games that are in the spirit of the kind of stuff that made my generation fall in love with games in the first place, in the days of the NES, Super NES, and Playstation. I've always loved the 1-1 controls of a great platformer. There's something so satisfying about pressing a button and causing an instantaneous reaction, rather than what you get in so many games today where a button press activates a pre-programmed set of animations to play out. The feeling of pressing the "jump" button and your character just, you know, jumps. It can't be overstated how good that feels and how immersive it makes gameplay. There's also something to be said for games that can be played in relatively short bursts, that don't require a a multi-hour commitment and don't require the memorization of or mastery over multiple complex systems in order to really get in the groove. Not that there's anything wrong with that ... but sometimes, less is more.

And that, I think, was evident when it came to some of 2024's high profile bombs. The recent Suicide Squad game will forever be the quintessential example of this. The game tried to be SO much. It was a single player action adventure game, but also a loot shooter, but also an online co-op game, but also ... Why do game publishers think this is what people want? Hopefully, game successes like Astro Bot help to swing things in the other direction. I mean, when Nintendo made Super Mario Bros., were they thinking "gee, I bet we could create better longterm monetization opportunities if only we put ___ in this game"-?! No, of course not. Great games always win out at the end of the day. As we inch towards new console generations and even more advanced tech powering these games ... it's a lesson the industry could stand to remember.

I played a lot of great games in 2024, and of course, a lot of those games were not from 2024. I played through Astro's Playroom in preparation for Astro Bot's release and realized it has the most amazing videogame soundtrack ever ("S-S-D ..."). I finally got to the end of Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which I really enjoyed. I also finally played Life Is Strange: True Colors, which I loved. What an incredible and affecting narrative experience. 

But as for my favorites of 2024, let's get to it.

DANNY'S FAVORITE (NEW) GAMES OF 2024:

1.) Astro Bot

- Astro Bot is just pure coolness and joy wrapped up in a shiny futuristic package. It's a platformer on par with the greats in terms of gamplay, level design, and tightness of its controls. It has numerous moments that are there simply to wow and delight. And its techno-synth musical score absolutely rips. But bigger picture, it also feels like a throwback to the optimistic Y2K Futurism of the late 90's and early 00's - the era of Space Channel 5 and SSX Snowboarding and Daft Punk. There's something inherently happy and cool and inviting about this game that feels needed in this day and age. At a time when joy and escapism was much needed, Astro Bot answered the call.

 

2.) Animal Well

- Animal Well is a mind-blowingly magical and inventive indie game - a brilliantly clever and imaginative Metroidvania. It looks simple and charmingly retro on one hand (with its 8-bit style graphics) - but it's a game full of complex puzzle design that demands creativity and thoughtfulness and discovery on the part of the player. Inspiring, absorbing, and endlessly surprising. If you haven't given this one a whirl yet, you've really got to check it out.

 

3.) Life Is Strange: Double Exposure

- I love the Life is Strange games. I spent a solid chunk of gaming time in 2024 playing through True Colors, which I can now say is incredible and hugely underrated. And I'm just now dipping my toes into Double Exposure - which brings back original series protagonist Max Caulfield, continuing her story from the first Life Is Strange game. It's great to check in with Max again, and already I can tell that the same eye-popping visuals and absorbing narrative design from True Colors have carried over into this one, via developer Deck Nine. Those classic Life Is Strange emo-punk vibes are back again, and that to me is a wonderful thing.

 

4.) Tekken 8

- I'm a longtime fan of the Tekken series. I love the insane characters, the even more insane storylines, and of course, I love the bone-crunching fighting game action. Tekken 8 brings back pretty much all the best characters and gameplay innovations from the previous game - while also upping the ante in terms of graphics and fighting play styles. But at the end of the day, this is just the complete Tekken package. It's one of those series where each new installment helps to make a Playstation generation feel complete. Finally, there's Tekken on PS5 (now I just need Soul Caliber).

5.) Dragon Age: The Veilguard

- I'm not a hardcore Dragon Age fan, so I don't have strong opinions on the overall direction of the series or anything like that. But I decided to give this new installment a go, as I was especially intrigued by its shift to action-heavy gameplay. And so I recently fired up the game and got totally lost in its fantasy universe. The game feels a lot like Mass Effect but high fantasy, except in this case, the combat is nicely crunchy with a Horizon: Zero Dawn esque flow. I'm into it.

6.) Star Wars Outlaws

- It was always going to be a bit of an uphill battle for a brand new take on a Star Wars adventure game to win me over, so close to the release of a new game in the super-fun Jedi Fallen Order series. But this one quickly drew me in because it allows you to just sort of hang out in Star Wars in a way that few other games ever have. Sure, the various missions are cool, as is the narrative - but even more cool is just stumbling into a Star Wars dance club and checking out the scene. 

7.) Loco Motive

- I'm a sucker for a great, old-school point-and-click adventure game, and Loco Motive hearkens back to subversively funny LucasArts classics like Day of the Tentacle or Sam & Max Hit The Road. The game features some really amazing pixel art, some really nice jazz music, and that classic LucasArts-esque charm and wit that makes all the puzzle solving that much more enjoyable.

8.) Stellar Blade 

- If you enjoy quirky Japanese sci-fi action games a la Nier Automata, then Stellar Blade will likely float your boat. The game has an out-there story about an android protagonist navigating a post-apocalyptic world, and it's got fast-paced, stylish action that calls to mind the likes of Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. In fact, the game feels like a bit of a throwback to the PS2 days. Which to me, made it instantly appealing.

 

9.) Epic Mickey: Rebrushed

- I missed out on the original Epic Mickey game, so I was super curious to finally try it out via its new remaster ("Rebrushed"). From what I've read, this new version not only gives the game an amazing-looking visual refresh, but it also polishes up the gameplay substantially. Suffice it to say, the game now looks and plays fantastically, and so far I've really been enjoying it a lot. The Disney magic is strong in this one.

10.) The Plucky Squire

- The Plucky Squire is one of the most graphically innovative games I've ever seen. The central conceit is that you play as a cartoon-ish character from a children's storybook, who can leap out of the 2D plane of the book and into a more realistically rendered 3D space. Not everything works here, and there can be some clunkiness. But there is a sense of real visual magic on display in this game that you don't often see. It's worth checking out for the wow factor, but overall I found a lot of fun and charm from this one.

THE BEST OF 2014 - The Best GAMES Of The Year

THE BEST GAMES OF 2014:

- Man, what a strange year it's been for videogames. It's hard to encapsulate, but I'll try. The videogame industry collapsed under its own weight in 2014. Gaming broke. The good news is: that may ultimately prove a good thing, because now, finally, we can move forward.

The storm has, perhaps, been brewing for a while - but many couldn't see it coming. On one hand, gaming has, for several years now, been moving in a positive direction. As geek culture in general expanded and diversified, so too did the audience for games. With the proliferation of smart phones and tablets, millions of people had an easy, ever-present way to discover or rediscover games. But it wasn't just the casual games that brought in a more diverse audience. More and more female gamers counted themselves as hardcore gamers in 2014. And I don't say that to mean that they preferred a certain genre, or console, or franchise. I simply mean that gaming culture - long a boys-only club - was increasingly filled with genuinely-interested girls and women this year. Not that they hadn't been there before - but this year, it felt more normalized. It didn't feel strange or surprising anymore to meet a girl who dug gaming. The fact is, gaming culture is fun. People who dig gaming tend to be, for the most part, smart, open-minded, cool, creative, and funny. And more and more, gaming culture felt like a place where all were welcome. Some of the women who embraced games had always been there - perhaps just not so open in their love of the medium. Some were newbies. For me though, the thing that sort of paints a picture of gaming, at its best, in 2014 is the Indoor Kids podcast. Hosted by the husband-and-wife team of comedians Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon, this to me is the new generational reality, the new ideal: two smart, funny people - male and female - who play games together and share a love for the medium and culture of gaming. As this became the new paradigm, coverage of gaming also evolved. Growing up, the predominant coverage of videogames was from publications aimed at young boys - the Game Pro's and Nintendo Powers of the world. Now, you've got smart sites like Kotaku that mix traditional reviews and previews with all manner of interesting think-pieces about games and gaming culture. Writers are male and female. Coverage includes mainstream games, indie games, and everything in between. For the enlightened - the people who grew up with games being talked about in a certain (juvenile) way, but who were now ready for a more sophisticated conversation, gaming, of late, seemed to be in a really good place. At least from a cultural perspective, gaming seemed like this almost utopian sort of thing - a subculture filled with really smart and cool people doing innovative and creative things.

So what happened?

In parallel to this, there was a counter-movement going on. A movement that spanned across a spectrum that was on one end mostly harmless, on the other end pretty legitimately scary. The thing is, games had indeed grown to appeal to a more diverse audience over the last several years. But with the good comes the bad, and part of the bad was an influx of bro-culture into gaming. This was the segment of gaming that was less Indoor Kids and more virtual militia. These gamers latched on to the Call of Duties of the world and made them into huge sellers. In turn, they made the budding world of online gameplay a world rampant with misogyny and juvenile behavior. A place that seemed to represent the worst of gaming. We saw a subset of games that increasingly catered to this demo. And somehow, this demo claimed the term "gamer." To the public at large, "gamers" were black T-shirt-wearing thugs who lived to frag virtual opponents on their XBOX. I'm not saying that all fans of online shooters fall into this group. Not at all. And certainly, there are plenty of gamers whose tastes span all categories.I'm just saying that a certain segment of gaming was actually becoming *less* evolved, a place where casual misogyny was the norm. I'm saying that while all this positive stuff was going on, and gaming was changing for the better, there was, in turn, something ugly festering.

That something ugly was GamerGate. I won't go into the whole history of GamerGate. I'll just say that what started as attacks against two prominent female members of the gaming community - one a cultural critic, one a developer - spawned a "movement" that claimed to be about legitimate things like "ethics in journalism," but in fact became an excuse for the worst subculture of so-called gamers to lash out against women and women in games. Prominent people - almost all women - who spoke out against GamerGate fell victim to threats of violence and very real incidents of cyber-bullying. Anita Sarkeesian, the cultural critic whose video series "Tropes vs. Women in Video Games" triggered an onslaught of threats and online abuse, became GamerGate's public enemy #1. And why? Because she dared to critique the role of female characters in videogames, and call for more thoughtful representation of women in games. Here's the thing: I don't necessarily agree with every point Sarkeesian makes in her videos, but I'm 100% cool with her making these arguments. More than cool - it's about damn time that someone talked about games in this way - the same way that cultural critics talk about books, movies, and TV. Games have been around long enough, and their narratives are now sophisticated enough, that they've earned the right to be taken seriously as culture and art. And yet the "gamers" of GamerGate don't really even want to engage in these conversations. Instead, they continually fell back on personal attacks. Their whole purpose seemed to be more about trying to discredit women in the gaming community - and in turn forcing them out - than it was about anything else. The whole GamerGate thing also came in a year when we as a country were reeling from multiple incidents of real-world violence, in which the perpetrators subscribed to versions of the "men's rights" ethos. These killers read stuff on various dark corners of the internet that fostered and encouraged their belief that feminism was a nefarious movement meant to stomp all over men, a movement conspiring to ruin everything men liked while denying them everything they wanted. Dangerous stuff, and it's a way of thinking that encourages a toxic mindset - a mindset that men are human, women are inhuman. It all reflects the internet's dangerous ability to serve as an echo chamber. All of these troubled young men found their festering, misogynistic views confirmed by like-minded individuals, and the collective voice grew stronger. The worst manifestation of this voice is in mass-killings. But further down the spectrum, you've got the GamerGaters who became brainwashed into thinking they were fighting a good fight, when they were in fact spouting nonsense. And a finger of shame to prominent people - like actor Adam Baldwin - who encouraged these people via Twitter and other social media. Wrong side of history, dudes.

Luckily, the blight that was GamerGate seems mostly to have subsided as we head into the new year. And videogaming again, mostly, seems awesome. The one positive to have come out of this whole thing is that I think people were genuinely surprised to see how much of a nerve GamerGate touched. Men, women, all kinds of people came out of the woodwork to proclaim their love for games, and their revulsion that this harmful element was trying to lay claim to the "gamer" label. Average joes and celebrities like Joss Whedon alike felt frustration that the GamerGaters seemed to be trying to turn back the clock and make games a less cool, less inclusive, less progressive place. The movement and the backlash to it also came in the midst of a major feminist revival. A growing number of individuals and publications have been looking at pop-culture with a critical feminist slant, and so the internet seemed poised and ready to mobilize against the GamerGaters. Although some may grow tired of "feminist" being such an omnipresent descriptor these days, what's important is an understanding that being a feminist implies wanting equality, not superiority. As that sinks in, and people stop viewing these conversations as "us against them," I think the negativity that people harbor towards the Anita Sarkeesians of the world will subside. That said, it will take a while for games to fully get over this whole thing, but I think positive change will come. Games with more diverse characters, more sophisticated narratives, and designed with more than just a very narrow demo in mind. A gaming culture that is increasingly diverse, sophisticated, and that once again feels like the kind of thing that cool, smart, progressive people want to be a part of.

And of course, that's not to say that games in 2014 weren't awesome in and of themselves. It still felt like a transitional year, with the XBOX One and PS4 still sort of finding their footing. 2015 seems to be the year that the big influx of next-generation games will really begin. But 2014 continued the interesting trend of indie, digital-only games getting as much buzz as their big, blockbuster, franchise-ready counterparts. That trend certainly will continue in 2015, with digital indie games like No Man's Sky seeming to be just as anticipated as the next iterations of Uncharted, etc. I like it. As some of the big franchises become more and more impenetrable with each iteration, it seems like some of the most original, creative, and fresh-feeling development is happening in the indie space.

For me, time for hardcore gaming sessions was rare in the past year. And much of my play time was devoted to wrapping up 2013-and-older titles like The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite. However, I did take the plunge and purchase a PS4, so I've been trying to play catch-up on some of the big games of this year.


DANNY'S BEST GAMES OF THE YEAR:

I once again did not play anywhere near the number of new games I wanted to in 2014. I've been binging a bit over the holidays playing catch-up, and I will say that there was some really good stuff this year. I think that 2013's The Last of Us was such a monumental game - I spent a lot of time on it in 2014, and there was nothing this year that, for me, was quite on that level.

So my Game of the Year for 2014 is a bit of a cheat:

1.) The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead: Season 2

- I love what Telltale Games is doing these days. Back in the day, I was enamored with point-and-click adventure games. Sure, the gameplay mechanics were simple, but the games were unforgettable. There's a reason why people have been going crazy in recent weeks over the announcements of HD remakes of classics like Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle. Those games rocked. And it's great to see adventure games making a comeback, almost entirely because of Telltale. Really though, these guys are raising the bar in general when it comes to storytelling in games. The writing on The Walking Dead series eclipses that of the show. The writing in The Wolf Among Us is every bit as good as Fables, the comic on which it is based. I'm a huge, longtime fan of Fables. In what world is a videogame spin-off giving me one of the best Fables stories I've seen in years? In this world, I guess. Telltale deserves huge kudos for what they are doing. It's come to the point where my first choice for any narrative-driven franchise adaptation is now to have it turned into a Telltale game. Speaking of which, I can't wait to dive into their version of Game of Thrones.

2.) Dragon Age: Inquisition

- I'm still only in the early stages of Dragon Age: Inquisition, but I can already tell that this is a game that, like Skyrim before it, could easily envelop my entire life and that would be that. What was cool about Skyrim was that the narrative happened on the fringes of the game - really, you made your own story. But Dragon Age mixes the massive open world of Skyrim with Bioware's trademark storytelling to create a game that's both expansive and story-driven. I believe the word I'm looking for is "epic."

3.) Infamous: Second Son

- I've been a fan of the Infamous franchise, but something about Second Son really appealed to me. Maybe it was just that the next-gen upgrade made the open-world that much smoother and prettier. Maybe it was that the story was a little better-written and more interesting. Maybe it was that the gameplay seemed just a little tighter. But Second Son is hell of a game that was one of the first of this generation to feel truly next-gen.

4.) Shadows of Mordor

- I didn't anticipate that the Batman: Arkham Asylum games would make a good template for a Lord of the Rings game, but ... they did. Shadows of Mordor is a fun, action-packed adventure that builds on the Batman games with an interesting "nemesis" system in which enemies remember your previous battles, and make tactical adjustments the next time you meet. Very cool stuff. My one complaint is that the story and world doesn't quite feel Lord of the Ring-ish enough for me - the darker tone seems more suited to some other fictional universe.

5.) Broken Age

- Speaking of old-school adventure games, this Kickstartered gem is a return to point-and-click from maestro Tim Schafer, the man who helped bring us the classics like Grim Fandango that I mentioned above. The crowd-funded nature of the game means that Schafer was free to keep the gameplay classic and familiar, while imbuing the graphics with a modern sheen. And man, it looks great. The story and humor is classic Schafer. Hopefully this leads to more games in this vein that don't need Kickstarter to get made.