My 2024 Gaming Year In Review
This year has been a bit of a bizarre year for gaming. The news has been all over the place, and due to personal reasons, I managed to game a lot less than usual and write a lot less than I would have liked. Going into 2024 it didn’t seem like there would be many memorable games to play but despite it being a quieter year there was a high amount of quality in the games that were released.
Sadly all year long there was news of industry layoffs. One of the most high-profile was the commercial failure of Concord, a game that critically had decent reviews but sadly didn’t have enough players which led to the game being pulled from shelves shortly after release and Firewalk Studios being closed down shortly afterwards. It even led to the awkward moment of the show Secret Level which had an episode based in Concord still being released and I guess is one of the few ways that game is now being somewhat persevered.
Industry layoffs were rife though and it wasn’t just at Sony, Microsoft laid off a bunch of people after their merger with Activision Blizzard and even Bethesda-owned studios like Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin closed. Tango particularly was sad for me as I loved The Evil Within, especially 2 and whilst I hadn’t completed Hi-Fi Rush it was a special game and seemed like it was going to be a reboot for the studio in a lot of ways allowing them to branch out a bit more. Still, fortunately, it was saved by Krafton. Embracer unsurprisingly continues to struggle and downsizes its operations. Toys for Bob managed to break out from Microsoft too and forge their own path.
All of this combined with criticisms of last year's The Game Awards led to Geoff Keighley admitting live in the show that they have struggled to address industry issues within the show and they were trying to rectify that by announcing the Game Changer award. This led to a truly special moment where the recipient Amir gave an emotional speech about the beauty of gaming and the sadness of the way the industry treats its developers. I can’t stress enough it was a beautiful speech and it’s worth viewing. Honestly, I deemed this year's show to be the best The Game Awards to date with amazing announcements such as Onimusha and Okami getting sequels to beautiful heartfelt speeches being made. I loved how Sven, the leader at the Baldur’s Gate 3 Larian Studios said that the nominees of Game of the Year are nominated because the staff used to make the game weren’t treated like numbers on a spreadsheet. It was definitely worth staying up late to watch it and being shattered the next day.
Alas, that wasn’t the only big news that hit in 2024. Microsoft continues to signal that they are in the middle of a transitional period in their strategy as they move towards multiplatform games more and more.
Games like Palworld, Black Myth: Wukong and Stellar Blade are new Intellectual Properties that have been released to huge success although the developers of Palworld are currently being sued by Nintendo for patent infringement seemingly over the capturing mechanics of the Pals in Palworld.
The PS5 Pro was also released this year to somewhat controversy due to the high price and people including myself feeling that the base PS5 is not even fully utilised yet and potentially there won’t be enough developer support for the Pro. I could be wrong though, I remember feeling the same when the PS4 Pro came out but that ended up being quite popular and was a noticeable upgrade in the end. I know I have decided that I won’t be bothering to get a PS5 Pro though unless my base PS5 breaks but I will have to pay for an additional disc drive as nearly all the games I buy are physical on it and the Nintendo Switch.
Speaking of the Nintendo Switch, there was also the bizarre way that Nintendo confirmed the existence of the Switch 2. It came off the back of a low hardware sales period and the President just took to their corporate, investor Twitter page and announced that the Switch Successor is incoming and will be revealed by March 2025. However, since then there have been plenty of leaks from accessory manufacturers and the speculation is that Nintendo is urgently trying to bring forward Switch 2 reveal plans so they can try and get control of the situation. Of course, though this is all just rumours and speculation.
I mentioned earlier that I haven’t been gaming as much this past year. In 2023 I finished 33 games and played another 16. This year that dropped to 20 games completed and played an additional 5. I track this all using the amazing GG app. This was in large part due to the fatigue and intensity I was feeling from the issues I was facing that gaming just sadly felt like too much effort a lot of the time and so I ended up watching more TV/YouTube than usual instead. I have been a Kinda Funny fan for a long time or I guess a “best friend” as they refer to their fans and honestly watching them was perfect for much-needed escapism whilst still being connected to gaming. At least I managed to get around to bingeing all of Taskmaster and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Both are amazing but the latter especially just shows the caricature nature of far-right winged people and I really enjoyed how it flirts with satire a lot of the time. Speaking of satire, a lot of news in 2024 gave a lot of material to satirists.
This is supposed to be a gaming article though so it’s time to summarise some thoughts I have on the standouts for me this year.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Final Fantasy VII Remake at the time became my favourite game of all time. It’s since been dethroned by Rebirth. I am not usually someone who enjoys open-world games but activities such as Queen’s Blood are just such a delight to play and the game is absolutely stunning throughout. I don’t know how they made that game look so beautiful and still have it be a stable 30fps. It’s a shame the performance modes weren’t so great though as I prefer playing in 60fps. Final Fantasy has always done music right but to have over 400 tracks in the game is truly impressive. I also finally managed to get myself to one of the official Final Fantasy concerts and hearing tracks like Aerith’s and Jenova’s themes as well as One Winged Angel in person with an orchestra is something I will always hold dear. The acting is amazing and my big problem with the original game is I found most characters to be a bit bland. Rebirth is essentially the second act of the original game where you go around trying to find Sephiroth and investigate what exactly is happening and understandably as a result it’s the slowest part of the main story. Rebirth remedies this wisely by fleshing out the world a lot more and focusing so much on character development that everyone genuinely feels unique. The combat in Remake was always great but somehow they found ways to build it out even more with things like synergy attacks and make it feel more fluid. The ending is messy, to say the least, but I am hoping the payoff for it will come in part 3. I legitimately believe that this is the best game Square Enix has ever made.
Metaphor: Refantazio
It's amazing to see a new IP from the Persona developers. The battle music is so good, and the chanting elevates it further, but sadly, I found the rest of the game’s music a little forgettable. The character moments are truly spectacular and Heismay and Hulkenberg will remain among the JRPG greats for me. My biggest issue with the game is the final act of the game has a huge difficulty spike and I wasn’t impressed by it. I got to the point where I dropped it to the easiest difficulty as I just wanted to finish the game and wasn’t in the mood to grind. It’s hard to talk about Metaphor without discussing the amazing story. I keep flip-flopping but I feel like Metaphor told a better story than rebirth this year. It tells a wise story of the problems of capitalism, right-wing ideologies, and dictatorships and goes as far as to suggest togetherness, left-wing policies, and socialism as the solution. However, it’s smart because it understands that going down too far any path including socialism can also lead to problems so it’s important to keep grounded in reality and continually work to fix society's problems. It’s important to realise that even if socialism was achieved, the work doesn’t suddenly stop, you need to keep going to ensure people’s evolving needs are met. After all even as someone who believes socialism is the right path, forcing new policies without talking to the public, having votes on policies etc is just another form of dictatorship and extremism and the game wisely recognises this. It was both bizarre and amazing to see such nuanced, well-thought-out storytelling in video games. I’ve always believed video games tell the best stories but it’s reassuring to see creators wear their hearts on their sleeves and show their beliefs so openly to modern-day problems and understand the criticisms but show it through the skin of high fantasy.
Thank Goodness You’re Here
It’s rare for comedic games to exist and it’s even rarer for the humour to not be completely juvenile so Thank Goodness You’re Here is a genuine breath of fresh air. It’s lovely to see old Britain represented in what feels like a fictitious town set in Yorkshire somewhere and I love how the story of the game in essence is highlighting the problems with British politeness and the inability to just say no and “keep a stiff upper lip” as the saying goes. This game had me laughing throughout and I feel like it’s a must-play for anyone living in the UK and wants to experience something quintessentially British.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
I love all the games in the series to varying degrees. Infinite Wealth has become one of my favourites. Ichiban is awesome and the Hawaii setting gave some lovely vibes. All the new characters were great and Tomizawa and Chi-Chan in particular I hope to return in a future game. As usual, the story was great and bizarrely it was the second JRPG I played this year to feature segways.
1000xResist
The story in this game is genuinely beautiful and I like how it explores the concept of identity and the feeling of diaspora through the lens of the split of Hong Kong from China. The music was lovely throughout. The story is a post-apocalyptic future when most of humanity had been extinguished due to a disease that spread from aliens being a bit of an analogue perhaps to the covid pandemic. If you’re a fan of visual novels then this is a must-play.
Silent Hill 2
I seemed to be a minority at the time but I always thought the trailers for this remake looked good although I was a bit trepidatious considering the game was being developed by Bloober. Fortunately, Bloober didn’t repeat the mistakes of the remaster removed the fog and maintained a fantastic atmosphere throughout. I also liked how they cleared up some of the story aspects but kept things just vague enough to maintain the air of mystery that made the original so intriguing. This remake was fantastic and did a great job modernising the game, especially because I find the original quite difficult to go back to now.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
A game where Zelda is finally the main character you play. I loved this game and during the opening hours, I had more fun with it than Tears of the Kingdom. I think the game could have done with being slightly shorter but I enjoyed how it channelled the spirit of Breath of the Wild and its sequel by letting you store echoes of various items and enemies scattered throughout Hyrule and let you reuse them as you saw fit. It turned it into way more of a puzzle game and using beds as a way to heal and to get up to high places was a novelty that didn’t wear off for me. It reminded me of the old 3d Zelda games.
Sonic x Shadow Generations
Sonic Generations is arguably the best 3D sonic game to date so bolting on an expansion featuring Shadow, arguably the cooler hedgehog was a stroke of genius. The graphics were amazing and you could practically see every hair on Shadow’s spikey body. The one misstep for me was that they didn’t include a level from the Shadow the Hedgehog game. It seems like Sega is distancing themselves a little from the game by stating that Shadow won’t be using guns much in the future. It’s been nice to see a renewed reverence for the Sonic franchise in recent years in part due to the movies.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
This is an amazing Metroidvania. The story is a bit throwaway for me but running around, solving puzzles and wall running will never get old for me. The platforming is so satisfying and the combat is pretty decent too. There are new abilities unlocked throughout the game adding new layers to the traversal and puzzle solving and some of the later solutions that are needed are so precisely timing-based that it was quite satisfying. The map is huge for those who love to explore but if you prefer to mainline games like me it doesn’t feel overwhelming. It’s a shame this game won’t get some kind of sequel as apparently, Ubisoft deems it as a commercial failure, even if it is a critical darling.
Astro Bot
PlayStation has such a rich deep history that was often forgotten about from the PS3 onwards because they had gone through such a transitional phase. It’s amazing to see Sony celebrate that history with the family-friendly platformer Astro Bot. Those adorable little robots just bring a smile to my face whenever they are on screen and I loved seeing all the different bots cosplaying as various characters across all of gaming history. The pacing of the game is fantastic, the boss battles are fun and the secret challenges are tough. It does a nice job of showing the history to the next generation of gamers and it reminds me of the quirky Sony era mainly due to Japan Studios which is sadly lost now.
2024 was definitely an odd year, to say the least for gaming. As with most years, there were highs and they were lows and sadly I didn’t get to entrench myself in gaming as much as I would have liked to. Whilst there were fewer notable releases than the previous year, the games were great and worth playing in between seeing and hearing the bad news of the industry and the wider world.
Looking ahead to 2025 is a bit of an interesting year. The Switch 2 will be revealed by the end of March it seems. Grand Theft Auto 6 is currently due to be released in 2025 although if I were to hazard a guess, that game will be delayed due to Rockstar forcing return-to-office policies meaning people will have to either quit or uplift their lives, all of which will take time. There are also other games to look forward to like Pirate Yakuza where the protagonist will be Majima in Hawaii this time, 2KXO the fighting game from Riot Games, Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yotei, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and many other games that will be worth looking forward to. 2025 is looking to be an exciting year of gaming and I for one can’t wait to see what’s next.
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