Games of 2024 🎮

🎵 The song for this post is Sing Along, by Sturgill Simpson. The song and video absolutely slap 🎵

I don't consider myself much of a "gamer"; it feels like an indulgence to play for any real amount of time. I don't keep up with new releases. Apart from the Switch, I haven't owned a console since the Gamecube. And yet: through dating, and being an uncle to kids, I've watched people hold a controller for the first time, and it occurs to me that I've been holding controllers since I was 3. Most "gamers" don't do things as hard as I do in video games. Even on a light games diet, I play games more than I watch TV shows. So, "gamer" I am.

Last year I traveled a hell of a lot, but a few times a year I fell in on some games while grieving my sick dog in San Francisco. If it's on this list, I recommend it; here are short writeups of how I experienced them.

Marvel Midnight Suns

I bought this blind based on a tweet that said something like

Guys, Marvel Midnight Suns is on sale and you should really buy it! It's made by the XCOM people, and that fanbase ignored it because of the Marvel stuff, while the Marvel fans ignored it because it was poorly marketed, and comics-not-MCU. But it's so, tremendously good!

And Lord: the main feeling I got from this game was tragedy. It is! So! Good! It's the result of thousands of hours by experts, almost certainly built on the brutal crunch of AAA gaming, and nobody I know has heard of it.

It ate my entire August: like eating a Cheetoh, you know it was designed to be impossible to put down. "Just one more mission." It's as addicting and deep as XCOM, the deckbuilding is designed such that your heroes play like their characters (Spider-Man, for example, is extremely nimble and tricksy; Deadpool is a terrible team player but exceptional if you play him selfish). The comics-not-MCU universe is fun in a childlike way that's missing from the deluge of Disney Marvel movie sludge.

Play this if: You were a fan of XCOM, you don't mind a hammy story, you love a AAA game.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

On tragedy, AAA games, and their unsustainability: ditto all the above. Prince of Persia: Lost Crown is one of the best Metroidvanias I've ever played (and I've played a lot). Not that anyone is playing it for this, but also: the localization is amazing. I played it en español y los voces fueron maravillosos.

Predictably: Ubisoft considers it a failure because it didn't make a bajillion dollars in two weeks. They won't make any more DLCs except the one they released. The team that made this won't get to make another. I also detest that you also have to log in to play a single-player game that runs locally.

I did a silly thing and played it immediately in Hard mode. "I'm a seasoned Metroidvania guy," I thought. "Most AAA games aren't hard enough." This was both a terrible mistake and the best choice ever. Early game was brutal as a result, and bosses were almost Souls-like. But as I got better it balanced out better, and I'm grateful I gave myself that challenge.

Play this if: You love a good platforming Metroidvania. While I wouldn't call it a combat-centric game like Blasphemous or Chasm or Ender Lillies, be aware it isn't as combat-squeamish as Ori, and you will have to lean into it a bit.

Disco Elysium

A giant overwrought article here. This ate my July. It's one of my favorite things I've ever consumed. That it exists and got widely distributed was a glitch in the Matrix that's since been corrected, and the team who made it will never be allowed to produce it again. It's too interesting, too human, too funny, too tragic, too imaginative.

I should note that I played it for 5 or 6 hours a few years back, kind of hated it, and put it down. Only last year did I give it another try, where it stuck. So if you're not feeling it, I get it. I'm happy to come over and be a hype man while you find your footing.

Play this if: You're a human being.

Return of the Obra Dinn

While very differently flavored, Obra Dinn, a bit like Disco Elysium, does hit me as a singularly unique piece. I feel like some artists, if they didn't exist, would have the resulting void filled in by someone similar (e.g. if Katy Perry didn't exist, someone like her would have). But others don't have successful imitators or comparisons (thinking Jackie Chan, or Weird Al): they are irreplaceable. Lucas Pope is from the latter, and out of his mind with this 1-bit presentational style "insurance adjuster sim on a ghost ship."

Here's a video of him learning to draw the hand, and I find it inspiring for other reasons. When was the last time you worked on a task, focused, for so many hours? He never tabs out to social media or email. He's just working on The Thing, for hours. I sometimes go back to it to fantastize how powerful I'd be if I could do that.

Play this if: You love a good puzzle. It's tragic that you can really only play this once.

The Roottrees Are Dead

This was recommended to me by the wonderful Hillel Wayne after he learned that I'd loved Obra Dinn. At the time, it was a free game on itch.io. But programmer brain is contagious, and another engineer fan of the game named Robin Ward (who I knew from being one of the co-founders of Discourse) made it a project to remake it in Godot, without AI art, and with many edges sanded down. He wrote a neat dev blog about it. Now you can get this version on Steam, and it seems strongly endorsed by the original author.

Hillel's recommendation is solid! I had so much fun playing it, and the parallels to Obra Dinn are apparent. In many ways, it's the simplest game on this list. At the same time, it's the only one I could see my friends or I conceivably making. It's got a "home-cooked meal" quality that's great to find in games.

Play this if: You like a cute story, enjoy light nostalgia from the 90's, don't like mechanically demanding games, and enjoy a good puzzle.

Dead Cells

I had the pleasure of hanging out with Ian Danskin a few times (his channel is one of the best on YouTube) and we talked about his love of Adventure Games. I told him that I struggled with the genre, and when he was asking questions to recommend one for me, I joked that he should become "an Adventure Game sommelier." "Hm, tell me what you're eating and I could recommend a pairing? What have you liked in the past?"

If I had to offer my own genre specialization, it's in Metroidvanias, so it was almost homework to get to Dead Cells. I've played a million "Souls-like Metroidvanias," but not the decade-old, blowout hit "roguelike" one. And to be honest: I didn't love it? Now, I didn't love it for dozens of hours. And I appreciate the hell out of how deep it is, and what an achievement it is on its own. And good lord did I love the Castlevania content, because I'm basic like that. But it's the same issue I have with most roguelikes: it feels like grinding while you acquire the permanent skills? The runs have plenty of differentiation, so why was it always with a groan that I started a new one? I guess I was like "well, we're committing for another 40 minutes, the first 35 of which will be "Don't fuck up and ruin your run, Pablo," and if I fuck up, that time was mostly wasted. I guess I can buy a new skin or something. Or save up the cells from hundreds of runs and never buy a skin for a very, very small upgrade."

By the end I could see a path to grind and roll dice for another 3 dozen hours to advance the story another iota, and I wasn't really invested at that point. Other video games, or a novel, or going outside, all spoke to me more than "yet another Dead Cells run, even though there's more to see."

Now that I did the homework and ticked off the box. The next entries of "Metroidvania mastery" are the "Metroidvania pinball game" or the "Deep puzzle metroidvania."

Play this if: Your biggest issue with most Metroidvanias is skill ceiling (you no longer feel challenged) or replayability. Story and setting aren't that important.

Super Mario Wonder

While I love Metroidvanias, I think it's because I also love platformers. Celeste changed my life, and 2D Marios are among my favorite video games. So when my niece wanted to play Mario Wonder, we downloaded it and played for a few hours. After she left I spent the next week or two beating it.

It's fun. Of course I felt the most alive playing the hardest hardest hardest extra extra bonus optional challenge level (video above), which took me an hour or so. The Wonder Seed mechanic is neat, but I heard someone describe it (and Mario Maker, generally) as mining the creativity of the ROMhacking community after litigating them away, and it's hard to unsee.

My favorite things about it though: WOW is it hard to design games for "all ages," and watching my niece and nephew (10 and 7 years old, with little video game experience) pick it up and work through some levels was instructive. I found it fun enough to play through; that they also have a great time speaks to how wonderfully the game's designed.

Play this if: You've got kids in your life. You enjoy platforming but aren't a masochist about it.

Dredge

"Lovecraftian Horror fishing game?!" Sign me up!

My buddy Ben Hutchinson once coined "Ben's Law: if a game has horses, it has broken horse physics." I'm thinking of climbing mountains on horseback in Skyrim, or ladder goat. I have a more modest "Pablo's Law: if the game has fishing, it's going to be the best minigame I've played all year." Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Hell, even the original Dreamcast Sonic Adventure: gimme that fishing minigame!!!

I usually resent games where the Skinner Box mechanics are laid so bare, e.g. "spin on this hamster wheel to get some of currency #1; travel across the room to pull the lever for the currency #2; now use the currencies in a crafting minigame to make the third currency, which you can spend for better hamster wheels, levers, and crafting. Do this for 15 hours." If you also're also like this, you may struggle a bit with Dredge. But once I was hooked, I was hooked.

Play this if: You want to try something fresh. You're tired of games who's conflict is all about combat. You love a well-built setting, and want to see other ways to create "spooky."

Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands

This is probably the most obscure one—for most of the 2010's I enjoyed Deathbulge comics; the most viral one that you might have seen was Bulgemon, but I appreciated this one and the series about the party, where everyone kicks down doors.

I followed Dan on Twitter and in 2019 he Kickstarted an indie game based on Deathbulge. It took them years—as far as I know that team never made a game before, making games is very hard, and now that I've seen the product, I understand what a massive project it must have been to make a game this big, with this many art assets and gameplay elements, as your first.

It sounds like faint praise to say, but truly one of the best things I can say about it is that it's done, it's a complete and polished game, up to par with any on this list. The ingredients in its making often lead to "fizzles and becomes vaporware," or more likely, "less innovative or interesting than most RPG Maker games." But I really think they nailed the target: there is so much character (especially the illustrations, naturally) and a full-length RPG.

As a game though? I guess I'm not that into RPGs? I love what they did with the battle system, their spin on character classes. I also wondered how you could provide a coherent cast of characters and storyline to a "universe" like Deathbulge, which works wonderfully in comics but has to bear very different weights for a game. But when I look back, I have a hard time feeling like it truly moved me, other than to be extremely happy that it got made at all.

Play this if: You enjoy Deathbulge comics (the ones I linked, or others you find). You want to see a neat combat system. You love a setting where sick guitar riffs are everywhere and as magical as you felt them when you were an 11 year-old.