Well I guess there’s only a few days left in 2024, so I should be naming the best games of the year… that I played.

You’ll be getting an opinion that actually has some small level of viability compared to, say, “Geoff Keighley’s stupid show that is just a way for him to make a lot of money rather than actually celebrating gaming’s accomplishments of the year”. You know, the show where he gave an award to a Tencent director, where his job is doing the opposite of what his award was given to him for? The show where most of the people deciding on nominees and winners aren’t even gamers? That one? Yeah it’s bad.

So yeah, I will be choosing 5 Games of the Year, with a fairly arbitrary top choice. Because one winner isn’t enough. Then I’ll do honorable mentions and… maybe bad games of the year, I dunno. And a quick rant about the year as a whole

To be clear, this is games I have played. If I haven’t played it, it will not be here. If I had played Stellar Blade, it would probably be on here. I didn’t. I will play it when it comes out on PC. Other games that are probably good that I haven’t played are: Another Crab’s Treasure, Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, Marvel Rivals, FF7 Rebirth, MiSide, Animal Well, and VGA winner Astro Bot… among many others. Lots of interesting stuff came out that I just skipped over for whatever reason.

There’s also games that came out that I skipped because they looked genuinely awful, such as Concord, Dragon Age: The Veilguard and many other failures. If something like that was your favorite game this year? Get a different hobby.

As a general rule, remakes and remasters will not make the list unless they’re substantially different from the original, but some might make it into the honorable mentions. Even though there’s so many remasters/remakes, I avoid most of them.

Anyways, time to rant quickly, then go through the winners and stuff. LET’S GO!

Well the GotY and 2024 hype stuff is done, so back to the regular schedule. Game releases! I do have a review incoming for the japan-exclusive Mameda no Bakeru, once I’m done with it. I have been playing other stuff as well, not sure I’ll get reviews up for those. Namely Dungeons of Aether (very okay/10), 9 Years of Shadow (actually pretty good), and I bought but haven’t started Chained Echoes which I heard very good stuff about.

So here I’m highlighting: 8 multiplats, 2 Switch games, 2 PC games, and the dumbest release in history on PS5. As far as what I’m buying in those, there’s one of my most hyped games this year already so that’s one, and I have 2-3 maybes. Not a terrible start for the year.

Oh and Palworld I think is meant to come out in Early Access this month, I might have a look.

Let’s go and start 2024!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

Okay I did my GotY post, now let’s stop looking at the past and look at the future… Hopefully 2024 brings just a bit more quality than 2023 did.

I’m just gonna do the usual, just talk about my top 6 most-hyped-for-now games, and then big lists of games I have some level of hype for, and a slightly smaller list of games that might be popular but that I don’t have hype for (some because they’re bad, some because they’re not really my thing).

So let’s go!

Well I am actually writing this intro before a Direct was even announced (today is September 10). Because it’s pretty clear we’ll get a Direct this month at the same kind of time as every September in the last 8 years, and I assume 13 or 14 for the date of the Direct (*Edit: okay it was 14, let me update the title*).

There are rumors going for this one from Pyoro, one of the only “leakers” that has actually been somewhat trustworthy so far. Namely a DK game that SEEMS to be Mario vs DK-related… hopefully it’s not one of the Minis games and actually a return to the original MvD, which was a take on Donkey Kong 94. Then one for an F-Zero game, which he is heavily hinting at being F-Zero 99 (please no). And one that seems to be hinting at a remaster of the 2 Trace Memory games (the Wii one never came out in America), or at least a Wii game and a DS game that are linked somehow. And there’s no other leaker saying anything credible. Would be funny if this Direct was the one where Pyoro lost his credibility.

My true expectation is, of course, that even a bad Direct has one or two cool things, so in the end I’ll probably have some thing to be happy about here.

Well, let’s go and watch this Direct! These are live reactions as I’m watching the Direct.