For a while now I’ve been able to start these year-in-review posts with “[YEAR] was a great year for video games!” since I find a few game releases that absolutely blow me away at some point, but this year… was honestly disappointing. Not to say there weren’t a few bangers, but if it weren’t for many unplayed games I had hanging out in my Steam library, this year would’ve been pretty brutal for me, and honestly the gaming community at large. Nothing came out that was really a masterpiece, and what did come out was either overhyped and underdelivered or just mediocre/decent enough for a playthrough or two but destined to gather dust on the shelf of “quite alright” games.

But that’s not to put a damper on my HOTLY ANTICIPATED and WAY OVERDELIVERING AWARDS! The few great games I played this year can’t be overshadowed by some poor releases. I dumped all my time into some deep indie cuts, FPS games, and RPGs, but I did clock a good amount of playtime in a few console games, mostly being Nintendo Switch stuff since I had a lot of moments to do some party games with folks these past few months. Not sure why as well, but I rarely set up my VR to play any games this year (beyond Beat Saber). At this point I’ll assume nothing was really marketed well enough to me in the VR space to get me excited to pick it up, though Blade & Sorcery had its full release in 2024 and that game is always great.

THE CATEGORIES

🥇MAJOR AWARDS 🥇

BEIGE PAMPAS GRASS IN AN UNDECORATED VASE AWARD FOR MOST MEDIOCRE GAME

This category is absolutely stuffed for 2024. Our unseasoned beef of a year had many disappointments, but not really for the fact that the games that came out were bad but because they were very nothing-y. These select few masterpieces tread ground where others have tread, break through barriers that already had lain shattered on the floor, and raise bars to about chest height before walking away with a smile on their face. Never in my life have I had to muddle through so many new games just because I spent so much damn money on them. Jokes on me for buying on release I suppose.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Let me preface with this: I actually rather enjoyed Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but it took a long time to get there. The combat is good, the locations are neat, but there was a significant drop in quality from Inquisition to Veilguard. Not really gameplay-wise, or even in a design-oriented manner. Just as the execution went, as the bones of a great game are here but it’s wrapped in an all too basic story, with all too basic characters, lazily ridding itself of a lot of the moral and important choices of previous games that Dragon Age and Bioware as a whole are known for. You often feel like you don’t have any authority in your decisions. All dialogue options lead to the same events, with only a lil -1 or +1 to random companions to show you how they feel about the slightly stern thing you said to the dude who just murdered 6 civilians. It tries to shove in a Mass Effect 2-style “I hope you completed every side quest” ending for dramatic effect too, but it lacks so much finesse and polish it’s difficult to stick around with. The acting on a few of the characters feels so phoned in and stiff as well, it actually broke my immersion quite often. What direction was given to Neve’s actress? They did that girl dirty. But, in the end, the gameplay carries it

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League

If a dropped ball gained sentience, it’s favorite game developer would be Rocksteady Studios. From rousing successes in the Arkham series, to whatever unmitigated disaster this was, they’ve done it all. I’m a tiny bit wary to put this into the mediocre category honestly, because Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was actually pretty terrible. I suppose where Dragon Age was mostly mid but peppered with a few good parts, Suicide Squad was mostly mid and peppered with some horrible parts. Ostensibly taking place in the main Arkham universe we’ve all come to know and love (which I’m sure will be retconned at this point), Suicide Squad: Kill Me follows Harley, King Shark, and some other fellas I’ve forgotten as they fight to rid Metropolis of the scourge that is Brainiac, who has corrupted all your favorite DC heroes and turned them into baddies that mock you over your two-way radio. Gone is the excellently paced, brooding dark worlds Rocksteady is known to craft for the Arkham games. Gone are the single-player focused experiences with every unlockable to be achieved through skill and progress in the course of the game. Live-service and microtransactions are here to stay baby! Thought you would unlock the Joker right away when the season dropped? Nope, you have to unlock him by grinding the shit missions over and over again! The absolute only reason I played this to completion (and lord forgive me I did) is because I bought it at full price. The death of Kevin Conroy as well sets this game in stone as his final appearance as Batman in a video game, and they did not do him any justice having his name tied to this.

Warhammer 40k: Spacemarine II

A controversial inclusion into this list I’m sure, but Warhammer 40k: Space Marine II didn’t knock my socks off like I thought it would; A sentiment I believe I share with a lot of the community. Pretty much boiling down to a reskin of a Gears game, Space Marine II has you running around mostly murdering Tyranids and a couple other enemy types for about 10 hours of gameplay, carousing through some linear levels on desolate and destroyed worlds. Most of my time was spent in the story, learning about what our dear space marine has been doing since the first game. The PvP mode included in this is pretty mid, and seemingly only exists because they wanted to check off a few luxury items to write as blurbs on the back of the box. Co-op is alright too, though it feels rather average and bland. Hm, I’m waffling a bit because I’m struggling to remember anything that happened in this game, which is usually a good sign for inclusion on a list about mediocre games. The most unique part of this is that it’s set in the Warhammer 40k universe, but they fail to utilize a lot of the interesting aspects of 40k and rather have their game rely on antiquated late-2000s shooter design, which, fair enough, the original Space Marine released in 2011, but there’s some evolution that could’ve happened in that decade that passed.

Sker Ritual

There’s a part of me that feels bad for singling out indie games in a negative light. I’ve done it a few times over the past decade and each time a part of me dies, mostly since I know it’s a hell of a lot more common for smaller developers to actually look up mentions of their games than those from big AAA developments. And their games are always personal pet projects, with a lot of time and effort put into them to perfect it to their liking. With that being said, while I often have fun jumping in and dipping out of Sker Ritual once in awhile with the wife, I seem to always notice how uniquely uninspired this game seems to be. Wholly based off of classic Call of Duty Zombies gameplay, Sker Ritual is a co-op FPS game not deep enough to be a new Killing Floor, but touches on what I think is a genre that could use more love: wave-based shooters. If it had larger maps, more weapons, and a semblance of a comprehensible storyline (based on what I think they’re trying to do) it would be pretty good honestly. As it is, it’s pretty bog standard click-on-people’s-faces shooter game.

And our winner is:

NO MORE RAMEN-DIET AWARD FOR BEST INDIE GAME

The dream of most game developers is to make it as an indie dev. To build your own game from the ground up, assembling it to your perfect specifications and your dreams. To be a visionary and entrepreneur in a space that craves to be disrupted. Until then though, most devs are munching away on their 70 cent chicken flavored ramen, coding day and night to hopefully one day burst onto the scene in rain of confetti. The following games’ devs however, have their newfound fame. No longer will they need to get their lunch from the pantry! Their meals have to be refrigerated! Because that means it’s more expensive! I think.

These are the best indie games of this year.

UFO 50 is a compendium of “50 fully fleshed out games, not mini-games!”, filled with some decently long experiences and some mini-games, but that’s not a big problem. Taking inspiration I’m sure from Action 52 of the NES era, UFO 50 is the latest game from Mossmouth, creators of Spelunky. Mixing in current day game design with classic art and presentation, UFO 50 has a little bit of everything to cater to every need. Puzzlers, platformers, shooters, story based games, weird indie games, and even an idle clicker to name a few. Most of the games are as complex as 8-bit games of the time were (with a bit of 16-bit love thrown in there), and each of them I can see being someone’s favorite, as they’re all bangers. Though it is a bit disingenuous to say every game in it is not a mini game. Just because you have a 10 second cutscene introducing the plot doesn’t mean it’s a fully thought out game, guys. I can point to a couple that I played and finished in under 10 minutes, which I would class as a minigame. Were they bad minigames? Not at all, they were still fun as hell. There’s a significant market of people with busy lives that can be catered to with short form games, and I would assume there will be more games in this compendium style in the future. Dread X fitted into this category when they were doing those. I could certainly see other game releases successful in this niche.

Balatro is probably the PC darling of this year, which is wild since it’s just a roguelike card game (of which a few of those have been kicking around for years now), but I agree completely. It has a unique flashy style with hundreds of unlockable cards and some different decks which makes you keep coming back for more. I explained as much in my Balatro review, but often times your luck is inexorably tied to your enjoyment of the game, but when mixed with a bit of foresight you can guarantee a lot of your wins, or at least deeper runs. It has this unique aura about it that feels very… mysterious. Like you’re playing with dangerous cards or with the one dude from Hand of Fate just watching over your shoulder. Inscryption was the same way, but it actually had in-world mysteries to discover, rather than just unlocking new cards through special plays. Which, actually, would be a good comparison. Inscryption’s card game was not as good as Balatro, but Balatro doesn’t have, well any story, compared to Inscryption (even though that weird FMV thing at the end of Inscryption was a bit cringe). I’m at risk of going off topic here, but basically Balatro feels like it has something to discover behind the cards, but there isn’t really. It’s just a unique card game, and one I really enjoyed quite a lot looking back on it.

Thank Goodness You’re Here! is as British as British can be. Our friends over in the UK make games too, and when they make them as British as humanly possible, they are incredibly hilarious. Thank Goodness You’re Here is very funny, and it’s rather hard to find legitimately funny games these days. Although the comedy may not be as accessible to a non-anglo audience as other games (most jokes are heavily tied to knowledge of UK culture), this will tickle all your fancies if you hail from the clouded lands of meat pies and bovril. That’s not to say only British people find it funny, I did as well, but many subtle comedic moments that would’ve passed me by were pointed out by my resident Brit Mudsie. All in all though, it’s refreshing to have a comedy game that does more than slapstick and ‘woah isn’t it cool you can do this stupid thing’ ala Goat Simulator humor.

And our winner is:

Shoot-Myself-In-The-Foot Award For Best Game Released This Year I Didn’t Play

There were quite a few games I ran out of time to try this year. I love sitting down at my desk or on my couch to play every new release that comes out, but something terrible happened at some point and I have to pretend to be an adult with a job which takes up 40 hours of my week. Also, now that we’re solidly in the “$70 for new releases” era, I have a bit more hesitation to put myself out there for a game or genre I’m not completely comfortable with, even though in the past I’ve surprised myself with how much I enjoy some games I’ve given a chance. Also DLC doesn’t count! I didn’t play Shadow of the Erdtree, but as an aside, it’s very weird how popular that has been for “game of the year” awards. Yea it’s beefy DLC, but it’s DLC. It’s not a game! I remember when we used to have standards, like having Dave the Diver win best indie game awards.

Astro Bot won a many accolades this year, but it seemed to me to be a general platformer when it came out. Also, my PS5 has been collecting dust under my desk for awhile and I really need to pick it back up. After the great reviews, I decided to get Astro Bot to finally give me a reason to turn on my PS5 again… and summarily left the game on my shelf unopened. Same happened with Ghost of Tsushima a year or two back. I’m a whore for Sony and Playstation releases so this would’ve been great for me probably, but I never felt in the headspace to play a casual platformer game. When it happens though, I’ll try it out and probably love it as much as everyone else does. I have no excuses when I own the damn thing!

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was on my radar after it was announced, as I have some pretty core memories of watching Indiana Jones growing up. I love the settings and the feeling of adventure those stories give me. A different part of me feels though that it was never meant to be a first-person game. Maybe my brain is too cooked from my history of playing action-adventure games like Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and Assassin’s Creed, which are all third person experiences (except for a strange diversion in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag/Rogue I suppose). Indiana Jones just seemed a bit out of reach for the price, and it wasn’t really out long enough to catch my eye towards the end of the year as I was already deep in a few other games. No matter what, I’ll definitely pick it up sometime in 2025. Maybe I should’ve made time for it this year though…

Metaphor: ReFantazio is one of this year’s highly lauded games. I’ve had an admittedly checkered past with anime games. I love stuff like Ni No Kuni, which this sorta looked like, but I’ve also been a bit bored by classics like Xenoblade and Shenmue when I’ve tried them. Of course random anime games like Omega Quintet are at the bottom of the barrel of my levels of enjoyment, but I did put like 30 hours into Sparking! Zero this year… I guess there were too many unknowns to pull the trigger on Metaphor. There’s a thin knife edge for JRPGs I absolutely love, and I’m not sure this would sit on it. It did look cool, but I think most of my interest came from just how many people were praising this game; I just never knew if it was going to hit the right buttons for me. I’ll pick it up when it’s <$30 and see if it would’ve changed my opinion on the year. We certainly need new IPs succeeding in the awards circuit. So many games that people find easy to love are usually sequels or remasters.

Silent Hill 2 Remastered was forever sought after by the gaming community. Being one of the greatest PS2 games of all time, it was an early definitive entry in the survival-horror genre and gamers clamored to play it on modern systems. Luckily, I already own Silent Hill 2 on PS2 which has become a bit of a costly white whale in the collector community as of recent, but, with all due respect, Silent Hill 2 was only pretty alright when I played it. Though I only got around to playing it in like 2020, and it was a bit aged at that point. One of my biggest failings which I need to work on is that it’s hard for me to enjoy older titles I don’t have history with. There are games I’ve recently tried for the first time like Symphony of the Night which are outliers, but many times I find older games somewhat clunky and missing features I’ve grown to expect.

And our winner is:

🥈Minor Awards🥈

Before announcing my Game of the Year, here’s a few awards personally dedicated to some of the great games and moments from this year.

Pitchforks and Torches Award for Best Controversy

Tizzies and conniptions are rather common in the gaming community but often times they stem from real problems. Maybe you didn’t read your audience right, maybe you did some stuff that a normal human would see as actually moronic; Whatever it is, drama makes for fun events in gaming! Ongoing layoffs are always controversial but they’re not fun since actual innocent people are being harmed by them. This award is more for community outrage or bad ideas that blew up in the faces of devs or CEOs who think they know what they’re doing, but probably didn’t. Some honorary mentions would be:

Capital-G Gamers’ outrage at Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the complainers of which should probably go dive into the shallow end of a pool. Gammon-faced Gamers thought to band together to “uhm acktually” historical inaccuracy in an Assassin’s Creed game for the first time, with their main argument being that one of the main characters, who is based on an actual historical man, is black. Nothing is historically accurate in video games beyond Putt-Putt Travels Through Time, and the concept around Yasuke is badass, really. I feel personally insulted as someone who’s wanted a mainline Japanese Assassin’s Creed game since the first game came out in 2007, and I’m pretty sure Shadow’s delay was in part to let the whole annoyed-mouth-breather thing to blow over. This seems cool as hell and I’m pretty excited for it, I’ll certainly play it on release. If it’s anything like recent Assassin’s Creed games though, it probably will be a bit mid anyway.

Dr. Disrespect sexting a minor is something he will never live down. And imagine getting fired from your own game studio! He can join the illustrious ranks of Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland who was summarily fired from his own game company Squanch Games in 2023 after his weird interactions with minors came to light, and his pastime of ignoring sexual harassment complaints of women under his management.

Concord was a thing. I’m sure you’ve forgotten by now, but after having years of development and a triple A amount of money dumped into it, Concord was pulled off all platforms and all online services were shut down in under two weeks earlier in 2024. While wholly embarrassing to all involved, this sorta broke the “don’t let innocent devs take shots” requirement of my award, so it wasn’t able to pull off a win here (either), as they shut down the studio and laid off everyone who were really just following orders from some upper management guy whose job was never going to be threatened.

Banana on Steam was another controversial moment I remember. Sure clicker games are fun, but much like those weird “my pc definitely got a virus from this” achievement stuffing games on Steam, Banana was just a means to an end as a real-money skin selling game. Which, I mean, fair enough, a lot of games on Steam like CS2 and TF2 had entire economies created on their skin markets (which is a horrific term out of context), but at least they had the decency to make a game around it all. This is just a weird gamer version of a bitcoin miner. Who the hell is buying skins for this anyway? I’d assume people are just laundering money with stolen credit cards, but we’ll never know. All we will know is the winner of the Pitchforks and Torches Awards for Best Controversy:

WINNER: HELLDIVERS 2

Helldivers 2 is awesome, but you know what’s not awesome? A helicopter (or perhaps, pelican) mom named Sony trying to shove PlayStation down your throat. Forcing you to link your game to a service you don’t use for their own benefit and not yours, releasing overpriced Killzone skins to promote other IPs… How nice! CEO Johan Pilestedt said screw this I’m out, and downgraded his position so Shams Jorjani could deal with it. The developers themselves were shielded from much blame for those moments, but don’t forget the drama with nerfing all the weapons and armors in this PvE game, which without doubt was the development team’s fault entirely. “You’re having too much fun? I’ll stop that!” Said Helldivers devs. At the least, Helldivers 2 certainly earned the Pitchfork and Torches Award through sheer numbers of controversies, much like the hordes in the game itself.

Fine Wine Award for Best Game I Played From My Backlog In 2024

I have a huge collection of games I’ve been playing throughout the year, and some older touchstones that I finally get around to which would benefit from a bit of personal note to satisfy what probably are previous Shoot-Myself-In-The-Foot award winners. Some honorary mentions would be Hi-Fi Rush, which was really good, and Sniper Elite 5, which was amazing smashing through co-op with Mudsie. They don’t overshadow the winner though, that being:

Fuzzy Caterpillar Award for Best Beta/Early Access Game

2024 did have a fair few games released into Early Access (Palword, Hades II, Liar’s Bar) and a few continuing entries (Escape from Tarkov mainly) rounding out the nominees, and while most (if not all) of them I would say are not yet fully fledged titles, they are on my radar to bloom into greatness having delivered excellent first experiences early on in their development cycles. I tend not to get into early access games since I’ve been burned a few times in the past (I’m looking at you Star Citizen), but having a few that I enjoyed this year, I have to give a shout out to one that I had fun with the most:

WINNER: WITCHFIRE

Having seen Nosferatu in the new year (one of the most unhinged horny movies I’ve seen in recent memory btw), I think I’m gaining more of an appreciation for Victorian-Gothic crossover styled games like Grim Dawn, Witch Hunt, and Bloodborne. Basically if you wear a large floppy hat and murder monsters in your game, I think you’ve got gold on your hands. Witchfire then has been a great first showing of a rogue-like, extraction-based, victorian-gothic FPS shooter set in an occult-ish world, with excellent gunplay and replayability. With a (currently) pared down story and general lack of content (like maps), it has a few draws against it, but honestly its quality will presumably only go up from where it is now, which is very exciting!

Epic Store for Epic Games Games Award for Games I Bought On The Epic Store This Year

The Epic Store is a thing that exists, and is still hunting to carve out its place in the PC gaming community as a place for epic gamers to get video games that are usually not available on other PC distribution platforms!! Mostly because they lower their cut on your game if you develop with the Unreal Engine, which of course is developed by Epic. Although they’re trying to be competitive with Steam and Xbox store now, trying to focus on being more developer friendly than the others. Anyway, it’s probably good to have competition for Steam, as if they rest on their laurels they may fail to innovate and improve our PC gaming experience. Epic then has a niche they can fill, and beyond all the free games they offer every week to desperately get anyone who isn’t grinding Fortnite to visit their store, they have a pretty large selection of games exclusive and non-exclusive to the Epic Games Store. And our winner for award for Epic Store for Epic Games Games Award is:

WINNER: ME

Yea I still haven’t bought anything on Epic Store.

eh, nah. Award for Game I Stopped Playing The Quickest This Year

I try out and play lots of games. 2024 was no different, and even most games that I didn’t really enjoy playing (looking at you Suicide Squad) I still put many hours into. But with having a bunch of games, there are a few that don’t quite make the cut for my daily rotation. Something like Zoochosis, which I put a good 3 hours into over Halloween and then dropped since there wasn’t much to do in it, or Crime Boss: Rockay City into which I dumped 8 hours for a few story run throughs to chuckle to myself about how the gameplay is better than Payday 3 before going back to Dragon Age. This award though goes to something I only played for one session. Something I knew it wasn’t for me pretty much right away:

WINNER: SPECTRE DIVIDE

A matrimony between Counter Strike and Valorant directed/envisioned/promoted by famed FPS gamer Shroud, Spectre Divide took the gaming world by storm in 2024 when it was announced and released by surprise into Early Access. Shroud’s extended family of streaming friends played it night and day, presumably to not disappoint him as everyone quickly realized it was pretty mid and completely dropped it within two to three weeks. I personally played it a grand total of one and a half hours to finish the tutorial and do two rounds of it before uninstalling and going back to regular CS. Give it some time to cook, I suppose, it may become something good eventually once it figures out what’s special about it besides the one unique element they promote. As it is though, it probably could’ve even won my mediocrity award had a few other games not edged it out.

BEST GAME I PLAYED THAT WAS ACTUALLY RELEASED IN 2024 AWARD

Just as your old high school crush can’t end a conversation without having asked about investing in her pyramid scheme, an article about awards cannot be complete without an award for the best one overall. The award to top all awards. The one to highlight the game that reigns supreme above all others. This game was the best of this year, better than all others I played.

These are the nominees, and some ultimately honorable mentions, for NukedPixels’s Game of the Year Award:

UFO 50 with its unique charm, variety, and retro appeal was a huge time sink for me in 2024. Everything it does is awesome with its modern takes on retro games. There’s a little bit of something for everyone in this. From the most basic games to overly complex ones, each is done in a masterfully creative manner. Not to say that a few of the games it includes should’ve had a touch more time to cook gameplay-wise, but the collection as a whole is exquisite. Would I be disappointed then to have UFO 50 as my game of the year?

Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO was huge in my friend group this year. Finally, Budokai is back on the menu boys! I played the original ones on PS2 over and over, and finally having a Dragon Ball game like this to come back to was incredibly pleasing to my inner child. Being a button masher at heart, Sparking Zero has you relive all the stories of Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super, and sometimes make different choices to see how they might’ve turned out. Multiplayer is good too, though it might not have as much depth as other fighters, it’s still fun. It’s certainly a great experience for Dragon Ball fans, but does it have wide enough appeal that I think it should be game of the year?

Helldivers 2 let democracy be introduced throughout the galaxy this year. Everyone and their mum played it, and I knew it’s a unique and special game when my best friend from Middle/High School whom I had not spoken to for 16 years randomly joined my game, and for one beautiful play session we both reminisced, reconnected, and shot up bugs for the glory of Super Earth. Definitely the best co-op game of this year, but with all the headaches of the nerfs and out-of-game drama, should it win game of the year?

Black Myth: Wukong came with a new graphics card I bought over the summer, and I made sure to specifically hunt out the promotions it was offered in since I needed to play this game. Therefore, I paid hundreds of dollars specifically for Black Myth: Wukong, and it was a blast! A Chinese influenced souls-like, it brings a very unique aesthetic and atmosphere that is rarely felt in AAA games, like how you can tell when a game is developed in Eastern Europe (Metro, Witcher, Escape From Tarkov, etc). Full of boss fights and that weird ethereal story feel you get from Dark Souls games, it may not be the best souls-like game I’ve tried but it’s definitely the best Chinese game I’ve ever played. I feel like it lets itself down a bit with the difficultly level, actually being quite a bit easier than I expected, but is that enough to deter it from being my game of the year?

and the winner is:

WINNER: HELLDIVERS 2

Games are meant to be fun, and Helldivers 2 simply was what I had the most fun playing this year. From blowing up bugs and shutting down robots, to throwing strategems on my friends and diving away, Helldivers 2 is a game that’s unapologetically fun as hell. Sure, some in the community seem a bit terrible. Sure, some of the developers seem to make awful decisions. And sure, Sony is desperately trying to leverage the popularity of Helldivers for its own gain, but once you jump into a match and start fighting alongside your fellow Helldivers, or even in solo play if you’re a chad, everything in the periphery fades away and all that matters is you and your ability to frantically shoot things while under pressure, and no game does it better.

Thank you for reading! I’ll see you all in 2025!!!