There are some years that are pivotal in the gaming landscape, even if we don't realise it at the time. You probably have your own red letter events in the annals of gaming history, maybe GTA 5, Breath of the Wild or Half-Life 2. The years these massive games land on also feel that little bit more special. When we crawled into 2024 most who had an opinion on such matters thought this year would not be one of those years. A moment of calm before the madness of GTA 6 ensues. Yet, despite the lack of life-changing game releases, 2024 has certainly seen some absolute classics emerge.

As is now tradition, I will run through five of the best games I have reviewed this year. Games that were certainly considered worthy of game of the year and worth a look from you. I have also included an honourable mention for a game that was at one point in the top five but got bumped due to other games being better. Then onto the grand finale where I will show my game of the year 2024. Next year is set to be massive, maybe the biggest yet with titles like GTA 6, The Witcher 4 and Death Stranding 2. However, as we know all too well now, nothing is ever a sure thing in the world of gaming. Thank you for all your support, for reading my content and I hope you all have a great Christmas break.

Five of the best

Pacific Drive

This one was the first game of 2024 that I had mentally earmarked as a potential game of the year. You enter a world filled with malevolent energy fields and everyday objects seemingly becoming sentient. Following a brief introduction as a delivery driver you are sucked into a restricted zone in the Pacific Northwest, a place that is constantly awash with mysterious storms that can alter the very fabric of reality. 

After being unceremoniously whisked onto the wrong side of the restricted perimeter wall, you commandeer a dilapidated old station wagon to make your escape. Soon after, voices start coming through the radio static, belonging to people who seemingly want to help you survive. The car is fully upgradable and once you make it to the garage this becomes your port in the storm, figuratively and literally. The robust interface is one of the things that makes this game such a joy to play. There is also some brilliant design work in what you can build and how it all fits together. Over time you will add new facilities to the workshop which in turn, offer new gameplay loops and access to deeper parts of the map.

Each time you do a run into the zone, conditions can vary wildly and deciding on how to configure your ride becomes an essential skill. You must scavenge as much data and resources as possible before the area stability starts to buckle. The game then turns from a creepy scavenger hunt into a mad dash to the exit portal. This is an exceptionally well-made indie game that offers a unique take on the standard roguelite formula. You can check out my full review here.

V Rising

I love vampire games and it always seemed strange to me that we don't see more. Masquerade and the Legacy of Kain games stand out in my memory but this just goes to show how sparse the hits have been over the years. Within hours of booting up the early access version of V Rising, I could tell we had something special here as the build quality was rock solid. This year we finally got a chance to dive into the final release version and it was everything I had been hoping for. 

You start the game with a basic character creator before setting out to seize dominion over the night. Very quickly you will be setting up a basic wooden castle and catching the scent of your first blood target. Boss characters are the backbone to progression, very much like Valheim, killing them grants you new abilities and build options. As your powers grow so will your castle and the gear you can make. It takes a deft hand to balance progression this well as each tier of resources can filter back into the next. New skills give you a fighting chance against more powerful bosses and bringing them down is always a satisfying scrap to the end. Another huge source of fun is that the whole game can be played in co-op with friends or in PVP battles. We rented a server from G-Portal and had a blast building our castles in order to stalk the night together. 

V Rising has taken so much of the established vampire lore and honoured it perfectly. They have also captured what makes being a vampire such an interesting existence in the balance between power and fragility. The sunlight casts real-time shadows so moving around becomes a shadowy version of the floor is lava. The other weaknesses are here as well such as villages covered in garlic and the repellent force of holy folk. You can even transform into various animal forms when humanoid just won't cut the cheese. From start to finish, there is always something to do and another challenge to take on. I cannot recommend V Rising enough and you can check out my review here.

Space Marine 2

I think Space Marine 2 is one of the best 40k games we've ever seen. Sabre Interactive have taken all the lessons they have learned from previous games and enriched this title with that expertise. The massive swarms of enemies are the headline feature here as they are very impressive to witness. These massive writhing armies swarm through the devastated cityscapes and impossibly large structures to meet you head-on. You will see dreadnoughts cutting down whole swathes of Tyranids and Leman Russ Tanks shielding normal ground troops which look like children to your massive size.

The only downside to this wonderful game is that it hasn't launched with a great amount of content. With a six-hour campaign and a few hours for the Operations, some might feel a little overcharged: especially if they paid for the more expensive versions. What I do like is that all future playable content will be available for all players, even if you only have the base version. Paid content is purely for cosmetics and for that, I think they deserved a nod of credit. Even with the lean amount of playtime, the operation progression is somewhere to spend many hours levelling your chosen class. With new Operations on the way, I think the future is very bright for this top-tier horde shooter. As for 40k enthusiasts, this is an absolute must-play. You can check out my review here.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

To my shame I decided to review this one, assuming it wouldn't affect my game of the year article. As it turned out, it very nearly knocked the winner off its top spot. This is the best Indiana Jones game I have ever played and an absolutely stunning title in its own right. The way Machine Games (and Troy Baker) have captured the feeling from the films is magical. 

Right from the off we are treated to a familiar sequence from the Lost Ark and this sets the stage perfectly. Each main area opens up like a good book, feeding you new challenges and interesting side quests. By the time I had finished the first main area I was already ten hours in: this game is massive. As for moment-to-moment gameplay, this is certainly not a shooter. The sneaking is basic but fun and the repertoire of items you can use to clonk Nazis on the head is massive. Shooting is a thing but the fact you alert every guard on the continent makes it almost a failure state. When you are discovered using your fists is the way to go and this must be one of the most satisfying punch effects in gaming. Of course, your trusty whip can also be used for many situations.

On the highest settings, The Great Circle is also one of the best-looking games to release this year with a wide range of locations. If you then turn on full path tracing (and if you have the hardware) this game is a beautiful glimpse into the future of game environments. An absolute triumph and also bodes well for the next Wolfenstein game. You will see my review up soon.

Horizon Zero Dawn Remaster

When this remaster was announced we saw plenty of negative comments, many going with the ‘nobody asked for this’. Funnily enough, those same gaming pundits aren't so chirpy now we have actually seen the amount of work that has been done. Everything from new vegetation and foliage, new water effects, a reworked lighting system and textures applied from the sequel added with a deft touch. All the NPCs have been updated and hours of dialogue rerecorded. There is so much more but the best way to summarise this update, is Zero Dawn now looks very close to the visual splendour of Forbidden West. 

This remaster has been an absolute joy to play from start to finish. To see a game you love enriched and enhanced in a way that also leaves the original framework intact is a wonderful thing. The team at Nixxes continue to bring excellent ports our way and they have earned their reputation as a safe pair of hands. You can check out my full review here. 

God of War Ragnarok (Honourable mention)

So world structure aside, Ragnarok is ostensibly better in every other way than the previous God of War game yet also feels like it was cut from the same cloth. The combat feels more substantial, the characters are bursting with life and it leads to an absolutely heart-pounding conclusion. With the technical issues now being fixed, there is no reason not to play this epic game on PC, that is unless the PSN requirement buggers that up. It is hard to fully convey how angry I am with Sony and I'm sure Santa Monica Studios aren't best pleased either. The sheer amount of work that goes into making games like this is immense and to see it sullied just for a few extra PSN accounts is a crime. 

When I consider Ragnarok, I do not see it as a sequel to the first game: it is a continuation and ultimately a concluding chapter. I do think the first game felt much more like its own contained story with a well-rounded arc. Here we literally start where we left Kratos and Atreus in the last game. With the prior title using the central hub, you could move around and mostly take on quests at your own pace. Ragnarok is more linear in its direction and with less flexibility in how you approach each area. With the main story being what it is, however, this sense of urgency actually feels right for the story they are telling. With a very scalable set of graphical options you could enjoy this game on most gaming rigs so there really is no excuse not to. You can check out my review here.

Game of the Year 

Helldivers 2

Most game developers do not have an easy time of it and even after years of hard graft the smaller ones very often don't see success. Yet sometimes, if the stars align and you have made the right moves, things can go your way. Helldivers 2 landed on the gaming scene like a flaming Hell Pod from orbit and was an immediate phenomenon. This overnight success took the developers at Arrowhead by complete surprise and they were in no way prepared for the army of players now decimating their servers. The first few weeks were this bitter-sweet battle between success but also the constant server issues. Eventually, the team managed to wrangle enough server capacity so everyone could play. At its height, we had nearly four hundred and sixty thousand players online. 

All that we knew going in was the game, which very few had originally played, was now dropping its top-down viewpoint. In a fully three-dimensional game world, we would now feel much closer to the action. The idea is simple: choose your loadout, select a planet from the star map and dive into an available mission. With an epic musical track thundering away as you hurtle towards terra firma, you smash into the mission site and start shooting. 

The two main factions so far are either the bugs (Terminids) or the bots (Automatons), each offering a very different challenge. The bugs make you feel like you are playing StarShip Trooper ‘the game’. The bots are much more of a ranged adversary resembling something Skynet might cook up. In a very unexpected move, the developers dropped the much sought-after third race at this year's game awards: the Illuminate! This new (old) race was only expected to be arriving at the earliest in the first half of 2025. Not only that but the other things Helldivers have been clamouring for since launch are vehicles (Mechs notwithstanding) and now a four-player truck has dropped with this update. The developers have been delivering an ongoing galactic narrative as we have played (mostly via text) and it has had some success. We have seen new mission types, new biomes, new enemies and a whole list of Warbonds. 

What a wild ride the last nine months have been. It has often been like a war of attrition with quite a few weeks feeling like the player base had given up the fight. Yet, the embers of managed democracy were still burning bright and Arrowhead finally gave in to players requests. The ‘buff patch’ probably saved the game in the short term as it gave players exactly what they had been asking for: unlimited power! All those weapon nerfs were now a distant memory with each weapon fuelling the power fantasy we all knew we wanted. Even the most recent big change, the DSS space station has landed with an initial thump but then been made good by the Eagle Strikes and changes from the devs

. 

I think the success of Helldivers 2 has been mostly down to a very simple fact, that the basic minute-to-minute gameplay is pure satisfaction. Enemies scatter like autumn leaves as you obliterate them with devastating firepower. There are times when your heart is pounding from the relentless waves hitting your position and you are just flying by the seat of your pants. It makes all those awesome scenes in action films playable, sprinting for the evac while friends lay down cover fire or staying behind to protect the hellbomb and making the ultimate sacrifice. Who knows what will be in store for the game in 2025 but this year, I give Helldivers 2 my game of the year award!