2024's Games of the Year, Pt. 2

Yes, this is a retro video game publication, but I find plenty of time for new stuff, too.

Eligibility rules for 2024 were already discussed in the first of three parts, but I do want to make a follow-up note that I still don’t have a Playstation 5. So, while I’m sure Astros Bot is as lovely as people have said, I can’t vouch for it. But now you know why that (and whatever else of note came out exclusively for the PS5 in 2024 will see no representation here.

Which is fine. Between the Switch, Xbox Series X, and Steam Deck, things are pretty well covered. Until the length of days and years are extended, anyway.

For part two, we’ll cover another seven of the 20 Games of the Year, with the final slate of honorable mentions at the end, as well.

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Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Playstation 4/5, Xbox One/Series S|X, Windows
July 19

First of all, let’s talk about the sheer volume of people who gave up on this game. I shouldn’t be less than halfway into Kunitsu-Gami picking up story-based achievements that just five percent of everyone who started playing the game managed to earn, and especially not months after it released. If you started Kunitsu-Gami and bounced, you missed out. Unless you really aren’t into the genre at all or whatever, but still. It’s one of my top-tier favorites from the year, and barely anyone bothered spending more than a couple of hours with it, even if they did take the time to start in the first place.

Anyway! Kunitsu-Gami! It was pretty much teleported from the mid-aughts Capcom offices to the present day, as it felt a whole lot like the kind of game that they would have had Clover or Clover-adjacent developers in their ecosystem put together in 2006 or what have you. An Extremely Playstation 2 Game, he says with the most complimentary voice he can muster.

It’s an action game, in the sense that you control a spirit whose goal is to destroy the demons infesting a mountain, capturing the various villagers who live in various villages all up and down it, and you get to destroying using your weaponry and very acrobatic attacks and combos. It’s also a real-time strategy tower-defense-style game, however, as you have to build up your defenses, a small force of villagers whom you can change into different classes depending on what you’ve unlocked and what you need in that moment, and direct all of that while you’re also doing the whole rampaging spirit on the side of the forces of good thing. Levels are meant to be replayed as you get stronger, so you can more effectively and efficiently finish them while achieving specific goals like finding all the hidden items, or avoiding taking damage at all, or never letting the maiden, Yoshiro, who is dancing to dispel the spirits and the gates from which they emerge, from the physical world, get hit, either.

The levels are wonderfully designed and challenging, and the scaling up of your powers makes revisiting them a welcome assignment. The bosses, too, are a great fit, since it takes the defense-building portion of things away and forces you, with limited resources, to figure out how you’re going to build a tiny army to take them on with you leading the charge. Bosses have additional challenges that see you take them out in 30 seconds or 90 seconds or what have you, which will seem absolutely impossible at first, but wait until you get those upgrades for Soh, the spirit you control. Then all of those bosses are going down in a satisfying hurry.

What a game, one of the best of the best of the year, and yet… look at all of those abandoned sessions.

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Angel at Dusk

Developer: Akiragoya
Publisher: Sanuk
Switch, Windows
July 19

A question I often think of answers to is, “What’s a good shoot ‘em up for me to play as a newbie?” I am not new in this arena — a copy of the Atari 2600 Galaga played on an Atari 5200 in the early 90s is where my obsession began, so I’ve been here — but this also means that I, like a whole lot of other genre fans and the people making these games, are looking for escalating challenges. There’s only so much new new you can do within a genre that’s been building off of Xevious for four decades now, and while said newness isn’t impossible to find by any means, it’s not a constant. Which means that entry points for players who are new to shooting games — STG for short — are few and far between, and also oftentimes located in the past, in a time from before so much had been constructed on top of the foundation laid out in the early 80s.

Which makes a game like Angel at Dusk both worth pointing out and special, in that yes, it does have plenty of challenge, but is also designed very much with the idea that STG, and bullet hell, in particular, could be a new experience for some — but they don’t need to be an intimidating one. Sure, the art style makes it look like you’re flying around inside of the guts of some enormous, fleshy monster, and there’s blood and muscle and organs and stuff everywhere by design — not to mention demons — but hey, the gameplay itself? Not intimidating!

Between entry-level and explanatory tutorials and difficulty levels, Angel at Dusk is a perfect starting point for bullet-hell-curious players. I’ve seen some reviews saying it’s gross to look at and therefore they can’t recommend it, but if you don’t have a weak stomach for a very intentional art style that’s meant to evoke disgust because of the aforementioned blood and guts and all of that, you can ignore all of that. The gameplay is tight, the scoring systems intriguing, and it’s easy to come back again and again to see if you can top your previous run.

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Developer: MachineGames
Publisher: Bethesda
Xbox Series S|X, Steam
Dec. 8

None of the trailers grabbed me. In fact, they turned me off from the game a bit, since there was an uncanny valley nature to the look of Indiana Jones, and his voice wasn’t there yet, either. It felt like a huge shame for two reasons: Indiana Jones was overdue for a great game, and MachineGames, the developers of the Wolfenstein reboot titles that I swear by as some of the top offerings of the previous console era, had spent years making this game instead of… well, instead of more Wolfenstein, which has an ongoing storyline that hasn’t been wrapped up yet.

And people say that Indiana Jones isn’t realistic.

The reviews started to come in, though, in the days before Great Circle dropped, and everyone seemed shocked: MachineGames had produced something immersive-sim adjacent for Indiana Jones, of all things, which makes a ton of sense when you remember that they spun out of Starbreeze, the developers of licensed — and extremely weird [complimentary] titles like the Chronicles of Riddick games on the Xbox and Xbox 360, as well as The Darkness.

It was the right call of developer, and frankly, the writing in Great Circle is a lot better and more Indy-like than anything the franchise has produced since… God, Fate of Atlantis? I say this as a fan of some of the action games Indiana Jones has already produced, as well, and as someone who feels that the recent (and final) film, Dial of Destiny, was (aggressively) fine. The vibe, the humor, the feel of it all is so very Indiana Jones, in a way that makes me hope that this is the only venue that anything the series produces exists in going forward. No AI-assisted Harrison Ford replacements, no recasting of the actor — do not Solo Harrison Ford a second time, you monsters — none of that. Do what has been done here, and let writers who get the character partner with artists who can render him and a voice actor who can do a convincing job of things. If there needs to be more Indiana Jones out there — and I now feel that there should be, which was not how I felt before playing this — then let it either be by MachineGames or someone else who understands the assignment they nailed, and why.

There were some complaints floating around that there’s too much to do in Great Circle, but I’d go in the other direction. It’s actually wonderfully paced, as you don’t need to play most of the game at all. The map markers are almost entirely ones you purchase, other than some main quest ones, which means they’re optional. Just exploring and seeing what’s to see, en route to where you need to go anyway, will reveal plenty of side missions or activities or rewards or collectibles, but you don’t have to go out of your way for them, and you don’t have to finish anything besides the main quests and a few side missions that tie into them. Run around, wear disguises, hit Nazis in the back of the head with a shovel as hard as you can, pick up some ancient artifacts, and be on your merry way. Watch some extremely, shockingly on-brand cutscenes with peak-Indy humor and Looney Tunes-esque goofs in them, then find some more Nazis to crush the skulls of. Rinse, quip, repeat.

This game completely upended by game of the year rankings before I had even finished it. I’d already submitted my nominations to Paste for their year-end list before even booting this up — it hadn’t released yet, because what major studio puts out something this good this late into the year?? — and if I could go back and do them again, I’d have put this in the top half of the list for sure. I can scarcely believe it myself, but if you’ve got access to Game Pass, go play. If you don’t, but have a platform that plays Great Circle, pony up. If you've got a Playstation 5, set aside the cash, because you’re going to want to play this one.

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The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Developer: Grezzo
Publisher: Nintendo
Switch
Sep. 26

It was as I was heading into the third dungeon in Echoes of Wisdom that it hit me. Grezzo, who got their turn at the wheel thanks to their remakes of various Legend of Zelda games on the 3DS and Switch, truly knew what they were doing. Do you recall the period of time on the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance when Capcom made a bunch of Zelda games that clearly understood the series' history, but also veered off course a bit because they could leverage that knowledge and subvert it? Grezzo went that route, and it made for a brilliant return to the classic Zelda style, with a bit of a taste of what Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have brought to the franchise.

Echoes of Wisdom, like those two games, emphasizes freedom. Of movement, of solutions. Thanks to a magical staff Zelda has been given, she’s able to create “echoes” of objects and creatures that she finds out in the world of Hyrule. She uses those echoes to defeat other enemies, to solve environmental puzzles, and also just to see what happens. The design of this game unlocked a forgotten memory of mine, from when I was just a kid. There was a Game Genie code you could use for Link to the Past, where the various enemies of Link would be able to be “recruited” to your side to fight your battles for you. I forget the exact mechanism that allowed this, but you could essentially create a mini fighting force that’d follow you around and dispatch other foes in your way. Echoes of Wisdom uses that game-breaking code as a central mechanic, three decades later, and I think that’s beautiful.

and also this

There were some complaints about how the game “forced” you to use the power of Link’s sword — which Zelda picked up as he was sucked into another dimension in the game’s opening — to play this like any other Zelda title featuring Link as the protagonist. To me, this showed a lack of imagination and a resistance to the options laid out in front of you. Your opportunity to use Link’s sword against a boss was my spawning Peahats directly in front of that same boss’ glowing weakpoint. Switching to Sword Mode kept you from doing things like grabbing onto enemies with Zelda’s magical ability to do so, and holding them in place while the Bombfish you placed on land ticked away until it exploded. Going with the sword is something you did because you didn’t consider how hilarious it would be to have Zelda spawn endless Octorok turrets to overwhelm a room full of enemies that couldn’t destroy them fast enough.

If you engage with the game and the opportunities it presents, if you free yourself from the traditional way of defeating enemies and focus on the newer, more imaginative, and much funnier ways of doing it, then Echoes of Wisdom has plenty on offer. Neither of Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom work as well if you eschew all the newness they have on offer, either, and while I sympathize with the idea that a developer’s intentions can maybe not play out as they’d hoped because a title failed to do something in particular to draw players in, I don’t see that here. It might take a little time to get going, sure, to understand what’s possible here and why you should care, but if you stick with it for a little bit, it’s going to click in a way that makes you realize this return to the “classic” Zelda formula, with a twist, was a great thing for the series.

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Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom

Developer: Panik Arcade
Publisher: Those Awesome Guys
Windows
Apr. 9

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is, in short, a cross between a traditional 3D platformer and something like Crazy Taxi. Which is to say that it isn’t like a traditional 3D platformer at all. You’re a little yellow taxi, and you sure do go vroom, platforming all over a 3D, collectathon world that takes some inspirations from games of the 90s, sure, but with more modern design sensibilities girding the entire experience. In a standard platformer, jumping is something you’re pretty used to, but here, you have to pull it off with a car. Which is not something you’re used to, and therein is the draw of things here: something familiar, presented as such, but solved in a much different fashion.

It takes a little time to get used to the controls and what your little yellow taxi can do and not do, but once you get the hang of its movements — there isn’t a jump, so much as a canceled “flip” move that can be used to launch your car upward in a jump-ish fashion that is only by the most technical definition a jump — you’ll be moving around as if you’ve always played platformers like this one. You haven’t, though, is the thing, but you could and you should.

The humor is both a blessing and a curse — it’s the kind of game that’s going to throw a ton of jokes and gags at the wall in the hopes every few of them lands for you — but there’s no denying that there’s an oddball charm here. Give it a spin, and enjoy a land so full of similar to but legally distinct from people and designs that there’s even an NPC you’ll find constantly explaining that this is a work of parody and parody is protected by the law.

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The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak

Developer: Nihon Falcom
Publisher: NIS America
Playstation 4/5, Switch, Steam
July 5

I know, you’re shocked that I loved the newest Trails game, but the thing is that it ruled. It was something of a reset for the series, since the entire Cold Steel arc was now behind them, so they used it as an opportunity to massively upgrade the game engine and change how combat even works. You’re still doing turn-based, strategic-moving-around an “arena” combat, but you also have the option of more action RPG-style fighting. Which you can use for sneak attacks, and to attempt to stun enemies before the turn-based portion begins — which happens whenever you press the button to engage in that way — and doing so allows you some specific bonuses that’ll help speed your fight along. It’s a great system that helps keep combat flowing, as well as the main game itself — you’re essentially choosing whether to fight or run now, and can smack at enemies without entering battle long enough to stun them, or in the case of low-level foes in areas you’re returning to, just defeat them outright without true interruption.

Cold Steel ended on something of a downer note, both thematically and as a closer to an arc that had a lot of potential, so opening up the next Trails arc in a new country with a new cast had to work well to help the series rebound, and that’s been managed with Daybreak and then some. It is very important to me that the protagonist ends up happy. He deserves to end up happy! Which is a wonderful shift from Cold Steel’s primary protagonist, who frankly I’d be fine with never seeing or thinking of again. I know he shows up again in a game that hasn’t been released internationally yet alright I’m trying not to think about it.

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UFO 50

Developer: Mossmouth
Publisher: Mossmouth
Windows
Sep. 18

It should say something about UFO 50, the compilation of a “lost” video game console from the 80s and the company that developed games for it, that I entertained the idea of ranking all 50 games within for whichever outlet would be interested in such a thing. It was basically a title made for someone like me and the people like yourselves who subscribe to a newsletter about retro games. I really cannot say enough good things about it, but just know that there is something here for you, many somethings, even if all 50 games don’t hit. It’s like the video game equivalent of Mystery Science Theater 3000 jokes. If the first one doesn’t land, the next one is going to, and it’s going to change your brain chemistry, too.

What helps is that the team at Mossmouth truly understood the era of games they were aping. While I joked about how they introduced a double jump mechanic before such a thing existed in reality, the level of detail in simply getting the era and knowing what made it work — and what maybe didn’t work as well or wouldn’t work as well in the present, and could therefore be removed or mitigated somehow — helps the entire package. That there is also exceptional game design that is going to have me coming back to this compilation for years and years as I work through its nuances and attempt to master what’s contained within means you could put UFO 50 number one on your game of the year list, and I wouldn’t argue, because even while it’s my personal pick, it’s close enough, and I get where you’re coming from.

If you’re reading this, then you’re the audience for UFO 50. I completely lost myself in mastering the efficiency-obsessed rules of the tower defense game, Rock On! Island. The strategy title featuring little pucks of various sizes engaging in “combat,” Lords of Diskonia, is brilliant — simple to start, but layered enough for you to have to hunker down and think to master it. Night Manor is a wonderful ode to titles like those in the Shadowgate series — horror adventure games from the 80s. Magic Garden is deceptively difficult due to how cute it is, but it’s the kind of game where one false move completely destroys your progress — the important thing is that you’ll want to try again. And god, Mortol, even just on a conceptual level, should be a game of the year candidate on its own. I’m going to figure that game out, I’m going to complete it.

Rail Heist! Waldorf’s Journey! Party House! So delightful. So varied, so well done, and with the 2024’s games behind me for work purposes, I can return to put another 40 hours into UFO 50, and another 40 after that, at my leisure.

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Honorable Mentions

Zakesta-Z: A shoot ‘em up that borrows pretty liberally from the Compile style of those games — this is not a complaint, which you already knew if you’ve ever listened to me talk about or read anything I’ve ever written about games. While I don’t know if it’s quite at the level of Compile’s best efforts, this is a fine one all the same, with a heavy dose of subweapons to choose from and a focus on multipliers in scoring that’s absent from the works of its influences. I’ve gone through it a few times, and I’m determined to do so on its toughest difficulty before too much longer. There’s nothing new here, exactly, but you don’t need to be new to be enjoyable. Just done well, and Zakesta-Z certainly is.

Denshi Life 2: The latest from Mindware ended up releasing about a week after it was originally planned to at the time I wrote my review, but hey, everything within still applies:

The roguelike mode is the most expansive, though, as it’s a balance between the more casual basic mode, and the harried nature of the caravan. And that’s because it has you choosing your mission yourself instead of having it handed down, with the idea being that you complete as many of them as you can from 21 different types, attempting to rack up the highest score you can before failure. While you have a timer that goes across all missions a la the caravan mode, you can also choose to try to win some additional time as a reward in certain missions, extending your run. Or! You can sacrifice precious seconds in order to select a huge, score-altering multiplier for that mission, betting on being able to gain the seconds back elsewhere at a later mission select.

Radirgy 2: This is cheating, sort of, because Radirgy 2 only released in Japan, but I’m compensating for that by putting it in Honorable Mentions. It’s my list, alright, I make the rules so I can bend them or break them as needed.

RS34, which succeeded Milestone, which succeeded Compile, is still making games in their Radio Allergy series, but it took a couple of decades for them to make a “true” sequel to the original Radirgy. This is a mission-based shoot ‘em up, with some specific goals you’re supposed to achieve within, and you get to play as two different kinds of ships that completely change the way the game works, depending on which you play as. Like with all Milestone/RS34 shooters, this one takes a specific kind of STG appreciator to enjoy — the art style is one you only find in their games, the general feel and vibe of the titles is different, and while they’re vertical games, they’re all designed with a widescreen horizontal setup in mind. They’re all worth checking out, though, if you want to see some of the creativity and experimentation I earlier said there sometimes isn’t enough of in this genre I adore so much.

The downside with Radirgy 2, specifically, is that it isn’t in English, so you’ll either need some familiarity with how RS34’s previous games worked already to get started, or maybe read a guide to see what it is you need to do. But it’s all worth the effort, if you’re the right kind of sicko.

Little Kitty, Big City: Nothing against Stray, but that’s a video game like a lot of other video games, only you play as a cat. That’s fine! Cats are great, playing as a cat is great, but it’s got more in common with Cat Quest — an action RPG starring a cat full of cat puns that plays by the same rules as action RPGs not starring a cat — than it does Little Kitty, Big City, which very much makes being a cat the entire point. You do cat things like a cat would, and without any dystopian themes or lost civilizations or Navi-like companions doing all the talking for you since you’re a cat and all.

You’ve fallen from your perch high up an apartment building, and, with a little accidental help and cartoonish luck, made it to the ground level intact. Now it’s time to make your way back up, which you’ll be able to do by climbing. But wait, you need some energy to climb, so you need to find some fish lying around and eat them — in all but one case by stealing the fish from unsuspecting humans — in order to have that energy. So, go around and meet some colorful characters, like the crow obsessed with “shinies” or the tanuki who doesn’t understand why she’s confused for a raccoon all the time, and also distorted space time with a tunnel system that just so happened to break the pipes around town, causing some flooding that shut the roads down for cars for the day — a convenient thing for you, a cat, who does not need to fear drivers on this already unfortunate day. Okay, sure, that’s not a normal part of a cat’s day, no, but it’s just a a couple of gags duct taped together to explain why all of the cars are parked and there’s a fast travel system if you want to use it.

It’s short, it’s sweet, and it’s worth the little bit of time you’ll have to put into it.

Astrolancer: A brand new game that decided it was worth taking inspiration from The Guardian Legend, and its dual-genre approach to action-adventure? I haven’t wrapped yet, but I’ve played enough to be able to recommend it to anyone whose attention was grabbed by that opening sentence.

DOOM: Legacy of Rust: A new DOOM episode, with new enemies and weapons and a difficulty expectation that you’ve already been through the hottest fires of hell to get to that point? We all needed this. We might not have known we needed this, but we did. Kudos to the soundtrack, which for some reason sounds like the composer confused DOOM for Mega Man X. This is not a complaint, mind you.

I’d love to include Arco and Children of the Sun here, as well, but I haven’t played enough of them to justify that just yet. Still, I’ve experienced enough to at least put them on your radar by mentioning them in this space.

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