Best games I played this year : 2024 edition

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 I played more games this year than I ever have. This included quite a few new for 2024 fighting games like Tekken 8, Under-Night Inbirth 2 and 2XKO. All of them were enjoyable in their own ways but did not take me away from Street Fighter 6 which remains my favorite current fighting game that I play nearly every day. When I was not playing fighting games this year I played various other games that brought me to some wonderful new places. Here are the best games I played this year with corresponding categories to fit how I felt about them. 



The game that surprised me the most: Hades 2

I knew I was playing something special when I booted up the original Hades in early January. It took some time to click, but eventually, it became one of my all-time favorites. I had beaten the game's main story by completing it a certain number of times, and then another game took me by storm: Hades 2. 

While Hades 2 remains in early access to this day, its amazing evolution of the already great Hades gameplay loop sucked me in yet again.  It has this mix of an addicting replayable gameplay loop as well as amazing characters that impress for a game not near release quite yet. Its evolutions on the Hades's original gameplay formula make the game feel different enough where a 2 on the box actually makes sense and I can not wait for its release in the future. 

Read my write-up for more thoughts. 




The game that gave me the most fun: Street Fighter 6

While the game technically came out last year, Street Fighter 6 was definitely the most fun thing I continued to play this year. It has the most engaging and fun gameplay loop of the Fighting games I have played this year and continues to release more exciting characters over time. 

That being said, the game has definitely failed at being the live service it may claim to be. Capcom's higher standards for its assets and the lack of ability to reuse assets from previous games have led Capcom to a slower release of content for its versus mode. This has led to them failing to perfectly capture my attention, as the game has a much slower release for its content in comparison to its contemporaries, even in the same genre. 

I love the game, as it has brought me much competitive fun this year, but I think Capcom can do better than this. I might write a piece about this in the future regarding the missed potential in some of these fighting games. 


My favorite game of the year: Metaphor: ReFantazio

No surprise to the people who have spoken to me, Metaphor: ReFantazio is my favorite game of the year, and also probably the best game I have played this year. While I did not get around to playing a lot of the other big game of the year contenders this year, I was on the Metaphor train on the first day. 

I already was a big fan of Atlus's output when I picked the game upon release, and this game has become my favorite game of their output. The game's setting allowed Atlus to tell a story that said something about fantasy as a concept, while also being extremely timely. The story had tons of good twists and ends in a way that made me want to boot up my second playthrough almost immediately. 

The gameplay evolved well from concepts taken from Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. It further perfected some of the social systems that Persona 5 had already done so well and borrowed combat from Shin Megami Tensei, making the game's combat feel harder and more satisfying. 

It is truly a modern masterpiece that I will not forget any time soon. I hope to write about it more soon. 




Best game I did not finish: Persona 3 Reload

I do not have much to say since I did not finish it, but Persona 3 Reload is an amazing game that I only have 10 hours in. The game does a great job of making the combat more appealing than its original, but the real good part is its story. It could never be better than Metaphor in my mind due to its pacing being quite slow in a lot of situations, but it's still an amazing game so far that I will hopefully finish now that I am done with Metaphor. 


I made a New Year's resolution to play more games in different genres, and I am proud to say I played a bigger variety of games this year than last. This year in the industry was filled with layoffs and controversy, but just like last year we still got an amazing lineup that keeps on coming. 

Hope to play even more games in 2025. 



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