Happy 2025 everyone! 2024 was a weird year for games for me because I became a dad and had way less time for games than I’ve ever had before. Regardless, I still found enough time to play enough games to make a list, so here it is, the top 10 games I played in 2024!
10) Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Multiplayer
The last Call of Duty I played with any regularity was Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 way back in college. I thought I was done with the series for good, but thanks to Game Pass Treyarch reeled me back in!
What a surprisingly fun multiplayer experience! There’s nothing really revolutionary about what Black Ops 6 does with multiplayer, but what it does do it does really well. It's just endless fast-paced dopamine hits. My main gripe is I wish the maps were bigger, but I had a fun three or four weeks mindlessly playing this game.
9) The Finals
Where Black Ops 6 didn't do anything revolutionary on the multiplayer shooter space, The Finals is ALL revolutionary. Every single aspect of the game was so obviously well thought out and crafted to be something different and new in the genre. Massively destructible environments, a smorgasbord of gadgets, unique game modes, The Finals has it all.
Despite all that, I just didn't stick with it as long as I thought I would have. It's just tough to put time into grinding out in a multiplayer shooter when there are other games releasing every month.
8) Plate Up
Plate Up was released in 2022, but 2024 was when I had the most fun playing it with my wife and brother in law. At first glance, it looks like an Overcooked-like, but I am begging you to throw that comparison out the window because the games couldn't be more different.
Where Overcooked is level-based, Plate Up is a rogue-like. No, seriously! You pick your main dish and restaurant layout and then are free to move everything in the kitchen and dining area around to your liking. Your goal is to SURVIVE as long as possible. Each day you make orders for customers and then at the end of the day you spend your hard earned money on new appliances or foods. There's a ton of randomness in what can happen during a run, and having to adjust your strategies to those events is a blast.
I can't imagine this game would even be playable alone, but it was far and away the best local multiplayer game I played this year.
7) Tales of Arise
Tales of Arise is 100% my biggest surprise of the year. The game was released way back in 2021, but on a random day I downloaded it off of Game Pass because I was just looking for an adventure to go on. And what an adventure it was!
On the rare chance I actually play a JRPG, I always play the turn-based ones. So as soon as I learned Arise was real-time action based, I was concerned, but I quickly grew to love the combat mechanics and treasured every encounter. The combat is far, FAR more complex than “hit X for light attack and Y for power attack.” There's cooldown timers, special abilities, combo attacks, on and on and on. If you're just watching someone play the game, it looks like complete nonsense, but in the moment it is incredibly satisfying.
The story, characters, and world are phenomenal and I was hooked on experiencing the full story. Unfortunately, after the game reaches what should have been a natural ending, it continued on and on and on. I had to give up before reaching the true end, or it would have placed higher on my list.
6) Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
At times, Indiana Jones was one of the best experiences of the year for me and at other times was unfortunately frustrating. The game's open world zones allowed for genuine free form exploration and puzzle solving, and the surprising disguise system was superbly implemented. I was hooked on just living in these worlds as Indiana Jones and going around doing Indiana Jones things.
At the same time, the game features a few too many linear set pieces to break up the open areas and horrible hand to hand combat in THREE boss fights. The open exploration puts the game on my top 10 list, but everything else around them keeps it from my top 5.
5) Balatro
Look, obviously Balatro was my most played game this year. I'm a deck-building freak. And yes, the game is a masterpiece of mechanics, build strategy, and style. But… it got to a point where I stopped reaching the high highs of awesome runs much quicker than I thought I would.
I've seen all there is to see. I'm one with the Matrix of Balatro. It was a fun time and continued to be fun. But, for me, it doesn't scratch that itch that other games like Slay the Spire or Legends of Runeterra scratch when it comes to creative deck building.
4) Pokemon TCG Pocket
Oh hey, another card game! This may come as a surprise, but I have always despised the physical Pokemon card game. I NEVER collected Pokemon cards. The gameplay is slow and boring.
So when Pokemon TCG Pocket released, I was going to try it as a fun card collecting experience. So it was a huge surprise to not only learn that they revamped the card battling for this game, but that it's also GOOD. It's REALLY REALLY GOOD.
Battles usually take between 5 and 15 minutes and move at such a fun, quick pace. There are, of course, a small handful of decks that work best, but I still have fun running dumb off-meta decks.
And the game has a steady pace of various kinds of events utilizing the different aspects of collecting and battling to always give you something new to do.
I thought this game was going to be something I open once or twice a day to open packs, but it's become a daily obsession for me instead.
3) Octopath Traveler 2
The first trailers for Octopath Traveler in 2018 blew me away with its HD-pixel art graphics and fancy-smancy effects. Unfortunately, that was really all the game had going for it. The characters were dull. The story was barely there. The combat was awesome, but not enough to keep me playing.
I had seen excellent reviews for the sequel, but didn't get to actually playing it myself until it popped up on the ol’ Game Pass. WOW. It was super obvious that the developers learned their lessons from the first game.
The characters are all phenomenal and each of their stories is unique and interesting. The gameplay in each chapter is far more varied than you'd expect. Some chapters don't feature any combat at all! There's a new day/night cycle that you can toggle whenever you want, leading to different mechanics for each character, too.
I got far enough into the game that I could combine classes for characters, which made the already deep mechanics even deeper and more satisfying. I didn't quite make it to the end of the game, it's very long, but I loved every second of this game. I truly hope we get a third game in the series some day.
2) Alan Wake 2
I am the biggest coward when it comes to scary games. I have never and will never play a Resident Evil or Silent Hill. I struggle when normal games have spooky sections.
It took me months to grow the courage to even attempt to play Alan Wake 2, because I was afraid of the horror elements. I am beyond happy to report that if you're a coward like me, the game is absolutely playable and enjoyable! …As long as you crank the difficulty to the lowest level.
Alan Wake 2 is phenomenal. Where other games feature a narrative that does little more than set the stage for gameplay, Alan Wake 2 mixes gameplay and narrative in a way I've never seen before. The game puts so much TRUST in the player to understand and appreciate the narrative as you play it. I was constantly bouncing around what I thought was happening and what I understood the story to be.
There was never a moment of “ok, here's what's REALLY happening.” Instead, the game gives you different pieces to the puzzle and lets you figure it out on your own. Then right when you think you understand everything, the game flips the puzzle pieces over to reveal a new puzzle on the other side! THEN, the game dumps a new puzzle with different pieces in the table and mixes them all together.
It may sound complex, but twisting and turning through the narrative was endlessly satisfying. The addition of Saga Anderson as a new protagonist was splendid, as she adds so many layers and insight that Alan himself could not.
Alan Wake 2 is just the perfect mix of fun, interesting gameplay and excellent storytelling. By the time I reached the credits, I had forgotten that it was supposed to be a survival horror game!
1) 1000xRESIST
WHAT THE HELL. What a video game! Holy cow! Have you guys played this game? If you haven't, YOU NEED TO.
In short, 1000xRESIST is essentially a walking simulator/almost a visual novel, but is a bit more complex than each of those genres traditionally are. There's a lot of open exploring and mountains of dialogue with options to select what to say, but there's also some puzzle solving sprinkled in here and there. But what the game does the best is tell a compelling story in a truly unique way.
The utter CONFIDENCE this game has in its narrative and how it tells it is astounding. This game features a sci-fi story that spans literally over 1000 years, but tells it in such a way that you never feel overwhelmed or lost. This is the kind of story that would fit right into a sci-fi novel, but getting to experience and interact with it as a video game pushes it beyond what a novel would be capable of conveying.
The themes are varied and told with such delicate care in ways that other games usually don't. I have never, NEVER felt as much emotion as I did while playing this game. It changed how I view things like protests and resisting authority in the real world. This game has so much to say and uses the medium of video games perfectly.
The visuals for the various scenes are incredible. You've never seen anything like this game. It would have been so easy to just have scenes and dialogue play out with static characters and dialogue boxes, but every chapter is different in its style, tone, and visuals.
I am saddened that I will never play a game or have an experience like 1000xRESIST again. This is a once in a lifetime video game that should be played by everyone.
