With 2024 fully in the books, it’s time to look back on what everyone sitting around the Goonhammer office thought of the year in video games, and what they thought the Game of the Year was. There were no editorial guardrails provided for lists besides a clear choice for Game of the Year and two to five runners-up; they could be DLC, they could be games from previous years, they could be mobile games, whatever. We came up with a bunch of very broad lists with few repeating titles; a testament to the breadth and depth of good gaming available in the year that was.
Jonathan Bernhardt
2024 was a weird gaming year for me — I transitioned from doing reviews for Goonhammer into a full-time editorial role, so I haven’t reviewed as much stuff for the site as obviously I would have liked to, and I’ve been so busy both with work and personal stuff that I’ve only gotten through the big top-liners of games I wanted to play instead of getting to dive really deep. It was also a pretty huge bummer of a year for news in the industry, and outright disastrous for every big budget AAA live-service co-op title that tried to enter the market except Helldivers 2. Still, I had fun with a bunch of single-player stuff.
Game of the Year: Pacific Drive
The perfect mix of genre-bending FPS exploration, crafting, and storytelling packed into maybe the only run-based structure for a single-player game that didn’t turn me off this year (except for Hades II, which I’ve decided isn’t eligible for 2024 on my list because it’s still in Early Access). There’s just something really appealing to me about having a cool car that’s a Safe Zone in an incredibly dangerous world, and trundling around in it through increasingly hectic environments as you upgrade it to match the violence outside your windows — also something really and maybe uniquely American about that, too, given our relationship to cars. Fantastic art design, fantastic narrative design, and maybe the best implementation of modular difficulty I’ve ever seen. I wrote a full review for the site here, what feels like five years ago.
Runners-Up: Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Star Wars: Outlaws, Last Epoch, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Dragon Age: The Veilguard came very close to taking the top slot here, but ultimately the game’s second act is just a bit too soggy and frictionless — and my buy-in a bit too obviously predicated on the previous entry in the series — for it to beat out Pacific Drive, even with the best ending sequence in either the Dragon Age or Mass Effect series of games. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle also might have taken this if it came out a bit earlier than December, but this game also lets you wander a bit much into sidequest stuff that takes some air out of the plot; I’d recommend doing the story path, the “fieldwork” side quests in each hub, and then going back later to 100% the collectables lest you burn out. Star Wars: Outlaws is a great and actually innovative entry into the Ubisoft open world canon, but its peaks just aren’t quite high enough for the top spot. Last Epoch released out of Early Access this year; it’ll always play second fiddle to Diablo IV and Path of Exile 1 and 2, but it’s a great little ARPG. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a fantastic Suikoden 2 nostalgia fest.
Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones
I had to go back and actually do an inventory of the games I played this year; the start of the year is always a bit of a blur to me and separating out late 2023 releases from early 2024 ones is always a bit of a fraught affair. That said, 2024 felt like a transitional year for games compared to 2023; every 3-4 years we get a bit of a down year as devs gear up for the next console release cycle to begin though we’ve now very much reached the point where console cycles just don’t matter. The graphics no longer improve in ways that are immediately appreciable (except potentially on the Switch), and libraries are more cross-platform than ever. That’s a good thing for consumers, where platform of choice should be more about the bells and whistles – interface, controllers, etc. – than access to games and the ability to play with friends.
Game of the Year: Shadow of the Erdtree
I can’t in good conscience put anything else up here. It doesn’t matter that it’s an expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree has enough content to count as a full game and it managed to edge out Hades II as my most anticipated release of the year. It’s just a wonderfully tight package with a lot of cool stuff to explore. And sure, it has its warts – locking the content behind what is essentially an endgame boss in Elden Ring is a pretty weird move, and making it have no bearing on the base game’s main quest is probably its lamest point – but SotE’s quests and NPCs far outshine those in the main game. Its story is tighter, its world a bit more strongly realized, and it does a wonderful job of answering many questions from Elden Ring’s lore while opening up just as many new ones. Also its bosses are just great. Elden Ring suffered from being a bit too big for its content, with a few too many repeated bosses and dungeons. Shadow of the Erdtree adds a ton of content without ever managing to outstay its welcome.
Runners Up: Hades II, Thank Goodness You’re Here!, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and Silent Hill 2 Remake
Hades II was the closest of any game to dethroning SotE as my game of the year and would have if it had released in full. The game builds wonderfully on its predecessor, with more than double the content, double the upgrades, and double the sexy mythological Greek romance. The game once again set the gold standard for roguelike gameplay and it’s just a blast to revisit.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! Is a wonderful old-school adventure game and I absolutely fell in love with it in the first minute of seeing it. It’s one of the funniest games I’ve ever played while managing to be so accessible that my eight year-old could play it (it’s also one of his favorite games). There’s absolutely nothing like it and it’s brilliant.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown isn’t going to receive enough acclaim but I found it to be the best Metroidvania I’d played since Hollow Knight. It’s bold and colorful, has great controls, and I legitimately loved the puzzle platform aspects.
Silent Hill 2 Remake was a game I wasn’t expecting much from and then it surprised me by becoming the definitive way to play the game. While it’s a bit overstuffed at parts – it drags a bit in the same places as the original, only now they’re even longer – it’s still every bit as terrifying and it’s filled with lots of wonderful touches, particularly in the Abstract Daddy boss fight. And on that note, the boss fights are now some of the game’s highlights instead of its weakest parts. Add to that actually having good acting and dialogue and I can’t see myself ever playing the original again.
Honorable Mentions: Crow Country narrowly missed my list but it was a fantastic game with the novel option to turn off enemies, making it very accessible to people who just want to solve puzzles in a creepy amusement park. And while I haven’t finished it yet, Dragonquest 3 HD-2D Remake is a gorgeous re-imagining of a game I love dearly. And I put a lot of hours into Final Fnatsy VII Rebirth, but in the end I’m not sure I actually liked it all that much.
Campbell “SRM” McLaughlin
I probably played more video games than usual this year, as after a long day in the content mines I found it easier to pick up a controller than break out my brushes and paints. Most of these were older games, but I played a handful of new ones.
Game of the Year: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
FF7R2Fast2Furious is the overstuffed 1.5 seat armchair of video games. There’s entirely too much stuff, too much time between said stuff, and too many superfluous things to do, but my word can you sink deep into this comfiest of seats. In this way, it perfectly recreates the feeling of an endless PS1 RPG where it feels like anything can happen, but this time with good combat and a budget larger than a developing nation’s GDP. On little sidequests, between getting FaceTimed by Chadley and picking up inconsequential crafting doodads, I get to know my party members better and watch their relationships develop. While chasing down a dog on some filler sidequest, Barret cries about missing his adoptive daughter’s childhood. Taking pictures of star constellations leads to a candid shot of Aerith and a genuinely sweet scene between her and Cloud that has me rethink the endless “Aerith or Tifa” question every nerd has been arguing over for nearly 30 years. This adventure across Gaia comes to a pause as, for some reason, this group of wanted ecoterrorists stops to play in a card game tournament on a cruise ship. Said card game grows from a stupid distraction to something I would genuinely pay five dollars to have on my phone. Each time I came back to this game over the year (and it has taken me a year to get through) it gave me the feeling of being on summer vacation, with no responsibilities and nothing to do but hang out with my friends. I never played FF7 growing up, only absorbing it in bits and pieces through cultural osmosis, but this still made me nostalgic for that entire era of gaming. There’s some cheap brand recognition pandering for sure, but surrounding that is a genuine, heartfelt, and earnest road trip adventure that I loved nearly all (looking at you, Shinra Manor) of my over 100 hours playing.
Runners Up: Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, Crow Country, Space Marine 2
Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is a sequel to the better titled but not quite as good Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, and you could easily knock the pair out in a weekend. Where the first Turnip Boy was a Zelda-like, Robs a Bank is sort of a Hotline Miami-like. It’s a cute, stupid, charming, Extremely Online joke game with a solid gameplay loop and a good density of jokes to it. The sequel builds on some jokes, characters, and, dare I say it, lore from the first game, but I’d definitely recommend both to the right kind of weirdos out there.
Crow Country is another charmer, and I’m just happy to see low fidelity 3D games alongside the pixel art we’ve been seeing in retro throwbacks for decades now. The puzzles were fun to solve, without any huge logic leaps to them, and I loved the setting and atmosphere. I won’t say the gameplay felt like anything special, but I do feel that was likely the intent given its clear influences of early Silent Hill and Resident Evil games. It wasn’t the scariest horror game I’ve played, but I had a great, if brief time with it. Much as I love those hundred hour RPGs, gaming is a richer hobby for having short, intentional experiences like this.
Space Marine 2 is the sequel pretty much everyone here had been patiently waiting over a decade for, and it absolutely delivered. In a world where big budget games seemingly have to be endless seasonal content mills or simply endless in their own right, it was refreshing to have a brisk, well-made campaign that didn’t outstay its welcome. The multiplayer modes unlock all the sorts of doodads you’d expect, but they’re just fun in their own right, and make it worth returning to the battlefield with your customized dude and wreaking havoc online. It feels in so many ways like a throwback, despite playing with all the snappiness you’d want from a modern action game. If you’re reading this website you probably don’t need me to sell you on it, but it’s just a rock solid videogame, and the fact that it’s a rock solid Warhammer game specifically makes it all the more obvious a pick for my runners up.
The Marquis of Peaches
Looking at my Steam Year in Review (the newest console I own is a defunct PS2), this was a weird year for me. The true throughline is games with a short minimum playtime, with a sharp dropoff in total hours around the middle of the year. It turns out that when your life falls apart, your hobbies fall by the wayside! I really focused on quick dopamine hits, which means there was only one choice for my GOTY –
Game of the Year: Balatro
Look, this game is simply weaponized dopamine. I don’t know any other way to put it. It took me dozens of runs to figure out what the hell to do and beat the game for the first time – the real breakthrough was when I stopped trying to build a run around flushes and focus on joker combos – and then I breezed through unlocking all the decks. Then I tried all the challenge runs, where I eventually had to throw away everything I had learned and win the game without jokers. Then, for my sins, I continued to need distractions and started working my way through all of the decks on every difficulty. I tell myself that I’m not going to try and get a Gold sticker on every joker, but when I only have one achievement left, I don’t know how I’ll stop myself.
There are other games that I enjoyed more this year. There are games, very good games, that I wanted to get into but bounced off of because of complicated systems or simply not having the time all in a row, or the spoons, to make a “session” of them make sense. But only Balatro kept its hooks in me for 210 hours – more than half of my total Steam hours this year.
Runners Up: Helldivers 2, Slice & Dice, Dave the Diver
There’s not much to say about Dave the Diver that hasn’t already been covered! I was simply late to the train, and crushed out the entire main game in ~35 hours this January. Great little cozy game, interspersed with the most stressful sushi making you’ll ever do!
Helldivers 2 took me as much by surprise as everyone else this year. I actually had the first Helldivers on my Steam wishlist for several years, having fond memories of playing it with my neighbor back on the PS3. When the sequel came out, I dove in (feet first!) with a group of friends from high school, reconnecting with them through splattering bugs and bots. I haven’t played it since July, but dammit that game was a blast.
Slice & Dice is a weird one, but I’m including it on this list to hopefully bring a little more attention to an indie game that deserves it! It’s a very simple roguelike, where you take a group of characters on a “run” through several environments, beat minibosses, and finally a big boss. The unique mechanic here is that each of your characters is represented by a single D6. Various classes have different dice – a healer may have 2x 1 Damage faces, 2x 1 Heal faces, and 2x 2 Heal faces; while a support class may have 1x 1 Damage, 1x 1 Shield, 3x 2 Shield, and 1x 3 Shield. On each turn, you roll each of your characters’ dice and assign their damage/healing/protection as appropriate. As the run progresses, your characters will level up along branching trees, and you can give items to your characters that affect particular faces of their dice. It’s a very fun little game! Well worth the ~dozen hours or so that I put into it.
Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson
There must’ve been something in the water this year, because I too had to really think for a while to even remember what games I played this year. I like to think I usually get in some weird indie gems or two that stick out in my memory when I look back on my year in video games, but my free time in the back half of this year dramatically shrunk because of my job and preparing for my first child. So, when my nights became a toss up between getting some hobby done or video games, hobby usually won out. There were a few games that released this year I had a great time with, each of which managed to grab my attention away from painting plastic dudesmen for a few days or weeks at a time and embrace the comfort of brain melting digital entertainment.
Game of the Year: Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail
I wish I didn’t have to be that guy. That person you know who does a little jig whenever FFXIV is mentioned, and claps like a seal in the world’s most annoying circus when a new expansion for the game is announced. But I can’t avoid it, I have to shoulder this mantle. I’d be lying to myself if I said Dawntrail wasn’t my game of the year.
Which isn’t to say there isn’t criticism to be had about the expansion. The content droughts feel longer between every patch, there is a noticeable lack of level 100 midcore content, and the story was a step down from Endwalker and Shadowbringers. But Dawntrail was absolutely the best battle content the game has had in a very long time, with even the normal dungeons and raids presenting some of the most engaging mechanics and spectacle the game has had in a long time. The main story of the game did drag in the first half, and even the more exciting second half lacked the fist pumping payoff of expansions prior. But in the last zone of the expansion absolutely stands as one of the great stories for the long running mmo. The final zone is the emotional thesis of the expansion, and it’s done well enough that it got some tears out of me in the process. Dawntrail isn’t the peak of what Final Fantasy XIV can be, but not everything can be the peak. When approached on its own merits, and not the expectations of expansions before, Dawntrail is a great time and a solid addition to the FFXIV saga.
Runners Up: Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Shadow of the Erdtree, Helldivers 2
Frankly, I think the biggest thing keeping Dragon Age: The Veilguard from being my GotY is the fact I just haven’t beaten it yet. I still need to play the game’s third act, which by all accounts is its strongest. What I have played though is a great time, I’ve been running around Thedas as elf Captain America and just clowning on Darkspawn with my shield throws, it rules. The writing does dip into young adult novel quality every now and again, and it’s clear that DA:TV has no real interest in presenting any facet of the companion characters as anything but the unproblematic good guys superfriends. But if you can forgive this, there’s much to love about DA:TV, and it’s an encouraging sign for the future of BioWare.
Shadow of the Erdtree is an incredible game, but I guess I have to out myself as a scrublord here and say I did find the whole thing just too hard. I like my souls games to have thrilling difficulty peaks and some cozy difficulty valleys, and Erdtree favors the peaks much more than the valleys. Which ultimately does probably make it a better game when it stands against the test of time! The peaks are more interesting for sure. I just like to walk into a boss arena and clown on a bozo every once in a while.
And I didn’t play a ton of Helldivers II, but blasting bots is a good time. Blasting bugs is a good time. Playing with friends and blasting is even better. Good game, glad to see it become as successful as it is.
Magos Sockbert
2024 was a weak year in gaming, for me. Veilguard was a crushing disappointment of sanitised, poorly written YA spinoff (this is meant to be a positive article, so I’ll stop there), Space Marine 2 felt amazing but made me want to throw my controller through the TV every time they tried to Do Plot, and Hades II still isn’t fully out yet. Even my GOTY didn’t appear on my screen until Boxing Day thanks to a couple of other GOTY articles I’ve been reading (cheating on Goonhammer, I know). What it’s done since then, is take over my life.
Game of the Year: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
What if, instead of the cynicism, edginess and Joss Whedon-style “humourous quips” that’s come to dominate modern media, you instead had something that was truly wholesome and sincere? A main character who was a labrador of joy and honesty, seeing the best in everyone and every situation, dragging those in darker places up into the light simply by virtue of his sheer earnestness? Infinite Wealth is that breath of fresh air, an open world RPG that is technically turn based combat, but never feels anything less than free flowing. Oh, and it has Animal Crossing built in. And Pokemon. And you change character classes by going on tourist trips and finding new hobby obsessions. It is a wild combination of offerings.
While I should have been focussing on finding my mother and protecting her from the attentions of rival gangs and governments, I was instead tending crops and getting tourists drunk on my little resort island. While I should have been training my pokemon (sorry, “sujimon”) to battle the Discreet Four I was instead bicycling up buildings to improve my tips in a gig delivery style economy. While I should have been taking pictures of creeps hiding in bushes I was instead taking my companions to dinner to solve their problems in the most human, real and truthful peer-to-peer interactions I’ve yet seen in a video game.
The world of 2025 can be a bit dark. Infinite Wealth is a wonderful breath of fresh air away from that, and it’s a superbly polished video game – of whatever genre you want it to be.
Runners Up: Balatro, Astrobot
Balatro stole my fiancee oh my God give them back. That game is a menace, and is probably the best game mechanically I’ve played in some time. Having the damn thing accessible on Steamdeck whenever and wherever we want is a blessing and a curse, and I have now purchased the game on three different platforms. It’s addictive, innovative, and if it had a story like Inscryption I’d have been lost forever.
Astrobot almost falls into the same category; it just feels good to play, and is maybe the best platforming experience I’ve ever had? Smooth, elegant, colourful, all the things that most modern games try and avoid; if only it wasn’t literally just a giant advertisement for a hundred billion dollar mega corp…
Greg
Video games nowadays are too hard. I have a toddler man, I ain’t got time to roll around getting sliced to death by the same pile of Tyranids 12 times while my dipshit AI teammates mag-dump their bolters at the sun and holler encouraging slogans. I never even tried Armored Core VI because I knew it was going to waste my time and give me a fatal aneurysm. It’s grim out there: everything is either a failure simulator I don’t have time for, or a mobile “free” to “play” gambling simulator I don’t have money for. In conclusion, don’t have kids.
Game of the Year: The Elder Scrolls Online
No game – no art yet produced by human hands or inhuman appendages – has surpassed The Elder Scrolls Online for the sheer joy it brings. The craftsmanship is unparalleled. Frankly I find it distasteful that other game studios even exist at this point. What are they playing at, trying to make other games when the form was perfected by the handsome and talented staff at Zenimax Online Studios more than a decade ago. Maybe one year they’ll manage it, but until then here I am, and here I remain.
Runner Up: This is a Warhammer Website, so Space Marine 2? I guess.
It’s the only game I played that actually came out this year, and I didn’t even like it.
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