Lex Luddy's Expanded Game Of The Year List... And Sonic 06 | Winter Spectacular 2024
I already wrote my Game Of The Year List. In fact, you can go find it right now over on Giant Bomb. So this year I wanted to use my Winter Spectacular spot to highlight some games I really liked that either didn’t make the cut for my Top Ten… and Sonic 06…
First up! Here are some honourable mentions of games I loved that didn’t make my GOTY list:
Helldivers 2
I wish coordinating with friends wasn’t such a pain.
Indika
Yeah, this is pretty much what growing up catholic is like.
Still Wakes The Deep
This is what I imagine the average day at work looks like for Jordan at VGC… Or what would happen if I pissed off Scott enough next time we share an AirB&B.
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League
It’s actually a totally acceptable third-person shooter if you play it as a single-player game and never interact with the endgame.
Alan Wake II Night Springs And Lake House DLC
Fuck man, this is the good shit.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
I have no idea what is going on and at this point, I am too afraid to ask.
Neva
Don’t worry… It’s actually sadder than you think.
Star Wars: Outlaws
I love Nix so much I want to die!
Here’s some non-2024 games I really dug:
Sackboy A Big Adventure
I was pretty harsh on the PC version of this game at my old gig, but I think a lot of that comes down to 1. playing on Steam Deck before the game was optimised and when a bunch of pre-rendered cutscenes were broken and 2. I was in a horrible headspace and hated everything at that time.
Coming back to it in 2024 and can’t stop singing this game’s praises. It’s probably the best 3D platformer on PS5 without the word “Astro” in it and honestly, how am I not meant to like a game that has a whole level set to Britney Spears’ Toxic?
Hi-Fi Rush
Turns out this game still slaps whether you play it on an Xbox a Steam Deck OR a PS5.
NieR: Replicant
This one is weird because I have spent about 40 hours with it all in the name of seeing the [REDACTED] gameplay new to this remake and then about three hours before I got to that stuff, I just put it down and didn’t pick it back up.
It’s still great though, and Kaine is very me-coded*.
*angry and gender non-conforming.
Hades 2
This isn’t an old game but I didn’t want to count it as a new game either until its out of Early Access. I put about 25 hours into the very first EA release and haven’t gone back to any of the subsequent updates and at this point, I am just waiting for 1.0 and will restart the game then.
Everyone is hot though. So hot…
Analogue Pocket
I had a bunch of fun ramming every single GB, GBA, NES, SNES, Mega Drive and a few other weird consoles’ games onto this after I got it but wound up using it surprisingly little over the course of the year.
It did, however, come in clutch during my 13-hour flight to LA when I was already feeling burned out by video games and not enjoying playing much back at home. I ended up bebopping around from the shockingly good GameBoy Color Blade and Daikatana game to the banging Ninja Five-O and a whole chunk of The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap… which is fine.
Lego Star Wars - The Skywalker Saga
It’s kinda wild how big this game is. Anyway, I didn’t play loads of this but it was a nice nostalgia hit in that satisfied me in a way I doubt returning to those Lego Star Wars games on PS2 would do.
Ghost Of Tsushima
Fuck, dude… This game really is very pretty.
I hope the sequel has more consistently good writing.
Batman Arkham: Origins
Warner Brother’s Montreal just made a really solid Batman game. Like, it’s damn good.
But it sold like crap because it came out a month before the PS4 and Xbox One… How did it never get ported?
Marvel’s Midnight Suns
My second biggest surprise of the year (behind Kunitsu-Gami) was how much I love this game. I’m still chipping away at it but it just has such a damn tight loop and Blade crushing hard on Carol Danvers is some of the most fun writing I have seen in a licenced game.
The Order: 1886
I get why people would have been bent out of shape paying 60 bucks for sever hour game in 2014… but fuck man, this game is actually kinda novel now. Exceedingly linear, yes. But, I paid a tenner for a secondhand copy so what do I care. The world it builds up of East India Company actually being a front for a sect of evil werewolves is fucking weird and fun enough that I would have loved to see what a sequel would have looked like.
In fact, I recently heard some of the outlines for what some of the devs at Ready At Dawn were hoping to do with that universe, and not gonna lie, it sounded rad.
R4: Ridge Racer Type 4
Nobody is more upset about saying this than me, but… Mike Minotti was right… This game is awesome and timeless.
Ranking The Games I Played A Lot Of On Stream:
1. Binary Domain
2. Dead Space (2023)
3. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops
5. Stranglehold
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3
[a big gap]
7. Knack
8. Infamous
9. Yakuza: Dead Souls
[16ft of steaming horseshit]
10. Sonic The Hedgehog (2006)
So there it is. 2024, done and dusted. Hopefully 2025 is better year for the video game industry and is a better year for me.
But even if it’s not, I’d be lying if I said it was all bad this year. I met so many wonderful people this year who inspired me to be better and engaged with art, which made me discover and untangle things about myself.
Even if 2025 is worse than 2024 at least I’ll be surrounded by some of the smartest and most caring people working in an industry I love… despite it all.
