2024 Video Games - Year in (mini-) review

played a lot of games in 2024. This is mostly due to me taking parental leave from work in the second half of 2024 (which I recommend for anyone in general). You may ask how I managed to spend so much time playing games while looking after a baby full-time? Well, luckily my baby sleeps consistently and well. However, it’s still exhausting and there are still plenty of late nights, mid-night wake-ups, early mornings and times where you need to stay awake – for whatever reason.

For any new parent, I would potentially recommend video games as a legitimate tactic to stay awake. I have found television and movies an effective way to fall asleep on a couch. Books I find myself reading the same page three times over and passing out mid-sentence. For me, video games strike the right balance between brain engagement and eye engagement. Your eyes need to stay open, and your brain needs to engage.

Anyway, here are the games I played throughout the year.

Balatro (February 2024) – PC

Tann – Tann

Recommendation: Balatro is a pure mechanics game, which I thought would turn me off as I like my stories and themes and all that (was looking for something more like Inscryption). But it turns out I didn’t need it as Balatro stands up on the game-play alone.

Balatro is great game and is my game of the year. I am approaching around 300 hours since February. This is one of those games that has started its own genre (see Aotenjo, Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers). Balatro is a unique, poker–based point generation game. Simple to pick up, play and put down. One of those “one more run” kind of arcade games with a wee bit of Roguelite elements. You score points and multipliers by making poker hands but can accumulate a separate hand of jokers that can affect the points and multipliers your score, the nature of your cards, the currency you earn and the way all cards interact with each other. By the time you get to your final hands, you have gone from making hands of several hundred points to making several millions points.

The real downside of Balatro is the luck element. Unlike most rogue-lites, there is little you can do to influence the jokers, enhancement cards or bonuses you receive which can make or break your run. The currency used to buy these cards and decks can be hard to gather in the first few rounds which makes your later runs tricky unless you get the right joker.

Bouncing back from its main issue, Balatro is an engrossing, “one more run” game and has become my default quick play for when I have minutes at my computer.

Solium Infernum (February 2024)

League of Geeks – League of Geeks

Recommendation: This is a great 4X/Board game or whatever you want to call it. However, I don’t think it’s quite worth the current going price on Steam. More of a sales game.

This is League of Geek’s last game before they closed mid-2024 as part of the general f**kery occurring within the gaming industry (a bit sadder given they’re located in my current city of residence). They developed Armello, which is an important fact to remember going into Solium Infernum, as it’s a remake of a 2009 video board game.

I found Solium Infernum jarring at first as it feels like a weirdly structured 4x game with a hyper focus on diplomacy, but once I got into the Board game mindset, I found my attitude shifted. After playing a few single player games, I loved the intricacies of resource gathering, manipulating diplomacy and working in between the rules laid down by the Assembly of the Conclave (a senate dictating the terms of war following the disappearance of Satan).

Diplomacy is the key mechanic of the game which is a unique play from the usual expand and explore mechanics. Exploit and exterminate still has a role, but diplomacy ends up being one of your biggest tools to achieve those things. In the games I've played, I taken some more combat heavy routes, but also managed to avoid it all together using duels, trickery and general diplomacy.

I’m still keen to play Solium Infernum with people and will hope to test it out on human personalities to see whether it holds up.

Helldivers 2 (February 2024)

Arrowhead Game Studios – Sony Interactive Entertainment

Recommendation: All the fun to be had… provided it’s with friends.

As a huge fan of the first Helldivers, I pre-ordered this one looking forward to replaying the first game but in full 3D. Like the first one, I expected to play it with my partner and a few friends here and there but wasn’t expecting a video game zeitgeist surrounding the game, but maybe that’s unsurprising given the rise of multi-player co-op games with Twitch-able moments.

Helldivers 2 is a lot of fun, and a quick and easy game to get into. At its core, it’s a third-person shooter in which you are sent down to planets to spread democracy via bullets. You have two weapons with limited ammo, limited grenades and importantly, “strategems” which can include orbital strikes, cluster bombs, turrets, special over-powered weapons, mines, and vehicles. Importantly, you need the strategems to complete certain missions on a planet or call down clones of your friends when they’re blown apart.

However, this game is not fun because of the alien shooter mechanics, it’s fun because of friendly fire. Everything you can do to an alien bug; you can do to one of your teammates. You are just as likely to die from a friendly grenade landing at your feet than you are from a cyborg with a buzz saw arm. While all this is happening, there is a constant satirical overtone reminiscent of Starship Troopers (the movie, not the book).

The main downside of the game is all the shenanigans you can get up to with friends can come off a little differently with strangers. While I’m happy that there are thousands of players in the game at once, shooting a stranger in the leg for funsies isn’t really that fun. So, if you have a friend to play with, there really isn’t no issue with Helldivers 2. Even the battle-pass system holds well and isn’t overly expensive, especially if you play enough to earn the currency anyway.

Reus 2 (May 2024)

Abbey Games – Firesquid

Recommendation: Reus is a unique and engaging puzzle god-game worth its price.

Reus 2, like the first one, is a 2D God-game where you control a series of “titans” that influence the planet, meeting the needs and quests of the people that rise from the mud. The titans create biomes within which they create animals, plants or minerals that in-turn produce resource synergies across your planetoid. The aim is to produce food, gold, science, and prosperity of villages to elevate the people through different eras. At its heart, Reus 2 is a puzzle game: What combinations of environments meet the quests posed by the humans, increase planet prosperity and allow your planet to continue through the ages.

It's far from being a realistic simulation game, but easy and fun to play with enough puzzle strategy, unlocks and progression to keep me entertained for hours. There is also a meta-progression as you try to achieve different combinations of end-states, fulfill the needs of leader archetypes, and unlock new Titans, animals, minerals, and plants.

Reus has a lot of legs to it and is well worth the price, especially as it constantly releases free content updates. I’m also looking forward to the upcoming DLC.

Alan Wake 2 and Night Springs (October 2023 and June 2024)

Remedy – Epic Games

Recommendation: Alan Wake 2 coalesces storytelling, characterisation, themes, and video games into an amazing video game experience, assuming you can get past the spookiness and potentially frustrating combat.

I played Alan Wake 2 and the Night Spring expansions through with my partner because I’m a sook when it comes horror games. Alan Wake 2 is more a horror game than the predecessor. There is a good ebb and flow of tension as you play through the chapters for Alan Wake and the new detective character, Saga. Fun daytime character interactions and introspective monologues relieved the tension that builds throughout the game.

The game uses unique mechanics to tell the story (both Alan and Saga have their own game structure). I do wish they had changed or improved upon the combat a bit which still handles like dog’s balls – I was getting pretty frustrated in some section. However, turning the combat difficulty down to easy did help this. Alan Wake 2 is one of the best–looking games on PS5 and is clever in the way it merges gameplay with live actions videos. If you want to play, I’d recommend replaying the first Alan Wake, or watching a let’s play as it’s a direct continuation of the first game.

The Night Springs DLC feel like universe-building cherries on top of the main game. It consists of three episodes of the Night Springs TV show (a Twilight Zone knock-off) which you can either encounter in the game or access from the title screen. The first one follows Alan Wake’s biggest fan on a rescue mission to save Alan Wake from his evil doppelganger. The second episode follows Jesse Faden from Control as she searches for her brother in the coffee theme park (so a Control prequel). The final episode has Shawn Ashmore (playing himself) sucked into the plot of the TV show he is starring in, the Time Breaker. He goes through a universe hopping adventure which covers other versions of himself including Tim Breaker (the Alan Wake 2 character) and Jack Joyce (the Quantum Break character). I mention these stories because I believe your enjoyment of the DLC will be based on how much you have enjoyed Alan Wake 2 and Control specifically, while the third episode is a lot of fun regardless of whether you played Quantum Break. Otherwise, they are not doing anything new from a mechanical perspective.

I’m now pretty excited to play the Lake House DLC, Control 2 and keen to see how Remedy keep expanding their weird cinematic universe.

Harry Potter – Quidditch Championships (September 2024)

Unbroken Studios – Warner Bros

Recommendation: A fun multiplayer sports game with a compelling cosmetic-based battle pass. I just can't see how this game will carry forward for the long-term.

This is my kind of online multiplayer game. Rounds are short (can last no longer than 5 minutes), low barrier of entry, a steady route to mastery, and it’s easy to blame other people if you lose (which is becoming less the case as general skill levels improve across the player base). I think most people understand what Quidditch is, and the developers have done a good job to make it a fair sport game. Changes are (assuming you remember the OG rules):

• Snitches are worth far less, don’t end the game and get released a couple of times per match.
• There is only one beater per team and a bludger assigned to that team.
• It’s the first to 100 points or the highest after 5 minutes.

The changes mean a few things, 1) The game is playable and fair, and 2) Every position matters. I’ve played a few dozen hours across the 3v3 and 6v6 game modes and, in most matches, strong players can swing games. Seekers can accelerate a game to win it, but not end it; keepers can block enough shots to make chasers redundant; beaters can destroy the seekers and keepers enough to mitigate their influence; and some quick and coordinated chasers can rack up points quickly.

Given I paid nothing for it, it’s pretty fun to play, and has an easy levelling and battle pass system to upgrade and dress up your players. However, I can’t see what longevity the game has. Even if they keep releasing new battle passes and outfits, it’s still a one-dimensional game of Quidditch and based on their roadmap, I don't see any potential direction that will ever make it more than it is currently.

I Am Your Beast (September 2024)

Strange Scaffold – Frosty Pop

Recommendation: While an exhilarating trip into alpine North America, the game is too short to justify its cost.

Imagine Hotline Miami, but first person and set entirely in an alpine environment. You need to run through each level with a goal such as killing all enemies, destroying satellites, or turning on computers before running to the exit. As you run through the level, you are throwing knives, shootings guns, kicking faces, jumping on heads, and exploding barrels to kill enemy soldiers at speed. When you finish the level, you get a letter rank based on your speed and types of kills.

While I didn’t find it too hard to complete the 28 or so levels in the campaign, getting S rank in any levels was a difficult challenge, but not one I felt like having a crack at. There is a story carrying over through the levels which was fine, but not engaging because cut scenes were delivered entirely as words of radio dialogue against a static background, which is a shame because the voice acting and dialogue writing was surprisingly good.

Overall, the game was fun, but way too short at only about 3 hours long (less if you’re good and more if you want to complete all the extra challenges and achieve higher ranks), so I can only recommend if it’s on sale and you feel like an exhilarating afternoon.

The Plucky Squire (September 2024)

All Possible Futures – Devolver Digital

Recommendation: While it starts off enchanting, The Plucky Squire loses its charm quickly with simple puzzles, too much direction and spreading itself thin across a dozen mechanics.

The Plucky Squire is, from the onset, a charming game. It starts off like a cartoon Zelda set within the frame of a picture book, and then soon has you manipulating pages, manipulating the story, and leaving the book to use objects you find on the surrounding desk to save the day. The plucky squire, his goblin and artist companions, and the supporting wizard whitebeard create a fun, metaphysical atmosphere which tells a children’s story in a very light-hearted and 4th-wall breaking way. The music is lively, and the narrator is an added character that creates a vibe reminiscent of The Stanley Parable.

However, the fact it’s a children’s game leads to a lot of the negatives. The game doesn’t let you just play the game. Every time you transition to a new page, come across a puzzle, or anything new like a mechanic or character, the game pauses and you go through some dialogue, exposition, tutorial or cut scene. The game doesn’t even let you solve puzzles you have done before, but rather talks you through what to do each time. It’s like an extreme version of the sidekick suggesting what to do – instead you’re being told directly.

This over-explaining feels a bit insulting given the puzzles are easy. None of them go beyond the depth of what you’re introduced to, nor have cross interaction from memory. I have no issue with easy puzzle games, but I do expect the puzzles to develop over time and become more complex, but they are all variations of the first problem posed – which are all clever but lack legs. I believe this is because there at least six different distinct puzzle mechanics, plus about another dozen mini games throughout, and The Plucky Squire ends up being a master of none.

While I finished the game and enjoyed the ending of the story, it was a slog to get there, and I wish they had focussed more on the book manipulation and meta-story than anything else.

Shadows of Doubt (September 2024)

Fireshine Games – ColePowered Games

Recommendation: Shadows of Doubt is a brilliant use of procedural generation and while the game can get repetitive after enough hours of gameplay, is still worth the price tag.

Shadows of Doubt had its 1.0 release in 2024 after being in early access for over a year prior. Set in an industrialised, cyberpunk-ish 1980s city, you are a private investigator investigating murders. When you first generate your city, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by how alive everything is. There are tall and cramped apartment complex and offices, restaurants, cafes, a city hall, and other establishments you would expect to find in a city. Most apartments have occupants who all have jobs in buildings that you can visit, along with motivations and personalities that matter for the murders being committed. The fact it's all procedurally generated is the brilliant part and the voxel art style lends itself well to the generation of a city and identifying clues.

You receive alerts or request to investigate murders which you do so using tools, pinboards, logic, interrogations or sneaking into areas you’re not meant to be in. This includes lock-picking, exploring computers and CCTV footage, all of which can be a crime which can lead to you being arrested or attacked if you’re caught.

The world seemingly reacts to your investigations, the timing of where you go and when can affect how the culprit might behave (or at least that’s how it felt when I played through a few investigations).

The only downside is that after a few investigations, you start to recognise the patterns of how crimes are being committed and the way to investigate them. One potential solution for this would be to introduce other forms of crimes to change it up a bit, but this could be a lot of work, so maybe something for Fireshine’s next game or a DLC.

Diablo IV – Vessel of Hatred (October 2024)

Blizzard Team 3 and Blizzard Albany – Blizzard Albany

Recommendation: While certainly an extensive and well-made expansion for Diablo IV, I did have few vexations with the game towards the end. However, this was more of an overall Diablo IV issue than an issue with the DLC specifically.

It’s worth noting that I played through Diablo IV and the Vessel of Hatred purely on couch co-op. Couch co-op brings the benefit of playing through the game with someone by your side, but also brings the detriment of being locked out of certain parts of the game and having to deal with unfair loot drops. I didn’t play the new class (that was my partner’s privilege), but did play a new character for this expansion, which was a smooth transition.

Vessel of Hatred is a grim story extension with a new area, new characters and similar themes and tones carried over. Any issues I have with the story and are content are also just extensions form the source game, generally around how you are not the protagonist in these stories but are a follower of other protagonists as they progress the story. You feel more like hired muscle with a bit of personal investment.

Towards the end, I was getting a bit tired of the game and was merely going through the motions to access all the added content (a lot of it seasonal). The consideration for couch co-op seemed lacking as we started encountering a few issues like some awards not being granted and certain quest not triggering properly. It does seem likely there will be more DLC, but whether I play them will be dependent on whether there are other games I’d rather play at the time.

Marvel Rivals (December 2024)

NetEase Games– NetEase Games

Recommendation: A strong and dynamic entry into the hero-shooter genre at a time when people don’t want to play hero-shooters. Marvel Rivals is worth the play if you enjoy these kinds of games and want something slightly different.

I was sceptical about Marvel Rivals going in. Three months after Concord shut down due to hero-shooter fatigue, a prohibitive price-tag and being an unknown IP, NetEase released their Marvel-based hero-shooter. Marvel Rivals addresses two of these issues by being free and using one of the most established IPs in the world. But after playing 15 or so hours, I can see how it addresses the fatigue by just being different enough.

Marvel Rivals is a team-based hero shooter like Overwatch (as opposed to the arena shooter that is Concord): three of the same game modes, a roster of varying heroes and various powers, heaps of cosmetics to unlock with too many types of purchasable currencies or battle passes.

Out of the gate, Marvel Rivals is highly polished and offers everything I would expect from one of these games several years in. There are 33 characters who all feel distinct; no bugs, crashes or networking issues from my end; a strong visual style; and lots of things to achieve and micro-transact – not a pay-to-win, but rather a pay-to-look-cool. There's even a competitive mode which probably needed some more time to bake, but it's there. Marvel Rivals is a serious competitor to Overwatch 2 (OW) which has had lacklustre reception at best.

I would say NetEase have been cheeky with the character design. While a few are direct OW clones, most of them are combinations of OW characters and playstyles. This is clever as characters feel both unique and familiar. For example, Winter Soldier's tactic is like Roadhog's, with general shooting like Reaper and an ultimate like Doomfist. However, I have found the characters more complicated and diverse than Overwatch’s – there is an extra power or two per character, each has a strategy, as well as all the team-up combos. And so there is a greater difficulty ceiling in getting across the play-styles - but the game also does a good job of telegraphing the difficulty, strategy, and team ups.

The only real issue I have with the game is the levels are too cluttered, complicated, or janky. They're confusing and don't feel overly intuitive, especially compared to OW, in which the levels were simple, functional and mechanically fair. While I think Marvel Rival's levels are fair enough, it's easy to get snagged on or backed into a corner.

There's also a bit of character imbalance, but this is always the case at first with these games and it's not too egregious. If anything, the character imbalance carries a bit of charm and, in a decent game, player targeting often balances out the imbalance.

It’s also worth mentioning the money-making part of Marvel Rivals. There’s seasonal content which unlocks comic book stories (nice art, but a bit whatever in my opinion), there’s very standard battle-pass and then there’s cosmetic purchases. Given their season 0 was US$5 and later seasons will potentially be US$10, it’s not overly steep to participate if you’re keen on gaining cosmetics. But there’s also enough to achieve without paying.

I intend to keep playing as new seasonal content is released and I’m keen to see where this game goes.

Honourable Mentions

• Florence (2018): A small phone game set in Melbourne which is closer to an interactive story than an actual game. Page turning has been replaced by neat click mechanics that reflect the story being told - good ludo narrative. However, I found the story very meh – it came out at a time where there were a lot of games telling stories about people meeting, entering relationships, and then breaking up for the very normal reason of "the just grew apart". These kinds of relation stories can appeal to most of us who have gone through similar break-ups, but also lack any kind of tension. They don’t say anything interesting or new, and I imagine the single developer is self-indulging in some personal experience. However, Florence is only a few hours long and is worth playing for the clever story-telling technique, just not the story.
• Assassin’s Creed Mirage (2023): I love AC games and will play them all until I die, or they eventually run out of steam – which Assassin’s Creed Mirage felt like it was doing. The game tried to go back to the stealth roots, simplifying and streamlining a lot down - which was the great part. But it used the same engine as all the action RPG games (e.g., Origin, Odyssey, and Valhalla), so the free-running and stealth felt clunky and lacked depth. In fact, the whole game lacked depth. While a new and great setting, there wasn’t much going on. The main character was one of the more interesting ones from the earlier game, but they turned him into a banal and boring protagonist which reflected onto the story. If you had to pick an AC game to play, probably give this a miss and hold out for AC Shadows.
• Dragon Age: Inquisition (2015): The longest game in the world – or at least it feels like it. I think I sunk close to 100 hours in this one over a few years just to get to the end. Dragon Age Inquisition shouldn’t be as big as it is because it’s not technically open world, but a collection of open worlds… but every one of those is huge. I looked it up and the collection of different maps is about three times as big as Skyrim and twice as big as Witcher 3. Beyond the size, the game is ok at best. RPG mechanics are fine, if not simple - the item menus were a chore to go through. The story is good overall (asides from being long), especially the way it ties in all earlier games and lore. I have felt that as more Dragon Age games are released, they become more generic fantasy and lose a bit of what made the first one more unique at the time (could also just be the effect of other, better fantasy games coming out in the meantime). However, while becoming more generic fantasy, it also does an excellent job of making the world feel larger and more complex. I also realised a few months after I finished this game there was a final act of the game delivered via DLC that bridges into Veilguard (which I intend to play). While I understand Veilguard has some mixed reviews, I can’t help but be impressed with them setting up the game 9 years in advanced and sticking to their story.
• Rumu (2017): A small game which has you playing a semi-sentient Roomba named Rumu as you clean up a smart house controlled by an omniscient AI. I was looking for more of a “dad game” like Power Wash with a bit of a plot, but it was much more plot and entirely predictable at that – Rumu didn’t say anything new or interesting. Pretty unengaging overall, so not much more to say.
• Shadow Warrior (2013): Despite being a 2013 game, Shadow Warrior comes across more like a movie from the 90s. First person shooter where you play a demon-possessed Triad mob enforcer trying to stop a demonic invasion into our world… or get revenge on someone… or be the pawn in the games played by greater Chinese–esque demons… it’s all very unclear and not overly important. The fun part is killing hordes of demons with guns, ki magic, sword techniques, or a combination of all three. For me, it’s Serious Sam cross the Keanu Reeves film, 47 Ronin (which is a weird film that also came out in 2013). Playing it in 2024, the game still plays well given its age but would guess number 2 or 3 would be more modern.
• God of War Ragnarok – Valhalla (2023): This is a DLC for God of War Ragnarok, not be confused with the DLC for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, called Ragnarok. It’s a standalone game accessed in the main menu but is definitely set after the events of the main game. You’re playing God of War but in a Hades–like way. You set out on multiple runs where you gain currency that you can spend on permanent or temporary upgrades to help you progress further in the next run. You unlock story by beating bosses or dying. It doesn’t have as much replayability as Hades - the upgrade and skill level ramp–up is much shorter – and so it comes to around 6 to 10 hours long. But it’s definitely worth the time if you enjoyed the combat from the main games and want an extra nugget of story.
• Cuphead (2017): I’ve been slowly chipping away at this one for years, and probably not a huge amount to say about it that isn’t already known. Cuphead's main draw is its old 1920’s style Disney / Warner Bros animation style (but in colour) – highly animated foreground and backgrounds. It’s a series of unique, side–scrolling boss battles and every time you defeat a boss, you collect a soul contract in exchange for the devil sparing your own souls. Every level is a memory / rhythm game. The more you play the level, the more you remember and therefore closer you come to defeating the boss. Cuphead is worth playing until the end as the boss battles in the latter third of the game are some of the most fun and interesting in the game.
• Hi-Fi Rush (2023): Hi-Fi rush is a third–person rhythm action game which might appear to be a standard, 3D action platformer with arena–style battles, and collecting hidden powerups and currency to buy more stuff. The thing that sets this game apart is the “rhythm”. The entire combat system aligns to a beat which is important for dealing damage, combos, multipliers, dodging and counters. But also, the world moves to this beat, so it’s a lot of fun to move around and explore as the environment bounces in tune. I was also surprised by the fun story and characters. There’s a real Nickelodeon vibe - think bright, colourful, PG cyberpunk dystopia with some genuinely funny humour. Hi-Fi Rush was a joy to play and surprise hit from Bethesda. It is worth noting I have no inherent rhythm, so this game was a challenge at first. But by the end I was hitting all the timing reasonably consistently.
• Horizon Forbidden West (2022): Third–person, open–world, action games with RPG elements are a dime–a–dozen, but I still can’t get enough of them. Horizon FW is more of the Horizon Zero Dawn with new, larger areas, more robot machines, more weapons, more collectables, and higher stakes – a standard for sequels these days. After playing through 60–odd hours of this game, I highly recommend Horizon FW if you like open world games and sprawling adventures, but also if you like sci–fi. They do a great job of connecting a lot of fun sci–fi concepts, not the “what if people had emotions surgically removed” kind of sci–fi, but more of a “what would happen if someone who really liked animals developed a whole planet terraforming system” kind of sci–fi. Every aspect of the world has an in-game explanation including why certain species of animals exist, what all the robots do, why do all these distinct cultural groups act the way they do. It’s definitely not deep, but still clever in its own right. Also, shooting giant, robotic Spinosaurus with a bow and arrow is fun.
• Slice and Dice (2021): Slice and Dice is pure mechanics, rogue lite game on mobile. This one is simple: you have a party of adventurers, each a different class. A six-sided die represents each class, each face of the die has a different ability (attack, defend, heal, magic, etc.). The game runs you through a series of turn based battles where you roll the dice and use the abilities that come up, and you get a certain amount of re–rolls. As you progress, your adventurers upgrade to more powerful classes and you get items, curses, and blessings. The game starts off easy and scales all the way up to “unfair” (which is deliberately unbalanced). There’s a free version on Android, but I ended up buying the expanded version after sinking close to 5 or so hours into it.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020): I only picked this up because I saw a trailer for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and decided it was time to jump on the bandwagon. An overall amazing JRPG with a great cast of characters in a winding, near incomprehensible, yet somehow engaging story. There’s also a bunch of superfluous activities like running a business, Go Karts, and eating at different restaurants – everything I want from a story of crime, betrayal and redemption. My only criticism is that it felt like the developer’s first foray into turn–based combat, which was good for the most part except for some boss battles with intense difficulty spikes that meant you either had to grind or re–spec a bit. After the 60-hour romp in modern Yokohama, I’m pretty keen for the next game… after a break.
• Marvel’s Spider–man 2 (2023): I think the reason there are so many Spiderman games compared to other superhero games is that it’s fun to swing around New York. In Spider–man 2, it’s fun to swing around New York, as well as wall run, glide and launch yourself around the city. In terms of open world games, it does a lot of things I like by keeping the open world small and condensed, making sure the side quests or activities have meaning and emotional stake and includes lots of small flourishes that make the world more immersive. The combat is also fun, and the story is good – especially the way it connects the hodgepodge of villains and characters that somehow exist in about ten NY suburbs. No real complaints, but enjoyment may vary based on personal taste and how burnt out you on superheroes in general.
• Immortals of Aveum (2023): This is the first game developed by one of EA’s AA studios. Unfortunately, the studio almost immediately closed due to poor sales figures, the general trend for every developer whose business model relied on a successful game in the latter half of 2023. It’s an action / adventure FPS with RPG and open-world elements (all the tick boxes). Except replace guns with magic gauntlets, traversal and control magic, and more mana-fuelled spells. The combat is fun, although given it’s a linear story from area-to-area, I wish they had focussed more on the weapon play, enemies, and more diversity of combat arenas and levels, rather than the RPG and open-world elements (although they did a decent job of the puzzles in the world). There was no real reason to put so much effort into an open world. The story is almost a stock-standard, high-magic fantasy – street boy finds he has magical abilities and some more again, joins an everlasting magical war for one side, secrets, twists, deaths, save the day, etc. It does feel like the writers are proud of themselves, lots of lore, a story that flows, lots of interesting characters and a nice bit of subversion on some of the tropes. While the world is a bit too simple and shallow for my liking, they still did a decent job across a 15-to-20-hour game. The dialogue – supported by decent voice actors – was a little too Whedon-esque (that snappy, overused modern wit). But it was still genuinely funny at times and good at conveying character. Overall, it’s not a bad game, although feels like a first game – and would have been nice to see the developers build on it for another game.
• Humanity (2023): A puzzle game which is Lemmings cross the Severance title sequence (from a visual and audio perspective). You’re a little Akita dog leading humanity through a series of puzzles with a limited series of commands. Each sequence of levels introduces a new puzzle concept with the levels increasing in complexity or requiring you to think about the commands or level more laterally. It’s a very good puzzle game – none of the puzzles are too difficult (except for some bonus missions) and there’s additional challenge in trying to collect all the golden people along the way. It’s also very satisfying and visceral when you solve a puzzle – all of your humans moving onto the exit zone like a swarm. As of now, it’s on GamePass and only a 10 to 15-hour game depending on how clever your feel.
• Tunic (2022): You might see Tunic as a Zelda clone with a fox instead of elf boy (or whatever Link is) – it even has the same visual style as the most recent Zelda Links Awakening game. However, Tunic is more than a Zelda clone as it uses its Zelda inspiration to create a fantastic self–referential, puzzle game. The conceit of this game is that you wake up on a beach and quickly find a page to an instruction manual for the game, Tunic. The first few pages run you through the basics of the action combat with a sword, shield, dodge, magical objects and throwing items. The aim of the game is to collect all the manual pages, explore the world, collect items, and fight enemies while figuring everything out. The manual tells you what you should be doing, what the story is, what items do and how to use those items — except it’s written almost entirely in a glyph language. The goal isn’t to translate the manual, but instead to infer what you can from the pictures, the limited English, trial and error and the pencil notes scrawled in the margins of the manual. As you collect more pages, you get maps, new instructions and start to work out mechanics and goals that re–contextualise the environment, show you how to solve puzzles, find secrets, move around, or eliminate enemies. While completely different to play, this is the closest game I’ve found to Outer Wilds where beating the game requires you to solve out how the world works. Progression is measured by the knowledge you gain. The puzzles were also complicated enough that I had to bring out the pen and paper and draw or write things down myself. I highly recommend Tunic, and it isn’t overly long at 12 to 16 hours on GamePass.
• The Talos Principle (2014): While I’ve been diving into puzzle games, I thought I would give The Talos Principle a go as I’ve heard nothing but great things. After 5 hours in, I was done. It’s too slow to build up the puzzles or introduce concepts, and when it does, the introduction can be jarring. The environments are dull, interactivity is limited, and because there’s so many variations of the same puzzle, the satisfaction of reaching a solution waned quickly. I understand people like this game because of the philosophical themes and metaplot, and maybe because my patience is thinning these days, but I’m found the philosophy quite wanky and delivered in the driest way possible — via computer / email logs. So, the question to anyone who has played the game through: when does it get good?
• Jurassic World Evolution 2 (2021): I started playing this on the PS5 for a game to play around my child and as far as a zoo builder game goes, it’s great. You either catch, research or breed dinosaurs to create your park while also making sure there are medical staff, rangers, tourist attractions, bunkers (for when the dinosaurs escape), scientists, hotels, etc. The game handles well on a console and there is a huge amount of detail in the dinosaurs themselves, to the extent I had to be careful about showing the Allosauruses on screen when they were hunting goats – a bit too graphic. I do wish the tutorials and campaign modes hadn’t tried to imitate Chris Pratt and his co–cast in terms of guiding instruction and plot points. The voices terrible and the jokes were flat to the extent it distracted from the game. Thankfully, the focus of the game isn’t the tutorials but rather the series of scenarios set at various points in Jurassic Park’s flawless history.
• Cyberpunk 2077 - Phantom Liberty (2023): Cyberpunk 2077 is now my most played single player game with over 200 hours and probably one of the few I’ve played through entirely twice. Would I have played it through twice if they did not revamp the RPG elements in the version 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty storyline? Probably not, but I’m glad I did. I appreciated the game more so the second time over. There is detailed content I missed out on the first time, so many fun quests with interesting characters and side–bar commentary from Johnny. I also played through the ending with a new love interest and different approach and my closing chapter and epilogue were completely different. Phantom Liberty itself was a fantastic expansion in terms of new characters, well–realised setting, and an interesting spy story with important choices. There was a point towards the end of the story where I felt genuinely nervous at whether our plan would pay off, we being V, Johnny, and the Phantom Liberty characters. It's a testament to CD Projekt Red’s ability to write the unexpected. Phantom Liberty is a must play for anyone who loves action RPGs, the cyberpunk setting or immersive sims.
• GTA V (2013): With GTA 6 only 15 delays away, I figured I’d go back and play through the GTA V story (given I only played online). Whether I’ve aged a bit too much, or the times have changed, I did find it hard to sympathise with three irredeemable criminals as they do irredeemable criminal stuff. Despite not liking the characters, I still enjoyed the dialogue and interactions between them in the 35 hours or so of story - something Rockstar excels at. It was constantly adding and developing on the mechanics and spectacle which was a big issue with GTA IV. Transitioning between the three characters was clever and made them feel like living people. GTA V is also one of the few games I’ve played in the last 10 years that uses the open world appropriately across the game. The world felt alive and realistic, and you often have to travel from one end of the map to the other during missions, whereas most open world game operate a series of zones with localised story missions. GTA V was worth going back and playing back as I’m now keen to play the next one.
• Astro’s Playroom (2020): I jumped into this in preparation for the main Astro Bot game which has won all the awards. Then I saw the price tag on the new game and decided to wait for a sale. Astro's Playroom is free on PS5 and considering it’s kind of a tech demo for the PS5 controller, it’s a very solid 3D platformer in the same vein as a 3D Mario game. Not too difficult, but a wide variety of mechanics and gimmicks for such a small game. I’m sure I’d appreciate all the references more if I played PlayStation when I was kid, but it’s still a fun visual feast and highly polished. My son and I had a fun time playing this together and it even taught him to use the controller a bit.
• Escape Academy – Escape from Anti-Escape Island and Escape from the Past (2022 and 2023): These are two DLC for Escape Academy I played in co-op mode. More puzzles for escape academy and they live up the base game’s good escape room design and do an excellent job of creating a co-op environment which makes it feel like a real escape room. Escape from the Past was the stronger game in terms of puzzle design and story.
• Monument Valley (2014): While Netflix have closed their game development studio, they still seem to be publishing or at least hosting games via their app, which is from where I picked up Monument Valley. Monument Valley is a puzzle game heavily inspired by the art of Escher, specifically Relativity, Waterfall, and Belvedere (the black and white lithographs of the staircases and buildings at impossible angles and perspectives). The puzzles are not too difficult as you attempt to move a figure from A to B. However, you manipulate the level and your perspective of that level to reach B. For a small phone game, it’s very clever and smooth in how the world can connect and re-connect from different perspectives, as well as introducing new mechanics and puzzle concepts. The puzzles build up and add complexity as they go along, but you have a good foundation to complete those puzzles. Monument Valley is free to play if you already have Netflix but is also reasonably cheap on mobile stores.

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Shredder’s Revenge (2022): I played through Shredder’s Revenge in a single evening with two others online. The game was easy enough to start and we only encountered a networking issue once or twice over the several hours which barely impeded our gameplay. Overall, it was a lot of fun and scratched the arcade nostalgia itch without needing to fork out a lot of money (free on GamePass helps). The game handled well, and the screen wasn’t so busy that we couldn’t tell what was going on or where our characters were (even though all the Ninja Turtles look the same). The story was as dumb as I would hope for and while we didn’t play on a hard difficulty, we died just enough to that it felt achievable to finish.