What a fantastic year for games, especially indies. I played most of what I wanted to get to, maybe only metaphor I want to try. Some honorable mentions right out of the top ten are Wukong and Animal Well.

10. Astro Bot - A joy filled creative platformer that celebrates everything PS. Nearly every level had some new gameplay mechanic, a blast to play from start to finish. It doesn’t have the high skill ceiling as mechanically it is too simple, that holds it back from true greatness.

9. Shadow Generations- They fixed 3D Sonic in a half game attached to a remaster?!? Shadow Generations may not be as long as a full Sonic game, that’s all that’s holding it back. It controls the best, has the best levels, and a far better open world than Frontiers. Please use whatever magic this has for the next full game.

8. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes - A brilliant stylish puzzle game with great presentation and interesting story. I loved the practical puzzles, lots of logic based puzzles that cover many types such as sound, math, and visual puzzles. Must play for puzzle game fans.

7. Legacy of Rust - The first official Doom 2 expansion in decades is an absolute master class in level design and shows that Doom is still the best of the best of the old style FPS. This has new weapons and monsters, at first those weapons feel useless but later on levels are built around them, I just love how unique each stage is. Every Doom fan needs to play this, better than Sigil and all those stupid hard fan expansions.

6. Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom - Taking the classic top down Zelda and adding the creativity and player expression focus gameplay of new Zelda games, this game manages to find a great middle ground. Far more focused than BOTW types, the echoes system allows players to tackle puzzles and combat encounters in many ways. Zelda’s first playable adventure is a great one.

5. Balatro - Indie game of the year, the most addictive, creative rogue like I have played. Taking the base of poker this game is actually a math game where every run can lead to new strategies to try to get those multipliers to rise to insane numbers. It’s so easy to get into, so deep to master, so many ways to play it. This is a masterclass in rogue like design, a perfect pick up and play game.

4. Silent Hill 2 - I have been confused by people who call the original SH2 a masterpiece, that’s a boring slog of a game with a good story. Never in a million years would I have thought that Bloober could turn SH2 into the masterpiece people claimed the original one but here we are. This is survival horror at its best, incredible level design that goes on and on and keeps surprising for longer than nearly any RE game. The tension is just right, combat fits perfectly with what they are going for, it nails everything. This sits right behind RE2 remake as the best modern survival horror games and easily the best SH game ever made.

3. Prince of Persia The Lost Crown - Super Metroid, Symphony of the Night, Hollow Knight and now The Lost Crown, this game enters the Mt. Rushmore of Metroidvanias. Every aspect is so perfectly fine tuned from the impactful combat, to the devious traps and puzzles that litter the massive game world. Every new area introduces a new gameplay mechanic that works not only for platforming but combat as well. The platforming challenges are as tough as hardcore platformers like Celeste or Meat Boy. This is so under-appreciated it’s a crime.

2.   Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree - The discussion over this not being a full game so it can’t be GOTY is so tiring, this GAME is better than nearly every game in its genre. You want to say this is just an expansion, ok then it’s the greatest expansion of all time. It’s like 70 hours long, it’s bigger than practically any souls game, has the best bosses and some incredible levels. The new weapons and build possibilities are more fun than base ER. The worst I can say about this is that yes it uses ER as a base so it’s literally the same mechanics and it’s a continuation of your character, still if this were a quick cash in sequel it would be one of the best ones out there.

1.  Final Fantasy VII Rebirth -  Back when Sony had the E3 conference of dreams FF7 remake was easily the one I wanted the most. Then came the news that it would be split in pieces with the first part being just Midgar, and for what it’s worth they did a remarkable job turning a prologue into an excellent fun linear RPG. It still wasn’t the true FF7, Rebirth is that promise of a full fledged modern day remake of the beloved PS1 classic that should be impossible to recreate in todays kinds of games, but some how they did it.

Every inch of the world is not only there, it’s expanded. Every mini game, accounted for and better than ever. Every boss fight, every location, even crazy shit like having an airship fly through the entire world… it’s there. They took an old school FF game, with its large party, massive world to explore and incredibly varied locations and translated it into a modern day graphical marvel with better combat, better exploration and more content than ever. Still it’s missing the last third of the game which is honestly the only reason this isn’t my favorite JRPG of all time.

The combat of this game makes every other party based game feel sloppy in comparison, it builds perfectly off of what Remake was doing and expands it to fit the growing materia system and the unique traits of every character on the team. It has an entire card game side quest in it which is the best card game the series has ever had. The mini games, oh so many mini games!!! All a blast.

This game is an absolute dream come true, when FF transitioned out of the PS1 days something was lost. It started with FFX and the loss of the overworld and kept getting more and more streamlined, less party focused. This is the old style FF game structure mixed with the far better gameplay mechanics of today. If this was the complete story it would be better than the original by a good margin.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is my 2024 GotY. Absolutely fantastic game, couldn’t have asked anything better from SquareEnix.

No Indiana Jones?