It’s another Game of the Year countdown in the bag. If you’ve been following, you’d know that Astro Bot took out the number one prize, adding another gong to PlayStation’s cabinet as their first-party studios continue to produce year in, year out.
That’s not to take away from any other games that deservedly made their way into the top ten, including Balatro, whose meteoric rise this year has been another delightful tale of indie power. Only a few years ago, Immortality almost stole the gold with a Bradbury-like display only to fall disappointingly short.
Something we’ve never really done before is recap the countdown while providing a little bit of insight on the voting process while shining a light on some of the year’s honourable mentions and which short-priced favourites didn’t poll at all with the Press Start team.
Here’s a look back at our Game of the Year 2024 countdown.
How We Vote
Before we go over the ten best video games of the year, let’s revisit the voting process and how exactly we come to arrive at the list we do.
The votes of each Press Start team member, of which there were ten this year, are submitted with weighting from #10 through to #1.
Any game worthy of a voter’s top spot would be awarded a maximum of 10 points and the values would descend to their tenth selection, which would receive a single point.
Each voter assigns a total of 55 points across their ten selections. While over 500 points are up for grabs across the entirety of the count, the most any one game can be awarded is 100 points (and that’s if every staff member awards it their top spot).
The Top Ten
Let’s take it from the top and go back over the top ten in its entirety.
#10 Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
The game focuses on a pair of ghost hunters named Red and Antea, who arrive in seventeenth-century New England with the aim of helping an old friend with an investigation.
After a dire turn, Antea is killed leaving Red, who is now alone in the mortal realm, to pursue revenge against the demon who ended her life so that she can ascend and find peace.
Read the full article here.
#9 The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
After Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom dominated every single top ten list with relative ease in the last half a decade, Echoes of Wisdom perhaps had more to prove. It’s the series’ first attempt at casting Zelda herself as the lead, it appeared to regress back to a more kiddish art direction, and it largely stripped away the combat we know, replacing it with a quasi-puzzler formula that ties into the game’s key feature being the echoes themselves.
We’re grateful, of course, that not one of these design choices missed and Echoes of Wisdom proved to be a darling, novel take on a franchise that had already been many things.
Read the full article here.
#8 Helldivers 2
With this sequel steering in an unexpected direction, Helldivers 2 felt like a call to arms for gamers all over as the game sold like hotcakes across its two platforms, crossing twelve million units sold in just three months.
Read the full article here.
#7 Animal Well
Animal Well is an astoundingly layered, ingeniously crafted Metroidvania that builds its entire ethos around exploration and player curiosity. It’s a nonlinear labyrinth that can be tackled in any order, with monstrous fauna, such as the horrific kangaroo, obstructing the player’s path.
All of the collectible gear items have several not immediately clear uses to the player, which adds even extra depth and density to what is a relatively small game.
Read the full article here.
#6 Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
It might be billed, an award-nominated, as an action game, but The Lost Crown is, for all intents and purposes, a sprawling Metroidvania that features a connected world that very much plumbs the depths of Persian mythology and delivers a great sense of place on Mount Qaf.
Read the full article here.
#5 Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
The task of looking back and recreating one of the most iconic role-playing games of all-time isn’t just a daunting one, it must also be a creative thrill.
The original game might have been on three discs, however, this remake is three games, which affords the team to expand upon and refine character arcs, tighten the story structure, and completely overhaul the combat.
Read the full article here.
#4 Metaphor ReFantazio
A number of its systems are a bit of a grabbag of past ATLUS ideas, however, the combat being as malleable as it is was a strength of the game.
It’s easy to pick up for someone who has never put meaningful hours into a Persona, however, it has an unassuming, strategic depth that becomes evident as you continue unlocking Archetypes and get into the nitty-gritty of the combat.
Read the full article here.
#3 Silent Hill 2
After it was confirmed that Bloober Team would be going to work to recreate one of the greatest survival horror games ever made, it’s fair to say a large part of the community embraced the notion with some trepidation.
The developer, who had enjoyed a middling kind of success with titles like Layers of Fear and The Medium, didn’t seem like the obvious choice at first.
Read the full article here.
#2 Balatro
The game is moreish and hard to put down like a good roguelike should be, and I’ve lost several nights to its allure without making any ground at all.
And that’s the beauty of it, although you can absolutely rack up calculator-breaking scores and rake in more chips than could be counted, Balatro is simple fun even for modest players.
Read the full article here.
#1 Astro Bot
Just as Astro’s Playroom achieved at the launch of the console, Astro Bot is a mid-cycle celebration of the expansive history of PlayStation that paints Sony’s now-premiere platforming mascot with a nostalgic brush that’s sure to paw at the video game fan in everyone.
Whether it’s Ape Escape, God of War, or even something more abstract like Space Channel 5, Astro Bot feels like an archival project and, in a roundabout way, PlayStation’s most concentrated effort at game preservation.
Read the full article here.
Honourable Mentions
While it might have been a tight tussle to squeeze into our top ten this year, there are a few games that, in particular, fell agonisingly short and missed out on the ten by the narrowest of margins.
A few of these include Dragon’s Dogma II, Neva, and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II.
A Bit Of Fun
- A total of forty-five individual games received votes this year.
- A perceived short-priced favourite for many publications’ end-of-year lists, Black Myth: Wukong, astonishingly didn’t receive a single vote across 100 possible nominations.
- And not to diminish a small indie’s critical acclaim, the above point appears even more bonkers when Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is featured in our voting.
- Due to being technically eligible with our determined cut-off, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle did receive votes from one staffer despite only just exiting its paid early access period.
- Astro Bot’s win continues a storied run for PlayStation-published titles, which have captured our top prize six times now since 2017. The only other games to win since that period are Control and Alan Wake II.
We’re, of course, extremely eager to look forward to next year as it’s promising to be an all-timer in terms of output, not only from the third parties but from the big three also.
Let’s be frank, any year that’ll welcome the launches of both Grand Theft Auto VI and the Nintendo Switch successor is an utter megaton by any measure.
