The Plucky Squire – pretty but not a particularly good game (Devolver Digital)
The best graphics of the year, the best soundtrack, and remake of the year are part of GameCentral’s mini-awards, along with Worst Game of 2024.
Our list of the Top 20 games of 2024 honours what we consider to be the best video games of the year but sometimes titles can have elements that are worthy of high praise, even though the overall game doesn’t necessarily work on every level.
We wouldn’t unconditionally recommend the games we’ve named as having the best visuals and best music, and our innovation of the year award goes to a title that only just made our Top 20, but there’s no doubting that, at least in some respects, they’re very accomplished games.
Our worst game of the year is the only one without any redeeming features but it’s always useful to warn about that too, especially when it’s a licensed game.
Best Visuals
It’s very common for the best visuals of the year to not belong to a particularly good game. Ever since gaming began, amazing graphics have been used to compensate for mediocre gameplay and we’re afraid to say that’s definitely true for The Plucky Squire.
It’s not a bad game but its attempt to combine Zelda style 2D visuals with the ability to walk around in a modern 3D world is much more interesting for how it looks than how it plays. It’s a shame, because the game has lots of other great ideas too, such as making the storybook you play in a physical object you can move around to change the game world, but unfortunately it never evolves beyond a neat visual gimmick.
Runner-up: Black Myth: Wukong
Best Innovation
The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom
2024 has been a little short on big new ideas, although we were very impressed by how well Batman: Arkham Shadows nailed its VR controls and how the puzzles in Arranger work. The most enjoyable and inventive idea of the year though was Echoes Of Wisdom, the spin-off Zelda game where you finally get to play as Zelda herself.
It wasn’t a perfect game, but it did revolve around an entirely new concept where Zelda is able to clone any object – whether living or inanimate – and create new copies indefinitely. This is used to solve puzzles and engage in combat and while the game doesn’t exploit the possibilities to their full potential that’s what makes the concept so exciting – that it’s not a one shot gimmick and there’s more that can be done with it in the future.
Runner-up: Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure
Format of the year
The old reliable comes through again (Valve)
PC
This is the hardest award to give out this year, since no format has really excelled beyond any of its competitors, although interestingly none of them have embarrassed themselves either. The Xbox’s line-up didn’t fulfil its early potential but S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and Indiana Jones both impressed. The Switch’s 2024 releases were also clearly all second stringers but only Princess Peach: Showtime! was a real letdown.
And while we’re still disappointed by much of what Sony did this year, we have to admit that they did have some great third party exclusives this year, including Silent Hill 2, Stellar Blade, and our game of the year Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. On balance though we gave the prize to the PC, as not only are most of the best games of the year available on the format but many of the indie titles are exclusive to it – at least for now.
Runner-up: PlayStation 5
Remake of the year
You’ll be shocked to find that Sony’s farcical remake of Until Dawn wasn’t in contention for this award. Instead, it was a fairly easy win for Silent Hill 2, which is not something you would’ve guessed at the beginning of the year.
There was very little faith in the remake amongst fans, including us, but as soon as we got to play it, it was clear what a good job Bloober Team had done; not just recreating the original with modern graphics and controls but adding to and enhancing the game with new areas, new puzzles, and additional story elements that fit in seamlessly.
Silent Hill has always been a very different franchise to Resident Evil but now both horror legends have got excellent remakes for their most famous entries.
Runner-up: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Best Music
Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess
Another game we didn’t particularly like but where one element clearly stood out as exceptional. The action strategy gameplay in Path Of The Goddess was very undercooked but the soundtrack is fantastic, not least because of how varied it is. There’re multiple jazz tracks that are amongst the best we’ve heard in games for years, but there’s also everything from traditional Japanese music to modern electronica.
Most of the boss battles in the game are a chore but they’re greatly enchanced by the superb music, enough to have us play them more than once just to listen to it again in situ. That’s when you know you’ve got a great soundtrack. Capcom doesn’t seem to have made any great effort to promote it separately, but it is on Spotify and we strongly recommend giving it a listen.
Runner-up: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Best Storytelling
They say launching a new IP is difficult but the trick to making a successful one seems pretty straightforward: ensure it’s good. Metaphor: ReFantazio owes an obvious debt to sister series Persona, especially in terms of the visuals and combat, but it’s in terms of the plot and characters that it really distinguishes itself.
Despite it’s peculiar set-up, with an election in a fantasy world that has just lost its king, it manages to deal with a lot of serious subjects, from discrimination to populism, without ever getting too specific with its allegories. It’s more than enough to make the point though and by coincidence, given how long ago the game was started, it manages to seem very topical as a result.
The human (and otherwise) stories are compelling too, as the game neatly avoids being too serious and still has time to be a fun Japanese role-player with outrageous boss battles.
Runner-up: 1000xResist
Worst game
Sometimes we don’t like giving out this award, when it feels like you’re just kicking a game when it’s already down. But other times it’s a useful second warning that something is not what it’s pretending to be.
More often than not the worst game of the year is a licensed title and so it was this year, with this dreadful VR ‘game’ that is barely interactive, utilises ugly cel-shades graphics that make it look nothing like the show, and has little in the way of story. When the only thing a Stranger Things game gets right is the music you know things aren’t going well.
Runner-up: Slitterhead
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