VG247’s best games of 2024 that aren’t actually from 2024, because we’re all time- and money-poor these days, right?

I will lower to the chase: 2024 has been an ideal 12 months for gaming. Simply have a look at the varied GOTY items that’ll be going up over this week and into the start of 2025: every of the writing group right here at VG247 has written three items – one about our precise GOTY, one about one thing that we really feel has been criminally under-rated over the previous 12 months, and one about one thing we’re actually trying ahead to within the new 12 months.

However there’s a price of dwelling disaster proper now. Most territories that play video video games are seeing dwelling prices rise and rise while wages stagnate. Video games are costly, and so they’re solely getting pricier.

With that in thoughts, I’ve requested the group to every write about one thing they have been taking part in this 12 months that is not really from this 12 months. Many people have chosen to put in writing about video games that we have picked up on a budget as a result of they’re getting on a bit, or downloaded as a part of a subscription service because the writer has relaxed limitations on licensing for them since they’re displaying their age.

I feel it is essential to point out some like to the backlog, particularly when many people cannot actually afford to select up a brand new $70+ sport per 30 days. With that in thoughts, right here is the complete record of what VG247 has been taking part in in 2024 (that is not from 2024).

James Billcliffe remains to be taking part in… Frogwares

My most performed style this 12 months is Frogwares.

On the PlayStation Retailer, they promote bundles of The Sinking City, Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One and Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened for ridiculously low cost every time there’s a sale on. That equals 60-ish hours of gentlemanly intrigue, investigation and thriller.

As a set, it’s excellent: you get to play Cthulhu, then Sherlock Holmes, then Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu – what extra might you need?

Frogwares video games are virtually faultless in idea if not execution – a pulpy combination of atmospheric role-playing and exploration that’s unbeatably cozy, even when the sport’s imagined to be spooky. These are good, old style video games: designed to be vibrant and bold and shocking and, above all, enjoyable – even when the extra technical facets can’t match as much as some greater funds releases.

Due to the standard of life enhancements launched with every sport, I’d advocate taking part in them in launch order, beginning off with a bang within the squelchy open-world of The Sinking Metropolis, the place an aristocratic orangutan man welcomes you onto the dock and it simply will get weirder from there.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One subsequent is a delight with a surprisingly detailed open world and tons of fascinating and twisty circumstances to unravel, however the smaller-scale Sherlock Holmes: The Woke up is greatest to shut proceedings because the shortest, and most fashionable, entry.

Dom Peppiatt remains to be taking part in… Inscryption

So, I’ve simply wrapped up watching Rivals on Disney+, and it was one in every of my favorite TV collection of the 12 months. And that is not due to its raunchy intercourse scenes, not due to its diligent, poet-souled Irish lead actor within the type of Aiden Turner, and never due to David Tennant’s spectacular flip as a ruthless 80s baddie. No. I used to be obsessive about it as a result of, at no level throughout its eight episode run, might I precisely predict what was going to occur subsequent. The present deliberately toys together with your expectations and subverts tropes with deft ease.

I really feel precisely the identical about Inscyrption; a sport that originally seems to be a bizarre hostage scenario in a log cabin with a mystical card sport very, in a short time reveals itself to be one thing else completely. The sport is absolute insanity – literal and figurative, it seems – and side-swiped my expectations persistently. Not an hour of in-game time glided by with out me saying ‘wait, WHAT’ out loud, an enormous labrador grin plastered throughout my face.

It is laborious to speak in regards to the finer factors of Inscryption with out spoiling issues, so I will preserve this temporary: I feel it is probably the most subversive and fascinating video games I’ve performed in years. Many years, perhaps. It is an inky black card-based odyssey that is half deck-building roguelike, half escape-room hell, part-Stanfod Prisoner Experiment. Daniel Mullins Video games – who you may additionally recognise from Pony Island and The Hex – completely perfected its craft with this one, and I am very unhappy I did not play it nearer to launch in 2021. I am very glad it’s on PlayStation 4 and 5, and through PS+, no much less.

Connor Makar remains to be taking part in… Buckshot Roulette

This 12 months I’ve spent numerous time taking part in numerous multiplayer video games with some IRL associates in Discord, which breathed life into a wonderful indie that I had numerous enjoyable with some time again. You’ve probably already seen Buckshot Roulette! A shady, gritting spin on its Russian counterpart by which you enter a sport of life-or-death likelihood within the hope of snatching the money. It is a fantastic solo expertise. Then, actually final month, the fantastic Mike Klubnika dropped a multiplayer replace! If a sport wins me over as soon as, it is nice. If it wins me over twice? Then it deserves a spot in articles resembling this.

Kelsey Raynor remains to be taking part in… Stardew Valley

Whereas 2024 has had loads of stellar releases, in addition to some I’d moderately neglect, there are a few video games from pre-2024 that I’ve been spending a great portion of time with this 12 months. Specifically, Stardew Valley.

Stardew Valley was launched again in 2016, which I can’t fairly imagine, and the updates for it haven’t stopped coming since. Simply earlier this 12 months, developer ConcernedApe released the 1.6 update. Yeah, the fella is meant to be laborious at work on Haunted Chocolatier, however people like me have such an affection for Stardew Valley that ConcernedApe simply cannot leave the game alone for more than five minutes. I can’t blame him, and it meant that when the replace hit consoles, I began one more run of the sport.

I’ve misplaced depend what number of farms I’ve began and deserted as soon as the Neighborhood Heart was accomplished. This time round, I’m decided to succeed in Perfection on my present save, however you’ll should test in with me once more subsequent 12 months to see if I bought any nearer to reaching that, as a result of that’s in all probability how lengthy it’s going to take.

What’s higher is that whereas I’ve been revisiting Pelican City, my associates have concurrently been grinding within the mines and foraging like their lives rely on it. Evaluating our progress frequently (or celebrating every Prismatic Shard one in every of us finds) has been one of many ‘little issues’ that has actually helped make an in any other case chaotic 12 months rather more bearable. I’ve numerous love for Stardew Valley, the fantastic group ConcernedApe has helped form, and principally, attending to share my love of this sport with my associates.

Rebecca Jones remains to be taking part in… Honkai: Star Rail 2.0

You may’t precisely accuse Honkai: Star Rail of being some ignored retro gem: it launched lower than 18 months in the past and has been one more extremely profitable gacha hit for developer miHoYo ever since. However we’re right here to speak in regards to the already-released video games that we beloved in 2024, and there is no denying that Honkai: Star Rail – thanks largely to its stellar (pardon the pun) 2.0 update in February – has match the invoice for me this 12 months. The Penacony chapter whisked the Astral Specific crew alongside the silver rail to their subsequent cease: a swanky diplomatic retreat at a faux-Jazz Age dreamland theme park with (insert shocked gasps right here) a sinister underbelly.

All the pieces about this newest storyline represented a formidable refinement on HSR 1.0, regardless of the launch model of the sport already being one in every of my favorite new releases of final 12 months. It was in order that good that I am not even mad we did not get many new hints as to March seventh’s actual identification… though if my MVP amnesiac daughter might get her long-deserved narrative payoff when 3.0 launches in January, that’d be beautiful.

Mark Warren remains to be taking part in… Elden Ring

Psst. Whereas 2024’s not trying, I’ve bought a secret to inform you. It’s an enormous one. Definitely not the sort of factor you possibly can have recognized about when you regarded on the homepage of a sure web site in, say, July. You already know, not that lengthy after a sure DLC got here out. I performed Elden Ring for the primary time this 12 months. Okay, so I cheated by using a mod that made me a dwelling god, as a result of I’m a coward, a wimp, a weakling, and undoubtedly not price your time.

However right here’s the factor – although I did that, I nonetheless got here out of my playthrough feeling like I’d gotten a correct understanding of why Elden Ring is the masterpiece individuals (my coworkers included) have lengthy been telling me it’s, even when getting slapped up by Malenia’s not essentially my gaming cup of tea. Oh, and I’ve lastly given Fallout 76 a attempt, in addition to the Katamari collection through the remasters. I’m undecided which is the higher factor about hoarding. Okay, it’s Katamari.

Sherif Saed remains to be taking part in… Diablo 4

In the case of ARPGs, I’m a person of easy style. If clicking on demons and killing monsters feels nice, and the dopamine hit of energy and merchandise acquisition is constant sufficient, you’re going to search out me taking part in quite a bit of whichever one in every of them delivers – and I in all probability received’t cease speaking about it. At the same time as scarred because it was at its launch in 2023, Diablo 4 instantly delivered on the previous, and made a good sufficient try on the latter that it was all I wanted for my curiosity to be sustained all through that 12 months.

Diablo 4 began off 2024 on a very bitter notice, with what’s undoubtedly been its worst season yet. We have been months off from the discharge of its first main post-launch growth, too, so to see my favorite ARPG run out of steam that early into the 12 months was alarming. No matter inside awakening occurred at Blizzard in 2024, it has been liable for among the greatest content material the sport had seen but. Most of that work has been squarely aimed toward making a compelling case for the endgame. The entire structure of loot and itemisation was entirely overhauled, and Blizzard later even turned the entire levelling system on its head. With virtually each season, a new endgame activity could be launched; a brand new boss to fight for targeted loot, or some much-needed quality of life updates to maintain up with the ever-growing sport.

Paradoxically, numerous that work has been extra impactful on the core sport than the paid growth. Vessel of Hatred, nevertheless, I’m rather less sizzling on. Judged solely on the worth (and quantity) of the content material it delivered to the sport, it’s a strong growth. The new Spiritborn class is incredibly fun, and brings a brand new fashion of play to set it except for the bottom 5. The brand new zone has enjoyable enemies, new endgame activities, and effectively, it’s a brand new landmass to gallop round in. Narratively, nevertheless, it was essentially the most egregious waste of time I could have ever seen from a Diablo, effectively, something. There’s a stunning, and instantly obvious, drop to the standard of writing. The marketing campaign fails at establishing a risk price fearing or a spinning a story price following.

My grievances with that apart, all the work that went into Diablo 4 bought me to complete lots of the 12 months’s battle passes, getting a number of heroes into the endgame, and discovering new methods to take pleasure in my favorite ARPG. So right here’s to a different 12 months of making a brand new character each rattling season and discovering pleasure on the treadmill as soon as once more.

Alex Donaldson remains to be taking part in… Cities Skylines 2

Cities Skylines 2 was at all times brimming with potential, however when it first landed again in October of final 12 months it was a bit of a multitude – and that is me being extraordinarily charitable.

Within the pre-release interval I did not even discover the issues as a lot – taking part in for a restricted period of time, and on a pimped-out, cutting-edge rig, I simply acknowledged that this was a sport pushing for a deeply granular degree of simulation that left CPUs burning sizzling and PCs struggling – although I noticed its potential as a undertaking that’ll be performed for the subsequent fifteen years, not merely the subsequent two.

As soon as Skylines 2 was in additional individuals’s arms, nevertheless, it shortly grew to become clear that this wasn’t simply teething issues – this was full-on edentulation. The enamel have been straight-up falling out. You might suppose I am stretching the dental analogy to breaking level, and you would be proper – however know this: one of many issues that was breaking the sport and melting PCs was Skylines 2 rendering NPC’s teeth in graphic detail even when the digicam was zoomed out by miles.

2024, then, has been a 12 months of apology and enchancment. Writer Paradox Interactive has principally spent all of 2024 consuming a dump truck’s price of humble pie throughout a number of tasks, and in Skylines 2 that is manifested as a shed load of patches, free DLC, and an indefinite delay for any doable console model. Quietly, slowly however absolutely, that PC launch has been getting extra dependable and extra acceptable. And in the long run, I’ve performed numerous it – over 150 hours this 12 months. That is in all probability solely behind Street Fighter 6 and Balatro.

Video games should not launch as damaged disasters, and Paradox deserved the general public flogging it bought for the state of Cities Skylines 2 at launch. However because it retains enhancing, it inexorably edges nearer to being what it ought to’ve been: a worthy sequel to one of many biggest metropolis builders ever. I sit up for persevering with to test in on it each couple of months in 2025.