Scott McCrae’s Top 10 Games of 2024

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Hello, I’m Scott McCrae. You may remember me from such shows as Game Mess Mornings and appearing in the background of GB@Nite this year. I’m a freelance writer who travels all across the realms writing about how much I love PS2 games that haven’t been relevant in 20+ years (have you played God Hand!?). You can find me on the likes of Eurogamer, PC Gamer, VG247, and TechRadar, and here apparently.

After how monumental a year 2023 was for games, I felt a touch underwhelmed by 2024’s releases. At least I thought I did, but creating a top 10 was an absolute pain in the arse that made me question my undying loyalty to writing dumb lists. So I’m going to do the absolute cop-out thing and drop some honorable mentions on you, and NO ONE CAN STOP ME.

Slitterhead

This game absolutely rules; it’s got so much style, creature design as brilliant as it is grotesque, and a fantastic core concept and is let down by going on too long and an uncompromising amount of jank.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Probably a contender for this list if I had gotten the chance to play more of it. MachineGames is one of the best studios in the biz, and I’m so happy to see the team continue their fascist-bashing gameplay, enough that I’m interested in a series I have no attachment to.

Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero

Dragon Ball is one of the three cool anime series alongside Jojo and Space Dandy, so I was playing Sparking! Zero regardless. But I was actually shocked by just how good this game I had written off as probably just another anime arena fighter was. Also, it’s a perfect love letter to Toriyama, which we desperately needed this year.

Without further ado, here are my top ten games of 2024.

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Antonblast absolutely rips. Summitsphere has the advantage over other games by seemingly being into the exact same things I was growing up, with the game taking aspects of Ed, Edd, n Eddy and other 90’s Cartoon Network shows, the Game Boy Advance, Crash Bandicoot, and most importantly Wario Land.

Even though it has the main aspects of Wario Land (like the Hurry Up! timer and the hard hitting platforming), what that series means to me is level design. Each level of Antonblast introduces something new to the game only to never use it again. And despite all of these disparate level gimmicks, Antonblast nails every single one with ease. It only released earlier this month, but you’ll be doing yourself a disservice to miss Antonblast from your 2024 lists.

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I knew from the moment Metal Slug Tactics was released that I would like it. It’s such a banger of a concept right there. But what I wasn’t expecting was the best tactics game since Into the Breach to appear in front of me. Leikir Studio took the roguelike tactics from Into the Breach and crossed it over with Metal Slug’s core ideals of fast-paced and aggressive gameplay with phenomenal pixel art.

This game even had some rough issues on PS5 while I was reviewing it, and despite that, I’m still super high on it. Now that those are fixed, I highly recommend picking it up if you’re into some good ass tactics.

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Silent Hill 2 was the best game I played in 2024. Silent Hill 2, on the other hand, was still pretty good, but not quite on par with the game it was remaking. I was in the camp of not trusting Bloober Team with Silent Hill 2, and I’m more than happy to eat my hat and say the studio did a great job remaking it. But playing the original for the first time a week prior probably stopped me from liking this remake as much as I could have.

Despite my issues with it (some of the added scenes and making boss fights more AAA epic don’t work for me), Silent Hill 2 is still fantastic. The game’s atmosphere and sound design are absolute feats, and should be sweeping this award season. And despite how much I love the original cast and how weird and stilted the voice acting is in the original, Luke Roberts’ performance as James Sunderland is an all-timer.

But if I have to push another bin across a room in a game, I’m going to scream.

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Tekken 8 is some good-ass Tekken. If I wrote my GOTY list in January, this would undoubtedly be a lot higher. Sadly, the game has had so many weird additions in the time since that its star has fallen a bit. That being said, what’s here is great.

The aggressive gameplay focus is exactly what the series needed after Tekken 7, and while the new Heat system isn’t perfect, getting right in your opponent’s face and whipping ass is incredibly satisfying in Tekken 8. Plus, I’m an absolute sucker for the Tekken story. These dumb bombastic events are my favourite in the genre and take Netherrealm’s gimmick and does it far better than NRS does.

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I played Thank Goodness You’re Here! the day before I started writing this list. Thank goodness I did. The gameplay may be a little simple, and it’s only about two hours long, but what an impact this game made. I can’t think of any game where I’ve laughed out loud this much while playing it; all of the tiny character interactions and signs hit like a truck. Going into Price Shaggers only to find the rat infestation is being housed from a smaller shop called Mice Shaggers sent me into an alternate plane of existence for a good minute or two.

I also adore physical comedy; the fact that your wee guy can just smack everything in sight as his only action outside jumping was an instant win for me. Every single time he fell out of somewhere and just flopped onto the ground, it got a pop from me. Plus, it’s nice to see a game based so heavily on one part of a culture to an uncompromising degree as this is to North England. It joins Wallace and Gromit as the reasons to actually like England sometimes (Scotland World Order for LIFE).

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2024 being so jam-packed with excellent RPGs meant that by the time Metaphor: ReFantazio came around, I was so burnt out on the genre that I didn’t pay it much mind. Even when I played at Summer Game Fest and Gamescom, I just wasn’t getting on board with the new game from one of my favourite teams.

But I made the time, and despite taking a while to get going, when Metaphor: ReFantazio hits, it absolutely hits. Even though I’m a Persona 4-for-life kind of guy, there’s no denying the core cast of Metaphor is absolutely the best Atlus has ever created. There’s absolutely zero duds in the entire game, which goes a long way when you’re spending 70 hours with them. Basilio may only be rivalled by Kanji for my favourite Atlus character, which is a super high bar.

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What can you even say about Astro Bot at this point? It’s full of absolute whimsy; the cameo collection is equal parts incredible and a bit sad (I miss you Japan Studio), and the soundtrack is full of absolute bops. It’s easy to get caught up in all of the PlayStation nostalgia, but even outside of that, Astro backs it up.

While not quite on the Nintendo level, Astro is one of the best platformers we’ve had in a long time. Even though Astro itself is quite limited when it comes to movement, the level gimmicks and power-ups are so smart that it’s hard to get caught up in it. I hope PlayStation Studios takes notice of the overwhelming response to Astro and stops being so one-note with its first-party stuff and brings back some of that PS1/PS2 era spark that was full of inventive ideas.

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I loved Balatro on PC but Balatro on Mobile has ruined my life.

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Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is an absolute feat. How in the hell RGG wrapped up 20 years of storytelling with Kiryu while pushing Ichiban’s story forward is nothing short of incredible. Ichiban Kasuga continues to be the greatest protagonist in gaming history; his enthusiasm and hopefulness for life are genuinely affecting in a way that most stories don’t hit.

Even outside of that, the battle system improvements have turned what was a kind of clunky RPG in Yakuza 7 into one of my favourite turn-based battle systems ever. This game was so good that it made Persona look basic in comparison. Like a Dragon’s infinite wealth of side content also packs such a punch this time around, like sure, why not have a whole ass Animal Crossing in there?

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I wasn’t reviewing games when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring dropped. Playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 made me feel the same way so many described reviewing those games felt. Something as uncompromising and systems dense as Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t come round often, especially from a triple A studio. It’s just so goddamn cool.

Open-world games are very hit or miss for me. I can’t enjoy the Assassin’s Creed/Horizon map markers and towers design, but when something sends you out into the world to do your thing, I’m down. What makes an open world to me is when I think, ‘Can I do this dumbass idea I have?’ and the answer is yes. What do you mean I can climb on a griffon’s back and use it as a fast travel across the map? Even as players were discovering just how devastating Dragonsplague could be – wiping out entire cities and ruining your quests because the givers were dead – I couldn’t help but just revel in how incredibly cool that was when it happened to me.

Capcom has been on a hall of fame-worthy run since Resident Evil 7 (five of my last 10 GOTY have been from Capcom). This being Hideaki Itsuno’s swan song at Capcom is such a fitting end after 30 years of absolute bangers, and it’s going to be the new bar by which all open-world RPGs are judged by me from here on out.

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