Hello and Happy New Year! Did you have a nice break? I hope so.
This is our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing, in this case, over the festive break. This time, we gorged on loot in Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2, we were pleasantly surprised nay delighted by Indiana Jones, and dug into the trifle-like layers of genius that make up Animal Well.
I’ve been ping-ponging between Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 during the Christmas break – I’ve been filling my ARPG cup, you could say. What surprised me, doing this, is how complimentary the games can be. Path of Exile 2 is frugal. It doesn’t give up anything easily. You inch through zones and then try multiple times to beat bosses, and when you do, they don’t give you much, the stingy bastards. Path of Exile 2 certainly doesn’t shower you in rewards like Diablo 4 does.
Never was this more apparent than during Diablo 4’s festive Slay Ride to Hell celebration, which spawned Treasure Goblins around the map seemingly everywhere – those scurrying Santa-like carriers of bottomless bags of loot. The spawns were particularly potent in the new Vessel of Hatred expansion zone, Nahantu, which it turns out I hadn’t been to yet because I hadn’t played the expansion yet. Cue, then, the perfect storm for me: catching up on a year of loot changes and expansion content, while also being drenched in fountains of loot along the way.
It did get old eventually, but not before I’d romped through the standard character levels with the new Spirit Warrior class and redeemed literal bags full of some of the best loot in the game. I even had time to re-equip a few other characters. It’s an embarrassment of riches that couldn’t be further away from the Scrooge-like approach of Path of Exile 2, and I loved Diablo for it – I gorged on it.
Now, though, I’m back to Path of Exile 2, as if to purge the excess of Diablo. It’s fitting for January, I feel.
-Bertie
Animal Well, PC (Steam Deck)
This video features the maker of Animal Well: Billy Basso.Watch on YouTube
I swallowed the Animal Well pill along with my Christmas dinner this holiday season and cor, what an absolute gem of a game. I know it’s been said a million times already, but Developer Billy Basso has cooked up something really very special with this debut, and Metroidvania likers owe it to themselves to get this played if they haven’t already. This is an ingenious interpretation of the genre, not just in the way it changes the rules around traversal and discovery (swapping double jumps for frisbees and bubble wands, for example, and dashes for yo-yos and spinning tops), but also because it’s just so gosh-darned clever. It does that thing that a lot of my favourite games do, in that it plops you into a world and then simply gestures towards the open door, leaving you to discover it for yourself with next to no guidance whatsoever. It’s so, so thrilling, and the kind of game that occupies every waking thought while you’re playing it.
Case in point: I loved discovering all the different ‘layers’ of Animal Well the more I played it. The first one is the six-odd hour jaunt you’ll experience to simply get to the bottom of the well, completing the main thrust of its story quest and conquering its ‘final’ boss. The second layer, however, is where Animal Well really comes alive, which is a 64-strong egg hunt that actually lets you leave the well altogether, leading to what I’d consider its proper ending. This is what I was able to finish over the holidays, expanding my playtime closer to 20 hours. But there’s also a third layer that riffs on all manner of Tunic/Fez/ARG-style ‘deep’ secrets involving hidden bunnies, bar codes, community puzzles that – hands up – are probably beyond me (or rather, beyond the amount of available head space I have for that kind of stuff alongside also having a job).
But man alive, that egg hunt layer was properly great, if only because the tools and gadgets you need to obtain to find them all go way beyond what’s required to beat the first layer of Animal Well. It really fires up your mind about what’s possible in this strange environment, and what other secrets might have been hiding in plain sight all along. And some of those eggs are so well hidden! An absolutely insane achievement for a solo developer, and very deserving of its spot in our Top 50 Games of 2024.
–Katharine
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Xbox Series X
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.
What a joy it’s been discovering Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Eurogamer’s 2024 Game of the Year. I’ll happily admit to some initial scepticism about it. Indiana Jones is a franchise that has not always been well looked after, and while MachineGames is undoubtedly a talented developer, it is not known for handling licensed action adventure games. How wrong I was! I’m having more fun than I’ve had with pretty much any other game launched last year.
But it goes beyond Indy simply being a fun game to play. MachineGames consistently demonstrates an understanding of the essence of Indy – his half-mumbled deductions, mildly snarky humour, and the subtle movements and facial animation that make me feel like I’m watching a fresh performance mo-capped by Harrison Ford himself.
Then there’s the attention to detail. Surely I wasn’t the only one who teased out the arrival of the game’s first villain even longer by reading up on all the fossil exhibits in the college library? And hopefully I’m not the only one to notice MachineGames finally solving something that irks me in so many games I play: that you explore a cave/dungeon/some catacombs supposedly left undisturbed for hundreds of years, except for the fact that all the candles are still burning.
Indiana Jones, I should have known some day you’d come walking back through my door with a brilliant new chapter. I just didn’t expect it to be this.
It’s rare that a game released in the last gasp of December manages to not just make a lasting impression on almost a dozen-odd members of staff, but a big enough one to almost instantly supplant the last dozen months’ worth of equally excellent video games they’ve all been playing. But that’s precisely what Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has done to the Eurogamer team over these last few weeks, stealing in with hushed footsteps to lift this year’s most coveted prize before any of us really knew it was happening.
It’s a testament to the strength of what MachineGames has managed to achieve here with its globetrotting romp about a mysterious and ancient legend circling the planet, as well as its deep commitment to letting players create their own improvised fun within it. It’s also a lesson in how we as critics should always encompass the full scope of what any given year has to offer us, as to ignore such a brilliant, shining gem of a game just because it falls at an awkward time of year is simply a disservice to you, our readers.
This spirit of play and unbridled adventure is also what defines Eurogamer’s second game of 2024, Team Asobi’s joyous Astro Bot. It was quite a close-run race between these two games this year, and both stood head and shoulders above almost everything else when it came down to the final vote.
In some respects, these two games sit at almost opposite ends of the spectrum – one is a PlayStation family mascot platformer that rattles through 30 years of gaming history with delightful exuberance, while the other is a boisterous Xbox blockbuster that meshes breezy and spontaneous stealth systems with whip smart puzzles and brawny melee action. But I think they both speak to the same, underlying yearning we all feel – that we’re tired of being spoon-fed the same bland AAA fare year after year, and that what we really want is to poke, twist, prod and really get beneath the skin of what makes these games tick. We want to be challenged, to engage with what’s in front of us, and we want to feel thrilled and elated by it all as well.
That’s not to say we’re actively shying away from some of the darker aspects that also make games great. The sheer number of horror games on this year’s list is ample proof of that. Indeed, these, too, can be sumptuous interactive feasts that make our brains light up in all the same ways that games like Astro Bot and Indiana Jones do. But I think it’s that particular mix of player-authored chaos and creativity that The Great Circle taps into that’s made it such a deserving champion of this year’s picks.
The invitation to reach out and pick up a broomstick, a hammer, a mandolin, a violin bow, and then grasp and hold it in Indy’s hand with such poise, and such devious confidence, that you don’t even need to think twice about where that object’s going to end up in the next five seconds. It’s going to crumple and splinter the temple of the nearest Nazi guard, buckle them at the knees, and knock them out cold. Such is the fate of every object that passes through Indy’s fingers, because it’s too goddamn delicious not to (well, apart from the copious biscotti loaves, bananas and prickly pears you’ll also find lying about – those are going straight into Indy’s gob to give his health and stamina bars a second wind of endurance).
Image credit: Digital Foundry
But even though the outcome of all these myriad objects might be set in stone, The Great Circle still thrums with the unexpected. Your plan of attack might get thwarted by a hidden guard you didn’t clock on your approach, say, your silent takedown suddenly erupting into a frantic chase of thrown bottles, grabbed trowels, and chaotic, panicky punches. Or you might come across a little brain-teasing puzzle that acts as a pleasing diversion for a few minutes, encouraging you to take five to solve a proposed board game conundrum, or crack a locked safe where skill books, cash and other tasty treats lurk within. Or perhaps you simply want to pause a moment to spend a little more time with its superb cast of characters, from your spirited companion Gina, right down to the Sukhothai village chief and his cat Fried Egg.
Or maybe you’ll stumble across an entirely different rabbit hole on your way through its densely plotted locations that forms one of The Great Circle’s many outstanding sidequests, many of which are so substantial, not to mention almost integral to what’s going on in the wider story, that you’ll want to seek them out regardless. Often sequestered away from the rest of The Great Circle’s story missions, they take you to all sorts of different places on its various maps that you might not have explored otherwise, their tailored plotlines and environments bringing a unique flavour to each and every one of them. Some tap into stealth-driven rescue missions, while others lean into Indy’s penchant for tomb raiding. There’s even one that feels like an homage to PT – a truly spectacular sequence that I won’t spoil any further, but which is just sitting there, off the beaten path, ready to delight those who happen to come across it.
I didn’t come across it at first – it was only after going back to mop up the stuff I’d inevitably had to leave behind in order to finish our review on time that I eventually discovered this little side story. And it really feels all the more special for having missed it the first time. A heavier handed blockbuster would have taken great pains to make sure I saw and experienced every last hyper realistic morsel of it in a single-player game like this (looking at you, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and your stupendous ode to maximalist excess), and with the threat of rising development costs and the pressure of making sure players get their pound of flesh in exchange for their 70 British pounds, it’s understandable why games leave so few stones unturned these days.
Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
But how much more exciting it is to discover these gems for ourselves – to unravel new wrinkles in Indy’s story without them being handed to us on a plate, and all virtual fingers pointing ‘Go here! Please! I promise it will be good!’ How much more thrilling to be able to have that secret handshake with the developer, in a moment that feels truly your own. This is what the best games of recent years have always done for us – the Outer Wilds, the Elden Rings, the Unpackings, the Cocoons. All of them put the player at their heart, presenting us with rich and vibrant worlds to simply go away and tinker with at our own pace, peeling back its layers, and fully submerging ourselves in everything these games have to offer us. They let us play, uninhibited, within their respective sandpits, and they remind us of what’s possible in games, and how, even after all these years playing them, that they still have the capacity to surprise and delight us – whether we’re stepping into the shoes of a well-known film star, or a shining, blank canvas little robot.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle does all this and so much more with such confidence that it’s the best full stop to the year we could ask for, really. And with any luck, it will also be a bright new beginning for its developer MachineGames as well, a studio that’s taken such an assured swing with this new blend of genres that I can’t wait to see how it builds on these experiences in the future. Indy is back, and he’s never been better.
What a year, huh? 2024 has been brutal for video games, a medium which has taken a bludgeoning from seemingly all angles. It’s been one of the quietest years for triple-A games in recent memory and the toughest for studios of just about all sizes too.
But through all that there have been – as there always has been and probably always will be – a surging, irrepressible wave of brilliant, inventive, utterly joyeous video games. This has been a year of survival, but also a year of total, out-of-nowhere hits. New, weird, unsuspected gems bursting onto the scene to fill the void left by the blockbusters, which seem set to almost unanimously duke it out for your attention in 2025 instead.
Well done on making it through this year. Thank you, as always, for reading. And please enjoy this list of wonderful games – the reason we’re all here in the first place. Here are the 50 best games of 2024, ranked.
50. The Plucky Squire
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch
Image credit: All Possible Futures/Devolver Digital
At the centre of The Plucky Squire is an idea so brilliant it’s still stunning no one has done it before. The ability for a picture book character to become sentient and jump out (and back into) the book’s pages to impact its story is an idea I can’t believe isn’t already a Pixar movie. In a video game, even after two dozen times, the concept never quite gets old. It’s a superlative idea, and The Plucky Squire oozes charm as your little hero attempts to save the day by exploring back and forth through his picture book’s chapters, and then in the bedroom of the book’s young reader. The game isn’t perfect – at launch its verbose writing risked alienating a similarly young audience, while some of its repeated, handhold-y puzzles should probably have been abridged. Now, a recent update has attempted to smooth over some of that – and the brilliance of that initial key concept remains.
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Image credit: Eurogamer / Sega
“Hope you guys know how to fish,” says Infinite Wealth’s lead character Ichiban Kasuga moments before a giant shark beaches itself on the boat you’re traveling on. A turn-based battle against this beast follows, the ridiculousness of the situation barely registering as you attempt to beat up a monster even the great Jason Statham would be wary of. This is Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, though. It’s a game full of moments like this, the kind of which you’d usually never expect but kind of do here. As with other games in the series, you can try to explain to someone why they should play it, but it’s not until they actually do that the penny drops. There are no other games like this, and they must be treasured. – Tom Orry
The pandemic. Cloning. Gene editing. Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution. The apocalypse. 1000xResist embraces all of these subjects during the course of this intimate 3D visual novel, shining a bright and unflinching light on what kind of society might emerge from this petri dish of disasters. The result is one of spiralling complexity, a slow burning tale of faith, lies and conspiracy that suddenly roars to life as it hits the halfway mark, catapulting the world of heroine Watcher, her clone-like sisters and their All Mother goddess originator into violent disarray. Memories become vital battlegrounds to discern and excavate the truth behind Watcher’s heritage, and as the whys and hows of this strange, enigmatic world begin to take shape through these fickle and dreamlike flashbacks, we get to see the big ugly mess of best intentions gone awry sitting at the heart of it. 1000xResist offers no easy answers to any of its big thematic debates, but that’s precisely why this raw and deeply personal journey is so memorable and important. – Katharine Castle
Self-described ‘totally normal gardening game’ Grunn is anything but normal, and developer Sokpop Collective delight in wrong-footing you at almost every turn in this secretly low-key horror game. Your task seems simple enough – as you arrive at the gates of an overgrown country house on a bright Saturday morning, you’ve got until Monday to get the place spick and span before the owners come home. The gardening itself is pleasingly tactile, and the shoomp shoomp of the grass and hedge shears and the combative swipes of your trowel all feel great under the thumbs. But you’ll soon realise there’s something much darker and weirder going on beneath the surface of Grunn, and that these strange forces are actively out to get you. Through a smattering of enigmatic polaroids, Grunn gradually emerges as a horror-infused adventure game, tasking players with matching disparate items to the right puzzle scenarios to help peel back its layers and get to the heart of this deliciously unnerving experience. You won’t be able to do everything on a single playthrough, but each run arms you with more knowledge and shortcuts to unravel its tantalising mystery. It’s wonderfully creepy, and a real grower. – Katharine Castle
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Image credit: Activision / Eurogamer
I won’t lie, I enjoyed the Black Ops 6 campaign a lot more than plenty of games above it in this list. I’m not sure if that’s going to get me banished from the EG Slack or something, but I need to speak my truth. I don’t care one bit for the various multiplayer modes CoD offered this year, partly because they didn’t grab me but mostly because I simply don’t have time to sink into an online multiplayer shooter. Still, BLOPS 6 has the best campaign in a Call of Duty since 2016’s Infinite Warfare. There, I’ve said it. It’s a banger. I think that’s plenty of info to judge me with, but just know I’m right about this and if you disagree you are wrong. Here’s to terrible campaigns for the next eight years! – Tom Orry
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch
Image credit: Digital Eclipse/Llamasoft
These Digital Eclipse collections are hard to sum up, but here’s the rough gist of it. Imagine a luxurious special edition DVD box set of several classic films, put together with a bit of curation, and introduced with context and explanation and nice bonus features. A collection and a story all at once. The latest, from the people behind the excellent Making of Karateka, focuses on the legendary Jeff Minter, king of psychedelic arcade wonder games. This focuses on all of his earlier stuff, but don’t let that put you off. Many of these older, lesser known games still feel frighteningly new, even as you warp back to the mid 80s. Preservation with love. This is video game heritage. – Chris Tapsell
A demonic love story told through the lens of survival horror, Sorry We’re Closed is one of many excellent PS1-throwback games to appear on our list this year, but it’s almost certainly the most stylish one of the lot. With its searing colour palette and punk rock cast of ordinary folks just trying to survive in downtown London (albeit a downtown London that’s somehow become a hotbed for angels and demons all hanging out together and vying for celestial supremacy), this is raw and emotional tale where opening up your heart is a surprisingly deadly endeavour. Shop worker Michelle knows this more than most, after catching the fancy of arch demon The Duchess and being cursed with a third eye that can pierce through the fabric of reality to reveal the seedy, demonic underbelly within. If she doesn’t submit to The Duchess in three days, she’ll be tortured for the rest of eternity, but as she fights for her life in a brilliant mix of third person puzzling and first-person shooting, Sorry We’re Closed shows there’s still a lot to love about fixed camera angles, grungy lo-fi visuals and punching god/the devil square in the face to earn your freedom. – Katharine Castle
What if Sniper Elite was a low-fi conspiracy-fuelled shooter with multi-kill mechanics reminiscent of pinball or the Crash Mode from Burnout? Well, you’d get something like Children of the Sun, an indie shoot-’em-all-up that’s part shooter and part puzzle game. Crouched from afar, its your job to line up a shot – and its subsequent richochets – that take out all of your targets, as you uncover why your mysterious main character is taking revenge on a deadly cult. The visuals and story – such that there is – are enjoyably pulpy, while the quick-fail-and-retry gameplay allows you have just one… more… go… – Tom Phillips
Ah, the weight of expectation. 25 years after the first genre-defining Homeworld game, nine years after a successful remaster and five years after a crowdfunding campaign for a sequel, Homeworld 3 seemed to have its course set to become another intricate, galaxy-spanning real-time strategy game set in 3D space. What emerged from hyperspace was in some ways the game I dreamed of: a fun evolution of what came before, with new factions and a new setting, yet familiarly iconic ship designs emitting primary-coloured exhaust trails, producing realistic battle chatter amongst beautiful nebulae backdrops as a Middle Eastern inspired ambient electronica plays. A new focus on maps with megalithic structures suitable for cover or flanking was a smart twist, providing a new stage for the game’s excellent art direction and making for more interesting battle scenarios too.
Yet an ultimately disappointing campaign that focused on a handful of poorly realised characters stood in stark contrast to the epic, survival-of-a-people tales that made the first games so well-loved, and depressed review scores to the point that the game’s extensive post-launch development plans were halted just four months later. The game’s campaign and its roguelite War Games mode are still well worth playing, with the final 1.3 patch providing some much-needed balance and gameplay improvements, but I fear it may be the final chapter in this iconic series. – Will Judd
Puzzle games about growing plants have been popping up in abundance in recent years, but Botany Manor is almost certainly one of the best specimens yet of this particular sub-genre. Set inside an enormous and picturesque Somerset manor, amateur botanist Arabella Greene takes it upon herself to study and recreate rare strains of peculiar plants that will only bloom under the most specific and wonderfully whimsical circumstances. Like the flower that needs the exact wind temperatures of its mountain home, or the rust-cleansing river weed that will only bloom at a certain water temperature. Or the one that mimics the wing colours of a moth at a particular time of day, or the sleeping heartbeat of a specific woodland creature. As you root out each plant’s respective seed bag from around the house and try and deduce exactly what will make each one burst into life via the notes and letters and other diegetic clues you’ll find scattered around, Botany Manor reveals itself to be a surprisingly robust and artful kind of puzzle experience. It takes time, care and more than a little attention to solve these conundrums, but this game’s a grower, no doubt about it. – Katharine Castle
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Image credit: Piranha Games
In MechWarrior 5: Clans, you are the monsters suddenly bursting out of the walls, except the walls are the edge of the known universe and the monsters are armed with several-stories-tall BattleMechs. There’s plenty here that’s familiar to players of the hugely addicting sandbox of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, but that game’s slow-and-steady progression of a mercenary company taking on odd jobs is jettisoned for a more engaging linear campaign through the highlights (and lowlights) of the Clan invasion of the Inner Sphere, complete with animated cutscenes replete with in-universe lingo. As agents of a technological superpower hidden away from the centuries of in-fighting and neglect faced by the rest of humanity, your advanced machinery is faster, better-armoured and hits harder than anything you’ll face from your enemies. That lets your five-member squad carve through hordes of opposition in supremely entertaining style, and gives you some latitude to experiment with weapon loadouts and skill upgrades before the game’s difficulty ramps up in the final chapters. Best of all, everything can be played in co-op if you like – and despite upgrades to AI squadmate control, subjugating the surats is always more fun with a sibkin. – Will Judd
Arranger is ingenious, beautiful and deeply, surprisingly accommodating. Its premise suggests a world of genius-tier head-scratching where only puzzling’s greatest minds will succeed, but this game doesn’t just want you to get through its challenges, it wants you to feel clever too, and feel like you took everything at your own pace. These are excellent ambitions. At its most basic, Arranger offers players a tile-based world in which rows and columns move as the player does, and many objects wrap around the screen, reappearing from the left when they disappear off the right, say. Taking this idea, you’re sent off on a beautiful adventure, moving from one town to the next, solving problems, engaging in combat – you move swords and whatnot along with your rows and columns – and even taking on bosses. It’s elegant stuff, but it’s backed up with a lovely hint and skip system which means, should you want it, you can have a marker on-screen that permanently points you in the right direction, and you can hop right over any puzzle that’s annoying you. All this and some stellar writing and world-building. Arranger is a treat. – Christian Donlan
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch
Image credit: Eurogamer/Blumhouse Games
Vibes, the video game. In terms of mechanics there’s not a whole lot of complex stuff going on in Fear the Spotlight, but it absolutely nails that late 90s/early 2000s horror aesthetic. It’s a game split into two parts, parallel stories that follow on from a disastrous seance. The first is mostly set in school grounds as the protagonist attempts to find her friend and avoid the bright orange searchlight emanating from the singular baddy. Part two is more personal, centred on the life of the aforementioned missing friend, this time predominantly set in her old family home. Scarier than part one, this story leans more into Japanese horror like Ringu and Ju-On: The Curse. There’s not much of a challenge here, but the throwback puzzles and brilliant retro visuals felt like a palette cleanser much needed after years of gnarly horror designed to make you wince. – Tom Orry
Look up. This is the slogan DC is using for its new Super Man movie. It’s also something you can do with your actual head while playing Batman: Arkham Shadow on the Meta Quest 3. Looking around isn’t new in a VR game, obviously, but it’s the first part of Camouflaj’s brilliant Batman sim. While Bruce Wayne, famously, can’t go five minutes without saying “I am the Batman,” or similar, in this game you are in fact the Batman. Never before, even in the Rocksteady games, has this feeling been truer. Key to this is the fact that Arkham Shadow doesn’t shy away from the combat we’re now accustomed to in Batman games. Yes, it’s simplified here in order to open the game up to as wide an audience as possible (you don’t have to be trained in martial arts), but it just works. – Tom Orry
Modern games that look like retro games are having a rather elongated moment, aren’t they. One of the best examples this year is PS1-era throwback horror, Crow Country. Rather than simply rely on nostalgia through deliberately-dated, SFB Games created a game that would have slotted in perfectly back when everyone was being scared by the marvels that were Resident Evil and Silent Hill. It’s got smart puzzles, which are essential in a good survival horror, but more importantly the setting is brilliantly realised. There’s a superb sense of place here, which elevates it above the average attempt at aping games of this genre. Oh, and it’s funny, too, which is something games often fail miserably at. – Tom Orry
Often overshadowed by the vast success of its sibling Age of Empires, Age of Mythology is, frankly, an absolute banger of a game, a peak early-00s era RTS from the time where the ostensibly serious strategy genre started to get a bit silly. But I will always maintain that “a bit silly” is exactly what makes for a good RTS, frankly, and Retold is a fantastic glow-up, filing down the jagged, polygonal edges of the original but losing none of its off-beat charm. There are still outlandish god powers to throw around – now with cooldown timers (how modern!) rather than a single use – and still the faintly ridiculous physics to go with it. Seeing colossi and giants boinged up in the air by a meteor will never get old. Nor will a good old-fashioned comp stomp with friends against the improved AI. If you missed the original, or you loved the original, or you never quite got into real-time strategy but want to give it a try, I can’t think of another game I’d recommend first. – Chris Tapsell
34. Pacific Drive
Platforms: PC, PS5
Image credit: Kepler Interactive / Eurogamer
Pacific Drive isn’t the most cooperative of games. Your first dozen or so hours will, if you’re like me, be spent cursing it (or cursing at it). And then the next dozen or so hours will, well, probably also be spent doing that. Weaving your way through the sodden forests of the pacific northwest with nothing but a banged up, possibly-haunted jalopy and a grumpy radio accomplice you will find yourself crashed, mashed, flipped, hurled, shocked, poked and bonked by various obstacles, ranging from slightly horrifying ‘anomalies’ of the Zone to the car’s boot lowering on your head – your own weaponised incompetence manifest. This game is wonderfully, hysterically sadistic, but it’s also laced with clever mitigating design – the garage, where you stop off to recover, rebuild, and make slow RPG-like progress between runs, is really the game’s beating heart – and also a scintillating, Strugatsky brothers-inspired atmosphere. One of this year’s most unique games, but also one that seems to tap right into the zeitgeist: weird physics, gallows humour, masochistism, and a requirement to press on regardless. – Chris Tapsell
I’m torn on Stellar Blade. Having had little to no expectations for it on release, I was surprised by just how great the combat is. I don’t want to sound like a complete idiot, but I wrongly started playing assuming I’d get some fairly by-the-book hack ‘n’ slash gameplay, but in fact Stellar Blade feels less frenzied than that. It’s not souls-like, but it’s not a completely different beast to those games either. It helps that Stellar Blade looks superb, being one of the most impressive games I’ve played on PS5 in 2024 (and all the nicer on PS5 Pro). I won’t sugarcoat it, though: I’m not a fan of the frankly quite ridiculous costumes. I appreciate that there’s a market for that, but I think these designs undermine a top notch action game. – Tom Orry
I’ll be honest, I really thought TCG Pocket was just going to be one of those ‘interactive experiences’ that really centred on pack opening, collecting pretty digital things and extracting as much money out of fans as possible. And, okay, it is sort of that– but wait, come back a sec and just listen. It’s also just a fantastic card battler. This is maybe to be expected – Creatures has been making this card game for a few decades now, after all – but there are some quietly genius tweaks to the formula that make it work so well here. Energy has been shifted from cards in your deck to a generation system, enhanced and modified by the cards you can then build decks around. Matches are faster, and somewhat inconsequential by most competitive standards – but counterintuitively, that also makes it even more fun. If you lose, it’s fine – you lost five minutes, and probably learned something valuable about the deck you built or decisions you made along the way. The interlocking systems, across chance-based elements like packs and wonder picks, to the many quests, AI and online battles, collectibles and more, are astonishingly intricate. And yes, the artwork really is quite lovely. This is one of the best games to come out of The Pokémon Company for some time – don’t write it off before trying your hand. – Chris Tapsell
Games are often so slick, so focus grouped, and so safe these days that it’s amazing when a big game is released and it doesn’t feel like any of those things. Stalker 2 feels like a hugely ambitious indie game from 15 years ago, but with the production values of a modern AAA title. It had plenty of issues at launch (and still does after a bunch of updates), but no other game released this year matches it in terms of scope. It’s an open-world FPS, but unlike any you’ve ever played before unless you’ve played a previous Stalker game. Games don’t have to be sanded down so much they have no sharp edges in order to be worth your time and money. Stalker 2 proves that. It’s got more rough spots than Sony’s entire first-party output this entire generation. – Tom Orry
A game about escaping to the Austrian alps to simply get away from it all, Dungeons of Hinterberg will have added resonance with you if you’ve felt a little burned out recently, or if the pandemic is still faintly lingering in the back of your mind, or if you’ve just had a bit of a year. It’s probably the closest to this year’s A Short Hike, a game about the soothing atmosphere of a physical place, about presentness and mindfulness and nice strangers offering a few words of smalltalk or advice. But also just a very nice, tight, smartly designed game in itself: a mix of Persona and Zelda, mashing together environmental puzzling, playful camera perspective shifts, a bit of light third-person combat and then a soothing retreat to the local mountain village in between. If you play games for escapism, there are few this year that did it better: a dreamy, warm-hearted, timely and deeply welcome retreat. – Chris Tapsell
Another of the very fine, small-team indies of 2024, Arco is a gem of an action adventure game, all rendered in lovely, expressive pixel art (there’s a whiff of 2013 about it, in a good way). Smart combat focuses on short, snappy, intelligent encounters, while the vibe is wonderfully Western-meets-fantasy: a lone wanderer, an authentically South American twist on the cowboy story, a big, mysterious tree. There’s richness and texture here, condensed and refined into something compact yet powerful. – Chris Tapsell
Caves of Qud is a forever game. It’s a blend of Dwarf Fortress and the original Rogue, generating a dense fantasy world and millennia of history, and then using that as a rich backdrop for some brilliant dungeon crawling.
Everywhere you look there’s something special. The art – one or two rungs away from ASCII – is gorgeously evocative of all-night sessions in old University computer labs, while the writing is poised and strange, the storytelling blends the far future and all its horrors with a landscape of ruins and strange mushrooms. Dungeons are procedurally generated but the storyline’s main beats never change, which puts the emphasis firmly on the player themselves. Who do they become? What path do they take? How many limbs and fingers do they want to replace with laser cannons? These are all excellent questions for a game to ask.
Somewhere in amidst all this stuff is a game that tugs at a concealed theme of 2024 in games. Like UFO 50 this is a game with the trappings – and some of the ideas – of the past of gaming, but which treats everything in a way that makes much more graphically lavish titles feel pretty old-fashioned. Even if you don’t think Caves of Qud is for you, give it a try. – Christian Donlan
I honestly believe that Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition is one of the best games of the year and on the Nintendo Switch full-stop. It’s that good. I know it’s not perfect, lacking high-score leaderboards for online competition, but it’s an absolutely essential local multiplayer game for all ages. I’ve enjoyed countless hours playing this with my son, essentially showing him that despite the massive advantages his youth offers, he still can’t beat me at video games when compressed into tiny challenges.
The really special thing about NWCNE (sorry, just wanted to write something that looked like a professional wrestling franchise) is more of a side effect, really. By introducing my son to these relics of the video game world, he’s now developed an interest in playing the full games. He’s sunk hours into Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, and Metroid. That’s the power of Nintendo. – Tom Orry
What a breath of fresh air Infinity Nikki is. If you’re tired of the usual open-worlds focused on combat, then may I suggest a trip through Miraland’s lush, fairytale landscapes instead. Where other games may have bosses to challenge, Infinity Nikki’s got high-stakes fashion battles across rooftops and spooky forests, for no other reason than simply being as dramatic as possible. But when Nikki does need to roll up her impeccably-styled sleeves to take on some mischievous creatures, then it’s in service of ‘purifying’ the poor things, not killing them.
When not exploring, or saving the world in one of the most endearingly silly stories I’ve ever heard (where fashion is worshipped in tandem with ancient gods), then just dressing Nikki up to look cute is your only real goal. And if you’re a fan of taking pictures in those cute clothes, be prepared to craft some high-quality snaps, with one of the most in depth Photo Modes in gaming.
Simple concepts, but a joyous execution of them, makes Infinity Nikki the upbeat, batty adventure that it is. – Jessica Orr
Timemelters is the work of some of the people behind Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves. That was a distinct blend of strategy and tower defence that had an enviable sense of its own identity. Timemelters takes the idea further and really pushes up against the limits of how many new ideas a player can handle at any time. That’s a compliment.
You’re playing as a witch in a mythical version of Scotland, but really you’re a flexible attack unit with the ability to cast spells, reverse time and record your own clones to fight against, and move through wormholes that tie the maps in non-Euclidean knots. The stroke of genius that brings it all into focus is this: you only have one hit point. If you fail at any moment in the game you’re dead, and so you really explore each map and its challenges, breaking down objectives, working out how to rethink space, and steadily becoming the kind of ingenious player you always hoped you might be. 2024 had a lot of great games, but few had as much to teach the player about their own potential as this one. And it’s brilliant fun too. – Christian Donlan
One of this year’s most compelling detective games, No Case Should Remain Unsolved is a deep dive into the fickleness and fragility of the human mind. It’s the kind of mystery game you should really just go and play and not read too much about beforehand, as saying anything about its story or finer details will veer dangerously close into spoiler territory. But the simple facts of the case are thus: you play a detective haunted by one particularly harrowing case from your youth that’s long since gone cold, and at last you’re tasked with rooting through your own piecemeal memories of all the different witness testimonies to try and get to the bottom of it. As you start reconstructing a timeline of events and matching fragments of statements to the correct speaker in the right order, you’ll gradually unearth other, hidden details of the case that constantly challenge and expand your understanding of it. But the real masterstroke of this game is how deftly it weaves its narrative, and how closely it guards its deepest and most devastating secrets. It’s masterfully executed, and a must-play for all budding detective heads. – Katharine Castle
Platforms: PC, Ps4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch
Image credit: Ubisoft
This year’s best Metroidvania and a new benchmark for the genre at large. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is an athletic, nimble dream of an action platformer, marrying taut and challenging traversal techniques with a mythic quest of dazzling proportions. As heroic warrior Sargon, you must save the titular prince from the sprawling, labyrinthian prison of Mount Qaf, a foreboding and ominous place that turns friend against foe and time back in on itself. It’s an enthralling adventure, and the kind of hero’s journey that feels steeped in both the series’ tradition and the modern, dynamic flair of anime and graphic novels. It also solved the genre’s ever-present problem of painful backtracking with its game-changing screenshot tool, letting you pin images of locked doors, puzzles or anything else that caught your curiosity directly onto the map. Together with its rigorous and skilful platforming, this is a staggering achievement from the Rayman Legends team, and it’s a travesty that we won’t get to see more of it in the future. – Katharine Castle
There’s something about I Am Your Beast that reminds me of the old Batman TV series’ comic book punch effects – BAM! ZIFF! BOFF! FWIP! – only with less of the camp and much more angst. One of several games to come from Xalavier Nelson’s Strange Scaffold this year, which is arguably less a typical development studio and more a venture, allowing different devs to come in, put their stamp on something, and quickly turn around a tight, snappy, few-hours-long game with an exceptional premise that carries it well beyond what you might expect for the budget. Of those, I Am Your Beast is probably the snappiest and the tightest, a steely revenge flick with deeply cathartic, thunderously hard-hitting action to back it up. KAPOW! – Chris Tapsell
There’s been growing chatter this year about the death of double-A games, which is interesting. For one, I’m pretty sure we had that same conversation some time around 2013. But more than that, I’m also just not entirely sure it’s true. Maybe double-A games haven’t gone away, so much as just become much more expensive, in the same way triple-A budgets have ballooned. Either way, consider Space Marine 2, a game that is double-A in spirit and nature, and just about every sense other than how much it actually cost.
I have to emphasise: that is intended as a very big compliment. Space Marine 2 is a joy in co-op, particularly against AI hordes but also in its meaty, gristly, simple pleasures campaign. It’s very pretty, richly detailed, but also just has a teeny tiny whiff of harmless jank to it around the edges, in those distant hordes and over-the-top explosions. And it’s also thoroughly, utterly committed to the bit. This is an exceptionally 40k game, rich with little details – lore for the lore gods! – and ripe with gothic, dark future atmosphere. Coupled with little Doom (2016) inspired mechanical hooks, like its parry and execute system, and it’s an absolute winner. The second best game about getting together with pals and shooting hundreds of xeno scum to bits this year. – Chris Tapsell
Strange, stylish, and (mostly) successful – Indika is maybe the most A24 video game of this past year. There’s a lot going on here, but it’s hard to get past the presentation – and the impact that utterly striking presentation has, in all its forms, on the game as a whole. Think morphing, switching, surprising camera angles and movements, or sudden snaps to entirely new perspectives or art styles. Think deeply thoughtful character animations – Indika chews her nails and looks around skittishly when left to idle. Think bicycle sprints and thorny takes on religion and oppression. While the actual mechanics themselves – effectively, a bit of platforming and light puzzle-solving – don’t burst with novelty, there’s still a serious lesson here for a medium that has, let’s face it, been astonishingly slow to evolve when it comes to the good old camerawork and direction behind visual storytelling. That lesson is in just how much can be wrought from a game with some proper thought – behind how and where you put your camera and what you can see on screen, but also what you choose to do with it and why. – Chris Tapsell
There are many very clever people working in video games, and one of those especially clever ones is Suspicious Developments’ Tom Francis, developer of Tactical Breach Wizards (and I’m not just saying that because he’s written for Eurogamer). Tactical Breach Wizards is a deft, compact, and deeply witty take on turn-based tactics, setting you up as a bearded, wizened SWAT team that begins each scenario with a wonderful, thunderous boom through the front door. From there you need to clear a tiny, intricately arranged room, Into the Breach-style, using clever systemic devices – into the wall! Out the window! – to shunt and blast enemies around the arena as you go. As Matt Wales put it in his excellent review, “Tactical Breach Wizards is absolutely obsessed with defenestration”. Sold! This is the stuff of tactical dreams. – Chris Tapsell
The first Frostpunk went down as something of a cult favourite amongst the PC strategy hardcore for its grizzled take on settlement survival. The second takes things further: difficult decisions are even more difficult. Politics, split curiously into sets of opposing values: Progress and Adaptation; Merit and Equality; Tradition and Reason. There’s a sense of breathlessness to it – of constant forever-struggle, a civilisation perpetually on the edge of strife – and at the same time one of pensive depth. If grand strategy games have always felt a bit too detached for you, too ‘God’s eye’ and geopolitical, then zoom right in onto this one. This game is right there on the ground, in the dirt and soil and snow, and the bloody choices of how you get by against the odds. It’s one of the best strategy games in some time. – Chris Tapsell
Platforms: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Netflix
Image credit: Eurogamer/Playstack
The Case of the Golden Idol was always going to be a tough act to follow, but developer Color Gray Games has truly outdone itself with this ambitious sequel. Catapulting the timeline forwards 300 years to the paranoia-drenched 1970s, this tale of corporate conspiracy and murders most fowl captures your attention at every step. Technically, it’s a little lighter on the blood and gore this time round, with some scenes simply depicting brawling TV contestants, exploding outdoor cinemas, or even poetic dances with secret, hidden meanings to decipher. But the crimes and mysteries themselves are no less compelling for it, and deducing who did what, why and how in each of its freeze-frame tableaux remains as tantalising as ever, especially now its dedicated windows and parcelled out puzzle boards make them more approachable than ever to crack open and read between the lines. It’s smartly done, and one of the most satisfying mystery games of 2024. – Katharine Castle
Capcom has been firing on all cylinders lately, and its mythological romp through the demon-infested torii gates of Kunitsu-Gami is no exception. This action-heavy strategy game is a real feast for the senses, combining its athletic and kaleidoscopic kagura dance combat moves with a challenging tactical core of cerebral tower defence. The goal is to safely escort the priestess Yoshiro through the cursed and corrupted towns and hollows of a mountainside community, defending her from waves of strikingly gnarly demons both as her chief guardian Soh and the gaggles of recruitable villagers that can be assigned different roles and jobs to best hold down the fort. Long range archers and brawny woodcutters are eventually joined by powerful sorcerers and teleporting ninjutsu, but the demons you’ll face also evolve in kind, as do the settings, objectives and obstacles you’ll encounter along the way. There are so many fresh ideas to get to grips with in Kunitsu-Gami that you’re never short of creative challenges to overcome, and the energy and enthusiasm it presents them to you with is always utterly infectious. A truly wild ride from start to finish. – Katharine Castle
You should always make time for a Simogo game. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes takes a sharp turn from the breathless, bubblegum electro-pop of platformer Sayonara Wild Hearts, the studio’s previous, instead opting for quiet, moody, monochromatic puzzle-solving in a strange, vacant mansion in the woods. Some of those puzzles can be a frightful challenge – this one’s a notebook-and-pen joint, and you’ll be much happier if you give yourself over to that fact from the off, rather than resist it out of pride, as I always find myself doing at first. You make time for a Simogo game, but this is one you need to carve out hours for, not only to play but to sit with, puzzle over, examine from all sides. Like a good old puzzle macguffin, but also like the curious objects of art this game builds its web of brilliant clues around. – Chris Tapsell
Following up a game like Spelunky must have been daunting, so in many ways Derek Yu’s response makes total sense. He got a bunch of talented friends together and slowly they all made something weird and unique. UFO 50 isn’t a game so much as it’s the back catalogue of a console that didn’t actually exist, but might have.
Real talk: it’s overwhelming at first. All of UFO 50’s games are complete experiences and they’re all unlocked from the off. That means when you load the game up for the first time you have a daunting decision to make. Where to start? But as you pick a path and move outwards, shifting from RPGs to puzzle games to strategy games – so many strategy games! – you start to realise it’s not necessarily about getting the most out of everything, it’s about finding the games that click with you and exploring them deeply, and then moving on to something new.
Over time I suspect every game will have its moment. Of all the games on this list, this is the one I think you’re meant to live with for a decade or more, really getting the most out of it. 50 games, weird interconnected lore, different art styles and a gorgeous approach to pseudo-history. As follow-ups to one of the greatest games ever made go, it’s hard to fault. – Christian Donlan
Three years ago, it would have been hard to fathom that the natural successor to games like Deus Ex, Dishonored and other renowned immersive sims would have been Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda series. But just as Tears of the Kingdom amply proved last year with its anything goes Ultra Hand contraptions, Nintendo’s creative spirit has only grown stronger over time, and the bevy of magical building blocks at your disposal in this year’s Echoes of Wisdom is a brilliant extension and evolution of that particular school of problem solving. Zelda makes for a highly winning heroine in her first proper outing as series lead, and the way she’s able to repurpose everything from beds and children’s trampolines right up to the most fearsome monsters that have terrorised Link across 30-odd years of adventuring to overcome the trials in front of her makes this one of the most daring and innovative Zelda games to date. It confronts what the future of the series might look like without a sword-swinging hero at the helm, and it does so with inventive and elegant ingenuity. Here’s hoping it’s not another 30 years until Zelda gets to reprise her stunning debut role here. – Katharine Castle
Platforms: PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Image credit: Playstack/LocalThunk
It’s the game that’s been on everyone’s lips (and brain, and console, and phone and practically every device going) since it took the world by storm back in February. Balatro has been a force of nature this year, captivating the world with its roguelike poker games that make cheating and gaming your deck the main event. Whether it’s amping up the score of your hands by exploiting all manner of special effects from its deviously conceived Joker cards, or juicing the numbers with arcane twists via booster packs of accompanying celestial buff cards, Balatro is melting pot of cunning creativity – a feeling that’s only enhanced by its wonderfully woozy music and hypnotic, swirling backgrounds. The aim, of course, is to manipulate your limited number of playable hands to beat the high score blind offered by your opponent. But as the ante goes up each round, so too do the number of zeroes on the end of those score targets, requiring all the more tactical manoeuvring to keep your run going. It’s a work of marvellous depth and winning simplicity, and rightly one of the best and most memorable games you’ll play this year. – Katharine Castle
The original Dragon’s Dogma came out at the tail end of a console generation that, frankly, everyone was sick of. It’s not that we didn’t love the PS3 and Xbox 360, but they were knocking on for seven years old at this point which back then, when Moore’s Law was still holding strong, made them the gaming hardware equivalent of a still functioning Roman aqueduct: impressive, and beautiful, but relics. Wholly inadequate for modern challenges. Probably leaking somewhere.
And so Dragon’s Dogma wasn’t quite the game that had been envisioned. Features were cut. Compromises were made. Par for the course at the best of times, but stuffing Capcom’s Elder Scrolls into a measly half gig of RAM would have been gruelling. Still, it managed to impress: justifying a huge DLC expansion, several re-releases, and a Japan-only MMO. The business, alas, remained unfinished. When work started on a sequel, the mission was plain: do it properly this time.A larger and denser map. More settlements. Two capitals. A beast race to rival the world of men. Richly drawn NPCs and better quests. An expanded pawn system including a controversial but frankly brilliant meta-game in the form of a deadly disease that spread between users. Dragon’s Dogma 2 delivered where the original game had to pull back, bringing to fruition a singular vision that had eluded its creators before, finally running on hardware that could do it justice. As long as you had a VRR TV. Look, shut up.
It’s the decade-long chasing of that vision which impresses the most. There isn’t anything quite like it: quests aren’t checklists, they’re arduous journeys into an untamed wilderness, where you can feel civilisation slipping away with every stride. Its landscape is unforgiving, fast travel only barely exists and requires effort to arrange, and night means night: travelling in darkness means danger and no visibility, as opposed to everything being normal but tinted blue, as night time so often manifests in other games. But there is beauty in the inhospitable. Grand vistas, forests as dense as real life. And this game has the most realistic mountains I’ve ever seen outside of literally the Scottish highlands: they are emphatically there. Intimidatingly tall. Impossibly wide. Unconcerned about spoiling your view, infinite draw distance be damned. There are mountains and you will look at them.
In the time between Dragon’s Dogma and its sequel, the RPG landscape has undergone several game-changing revolutions. The cultural dominance of Soulslikes mercifully peaked and waned. The likes of The Witcher 3 and Zelda: Breath of the Wild caused enormous shifts in world design that are still massively evident in new and upcoming games. But for Dragon’s Dogma 2, all that might as well have never happened. It is entirely unmoved by all the strides that have been made in This Sort of Thing, seeking only to be the best version of itself. The genesis of the project may have been Capcom’s desire to have its own competitor to Oblivion and the like, but it achieved something much more worthy than that: it finally became Dragon’s Dogma. – Jim Trinca, Destroyer of Word Limits
In a year of political elections and excellent RPGs, there couldn’t be a more 2024 game than Metaphor: ReFantazio. From Atlus, creators of the Persona series, it shifts setting from high-school drama to epic fantasy and bases its narrative on an election to restore justice to the world and prevent a dictator from brainwashing the population. It’s a celebration of diversity as well as an ode to the RPG genre, with its varied characters and anti-prejudice themes wrapped up in a smart Archetype class system and nods to 90s classics.
Above all, it’s a damn fine RPG in its own right. Building on the premise of the Persona games, its calendar structure expands into a heroic adventure, its menus are exquisitely designed, and its operatic soundtrack includes one of the best battle themes ever. Its turn-based combat, meanwhile, is fast and thrilling, its Archetype system full of depth, and its plot folds in on itself to interrogate the very meaning of what a fantasy story can be. Metaphor: ReFantazio is grand and poetic and enchanting, but it’s also a game full of hope for the future – something we could all use a little of this year. – Ed Nightingale
When I first played Thank Goodness You’re Here! as a brief demo out at GDC, I worried it might just be a game about silly jokes and slapping people. Then I played more of it and realised it is just a game about silly jokes and slapping people, and that’s brilliant. There’s a mix of all sorts here, Beano and Aardman Animations, and that very specific, red-faced, lip-puckered, Matt Berry sense of humour (you know what I mean just from that, I’m sure. And yes he is also in it). Of the many games released this year that lasts just a few hours, and only costs a few bob, this is right up there. Games can be oddly serious business; maybe it’s time to treat yourself to a cheap laugh for a few hours instead. – Chris Tapsell
We certainly haven’t been short of great horror games this year, but few have captured the 0-60mph unravelling of the human mind under pressure in quite the same way as the brilliantly surreal Mouthwashing. You know from the start that your spaceship hauler and the rest of your crew are doomed – you’re the one, after all, who sets their collision course in motion. But as time flips between the before and after of this pivotal moment, we get to see how it all started, how it gradually starts to fall apart, and then the violent and sudden rupture of multiple psyches all at once. Mouthwashing delights in wrong-footing you at almost every breath, but it moves at such a brisk and bracing pace that you can’t help but feel enthralled to it. Nothing is as it seems on this cursed ship, and its tight quarters and corridors morph and bend to brilliant effect to mirror the crew’s deteriorating mental state. It’s also not afraid to have a good laugh at itself either, as reflected by its punchy, witty script and some particularly dark comedic interactions you can have with the near-mummified captain Curly. There’s simply nothing else quite like Mouthwashing out there right now, and it’s downright refreshing. – Katharine Castle
What is the purpose of a remake? How do you balance old and new, while preserving the thrill of the original game? These are questions Square Enix is exploring with its Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, with Rebirth proving a divisive middle entry. While some of its narrative changes have appeared convoluted, they’ve certainly got players talking. Simultaneously, the richly detailed open world, characterful storytelling, and beautiful performances have expanded upon the beloved original, bringing its story to life in ways players in the 90s could only dream of.
And while it only represents one part of a broader trilogy, it’s a brilliant RPG in its own right. Combat is a smart mix of real time and command-driven action, its extensive soundtrack is absolutely killer, and it’s (perhaps overly) stuffed full of things to do: from chocobo racing, to monster hunting, to dancing and piano playing, to the utterly absorbing Queen’s Blood card game. Rebirth presents an entire world for Final Fantasy fans to lose themselves in while preserving the original’s tonal shifts from dark sci-fi conspiracies to bizarre characters, camp cutscenes, and the palpable homoerotic tension between its leads. Square Enix went with a maximalist and flamboyant approach to gaming remakes, which certainly worked in its favour. – Ed Nightingale
When I think of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I think of its journey to release – and the relief I imagine its development team at BioWare felt seeing the project finally launch, to a generally positive reception, after a sometimes-tortuous 10 years. Veilguard is by no means a perfect game, and there are moments where a decade of witness marks are visible. But as much as it is a different proposition to Dragon Age: Origins – unsurprising, coming some 25 years later – and as much as it stands somewhat in the shadow of last year’s genre-defining Baldur’s Gate 3, Veilguard still stands tall, strengthened by its similarities to other BioWare greats.
In Veilguard I can see the character work of Mass Effect 3 and Citadel, particularly in the brilliant Davrin and Emmrich, and the ambition to build towards a thrilling conclusion of a kind we’ve not seen since Mass Effect 2. It is the developer’s most enjoyable adventure, with brilliantly designed environments that expand over time, and certainly BioWare’s most technically stunning and beautiful effort to date. It is a return to form, and makes me excited once again for BioWare’s Mass Effect team to build on these foundations next. – Tom Phillips
Animal Well is the kind of game you dream about. It offers a midnight world filled with nature and strange ruins, but it’s also dense, complex, and filled with unlikely secrets. It’s one of those special pieces of art that lives with you for such a long time that it starts to feel like a companion. It encourages you to work out how it thinks.
And yet on the simplest level it’s pretty straightforward. It’s a Metroidvania in which you explore a large, interconnected series of grottoes using new tools to open up new paths. But the tools are brilliant in their mundanity – a frisbee, a slinkee, a yo-yo – and the ways you use them are constantly changing. Mechanically there is a strong sense that you’re following in the designer’s footsteps, finding the potential in your oddball arsenal in the same way that they did.
The game’s world is constantly unfolding, and offering new opportunities and revelations to those who learn how to look for them. It’s partly about pattern recognition and partly about taking really good lateral punts at things – often your weirdest impulses will lead to something good.
Clever as this stuff is, when it slowly fades from memory, what remains is pure atmosphere. This is a pixel-art world ripped straight from the early days of home computing, with all the idiosyncrasies that suggests. You’re not alone in the depths either, you’re surrounded by beautifully animated, playfully designed animals who share the caves and walkways with you. We loved Animal Well when we first played it – now, more than anything, we wish we could experience it for the first time again. What a beautiful thing this is. – Christian Donlan
How do you even begin to build on something as exactingly crafted as the original Silent Hill 2? Every step, every rhythm, of protagonist James Sunderland’s oppressive journey through the infamously foggy town is so imbued with underlying meaning, so key to understanding the larger picture, that meddling with it too much is liable to bring the whole thing crashing down. But developer Bloober Team’s deft Silent Hill 2 remake is quite extraordinary, not only modernising the beloved survival horror classic with intelligent mechanical finessing and a beautifully forlorn makeover but expanding and enriching it in genuinely additive ways.
It’s a remake of incredible balance, fiercely reverent to the original but unafraid to be bold. It slavishly hits every story beat, every iconic moment, except where there’s room to surprise; dialogue is barely changed, yet stellar performances find new emotional depths; anticlimaxes are reworked into unforgettable crescendos; it brings clarity without ever losing its sense of mystery; and, brilliantly, it even cheekily canonises an age-old fan theory, allowing this new version of Silent Hill 2 to harmoniously coexist with the original along the same timeline. But more than anything, it plays beautifully. Bloober skilfully explores new spaces within the original’s immovable structure, all while keeping masterful control of tone – and its bereft malevolence reaches some genuinely terrifying extremes. That the studio also manages to do all this with a gentle sense of fun, and makes one of gaming’s most wrenching closing acts somehow even more devastating, speaks volumes. – Matt Wales
There’s a case for a lot of games on this list being the game of 2024, but I think Helldivers 2 might be the one that pips it. Helldivers 2 released at the height of the industry’s period of catastrophic layoffs, as publishers scrambled to adapt to a changing, post-pandemic industry and as analysts went in desperate search of answers for what, exactly, makes for success. And Helldivers 2 had the answer: gameplay, above trends and fashions and not-so-sure-things, has always been king – and great gameplay comes from invention first, from giving developers time and space and the means to take a gamble. In this case, developer Arrowhead’s great invention was to mix the comedic brilliance of its more niche twin-stick efforts – the likes of Magicka and the first Helldivers – with an ingeniously novel concept: a “Game Master”, in the now-infamous Joel, who planned and responded in real time to the efforts of the playing public, pulling the strings of the game’s galactic war from afar.
The result is a kind of grand, divine comedy playing out across battlefields, regions, and planets. A sense that this whole thing is a bit of a prank – that “robot Vietnam” is very much an intentional nightmare, that just as one planet is saved as a result of Herculean communal effort, another will be plunged into a far worse conflict of its own. But also that you’re still in on the joke – mashing in Komani code-style combos into my controller to call in an airstrike, complete with frantic, finger-pointing ‘beep boop beep’ animations in-game, never fails to crack me up. Nor does ‘accidentally’ landing my drop pod right on a mouthy teammate’s head. It’s masochistic, darkly funny, creative, playful, strategic, thematically aligned, anti-fascist, mechanically tight as anything and indisputably new. If we must still insist on funding or designing games by formula, fine – give that one a try on for size. – Chris Tapsell
I’ve described Astro Bot as “mid-tier Mario”. You might see that as being negative and unnecessarily harsh on what is a wonderful, joy-filled video game, but that’s not my intention. If I told you that I’d make you wealthy, but only as wealthy as a mid-tier billionaire, well, I doubt you’d be upset (other than the new found stress of needing to work out how to use that money responsibly). Mario has been so far ahead of the competition in the 3D platforming space that being mid in this context is a rather incredible achievement. Sony now has a giant of the genre and as a result I now have more confidence in the industry to care about it once again.
Being popular does matter, but sentiment counts for something too when you’re building a brand. With Astro Bot Sony has made people feel good about the PlayStation. Not just in the current moment, but over their lives with the console. Big budget blockbuster narrative experiences have won PlayStation awards and millions of users, but Astro Bot made me (and many others) connect on a fundamental level. It’s fun to play video games. I didn’t think I needed to be reminded of that, but I guess I did. – Tom Orry
The biggest surprise success story of 2024, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a game that’s snuck into our collective hearts, walloped us over the head with its guitars, fly swatters and dusty brushes, and instantly won us over with its roguish charm and winning smile. This is a game that fully understands what Indy is, both as a character and as a series, placing us firmly in the baggy beige trousers of this whip-cracking adventurer whose globe-trotting treasure hunt takes us from the hushed halls of the Vatican, the sweltering deserts and jungles of Egypt and Thailand, as well as a few more explosive and spine-tingling locations along the way.
Within those environments, developer MachineGames has crafted a series of dense and deeply lived in spaces, giving players the tools to improvise multiple routes into tightly guarded areas, all manner of weapons and daft, everyday objects to clobber Indy’s enemies with, as well as an entire museum’s worth of brilliantly conceived mysteries, puzzles and sidequests to indulge in along the way. Indeed, the latter ‘Field Work’ assignments are frequently so substantial and crucial to filling in more information about the main plot that they’re almost full story missions in their own right. It makes everything feel important and worth your time in The Great Circle, tempting you further into its central mystery so you can prise open every last secret it has to offer.
It’s also just a bloody great action game, meshing approachable, fleet-footed stealth systems with muscular melee combat and some properly good tactile puzzle sequences. It’s all backed up by a wonderful cast, too, whose memorable performances and outstanding voice work bring that extra layer of polish to the whole experience. The Great Circle is everything you’d want and hope an Indy game to be and more, and we only hope MachineGames gets to reprise its role as long-term Indy custodians in the future. It feels like a bold new chapter for this studio, and it will be one hell of a ride to see what it does next. – Katharine Castle
Every year, the Digital Foundry team share their notes about the most technologically impressive games of the year – and in a wide-ranging 108-minute discussion, John Linneman, Alex Battaglia and Oliver Mackenzie share their honorable mentions and a top ten list of titles that caught their attention. However, just like last year, it’s the top three games that truly stand apart and once again, deciding which game takes champion standing was the subject of intense debate.
Where there is unanimous agreement is in the placing of Star Wars Outlaws in the number three position. The game is lauded for bringing the ‘lived in’ Star Wars aesthetic to gaming in a simply brilliant manner, powered by Ubisoft Massive’s state-of-the-art Snowdrop engine. From a technological standpoint, the use of RT reflections, diffuse global illumination and RT shadows is a remarkable achievement bearing in mind the relatively limited ray tracing hardware available on consoles. The fact that the PC version also has a path tracing alternative (RTXDI) for higher-end hardware is the cherry on top.
It’s a stunning achievement overall, let down only by its cutscenes where animation actually seems to look sub-par compared to in-game animation.
Got a spare 108 minutes to watch/listen to Digital Foundry discuss graphics? Well, here you go.Watch on YouTube
1:08:49 Star Wars Outlaws vs Hellblade 2 vs Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Where opinion is divided is in the placing of the top two games: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Obviously, from a gameplay perspective, MachinesGames’ epic is a clear winner – but that’s obviously not the focus of a Digital Foundry ‘Best Graphics of 2024’ discussion. Hellblade 2 was lauded for its astonishing character work and virtual camera, to the point where some environments look almost indistinguishable from real-life footage.
The scope is far more limited than Indiana Jones but it also makes for a tight, commendable level of consistent quality across the experience. It’s a heavy game, but also surprisingly scalable – Hellblade 2 can run on Steam Deck, while the 30fps limit on consoles is easily surpassed on more capable PCs.
The team ultimately agreed that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle should take the coveted ‘graphics of the year’ accolade. The sheer quality and quantity of its objects, environments are remarkable, while the utilisation of good quality RT global illumination on all console versions – and at a high resolution on Xbox Series X – can’t be ignored.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.
The fact that the game is effectively locked at a perfect 60fps is another feather in the cap for MachineGames’ epic, while the PC version running unlocked is a remarkably consistent experience with no stutter. We were also impressed by how far the PC version scales beyond the console versions thanks to the inclusion of path tracing – and that’s ultimately why the panel gave the nod to Indy: while Hellblade 2 barely puts a pixel wrong in what Ninja Theory set out to achieve, there are hard limits there – no support for hardware-accelerated RT, for example. Indiana Jones provides that in spectacular style, while taking it to the next level with the ‘full RT’ upgrade… and while that is computationally expensive, it is still accessible even to hardware like an RTX 4070.
Of course, as the chapter list above strongly suggests, there’s a lot more to this discussion than just the top three alone, so if you have some spare time, do check out the full video (or podcast) where the team discuss a good many games!
When you think back to every Indiana Jones movie, at one point or another Indy has had to be stealthy. Whether it’s donning a disguise in The Last Crusade to get his father’s Holy Grail diary back, or sneaking onto a submarine to follow the Ark when it slipped out of his grasp, there’s always a time he needs to be silent and sneaky – though whether Indy actually pulls this off without being caught is another matter entirely. He’s not always the subtlest of human beings, which is precisely one of the reasons I feel stealth in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle works so well.
I should preface this by saying I don’t really get on with stealth in a lot of games – if I can bombard my way through them and hope for the best, then I will. Take Star Wars Outlaws from earlier this year. Sure, I could have been stealthy around the Imperial Bases, but why bother when I had a blaster? Apart from those insta-fail sections, which have now been patched out, it didn’t really matter if you caught out. But the atmosphere in Indiana Jones makes you feel like so much more is at stake if you get seen – even when it’s not an explicit requirement.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.
In the first moments of the game, it’s made quite clear that there’s a lot more going on in this story than has been revealed to you (as most Indy stories tend to go). By making this obvious from the beginning, it makes you want to be stealthy and keep yourself hidden from the eyes of enemies. You feel the sense of urgency hiding behind a crate while an enemy patrols past with a guard dog at their side, as you know it won’t be long before one is behind you and spots you, so you need to swiftly move between cover without getting caught.
The stealth itself is very approachable. When crouched, you can move silently through spaces, not having to worry about sound metres or the like as you might in other, more hardcore stealth games. Of course, if you run or fire your gun, then guards will naturally come running after you as well, and they’ll likewise whistle for back-up if you stay too long in their direct line of sight. But it all feels very intuitive as you start feeling out what is and isn’t possible in The Great Circle, making even stealth novices like myself feel like they confidently get through it.
Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
If you do end up raising the alarm, of course, then all is not lost. For starters, you can usually knock out an alerted enemy with a broomstick or guitar you’ve found laying around, which is always fun. I mean, you can run away but, well, where’s the fun in that? Similarly, if one approach isn’t working for you, there are usually other routes you can try, or other objects you can use to switch up your tactics, which is precisely what this game does so well. You can throw a glass bottle to distract a guard as you slip into a cellar hatch, or use your whip to get them to turn in a different direction while you climb up some (questionably) safe scaffolding.
It feels realistic, but not to the point that it becomes frustrating and unenjoyable. I once managed to get myself stuck behind a crate with no clear exit path, for example, and enemies were patrolling up and down (one had a dog which upped the ante), and I felt myself going, “Well… this isn’t good”. But after a moment, I realised I had multiple chances to use stealth to my advantage – this time I chose to create a diversion by grabbing a nearby wrench and tossing it across the courtyard to get the enemy’s attention. Then, while their backs were turned, I dashed across the way and dove through an open window… only to then find myself behind yet another guard. Luckily, I kept myself out of their eyeline and snuck into the next room. “Phew,” I thought. “I was safe!” And I liked that it didn’t punish me for thinking on my feet.
That’s really one of the best thing about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. You can lean into the stealth as much as you like, but if it goes wrong, you have the freedom to pick yourself back up again and try something new.
A gentle cadence and quirky characters can’t counter Mythwrecked’s repetitiveness, making this more Greek tragedy than odyssey.
As I drag on another hoodie and fight the urge to put on the heating, the soft sands and sun-bleached stones of Ambrosia Island are undeniably appealing. So, too, is Mythwrecked’s promise of a wholesome, frictionless adventure – as we haul ourselves towards 2024’s finishing line, I can’t imagine anything more delightful than losing a few hours exploring a lush, tropical island.
If you go in with that mindset, knowing that Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island is an uncomplicated, unhurried game that unfolds gently over ten-ish hours, then I don’t suppose there’s much to be offended by. You’re Alex, a young woman shipwrecked on an island paradise where a gaggle of Greek gods are dealing with collective memory loss and friendship fallouts. Your job is to jog the former and foster the latter by scouring the island for lost mementoes to help your new pals remember who they are and why they loved each other in the first place.
The gods, reskinned in contemporary personas that will delight and irk in equal measure, are initially wary but open up as you converse and do favours for them, as well as uncover clues about their lives before you got there. Every potential pal is unlocked in precisely the same way (chat, do favours, get mementoes, chat more, do more favours, get more mementoes), which means that from as early as a half-hour in, you’re done – Mythwrecked won’t have any more surprises for you.
And look, I get it. Maybe this is exactly what you’re looking for. Maybe you’re a little burnt out on the AAA grind and are seeking a game that’s gentle and predictable in precisely this way. Maybe you love the back-and-forth of fetch quests and treasure hunts across the petite Ambrosia. All of this is true of me, too, but ultimately, there’s a fine line between predictable and boring, and Mythwrecked sadly falls just on the wrong side of it for me.
As pretty as it is, the world of Ambrosia is curiously forgettable. You’re either stomping along the sand or stamping across non-descript grey stone, and although each god has their unique style and personality represented in their immediate surroundings, the world around them embodies little of it. This means no beach feels particularly different from the next, and no part of the citadel looks distinct either. Your journey from point A to B will inevitably be frustrated by a Greek pot that, to my chagrin, we cannot break, or be blocked entirely by the weird placement of a barrel or a dead-end. For the home of gods, it’s all surprisingly pedestrian, tricky to traverse, and… well, dull.
Image credit: Eurogamer/Whitethorn Games
There is a fast-travel system, though. Kinda. While you can’t instantly zip back and forth between places at a whim, there are nine magical doors across the island which will always transport you back to the shrine in the middle of the map near your home – a trick that Polygon Treehouse’s debut game Roki pulled off to great effect when used in a point and click puzzle context. Your home itself is quite pointless as a space, mind, and I never bothered with it after I realised I couldn’t do anything there but sleep. But I do appreciate the return of these magic doors, though, especially when I’m trying to find a god or complete a favour at a particular time of day.
That’s right – there’s a dynamic day/night cycle. Some gods are only available to chat at certain times, and some favours can only be completed during set windows, too. Unlike Animal Crossing, though, you don’t have to leave IRL and come back (or sneakily change the time on your device). Across the isle are about eleventy gazillion benches where you can sit and change the time to whatever you want… which makes the whole cycle-thing a little redundant.
Image credit: Eurogamer/Whitethorn Games
That’s the problem here. While I appreciate these quality of life touches, they make much of Mythwrecked’s mechanics unnecessary. You can also trade Ambrosia fruit, but just like the day/night cycle that can be overruled at almost any moment… well, there’s almost no point to it. Firstly, the fruit grows everywhere; all greedy gods need do is step outside and grab one, ffs. Nonetheless, the story requires you to gather it up and use it to barter with the gods for anything from keys to cassettes to plots of land where you can grow even more Ambrosia fruit. This could’ve been an interesting wrinkle, but there’s so much of the stuff (check out the map image below – all those yellow dots are a fruit I’ve yet to collect!) I bought every item I could the moment they unlocked, and still didn’t run out. And I finished the game with 350+ of the bloody things left over.
Image credit: Eurogamer/Whitethorn Games
Collecting mementoes and completing favours is strikingly simplistic, too. There’s a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing – this is not a game that respects your time – and I did find the piecemeal way the chores were doled out irritating towards the end, as often you’ll complete a set of favours in one area only to be sent back there five minutes later for something else. Trying to work out which hidden memento belongs to whom is neat, though – I never went to the Oracle for guidance; working it out for myself was much more rewarding, especially when Alex is on the hunt for several gods simultaneously. Chasing the proximity signals was a cool mini-puzzle feature, too – I never tired of that satisfying beep as you got nearer and nearer to your prize.
The more you play, though, the less engaging it all feels. While Mythwrecked’s cast is diverse, its world is not, with very little to make each area feel unique or worth exploring. The fixed camera that you’re not allowed to manipulate is always getting in the way, too, sometimes creating unforced errors as you enter and exit shrine doorways. There are teeny steps Alex can’t (read: won’t) climb. Interactions with the gods are twee at best and cringey at worst, and even if you completely suspend reality, the relationships Alex rapidly forges with each individual god feel forced and saccharin rather than meaningful, not least because each character’s vocal emote is grossly over-used. There’s always a trickle of excitement as you collect enough seals to unlock a new area, but even that ends up being disappointing; the puzzles you complete to open the doors are uninspired to the point of insulting.
Image credit: Eurogamer/Whitethorn Games
There are so many ways a little tweak here or there could have elevated the adventure. The mosaics we uncover for Aphrodite – what if they were all different, perhaps telling their own stories? The string lights we power for Zeus and Hades – could they have been different colours, maybe revealing hitherto hidden secrets when lit? What if the ghosts heard things as they roamed the island at night? The Lighthouse we call home and spruce up with home decor both scavenged and saved for – couldn’t we at least have been able to decorate our own home on our own? As it stands, the stuff you find is auto-magically added whether you want it or not. You cannot remove or reposition anything. You can’t change the colours or add your own little touch. There’s absolutely no agency here, yet so much squandered opportunity.
If you’ve been looking for a simple, low-stress adventure to settle down with the kids this Christmas, then Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island is as good a punt as any other, not least because it’s entirely without swears, sex, or violence. Beyond that, though, with its overly simple puzzling, uninspired environments, and repetitive fetch quests, I’m sorry to say I’m not entirely sure who else Mythwrecked is for.
A copy of Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island was provided for review by publisher Whitethorn Games.
Microsoft is expanding its suite of cloud gaming features by introducing the ability for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to stream a “select” number of their owned games to Xbox Series X/S or Xbox One consoles, without needing to install them first. It’s available to Xbox Insiders now, and will launch for all users at a later date. Microsoft has been touting the ability to stream owned games since 2019, with the feature initially expected to launch alongside its Xbox Cloud Gaming platform the following year. Unfortunately, it missed that target by quite some margin, and then failed to hit its revised launch of 2022. In the end, it took another two years for the feature to finally arrive, but since November this year, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers have been able to stream their owned games – and not just those available on Game Pass – to a limited number of platforms. Initially, it was only possible to stream games through TVs and via browsers on supported devices such as tablets, smartphones, and Meta Quest headsets. At the time, Microsoft said it would be bringing the feature to Xbox consoles and the Xbox app on Windows, but not until next year. So it’s a pleasant surprise to see that, earlier than expected, the console rollout is now here – albeit only for Xbox Insiders at the moment. Stream Your Own Game trailer.Watch on YouTube Starting today, Xbox Insiders in the Alpha Skip-Ahead and Alpha rings can – provided they also have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription – preview the ability to stream their owned games to Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One consoles. Users that meet both criteria can start exploring the feature by going to My games & apps > Full library > Owned Games on their console, then looking for (or filtering for) the cloud badge on compatible games. After that, it’s simply a case of selecting a game then choosing ‘Play with Cloud Gaming’. Image credit: Xbox The catalogue of supported titles does, however, remain extremely limited, with only around 50 games currently compatible. The good news is it’s a fairly strong line-up, mixing new and old blockbuster titles with acclaimed indie games. Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Star Wars Outlaws, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Warhammer 4K: Space Marine 2, Life is Strange: Double Exposure, Balatro, Hades, Animal Well, Dredge, Phasmophobia, and The Plucky Squire are some of the more notable games on the list – and Microsoft previously promised its “library of cloud-playable titles will continue to grow, as we work with our partners around the world”. If you’re not already part of the Xbox Insider Program, you can join up by downloading the Xbox Insider Hub for Xbox Series X/S & Xbox One or Windows PC. The full list of games currently compatible with Microsoft’s new cloud gaming feature can be found on its website.
Smart, fun and so very Indiana Jones, The Great Circle is a stealth action tour de force that marks a bold new era for MachineGames.
The legacy of Indiana Jones has been on rather shaky ground lately. His last two films didn’t quite hit the mark, and it’s been even longer since a game has managed to do him justice either. It’s a feeling that developer MachineGames seems acutely aware of, too, in the opening stretch of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. If there was ever a need to prove the studio fully understands what makes Indy great and what he’s about, then letting us play a word for word, and almost shot for shot recreation of the iconic prologue from Raiders of the Lost Ark certainly isn’t the worst way to go about it.
Cynically, one might suggest it’s the kind of painstaking homage that actually ends up casting an initial shadow of doubt over the whole endeavour – that the subsequent romp around equatorial sites that make up the titular circle is all going to be a bit by the numbers, and a plain and obvious yank on the old nostalgia goggles. But those cynics would also be dead wrong, as once those Raider training wheels come off, it’s immediately clear this is no mere rehash of an old museum piece. The Great Circle is wholly its own kind of Indiana Jones adventure – a rip-roaring, globetrotting tour de force that marries The Last Crusade’s eye for fun, wit and slapstick humour with smart, player-driven investigations that really put you, as Indy, in the driving seat of this worldwide mystery. Better yet, it’s so much more than just another reheated attempt at a new kind of Tomb Raider or Uncharted yarn. At every red dot on Indy’s journey, The Great Circle is never quite what you think it’s going to be, and it’s all the more thrilling for it.
Hands up time. I was as sceptical as anyone when The Great Circle was first announced. I mean, The Great Circle? Is that eyeroll of a subtitle really the best we can do here? It doesn’t exactly get the blood pumping, does it? Look past the words on the box, however, and this is right up there with the best that Indiana Jones has ever been on either the small or silver screen. Set between Raiders and The Last Crusade, the Nazis are once again up to no good in their pursuit of occult tactics to get the jump on World War 2, but the purpose and power of the treasures they’re after is kept tantalisingly at bay as Indy picks up their trail. It’s a journey that’s perfectly paced to keep you on tenterhooks throughout, its story missions and sizable ‘Field Work’ sidequests dovetailing brilliantly to fill in the gaps as you travel from the Vatican all the way across Asia and back again.
Costumes play a vital role in how easily Indy is able to move through restricted areas. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
The finer points of the story are best discovered for yourself, but the important takeaway here is that MachineGames well and truly sticks the landing with this one, offering up a gripping and memorable global conspiracy plot that’s buoyed by an excellent cast of supporting characters. This is a studio that’s always known how to do eminently punchable villains, and Marios Gavrilis’ performance as Nazi investigator in chief Emmerich Voss is no exception. He’s a real bruiser of man, his thick-set neck, permanently gritted teeth and wicked scowl making him a palpable intellectual threat from the off. He alone does a splendid job of carrying you through the main story, but it’s Indy’s companions where MachineGames has really stepped things up a notch.
Alessandra Mastronardi’s turn as Indy’s wily reporter companion Gina, for example, is an instant favourite, and an infinitely better hang than the wave of bland nobodies BJ Blazkowicz was forced to hang out with across multiple Wolfenstein games. But even tiny bit parts bring an unforgettable flavour to Indy’s various base camps, with Enrico Colantoni’s vinyl-loving Vatican priest, Necar Zadegan’s wealthy benefactress, and the late Tony Todd’s imposing gentle giant being particular standouts. I also love just how many native languages we get to hear in this game, too, both from Indy himself as an unsurprising polyglot, and the wider cast. It’s a truly remarkable feat of localisation all round, and it brings a welcome texture and cultural nuance to each and every setting.
Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
The locations themselves are marvellous spaces to explore, too. The tall, imposing towers of the Vatican, sizzling dunes of Gizeh and the tropical waterways of Sukhothai act as the main trinity of tentpole investigation areas, but they’re also supplemented by a handful of smaller, more linear setpiece environments that are just as dazzling and bonkers in their conception and execution as their larger counterparts. It’s the big three where you’ll be spending most of your time, though, as these discrete but dense environments have a surprising amount of depth to them. These aren’t just templated, copy-paste pockets of familiar stage furniture either, as while there’s a little bit of connective tissue between them all, they remain a far cry from the more common Ubisoft standard used to populate such wide, open sandboxes.
The Vatican remains perhaps the most impressive of the lot, as the puzzle-box-like nature of its warren of hallways, scaffolded courtyards and secret over and underground passages makes it innately more enticing to peel back and nose around in than the emptier stretches of sand and swamp filling in the gaps elsewhere. To MachineGames’ credit, there’s still plenty to discover in those seemingly vacant patches of land, whether that’s a little combination lock puzzle gleaned from just a handful of notes and documents in an abandoned tent, for example, taking a picture of a snoozing cat with Indy’s camera, or simply doing a good deed for a stranger you happened to find locked in a barn. Crucially, though, it sidesteps that dreaded Bethesda-style bloat by sensibly prioritising what’s actually important.
Every large setpiece puzzle has a wonderful tactility to them, and they’re all very much in keeping with the spirit of the films. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
The Great Circle’s biggest and most substantial sidequests are designated as ‘Field Work’ tasks, for example. These are essentially miniature story missions that take you to farther flung corners of the map, but feel just as bespoke as the main story missions. Collectible-focused objectives, meanwhile, such as seeking out rare medicine bottles for the local doctors to trade for collectible skill books (many more of which can also be found in camps and other points of interest out in the world), are classed as ‘Discoveries’. Smaller, one-off puzzles, on the other hand, are known as ‘Mysteries’.
Everything else, though, doesn’t even get a mention. Unlike Skyrim and Starfield where the simple act of walking down a street will invariably load you up with 10 more sidequests to go and toil away under, throwaway tasks like helping that bloke in the barn is never something that’s made your explicit responsibility to sort out in The Great Circle. They’re not catalogued anywhere, nor are they especially important. Your reward for everything in this game is simply a growing bank of Adventure Points, which in turn are only useful for unlocking new abilities gleaned from the comic books you yourself have go out and find. You’re rarely short of points to spend, and the result is absolutely blissful. The world can feel alive and rich with people’s problems, but you as the player don’t have to stake any claim in putting them to rights. Instead, these take-it-or-leave-it moments are given permission to be nothing more than instances of playful discovery, and I cannot tell you how refreshing that is to see in a big, lavish blockbuster like this.
Tiny dialogue lines like the above will occasionally catch your eye, and often involve little more than giving NPCs an item of food, a photograph or finding a key for a locked door. They’re completely throwaway, but they’re all the more enjoyable for it. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
The Great Circle’s approach to puzzle-solving is equally exhilarating, both in terms of their pure, pulpy spectacle and how you navigate them. Its hands-off approach puts real trust in the player to figure things out intuitively based on the evidence in front of them, and lessons have clearly been learned from the overly chatty companions of God of War and Uncharted. It’s empowering to be presented with little more than a room full of objects and discerning, through sight and sound alone, how they’re meant to be arranged and configured to crack open their secrets. Occasionally you’ll get the odd line of a dead language etched into ancient stone to give you a teeny bit of a steer, but other times you’ll glimpse a note inside a seemingly inaccessible chamber and just be left to your own devices to work out how to get in there. The solutions are never particularly complicated, but the game’s refusal to give into the same kind of heavy-handed prompts that have become so commonplace in the AAA space these days (at least on its ‘Moderate’ puzzle difficulty) makes you feel like a proper genius when the penny finally drops. And critically, it’s the kind of genius we all know Indiana Jones possesses in abundance.
That emphasis on successfully reading your environment extends to Indy’s more general traversal techniques as well. The Great Circle’s platforming is surprisingly robust, with stomach-lurching jumps complemented by breezily executed grapple swings of Indy’s whip – and sometimes both at once. Indy’s whip can also be used abseil up steeper cliff faces and ease him down into ominous chasms, though only at designated points. It’s not quite Stray levels of subtlety, but I’ll take its sparing use of lightly sun-bleached walls over honking strips of yellow paint any day.
Even when disguised, you can’t just hover up important items without consequence – you’ll need to do it out of sight so they don’t come after you for stealing. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
It’s important those routes aren’t too obvious after all, as part of the joy of The Great Circle is discovering the many possible ways into a single location. Again, it’s no Deus Ex, but it’s still absolutely the kind of design that will make immersive sim heads punch the air with a joyous, mournful smile. And when you do find a new way through, there’s a similarly pleasing tactility to the way handles, locks and chests must also be pushed, turned and rotated with intentional nudges of your analogue stick. You know Indy’s the kind of guy who’d appreciate a well-crafted mechanism, and it’s great to see this reflected in how you’re able to luxuriate in little details like this.
Surfaces where Indy can climb, vault over and abseil are still marked up to help you parse its lush environments, but these visual highlights are still reasonably subtle throughout. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
It’s certainly quite the step change in sensibility for MachineGames, a studio who, let’s not forget, has up until now made its name on the altogether more aggressive exploits of its Quake and Wolfenstein shooters. But it’s equally clear this studio has so much more to offer – and to see it take to an altogether different kind of combat so skilfully feels transformative. Indeed, reaching for any kind of gun in The Great Circle always feels like it should be an absolute last resort. Not because the guns don’t feel good to fire – they absolutely do. And it’s not because they’re so damn noisy that they’ll instantly alert entire camps of fascists and Nazi soldiers to your location – though that is certainly a factor. It’s more a question of why would you want to shoot your way through these dense and sprawling locations when there are so many other, better options available almost everywhere you look?
I’m thinking of the abandoned guitars, violins and metal bells you occasionally see lying around its security outposts, which twang, clang and wail with pleasing dissonance as you clobber foes over the head with them. Or the rakes, spades and lead pipes which Indy can thread through unsuspecting legs from behind and alternately whack them in the ghoulies or trip them up, before delivering another lights-out slug to the forehead in one, joyously violent takedown. Personally, my eyes would always light up whenever I clocked a spatula, dustpan or egg-encrusted grill pan. Sure, they break a lot more easily than the larger, sturdier pickaxes and hammers lying about, but the comedy value of using such daft instruments of destruction to dispatch ever-greater numbers of tightly scrutinised patrol guards is hard to beat.
My guitar gently weeps with tears of joy. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
There is, dare I say it, a slight Breath of the Wild-ness to it all – though if you’re bristling at the thought of tedious degradation management, you can rest easy. Yes, almost everything will break in The Great Circle. Even the guns, which once out of ammo can be flipped upside down to use as makeshift baseball bats. Or before. It’s really your choice. The point is, there are so many of these improvised weapons to choose from at any given moment that you’re rarely without something to put in your hands, whether you’re skulking the halls of the Vatican, or sniffing out secrets in a forgotten temple in Nazi dig site in Gizeh. It’s very generous in that sense, and it really sells the idea of Indy using his wits to turn whatever’s in front of him to his advantage. Besides, when you keep seeing his actual hands reaching tentatively towards any interactable object within grasping distance, you can’t help but feel the cogs of mischief begin to turn inside your head. Yes, I will take that grimy salad spoon to knock out that soldier. Because why the heck not?
Adventure Books (left) can be found to unlock new skills, but they’re designed to look and feel wonderfully diegetic – just like its physical maps (right), which must be held and pored over to find your way. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
When viewed in this light, everything has such tantalising potential, and the sheer abundance of these objects doesn’t diminish the game’s overall challenge, either. This is a stealth game first and foremost, but not the kind where you can send out Assassin’s Creed-style pulses to easily tag and mark up unseen enemies to fill in the gaps of your awareness. Indy doesn’t have the tech for that kind of nonsense. Rather, it’s clear The Great Circle has been a much more diligent student of the Hitman: World of Assassination school of sneakiness, putting the ball firmly in the player’s court to make sure they’re not spotted when scampering around restricted areas, or to leave any telltale bodies lying about in full view of their mates (and also which don’t automatically sink into the ground as soon as they touch a tall patch of grass either, while we’re at it). It’s a wonderfully nerve-wracking riff on IO Interactive’s seminal social stealth work, and it makes the player a much more active participant in the drama and danger of being somewhere they shouldn’t.
If all that wasn’t enough, there’s even a bit of creative costume work to indulge in, with Indy able to don disguises to move through certain areas more easily. Brilliantly, though, Indy can’t just strip the clothes of any old person’s back in a surreptitious alley. Instead, there’s a fixed number of costumes that are either found or given to you in set locations, and some of them are very well hidden, accessible only by completing sidequests that yield special keys as part of your reward. Seeking them out is well worth the effort, though – if only because they’re a godsend when it comes to mopping up sidequests, puzzles and other copious collectibles later on. Despite this being a mostly linear adventure, you can thankfully revisit earlier areas whenever you please to mop up anything you’ve missed. But even with the right disguise, that won’t stop wary captains and other authority figures raising the alarm regardless, as just like Hitman, there are always certain foes who will see through your tricks if you don’t give them a wide enough berth.
Villain of the year goes to… | Image credit: Eurogamer/Bethesda Softworks
Unlike Agent 47, though, Indy has a few more options to get out of sticky situations if caught. On the rare occasion there isn’t some everyday object to seize upon, Indy’s fists make for a muscular alternative. There’s a frenzied and slightly madcap energy to The Great Circle’s hand-to-hand combat, with shoves, dodges and the odd whip crack all essential in helping you to manage a crowd. But as its various brutes jostle to take you on, you can feel all those years of MachineGames’ powerful gun-craft come through with every punch, the sound, speed and wallop of it all feeling like the blast of a shotgun. Instead of discovery feeling like a failure, its meaty melee lets each encounter rally to a more positive end point, infusing them with a muck-in and give-it-a-go-anyway kind of attitude – though not to the extent that it turns Indy into a superhuman boxing champ. Enemy fists will also tear through you like a shotgun, too, if you draw too much heat at once, and it’s often better to simply leg it and wait for things to die down again rather than sticking it out to the bitter end.
Taken altogether, Indiana Jones really feels like he comes full circle (sorry) in this latest adventure. At long last, there’s an Indy game that nails both the puzzles and the kind of action we know so well from the films, and it does so with wit, charm and a real eye for spectacle. There are moments here that feel so inherently Indy that you almost can’t believe they haven’t been lifted straight from the cinema screen itself, and everywhere you look is a constant surprise and delight. I’d be hard-pressed to name a more entertaining game I’ve played this year, or one that so willingly hands the reins to the player and says, ‘Off you pop. Go and have some fun for the next 25 hours’. For those left disappointed by The Crystal Skull and Dial of Destiny, this is Indy as you remember him. And for those yet to discover why everyone keeps banging on about this beige man with a hat and a whip, well, what a smashing introduction this will be. The next Tomb Raider and Uncharted games certainly have their work cut out for them after this, as will whatever MachineGames ends up tackling next. But one thing is certain. Indy’s legacy feels well and truly restored with The Great Circle, and that’s the kind of mileage we can all enjoy for years to come.
A copy of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was provided for review by publisher Bethesda Softworks.
With the season of giving now officially upon us, Jingle Jam has unveiled its latest PC charity bundle – this year featuring the stellar likes of Citizen Sleeper, Shadows of Doubt, and Frostpunk, which can all be snapped up in support of a bunch of good causes. In total, the Jingle Jam 2024 Games Collection feature 18 titles (all supplied as Steam codes), and there’s a lot of good stuff to be found. For the most part we’re in the realm of indies, although Sega and Two Point Studios’ enormously enjoyable Two Point Campus sneaks in too. Also up for grabs are ColePowered Games’ wildly ambitious procedurally generated detective noir Shadows of Doubt (which we gave three stars back in October), superb sci-fi narrative adventure Citizen Sleeper (Recommended), survival city builder Frostpunk (also Recommended), and minimalist puzzler Patrick’s Parabox (four stars!). The Jingle Jam 2024 Games Collection official trailer.Watch on YouTube But there’s more: roguelike card battler Widlfrost is in there (this one made Bertie’s Games of 2023 list), as is wonderfully engaging sci-fi construction sim Mars First Logistics, sticker store management game Sticky Business, crustacean-themed Souls-like Another Crab’s Treasure, and the sequel to acclaimed 2018 tabletop-style RPG adventure, For the King 2. Also included is the well-received blackjack roguelike adventure Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, Geiger-esque horror Scorn, action-tower defense game Orcs Must Die 3, dystopian racer Death Sprint 66, dating sim action-RPG Eternights, card-battling rogue-like Hadean Tactics, hand-drawn puzzle adventure Submachine: Legacy, and Fight in Tight Spaces – a “stylish blend of deck-building, turn-based tactics, and thrilling animated fight sequences in classic action-movie settings”. And if you prefer you lists in bullet point form: Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers Wildfrost Two Point Camps Shadows of Doubt Patrick’s Parabox For the King 2 Citizen Sleeper Another Crab’s Treasure Mars First Logistics Sticky Business Hadean Tactics Submachine: Legacy Scorn Orcs Must Die! 3 Fights in Tight Spaces Death Sprint 66 Eternights Frostpunk The Jingle Jam 2024 Games Collection is a bit of corker, then, and if you’re sufficiently swayed, all the above can be acquired for a very reasonable donation of £35. Or rather, for a minimum donation of £35 – with more appreciated if you’re able, seeing as organisers are hoping to raise as much money as possible for this year’s eight selected charities. More specifically, money accrued though Jingle Jam 2024’s charity bundle will go to Autistica, Campaign Against Living Miserably, Cool Earth, Sarcoma UK, The Trevor Project, Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, and War Child. You can read more about each charity – and purchase this year’s games bundle – over on the Jingle Jam website. At the time of writing, it’s successfully raised £1,277,979.
Short but powerfully unsettling, Threshold takes aim at the strange and horrifying helplessness of being a small cog in a giant corporate machine, and nails its execution brilliantly.
Threshold is the kind of horror game that keeps just enough at arm’s length to really set your mind ablaze while you’re playing. After landing a coveted job with the government, the game begins as you prepare to take on your first shift looking after an important maintenance post just outside the city walls. But before you even arrive, it’s clear that something’s a bit off. A low, angry and muffled voice directs you into a lift. There’s an oxygen meter to your left, and as you start the long ascent up to the surface you watch your supply dwindle away to almost nothing. The air is thin up here, so much so that the clerk you’re relieving, a no-nonsense chap called Mo, speaks to you via hastily written notes, as talking simply involves too much effort.
Before you can wonder ‘what the heck have I walked into?’, Mo hands you a whistle and brings you to a large horn at the centre of your work area. Blowing the whistle here makes sure the large, ominous train trundling along on the other side of the river keeps moving at the ‘expected pace’, and you’ll need to rush back here every time it starts to slow down to make sure it keeps up to speed. For what purpose, you’re not told. Only that this is what the capital dictates. Trouble is, with the air being so scarce up here, blowing that whistle is surprisingly taxing, so you’ll need to clamp your teeth down on tiny little Air Cans to get your breath back every time you start wheezing or black, pixely veins start clouding your vision. And the more Air Cans you consume, the more bloodied the little picture of your mouth starts to become in the top left corner of the screen.
But this strange and unnerving setup is just the tip of the iceberg. As you settle into a gentle rhythm of keeping the train going and fetching tickets from a special machine to swap for more air cans, questions about the reality of this place start building up – both for your clerk and you as a player. Why is the toilet locked? And why does the river drain when the train slows down? Who was Ni, the clerk you’ve replaced? And why does Mo hate them so much?
Your clerk will log some of these questions in their own mind, but finding answers to them are harder to come by. Threshold does a brilliant job of letting these thoughts sit with you for a while, seeding its ideas upfront and without context so they swill around in your head, before eventually proffering up answers of its own – though whether you believe them is another matter entirely. The sparse and potentially unreliable script repeatedly butts heads with the clear evidence in front of you – though the shifting textures of the game’s PS1-era visuals certainly contribute to everything feeling just a little bit otherworldly at the same time. Still, even when answers do come, they’ll sometimes just beget even more questions in the process, and Threshold’s greatest strength is how it gives you the space to form your own conclusions about what’s really going on here.
Image credit: Eurogamer/Critical Reflex Mo takes you through the basics, teaching you about how to keep track of the train’s speed. Later on, he’ll add more tasks to your to do list. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Critical Reflex
All the while, of course, you’ll still need to keep that train running. As the cycle of corporate plate spinning begins anew, other tasks from Mo start creeping in to split your attention, such as collecting stray planks of wood or keeping the end of the river clear of ‘unwanted biomass’. But all of them are designed to needle away at that one fundamental mystery, introducing ever stranger elements to fire up your imagination. The more you engage in the job, the more inane it starts to appear, and it becomes a highly effective tool to fuel your desire to find out the truth of this place once and for all.
On a moment-to-moment basis, the gradual pile-up of tasks is also just a satisfying exercise in its own right. The water filter where the biomass collects is quite a walk away from the horn and the machine that dispenses your air can ticket, for example, and wading through the water is even more of a strain on your already fragile lungs. The time and oxygen it requires all needs to be weighed up against the pace of that infernal train, and every time I contemplated going down there, I found myself straining my ears for that tell-tale screech of the train’s brakes that always precedes when it’s about to slow down. You’ll wonder whether there’s something better you could be doing with your time, another task you could complete along the way, or when would be best to bite down on yet another air can so you can make the most of your remaining breaths. Even as you question your role here, it’s hard to resist becoming the perfect picture of industrial efficiency.
Left: The ticket machine will continually punch holes and spit out cards for each carriage that enters the city, but it won’t start making another card until you take the finished one. Right: There’s more to the post’s two wooden cabins than you might imagine. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Critical Reflex
Indeed, there’s never so much on your plate that you can’t keep things ticking along quite nicely, despite the ever-present threats to your overall wellbeing. If the train starts lagging behind, for example, your air can dispenser stops working, and it won’t start back up again until the expected pace has been met again. You’ll therefore need to keep a healthy supply of air cans and tickets with you at all times, just to make sure you’re not caught short. But as long as the train keeps running, the ticket machine will keep punching out cards for you – which it does so with a very pleasing chnk-chnk-chnk that only gets faster as the train’s expected pace increases. It would be hard to do a bad job or completely run out of air, in that sense, but the ease with which you’re able to course-correct doesn’t make the busy-work any less compelling in the moment.
Some questions are filed away to be asked later, but others are left hanging for you to imagine yourself. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Critical Reflex
That’s partly because Threshold is never quite content to let that general status quo last for very long. Rather, it’s the gradual and expertly paced disruptions to your working rhythm that make the game feel so thrilling and alive, like there’s some kind of unknowable force wriggling beneath the surface just out of sight. As the earth begins to shake, the river starts to swell and the mountain shifts ever more violently beneath your feet, the fabric of the world itself reflects that growing pressure cooker you’ve got bubbling up in your own mind, everything building and building until the centre can no longer hold and it all erupts in one of the most spectacular endings I think I’ve seen all year.
And yet, even after all that, Threshold still isn’t quite ready to relinquish its grip on you, as a closing teaser reveals yet another layer of the game’s underlying truth. It’s just enough to pull you back in for another shift, and to keep seeking answers to its impossible questions. There’s a sense you’ll never quite get your arms around the full extent of the role your clerk’s been given, but it’s the act of reaching for it that makes Threshold so deeply and utterly mesmerising.
A copy of Threshold was provided for review by publisher Critical Reflex.
