Welcome to Mako's first annual video game GOTY thread! Here I will be going over my personal games of the year, plus provide takes on various other games.
One of my new years resolutions is to write more. No better topic for me to write about, as I am an avid 
for ~30 years.
The criteria for the games discussed is that they must have released in 2024 and have been the 'full' release; not early access. I mostly play single player games, so that is what the majority of my list will be. I also only play on PC.
This post will likely have some amount of spoilers.
2024: The year of disappointment
On the whole, 2024 is one of the most disappointing years for gaming in recent memory. Lots of games came out that I was following for a while and all turned out to be so uninspired, meandering, broken. The games that I only discovered at release turned out to be hits. Lots more games are coming out in early access, which is also disappointing, but I suppose necessary given market conditions.
Before I start my list, let me first say that after 30+ years of games, I have rather refined tastes; I like very specific things in games and am disappointed by many others. In general, my rules are:
#1 Games that are stories: the story comes first, and the game is written around it. Have a theme!
#2 If you have side quests, they better feed into the main plot. Don't make me waste time on side quests to get +100 gold; it should affect the plot in some way and enhance/reinforce the core theme.
#3 I really, really hate wasting time. No slow movement speed, animation speed, grinding speeds. I'm old now, don't have time for that.
#4 The game should run at least 60fps and have ultra widescreen support. If it can't, then they have done a bad job. Game should optimally have toggles for all the postprocessing nonsense. Game should have FOV sliders, and lots of other setting! I love setting! Technical stuff matters!
The List
2024 GOTY: Nine Sols
This game came out of nowhere, and blew me away. I replayed it last week with the latest patches and it still was an amazing experience from top to bottom. The story is really interesting, bringing together a taoist (even dialectical) philosophy and a revenge story, with a best-ending redemption arc. The plot beats are great as you take down each Sol. Side quests provide great reinforcement of the games major themes and flesh out the games many great characters. Music is all around great. Artwork is amazing; backgrounds are eye-catching, especially the home-base, which gets more and more detail as the game progresses (ShuanShuan's artwork is soooo cute). In addition, the characters are very unique, well-designed and well-animated. On a technical level, games runs a super clean 120fps without breaking a sweat, and a user-mod enables ultrawide screen support. Load times are sub-one second on a nvme drive.
The gameplay is also incredibly challenging, but well balanced. The combat is a sekiro-like that emphasizes parrying enemy attacks and counter-attacking when appropriate. The 8 or so boss battles each feature a unique battle and really challenges the player's understanding and mastery of the different skills available to you. The final boss is also notoriously challenging; a fight you will remember forever once you beat it. Aside from combat, this is of course a metroidvania, and the exploration is very good. Each level has plenty of discoveries in the the form of collectable items and lore drops. Movement is very fun; later upgrades allow for double jumping, jump dashing, and other movement skills.
Nine Sols was an absolutely great game of the year for me. A few tears were even shed while playing through the heartwarming story. 10/10
Second Place: Another Crab's Treasure
Two Sekiro-likes this year? We're eating good.
This one also came out of nowhere. I watched parkenharbor(twitch) play it on release and decided to try it out myself. This one came out earlier this year and I haven't replayed it yet, so my memory about it isn't as sharp. Like Nine Sols, the combat was great and challenging. Very similar parry/dodge mechanics in this game as well. This one had some notable music scores as well.
Notably, the politics of this game were actually good! Very leftist understanding of the cause of environmental pollution and the plot actually follows through on it. Also, doesn't do the easy thing of resolving climate change with a deus ex machina; it very specifically states nothing will save you, you will need to do the hard work with your comrades!
Overall great experience. Short and sweet game with good politics and good combat. 8/10
Honorable Mentions:
Crow Country
A fun resident-evil like. Quite short, but fun to play. I wrote a mod for custom resolutions for it. 7/10
Horizon Forbidden West
Technically released last year, but only came to PC this year so including it. A rather generic open world game, with a slightly amusing story which managed to keep my interest until the end. Too many side quests with little affect on the plot if any. Very beautiful, though, and runs well on technical level. Native widescreen support. 5/10
Factorio: Space Age
A nice expansion pack to a legendary game. It was a fun reason to come back to it this year. I like the idea of the planets and the space ship. They really are designed to get you out of whatever shell you hide in while developing the original planet. Some of the new stuff is supeerrrrr tedious, though (looking at you gleba). Modding support is great, though, so i can install/write my way out of the tedium. 7/10
Dave the Diver
Not much to say. Fun game loop. 6/10
Shit Sucks:
Here's some rants about games I hated overall.
Eiyuden Chronicles
Biggest disappointment of the year for me. A spiritual successor to the Suikoden series (one of my favorites), it completely falls flat in its execution. Story follows a random guy of a small country being attacked by a bigger, eviler country. The stakes however are non-existant. This is entirely showcased early-game when the enemy raid's the MC's home town; the town is aflame and soldiers are chasing civilians around. The hero arrives and repels the invaders. Immediately after this scene, the village is back to normal; no one is dead, no houses are burned down, nothing. Plot as a whole is nonsensical.
Combat is super unbalanced. Magic does very little damage, most of your characters have weird stat scaling that is entirely unexplained, making them useless.
Art design is actually not bad. Lots of cool races like the desert shark people.
The only fun part of this game is the character recruiting and the town building. Other than that, this was just an awful experience. This is Suikoden without any soul. 2/10
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Second biggest disappointment. The first maybe 5 hours are actually great. Then, you get to the funeral scene, in which your cool new unique rpg plot becomes a 'your goal is to be the most popular person in high school, but in a fantasy kingdom' plot. The politics are absolutely atrocious liberal idealism. There are multiple races in this world; some are oppressed, but absolutely no reason is given for why they are oppressed; they're not like slaves, or exploited or anything, they're just 'oppressed' and so we need to fight this oppression! I don't think its ever even stated who is doing any oppression? Anyways, the main baddy also wants to fight oppression by making everyone who's weak into monsters and only the strong survive as normals, i guess. Very trope-y. The twists about who you are were very stupid, as well as the twist about your father.
This is a persona game, and wouldn't be complete without the social links. I've played P3/4/5, so by this point I'm pretty tired of the SL system. They're dialogue-sidequests, and they break rule #2 as they have no effect on the plot whatsoever. By the time I reached the second or third city in game, I was pretty much skipping all of the SL dialogue. Your companions have just boring, annoying problems and you have to let them emotionally dump on you so you can respond 'that sux' and get +1 friendship points.
The only good thing about this game is the combat. They have refined the Persona combat system pretty well at this point. I didn't really like the archetypes over the Persona demons, but it was okay.
Thank god this game got cracked i almost bought it at $60. 3/10
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Generic FPS game, broken on release. Plot is absolutely nonsensical. Possibly due to major translation issues. Goes on about 20 hours too long 3/10
Frostpunk 2
Overall downgrade from the original. Runs worse, has a terrible UI, and uninteresting politics. 3/10
Silent Hill 2 remake
Never played the original. Ran through this game like RE4 just shooting stuff, collecting puzzle pieces, etc. Don't see what the big deal about it is tbh. Didn't really feel any emotional weight. None of the game is scary in any way, save for a few mannequin jumpscares. 4/10
Ara: History Untold
I'm a big map-painter enjoyer. Also was hoping for a better Civilization game. Sadly, this the entire game loop seems to be producing Items, and placing Items in Slots. This process takes up 90% of the game play, and there's not much else going on. On a technical level runs like absolute shit. 1/10
Dragon's Dogma 2
Against my better judgement, i bought this game even though it looked bad, because of a particular game drought in March. Game runs like shit, all around downgrade from the original game. Cut content, nonsensical plot (again), entirely unfun and unmemorable compared to the original.
Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut
This will be the last time the Sony boys convince me an exclusive on their console is any good. Sorry, this game sucks. Open world slop with boring plot, boring sidequests (Rule #2) and a super unsatisfying ending wherein I cannot kill the annoying uncle in a dishonorable way. Either you kill him and he's happy to die an honorable death, or he lives and he's happy to redeem himself. It breaks Rule #1, in that the story is definitely written 'for the game' and is inconsequential; any mission could happen at any location on the map, it doesn't matter, just put a fort somewhere and assault it, whatever. The cool japanese-y stuff is nice at first, but gets super tiring after visiting the 100th shrine and you have to do a 1 min unskippable animation (Rule #3). 2/10
Dishonorable mention: Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
This was a big release this year which I didn't wanna leave out. I didn't play it. I hate elden ring. Its souls-slop. I played the original 2 times through. The game design is just 'lets put every boss, with every weapon and every spell and every item in the same big open world'. Nothing is balanced well, tons of enemies and bosses are copy pasted through the bland landscape, and you have to waste your time riding your horse to each one. Most dungeons you explore have no decent rewards, so its just time wasted. The only fun thing that happens in the story is that you fight radahn. every other boss is a big 'who cares'.
The expansion reinforces the idea that nothing is balanced or designed well because it has to invent a brand new leveling system that is completely separate. lol. No score cause i didn't play.
Conclusion
All right everyone, thats my list for the year. I hope you enjoyed reading it; I enjoyed writing it. Please feel free to rip me apart for my takes. I hope to start a huge nostalgic flame war. And of course, share your own takes!
Thanks everyone, have a good new year!
its gonna be announced at CES in a week