My Favourite New Games of 2024

My five favourite new games of 2024. Right. Let's get some honourable mentions out of the way first. I'm a stickler for the idea of cutting these lists down to the five most enjoyable games I played this year, and whilst I do enjoy that process it does mean that I have to make some real hard choices. As such I wanted to call out a few games that could well have made this list. Here they are: Crow Country Still Wakes The Deep Mouthwashing Fear The Spotlight. They're great games. Go play them. As for my final five. Well... Thank Goodness You're Here was a game unlike almost anything I've played before in that it was actually hilarious. Bonus points for having some truly memorable music and a lovely take on a fictitious northern English town. Rise Of The Golden Idol is the sequel to Case Of The Golden Idol from 2022. It builds and improves upon everything that came before it and does so without changing what it is at its core; a damn good videogame about solving puzzles. Black Myth: Wukong caught the lot of us by surprise when it released earlier in the year, and whilst I think some of the praise it received was a bit overblown, I still had a damn good time with the game. Special nod to the animated cut-scenes that are weaved throughout the games story; they're truly incredible and bring so much to a game that is often a bit too eager to leave things unexplained. Tactical Breach Wizards. Into the Breach meets XCOM with incredibly witty writing and some damn good gameplay. Nuff said. I hope we get TBW2, and I hope it finds a way to improve on this formula because damn, it's good. Minishoot' Adventures. Yeah I'm as suprised as anyone to see that this small little zelda-meets-bullet-hell was my favourite new game of the year. Normally I wouldn't give this sort of game the time of day, but I played the demo. I grabbed the full game. I played it. I played it more. I played it a lot. And then before I knew what was happening I found myself telling anyone and everyone that it was a game they 'needed' to play. Yes it looks a bit rubbish, but under the somewhat crappy visuals are some surprisingly nice animations as well as some incredibly moreish movement and shooting mechanics. The map opens up in that lovely way that just begs you to keep playing and the games central bullet hell mechanics are tough but fair; perfect for a reletive novice like myself. So yeah. There's that.