Ben Pack's Top 10 Games of 2024

Happy holidays everyone. It’s been a tough year for a lot of reasons, both personally and, you know *gestures wildly*. I am writing this off of one of the worst flus of my life. Like, I was having a recurring dream over multiple nights that I was living in the world of Megalopolis. Truly harrowing shit. Anyways, that’s why you can’t get mad at me for the list that I made. XOXO.

10. Path of Exile 2

While I’ve only put about 30 hours into it, I feel like this will be the first ARPG to stick for me since Diablo II. I’m not keen on the idea of playing this through multiple seasons, and still have no idea what the hell half the orbs in my inventory do, but I can recognize that there has been a lot of care put into this game, and am excited to see my way through it now, and check back in when it has completed.

9. Super Mario RPG

I paid $60 dollars to replay a game I’ve played 10 times - but this time it looks worse. Nintendo stays winning.

8. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth

In many ways, while this game may have played better than Yakuza 7, this game felt like the “sophomore slump” of Ichiban Kasuga’s story. Apart from the introduction of Yamai, the new characters felt unmemorable and I felt like we were left lacking in those big, powerful moments that these games are known for. In the end it felt like the narrative team was stretched too thin between the dual protagonist stories, creating two unsatisfying character arcs rather than the one very satisfying arc of Ichiban in his previous game.

7. Metaphor: ReFantazio

In a game that poses the problem of a kingdom brought to ruin by the slow creep of poisonous actors with too much power, it felt hard not to look at the current political landscape when playing through Metaphor. This game was arguably the most-ambitious story created by modern-day Atlus’ RPG teams (if this is wrong don’t yell at me, I don’t play those Devil Summoner games), however the game’s weak and murky politics lead to a wet fart of a conclusion.

Coupled with a job system where players are mostly shoehorned into one style of play left me coming away with a very sour taste in my mouth, despite heavily enjoying the first two-thirds or so of the game.

But oh my god does that battle theme go so hard.

6. Balatro

I didn’t catch the bug as bad as many others, but there was no denying that this game had me in a headlock through March. However even with the release of the mobile version, I haven’t found myself with the itch to go back and just ended up playing twice as much Slay the Spire.

5. Mouthwashing

I’m going to keep it one hundred, but I did not play this game. I had heard strong positive buzz around it, but because I do not generally enjoy “scary” games I figured I’d watch a bit of a playthrough first before I decided if it was for me. Before I knew it, I was two-thirds of the way through and decided I’d just let it rock and then purchase the game after because I believe that Wrong Organ has created something truly unique and deserves my money.

Mouthwashing succeeds in doing something that seemingly has gone out of fashion these days - creating deep, complex characters that leave a lot open to interpretation. Has it led to some of the dumbest discourse I’ve seen online this year? Yes, but I think that just goes to show that it’s more interesting to tell a story about how certain characters are morally right or wrong, and instead focus on telling a story that feels deeply human.

4. Helldivers II

The perfect “turn your brain off and shoot some guys” to play with the boys when we needed a break from competitive games. It’s beautiful, has great lore and flavor, but most importantly it’s FUN.

3. Caves of Qud

A truly late-comer that has cemented itself as my current “one more run” obsession game. As you may know I have a bit of a history with Rogue, but never really found the time to sink my teeth into Nethack or the other games that carried its torch. Because of this, I don’t know what is invented by this game and what is a continuation of a grand tradition, but what I do know is that this game is special. Part of the reason this game is so high on my list is I can tell that I’m going to probably put another 100 hours into it next year.

It’s as deep and complex as you want it to be. I haven’t even ventured out of creating my own character or choosing a different starting area than Joppa and I’ve already had such a refreshing variety of experiences in my runs. Even when I die, most of the time, it’s at least pretty funny. Which leads me to my next game…

2. Dragon’s Dogma II

My problem with most games today is that it feels like developers don’t trust modern players. And this isn’t me trying to start some yellow-paint discourse - I just believe that even outside of things like over-tutorialization or a prevalence of hand-holding that AAA developers are afraid of making games that would allow the player to fail spectacularly.

Enter Dragon’s Dogma 2. Having missed out on the original, I wanted to get in on the ground floor for the sequel. I knew that the game had a reputation for being unpolished and unforgiving, but I had no idea what I was in for. I soft locked myself and lost hours of progress. I spent or used extremely important items multiple times, or otherwise was managing my inventory every 20 minutes. I failed multiple side-quests - even going so far as accidentally allowing my Pawn to kill quest givers (I swear it was self-defense). The game seriously pissed me off on several occasions.

But the more time I spent with the game the more I started to fuck with the vision. I got an achievement for killing an ogre and having its body fall just-so that it created a bridge between two cliffs. I’ve had countless ox-cart rides that start with one monster attack, which leads to a larger monster attracted to the fight, which leads to an all-out war looping in any traveler within earshot. I had created a build so broken that I was killing dragons in seconds. I was a god amongst men, and I felt like I had truly earned it for all the bullshit I had to put up with. The scope of the game isn’t massive, it features only ~6 towns total, but it feels like one of the most truly alive worlds I’ve explored ever in a video game.

And then, after I was satisfied with my time, there is one of the biggest swings I’ve ever seen in a game - maybe ever - in the final act of Dragon’s Dogma 2. And while I don’t think they stuck the landing, I have to give them nothing but support for really going for it, when it feels like so few large open world-style games do these days.

1. UFO 50

The slogan of UFO 50, the long-awaited release from Derek Yu’s team, is “Play Forever.” Play forever was my approach to Spelunky, a game that I thought was the perfect evolution of the arcade game. Simple, elegant, and tight gameplay mixed with elements of speed-running and high-score breaking metagames. It was one of the first games I played that felt infinitely replayable.

No single game in UFO 50 has the exact level of replayability as Spelunky. Included in the 50 games are over a dozen arcade-style games, like Seaside Drive, where I will be chasing an even higher score from now until eternity. It has games like Bushido Ball, a game that I can bring to my fighting game friends and spend an entire afternoon playing, developing our own tier list and strategies only to one-up them the next time. Yes, it offers many games that are linear, like a full-fledged JRPG set in the wild west, that I beat and probably won’t come back to, but those serve as almost palate cleansers to the games that are designed to really get your points-brain activated.

UFO 50 is a collection of 50 good video games. Even the games I’ve barely touched, like the spooky house one, are good. Even Barbuta is good. I have about 8 “gold carts”, or finished games, and one “cherry” - a reward for going above or beyond. I have no doubt that over the coming years I will slowly work at clearing them all. Even Barbuta.