The best games of 2024: from Black Ops 6 to Astrobot, what came out on top?
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This has been the year of the indies and it has been no bad thing. Sure there were a few blockbuster titles – not as many as 2023 – but it meant that the quirkier, more surprising, off-the-wall titles had a chance to shine. From Balatro to Animal Well, we’ve had a lot of low-poly goodness (and some fiendishly addictive gameplay); and of course there were still a few mega-titles such as Black Ops 6 and Fifa, sorry EA Sports FC, which have refined their whoppingly successful formats still further and offered gamers fresh takes on old favourites.
We’ve spent an awful long time playing and here are our favourites... This gorgeous platformer should be getting all the accolades and then some simply for its art direction alone, but seems to have flown under the radar so far. That’s probably because Nomada Studios’ last work, the equally visually stunning Gris, came out all the way back in 2018 – but stick with Neva, because it’s well worth the four to five-hour playtime.
You are Alba, a warrior woman in a world bereft of humans but populated by massive animals – including the puppy Neva. Their world, rendered here in shades of watercolour, is beautiful but increasingly blighted by a malignant rot that warps those animals into terrifying fiends. Neva and Alba’s job is to fight that rot, but what seems like a simple premise actually unfolds into an exploration of love, humanity and death that hits with all the force of a freight truck.
