Jason Fanelli’s Top 8 Games of 2024

Another journey around the sun, eh Giant Bombers? Somehow, despite the inside of my head telling me otherwise, we’re at the end of another year.

It was a pretty weird year for me, all things considered. Aside from hanging on Game Mess Mornings a few times, landing on Kotaku and Rolling Stone for the first time ever (and in RS’s case, the second and third time ever too), and making a cameo appearance in an Amazon Prime documentary, this year I got to be part of some really cool things: A couch party and a talkover. 
I’ve watched those clips more times than I care to admit, and it simply never makes sense that I got to do those. Infinite gratitude to all who let me be included, and to paraphrase John Lennon on a London rooftop, I hope I passed the audition.

But hey, I also played video games! Lots of video games! And there are a few that I enjoyed much more than the rest! Here are my Games Of The Year for 2024…in alphabetical order.

I am Astro Bot. You are Astro Bot. We are all Astro Bot. A nostalgic joyride through PlayStation history contained in the best 3D platformer outside of Nintendo, Team Asobi crafted an adventure that simply wants everyone who plays it to smile. Smile at memories of games past, smile at the little bots jumping up and down in the controller, smile at beating a tough stage, it doesn’t matter; Astro Bot will make you smile.

Enough has been said and written about what makes Balatro such a good game, but even better for me is the story of its creation. This is the brainchild of a single person who by their own admission, slapped a bunch of code together with scotch tape and spit and created the most addicting roguelike I’ve ever played. Jimbo may slowly be entering my nightmares, but his card game is the stuff of dreams. Oh, and Fibonacci is the best Joker.

How often does a game eleven years in the making live up to the tremendous hype? EA Sports College Football 25 is the college football video game fans have been waiting for since it was discontinued in the mid-2010s, and it captures the college football experience incredibly well. I will admit I’m worried about a sophomore slump–there are a few things that could have been better in this first outing–but I still played this more than any other sports game this year, even WWE.

I love when a remake does more than just offer a 1:1 reincarnation of what I’ve played before, and Final Fantasy VII has now done it for two whole games. I love everything about this game, from the astoundingly good soundtrack to the twisting story that still shocked me even now I knew the inevitable was coming. Honestly, I have no idea where the third entry of this remake is going…and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This year, thanks to a freelance job doing guides for it at IGN (Hi Mark Medina! I do guides for you sometimes!), I played my first ever Like A Dragon/Yakuza game. Needless to say, it will not be my last. I loved the writing, I love the characters, and I love how it balances silliness with sincerity. I’d been told many times that Like A Dragon would be my jam, but I never made time for it… now, I may go back and play them all.

I simply cannot believe I’m writing about Marvel vs. Capcom, in the year of our Luigi 2024, in a capacity that’s not some fighting game retrospective. This collection is a love letter to an incredible series of fighters that seemingly were lost to corporate fuckery, and yet now we live in a time where a true sequel might be in the cards. When’s Marvel? Now’s Marvel, and it feels amazing.

The Case Of The Golden Idol is one of my favorite indie games in recent memory, and Rise improves on it in every way. Puzzles require real out-of-the-box thinking, dopamine hits from “a ha!” moments are in full supply, and the ability to move windows around and organize the screen how I want it cannot be appreciated enough. I hope Golden Idol continues its rise, I will play them all.

The team behind Tekken just has the juice, man. The Heat system is a great addition to the recipe, and the absolutely bonkers story kept me hooked until the very end. Tekken has been one of the most exciting fighting games on the market for a while now, and every iteration seems to find effective ways to mix things up. Even with a year under its belt, a year that included Clive from Final Fantasy XVI joining the party, Tekken 8 still feels like it’s just getting started.