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New Game Releases: 2024 Buyer’s Guide – Part 2

Andy Tuttle

With 2024 coming to a close, and Christmas just around the corner, most game companies have taken the next few weeks off.

“OH MY GOD?! IT’S ALMOST CHRISTMAS!!!! What do I do? My kid/wife/husband/Secret Santa wanted some game about…I don’t know, a fantasy baby being reborn, or the animated film Balto, or super may-reo brothers musical party ship, or maybe something that had all three. Do those exist? If they don’t exist what can I get?? HELP ME!”

Okay, okay, stop fretting, I got you covered. I will be giving you a buyer’s guide for each month with my top picks in BOLD. What were the best games to come out; which ones sucked, and which ones flew under the radar and deserve your attention? Get ready to find out!

Since this guide tends to be on the long side, and in the interest of keeping your attention, I will be splitting it into two parts; January to June and July to December. Get your pencils ready, folks, because the games are coming fast and I hope you’re taking notes.

July:

The middle of the Summer didn’t yield many high profile, AAA games to play, but if you want something big to check out, why not grab another one of this 2024’s massive RPGs, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak. Initially released in Japan back in 2021, it took three GD years to localize the game (it took so long that a sequel has already come out in Japan, due in the U.S. on Feb. 14th, 2025).

Part of the long running Trails series, Daybreak is the first entry in the “Calvard Arc” and is considered the start of the second half of the series; okay. Confusion about timelines aside, critics were overwhelmingly positive about the game and called it a perfect jumping on point for players new to the franchise. I love a good RPG, and the Trails series hasn’t really disappointed so far, a rare feat for a series on its eleventh entry.

The rest of July was fine, but not really full of show stoppers. One of the biggest surprises of the year came when EA announced that they were returning to making games in the long dormant college football franchise with EA Sports College Football 25. While you might think this was a way to excite the fan base, the reality is that the NCAA finally ruled that it was okay for college athletes to make money off of their likeness, and EA was happy to pay them a paltry sum while they raked in millions; capitalism is sick, bro.

Surprisingly, July didn’t have a lot of ports or collections. The closest we got was Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition, which gave players various challenges to complete from a list of classic NES games. We got a couple of action RPG games, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn and Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, two titles that I’m almost certain many of us forgot about. They got decent enough reviews, but failed to make any kind of splash. That’s July, in a nutshell. It came, it went, we all moved on.

July did have one clear stinker, though. The live-service, action game The First Descendant. Now, folks, this game is bad, really bad. It’s a predatory, loot box filled grind fest that is designed to take up as much of your life as possible and give it nothing in return. It’s awful, but 10 million people still decided to play it. Why, you might ask? Oh, that’s easy, tits & ass. Meanwhile, pornography is also free and only takes up about 2 to 3 minutes of your time if you’re in a rush.

Instead of gawking at boobies, why not play some of the games recommended by our readers! Dashboard Dough recommended the Metroidvania title Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus, saying, “I’m currently in the Castle, activating contraptions to power the elevator. Pogoing around has become second nature, which is very cool because in most games it’s a secondary skill I rarely master. The stories are simple but fuel my need for exploration and rewards“.

Reader Mirror Magic recommended the Breath of the Wild-esque Dungeons of Hinterberg, calling it a refreshing take on the genre started by BoW (one that I personally think is starting to feel a bit played out). They hoped that people would pay more attention to it, so here it is, PAY ATTENTION TO IT! Longtime reader Singing Brakeman also had a recommendation this month, another Metroidvania, Gestalt: Steam and Cinder. Brakeman says the game is “tightly designed; a short but punchy Steampunk Metroidvania with some elements pulled from Bloodborne“.

August:

Like April’s Stellar Blade, our top title for August, Black Myth: Wukong, comes with some baggage. While it is certainly a well made game that has amazing visuals, it was one of the handful of titles in 2024 championed by right wing activists. That means, instead of being able to gush over the graphics, praising the tight controls & satisfying combat, and the deep, explorable world, the tribalism of our culture demands you confirm to whatever side of the political spectrum you sit on. I really can’t stand all of this bullshit. Now, did I play Black Myth: Wukong; no, I didn’t. I thought it looked bland and a derivative. Was I wrong for ignoring? Well, maybe “wrong” isn’t right word, but I’m sure I missed out on something special by not checking it out at release.

There will forever be people who dismiss this game because of its right wing associations, and that’s fine, I guess, you do you, but there’s a experience here that you’d be denying yourself. For those who will only play this game because it “owns the Left”, or whatever, you’re also wrong. You’re letting a blind devotion to a cause cloud your judgement and give unnecessary prise to something that doesn’t deserve it. I both can and can’t believe this is the top game for August. Black Myth: Wukong is just a small part of the larger picture of the cultural/political climate of the U.S. in 2024. The sooner I can ignore this game forever, never to speak about it again, the better.

August was also a bit of a slow month, no surprise, as the year is usually front and end loaded, but we still had some pretty good games come out. If Black Myth: Wukong was one side of the political coin, Star Wars: Outlaws might as well have been the other (whether it wanted to or not). To normal people, Outlaws was a fun, fairly competent Star Wars game that let you live out your wildest Han Solo style fantasies. It had its share of problems, game play wise, but it wasn’t awful. If you were a crazy person, Outlaws was the death of AAA gaming and the downfall of Western developers because…the main character was an ugly girl-boss who hated men. 2024, baby.

If you were looking for games that didn’t announce your political affiliations (cowardly moderates), Nintendo practically shadow dropped Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, putting out a trailer for the game only a few weeks before it released. In case you were worried we wouldn’t get another massive RPG, Square Enix put out Visions of Mana to allay your concerns. In the world of indies we got a couple of sequels, SteamWorld Heist II and World of Goo 2, did you play them yet? Why not? Finally, every bro in America got hard when Madden NFL 25 came out, as it was superior to every Madden before it (probably).

It would probably be irresponsible of me to say that the election of Donald Trump was because of video games, so I won’t, but what I think we can say is that we probably should have seen it coming. With the success of Black Myth: Wukong and the muted response to Star Wars: Outlaws, August set itself up to be a mini-preview of the next couple of months, with the colossal failures of Dustborn and Concord. With Dustborn, we had an overtly left-leaning game, one with terrible rhythm controls and cringe-worthy dialogue, fail to meet any kind of solid player base on Steam. Its attacks, which consisted of “Triggering”, “Gaslighting”, and other liberal buzzwords, felt like parody except that, maybe they weren’t?

However, while Dustborn is still a game that exists and can be played no matter what you think of it, our biggest loser of August was the always online hero shooter Concord, a game so awful it was only available to play for two weeks; TWO WEEKS! Right wing blowhards claimed that it was because the game had pronouns and featured ugly, ethnic women as the playable characters, and no white men. Normal people just thought it looked like a bad game. A Temu version of Guardians of the Galaxy that did not come with Temu prices (the game was $40 bucks instead of being free, like most online multiplayer games). Who knows if we’ll ever get word on why Concord failed, if it really was due to a right wing boycott or just a bad game, but it won’t stop conservative culture war pundits from talking about it like some victory.

Alright, so what should you be playing instead? Reader Kid Presentable really liked Tactical Breach Wizards, saying, “It’s turn-based strategy puzzle game that feels like a mash-up between Into the Breach and XCOM, with a bit more story and sense of humor that (mostly) works. It’s a lot more forgiving than either though, and is built around an endlessly satisfying defenestration mechanic“.

Toothpic Monsoon had yet another recommendation, the Metroidvania Crypt Custodian, noting that they were impressed the game was created by a single developer (who also made the games Islets and Sheepo). Toothpic thought Crypt Custodian was really fun; I believe them. The last of our August hidden gems is from Merve, who recommends the game Individualism in the dead-internet age, “an interactive essay/walking simulator about capitalism and the homogenization of the Internet“. It is currently available, for free, on itch.io.

September:

After a slower than normal Summer, September started the Fall off with a bang, giving us one of the best games of 2024, Astro Bot. This lighthearted action platformer is a celebration of the PlayStation’s 30 year history, as player rescue robots throughout the game that resemble characters from various games released on the PlayStation. While the standard levels offer a decent challenge, they are usually pretty easy to complete. There are, however, multiple challenge levels that range from mildly difficult to hairpulling, teeth-gnashing, top-of-your-lungs screaming, ludicrously insane. In other words, I loved it.

While I personally think my game of the year is Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Astro Bot is a very close second. The game was a welcome alternative to the angry, cynical feeling that August gave us, allowing players of all sides of the political spectrum to agree on something. This wouldn’t last long, of course, because there’s no money to be made through peace & harmony.

What happened, then? Why, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II came out and the whole left vs. right debate was pun right back up, ensuring that Twitter engagement and YouTube views filled the coffers of every person who had an opinion about it. Normal people, again, saw this game and thought, “wow, that looks neat, I think I’ll play it” and they did! Space Marine II was by means a perfect game or a massive blockbuster, it was just a fun game to play and it only took a few hours to get through. It was a throwback to a more simple time in gaming and we all should have been able to play it without political/social pretense but, of course, you aren’t allowed to do that in 2024.

Low key, September was probably the best month for games this whole year, giving us not just Astro Bot and Space Marine II, but also a brand new Legend of Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom. After nearly 40 years as a franchise, players finally got to play as the titular Princess Zelda (what’s Wand of Gamelon?), as she embarked on a quest to save Link. Surprisingly, right wing dickheads didn’t complain about this, likely because Nintendo is as neutral as Switzerland.

Collections and remasters made a return in September, with a whopping four; Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, Dead Rising Deluxe Remastered, Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, and Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection. Wow! Rounding things out, we had the sports title NBA 2K25, the strategy/city building title Frostpunk 2, the Zelda-esque The Plucky Squire, the horror title The Casting of Frank Stone, which is set in the same universe as Dead by Daylight, and the interactive adventure Mouthwashing, which took the gaming world by storm with its gripping story and unforgettable visuals.

Not every game in September was a winner, though, and you should absolutely stay away from Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. One of the worst reviewed games of 2024, Solar Crown is, of course, an always-online multiplayer game, where players drive around an open world Hong Kong (apparently created at a 1:1 scale), competing against other players online. The idea for Solar Crown was very ambitious, with the developers wanting to compete directly with Forza, The Crew, and the upcoming GTA VI. However, terrible gameplay, awful AI racers, and the persistent online connection turned it into what is probably the biggest stinker of the year.

Instead, check out these great games recommended by our readers! First up, Toothpic Monsoon comes in clutch again with their suggestion, UFO 50, an amazing collection of original games, saying, “50 games for the price of one. All with a clever gimmick of it being games designed for an alternate universe gaming system. There’s some legit bangers in here and I still have 25 other games to try!“.

Reader Pastyjournalist had a great recommendation for September, the action RPG Beyond Galaxyland, saying that it has an “awesome SNES-style music soundtrack“, plus, “you have a guinea pig named Boom Boom who has human-like intelligence“. Cute animals, sweet music, sounds like a winning combination to me!

Merve also wanted to highlight two other games released in September. First up is I Am Your Beast, “a score-chasing race-against-the-clock first-person parkour shooter with bite-sized levels“, second is Echo Point Nova, “an open-world parkour shooter where you soar across the clouds“. Both games look excellent and should be well worth checking out.

October:

Moving into October, the hits kept coming and it gave us one of the best RPGs of the year, Atlus and Studio Zero’s Metaphor: ReFantazio. New IPs are a real gamble in the world of video games. Sometimes you get Concord, a forgettable dud, and other times you get the start of what could likely be a year long franchise, and that’s what I’m hoping happens with Metaphor ReFantazio. If anything, it allows Atlus to kind of pump the brakes on Shin Megami Tensei/Persona and come up with new, fresh ideas that will, hopefully, translate into better games all around.

Not to say Atlus has been struggling but, you know, too much of something can lead to diminished returns (i.e., Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty, Madden, etc.). Set in a medieval fantasy realm called the United Kingdom of Euchronia, players take on the role of Will, a magic wielding orphan. The King has been assassinated and, according to the law of the realm, a Royal Tournament must be held to name his successor. Wanting the throne, Will embarks on a journey to gain strength and rally support from the people. Oh, and did I mention the Prince, Will’s best friend, is under a curse that has put him into a deep slumber? Yeah, you gotta deal with that too.

October is, of course, #spookyseason, and if you were brave enough, you could have found yourself frightened by another one of 2024’s many remakes, Silent Hill 2 which, I’m told, actually lives up to its source material. There was a spooky remaster, Clock Tower: Rewind, making this the Super Famicom games Western debut. Two spooky DLC’s also came out, Alan Wake 2: The Lake House and Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred; TERRIFYING!!!

In non-spooky games, we got the annual Call of Duty release with Black Ops 6, another annual sports title, NHL 25, and, of course, another game in the long running dance franchise, Just Dance 2025 Edition. That’s so many annual releases that I almost forgot that we got Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO, Life is Strange: Double Exposure, Sonic X Shadow Generations, Super Mario Party Jamboree, and two more giant RPG, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven and Ys X: Nordics!

Our last big title from October came out on literally the last day of the month, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, the long awaited sequel in the popular BioWare RPG franchise. Like Star Wars: Outlaws, Dustborn, and Concord, Veilguard was the target of right wing activists who couldn’t fathom that people wanted to play a role playing game in which they could role play as themselves (i.e., gay, trans, female, etc.). While the game wasn’t an out and out flop like Concord, it seemed to follow the same path of Star Wars: Outlaws, received well enough but not OVERWHELMINGLY well enough to call it an outright hit. Veilguard seemed poised to be one of the biggest, most critically acclaimed games of 2024 and then it just…vanished, like it never existed.

Alright, for October’s game to avoid, we’ve got a remake on our hands, Until Dawn, a game so similar to its source material that we were all left wonder just what the point of this remake was? Riddled with bugs and glitches, the game was a complete mess. The addition of new mini-games was hit or miss (mostly miss) and, while there was some praise for the game’s new endings, none of them were Earth shattering. The fact that this new, unpolished version of the game is the only one available from digital retailers is appalling to game preservationists. Until Dawn isn’t the only game to do this, replace and old version of a game with a new, often worse, one, but it is certainly one of the most glaring.

If you’re looking for a hidden gem in October, I would recommend the tactical RPG Card-en-Ciel. Set inside a video game world, the game play takes place on a rectangular grid where players must use cards to attack and defend against their foes. There’s a lot of anime, mumbo jumbo bullshit but, hey, whatever man, Card-en-Ciel fun as hell! With lot’s of interesting game mechanics to keep track of, this really is a tactical dream, tailor made for fans of deck building games.

November:

It isn’t a year in video games without something that puts Mario in the protagonist role, and I’m happy to say that it’s our top pick for November, Mario & Luigi: Brothership. Co-starring his (low key better) brother, Luigi, Brothership finds the two embarking on a quest to reunite the land of Concordia after it has been broken apart by an evil force. Critics gave high praise to the game’s graphics and socially conscious message. Give it a try!

Brothership wasn’t the only big RPG in November, as Square Enix, who have, like, super prolific the last few years, put out yet another title, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake. That’s not it for RPGs, though, you can also check out Famagia a kinda/sorta farming sim mixed with a kinda/sorta monster catching game. If building farms isn’t your thing, maybe you’d be more interesting in building your own theme park in Planet Coaster 2.

As for everything else, Sony’s Horizon series made it to other platforms in the delightful Lego Horizon Adventures. The long delayed Metal Slug Tactics finally came out in November, the long awaited sequel S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl dropped this month, and the long awaited new game from the makers of Silent Hill came out, the survival horror game Slitterhead.

November’s title to avoid is a bit of a surprise, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. After a remarkable entry in the series back in 2020, players around the world were ready for the 2024 edition and, well, they couldn’t play it! Like many of the worst games of the last ten years, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 requires players to be connected to the internet at all times in order to play; there is no offline option. With an influx of players on day one, MS Flight Sim 2024 was nearly impossible to play due to server overload. Unhappy players flooded the game’s Steam page with negative reviews decrying not just the game’s servers, but also the multitude of bugs & glitches, as well as the game’s use of Blackshark AI, Bing Maps, and Microsoft’s Azure tools to generate much of the game’s terrain, objects, and buildings.

Instead of mucking around with some AI fueled, always online bullshit, I’ve got another recommendation for you, River City Saga: Three Kingdoms Next. Now, yes, the River City franchise is nearly 40 years old and popular, can you honestly say you remembered this game coming out? Yeah, it was just about a month ago, did you know it was available? Probably not (unless you read this column every Tuesday right here on The Avocado, thank you very much). The game is exactly what the title says it is, a River City style beat ’em up that retells various stories and events from the historical Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It’s not the greatest game of 2024 but it has that one key factor that all games should have, FUN! Mindless button mashing, light RPG elements, goofy characters, there’s something to love about this game around every corner!

December:

For the final month of the year, our top title is the wonderful Indiana Jones and the Great Circle from MachineGames and Bethesda Softworks. Announced way back in January of 2021, The Great Circle is a bit of a labor of love for Bethesda’s Todd Howard, who came up with the idea for the game’s story and served as executive producer (take from that what you will).

Set in the year 1937, wedged between Raiders and Last Crusade, Indy finds himself, once again, dealing with Nazis as they both try to uncover some kind of crazy mystery involving various significant spiritual sites around the world that form a circle around the Earth. With a overwhelmingly positive response from critics, The Great Circle is one of the best games of 2024 which, due to the way dates work out, means it wasn’t available to be nominated at the 2024 The Game Awards (though it can be nominated for 2025’s show).

For the rest of December’s games, I really only have the first couple of weeks to go on, so your due diligence is necessary here to find out just how good/bad these titles are. The next biggest game of the month was undoubtedly Marvel Rivals, a new online hero shooter that is, basically, Overwatch with Marvel characters. With Marvel Rivals, developer NetEase showed that the world DID want another online hero shooter but only if it was free AND only if it featured a well know IP. See, that’s where you fucked up, Concord.

We, of course, had some huge RPGs to play in December as well. First up is Fairy Tail 2, based on the popular anime, with a story that wraps up the Alvarez Empire Arc. Steam reviews are mixed, so this might be for fans only. Second, we had Fantasian: Neo Dimension, an updated version of the same game that came out on Apple Arcade back in 2021. The game was created by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and features some very cool environments made with real world objects, almost like a diorama.

The rest of December is pretty stacked, actually, with the retro inspired beat ’em up Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind, which looks like a lot of fun. There’s Infinity Nikki, a free to play “dress-up” game where players find costumes for Nikki and, well, dress her up in them. We also got our last retro collections of the year, Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1-2 Remaster, bringing the PSX and PS2 titles to modern consoles, and Taito Milestones 3, a collection of classic Taito arcade games, including: Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, Rastan, Cadash, and more!

It’s always hard coming up with a game to avoid in December because there just isn’t enough time to properly gauge what’s good and what’s bad. This year I had to just go with my gut and say that Flint: Treasure of Oblivion is the game to avoid. Truthfully, the game looks really interesting, it’s a tactical RPG set in a world of pirates, so why avoid it, you might ask? The answer is simple; the publisher. Flint is being put out by the French publisher Microids who are notorious for putting out shovelware schlock. Now, I hate to bad mouth a first time developer, Savage Level in this case, and reviews aren’t terrible, but I gotta pick something and Flint takes the short straw, sorry.

Instead of that game, why not check out Mr Ixolite’s recommendation ANTONBLAST, “a rad as hell looking Pizza Tower/Warioland 4-like“. I wish I had more games to recommend for December but everything I’ve listed above is about it. There’s some interesting games coming later in the month; Lief’s Adventure: Netherworld Hero looks neat, the Switch is getting an old MSX game called Aquapolis SOS, there’s a hidden object game called Cats Visiting Christmas Town that could be a nice time waster while you visit family, the noir RPG Twilight’s Final Judgement could be interesting, and something called Santa for Adult Men that I can not link to for some reason. Maybe, um, maybe don’t look that one up.

We did it! That’s all twelve months recapped and dissected. I hope you were able to discover a few titles you missed over the year, and I also hope that I’ve steered you clear of a few of the stinkers.

As 2024 comes to a close I am again reminded by how much I enjoy writing these columns every week and seeing all of your wonderful, happy avatars in the comments. Take care of yourselves this Holiday, folks, I hope your days are filled with happiness and love.

That’ll do it for the 2024 buyer’s guide, special coverage will continue this coming Tuesday, Dec. 24th, with Notable Events From 1984, 1994, 2004, & 2014. See you next week!

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