The 10 Best Video Games of 2024 So Far

As noted in our review, Stellar Blade is a profoundly stupid game. Developed by South Korean studio Shift Up, it’s a gory, ludicrously sexualized action-romp that cribs just about every concept it has from other famous action games and various anime tropes. Its story centers on a super-soldier-esque Airborne Squad member named Eve, who’s tasked with saving the remnants of humanity from the alien creatures of dubious origin that have laid waste to Earth. With a thin narrative whose central mysteries are telegraphed a mile away, the game relies on its crunchy action combat and the cheesecake gazing of its sex-doll like protagonists to carry it through.

But here’s the thing: it still works. If taken at face value, there’s little to love about the game’s plot. But like any good B-movie, Stellar Blade is at its best when being laughed at, letting the ludicrousness take hold as you enjoy the ride. The game plays tightly and feels good to control, which is especially important during the pseudo-open world exploration sections. The combat is empowering and satisfying to master. Even the music, filled with bizarrely catchy jazz-like ambience and K-pop ballads, will worm its way into your mind. If you subscribe to the idea of a guilty pleasure, Stellar Blade fits the bill as the year’s best porn-parody wrapped in silly violent veneer.

At a time when video game remakes are all the rage, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth does things a little differently. As the second part of a trilogy of games attempting to retell the story of one of history’s most beloved RPGs, it’s tasked with not just updating quality of life standards and delivering modernized gameplay and visuals, but also expanding on aspects of the 1997 original’s world to justify its own size. To those extents, it excels. Rebirth improves pretty much every beat of its predecessor, 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake, in terms of gameplay, scope, and the addition of open-world explorative elements that the first part of the reimagining was sorely lacking.

That being said, the most controversial aspect of Remake was that it only partially served as a 1:1 retelling of the OG VII, instead using some very iffy storytelling sleight of hand to ambiguously change the characters’ trajectory through flimsy breaks from fate. Detractors of that decision will still find a lot to love in Rebirth, which builds on the second act structure of the well-worn plot for most of its run time but will be left disappointed when the story ultimately deviates, pivoting to its newfound path.

Hollow ending aside, the vast majority of what there is to see and do in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is extremely satisfying and well-polished. Its action-RPG combat is second to none, its minigames are (mostly) fun, and the newly added exploration elements arguably give the middle act of a reboot tale more hours to fill than the entire play time of the game that inspired it.

Where many games often poke at the concept of religious zealotry, few go as deep into the well of satire as Indika. Developed by Odd Meter, the indie title presents the story of Indika, a reluctant nun bound to her Russian convent where she’s mostly abused and shunned by her sisters. Why is she treated like an outcast? Well, Indika can hear the devil in her head, which is generally frowned upon in most Christian circles.

But what feels like a pitch for a Blumhouse horror hit is actually a more nuanced and comedic affair. With the voice of Satan narrating the story from inside the mind of the afflicted nun, Indika is perpetually at war with her desire to do right and be accepted and the frequently slapstick ways in which her psychosis manifest, like an early moment where she’s intended to take the Eucharist ending with the nun knocking everything over. It sounds sad, and it often is, but as a visually muted journey of a woman struggling to find peace with herself, the contrast of strange humor and somber reality of rigid practices of faith create an artfully crafted experience worthy of contemplation.

Over its roughly five-hour journey, Indika plays like a third-person puzzler where praying the devil away is a suitable in-game mechanic and collecting points helps upgrade a skill tree featuring boons of “shame,” “guilt,” and, “repentance.” For those curious, it’s a thought-provoking stab at religion that for once asks more of the player than to simply power-up enough to kill God himself.

Another heavily story-driven indie gem of the year, Sunset Visitor’s 1000xResist blends striking anime-inspired visual design with a somber story about humanity’s fall over 1,000 years. Players take on the role of Watcher, one of six sister clones housed in an underground bunker in servitude of their creator and master, the Allmother. As a character tasked with chronicling the memories and shared experiences of mankind through Allmother, Watcher’s journey centers on piecing together the mysteries of how and why humans were eradicated by an alien species called the Occupants, with many twists along the way.

Gameplay in 1000xResist largely relies on light exploration and dialogue-heavy sequences as Watcher re-lives many of the moments of Allmother’s previous life as a human named Iris. For those looking for action, there’s very little to find here, but for fans of twisted mysteries and narrative knots, with some light puzzle-solving in between, there’s a lot to appreciate here. 1000xResist can be a hard sell, with little to describe the moment-to-moment gameplay beyond boiling it down to a “walking sim,” or the experience of playing an adventure game set primarily in between all the action. But for anyone willing to take a leap of faith, it presents the feeling of playing a modern anime classic in interactive form. Expect to see this one repeatedly pop-up during awards season come year’s end.

The king of 3D brawlers, Tekken has long been a staple of both arcades and home console play, but with no new entries since 2015’s Tekken 7, fans have been hungry for a modern iteration of one of gaming’s most cartoonishly ape-shit franchises.

Story wise, Tekken 8 picks up where its predecessor left off with the melodramatic tension between father-son adversaries Kazuya Mishima and Jin Kazama (both previous protagonists for the series), as the two square off in an ­Avengers-style scene of physical destruction in the heart of Manhattan. From there, things only get more ridiculous as devil transformations lead to a “getting the team together”-type action narrative that spans the globe as Jin prepares to take down his dad once and for all in the recurring King of the Iron Fist Tournament.

The story of Tekken is ridiculous, but its unabashed commitment to the nonsense elevates its story and arcade mode, as well as informs how everything in this game world works. Players can pick all kinds of fighters, old and new, and square off in fast-paced, high stress 1v1 bouts between martial artists, cyborgs, and not one, but two different bears. With destructible environments and multi-tiered stages, few games evoke the, “Oh shit” feeling of drop kicking your buddy through a plate glass window as he rag-dolls two stories down. Tekken 8 makes those moments its core design.

At a time when all games get a slow drip IV of perpetual updates and tweaks, few developers take as ambitious an approach to “the big one” as FromSoftware has with Elden Ring’s first and only downloadable content expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree. Practically the size of a new release, Edrtree brings an entirely new open-world region to The Lands Between for seasoned players to explore.

Seasoned is the keyword here, as the content in Shadow of the Erdtree isn’t even available to players unless they almost entirely beat the base game, itself one of the most harrowingly difficult experiences of the last few years. But the DLC goes a step further, fine tuning and reinventing many of the core systems from Elden Ring proper, with faster, more devastating boss battles that have drawn ire from gamers unable to “get good” enough to prevail.

But with Elden Ring, the difficulty is the point — it always has been. FromSoftwork’s library is a legacy of pain, beginning with 2009’s Demon’s Souls all the way to now. Not every game is for every person, but for those who are enticed by the survivalist mentality and find gratification in overcoming seemingly insurmountable feats, Shadow of the Erdtree is the mountain you’ll want to climb all the way to its stunning peak.

Speaking of the pleasure derived from insurmountable difficulty, Arrowhead Games Studios’ Helldivers 2 is the type of game that doesn’t just throw multiple players into the fray to be instantly annihilated — it’s one that actively mocks you along the way.

Helldivers 2 is essentially a squad-based take on Starship Troopers. To say it’s inspired by Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi satire film would be an understatement; in almost every way, it apes the scathing comedic tone and broad premise of the 1997 movie. As a third-person shooter, players are dropped on hostile planets to slaughter the overwhelming hoards of Bugs (and later Cyborgs and Illuminate), embodying faceless soldiers as cannon fodder sentenced to egregious death in service of spreading “managed democracy” in the name of Super Earth.

The game itself plays tightly, if intentionally restrictive, to create a challenging and often frantic war time facsimile, where working together is essential even if it means sacrificing your buddy in a rain of orbital fire to make it back to the gunship. The heart of Helldivers 2, however, is more human. A constantly evolving live service game, the audience is expected to follow real-time directives and weekly challenges delivered by the developers in character as the totally non-fascist government issuing orders — sometimes even dropping in new features and gaslighting players who point them out. Behind the scenes, there’s even a dedicated game master who is watching player trends to make changes to the game to keep things unpredictable. It’s a novel concept that makes practically every round of Helldivers 2 a potential “you had to be there” moment.

These days, there’s no shortage of “roguelike” games. The most replicated trend of the last few years has been to incorporate randomly generated enemies and levels into otherwise basic platformer and action games. Balatro does things a little differently by using the subgenre tropes to ask, “What if poker could be even more soul crushing than at a Vegas casino?”

At its core, Balatro isn’t even poker. It’s a strategy game where a bicycle deck and a suite of superpowered joker cards are the tools to attain a high score. Every round, you’re dealt a hand where the goal is to use basic poker hands to gain points. Over a run, players will get to choose upgraded cards to add to their decks, with chip bonuses or multipliers, and even the ability to add weight to the point totals of individual hands.

To non-gamblers, this could sound arduous, but the elegance of Balatro is tricking users into thinking they’re playing a game of cards when they’re actually fighting their way out of an imaginary dungeon. Every raise of the blind is a boss battle, and only by investing early in personal stratagems can the luck of the draw be overcome.

It helps that the game is visually presented as an eerie take on video screen poker by way of an acid trip from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. With scan lines and the vignetted edges of a CRT monitor, and a pulsating ambient score to boot, Balatro becomes a hypnotic rabbit hole that will bleed you dry of dozens of hours rather than actual cash.

If roguelikes are the bell of the ball these days, then “Metroidvanias” — 2D exploration games like Hollow Knight that borrow from the Metroid and Castlevania series — are yesterday’s news. Indie games like 2017’s Hollow Knight helped reinvigorate the subgenre, leaning on 2D side-scrolling gameplay with a heavy emphasis on deep exploration, breakneck action, and lots of backtracking to uncover previously locked off areas.

But a good idea is a good idea, and Shared Memory’s Animal Well is full of enough of them to reignite the spark of a well-worn genre. Unlike other Metroidvanias, which often pit you as a super soldier or warrior, here players embody an egg-like… thing. With no major weapons or crazy moves to utilize, it leans more heavily into the perplexing puzzle mechanics of well-timed jumps over perilous terrain and mental ingenuity to read the room and figure out the next point of interest. It’s a game where the joy comes from discovery rather than conquest and is a refreshing contrast to other games of its ilk.

With a minimalist story that eschews pretty much all need for context, players can set aside questions about what the world is about or why, instead allowing the games psychedelic vibes and haunting ambiance to wash over them in the pursuit of the next great treasure trove. In Animal Well, you’re just the egg. What comes next is up to you to find.

In our initial impressions of Hades II, Rolling Stone called the game the best of the year, despite not even being complete. That sentiment still stands, as Hades II continues its early access period for the foreseeable future. Developer Supergiant Games learned from the first Hades — which ran in early access for over a year beginning in 2018 before releasing in full to unanimous acclaim in 2020 — that the best way to fine tune its game was to give players almost everything up front and let them do the heavy lifting through playtest.

Like its predecessor, Hades II is an action roguelike that stars a child of Hades, Lord of the Underworld, on a mission to break free from their subterranean home on a mission of personal importance. This time around, the story follows Melinoë, daughter of Hades and Persephone, and sister to the first game’s lead Zagreus, who is on a quest to save her captive family and all of Olympus from the subjugation of the titan Chronos. Along the way, she’ll garner support from the many gods and Chthonic figures that make up her extended family and supporters in the fight against her grandfather’s rule.

Hades II is a roguelike in that the core loop of the gameplay centers on fighting your way through various randomized chambers and enemies, punctuated by big bosses, and choosing from an unpredictable list of upgrades as you progress. If you die, it’s back to the start to use what little progressive elements carry over for enhancing Melinoë’s abilities for another chance to apply what you’ve learned on the great escape.

What makes Hades II stand apart from the many other stellar games from 2024 so far is its impeccable blend of illustrated art direction, deeply memorable music, and an ever-unfurling narrative that rewards players for engaging in conversations over many, many runs to learn the interpersonal dynamics between every character in its world — which themselves evolve heavily over the course of the journey. The narrative in Hades II shouldn’t work for a roguelike, but it does, addictively — giving us a masterpiece that’s still in the making.