Something I've come to realise is that I can pinpoint a year by its one giant videogame (or two slightly smaller but still very large videogames), whether I played them or not. Last year's was, without a doubt, Baldur's Gate 3. Elden Ring took over everyone's lives the year before that, while Resident Evil Village and It Takes Two were the talk of the town in 2021.
There's something near-universally true about all of these games: People were pretty jazzed about them before they were even released. That fanfare almost always ended up continuing for months beyond launch—hell, in Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring's case, they're still hot topics and ripe for endless news today.
But now, in 2024? I honestly couldn't tell you what The Big Game was. Palworld was a real flash in the pan. Helldivers 2 probably comes the closest, having had a wildly successful launch not even Arrowhead could predict, but I barely recall any of that pre-launch mania I've become so accustomed to. Balatro's been a slow burn of recruiting my fellow poker roguelite sickos, and Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC had some nice hype but a surprisingly short tail. Black Myth: Wukong, meanwhile, was racking up the Steam wishlists, but I've heard very little about it in the months since it dropped.
Do I think that's necessarily a bad thing? Honestly, no. I think it's easy to dismiss this year as a forgettable one for videogames, but I couldn't disagree more. Instead, I would argue that it's been a fragmented one, and yeah, kind of a weird one. But it's been a year that has helped folk dip their toes into games they may not have tried otherwise, and one that has been great for more niche nooks of the videogame hive.
A weird year, huh?
Case in point: In 2023 I played roughly 15 new releases, a figure I arrived at by looking at my Steam library and diving into my mind palace to retrieve games I played on other launchers. Of course Baldur's Gate 3 is a big one, and I dabbled in other major releases like Street Fighter 6, Lethal Company, and Starfield.
Compare that to this year where I've bounced between 35 new releases: I briefly tangled with the Palworld hype, spent way too much time in Fields of Mistria on my Steam Deck, returned to Final Fantasy 14 for Dawntrail, and watched time march on in Metaphor: ReFantazio. I fell in love with Webfishing, finally got to grips with my long-anticipated spaceship repair sim Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop, suffered many a beating in Tekken 8, and got to be an unapologetic dress-up game sicko thanks to Infinity Nikki.
Quick sidebar: This is also the first year in which I've owned a Steam Deck. Do I think that helped bump up the number of games I devoured? A little, sure. I doubt I would've finished Metaphor without it and a 14-hour flight I had to take was perfectly timed with the Kingdom Hearts collection dropping on Steam. Yeah yeah, I know it's ancient, but in VST (Valve Standard Time) it's fresh as a daisy.
But even without all that portable excellence, this year has given us the breathing room to embrace all manner of weirdly specific games. Satisfactory is not my thing, but for many it’s the peak of the automation genre. I probably wouldn't have looked at UFO 50 twice had it been released last year, but I fell in love with it after virtually dusting off each and every cartridge the game had to offer. Thank Goodness You're Here! is a delightfully British romp that I fear would have flown under the radar had we had access to the all-encompassing megahit of years past.
If anything, the thing that has defined 2024 has been the niches, the underdogs, and the unexpected. That makes it tough to look at one particular gaming beacon and say "yeah, that's 2024 right there." But you know what? I like that. I like that the PC Gamer team was divided on what should be our GOTY. I like that I can ask five different friends what their favourite game of this year was, and I would very well expect five different answers.
I do largely expect things to return to form in 2025, though. There's already a feral level of excitement around Monster Hunter Wilds, while the rest of February looms over every PC gamer with the likes of Civilization 7 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Oh, and Avowed. And Assassin's Creed Shadows. That's only one month of the year, no less.
GTA 6 excitement will no doubt be reaching critical mass, and lest we forget Hideo Kojima threatening to release Death Stranding 2 (I'm kidding). I'm certain next year will be hype train central, but I'll secretly be over here kinda missing the vibes that 2024's fragmentation brought.
