[COLUMN] If You’re Bored By Games in 2024, You Might Be Boring | by Marty Sliva (Patreon)

“2024 has been a boring year for games.” It’s something I hear every so often in chat and comments across both Second Wind videos and my personal Twitch streams.

And on one hand, I get it. This year hasn’t seen the kind of totemic release that we saw in 2023 with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3 or in 2022 with Elden Ring. I also get that we all personally ebb and flow in and out of love with our various hobbies and passions. Due to a combination of life events, I played relatively few games from 2006 to 2011, and I’d bet that a lot of you reading this might have similar stretches.

Also, if you’re gauging 2024 based on passing headlines rooted in AAA games…yeah, shit seems bleak. $400 million games having their plug pulled after a few days, once-beloved developers forced to release trend-chasing bummers, the word “infinite” losing all meaning, and actual bangers like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown being seen as failures all point to a medium in the midst of bad times.

But while all of the above is true, for me, it tends to fade into background noise the moment I look at a list of all the games I’ve played so far this year, the lineup left over the next two months, and everything in my backlog that I haven’t had a chance to get to yet. Because hachi machi, 2024 has had some incredible games across so many genres, and I can’t help but feel like if you truly see this year as boring, then that might be on you.

So, where do we start? Well, indies are killing it, despite a growing problem of discovery across platforms like Steam and the console storefronts as well as a heaping pile of trend-chasing of their own. But you can’t look at a lineup consisting of Animal Well, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, UFO 50, Crow Country, 1000xRESIST, Another Crab’s Treasure, Children of the Sun, I Am Your Beast, Neva, Minishoot’ Adventures, Content Warning, Pepper Grinder, Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, INDIKA, Frogun Encore, Botany Manor, Still Wakes the Deep, Flock, Dungeons of Hinterberg, Valley Peaks, Thank Goodness You’re Here!, and Crypt Custodian and tell me that there’s nothing good to play.

And that’s not even including some of the sickos-only deep cuts like Arctic Eggs, Felvidek, Fullbright Presents TOILET SPIDERS, Home Safety Hotline, 20 Small Mazes, Mouthwashing, Isles of Sea and Sky, CROWDED. FOLLOWED., 4D Golf, Pangolin Cassowary, Paraedolon, and Shipwrecked 64. There’s a good chance you haven’t heard of some of the aforementioned games and an even better chance that you’d really dig some of them.

Turning our gaze to AAA, it’s been a banner year for JRPGs, which rules. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Metaphor Re:Fantazio immediately became two of my favorite games in recent memory and showed the kind of magic that can come from studios that retain their creative talent over the course of multiple projects and even multiple decades. Unicorn Overlord was a slept-on banger, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Dragon’s Dogma 2 gave fans of those franchises more of what they love, and Shadow of the Erdtree solidified the entire Elden Ring experience as an all-timer. 

On the first-party front, while Sony has had its share of missteps this year, I absolve it of all those sins because Astro Bot is the most fun I’ve had with a piece of media in 2024. It’s simultaneously a smart and expertly designed 3D platformer as well as a loving tribute to PlayStation’s storied history. And it gets bonus points for making me constantly smile during a bout of depression, which very few things are able to do.

While Microsoft is still mostly in “look at all this cool shit that’s coming down the road” mode, I just spent the weekend playing through Black Ops 6, and it’s my favorite Call of Duty campaign in almost a decade. With that and Indiana Jones on the horizon, my Game Pass subscription is paying for itself.

And Nintendo is still releasing gems an unprecedented eight years into their console’s life. I thoroughly enjoyed Princess Peach: Showtime!, Emio – The Smiling Man, Super Mario Party Jamboree, and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom as well as revisiting Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Another Code: Recollection. But seriously, please just announce the new hardware, and please also call it Super Nintendo Switch, and please also send me one; thanks in advance.

Speaking of those last two games, 2024 has also seen its share of high-profile remakes, which I frequently see used as an argument against the quality of modern games. And I get it—it’s hard to play these games and not wonder if the talented developers’ time would’ve been better spend on something original, as the past few years have had space and conversation taken up by cover songs like Demon’s Souls, Resident Evil 4, Persona 3 Reload, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Sonic X Shadow Generations, and Silent Hill 2. But, counterpoint—these remakes are also rad as hell, and I’m fine with this trend being used to introduce new generations to classics so long as we all agree to abide by a few rules.

I firmly believe that remakes shouldn’t exist as replacements of an original work, but rather a fresh interpretation of it, in the same way that Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” didn’t replace the Nine Inch Nails original. But for that to happen, the industry has to do a better job of preservation—it sucks that the original PS2 version of Silent Hill 2 is extremely difficult to play legally using modern hardware. It should be mandatory for all remakes to include 1:1 emulated versions of the original source material alongside it. 

Also, if a team proves that they’re competent at the remake game, reward them with an original project of their own. Nintendo has been pretty good at this, particularly with teams like Grezzo, who cut their chops on the 3DS remasters of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, and 2019’s Link’s Awakening, before helming this year’s Echoes of Wisdom.

On top of all of this, there are a ton of games that I haven’t gotten around to yet or just aren’t particularly my cup of tea but are clearly of a high quality and brought joy to millions of folks—stuff like Balatro, HELLDIVERS 2, Satisfactory, Manor Lords, Frostpunk 2, Ara: History Untold, Stellar Blade, Black Myth: Wukong, DRAGON BALL: Sparking Zero!, TEKKEN 8, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2.

While there are countless hardships, failings, and deep-rooted structural problems across the games industry that need addressing, the games themselves have remained fantastic. It’s hard for me to fathom looking at that massive list of experiences from 2024 and somehow walking away thinking that games are now boring.