My Top 27-12 Favourite Games of 2024!
Rhianne Ward
2024 is drawing to an end, and with it comes the discourse. What was the best game of the year of all time ever made objectively? Well, I don’t know about all that, but I do know my favourites!
If you’re a long time reader of the blog, you might have noticed that the format is a little different this year. When I tell you 2024 was one of the best years for video games in my lifetime, I’m not fucking around this time. Of course, every year is a good year for video games, because they are all years with video games in them! That being said, even picking out a top 25 was truly like choosing between children. I love all of these games dearly, and I loved some games that didn’t even make the cut. It’s been a fiercely competitive year, but call me George W. Bush because I fucking left some kids behind this time.
Since there are SO MANY games I wanted to shout out this year, I decided to split the Game of the Year celebrations into three posts. This is the first of the trio: the BRONZE MEDALLISTS. This post honours the 2024 releases that I loved a whole lot, but not quite enough to crack the top 10. This was supposed to be my top 25-11 games of the year, but then another game snuck its way in at the death, and I’d already written this damn thing so I decided to leave an extra one in, as a treat! So, this is now officially my top 26-11 games of 2024, ranked in alphabetical order because they’re all winners in my heart.
Edit: this is actually, technically, my top 27-12, because YET ANOTHER game rudely showed up and was amazing. It appears in my top 11-2 post if you're curious!
The way this is going to work is I’ll post this on Christmas Eve, then within the next few days I will upload my silver medallists – my top 10-2 games of the year – and on New Year’s Day, I’ll announce the official There Is No Sleep’s GAME OF THE YEAR, which will be its own dedicated post. I hope you’re all excited, because I certainly am!
But I’ve been blabbing for long enough. Let’s get to the games! I want to say here really quick that just because the games on this list have, for the purposes of my arbitrary GOTY format, placed 3rd, that doesn’t at all mean they aren’t worth your time. Like I said before, I genuinely loved my time with every single one of these games, and I highly recommend you play all of them. With that said, let’s start the list!
Apartment Story
I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about this game outside of my close friends, but this game rules. It incorporates the lifestyle mechanics from The Sims – managing metres like hunger, sleep, fun, etc – but tells a fairly on-rails story at the same time, with events happening at certain times of each passing day that you then have to work around.
It sounds simple enough, and, being a very short experience, in some ways it is, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t find the whole thing deeply engrossing. Unlike the very sanitised, comedic stylings of its inspiration, the mechanics of Apartment Story feel grounded and consequential in a way The Sims can never be. It’s one thing to keep a handle on your stats so your guy doesn’t die; it’s another thing entirely to juggle that while knowing that at any time something might occur in the story that completely throws your routine out the window.
In that sense, the game is paced more or less perfectly to evoke this ever-present feeling that you’re just barely holding your life together. Given our protagonist Arthur is recently unemployed and nearing the overdraft limit on his bank account at all times, that feeling is definitely intentional. All the messages from your energy company reminding you to pay your bills in the world can’t match the tangible experience of knowing someone is on their way to hurt you sometime today, and trying to somehow fit breakfast into that particular daily agenda. It’s genuinely awesome, if extremely stressful.
Give it a go! It’s cheap and short and really unique.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
Banishers is a game that took a while for me to love. Right out the gate, its influences are clear: we’re doing a God of War-like! That means over the shoulder combat, switching between weapons on the fly, managing enemy AOEs and trying not to get overwhelmed. Beyond that, it’s semi-open worlds, side quests, and optional fights that reward you with skill points or gear. That’s all well and good EXCEPT I’m not the biggest fan of that kind of design. I find this type of combat gets boring pretty quick, and the world design often feels like a lot of time wasting running from place to place. The scale of areas feels a little arbitrary to me, like it wants to inflate the playtime and make the game feel more like an epic journey than it really is.
As such, Banishers had to do something more to get my attention. And it does! The story is about ghosts, literally and figuratively. It’s about the ones we live with, and learning to leave them behind. It’s about loss and regret and finding peace in your mistakes and continuing on, informed by that tumultuous past. At least, that was my version of Banishers. The game actually has two distinct paths to take, and the other one is more about the lengths a person will go for the one they cherish most. It’s a game with choices, but those choices are never simple. There are characters who are decidedly evil in irredeemable ways, but does that make it right for you to execute them? In a world such as this – early colonial America – without a structured justice system to turn to, who gets to decide the right from the wrong? If you allow it the time to simmer, Banishers makes for a very compelling experience.
And also a deeply moving one. The core duo are so sweet and their love is undeniable, which makes what you must do hurt all the more. I love it a lot, and it’s a shame that in a year of incredible releases, it has been all but forgotten. If you’re willing to take a chance, I promise Banishers is worth your time.
Clickolding
In hindsight, there is something deeply funny about placing Clickolding, a 60-minute art project, above so many other enormous releases from 2024, like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth or Astro Bot, but that’s kind of the beauty of indie games, isn’t it? You don’t get to pick and choose what sticks in your brain, and for me, it was a weird sex game! (note: not actually a weird sex game, it’s a little more sophisticated than that, and sex is not had I swear)
Clickolding is incredibly straightforward. You are nameless, voiceless, not just aimless. Your purpose in this life is to click, and watch the clicker number go up from 0 and presumably into infinity. Of course, you’re not alone. In a hotel room with you sits a mysterious stranger in a disturbing mask, who seems to enjoy the whole clicking routine a little more than the average person perhaps might. The entire game is you click and occasionally the stranger will say something, or order you to move to different parts of the room where you will continue clicking. At some point, he pulls out a gun. What will happen when that clicker reaches 1000? Will your purpose be fulfilled? It doesn’t really matter; you and I both know you’ll keep clicking. After all, isn’t that the only thing you can do?
It’s a simple game that has you asking questions of it, and yourself, in the quiet of the hotel room. Why do we click? To reach an end? What if we reach the end and something terrible happens, or even more terrifyingly, nothing happens at all, and it’s just you and the clicker, alone in a hotel room? Clickolding is a game about being trapped, that had me asking if I’d really just trapped myself. It’s pretty cool.
Helldivers 2
I say this all the time, but let me reiterate: I am NOT a multiplayer girlie. It takes a special cocktail of personal preferences to get me interested in a game that promises no credits to roll by its end. In this regard, the recipe for Helldivers 2 is absolutely delightful.
I think what makes Helldivers 2 work so well is the way that all of its elements come together to have it play exactly like an absurd action movie. You feel so completely disposable in this game. One moment you’re taking out bugs left and right with your guns that sound like God, and all of a sudden you’re obliterated by an orbital laser thrown down by a teammate who misjudged the blast radius. Fear not though! In just a few moments, the next sorry soul is jettisoned in from space in a landing pod that immediately lands on that teammate, squishing them into sludge, and you’re back in the fight! The level of madness you’re able to achieve in this game while still managing to hold the operation together is genuinely incredible. More so than almost any other game I’ve played, this game emulates the chaos and confusion inherent to being in an absurd action movie masterfully.
That says nothing of the infamous “Robot Vietnam”, which I only ever heard legends about because I didn’t play the game enough to get there. A mission so brutal, so insane, that winning or losing is basically down to luck. I think that’s why this game grabbed me where other multiplayer games don’t: there’s an element of randomness to the whole thing where the enjoyment I derived from it is less about becoming skilled at the game, but rather the experience of existing in its world is its own entertainment. It fucking rocks.
Home Safety Hotline
There’s nothing quite like coming home from work, kicking back under a cosy blanket, whipping out your Steam Deck, and playing a game about working. Specifically, working as a call centre agent responding to customer queries ranging from common household pests like mice or termites, to slightly more obscure issues such as finding out if your dog is a skinwalker, or how to handle an encounter with The Hoard. Classic workplace shenanigans!
I wrote a review for this game months ago talking about how cool it is, and my feeling remains there. The vibes here balance upon a very thin line between darkly comedic and genuinely unsettling. It manages to maintain both feelings simultaneously for the entire runtime, while setting up a genuinely compelling mystery in the background regarding the nature of this weird company, hints at what happened to the previous employees, and what your place is within this strange, otherworldly corporate structure.
It’s really, really cool, even though I’m quite bad at it! I highly recommend giving it a try, especially if you’re a fan of Papers Please and general fey fantasy antics. A thousand blessings and good tidings upon thee!
I Am Your Beast
If I had to summarise I Am Your Beast in one word, it would be this: hard. Not hard as in difficult – although it definitely is sometimes – but rather, it goes hard. So, so, so, SO hard. It’s adrenaline made manifest; a speedrunning game where the goal is not to survive, not even to do so efficiently, but to achieve both those things with style.
The points you score in any one of the lightning-quick levels are based around your time to beat it, and that overall time is reduced by your actions within the stage. If you kill a guy by shooting them, that’s some time off the clock, but if you kill them with a hornet nest or blow them up with a nearby explosive, that’ll shave away full seconds. It’s a game that rewards creativity and optimisation, and you better believe my ass was fixed in place for hours at a time, trying my best to reach that coveted S Rank on every single stage. The game does not lay out the perfect plan or path to take in order to achieve that, however. You need to map out the level and figure it out yourself, and that makes achieving it feel absolutely incredible. I’m sure the game is quite deliberately designed, with routes to take that the developers predicted ahead of time, but in the moment, with how free form the design is, I didn’t feel that way once.
I think I should mention too that the storytelling here is some pretty great stuff. It’s about protagonist Alphonse Harding, a secret agent working for the government who decides one day to leave it all behind. Of course, it’s not that simple – the Military Industrial Complex won’t let him go that easy – and he ends up forced to battle through hundreds of operatives, surviving by tooth and nail, until they decide to give up. However, in true Strange Scaffold, there’s a beautiful soul at work here, simmering under the surface. Harding is ruthless, but his mild-mannered tone would never suggest that, and likely causes his adversaries to regularly underestimate him. He’s got a softness to him that I find compelling; his breaking point isn’t a dead family member or something, but rather his witnessing the senseless killing of a bird in the forest where he lives. A man whose job is to take life, broken by the loss of one.
I don’t want to spoil what happens from there, but I will say that in a game about killing with clinical efficiency, it chooses to interrogate that fact through a similarly focused lens. It’s genuinely such a special game, and if you’ve a fondness for high-intensity action titles like Neon White or Ghostrunner, then this is bound to appeal to your monkey brain. Also, support Strange Scaffold! This is their third game released in 2024, and the second to breach this list! If that doesn’t speak to their talents, I don’t know what will.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
This game coming out to universal acclaim was a level of vindication so delicious it made my entire year. I was the only one in my friend group championing this thing. “It’s Machinegames, the "Wolfenstein* guys! It’s gonna slap!” I’d probably say. Then gameplay came out and it was first person with all the hallmarks of Machinegames’ signature style, and I was like “you gotta let them cook, this is gonna be sick!”. And you know what? I’d like a written apology from all my haters and doubters because I was fucking right, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle bangs.
But like, it’s not my favourite. Ultimately, it’s an extremely faithful recreation of the Indiana Jones vibe, which means a nation-hopping adventure with a silly but compelling story mixing in some supernatural elements. It doesn’t rock the boat by any means, nor was I terribly surprised by what it presented at any time. Given that this is Machinegames we’re talking about, this rendition of the Nazis is pitch perfect, instilling in them a level of humanity while never once shying away from their oppressive presence in every region they occupy, and the destruction they regularly leave in their wake. They are murderous, disgusting fascists, and it’s a joy to bonk them over the head with everything from candlesticks to truncheons, fly swatters to toilet plungers, and so on and so forth. It rules.
And there is thematic texture to be found, if you go looking for it. The game makes a conscious effort of examining Indie’s famous catchphrase, “this belongs in a museum!”, by subtly posing an implied, uncomfortable question: whose museum? There’s a lot to love here in that regard; a sincere reverence for the Indiana Jones lineage, while reinterpreting some of its more problematic elements through a more modern lens. It’s a game that, in many ways, brings the series’ best to the forefront, while leaving the shittier stuff behind, not by burying it, but through clever interrogation. That extends to the gameplay as well, given how stripped back a lot of it feels in a gaming climate where more is often considered better. Indiana Jones is focused and rock solid in its fundamentals, and doesn’t feel the need to bloat itself with too much unnecessary busy work (though those collectible side quests can choke to be honest, no thank youuuuu).
Overall, I think my love for this game stems less from an enjoyment of Indiana Jones, a series I can honestly take or leave, and more so from my adoration for Machinegames as a studio. It’s possible we’ll never get a true Wolfenstein 2 successor, and while that genuinely saddens me, there is a certain comfort to be found in the fact that, even when making what I presume is a game born from contractual obligation, the studio’s unique identity and ethos shines through regardless. Machinegames, rest assured, you have my whole heart, and I love you.
Indika
When I went back through my blog posts from this year, I was shocked to discover that I somehow didn’t write a review for Indika. This was especially surprising given that I played it at around the same time I was writing a lot, so I’m not really sure why I never gave it a fair shake. Well, now’s the time to rectify that! I love Indika!!
Indika is a nun who lives in a monastery where everyone seems to hate her. She’s a bit incompetent, evidently plagued by demons of her own that distract her from her duties, and only trusted with mundane tasks like fetching water from the well. Eventually, she is given a letter and expected to deliver it by travelling across the country. The implication is that the other nuns simply want rid of her. Regardless, she embarks on this journey, meeting all sorts of strange personalities, encountering a variety of dangers, etc etc, you get the drill.
The thing to know about Indika is that it is quite odd, and quite often keeps its cards close to its chest which only adds to that feeling of oddness. There’s a points system, which you gain by doing religious actions like praying at altars, and those points are invested in skills which make it easier to accumulate more points. Occasionally, the game switches over to flashback sequences, which are presented in a SNES-style 16-bit aesthetic, a sharp contrast to the usual photorealism. Oh, and you have The Devil in your head at all times, narrating your adventure and giving little insights into the various contradictions of organised religion, while goading Indika to commit sins. I could say that all these things coalesce into one clear picture, but they kinda don’t? And it’s amazing.
It is, unfortuantely for you, one of those games that’s best played while knowing as little as possible. It’s an experience so rich in depth that spoiling what happens would rob the impact from you, so I won’t! It’s the kind of game that’s really fun to think about and discuss after playing it, so consider this me begging anyone else to play it so I can talk about it with them, because it’s literally so good. You simply gotta play it!!!
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
‘You just don’t get games like Kunitsu-Gami anymore.’ That’s what I was thinking the whole time I played it. Considering it’s an in-house Capcom release, you’d expect it to be a bit more…conventional. But this is a weird ass game! A management strategy action game where the goal isn’t simply to be the baddest bitch on the battlefield, and requires actual brains to see it through? Say it ain’t so!
It took a minute or two for me to fully vibe with Kunitsu-Gami. I think a big part of that was because I approached it as something closer to a traditional character action game. The game gave me allies to drop onto the map who would help me in my fight, and I thought, ‘okay, I guess I’ll use this if I need to’, only to realise that this was the crux of the entire game. Intelligent placement of units, taking into account their various strengths and weaknesses, makes the difference between life and death. Not to mention, you want to be careful of where the Maiden is positioned on the map when night falls and enemies strike, because if she’s too close to a demon gate, then she might end up right in the firing line of all sorts of bad guys. Day and night are the two states which the game can be in, but neither last too long, so during daytime I was stressfully running around trying to get all my pieces in the right places, and at night I was constantly running around making sure there wasn’t any gaps in my defenses. It’s awesome!
It’s not all anxiety all the time though! When you finish a stage – cleanse the area – you can revisit it in its more peaceful state. You can go around rebuilding the area with the help of the community who resides there, and the entire time you’re awash with this sense that you’re not just removing the demons, but laying down the foundations for future generations, so they can be ready as well. The Maiden, who is all but confirmed to be the goddess of the mountain, seems to be weakening with every village you save, and with that I gained this sense of impending dread that no matter what, sacrifices are going to be made.
Kunitsu-Gami is a game rich with humanity. When I was in the fight, I was constantly engaged, and when I was out of it, I found myself reflecting on what came before. At all times, though, I felt the warmth of a people working together to bring light back into the world. The Maiden is ostensibly the mountain’s saviour, and she is worshipped as a consequence of that, but the game makes clear that no amount of evil dispelling powers will help without belief and strength of will from everyone. It’s truly brilliant, and definitely worth your time.
Lil' Guardsman
Apparently 2024 was the year for Papers Please-likes. Go figure! Lil’ Guardsman has you embody the titular Lil, an extremely 12-year-old given the highly inappropriate job of managing the entrance gate for the grand fantasy city, The Sprawl. She’s tasked with deciding who to let in and keep out of the city, and the story is affected by who is or is not permitted entry. Before long, you acquire a solid arsenal of tools and rules that complicate and complexify the whole process. It all ends up being deeply engaging, in spite of the lighter tone compared to its spiritual predecessor.
However, what stood out to me with Lil’ Guardsman was its bleeding heart. I came to love these characters and care about their struggles in ways I did not expect going in. I became so invested in these weird little freaks, and it gave every acceptance or denial of every citizen a weight I wasn’t ready for, and that feeling only strengthened once the story took a surprisingly significant turn and my choices began to genuinely affect the city in tangible ways. To be a little crude, by the end of the game, I was about ready to shit myself with every button press. I wanted so bad for everything to work out for everyone I loved, and I think the ending I received reflected that.
If you’re a fan of Papers Please, Terry Pratchett, or old adventure games like Monkey Island, then boy do I have the game for you! It’s a wonderful wee experience that deserves its laurels. I’m excited for whatever Hilltop Studios cook up next!
Metaphor: ReFantazio
I’m just gonna open this by directly quoting a BlueSky post I made about this game (shameless plug: follow me on BlueSky @thereisnosleep.bsky.social!): “Atlus games are so funny because I will happily drop 100 hours of my life into them, enjoy them the entire time, come out the other side thinking they’re amazing, then I barely ever think about them again.”
This has been my Metaphor experience. Aside from, hilariously, Persona 3 Reload, this game is my most played 2024 release. There was a window in October from day of release to the 31st where I almost exclusively played Metaphor. There’s a little Silent Hill 2 mixed in there somewhere, but for a while, this game was my life! It is the Persona calendar system basically perfected; a beautiful miasma of time management and turn based combat that never once lost my attention. I loved my time with it! I love the characters, the world, the story and its plethora of twists and turns I genuinely did not see coming 90% of the time. I came out the other side of those credits feeling like I’d played something genuinely excellent; a true artistic triumph, and a modern gaming classic to boot. AND YET.
I think what ended up making me a little cold on Metaphor was that very little about it truly bites. It’s an incredibly refined experience from the ground up – almost two decades of refinement on the same general formula, made manifest – but the consequence of that is a game lacking in friction. This will be good for some, but personally – and this is going to sound truly insane – I kinda like it when games are a little bit bad. I like it when a game tries something and kinda fails but gives it a solid go. The same applies to Metaphor’s story. It’s definitely good and sometimes amazing, but it falls into familiar tropes by the end and when all was said and done, it didn’t leave much to chew on.
But I cannot stress enough that Metaphor is really great. I wouldn’t have spent almost 100 hours playing it if I didn’t at least like it. Despite my complaining, there isn’t one aspect to it that I can say is poor or disappointing. I would sincerely recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in fantasy, because while it didn’t completely work for me, it clearly has for plenty of others. In so many ways, this game is tremendous, and I’m always going to be there on day one for whatever Atlus cooks up next.
Pacific Drive
Confession time! I have attempted the UK driving test three times and failed it…three times! I swear I’m not bad at driving – I just get cripplingly nervous in exam settings – but the unfortunate consequence of this is I’ve never owned a car and, tragically, I haven’t gotten the experience of being weirdly attached to that car on a deeply personal level. I haven’t been able to name my car or discover a weird, highly unique issue with it. Every car has a unique personality all its own, but that’s an aspect of being alive in the 21st century that is sadly lost on me.
Pacific Drive is all about that experience. Your car is a character, both spiritually and literally. In universe, it is a sentient object that irreversibly attaches to the player character for reasons outside of your, and perhaps its own, understanding. To me, the player, it is my lifeline that keeps me safe from the dangers of the American wilderness (and other spooky creatures). The only thing I care about in this game is keeping this car safe, maintaining it, upgrading its parts, and when sometimes breaks, diagnosing the problem and finding the solution. It is insane to me how attached I got to this hunk of metal in the brief time I spent with it. I genuinely thought about ways to improve it outside the game. I think I possess the heart of a car junkie and my only avenue to experience this in any tangible way is this weirdo indie game about SCPs or whatever.
Even now, many months later, I still think about my car from Pacific Drive. I wonder how they’re doing, and whether I should take them out for a spin at some point. I can see myself coming back to this game every so often for the rest of my life, because I care an awful lot. I will protect my baby through all strife as they do me. The video game is good too!
Slitterhead
Slitterhead! Headed by the director of Silent Hill and the Siren series, Keiichiro Toyama, this is Bokeh Game Studios’ first release and it is a weird one. However, I’ve always said that I’ll take a kinda bad but interesting game over a competent yet boring one any day of the week. Thus, here we are, and luckily for Slitterhead, it is both interesting and really good!
Not without caveats, though. This game is jank as hell, and a bit ugly. Character models clearly shoot for realism but, without the appropriate budget, they end up looking like action figures. That being said, the design of its interpretation of Kowloon is absolutely stunning, rendering her evocative streets and alleyways with a suitably grimy atmosphere. The game often lacks a lot of voice acting which can cause some cutscenes and pivotal story moments to lack some momentum, but Slitterhead works around this by getting creative with its presentation in conversation scenes. The camera rotates around a character while they go about these ordinary day-to-day, with occasional expression cut-ins, and I love the way this matches the surrealness of the spirit-in-head situation with the grounded reality of going about daily life like normal. It gives the game a cool, “hidden society” vibe that I like.
The reason why I felt so endeared to Slitterhead was that it’s clearly a game fighting against huge odds. It’s a brand new IP coming from a brand new studio, in an incredibly competitive year for games in general. And yet, it commits to its vision so hard that I can’t help but love it. In many ways, this is a feel-bad game. The city is gross and miserable, everybody is scared of being slaughtered by giant bugs, and your ragtag band of weirdos are fighting against an impending apocalypse that only seems more likely to occur the more you fiddle with the timeline trying to prevent it. I haven’t finished the game, but I wouldn’t be surprised if all our efforts end up being for naught. On top of that, you’re a spirit who possesses people against their will and uses them as disposable meat sacks against foes far beyond their comprehension. In many ways, you are a villain, even if it’s for some kind of greater good. It’s even kind of fun to be this blithe with human life. Combat systems synergise well enough that I started to concoct strategies where I deliberately get people hurt or killed so that I have more blood to pull from for bigger attacks. The internet jankiness of the combat often led to situations where I got desperate, and reached for anything to win a fight, morals be damned.
It’s just that kind of game. You need to be a little patient and a lot weird to enjoy a game like Slitterhead as much as I do. I’m very fond of it, and that fondness only grows with every passing moment I spend away. It may not be the most polished experience of 2024, but it’s certainly one of the most memorable. I imagine I’ll be looking back on this game for years to come as a refreshing change of pace in an industry awash with safety and mediocrity. I hope Toyama gets to make a sequel.
Sorry We're Closed
Sorry We’re Closed was the closest game to missing the cutoff this year, and I’m really glad I gave it a try before I wrote this because it is incredibly cool. I love it! It’s a survival horror game with a branching narrative and a stunning retro presentation that just won’t quit. The character art here is genuinely stunning too; it’s kinda where I aspire to reach someday with my art abilities.
The story slaps too! It’s the tale of Michelle, a recently single and perpetually heartbroken woman who gets trapped in the curse of The Duchess, a demon who wants only to be loved unconditionally. You get to meet a handful of oddballs living on your little street in London, and they’re all interesting and easy to invest yourself in. It makes the various moral dilemmas you’re faced with all the more tricky. There’s a character who sucks and I hate, but doing wrong by him would negatively impact a different character that I like, so there’s some consequences to weigh. I also like that you need to go out of your way to find these choices by actively talking to people. You could quite easily avoid the discomfort of being caught between two people by simply not getting involved, but then it is that same inaction which means nobody wins. Building relationships makes you more vulnerable, but you also get to help and grow those bonds. It’s a push and pull, captured beautifully in this game’s design.
I’ve heard the phrase “gay Silent Hill” thrown out a lot in discussions about this game, and I mean, yeah, that’s fair lol. It’s a very queer video game, in a way that felt very true to life. If you have a friend group which is predominantly queer, then this captures the overall vibe beautifully. If any of that sounds good to you – and it should! – then give Sorry We’re Closed a shot. Not to mention, everyone in this game is very hot, and that’s pretty cool. Bisexuals stay winning always!!
Starfield: Shattered Space
As the sole remaining Starfield fan, I think it’s my duty to let you all know that its first – and probably only – DLC is actually really good! Playing this was such a trip because I blasted the whole thing out in a couple days and had a wonderful time with it, only to check what everyone else was saying about it and discovering that Shattered Space was not well received at all, and that genuinely shocked me.
In many ways, it felt like Bethesda’s attempt at returning to basics. Gone are the infinitely-stretching planets of the base game, favouring instead a single area where all the interesting stuff has been packed in. It made for a really cool change of pace to just wander off in a direction and stumble into a carefully crafted story or set piece. There’s such intentionality to Shattered Space that simply isn’t possible with the base game’s procedural generation elements, and it’s thrilling to see again since Bethesda are so good at this kind of environmental design. It also helps that the Va’ruun planet is absurdly beautiful. I'm only going to put one screenshot below, but you need to understand that I could quite easily upload around two dozen more, because the game just looks that good that I was scinstsntly screenshotting my run through it.
I think that’s the overall feeling I got playing Shattered Space. I felt lucky; fortunate to be able to experience it as it is. I find the universe of Starfield so interesting, and what they cook up with the previously mysterious Va’ruun here is super compelling. The main theme here is obviously religion, and the ups and downs of a society built dogmatically around its teachings. There’s a rot at the heart of Va’ruun society, and it’s your job to figure out where its spread started. This means the usual Bethesda dare – go around, chat to people, learn their stories and solve their problems – but since it’s a dedicated DLC, the game is able to focus its narrative efforts around a couple really important events and ideas, and what comes out of that is electric. In lieu of spoiling the whole thing, I found even the more mundane side quests to inform the greater narrative beautifully, and before long I found myself caring incredibly deeply about this city on the edge of the universe, and wanting to fix things.
I’m waffling a bit here but it’s only because I’m so passionate about it! Shattered Space is genuinely wonderful; a tour de force of emotionally resonant writing and thrilling discovery that hooked me from beginning to end. If you’re a fan of Starfield, or you’re simply intrigued, I urge you to give Shattered Space a chance. I struggle to understand why people didn’t like it. For me, it was magical.
Still Wakes The Deep
We do not get enough Scottish people in video games! The closest we often come to representation is normally medieval fantasy games, and even then it’s a sanitised version of the real thing. What the world needs is some proper Glasgow cunts kicking about, getting done in by eldritch beasts beyond the pale. So thank you, Still Wakes The Deep, for doing all that!
The game is about a collection of workers on an oil rig who accidentally mine the evil fossil fuel and release a horrifying body-morphing infestation that inflicts madness and a light case of turn-into-monster-itis on the crew. What follows is essentially the worst work shift that protagonist Caz MacLeary has ever experienced, not just trying to survive long enough to be rescued, but forced to maintain the rig and stop it from exploding, capsizing, or something worse. What gives this game a unique edge is just how Scottish it is. I’ve lived in this country for most of my life and there was Scots lingo in here even I had never encountered. It’s the deep lore, but that commitment to authenticity is precisely what makes the game easy to invest in. Everything here, the characters and the setting, feel so real, and as a result, you come to actually care about Caz and his crewmates. No matter what happens, you want to see them get out.
Especially since Caz is a man with unfinished business to attend to. He needs to be a better man, and if it takes the forces of the deep to make him become that man, then so be it. Still Wakes The Deep, despite its otherworldly implications, is a deeply personal tale that resonates. It’s as much a psychological horror game as it is a visceral one, so if you’re a fan of either type or both, it’s worth a look.
And that’s it! Check back here in a few days to hear about the games that were somehow even better than these ones! Hopefully that post will be a bit shorter, because this one took a wee minute. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you back here soon!