What I played in 2024

So what did I play in 2024?

Looking at this list of what I played last year, it feels like 2024 was something of a backlog year for me. Real life factors meant that more time was spent on a laptop, and my gaming PC was aging out fast. The trusty Nvidia 1080 machine is still trucking as an edit station, and I upgraded to a 4060 last year, so 2025 should feature some more modern games. Yeah, right. 

Inquisitor Martyr

I am a sucker for WH40k games. Good thing there are a lot of them then. Neocore have continued support for Inquisitor Marty admirably, with the Hierophant class DLC coming out in November - not bad for a game that first released 7 years ago. This time I ran a tech priest build that focussed on summons (not my usual playstyle for an ARPG), and had a good time with it. I am not a hardcore ARPG person (not played Diablo 4 beyond the demo nor Path of Exile) but this one fills a pretty sweet niche for me. It’s fun to kick back with a controller and watch the screen fill with explosions. The summons type build is less demanding and requires less micro management. Whilst some get a kick of deep diving the systems to create game breaking builds, I am content to follow a guide and amble through the campaign. The only thing that makes it better is listening to the Guillaume David Mechanicus OST whilst playing. 

Steam world heist

Ok, so I am late to the party. Really late. 9 years late to be precise. I found a lot to enjoy in this 2D tactical shooter that reminds me a little of Worms, because you are trying to finely aim shots and predict ricochet to your advantage. The game really evoked the Xbox 360 for me, and I don’t know why, because it was issued on iOS, Switch and Steam. It reminded me of the 2D arcade games from that PS3/360 era, when interesting 2D stuff was getting made by indie developers, like PixelJunk Eden. To be clear, interesting 2D stuff is always getting made by indie developers, I think I was just more aware of it then. 

SteamWorld Heist sees you tackle a series of missions where you must check off some objectives via the medium of turn based combat. Up until the final mission, it was not overly demanding, and then I failed to get past the final mission. My play time stands at 10 hours, and I don’t feel there is much more in it than that, also worth noting the game is priced accordingly and can regularly be found in steam sales for a couple of quid. Could be a nice distraction to make a plane journey go faster.

Project Zomboid 10 years later 

I think I write about Zomboid once a year so I will try and keep this short. I found myself doing some dog sitting this year, and to pass the time I decided to finish watching The Walking Dead, having fallen off somewhere around 2013. The 10 years later mod for Project Zomboid was a nice accompaniment here, switching the setting to 10 years after the outbreak which dramatically changes the early game loop of loot food > get fuel > acquire generator. Now all the food is gone, fuel is harder to come by, buildings are eroded and damaged, it has a wonderful “last man on earth” feel. With Build 42 approaching stable release, I am sure this game will be back on next year's list in another form as well.

Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries

MW5M is one of those games that is really brought to life by the modding community. It's interesting that this is also true for HBS’s Battletech game, which exists in the same fictional universe. Having over 100 novels written about your universe may be a blessing or a curse for developers, but for the mod makers and Battletech enthusiasts they provide a rich vein to be mined for content creation. Having played it first in 2023, this year I went back to replay it with Mods. Mods like:

• Yet Another mechlab / Weapon / Etc series, that dramatically expand the Mechs and weapons you can use, and fight against
• War FX and Von Biomes - to make the environments more diverse and pretty
• Battlegrid orders - allowing you to better control your AI lancemates

I found these quality of life mods to greatly enhance the experience. It does not make the game deeper, as the base combat remains the same, but it ads more detail. Especially being able to control the lance mates, as now you can do pincer attacks, or have your lance stand off at long range and provide fire support. There is a bit of learning the game here, as if you give a big support mech 6 long range weapons and was tiny short range weapon, the AI will always try to close to short range to fire their small laser (the Battle tech equivalent of “drive closer, I want to hit them with my sword!). In conclusion, MW5M is still fun, and as the developer continued to add DLC last year, I may play more (or perhaps dip in to the clans sequel when it goes on Steam sale).

Hades

I well remember everyone talking about Hades when it came out in 2020, and how some people got obsessed with it. I think it was the roguelike tag that initially put me off. I was reading a book about ancient Greek mythology, and thought this game might be a good accompaniment. You can probably tell by the types of games I play that skill based gaming is not of huge interest to me. I like learning systems, but being able to master precise physical inputs (to this day I still cannot reliably produce a hadouken in Street Fighter 2) has often been challenging for me. With that in mind, Hades was a bit of a learning curve, but I was pleased to discover features designed to ease players like me through the experience, specifically the god mode mechanic. This does not make you invulnerable as the god mode cheats of yore did, instead it adds 1% damage resistance every time you die. So you still have to play the game (forcing you to learn the systems), but you get a little tougher each time you do. I think this is really thoughtful game design. Much is written elsewhere by others about the story of Hades so I won’t go into it here. Suffice to say the cameos from the cast of gods and heroes from the Greek pantheon were entertaining (Who knew Sisyphus was such a nice guy?!). I really enjoyed my time with the game, it took me about 70 attempts to escape but then the floodgates opened and several more attempts followed. I am nowhere near 100% with it but think I am done for now, at 70 odd hours in. This was probably my most pleasant surprise of the year in terms of games I played.

Battle brothers

This is rapidly becoming my “I have time to kill on a laptop” game. 2024 saw me dip into mods for the first time (nothing too heavy, just some quality of life stuff) and up the difficulty to veteran. I still don’t feel like I have mastered Battle Brothers yet, but I enjoy spending time with it. 25% of my time overall in 2024, according to Steam Wrapped. That's probably a couple of hundred hours. I think the thing I like the most about it is the ability to pick it up and put it down quickly, which suits me when I am on a laptop. Like Inquisitor Martyr, the game received an update recently, and will probably continue to appear here.

Rocket League 

The best game to play while drinking beer. That's all I have to add.

Project Lazarus 

It’s hard to talk about Project Lazarus without mentioning Vampire Survivors. Auto Survival Shooter or Bullet Hell are some of the labels people have tried to apply to these games, but nothing makes it clearer to me than saying “It’s like Vampire Survivors”. The problem with this is that the original (henceforth referred to as VS) is a bloody hard act to follow. Project Lazarus sees a switch from 2D to 3D but not much else changes, you stomp around in various Mechs, shooting aliens on some godsforsaken planet that wants colonising. It feels pretty undercooked, lacking a layer of polish or finish. I guess, after 6 hours I felt I was done. I wonder if deep rock survivors is any good?

Into the breach

Another game that should be right up my alley that I have come to 6 years after release. This has many of the things I like (turn based combat, light RPG elements) but it just failed to grab me. I think this is more about me than the game itself. I have to be in the right headspace to learn new systems. It continues to amaze me that there are games that I have played hundreds of hours of that I don’t fully understand the systems of (Arma 3, Hades, Inquisitor Martyr to name three). I will probably come back to Into the breach and give it another try in the future.

PUBG

Like rocket league, i don’t feel I have much to add versus previous years entries on this one. I dip in and out of PUBG occasionally. While the heady heyday has passed, I think the devs have done a reasonable job of keeping it alive. Microtransactions are not for me, but that's what they had to do so good luck and godspeed.

Among us 

I do not like Among us at all. This is the most stressful game I have played (on par with VCOH 1v1 automatching circa 2010). Playing with friends and a microphone where you attempt to deceive or accuse people you like is straight up not my idea of a good time. Ok the tasks were not too bad. Overall I think I fundamentally don’t get Among Us. It’s been super popular with young people for the last few years though, and maybe that's a good thing. In five years time will we have a swathe of people who enter the workforce with a hypertrained ability to detect lies and bullshit? One can only hope.

No Mans Sky

Oddly, 2016’s most controversial game of the year is my 2024 game of the year, and that is in no small part thanks to the Worlds update. Hello Games should be lauded for what they have achieved, turning an ambitious but flawed experience into one of the most unique games around today. I had planned to dip back in, having not touched it since 2018, spend a few hours checking it out and then move on to something else. Instead I ploughed over 200 hours in, did all of the content I could get my hands on, and played solidly for 3 months excluding almost all other games. Lot’s to talk about here so lets dive in.

My memory of the base game from 2018 was pretty hazy, So I decided to start from scratch. Hello Games have added so much content this can initially be overwhelming, but the good news is the order in which you do things does not matter. If you accidentally flew halfway across the galaxy away from a quest? That's fine, just restart it locally. The difficulty systems can be tweaked to your desire, turning a radioactive rainstorm from a life threatening event to a sulphur tinted filter effect you can choose to ignore. I set about exploring and trading straight away, building a polar base, starting to farm materials, pushing on to the centre of the galaxy.

For me, acquiring new ships was a major driver to progress in the game. I needed lots of money so that if I saw a unique ship, I could purchase it from the owner. I hunted for salvaged ships, repairing them and then trading them in. Then I realised you could fabricate a ship, and started salving and trading for parts. The multiplayer aspect is constant but not distracting. I never ended up fighting any other players in my time, although I mostly had my settings set to forbid PVP. Hanging out at the nexus, some kind internet stranger gifted me the parts for the iron vulture hauler, which was only available as a reward for an expedition I had not done. Other players were always willing to wave hello, or at the least just ignore you, which was fine by me.

The expedition system was a revelation as well. By my count Hello games released five expeditions in 2024, on top of the 11 existing ones. A timed event that sees you start over from scratch with a vastly accelerated levelling arc, they introduced new mechanics and were really enjoyable. You have a checklist of tasks, a time to finish them, and rewards at each stage. At the end of the expedition you transfer back to your main save, laden down with rewards, including bringing back a ship and a weapon from the investigation. The ships were often unique rewards that you could not get anywhere else. The new mechanics introduced, such as the fishing in the Aquarius expedition, also transfer back into the main game. Hello games are keeping a steady drip of interesting content that will keep players coming back.

The timed nature of the expeditions, and a need to travel, led me to an unusual situation - opting to play the game streaming over GeForce now. I was pleasantly surprised at how well this worked, although its worth noting the combat in NMS is simplistic and no element of twitch control is required. I found I was able to settle down with a laptop and complete all of the things I needed to do to finish the current expedition. I have no plans to keep streaming through GeForce Now, but as a stop gap solution for a game where input latency is not a big deal, it is a perfectly acceptable solution. Overall, I immensely enjoyed my time with NMS, playing hours of King Tubby and Scientist on Spotify, and pootling round the universe mining, trading and exploring. If you haven't played it, its well worth a look.

Dwarf fortress with DF hack

I started playing Dwarf Fortress soon after the steam release, and it keeps dragging me back in as new dwarven engineering projects beckon, or because I see someone else's cool fortress on reddit. Adding DF hack has led to huge quality of life improvements, with tools like GUI-Design allowing me to easily draw circles, and AutoButcher meaning I no longer need to manually manage the levels of farm animals (why does our farm suddenly have hundreds of donkeys? Oh, right). Along the way I have been hauling magma in iron minecarts to make magma forges, undertaking a breeding program for giant grizzly war bears, and building a multi level open air temple complex in the cavern layer. No other game I know can make 3 hours go by in the blink of an eye. Dwarf Fortress is still good.

A footnote, and some more notes

I try to publish this blog in the first half of the following year, but it looks like we are slipping to August this year - it’s been a busy one. My gaming habits are leading me to play less and less new games, so these will probably become shorter, and perhaps gravitate to other things like books and music (or whatever else I am interested in at the time). So in that spirit, here is what I read in 2024:

Red seas under red skies by Scott Lynch

Second book in the Gentlemen Bastards series, follow up to The Lies of Locke Lamora. Think Oliver Twist meets Oceans Eleven in a more serious fantasy world like Discworld. While book one is city bound, this one sees the characters embark on a nautical, practical escapade. Grim and dark in parts, it kept me engaged.

Mythos The Greek Myths Retold by Stephen Fry Greek history had pretty much passed me by aside from Dina’s love of Jason and the Argonauts, and Clash of the Titan’s (the Herryhausen originals mind). So I am in no position to speak to the accuracy of Fry’s work, but I enjoyed its structure, the author's asides, and will probably pick up the next one in his series at some point.

The Paksenarrion series by Elizabeth Moon
(Sheepfarmer's Daughter, Divided Allegiance, Oath of Gold, Oath of Fealty, Kings of the North, Echoes of Betrayal, Limits of Power, Crown of Renewal) I ran through eight of these fantasy books pretty quickly. The first 3 are fantastic, concerning the titular sheepfarmers daughter, Paksenarrion, and her time in a mercenary company. Gritty, realistically written from a female perspective, and avoiding the tropes and potholes of the genre. In the latter 5 books, Paks is more of a supporting character, and the story is not as gripping as the first three books, yet I found it still eminently readable and enjoyed my time with them. Gritty like Game of Thrones, but with way less incest and fraticide.  

The republic of thieves by Scott Lynch

Book three of the Gentlemen Bastards. Back to the city then, and this one’s all about elections, which was timely given what else was happening in the world as I read this one. Lynch keeps the quality high, its probably my 3rd favourite book in the series, but not by much - the quality across the three I have read is consistently high. I felt I needed a palate cleanser between book two and three, and felt the same again when I finished. It's like an incredibly rich desert, delicious but you couldn't eat a lot of it. So I am taking a break from these at the moment, but I am definitely going to read book 4 at some point.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson (reread)

Neal Stephenson books are some of my favourites, especially Snow Crash. Don’t even get me started on his essay “In the beginning was the command line”. It's odd then that I haven't read that many of them. Seveneves shot to instant classic status when I read it. A sci-fi novel concerning the end of the world, it has elements of Andy Weir’s The Martian (survival in space), as well as politics, genetics, evolution and more. I opted to reread it in 2024, and found myself staggered again at how good of a book it is. If you have not read it, you ought to do yourself a favour.

Blindness by Jose Saramago

I get book suggestions from Reddit, I think this one came up in a discussion of dystopian novels. I was not prepared for quite how dystopian this one would be. Genuinely upsetting, reading it made me anxious in a way that I cannot remember another book making me feel. Is it good? Yes. Would I recommend it to you? Only if I felt it was something that you wanted. If you are looking for a book to mess you up, this could be it.

Old mans war series by by John Scalzi
(Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony) This sci-fi series is about as tonally opposite to blindness as you can get. Starting as a military tale about old people being given young cloned bodies to fight in wars on other planets, it does not seem to take itself too seriously. The first book is OK, but I felt myself losing interest as it went on, and it felt predictable and without much sense of jeopardy. Lightweight and inoffensive, I am sure the mooted Netflix adaption will do well. I am not planning to read any more of these though.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

I read this as a follow up to Bury my heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. I reckon it’s always good to read the book before you see the film so you can see what they got wrong (although I still have not seen the film). A historical procedural, I found it kept me engaged and I learned a few things I did not know before.

Roadside picnic by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky

OK, now we are talking! 1970’s science fiction from Russia. This is one of those strange cases where you may have heard of the franchise, but you have probably not heard of the book. This book coined the term “stalker” in Russian, which went on to become the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. videogame franchise. The novel itself is a great read, although different to a lot of other stuff I have read. Set in the aftermath of an alien visitation to earth where no one saw the aliens, just the effects and detritus of their passing, to me this novel sits comfortably with other science fiction greats of its era like John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids.

The Expanse series by Jame S.A. Corey

(Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate, Cibola Burn, Nemesis Games, Babylon's Ashes, Persepolis Rising, Tiamat's Wrath, Leviathan Falls) Occasionally I read a book, and completely gripped, absorbed in the story. This is what happened when I read Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (the nom de plume for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). I immediately read through the remaining eight books in sequence. One of the most impressive things is that the quality starts high and stays high throughout. Mixing hard scifi, military fiction, politics and a detective novel, the series follows the crew of the Rocinante through a series of jaw dropping events, and the political fallout accompanying them. I have not watched the TV show (it went off Prime just as I became interested in it), but I will get round to it one of these days. If you haven't read these and you don’t mind a bit of Scifi, I can't recommend them enough.