2024 has been a strange one. If you look at what actually launched this year, it's a perfectly decent roster of games: Helldivers 2, Balatro, Dragon's Dogma 2, Shadow of the Erdtree, Sins of a Solar Empire 2, Stalker 2, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Path of Exile 2. Lots of good things in this list.
A few of them even all-time greats. But for me, it overall felt pretty subdued. Boring, even.
At least until this last part of the year, when we've enjoyed a run of interesting stuff. This left me with plenty of time to delve back into my library of older games. Not much older, for the most part, but at least games that didn't come out in 2024.
First of all, there's all my live service diversions. As always, I'm a sucker for MMOs and their ilk, so I've been dividing my time between Final Fantasy 14 and Guild Wars 2 a lot. I got back into WoW, too, but burned out like I always do—though it took longer than usual this time.
I also quit and then returned to Star Wars: The Old Republic, started playing DC Universe Online again, and got heavily into Warframe. For years now, GW2 has been a regular thing I've played with Phil, our global editor-in-chief, and a couple of friends, and I'm still smitten with it. Though I do have to suffer mockery for my determination to play every single story bit in sequence.
ArenaNet keeps putting out new stuff, so I'm always catching up, but it's worth it. The quest and world design remains the genre's best, and boy does it .