The games you SHOULD have played in 2024!

[@flippedoutkyrii]

Loving that Selaco mention, the dev's change and fixlogs are longer then most dictionaries and I can't wait to see Episode 2.

[@SteelBallRun1890]

Oooo that town building mechanic in No Rest For the Wicked got my ears perked up. I love like mainhub/town evolving stuff in games.

[@flophouseplays]

It takes like 3 hours to get to, but it becomes very involved.

[@SteelBallRun1890]

@@flophouseplays Thanks Matt, will check the game out.

[@NeilMacay]

A few games that weren't shown in this vid but some of which were my personal favourites of 2024; Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth; You need to have at least played Yakuza: Like A Dragon prior for story reasons, but I thought this was great and was pretty much a straight improvement over Like A Dragon in terms of core combat. The story gets a bit messy in the later half but it's an otherwise another great game from RGG Studios. Metal Slug Tactics; This is definitely an acquired taste being a rogue lite TRPG, but I found this really addictive and kept wanting to do another run. Great pixel art and bopping soundtrack. Also as a long time Metal Slug fan, it was great to finally play something new in the series that wasn't gacha shovel-ware. Antonblast; This is one of those games that people seemingly didn't pay much attention to being released in December; but this is definitely recommended to anyone who likes Wario Land and Pizza Tower. Real fun platformer with great visual style and sound track, especially if you're sort who just likes destroying stuff lol.

[@Necromagenvi0n]

The lesson I got from here is that I really need to play more indie games. Haven't heard nothing of Dungeons of Hinterburg, No Rest For The Wicked, Muller Madjack, Selaco, and Vengaence Hunter until today.

[@JoaoAgile]

More indie games are always a good idea!

[@augustvalek]

Bad games of the year are easy to spot, but sometimes good games just fly under the radar, especially on the indie side, so I'm always thankful for lists of games that people found enjoyable. That said, I'm a GOG boy, so it breaks my heart when a lot of these are only in steam

[@theovermatt]

Mullet Madjack is a pure adrenaline surge in video game form. Literal only complaint is that I can't play it for more than like 20 minutes at a time because of stimulation overload, but goddamn are those 20 minutes incredible. It really feels like the scene of Milhouse playing Bonestorm.

[@Joe90h]

MILLHO

[@emilysong2000]

Some of my favorite games from last year (in no particular order): Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door remake Castlevania Dominus Collection Bakeru Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Emio the Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake Sonic x Shadow Generations

[@ryanwhaley5041]

I generally don’t play multiplayer but Space Marine 2’s has really hooked me. They’re mostly just additional single player content with a bit more playstyle diversity in the classes. Even if you don’t spend time leveling characters, I think each mission is well worth a playthrough as it’s essentially the other half of the single player content, even if you don’t replace the bots with other players.

[@andyf3269]

Ever since I watched him play the game I delve into the lore of war hammer 40k. I have yet to see the light of day and barley scratched the service of its immense story 😅

[@SolidSnake240]

POP The Lost Crown was definitely one of the sleeper hits of last year imo. That game is really solid and one of my favorite metroidvanias in a while.

[@archklown2]

That Balatro background music, good choice

[@reinokid]

Matt's top 10 list is a mix of big hits and lesser known gems: *YEAH, THAT MAKES SENSE*

[@ChaseMC215]

Mullet Madjack. I've not played it, but I can tell that it looks so fun. I think my favorite thing about the game is the Peace Corp Codec lady, mainly because she reminded me a bit of Asagi Igawa from the Taimanin series, the hairstyles are somewhat the same.

[@ghostmutton]

Thanks for these lesser-known recommendations. No Rest for the Wicked is one I wasn't sure about looking at the steam reviews.

[@joshuanelson6795]

It was so satisfying to see the Silent Hill 2 Remake turn out so well after so many people insisted it would be bad.

[@Joe90h]

I mean, Konami hadn't demonstrated much care for any of their IP besides direct ports for a full decade, killed Silent Hills by burning bridges with Kojima, and then handed Silent Hill to the company that made The Medium, which was really poorly written. All signs pointed to it being bad, so the community decided to not let themselves get 'appointed' so they didn't get 'disappointed'. It's cool to see Bloober Team might have genuinely taken on the criticism The Medium got and maybe they'll only keep improving from here.

[@SolidSnake240]

I mean Konami hasn't exactly done much to instill confidence in their releases so it's fair that people were super doubtful of SH Remake

[@joshuanelson6795]

@@SolidSnake240 I didn't have any faith whatsoever in Konami, but I was confident Bloober Team could pull it off. That's what I was referring to; the massive amount of backlash Bloober received leading up to release.

[@SolidSnake240]

​@@joshuanelson6795yea cuz they were associated with Konami, who already generated negative buzz due to their handling of Mgs and other games. I'm glad they were able to push out a solid game

[@theovermatt]

I'll admit to being one of those people. Konami is Konami, Bloober Team have a pretty mixed history in terms of the themes of some of their games (especially The Medium but even some of their others), and frankly the trailers for SH2R really didn't do much to make it look appealing. As far as I was concerned it was basically a guaranteed dud. I was so, SO happy to be wrong.

[@mikeosredkar8804]

Your video about Mullet Madjack got me to pick the game up, and I couldn't be happier! I hadn't even heard of the game until it came up on your channel and I fell in love. It really is an absolute blast to play.

[@PeacefulSubmission]

Prince of Persia was a great MetroidVania.

[@Uhcip]

It is. Nine Sols is also one of the best in the genre imo, but it doesn't get the same spotlight.

[@pavlotverdokhlib7627]

This year had a bunch of very PS2-style games that were released. The 2 that really stood out to me were Rakugaki (or RGKG on Steam), and my GOTY of 2024, Gori: Cuddly Carnage. Ereban was also a really neat stealth game. I'll also repeat myself: it's a 2023 game, but you should really give Nine Nights: Wolf Killer a look. It's like a Wuxia take on the PS2 Prince of Persia games, and the combat is very beat'em'up-y

[@bocosta4751]

Oh wow, The Lost Crown was 2024??? It's a great game, the platforming challenges got wild but they were so good.

[@Solh0und]

Matt, you need to do your "Hades" magic and convice Max to try out Mad Mullet Jack. It would speak to him so much.

[@LelouchRika]

Ode to Castlevania is definitely one of my favorite DLC ever. It also made me go back and play some of the previous updates because I just wanted to play the game more.

[@WillKeaton]

An important note about _Selaco,_ it's still in early access and only the first third of the game is playable.

[@simondaniel4028]

Also important note about Selaco, you can run it in GZDoomVR and voxel weapons are being put together.

[@d3structi]

You're underselling how large the Castlevania content is in Vampire Survivors. By the dev team's own estimates, it's around 75% the size of the original base game.

[@PKzale]

Hey man thanks for sharing, gonna check out mullet madjack, selaco and crow country they look right up my alley!

[@grime-ndofficial9894]

I watched that video on mullet mad Jack and although it looks fun I had a migraine just from watching the video

[@flophouseplays]

As stated, you can turn off the life draining mechanic, so you can wander through the levels at your own pace with no need to keep running.

[@crispin5741]

It would be wild to have a Jackal DLC for Vampire Survivors.. It would be strangely easy to toss a jeep, and some soldiers, and vehicles in there..

[@DrButthugger]

Great list, also happy to hear you’re working out! Any thoughts on anticipated 2025 releases on your radar, like how warhammer was your most anticipated 2024 game?

[@explodingtoads]

Excellent list Mr.McSkeleman

[@Ikumot]

26:54 The Takeover One? There a sequel in the works?

[@SolidSnake240]

My ears perked up when I heard that. Really underrated beatemup

[@Haysey_Draws]

I'd love some physical editions of Mouthwashing and Mullet Madjack! Also need some love for Sorry We're Closed, super SUPER great indie game!

[@thewal1ofsleep]

Considering the fact that so many gamers conflate game length with value for money, I understand that Bloober chose to extend the length of SH2R in attempt to justify the price. I think SH2R is a great game, but I think the devs could have restrained themselves and trimmed a solid 6 hours. My first (and likely only) playthrough took about 22 hours and it felt far too long. However, I got the labyrinth puzzle bug and spent a good couple hours trying to figure out the issue before I realized it was a bug, so some of my playtime was artificially inflated. I just think they game should have been 14 hours long at the absolute most.

[@joshuanelson6795]

I loved the remake, but I maintain that the original has better pacing.

[@BoomstarPrime]

The best thing that could happen to ubisoft is someone competent takes all their ips. I think trained chimps could do better.

[@docterfantazmo]

Gonna get back into gaming this year, me thinks. Deffo will check out a lot of this list.

[@Uhcip]

If you liked Lost Crown or even just Sekiro then Nine Sols is worth checking out. Probably the most underappreciated game of 2024.

[@nickgarcia1292]

Games brutal for me. I am very near the last boss and am dragging my feet on it because I've heard horror stories of it's difficulty. Loved the game tho, I usually bail on games that hard but this one got me hooked for sure.

[@nickgarcia1292]

Also if you don't mind some tricky platforming sections bo path of the teal lotus is another very good game.

[@Uhcip]

@@nickgarcia1292 I like Teal Lotus, just not nearly as much. Some good platforming.

[@pariah076]

A game I've been loving despite being it being in early access: Witchfire. I bounce off of every roguelike and roguelite (even Hades). But I am addicted to Witchfire. It is one of those games where you keep saying "just one more run." Also, roguelite aspext is very lite. Mostly, you keep everything you're earning including Louisville progression weapons upgrades, etc. It is absurdly amazing

[@claytonrios1]

2024 was easily the worst year for Ubisoft in general but I will admit that Prince of Persia The Lost Crown was the one good game that Ubisoft had. Too bad that the team got split up afterwards.

[@Casanuda]

Gotta split up a team that makes good games, this is Ubisoft! Wet paste games are their main export.

[@NeilMacay]

The last Ubisoft game I had played before The Lost Crown was Rayman Legends (also made by the same team). It was the first time in about 10+ years they released something that actually interested me. I played the Beyond Good and Evil remaster this year too. They've unfortunately become too reliant on the same design formula for their AAA titles while not giving enough room for more creative projects like Lost Crown was.

[@Alexalicious]

That and Outlaws

[@johnellis3383]

Vampire Survivors is such an addictive game and the Castlevania DLC is PERFECT!

[@archer6979]

The creepiest part of mouthwashing is the character telepathic talking.

[@RanMouri82]

The idea of dungeon crawling as a normal activity reminds me of Solo Leveling.

[@neddy42]

Glad I’m not the only one who loves Crow Country but constantly forgets if it’s country or county.

[@DeckardLA2019]

Glad to see a Crow Country mention - that was my GOTY hands-down. Selaco was a close second

[@deltaprime3509]

I like what you did for this list nice!!! 👍

[@eth102]

Ah yes, the add to wish list video. Time to prepare multiple indie games to buy in bulk again.

[@Cman0451]

Off the top of my head, my favorite games from 2024 would have to be: Astro Bot Marvel Rivals FF7 Rebirth Zelda Echoes of Wisdom MvC Collection Sonic x Shadow Super Mario Party Jamboree Another Crab's Treasure Cult of the Lamb (the Pilgrim DLC was 2024, right? It counts!)

[@nickgarcia1292]

Have yall played nine sols? It's brutally hard in some spots but if you like we'll made difficult searcha action games it's highly regarded

[@steelcurtain187]

Very nice list bud

[@garken30]

So many fantastic game only on pc, I gotta invest in one very soon

[@peterbutterjelly114]

one of the best parts of Mouthwashing has to be all of the fanartists coming together to show their absolute disdain for Jimmy 😌👍🏽

[@dreamshade]

In terms of "any survivors game requires some amount of thought!" I played three other survivors games last year that worked pretty well. Pesticide Not Included is a simple survivors game where you're a frog on a farm killing lots of bugs. The neat mechanic is that the enemies don't drop XP. The enemies drop coins, which you spend on seeds, and then you need to hang out close enough to your farm to water the seeds and grow them into XP drops. It adds just enough choices to make the game interesting. Picayune Dreams borrows some horror elements from 8-bit-looking stuff like Omori and Earthbound. It has a set path of killing bullet-hell bosses while unlocking a fucked up little story. It's solid and effective for a few dollars. And HoloCure is a free fan game based on the Hololive vtuber franchise, which is embarrassing weeb nonsense to play, but it's also up to something like 55 characters, and it has a small house-building mode and a casino now for playing with coins in downtime. It's a lot of content for zero dollars.

[@simondaniel4028]

Selaco in gzdoomvr is wild.

[@LAZERMAC87]

It’s a couple years old now, but if you haven’t played Inscryption…

[@dontgetmarried]

For me, Helldivers 2 was the most fun I've had since freaking Halo 2!!! It actually beat Halo 3 for me (in terms of pure fun per seconds played)

[@Casanuda]

Thank you for acknowleging the best Indiana Jones game that will ever be made. Sophia Hapgood is GoAT companion, unless the novels top her somehow.

[@dycebastion]

I chose anger foot over mullet mad jack. I’m not sure I made the right decision

[@paulhancock9942]

VOID STRANGER

[@kuatolives6190]

Vengeance Hunters🔥🔥🔥

[@ji_ji_]

glad to see that marvel ultimate alliance showed up

[@prestonowens4594]

Man, I need to get a gaming PC. Xbox seems to be dropping the ball on releases lately. What’s the point of owning all these developers and not letting them make cool games?

[@Slow_riot_]

No UFO 50😢

[@howlingwolf7280]

Whoa whoa whoa. Where are all the games as a service, battle pass and gatcha games? Those poor AAA money suits that will be crying into their fancy silk pillows. Matt you’ve been gotten at by big indie haven’t you?

[@Smartieboi]

Ufo 50 is my number 1 for this year bang for your Buck is an understatement

[@JudgementNutter]

Matt, what if they add Cyclops to Marvel Rivals and he's really good?

[@emperormegaman3856]

Matt's hatred of Cyclops would overshadow any gameplay benefits.

[@RockyLobster25]

I love Mouthwashing ♥

[@mambaregime]

Lotta streamers have changed.. Good or Bad Matty M has kept it solid/consistent since going solo. Now when we gonna get an extra long Treasure or Smilebit "Wha Happun" episode chump?

[@chrisdemetriou8593]

The weirdest thing about Rivals is that people like that game by hating Overwatch. I've never heard someone just say "I like Marvel Rivals". People always say "I like Marvel Rivals because Overwatch f**ing sucks". For some indescribable reason, people who haven't played Overwatch in almost a decade have harbored so much hate for it since the end of the honeymoon period, that it seems to have proppeled Rivals to success almost single-handedly.

[@Joe90h]

Overwatch was a cultural phenomenon with a drastic falloff as every character that came out felt like a punishment to the community for finding a fun strategy, rather than a natural evolution of the game's meta. And I'm not just saying that because I was a Moira main and Baptiste basically deleted all desire I had to keep playing because you basically had no counter for his ult so had to avoid him like the plague.

[@relightrobot1543]

A lot of the resentment that people hate OW over was simply because they established crutch characters and then removed their usefulness. OW2 is a better game than a massive majority of the time that OW1 was but it is looked at with rose coloured glasses. You have players that play Mercy expecting to be just as impactful as an Ana (don't get pissy my highest played is actually Mercy), just because they held LMB. They eliminated braindead stuns and the overall loss of control in the game. People don't like that. They like power imbalance and fantasies. Nobody wants to learn Tracer they want to freeze you and take 5 seconds to line up a headshot. OW2 was a better game than OW1 was for a long period of time and despite the fact that Jeff is a meme when the game was under his guidance after launch it turned into a pile of garbage because of their balance decisions and the directions they took. We sat in GOATS and Moth for AGES and nothing changed. Now I get the bitching about everything that is adjacent to OW2's launch such as being disappointment over loot/monetization/ethics etc. That's totally fine. But stop putting OW1 on a pedestal when it only got those passes because the game was new. The game at current is a better actual game. Jeff Kaplan was a horrible director post launch and the game suffered badly under his watch. Half the gameplay complaints I see online nowadays makes me wonder what kind of people are playing the game. Don't get me wrong, I'm fucking bad at the game, but a ton of the balance complaints were completely unhinged. Or the anger directed at everyone but Jeff when he was the one who refused increasing the team capacity and somehow made Bobby Kotick of all people look like the reasonable one. (And I can't comment of Rivals at all as I haven't played the game. I also HAVE moved on from OW2 for what it is worth as well as shooters as a whole, especially with so many embracing horrible auto-aim decisions.)

[@yellowprime8491]

Yeaup, it's like Star Wars fans have to piss on some other SW content when they find something they like.

[@kenterminateddq5311]

No mention of any Nintendo Switch exclusives, McMuscles?

[@flophouseplays]

I honestly didn't play very many, and those I did, didn't super grab me. Not to say there wasn't quality software released on it, of course.

[@nathanielpoppycock9827]

Second!