Games are weird again!
Don’t get us wrong, 2023 was an all-timer. We got new Zelda and Mario. Armored Core and Baldur’s Gate woke up from cryogenic sleep. Alan Wake rose from its plot in the Video Game IP Cemetery, while Street Fighter 6 acted like Street Fighter 5 had never happened. But while 2023 was an unforgettable year for iconic franchises, it wasn’t a surprising one. Nobody was underestimating Nintendo, FromSoftware, and Capcom.
2024, on the other hand, has been unpredictable! Our favorite games include a typing-based dungeon crawler, a surprisingly popular sequel in a totally different genre than its little-played predecessor, and a massive RPG where a reformed yakuza recreates Animal Crossing with perverts and garbage dumps.
This is a year for the real sickos (it’s us, we’re sickos) — the ones who feel their skin tingle and their pupils widen when they see “7/10” at the bottom of a review. This is the person who doesn’t want a pitch-perfect remake of Final Fantasy 7; they want Final Fantasy 7 tossed into a cosmic blender and funneled down their gullet.
It may be a decade before we see another year like 2023, but that’s OK by us. Without a classic entry in a beloved franchise released every month, there’s room for the new, the weird, and the unexpected.
The games on this list will be sorted in reverse chronological order, so the newest releases will always show up first. We also have a short section at the end devoted to late 2023 releases we didn’t have the time to consider for last year’s best-of list. Our latest update added Shadows of Doubt, Astro Bot, Tactical Breach Wizards, Star Wars Outlaws, World of Warcraft: The Base Within, The Crimson Diamond, Cat Quest III, Fields of Mistria, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Schim, Closer the Distance, Hades 2, Destiny 2: The Final Shape, Minishoot’ Adventures, and Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth.