Game Informer's (Belated) Top 10 Games Of 2024 Awards

Every time we boot up Helldivers 2 with a party of friends, we drop onto various alien planets to do… something. There are objectives – kill bugs and robots, collect data, and extract resources – but we honestly could not tell you what these are in any given mission. Though the Helldivers have goals to accomplish during missions (with a post-completion grade to go with it), the fun Arrowhead Game Studio’s sequel provides is found not in these objectives, but in the shenanigans that happen while attempting to accomplish them. Through fiery blitzes of alien raids, we unload bombing run stratagems, call down mechs and rocket launchers, and unleash near nuclear-sized bombs on the battlefield, laughing maniacally as our fellow Helldivers realize too late they’re in the danger zone. Helldivers 2 succeeds as a well-made extraction shooter that uses great battle pass “warbonds” and community efforts to advance an ongoing war to create one of the most exciting live-service games of the year. But it succeeds even more as the most fun (and funniest) cooperative game of 2024.

Marvel Rivals is the first game to wholeheartedly attempt to fuse the hero shooter genre with a major superhero brand, and while the two are a natural match, Marvel Rivals is impressively more than the sum of its parts. Seeing heroes clash is fun in its own right – watching the Hulk leap into the sky to grab Iron Man or seeing Doctor Strange open a portal for Scarlet Witch and Black Panther is still thrilling dozens of hours in – but the game is much deeper than its high-profile aesthetic. Queue times are lightning fast, an impressive feat for a game that launched to millions of players. The bright and striking visual design offers interesting new takes on classic characters and locales. And the playable roster of over three dozen heroes is almost completely competitively viable, keeping matches varied and fresh. Despite releasing just a few weeks before 2024's conclusion, it made a strong impression, and we expect it to stick around for years to come.

From the moment you walk up to the first puzzle in Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, you are already fully absorbed; and you don’t even know what mystery you’re working toward unravelling. The game just drips with a moody style and rewards thorough investigation of every corner of the strange mansion you find yourself exploring. Every document works its way into the hundreds of rewarding puzzle solutions, and at the end of the experience, everything you’ve learned comes into focus to deliver a fulfilling and surprising narrative conclusion. Lorelei is a game that’s difficult to put down and one you immediately miss after the experience concludes.

Following the success of Final Fantasy VII Remake in 2020, Square Enix expanded the scope of its follow-up entry in the Remake trilogy exponentially. Taking the story far beyond the walls of Midgar, Rebirth moves the series structure into the open-world realm to great effect. Going through a region, completing its avalanche of sidequests, and meeting the game’s colorful cast before moving the iconic story forward establishes a terrific gameplay loop that follows the party to its fateful end. And for longtime fans, seeing the events play out with modern visuals while rearranged versions of the original’s beloved soundtrack orchestrate your journey is a treat from the start of Rebirth. After closing out this second act of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy, we’re itching for the third entry to see how this modernized story plays out.

Across its 12-hour runtime, 1000xResist explores themes of generational trauma, immigration, authoritarian governments, grief, and about a dozen others with deftness and nuance nearly unheard of in modern gaming. That these themes are conveyed through a story about alien invasion, a world-ending plague, and a society of clones is unexpected, but after completing the game, it's clear it couldn't have been done any other way. The era-jumping timeline allows the player to see every side of a given issue, showing how suffering can be cyclical, in both families and systems of government. Boasting heartfelt voice acting, intricately crafted dialogue, and stellar sci-fi character and environment designs, 1000xResist is a narrative experience like no other.

Developer Billy Basso’s Animal Well expertly exists among a collection of genres. It functions as a satisfying platformer and Metroid-inspired action game, but it is also a shockingly deep puzzle game. Who or what you are and why you’ve ended up in the titular Animal Well is never made clear, but finding new tools to help you explore and solve its deep puzzles is consistently enthralling. You can finish the game and see its finale without losing yourself in the adventure, but the real joy of the experience, arguably, comes from digging into the game’s community and seeing just how deep the well truly goes.

Prince of Persia has struggled to find its place in the years beyond its heyday. Ubisoft Montpellier didn’t try to revive the series in the way we’d expect, instead returning to its 2D roots to create the best Metroidvania of the year and a true standout in the increasingly overcrowded genre. With smart features like the ability to drop a screenshot on the map to help you return to it later (hopefully something we’ll see adopted in other games) and excellent post-launch quality-of-life updates, the game is as approachable as it is fun. Engaging and dynamic combat with a parry that never gets old, excellent platforming, a vibrant visual style, and a story that uniquely doesn’t put you in the shoes of the titular prince, The Lost Crown is a game worth celebrating today, tomorrow, and onward. It’s a shame the team behind it was callously disbanded after delivering near-perfection, though, robbing them of the chance to build upon this exemplary foundation. But hopefully, the people behind it see the praise this game gets as more players get their hands on it.

Metaphor: ReFantazio’s elevator pitch is “Persona in a fantasy setting,” but that discounts everything the core Persona development team accomplished with this new IP. Using lessons learned from decades working on that iconic RPG series, Metaphor: ReFantazio moves forward various Persona mechanics like the calendar system, turn-based combat, and social simulation while adding an intricate jobs system and a road-trip backdrop to the story. And with a politically charged narrative that shines a light on mental health, tribalism, and social change (not to mention a fantastic cast and menacing antagonist), we were left thinking about our journey through the Kingdom of Euchronia long after we rolled credits.

To play Balatro is to obsess over Balatro. A single run of this brilliant poker-themed roguelike can quickly turn into several. Minutes melt into an hour or more as your score multiplies into the hundreds of thousands with each carefully constructed hand played. Nothing beats the rush of watching your synergized lineup of Joker cards pop off effects in succession to shatter a round's score quota, making you feel unstoppable as the meter erupts into flames. That is, until you hit a boss blind sporting a debilitating stipulation that unravels your entire strategy. But even these crushing defeats do little to dampen the enthusiasm to start runs anew.

Arguably, Balatro’s biggest success is that you don’t need to understand or even enjoy Poker to become hooked. The game is ultimately about assembling high-scoring hands and bolstering those cards with power-ups in the form of creatively designed Joker cards, powerful Tarot cards, risky Spectral cards, and more. Using multiple decks sporting unique conditions adds even more replayability while encouraging players to concoct new tactics; Balatro is excellent at rewarding multitudes of strategies, especially in its unlockables. Balatro is an ingenious and exquisitely designed surprise that kept us chasing our highest scores throughout 2024. We still have trouble putting it down for long.

Astro Bot emphatically proves that Nintendo hasn’t cornered every good idea in the oft-neglected 3D platformer genre. This joyous adventure is platforming nirvana, boasting inventive stage design, a gorgeous presentation, and perfectly tuned controls. Developer Team Asobi has crafted the PS5’s best exclusive to date, successfully showcasing the platform’s capabilities while raising the bar for its contemporaries.

The little bot’s previous strong outings, Rescue Mission and Playroom, feel like dress rehearsals building up to this exuberant third act. Leaping through dozens of eye-popping worlds never fails to make us smile, and traversal feels as good as it looks thanks to the effective and playful use of the DualSense’s haptic feedback features. Every stage offers a cool hook or surprise, whether we’re stomping around as a water-soaked kaiju sponge or playing an abridged reimagining of a beloved PlayStation title. Whenever we think Astro Bot could peter out of ideas, it lobs another neat twist on its mechanics, making it feel like a bottomless well of creativity.

Though it achieved this before, it remains impressive how Astro Bot’s interactive tour through PlayStation’s history feels like an endearing celebration rather than a commercial. An impressively deep roster of cameo bots representing a multitude of game franchises, iconic and forgotten, offers the perfect reward for completing a fun platforming gauntlet. Everything about Astro Bot feels expertly tuned to deliver maximum entertainment at the highest quality, and sometimes a superb video game just needs to be unabashedly fun. We can confidently say that no title this year kept a smile plastered to our faces more than Astro Bot.