Best video games of 2024: Why we loved these 8 titles, from College Football 25 to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
As 2024 winds down and 2025 looms on the horizon, it's time to look back at the year that was in pop culture. We asked our staff to pick their favorite movies, music and the best television from the past year, and now we are sharing it with you.
The rules are pretty simple: the film/game/album just needed to be released in the calendar year 2024 to be considered. For television, just one episode had to air for the first time over the last year. To be clear, this list isn't necessarily the best of the year, it's our favorites.
This last year was a fun one for games, as we saw the return of one of the biggest franchises with College Football 25.
Here are some of our favorites of the year.
1. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
The second game in the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy, Rebirth delivers on the iconic and emotional moments of the original with so much heart. Rebirth jumps straight into its open world with aplomb, throwing mini games and collectables at you left and right (shoutout Queen’s Blood). Seeing locations like Cosmo Canyon and the Gold Saucer — and hearing the new remixed music — in full HD glory was an experience I won’t forget. The Final Fantasy VII remake project still has one chapter left to tell, but Rebirth was yet another strong entry in this series.
-- Mary Clarke
2. Astro Bot
With Astro Bot, we finally get Sony's sublime spin on the Mario platforming formula. It's both a dynamic homage to a wide-spanning past of PlayStation characters and a look at the future centered around creativity, ingenuity, and simplicity over 80 mind-bending levels. I not only think it's the Game of the Year, but it should also be in the conversation for the game of the decade.
-- Robert Zeglinski
3. Dragon Ball Z: Sparking Zero
For the first time in a long time, I felt like a kid again in 2024. Sparking Zero took me back to the days when I was playing the DBZ Budokai series, just fighting against the CPU and enjoying my life. This game isn't perfect, but it gets the job done. It's so fun.
-- Mike Sykes
4. Balatro
Balatro is poker on steroids with a groovy soundtrack to match. If you know how to play poker, you can play Balatro, but winning a run and eventually mastering the game will take careful manipulation of your deck and picking the right Joker cards to boost your score to new heights. Balatro is a simple, but incredibly addictive, game that will change the way you think about poker.
-- Clarke
5. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
In Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Ubisoft gives us an incredible take on a Metroidvania world. The difference between its exploits and more challenging recent games like Hollow Knight is the quality of player life. Yes, you're still slowly building Sargon's strength, exploring, and backtracking through every nook and cranny of Mount Qaf while completing death-defying (but smooth) platforming. But this game doesn't punish people for playing it. It actually does everything in its power to keep pushing you forward, to help you finish it without holding your hand, and that's so appreciated in a gaming genre that's already hard enough.
-- Zeglinski
6. MLB The Show 24
I buy The Show every year, so I'm obviously a fan of the series, but I can say the look and feel of the gameplay in 2024 was more updated than usual over the previous year. So much so it was actually a little weird at first. Over time, though, I came to like the new version and this easily became my most played game of the year. Quite simply, this is the best sports simulation game on the market.
-- Prince Grimes
7. Persona 3 Reload
I never beat the original Persona 3 when I was younger, but the 2024 remake — Persona 3 Reload — was everything I was hoping it’d be. The Persona formula of dungeon crawling RPG mixed with teenage life simulator remains a very addicting mix and the quality of life additions here made it all the sweeter. Reload is bursting with color and life, with the characters, music, and gameplay all incredibly memorable aspects. And when the game takes a serious turn in its later acts, it treats the subject matter with the respect it deserves, culminating in an ending that tugged quite strongly at my heartstrings.
-- Clarke
8. Helldivers 2
Thanks to unreliable (and often broken) online servers, I can't say I got to enjoy Helldivers 2 enough as much as I had hoped. But when you DO get into the nuts and the bolts of the action, there's nothing better than spreading "managed democracy" with your best pals while killing Bugs together on desolate planets throughout the galaxy. This is basically if the movie Starship Troopers was a multiplayer video game. And yes, that's as awesome as it sounds.
-- Zeglinski
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Best video games of 2024: Why we loved these 8 titles, from College Football 25 to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
