As we inch closer and closer to the end of the year, I am slowly chipping away at everything I haven’t finished yet before Game of the Year season truly commences. There are only a few releases in December that look interesting to me, so at this point, I’m in hardcore catch-up mode for the rest of the year.
And I must say, I am having a great time doing it! I truly believe that the past two years have been two of the greatest gaming years in history. I’m currently rotating between five games, and I think four of them range from really good to excellent. Despite that, I am doubtful that any of them will make my top 10 at year’s end. That’s how good gaming is right now. There are many times just a few years ago where almost everything I am playing right now would be a top 10 game.
Thanks to my Game of the Year and Metaphor content, I haven’t done tons of updates on what I’ve been playing lately. So there is a lot to catch up on. Let’s get to the gaming round up!
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Veilguard is my pick for the most divisive game of 2024. That is partly because some people wanted it to fail for stupid culture war reasons. But I have seen very divided opinions even from those coming at it from a good faith perspective. My opinion was a bit mixed for a while, but the more I play, the more I like the game.
The one thing I enjoyed from the start with Veilguard is the combat. I am playing as the warrior class, and everything clicked almost immediately. The game looks great. It has mostly run around a smooth 60 FPS in performance mode, and the sound design is excellent. The game gives you a pretty nice array of options, too. The parry mechanic feels great (though, I wish the enemy indicators for unblockable attacks were more obvious). Dodging is responsive. The game throws a nice variety of obstacles in your way that force you to adopt different strategies for different foes. The abilities you get are also a big highlight. The warrior class gets a dropkick move, and the game has a lot of cliffs and pits that you can kick enemies off of. This hasn’t gotten old yet.
I also love the amount of difficulty options that you have. I have been playing the game on hard, but enemies felt way too spongy. I was able to keep everything else on the “hard” setting, but I lowered enemy health to “normal,” and now things are much better. I feel like developers can underrate how having settings like this can significantly increase the players’ enjoyment of the game.
The exploration and RPG elements are also really excellent. There are tons of winding paths and small navigation puzzles to solve. There is loot tucked everywhere. The skill tree is excellent. The ability to level up your reputation with each faction is also a bit addictive. There’s a lot of cool small elements all over Veilguard.
I also definitely understand some of the critiques of the game. The early part of the game is all devoted to recruiting, so it is very character focused. And none of the characters were impressing me all that much. Everyone just seemed a little too one-dimensional and “in-character” at all times. They all feel like they have their one little gimmick, and that is about it. As I’ve gotten deeper and played a few more quests, I’m starting to see a *touch* more depth, but I still wouldn’t say I’m particularly impressed with the characters yet. But I do see some potential for that to change.
The elements of dialogue and choice are also pretty mediocre so far, which is understandably disappointing for longtime Bioware fans. It doesn’t seem like my dialogue choices matter all that much. The more firm/angry choices are still pretty gentle a lot of the time. I guess the one upside to this is that I am occasionally confused as to what exactly my character is going to say with how vague the dialogue wheel can be, so the lack of consequences if I say something I didn’t really want to say takes some of the stress off.
The story also was kind of floundering for me early on. Because the game was so focused on recruiting, the stories were mostly focused on the individual characters. Since I didn’t really care for any of the characters, that was falling flat for me. But after everyone was recruited, a major plot point happens, and I am starting to feel a bit more invested in this story. The siege of Weisshaupt is a pivotal moment that was hyped up a fair bit on social media, and I think it mostly lived up to that hype.
After Weisshaupt in particular, I feel pretty invested in this game now. There were a couple of moments early on where I wondered if I would finish this game. Now I’m quite confident I will do so. I’d probably put Veilguard at an 8 right now, but I see serious potential for it to become an 8.5 and an outside chance of it getting to a 9.
Black Myth Wukong
Black Myth Wukong is a roguelite.
OK, it’s not. But I really want to highlight one roguelite-esque feature in the game. You never lose your experience in Wukong. Whenever you die, you keep all of your experience. This is a pretty rare feature in any game, let alone a souls-adjacent action game. Despite the fact that Wukong can be pretty difficult, I haven’t felt particularly frustrated yet. Part of this is that no boss has really tripped me up yet (I’m probably about 25% through the game), but a big part is also that when I do die a few times, I never feel bad about it. I take my experience and try again. Wukong also has a really cool skill tree with lots of unique upgrades that feel more akin to a roguelite over a souls game. Getting a level up in a standard souls game rarely feels all that amazing to me. It just means upping one stat by a point. That is not the case in Wukong. Getting a level up feels like a big deal. Small things like this can make such a world of difference.
As for the actual gameplay of Wukong, it is very competent thus far, but I do have a few complaints. Wukong is a VERY boss heavy game, and those bosses are designed quite well. They have a nice variety of attack patterns, and I’ve found most of them to be challenging but reasonable thus far. The animations are excellent, and sound design is passable, though I’d say it’s a bit weaker than most of the other great action games I’ve played this year. Perhaps this is because it’s harder to make satisfying sound design with a staff as a weapon compared to a sword. Regardless, nailing perfect dodges and landing a combo afterward is very satisfying.
Unfortunately, this combat flow gets ruined by some truly poor frame rate issues at times. I have had some pretty nasty slowdown on some of the bigger bosses that was very annoying to deal with. I also hate the game’s parry mechanic. Rather than being its own thing, it is a “spell,” so it can’t be used whenever you want, and it didn’t seem as effective as it should have been. This means that you are mostly stuck with dodging as your main method of defense. I don’t mind dodging. In some action games, I focus more on dodging. In others, I focus more on parrying. I just wish I had the option and flexibility here. I feel very pushed to focus exclusively on dodging.
As good as the bosses are, I also wish I had a bit more time in between them. Thus far, there have been quite a few scenarios where I’ve fought a boss, had a short section where I got through maybe 2-3 standard enemies, and then it’s a boss again. Some may prefer this, but I think it takes away some of the excitement from taking down a boss when you know you are going to be fighting another one very shortly after.
I guess the one nice thing about all the boss fights is it means less time navigating the world. My least favorite part of Wukong by far is the lack of any sort of map. While the environments are gorgeous, they can also be pretty repetitive. Jumping back into this game for the first time after a day can be absolutely obnoxious, as it can be tricky just to figure out where to go next. There have been a few times I’ve been turned around after trying to explore a bit as well. There seem to be a fair amount of side paths and things to find in Wukong, but I feel incentivized to stay on the main path as much as possible, as exploring can lead to some really big annoyances.
Despite that, I’m still having a good amount of fun with Wukong. I’d say I’m roughly in line with the critic consensus and have this game at an 8 so far, and I could see it getting as high as an 8.5. In my eyes, Wukong is the weakest of The Game Awards nominees for Game of the Year, but it is definitely a very solid game.
Nine Sols
I have been eyeballing Nine Sols all year. It got very strong reviews, but it was only on PC. I really wanted to play it on consoles, so I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, an Xbox release was announced. Even better, it is also on Xbox Game Pass. I jumped in on the first day.
I quickly realized that the hype was real. Nine Sols already stands out as one of the best Metroidvanias in a year that has been absolutely loaded with them.
The most shocking element of the game so far to me is the story. Metroidvanias are a very gameplay heavy genre. When the game started off with some cutscenes, I felt myself almost reflexively tuning out. This genre almost always tells mediocre stories. But not too long into the game, something very interesting happened, and all of sudden, I was hooked. The game has continued that momentum in my 4ish hours with it so far. It’s a surprisingly cinematic game, too, which is really impressive for a 2D Metroidvania. I love the storytelling here.
The gameplay is no slouch either. Nine Sols is very combat oriented. And I’m happy to report that the combat mostly cooks here. This is a very parry heavy system. There are a nice mix of different enemy attacks and clear enemy indicators to tell you if it’s a parryable attack or not. The sound design is very strong and helps the combat feel satisfying as well. I am also enjoying the difficulty balancing for the most part. Nine Sols is quite difficult, but it feels like a very reasonable challenge. The game also has an easier difficulty setting, which I appreciate having in my back pocket.
Every time you parry, you get a power up of sorts that lets you do an explosive move on enemies. You have to essentially dash through enemies and then hold a button down until the explosion happens. This mechanic works fine but is also a bit odd. You have to stay still for a second or two in order to use this explosion move. Because of this, it is very difficult to use it when facing multiple enemies at the same time. So when you are facing more than one enemy, the parry can almost feel like an exclusively defensive move and not as much of an offensive one. That’s a bit disappointing, but you don’t run into tons of situations where this is an issue.
My bigger issue with Nine Sols is with the map. The map is extremely barren of detail. And worse, you can’t place any custom markers on it. This makes exploring the map again for things you missed or couldn’t unlock last time damn near impossible. I feel like I’m going to end up playing Nine Sols much more as a linear action game over a pure Metroidvania because of this. I also think the Metroidvania elements fail a bit with the fast travel points. They feel too spaced out at times, especially with the game being pretty difficult. Walking back through long distances after death is just not the most fun for me. This sucks, but there could be much worse “biggest issues” to have with a game.
I also think the platforming is kind of mediocre so far. It’s a bit floaty and imprecise. But the game does not lean much on the platforming at all, so it isn’t a huge deal.
I’d probably have Nine Sols around an 8.5 right now. But there is a lot of potential here. I could easily see this as a 9 if the story keeps delivering. 2024 has been the year of the Metroidvania for me, as I have played seven of them before this game. Nine Sols has now officially solidified 2024 as the best Metroidvania year I have ever seen if there was any doubt before.
Mario and Luigi: Brothership
Outside of briefly playing the first game for a few hours a long time ago, I have never played a Mario and Luigi game until now. There can’t be many people in their mid-30s playing this as their first ever Mario and Luigi game. I am just one special guy.
About 10 hours in, I definitely see a lot of the appeal with this franchise. But I also wonder if it’s going to run out of steam soon.
Brothership is a turn-based RPG with heavy action elements. Think Paper Mario on steroids. You play as both Mario and Luigi, and have to simultaneously control each character at the same time to dodge and counterattack foes during their attack sequence. There are also some extensive button press sequences in order to max out most of your attacks in the game.
Those action elements are very cool for the most part. It’s not quite like any other turn-based RPG I have played. You really have to focus to deal with some of these enemy attacks. A lot of turn-based games with action button prompts are much simpler than this, and I’m enjoying the slightly deeper action elements here.
But I also think the system relies on these action elements a bit too much. There is next to no strategy or tactics really going on with the turn-based elements of the game (at least so far). So after I’ve been in an area for a bit and have faced the same enemy a few dozen times, it gets a little dull. Once you have the enemy attack patterns down, there really isn’t much else going on.
The game also has a ship sailing element that is kind of odd. Sometimes, when you want to go somewhere, you have to just kind of wait for your ship to get there, but you also can’t steer it or anything. It’s an oddly passive system. It’s not a huge element of the game, but it feels like such a waste of time.
I have a few smaller issues, too. The settings are a bit repetitive. The depth perception is very awkward when you try and ambush enemies outside of battle. There are also a few too many stoppages for tedious conversation with NPCs. None of these issues kill the game, but I feel like a lot of little things are adding up to diminish the experience for me.
There is still potential here with the battle system and RPG elements. I’m not having a bad time. But I can’t say I’m having an amazing time either. I think the game benefits from the fact that I rarely play it for more than 30 minutes at a time, too. The short bursts feel like the best way to play it. I’d rate it roughly around a 6.5 right now. A few small things and new moves are still getting added into the battle system as I play, so I do think there is a little bit of potential for this to grow to a 7.5. But I kind of doubt it.
Big Nerd Gaming 
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