Because a pack opening simulator can only win a personal GOTY by default.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/69586/donalds-top-10-2024-games-he-wants-to-play
For factors both NWR related (losing multiple weekend hours to recording a sea of slop) and otherwise (job burnout, medical issues at both the start AND end of the year, *gestures madly*) I really haven’t actually played much new this year. I fell into a Pokemon rabbit hole between getting into hardcore Pokemon Go grinding - going from level 42 to “enough experience to be level 50 if people would trade with me” in a 12 month span - and playing a lot of the older ones, so much so that when I tried to put together a top 10 list I physically couldn’t do it. So congratulations to Pokemon TCG Pocket on being my Game of the Year by default.
However, I do still want to revise that at some point. In fact, I was able to actually do a full list of games I’ve bought this year that I haven’t played, or in one case played more than a half hour of. So, the home office in Ecum Secum, NS presents “Top 10 Games Of 2024 Donald Still Wants To Play”. This list is in release date order.
Balatro (February 21)
A few years ago in a year that was just as screwed up but for entirely different reasons, I ended up naming Hades my game of the year - saying at the time that I thought it did to roguelike game structure what Xenoblade Chronicles X did to open world games. (IE: Ruined everything else in the genre forever.) However, I’m more than willing to press my luck, and a game that uses existing knowledge of a game I’ve been playing off and on since I was nine years old might actually get me to try another roguelike in a way Shiren the Wanderer couldn’t.
Also, I want to support the developer for the dumbest news story of the year where PEGI can’t seem to get it through their collective skulls that it’s possible to play poker in a way that doesn’t involve gambling real money. They STILL haven’t fixed its European rating as of press time, though the game has returned.
When will I play it: At the latest, the end of June: my parents have invited me on a trip for their anniversary in June that involves an 800km (just shy of 500 miles) bus trip to Boston and I’m going to need to do something to stay sane during it.
Unicorn Overlord (March 
It’s not just for the food porn, though that’s still cool. Sega has been high-key killing it with their gameplay this year (even if most of it is off Nintendo platforms and the stories are… questionable) but we did get the best tactics game of the year on the Switch and I feel like I need to at least dip my toe in. I haven’t even played the demo for it, and I’m a sucker for demos that let me carry over the progress.
Though a funny thing happened late in the year: My roommate picked up the game when it was on sale for Black Friday and in the past month has put 40 hours into the game - while just barely getting units up to level 20. Seeing bits and pieces of his playthrough has me even more desperate to see what I’m missing.
When will I play it: Only when my roommate’s done: the last time I picked up a tactical RPG just after he did, it became my game of the year but he dropped it.
1000xResist (May 9)
Don’t worry, I’m not the only person who missed this seeming instant classic this year. No less of an authority than Mat Piscatella of Circana was (is?) in the same boat I am.
People I trust have said it’s one of the most striking adventure games of the year, deals with a lot of potentially interesting subject matter (loss, isolation since it was partially written at the peak of the pandemic) and perhaps most importantly it’s Canadian content since at least part of the story takes place in Vancouver. The Discord will also be pleased when I finally get around to this.
When will I play it: Soon, hopefully. I’ve got something cooking for next week in gaming magazines, but after that I’m clearing a weekend.
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD (June 27)
Technically, this game has been on the pile of shame since the 3DS era, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get a game of multiplayer since my primary fellow ghostbuster never got the game. Still, I feel like I owe it to myself to determine whether this or February’s Mario vs Donkey Kong was the best remake of an old Mario game we got in 2024 even if it doesn’t necessarily make the cut on an actual top 10 of mine that excludes remasters.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 made a lot of improvements to the core gameplay and was designed from the ground up for dual analog controls, so I’ll finally be able to see what it’s like to take the prequel on with a similar control method as well.
When will I play it: This feels like a springtime project, maybe on a rainy long weekend.
SteamWorld Heist II (August
No less of an authority than, uh, me gave the prior game in the subseries of Steam a 9.5 when it came out on console for the first time in 2016, and it’s hard to imagine a game coming out in the death march between Color Splash and the Switch launch actually managed to score that high. But it did, and nine years (from its initial 3DS release) of improvements should have made this a no-brainer for my list.
The Switch may not have gotten Sea of Thieves called up from AAA Xbox this year, but between this, Cat Quest III and Mario and Luigi: Brothership we more than got our fill of nautical adventure. And hats are basically loot anyway.
When will I play it: I just got it with my Christmas eShop haul, so maybe I’ll peck away at it while my roommate wraps up Unicorn Overlord.
Emio: The Smiling Man - Famicom Detective Club (August 29)
This game has angels and devils on my shoulders discussing it. The angels are the people I respect who have the game pretty high up on their GOTY lists, while the devils are the people I respect who are incensed at some of the depictions of characters and / or think the gameplay doesn’t hold up in 2024. And then there’s our review, written by someone who should be inured to horror and bad games given he played Mario Party on stream for two+ years. I can put up with a lot of questionable content in games if the gameplay is good: I’ve given Atlus games pretty high scores on average even if we have an entire line devoted to their creepiness and bad taste. But Emio may be crossing the line here and I don’t personally know it.
Essentially, I need to know something about Yoshio Sakamoto. A couple of years ago, I claimed that the father of the Fire Emblem series, Shouzou Kaga, had “Steve Blass disease” - a baseball term for the sudden onset of the inability of a pitcher to throw strikes. In the gaming context, it was the inability of Kaga to create a new good game after he left Intelligent Systems. Sakamoto is still with Nintendo, but Metroid: Other M put him on watch. Was fourteen years enough time for him to shake it off, or is it time to corner office one of Nintendo’s most tenured devs?
When will I play it: Easter Sunday. I say this because it happens to fall on April 20 in 2025, and this feels like a game I’ll need to play while high.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (September 26)
Now we come to the only game on this list that I’ve actually booted up and played. For a half hour, but I got out of the opening tutorial so it should drop me in about 20% of the way through those. But it says a lot about gaming in my 40s that the last time we got an original 2D Zelda game in 2013, I started playing it on a Friday morning and by the time I went to bed on Saturday night I had already completed the game with all heart containers.
I was intrigued by the concepts of building your way to victory Tears of the Kingdom presented, but was immediately turned off by the worst thing to come from Skyward Sword in the stamina meter. Adapting it to 2D - and letting us actually control Zelda, even if “Link” ends up doing most of the fighting - should be a dream game, but my circumstances just didn’t let me proceed beyond the opening. I need to rectify this at some point, even if Nintendo already got my money. Or voucher.
When will I play it: Targeting early March before I drop everything on March 20.
Tetris Forever (November 14)
The first of two games to land right before I began another course of wound care for my right foot, Tetris Forever marks the first game in the Digital Eclipse Gold Master series that I’ve had more than passing exposure to its contents. I played Karateka on a 31-in-1 NES cart and TxK on the Vita, but I’ve lost count of how many Tetris variants I’ve played over the years, from original GB to Effect.
As well, I’m curious about what parts of the Tetris history they discuss beyond the obvious. I know they’re not going to turn it into a Cold War spy thriller, since the Apple TV movie already did that, but the true story is plenty wild as it is. And maybe they’ll get into The Tetris Guidelines and why they’re so strict? The fact that I can save out and boot into GB or NES Tetris when those inevitably get brought up is a nice bonus.
When will I play it: Digital Eclipse has promised additional content as it’s able to be produced, with an update a couple of weeks ago adding Welltris. Given that there was DLC produced for Atari 50 this year and that naturally came out in 2022… it’s possible that my wait for the definitive version may carry into 2026.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D (November 14)
I had a Whoosh romance with the Dragon Quest series… nearly a decade and a half ago. In about a month’s span I completed a playthrough of DQIX, beat IV in its entirety, and got about halfway through the second stage of DQV but haven’t really touched the series since beyond putting some time into the VII remake on 3DS in 2016. Given that this is fundamentally a Famicom/NES game with some really gussied up graphics I would have thought III would be a good time to get back on the horse before braving the cross-country trek that is XI. The fact that it released just before my last vacation of the year would have been perfect. Alas.
There’s one thing that holds me back from playing it, and that’s knowing what I do about the story of this game being way more mind-blowing if you played the first two games of the original trilogy FIRST.
When will I play it: Dragon Quest I and II HD-2D is only a nebulous “2025” release right now, so if it releases in the same window I might be playing III in December.
Fantasian: Neo Dimension (December 5)
The most recent release of the bunch meant that it came out when my burnout and ability to play anything was at its worst, so despite paying full price for the game on Switch I still have yet to boot it up - and when I had an opportunity to play it on the way home from a recent trip I instead started grinding jobs in FFV. (Maybe I’m min-maxing that game too much since I decided to have everybody master everything before continuing for some fool reason.) At least it’s still a Sakaguchi and Uematsu joint, just not the more mindblowing one.
I’ve only been calling for this to come out for, uh, five years now so I’m really kicking myself for not getting in at launch, but I bought entire hardware for Sakaguchi games before (Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey are the SOLE reasons I bought a used 360) so throwing $65 Canadian plus tax at a single game is no issue for me.
When will I play it: A turn based RPG might be the thing I need to either let me refocus during or after Xenoblade Chronicles X mania in March.
Honourable Mentions
Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On! (February 21): I loved this on 3DS and still can’t believe the Switch version might have been BETTER.
Princess Peach: Showtime (March 22): Because I still need to see for myself if this is as mid as our review said or if I’ll enjoy “Peach is a more humanoid Kirby” more than others.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak (July 6): Look, I’m ten games behind in this series already, and we’re getting a remake of the first in the line next year anyway so I might as well wait until then to start the “Trail to Daybreak”. Or whatever the final game in the series gets localized as.
Yakuza Kiwami (Oct 24): This came out in a week where I had COVID and there were 78 other releases. Is it any wonder I only picked this up because I got a $25 eShop card as a late Christmas present and it was on sale?
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