The best PC games of 2024 include:
- Duck Detective: The Secret Salami: Players solve the mystery of a stolen salami in a quirky office environment, combining humor and intrigue with a captivating design and storytelling.
- Turnip Boy Robs a Bank: A sequel featuring a mischievous vegetable engaging in a heist, noted for its engaging art style and witty writing.
- The Crush House: A game blending reality TV and social commentary, exploring entertainment pressures and social media impacts with humor and engaging gameplay.
- Conscript: A portrayal of the psychological toll of war, offering a raw narrative crafted by Australian developer Jordan Mochi.
- Sumerian Six: A strategic turn-based adventure combining history and fantasy, encouraging thoughtful tactics and creativity.
- The Rise of the Golden Idol: A successor to The Case of the Golden Idol, featuring fresh aesthetics and intricate puzzles that promote critical thinking.
- Neva: Known for its emotional storytelling and stunning art direction, creating an immersive experience.
- Harold Halibut: Reflects on life’s purpose through a handcrafted aesthetic and engaging narrative.
- The Plucky Squire: Blends 2D and 3D environments, showcasing innovative mechanics and captivating visuals.
- The Sims 4 Life and Death: An expansion pack introducing themes of mortality, enhancing the gameplay experience with new elements like funerals and a Reaper career.
Twelve free titles are available on Steam, including:
1. Ruins to Fortress - A post-apocalyptic survival adventure focused on crafting, building, and combat.
2. Night Project - A detective narrative with horror elements where players uncover clues to solve a mystery.
3. Dynasty Legends 2 - An action RPG for competitive gameplay against other players.
4. Poker Train - A game where poker skills influence the journey of a train.
5. The Permanent Residence: Souls Kept - A short horror adventure with a chilling atmosphere.
6. Sidereal - A quest where players cleanse darkness as a tall man in a hat.
7. Fruity Friendz Adventurez - A whimsical adventure to help Peter Pear escape with fruit friends.
8. Super Ricko’s Islands - A platformer featuring fun and exploration in vibrant locations.
9. Gripshot - A fast-paced shooter requiring quick reflexes.
10. Through - A hack-and-slash adventure reminiscent of classic arcade gaming.
11. Dungeon Crusher: Souls Hunters - An idle RPG with engaging stories and missions.
12. Angel Wings: Endless Night - A survival game set in a mansion where players seek an escape.
Crunchyroll has added five new games to its roster for Android and iOS users. The games include ConnecTank, Kawaii Kitchen, Lost Words: Beyond the Page, Roto Force, and Tokyo Dark, offering a variety of gaming experiences from tank battles to culinary challenges and narrative-driven mysteries.
Steam users played 50% fewer games in 2024 compared to the previous year, influenced by Game Pass, emulation, and the Nintendo 3DS XL. Only 15% of total gaming time was spent on titles launched in 2024, while 47% was dedicated to games released in the last one to seven years, and 37% to titles over eight years old. The free-to-play game Banana gained significant attention, and the action-adventure game Black Myth: Wukong led in single-player concurrent players. Long-standing games like Counter-Strike, Dota 2, and PUBG dominated the Most Played charts, making it challenging for new live service games to succeed. Steam offers over 200,000 titles, with around 18,000 released in 2024, making the 15% of playtime on new games seem reasonable.
The PC gaming landscape is thriving, offering a wide range of gaming experiences beyond traditional consoles. It serves as a versatile platform for multiplatform titles, first-party exclusives, and indie games, enhanced by mouse-and-keyboard controls. Portable devices like the Steam Deck have increased flexibility for gamers. The best PC games of 2024 include notable titles such as:
- Honorable Mentions:
- 1000xResist: A narrative-driven game exploring surreal concepts and emotional depth, reminiscent of Nier: Automata.
- The Rise of the Golden Idol: A sequel to a detective game set in the 1970s, focusing on solving intricate crimes through observation and deduction.
- Runner-Ups:
- Animal Well: A 2D pixel art platformer that emphasizes creative problem-solving over violence, featuring whimsical tools for exploration.
- Satisfactory: An automation game where players build factories and assembly lines in a vibrant open world, encouraging experimentation and collaboration.
- UFO 50: A collection of 50 retro-inspired games that blend nostalgia with modern design, offering unique gameplay experiences.
- Winner:
- Balatro: The best PC game of 2024, combining roguelite deckbuilding and digital poker, known for its addictive gameplay and strategic depth.
Batman: Arkham Knight has received a graphics overhaul that enhances its visual quality to compete with next-generation consoles like the PS6. Originally released in 2015, the game is part of Rocksteady Studios' Arkham trilogy and features gameplay elements such as FreeFlow Combat, stealth, and the Batmobile. The studio's recent project, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, has struggled commercially since its early 2024 launch, prompting speculation about a possible remake of Batman: Arkham Asylum. A vibrant modding community has improved the game's visuals, showcasing ray-tracing effects with NVIDIA RTX 4090 at 4K resolution and 60 frames per second. Batman: Arkham Knight is available on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.
Strange Antiquities is an upcoming sequel to Strange Horticulture, developed by Bad Viking. Players will take on the role of a shop owner in the city of Undermere, assisting customers and investigating occult artifacts. The gameplay includes using a magnifying glass to examine items and employing various investigative methods such as weighing items, comparing artifacts to notes, examining color and composition, assessing texture, detecting scents, and listening for sounds. Players will also gauge the "vibe" of items and have access to multiple reference books. The game features diverse characters and a shop filled with secrets and puzzles. Additional gameplay elements hinted at include a dice-rolling system and a rune-covered board. A release date has not been announced.
A reader, referred to as the "Disk Space Detective," is experiencing unexplained disk space depletion on their Windows Server 2022 despite checking for large files, enabling disk quotas, and reviewing logs. They seek advice on potential causes, such as hidden files or misconfigured storage settings. Suggested steps include examining disk configuration, particularly RAID setups, checking for memory dump files, assessing shadow copies for excessive space usage, and looking for orphaned files from Hyper-V virtual machines. If these do not resolve the issue, using a disk space analyzer tool is recommended for further insights.
Path of Exile 2 is set to launch in early access in December 2024. The PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted will be streamed on December 5, and The Game Awards will air on December 12. The Steam Winter Sale will begin on December 19 and run through January 2. Notable game releases in December include:
- December 3: Antonblast (Steam)
- December 3: Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age (Steam)
- December 4: The Edge of Allegoria (Steam)
- December 5: Entropy Survivors (Steam)
- December 5: Uncle Chop's Rocket Shop (Steam)
- December 11: Fairy Tail 2 (Steam)
- December 12: Kletka (Steam)
- December 12: The Spirit of the Samurai (Steam)
- December 17: Flint: Treasure of Oblivion (Steam)
- December 20: The Midnight Crimes (Steam)
