Difficult to just name one as there’s been plenty that I’ve greatly enjoyed my time with this year.

January - March 

Baldur’s Gate 3: that I finally got around to playing was outstanding and became an instant favourite. I’ve replayed it a bunch since, getting the plat was enjoyable and I’ll probably do another long replay (with mods) in the new year. Really nothing else came close to it for me in Q1 this year. 

April - June 

Rise of the Rōnin: oh the sheer irony of choosing Dragons Dogma 2 instead only for DD2 to be the biggest disappointment this generation. RotR ended up being an impulse buy and became my second favourite ‘24 release game and my third overall ‘24 game. Confusing as fuck story due to it jumping around a lot and could easily be confused for a PS3 game but it was just pure fun. Really really enjoyed my time with this. 

July - September

Half Life Alyx: Finally got around to playing this, was always on my must plays and it became my favourite game of the year. HLA blew me away with how good it was and the ending was a gut punch that it’s been 16yrs since episode 2. 

October - December 

Astro Bot: If you look up pure fun in the dictionary it’s just a picture of the protagonist with a thumbs up. Relentless fun! The entire game was just wild. 

Dragon Age: The Veilguard: went in with very low expectations, this isn’t the old BioWare and after ME4 and Anthem just reinforced they’re a dead studio right?. After waisting my life watching SkillUps review of a grown ass man irrational crying over the game I was convinced DA:TV was gonna be trash too! …. Well no, not even in the slightest. For a game that was in development turmoil for so long how it actually turned out the way it did is surprising. The sheer scale of the game and the content and the fact I never experience even a stutter or a bug you’d never assume it had any development issues at all. The writing is very light hearted and PG13. It’s reliance on more comedy over seriousness combined with so much cliche lines did make me roll my eyes and audible “god dammit” a few times but that was its weakest part. When the game wanted to go hard tho, it went hard, it had excellent characters and was pure spectacular at times. It didn’t feel like old BioWare but after this, I’m not worried about new BioWare at all. My favourite’24 release and just “pure fun” all the way through. 

Unicorn Overlord is my current GOTY pick, although that might change after I play a bunch of contenders before the end of the year.

The most fun I had this year, though, was with two Spike Chunsoft games: Natsu-Mon and Bakeru. Natsu-Mon really left a deep imprint on my heart, and Bakeru provides the sort of 3D action-platforming and collecting I love.

Astrobot is definetly on my list but I'm going to wait until a nice half price sale or vlose to it. It's not a game I'd pay full price for when I got Rescue Mission for 40 euro and I can only imagine Half Life Alyx, it looks like VR taken to modern AAA standards. 

I'm currently playing Dragons Dogma 2 and yeah, I'm feeling as if I should have went with something like Rise of the Ronin or Final Fnatady 16. It's very jank but I'm going to give it the benefit and dive deeper in to see if the combat systems open up to as fun as many say they are, Fighting Cowboy particularly drove home how great that aspect is for the genre but... yeah, what a jack game with very little appeal to progress and so many little annoying things like easy overencumberance and time wasting stuff that is the opposite of fun. 

For me Stellar Blade is the most fun and it was uninterrupted from start to finish, it continues to be fun in NG+ on hardmode and it is also my game of the year. What a game and what mind-boggling fun it is to progress and do side content along the way, right down to collectibles for the true ending. Every little thing in it is fun.

I'd find it very hard to believe a game could beat this as it's on par with Elden Ring for fun factor.