The RPS Selection Box: Brendan’s bonus games of the year 2024

I’m a sucker for a good first-person runabout. I don’t need to shoot, but it’s sometimes nice to get a sword, or a big whip. As long as I get to be immersed in an adventure. I think that’s the big theme of my selection box: being grounded within my player character. I want to feel what it’s like to hike through canyons with too much sellable loot in my backpack. I want to park my soul in the head of a scared Scotsman way out of his depth, hundreds of miles from shore. The closer I can comfortably fit in my character’s shoes, the more I seem to buy into the world they inhabit. Even if that world is constantly glowing a magnificent crimson.

We are not lacking for PS1-inspired horror. The latter half of this year saw the release of Threshold, Mouthwashing, Hollowbody, and Sorry We’re Closed. But one game freed itself from early access prison and took the aesthetics of that era to apply it to another nostalgic genre – the open-world fantasy RPG. Dread Delusion immediately and intentionally summons old Elder Scrolls games to mind (especially since you begin in a jail cell) but one of its great strengths is that it confidently builds its own weird and wonderful world, devoid of the classic goblins, orcs, and elves that litter the genre. Here, gods are hideous beasts with ulterior motives and kings are clockwork madmen. Everything looks strange, suffused with the jittering vertices of another realm; the hostile creatures wear masks for want of being human, the steam-powered farming machinery walks on spider legs and regularly goes insane. If you’re yearning for an odd new world to explore on-foot (or by airship, as in the later part of the game) then definitely consider stepping into this handcrafted wonderhell.

In preparation for our review of this pretty good first-person explore ’em up, I watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. I did it without expecting much, after the Labeoufian disaster of Crystal Skull, but came away surprisingly satisfied. It was fine! They went to cool countries, jumped on some wet rocks, and got into sweaty scrapes, tying everything up with a bit of outlandish hooey unexplainable by science or logic. It didn’t replace Crusade as my favourite in the series (probably nothing ever will) but it was absolutely good enough for an evening of quiet-brain-no-make-thought.

Indiana Jones And The Great Circle has done pretty much the same thing, but spread out over many days. It’s an expensive blockbuster done with all the craft and competence (and fascist punching) you’d expect from the Wolfenstein folks. It has huge levels, tons of secret areas, and photographable cats. As much as my heart sides with the scrappy underdogs of the games industry, sometimes I just want to luxuriate in impeccable lighting and munch popcorn to Hollywood-level acting between open-ended quests that’ll let me crack a Nazi in the back of the bonce with an ancient Roman statue. What I love most is how little you’re required to use a gun – every fight is better approached with your own fists, but it can help to use the smashable detritus around you. I fired Indy’s revolver in one specific moment, when a single foe brandishing a sword came racing toward me. What’s more Indiana Jones than that?

The first reason this is on my list: it cleverly limits your use of fast travel. For me, a game that allows you to instantly zap between any old cave or mine, without a meaningful limit, will have a hard time simulating a true journey. In fantasy RPGs, which often profess to bring the player on a grand adventure, this is particularly important. I won’t repeat my reasoning, I’ve written about this already and I’ll be neither the first nor last to harp on about it. I’ll just say that in playing Dragon’s Dogma 2, I often felt like I was on an actual quest. Going from place to place felt demanding in either coin or energy. If you want to get from one town to another, there’s always the ox cart. And enterprising players will be able to set up their own travel “networks” with clever crystals. But by and large, you’re hoofing it. And that gives everything more weight. Often literally, as you now have to carefully watch your inventory, never mind take care when day turns to night.

The second reason it’s on my list: You can pick up anyone and yeet them over a wall.

Okay, this one is not such a bodily immersive game. It’s bullet snooker on the high seas. But it was still an adventure. If you haven’t played the previous Steamheist, then basically it is a cartoony XCOM as viewed from the side. It’s a moreish little strategy game and, in this sequel, everything has been polished up and made even moreisher. In an overworld map, you sail around grabbing goodies from the flotsam of the tropical (and sometimes frozen) ocean, while also sinking enemy ships. But in close combat, you’ll enter hideouts and warehouses to ricochet bullets off walls and lob bouncy grenades among other gadgets to clear the map or escape the room with a new friendly crew member. Your foes are dieselbots, the suggestion being that they are a filthy pollutant-people, yet whether your steambots run on coal or not is seemingly unaddressed. It’s just one of the quirks of this continuing fictional realm that spans a surprising number of genres. I still hold SteamWorld Dig 2 as my favourite in the series – a one-and-done game of great pleasure – but this piratical caper came very, very close.

Still Wakes The Deep has incredibly good voice acting. Scottish accents in video games are generally foisted upon dwarves or bundled together with Irish accents to make up for a shortfall in Vikingesque islanders. But here we’re treated to a cast of Scottish oil rig workers struggling against a monstrous fleshy horror none of them can understand. As a game, it’s a highly polished, cinematic first-person corridor dasher, with some classic hiding from monsters and environmental puzzles that won’t tax you too greatly. But atmospherically, it’s a work of careful craftsmanship. Rain and other weather effects make every journey out onto the deck an uneasy, wet, gauntlet. Each monster is a fucked-up version of a crew member you have previously spoken to and gotten to know (if briefly). And the hideously glittering substance that seeps throughout the rig will put you in a state of constant, low-burning unease. Mechanically, there is nothing super new about any of it. But it brings you through an unfamiliar environment with such attention to detail, and such great voice work, that I really didn’t mind.