Game of the Year: Stephen’s Top 5 PS5 Games of 2024

Our individual Game of the Year articles allow our lovely team of writers and editors to share their own personal PS5 picks for 2024. Today, it’s the turn of assistant editor Stephen Tailby.

I must admit, I didn’t manage to finish this gargantuan game this year, but man, it’s good. Improving on the turn-based battle system established in the previous game, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is an excellent RPG that packs in an almost impossible amount of stuff.

The main characters are of course wonderful, and Hawaii is a super refreshing setting after years spent traipsing through Kamurocho. A highlight for me, as it will be for many, is all the side quests and activities that fill the game with so much personality and variety. It’s definitely something I want to return to, as it’s so clearly a fantastic title that deserves to be seen to its end.

Rare is the game that succeeds in being funny on purpose, and 2024 gifted us with one of the few examples that get it right. Thank Goodness You’re Here! is short, simple, and somewhat an acquired taste, but it worked for me so well that I’ve played it through a good few times now.

The unhinged British comedy is genuinely funny throughout, helped massively by fantastic vocal performances and brilliant art and animation that accentuates its absurdity. It’s quite remarkable how the Yorkshire town of Barnsworth feels like a lived-in place that’s simultaneously an over-the-top farce and a pinpoint accurate portrayal of provincial England.

Absolutely cracking.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown got lost amid the extremely busy first few months of 2024, and as a result, it’s severely under-played. However, it deserves recognition; it’s an absolutely fantastic Metroidvania action game.

Taking the series back to its sidescrolling roots but featuring time-bending abilities akin to the more modern titles, this is a slickly presented adventure that I loved from start to finish. The platforming and combat are responsive and challenging, the map is enormous and packed with secrets, and an ingenious feature makes tracking down areas you want to return to a doddle.

If this had come out at a less crowded time later in the year, I think this would’ve rightly been a bigger part of the conversation — it’s well worth playing.

I’ve always enjoyed roguelikes and have dabbled in card-based variants such as Slay the Spire and Monster Train, but for me, Balatro not only trumps other titles in its narrow niche, it’s one of the year’s best games overall. In many ways it’s a very stripped back experience, with no story to fuss over or overly complex systems. It’s just about playing the best poker hands you can to score as highly as you can.

The genius comes with all the ways you can manipulate and upgrade your deck, allowing for countless win conditions as you find synergies and tactics that deliver deliciously satisfying high scores. It’s endlessly playable, incredibly tightly designed, and fully deserving of all its praise.

It’s probably a predictable number one, but I don’t care. Astro Bot is sensational.

In my opinion, it’s the best 3D platformer Sony’s ever released; every stage is fun and unique, the controls are intuitive and responsive, and everything about it is laser focused and constructed with such care.

There’s a level of polish, imagination, and attention to detail here that’s strongly reminiscent of Nintendo’s in-house work, and it rules. Everything works together so brilliantly — the level design, the controls and haptics, the animation, the music, all of it is superb.

The character cameos, delightful as they all are, are just the icing on the cake. It just rose above everything else for me because it’s of such high quality, and extremely refreshing relative to the rest of the modern gaming landscape. What a game.

What do you think of Stephen’s personal Game of the Year picks? Feel free to agree wholeheartedly, or disagree politely, in the comments section below.