With the shadow of Concord’s demise hanging over the latter part of the year, it would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking 2024 was a rough time for PlayStation. But the past twelve months have been really solid for Team Sony, with a selection of games that really highlight the console’s strength in multiple areas, be that gargantuan RPGs, slick cinematic action, or spine-chilling horror.
It’s a good job there was such a great spread, too, as 2024 marks the return of our platform awards after being absent for the past few years. We’ve aimed to capture what made each console feel unique this year, and so naturally that means exclusives or games that feel distinctly “at home” on a specific platform. That was pretty easy for PlayStation thanks to a long list of PS5 exclusives that treated us to the likes of Astro Bot’s creative platforming challenges, Black Myth: Wukong’s ferocious boss battles, Helldivers 2’s chaotic co-op missions, and much more besides.
But only one can be crowned the best PlayStation game of 2024. What did the IGN team judge to be the most worthy? Let’s take a look at the results…
Honorable Mentions
2024 has provided a solid range of experiences on PlayStation, but it’s notably been a pretty good year for action games. Two have stood out in particular: Stellar Blade and Black Myth: Wukong. While neither quite picked up enough votes to climb onto the podium, they came in close behind our finalists.
Stellar Blade made a splash earlier this year thanks to its excellent combat system, which blends a little Dark Souls (parries, healing flasks, and bonfire-like checkpoints) with the stylish flare of Platinum hits like Bayonetta. It does so while also utilising all of the PS5’s power, ensuring that it looks stunning regardless of if you’re fighting scrap robots in the desert or duelling monsters in a lab.
Just a few months later we got Black Myth: Wukong, another game that blended some of the sensibilities of FromSoftware with more traditional character action staples. Its boss rush structure means you’re always facing a fun or fascinating new foe, be that a tiger bathing in a pool of blood or a dragon-headed pig swinging electrical maces. Combined with slick combat that can be augmented with all sorts of experimental abilities (such as a gang of ape clones), Black Myth: Wukong is among 2024’s most noteworthy action games.
Runner-Up: Silent Hill 2
The original Silent Hill is a PlayStation 2 classic. Team Silent’s 2001 survival horror is one of the genre’s most celebrated accomplishments, largely thanks to a sombre story that rewrote the rulebook on how to explore meaningful themes through an interactive medium. Following in those footsteps, Bloober Team has managed to create what is sure to be considered a PlayStation 5 classic with its remake of Silent Hill 2 – a game that respects and honours PlayStation’s role during the peak era of survival horror innovation while also carefully updating it for the modern age.
In an era where “remake” can mean many things, Silent Hill 2 treads the most traditional path. It is a largely faithful recreation of the original game, telling the same story with the same characters, and so it hits all the high points fans expect. But those old environments, story beats, and encounters are revisited from a new over-the-shoulder perspective, making exploration all the more immersive and combat a much more intuitive experience. The result is a fresh take on a beloved memory for veterans, and a way for new fans to experience one of the very best survival horror games of all time in a format that’s more comfortable to play.
Well, we say “comfortable” referring only to the controls and camera system. 23 years later, the original tale of Silent Hill 2 remains just as harrowing as ever. Bloober’s phenomenal new coat of paint only helps reinforce that – shadows have never seemed so oppressive, rust has rarely been this grotesque – and so Silent Hill 2 easily takes the top spot when it comes to the PS5’s scariest games. Finally, we can’t ignore actor Luke Roberts, who brings protagonist James Sunderland to life with astonishing nuance that highlights the character’s struggling humanity in every single line.
Runner-Up: Helldivers 2
Back in January, Helldivers 2 was barely a blip on the radar. Fast forward a month and gamers across the world were spending every spare waking minute spreading Managed Democracy, such was the alluring power of Arrowhead Game Studio’s masterful co-op third person shooter.
Helldivers 2 is one of those games that’s almost negligible on paper. A four-person team drops into a sandbox map, works together to complete an objective, and then escapes via evac ship. But rather than feel like many of the copycat extraction shooters that have landed in recent years, Helldivers 2 feels like a fresh, original vision. That’s in part thanks to the way it balances brutally unforgiving mechanics on a comedic knife edge; friendly fire means that one wrong trigger pull will punch a lethal hole through a pal’s skull, or drop a killaton bomb on your entire team. Somehow that always feels like a hilarious punchline rather than an infuriating team kill.
The real key to Helldivers 2’s genius is its smart approach to the meta game. Each successful mission pushes you further up the tech ladder, unlocking increasingly outlandish weapons and orbital bombardments with which to obliterate enemies. But mission success also affects the shifting frontlines of the galaxy map, which sees humanity’s enemies gain and lose ground in their attempt to invade Super Earth. The player-driven stories that this system creates, as planets are liberated and fan-favourite maps fall under enemy control, is the real secret sauce that makes this phenomenal shooter tick. It’s the best multiplayer game PlayStation has delivered in years.
Runner-Up: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
Square Enix had already proved that it knew what it was doing with Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but there was no denying that the first chapter in this reimagining of the 1997 PlayStation classic was overly-linear and stretched much too thin (it transformed just five or so hours of the original game into a 40-hour epic). The trilogy’s middle chapter, this year’s Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, tackles those issues head on, and the result is a grand, expansive RPG that feels like a thoroughly modern Final Fantasy as much as it does a homage to an old-school great.
As with many RPGs, Rebirth made the switch to an open world design, but did so in a fascinating way. Rather than a colossal map, its open world is made up of multiple hubs that represent not just varying environment biomes, but different methods of exploration. One area’s activities may be accessed through simple running or climbing, while another demands the use of an off-road vehicle or a flying Chocobo. All this means that while Rebirth’s open worlds may be filled with traditional genre fare like pick-ups, towers, optional bosses, and a genuinely excellent card game, actually accessing these activities requires you to rethink how you navigate and explore with every new location visited.
Of course, those open zones are also the stage for the grand adventure that is Final Fantasy 7. Freed of the dark city slums of Midgar, the story is able to hit the true highs of the original game, including a humorous stint at the Gold Saucer theme park. These are joined by Rebirth’s own original additions, such as a surprisingly dramatic card tournament aboard a ship and many more sequences we dare not spoil. All this, combined with what is undoubtedly the very best Final Fantasy battle system since the days of the ATB gauge, and you have Square’s most exciting RPG in a very, very long time.
Winner: Astro Bot
It’s only right that, in the year of PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, we crown something that celebrates the console’s legacy as the best PlayStation game of the year. Astro Bot is a Mario-matching 3D platformer that excels on all fronts: tremendous stage design, intuitive movement, fun power-ups, and a smart approach to combining all of those elements in exciting new ways on each world visited. It’s emblematic of the creativity that helped define the early years of PlayStation, and something we see all too rarely now on a console largely dedicated to mature, cinematic stories.
A huge amount of joy can be found in Astro Bot’s novel approach to playing with PlayStation history. Almost every stage riffs on a Sony classic, from a glittering casino that winks at Sly Coopers’ most daring heists, to a mushroom world where characters from The Last of Us hide among the fungi. There are a small number of direct homages that brilliantly translate the console’s blockbusters into platformer experiences, including a miniaturized God of War that really does capture the essence of Santa Monica Studio’s Norse beast. But it’s when Astro Bot is flexing its own bespoke creative muscles that it proves the most exciting. Throwing Kratos’ axe is great, but it’s Astro’s grabby gloves and explosive dog backpack that really sparkle.
While smart design is the thing that really powers Astro Bot’s instant joy machine, we can’t not mention the collectable PlayStation characters. What could have felt like a soulless brand exercise is instead perhaps the most engaging collectathon of the generation, with a constantly mounting army of classic characters – some world famous, others deep-cuts recognisable to only long-time fanatics – coming together in a wonderful diorama that feels like a digital PlayStation museum.
But you don’t have to be a PlayStation devotee to really get Astro Bot. Regardless of if you care about its homages or not, this is a platformer made with heart that delivers joy in spades. It is, unquestionably, the best PlayStation game of 2024.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.
