WTMG's Aaron Price: "At no point would I have ever expected a Mario Vs. Donkey Kong remake. I gave up hope on the series after it died with the Wii U Amiibo game. This was one of the most welcome surprises to what’s seemingly the last year of the Switch. If you’re too young to have played the original on GBA, or just want a fun puzzle game to play, I honestly could not recommend this more. It’s faithful to the original and has a ton of quality of life improvements that make it so much more fun to play. Really glad they went this route instead of just slapping the original on Nintendo Switch Online (if you want to do that though, especially the sequel, I wouldn’t complain). "
VGChartz's Lee Mehr: "Whether you call it a brainteaser, a conundrum, or – dare I say – a puzzle, the point remains the same: challenging one's mental ingenuity moreso than their finger dexterity. In this respect, the list of genre-defining titles from last year ranked among the best of the past decade. That doesn't mean 2024 was a slouch though; hell, even Mario was getting in on the puzzle action. That's often the surprise with the genre as a whole: indie titles with fresh ideas and established franchises have an equal chance of enjoying the winner's circle.
Our varied shortlist represents that to a tee. Whether it's the aforementioned Mario-themed game, the splendid pair of indie darlings, or a sequel over a decade in the making, there's no telling who makes the final cut. It's another eclectic list of disparate aesthetic & design personalities slowly moving the genre forward. Without further ado, here are the final four."
WTMG's Leo Faria: "We’re back at it. The moment you’ve been waiting for. The last twelve months were absolutely plastered with bangers, from all sizes, markets, development budgets, and genres. We’ve played VR games, Switch games, PC games, retro games, and so on. Every single niche had, at the very least, a title which managed to stand out. If our list featuring the worst games of 2024 was hard to create because there were barely any bad games to come out this year, this list was different. It was heartbreaking to see so many outstanding titles fail to make our final cut, just to show how many great games came out in 2024."
The Atlus RPG is the first PlayStation 5 title in eight months to take the top of the sales charts.
