Game of the Year 2024 – Overall Winner
As the end of the year looms large, it signals the close of our awards season, too. We’ve celebrated this year’s incredible visuals, innovative gameplay, and each platform’s best titles, but someone has to be the winner, sitting atop this remarkable pile like a particularly proud mole. Our winner resoundingly stood out as a celebration of PlayStation, and gaming as a whole, focussing on fun, and evoking a purity of vision that is rarely found in AAA games.
It has been a good year for games, but with so many blockbusting new games and genuine surprises, more incredible remakes than you can shake a stick at, even games backed by hundreds of millions could struggle to stand out from the crowd. Diminutive though they might be, Astro did exactly that.
And with good reason — what started out as effectively a tech demo has blossomed into something that shows off the absolute best of PlayStation. Not only is it an absolute nostalgia fest, but it is an incredibly well-designed game.
The long and short of it is that you are searching the universe for your missing buddies. Each level is a beautiful and moreish platformer, with upbeat music, colourful enemies and all manner of things to keep you entertained and engaged — like the special weapons and items that are key to your success. The level design is both varied and the right level of challenging, with super-hard optional side levels for those looking for sweaty palms.
As we said in our review, where we awarded Astro a very rare 10/10, “Whether you’re an old timer or a young kid with their first console — or better yet, a combination of the two — there are dozens of hours of fun to be mined here. It’s a fun, easy-going romp through PlayStation history, and absolutely impossible to play without a smile plastered to your face.”
Well done Astro, you cute little guy, you are well deserving of TheSixthAxis’s Game of the Year Award for 2024.
– Nic B
In other years, Metaphor could easily have been the one taking this prize home, but
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