January 4
Hello and happy new year! Did you have a good rest? I hope so.
This is our regular section where we write a little about some of the games we've been playing, in this case, over the festive holidays. This time, we gorged on loot in Diablo 4 and In Path of Exile 2, Indiana Jones pleasantly surprised us, rather enchanted us, and we delved into the small layers of genius that make up Animal Well.
Catch up on previous editions of this column in our What We've Been Playing archive.
Diablo 4: Vessel of Hate, PS5
I've been ping-ponging between Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 over the Christmas holidays; You could say I've been filling my ARPG cup. What surprised me when doing this is how complementary the games can be. Path of Exile 2 is frugal. He doesn't give up anything easily. You slowly progress through areas and then try multiple times to beat the bosses, and when you do, they don't give you much, those stingy bastards. Path of Exile 2 certainly doesn't shower you with rewards like Diablo 4 does.
This was never more evident than during Diablo 4's Slay Ride to Hell holiday celebration, which spawned Treasure Goblins around the map seemingly everywhere: those bottomless loot bag carriers who run around like Santa Claus. The spawns were particularly potent in the new Vessel of Hatred expansion zone, Nahantu, which it turns out I hadn't been to yet because I hadn't played the expansion yet. So here comes the perfect storm for me: catching up on a year's worth of loot changes and expansion content, while soaking up loot sources along the way.
It eventually became stale, but not before you'd surpassed standard character levels with the new Spirit Warrior class and redeemed literal bags full of some of the best loot in the game. I even had time to reequip some other characters. It's an embarrassment of riches that couldn't be further from the Scrooge-esque approach of Path of Exile 2, and I loved Diablo for that: I gorged on it.
Now, however, I return to Path of Exile 2, as if to purge the excess of Diablo. I think it's appropriate for January.
-Bertie
Animal Pit, PC (Steam Deck)
I swallowed the Animal Well pill along with my Christmas dinner this holiday season and wow, what an absolute gem of a game. I know it's been said a million times already, but developer Billy Basso has come up with something really, really special with this debut, and Metroidvania lovers owe it to themselves to be able to play it if they haven't already. This is an inventive take on the genre, not only in the way it changes the rules around traversal and discovery (swapping double unders for frisbees and bubble wands, for example, and racing for yo-yos and spinning tops), but also because he's so fucking smart. It does what many of my favorite games do, in that it drops you into a world and then simply gestures towards the open door, leaving you to discover it for yourself with virtually no guidance. It's very, very exciting and the kind of game that occupies every waking thought while you play it.
Case in point: I loved discovering all the different 'layers' of Animal Well the more I played it. The first is the six-odd hour journey you'll experience to simply reach the bottom of the well, complete its main story quest, and conquer its “final” boss. The second layer, however, is where Animal Well really comes to life, which is a 64-person egg hunt that actually allows you to exit the well entirely, leading to what I would consider its proper ending. This is what I was able to finish over the holidays, extending my gaming time to about 20 hours. But there's also a third layer encompassing all sorts of Tunic/Fez/ARG-style 'deep' secrets involving hidden bunnies, barcodes, community puzzles that, hands up, are probably beyond me (or rather, beyond the amount of information available). mental space I have for that kind of thing besides having a job).
But man alive, that egg hunt layer was really cool, if only because the tools and gadgets you need to obtain to find them go far beyond what's required to beat the first layer of Animal Well. It really lights up your mind about what's possible in this strange environment and what other secrets might have been hiding in plain sight all along. And some of those eggs are so well hidden! An absolutely crazy achievement for a solo developer and very deserving of its place in our Top 50 Games of 2024.
–ladybug
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Xbox Series
To view this content, please enable targeting cookies.
Watch on YouTube
What a joy it has been to discover Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Eurogamer's Game of the Year 2024. I will happily admit some initial skepticism about this. Indiana Jones is a franchise that hasn't always been well cared for, and while MachineGames is certainly a talented developer, it's not known for handling licensed action-adventure games. How wrong I was! I'm having more fun than almost any other game released last year.
But it goes beyond Indy being just a fun game. MachineGames consistently demonstrates an understanding of the essence of Indy: his half-murmured deductions, his lightly sarcastic humor, and the subtle movements and facial animation that make me feel like I'm watching a new performance capped by Harrison Ford himself.
Then there is the attention to detail. Surely I wasn't the only one who further revealed the arrival of the game's first villain by reading all the fossil exhibits in the university library. And I hope I'm not the only one to notice that MachineGames finally resolves something that irritates me in so many games I play: that you explore a cave/dungeon/some catacombs that were supposedly undisturbed for hundreds of years, except for the fact that all the candles are still lit.
Indiana Jones, I should have known that one day you would walk back through my door with a shiny new chapter. I just didn't expect it to be this.
-Thomas