Best Xbox Series X/S Games Of 2024 (So Far)

2024 has been a remarkable year for video games – and we aren’t even technically halfway through the calendar yet. As of this writing, we have only had four whole months of game releases, and while it’s not abnormal to have one or two game of the year contenders debut in that span, there have arguably been a half dozen or more. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Balatro, Tekken 8, and Persona 3 Reload all have some credibility as awards recipients, and there’s plenty more on the docket for 2024 that might make it the best year of video games ever.

That’s getting a bit too far ahead, though. Even now, there’s so many games to be excited about, even if they aren’t all contenders for the actual best game of the year. While PlayStation exclusives remain pretty popular, that’s largely the only platform that’s restricting where games land. In the Xbox ecosystem, it’s more about shared resources – Pentiment arrived on Nintendo Switch this year, marking a big milestone in the Nintendo and Microsoft partnership, and more collaborations are expected. For that reason, the best Xbox Series X/S games of 2024 so far aren’t necessarily platform exclusives, but rather excellent versions of games available across multiple devices.

10

Harold Halibut

Metascore: 77

Harold Halibut features a huge selling point as its central premise – it has entirely handmade character models and environmental sets, creating an aesthetic that looks far more like a feature film than the point-and-click adventure game that it actually is. The stop-motion animation is truly remarkable in a way that immediately establishes it as an innovative presence in gaming, even if there are some looser threads in its design that threaten to unravel and ultimately hold it back from being completely great.

That isn’t to say Harold Halibut is less than a good game – it veers anywhere between average to excellent – just that there are a few inconsistencies here and there. Critics mostly point to its narrative being up-and-down as an experience, and that’s a fair assessment, but the beauty of the game’s art and world, coupled with how much it tries to push against its genre limitations and innovate, make it an excellent 2024 release for Xbox and other platforms.

9

Go Mecha Ball

Metascore: 81

Go Mecha Ball doesn’t do itself any favors with the way it initially looks – at first glance, it appears to be a pinball game with a nice aesthetic, which pigeonholes it into a genre it actually doesn’t belong in. Go Mecha Ball incorporates pinball-style physics into a game that has a slew of movement decisions, upgrades, weapon styles, and an excellent OST that all combine into an experience that’s easy to miss but worth seeking out.

The biggest selling point of the game is likely its replayability – as a title that’s difficult to master but relatively easy to get decent at, it immediately rewards players with satisfactory progress but challenges them to continue to improve. It makes good on that allure by offering an experience that isn’t too time-consuming, either, making it very easy to pick up and play every now and then without needing to commit to it long-term.

8

Sand Land

Metascore: 72

Sand Land is based on the Akira Toriyama manga of the same name, which is finally beginning to get the recognition it has long deserved as a cult classic and niche favorite among many readers. Sand Land follows Prince Beelzebub and a rag-tag crew of survivors in a world that’s been devastated by disaster, where water is the most valuable resource and forging friendships and alliances among its disparate people might be the only way forward for survival.

Sand Land the game, however, also includes awesome tank-based gameplay and plenty of fun exploration to enrich the experience. It also adds true-to-style additional content to help flesh out the story and create something new for those familiar with the Prince’s adventures. The game is fantastic no matter what, but its especially poignant that it is an excellent adaptation that honors the late Toriyama and his impressively deep catalog of compelling work.

7

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Metascore: 86

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is an unabashedly proud sequel to one of Capcom’s cult classics, and in honoring the philosophy of its predecessor, it’s also an excellent modernization of a unique approach. Dragon’s Dogma 2 has no interest in holding its players’ hands while they learn its systems, but it also doesn’t have the same difficulty level as a Souls game, occupying an entertaining space that helps differentiate it from its competitors while still offering satisfying mechanics that can be learned and honed as skills.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 also has some systems that make it bafflingly strange in the best way. Pawns from other players often appear to be adaptations of characters from other popular properties, while the existence of the Dragonsplague was so controversial it eventually resulted in Capcom changing the way it functions. While these elements can feel odd or even unintuitive at times, their broader application to the game make it feel like something that can’t be had anywhere else, and it only takes one accidental Griffin ride dumping a player into a brand new area to fall in love with its organic, vivacious world.

6

Botany Manor

Metascore: 86

Botany Manor might not be the type of game most would associate with a list of contenders for the best Xbox Series X/S games of 2024 so far, but it is uniquely charming and a wonderful example of the viability of the puzzle genre. Botany Manor is set in 1890, placing players in the role of Arabella Greene, a retired botanist researching plants in the mysterious Somerset Manor while uncovering the magical properties of said plants as she goes.

It’s an interesting premise made even better by its puzzles, which are progression-based and flow into each other across a series of environmental clues about growing each plant. It’s a novel approach that makes the game memorable, and its relaxing vibe complements the lackadaisical pacing of its gameplay to create a game that’s pure stress relief, even when its next steps are obscured by a particularly difficult to parse clue.

5

Persona 3 Reload

Metascore: 87

Persona 3 Reload is the definitive way to play what is arguably the best Persona or Shin Megami Tensei narrative ever written. At the very least, it’s the blueprint for every later Persona game thanks to its incorporation of social sim elements into its party building and environmental design, and that’s before considering the stylistic approach to combat and JRPG tactics became the foundation for Persona 5. To say it’s a historically significant JRPG would be an understatement – so it’s great to see it so accessible and modernized in 2024.

Persona 3 Reload fully overhauls the game’s graphics to be more in line with recent releases, and modifies things like the menu layouts to be more aesthetically pleasing, too. While the gameplay more than holds up in 2024, it really is an excellent story that makes this a must-play, with a darker spin on the series and some memorable, heart-wrenching moments complemented by deep, fascinating characters.

4

Unicorn Overlord

Metascore: 87

Unicorn Overlord aimed for the lofty crown of the Fire Emblem series and somehow delivered a game that actually rivals some of the latter’s best entries. Unicorn Overlord is the followup to Vanillaware’s excellent 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, a strategy game centered around time-traveling mechs that featured frenetic gameplay (at times) and mind-bending strategical depth (always) that made is one of the most underrated releases over the last decade.

So, naturally, Unicorn Overlord ended up as a purely traditional high fantasy game that features turn-based tactics with less time constraints. What is here is simply superb, however, with an incredible variation of characters and roles that opens up strategies that feel endless in their complexity and viability. While it doesn’t quite manage to recreate the social systems and character relationships that Fire Emblem introduced to the genre and made so popular, everything else is on par or – at least arguably – even better, which makes it one of the best Xbox Series X/S games of 2024 so far.

3

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Metascore: 87

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a revitalization of a long-running, beloved franchise that challenges what players should expect from future releases in the Ubisoft series. The Lost Crown follows Sargon of a warrior group called The Immortals, who is tasked with rescuing Prince Ghassan while the fate of Persia hangs in the balance and is on the brink of total collapse. To say there’s a lot at stake in the game is an understatement.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a 2.5D adventure game and platformer that features puzzle-solving elements alongside the usual Metroidvania staples of progression-based upgrades and backtracking to solve previously unsolvable conundrums with new tools. The game is aesthetically pleasing and smooth to play, with an array of mechanics that make it a tactically deep journey. Savvy design decisions make for a return to form for Prince of Persia.

2

Tekken 8

Metascore: 89

Tekken 8 solidifies the franchise as one of the premier fighting game titles in gaming. Maybe that was obvious to some well before the eighth iteration of the series, but Tekken 8 over-delivers on bombastic visuals to catch the stray eyes of would-be fighters and then delivers some of the best mechanics it has ever seen. Chaining together combos – especially ones that are physically or mechanically taxing to perform – gives players that rare satisfactory, competitive elation that only the best in the genre deliver.

Tekken 8 is a stand-out because of its challenging gameplay, fluid combat, and gorgeous aesthetics. It’s not that the game completely reinvents Bandai Namco’s fighter – it’s more that it represents the culmination of seven other games’ worth of learning, and coalesces into one of the fighting genre’s modern bests.

1

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Metascore: 92

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is both one of the most ambitious and most approachable Yakuza games. Now rebranded under the LAD moniker, the story of Ichiban Kasuga ramps up significantly from its already emotionally-charged and compelling beginnings, as he explores Hawaii in an attempt to find his long-lost mother. Along the way, he assembles a crew of society’s misfits – some familiar, some new – and, as is the way with so many of RGG Studio’s heroes, finds himself embroiled in a plot far bigger than himself.

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is a massive achievement for turn-based, JRPG gaming. A job-based combat system that allows for customizable parties no matter which characters someone wants to use is combined with a spectacle of a story that features some of the series’ most memorable twists and turns, all to form one of the best RPGs in modern memory. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is a must-play for anyone who enjoys a good story or great gameplay, and is one of the best Xbox Series X/S games of 2024 so far.