Critics are wrong - what did gamers crown their 2024 Game of the Year?

The games critics often rate highly, and titles that players themselves enjoy the most can often be very different.

There are many different reasons as to why this can be the case, including critics focusing on how far technological boundaries and new concepts can be pushed compared to players wanting something that's simply fun to play.

For example, when looking at the top five gamers' Games of the Year, just one game crosses over from the six game shortlist for Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024, which was eventually won by Astro Bot.

indy100 compiled this list by looking at each of the top 100 games that released in 2024 according to the Metascore on MetaCritic, and the top 100 according to the user score, and picking the top five based on the highest user score with more than 100 gamer reviews.

It might sound simple enough to put a list together solely based on user scores but a number of titles with high scores were not reviewed by that many people and some games on the user score list were placed higher even though they had a lower rating than others - this is seemingly because more people reviewed it.

That's why indy100 has only considered games that had both a Metascore and have been reviewed by more than 100 people to compile the list.

Where games have the same user score, the higher percentage of positive reviews has been taken into account to split them.

Based on all that, these are the top five games of 2024 - as reviewed by you.

Which title will make it as 2024 Gamers' Game of the Year? / Image credits: Konami, Shift Up & Sega

5. Satisfactory

Satisfactory is a very unique PC game in that it's an open-world factory simulation game.

Players take on the role of a Pioneer who is dropped onto an alien planet with a handful of tools and must exploit its natural resources to make factories that become increasingly complex.

Not only has it earned a MetaCritic Must Play award with a score of 91, it also has a user score of 8.9 and is the highest rated PC exclusive of 2024.

4. Sonic x Shadow Generations

Sonic x Shadow Generations from publisher Sega features two games in one.

There's a remastered version of the 2011 title Sonic Generations along with an all new game called Shadow Generations which features Shadow himself as a playable character.

This didn't go down as well with critics - it only scored 80 - but fans loved it, it's just one of four games that came out in 2024 with a rating of 9.0 or higher.

3. Astro Bot

This is where it gets really close - the top three all have a user score of 9.2 and are separated by the finest of margins when it comes to the percentage of positive reviews. They're all PlayStation exclusives for now too.

The first among those is the 2024 Game of the Year winner Astro Bot, PlayStation's answer to Nintendo's Super Mario series it seems.

PlayStation has long been crying out for a mascot such as this and Team Asobi, a PlayStation studio, has delivered one of the best with a very fun 3D platformer.

2. Stellar Blade

There's barely anything at all to split the top two but just missing out on the top spot is Stellar Blade.

It drew criticism from some at launch as the main character, Eve, was accused by some of being over-sexualised but the game has a dedicated fan base and developer Shift Up has been very consistent with post-launch updates.

The action adventure game sees players control Eve across a post-apocalyptic Earth crawling with monsters which she must defeat to help restore the planet and save humankind.

1. Silent Hill 2

Claiming the crown of 2024 Gamers' Game of the Year by the barest of margins is Konami's Silent Hill 2 which released in October.

The game is a remake of the classic 2001 PS2 psychological horror game with the same name but this time around it has much better graphics, a more detailed story, even more intensity and loads of new gameplay mechanics that truly place it among some of the very best games out there, not just in the horror genre.

Players take on the role of James Sunderland who ventures into Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his wife who died three years ago in search for any trace of her.

Loads of monsters have been faithfully recreated, including Pyramid Head, with loads of twisted turns along the way.

So there we have it, Silent Hill 2 is gamers' favourite game of 2024. Do you agree with the top five, or is your favourite game of the year missing out?

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