I must confess that although I write a piece like this every year, I find it difficult to do so now with the same enthusiasm that I normally would. That’s not to say that the games of 2023 have been bad, far from it. Looking at the lineup, this has been one of the strongest years in terms of big-name releases.
No, the problem is that this has been a historically fraught year for the people who work within the industry: The people who make the games we all love to play. It takes almost no effort to find a story about big layoffs in some studio or another. GamesIndustry.bix has at least one story of major layoffs for each month of this year. Estimates are that about 6,500 jobs total have been lost.
And unlike the Game Awards, and their hasty desire to “wrap it up” without addressing any of that, I don’t want to sweep that pain and heartbreak under the rug. I doubt anyone in the industry actually reads this, but if you do, I want you to know that you’ve been seen and heard. Great games like the ones that came out this year were created by you and your skilled, experienced peers. Those efforts and those creations deserve to be celebrated.
So without further ago, in no particular order, the Highlights of 2023 in gaming are:
Shadows of Doubt
I make no secret of my love for detective fiction, so how could a procedurally generated endless supply of cases to solve be anything but the coolest? It helps that whatever algorithm they use to generate the city block does a remarkable job of crafting the background details necessary for a murder mystery, like relationships, addresses, jobs, and the like. There are clear limitations endemic to randomization. However, if the player is willing to suspend their disbelief just a little, they’ll be able to inhabit the shoes of a detective doing the field work, and making deductions to solve the case and get that sweet, sweet paycheck.
Ever since I bought it, Shadows of Doubt has always sat comfortably on both my Steam Deck and my PC, for those occasions when the mood strikes me.
Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name
I’m the guy who spent an entire summer marathoning the Yakuza games, so it’s no surprise that when a new one of those comes out, I’m ready for it. Sure, for the most part, it plays the same as the last few of Kiryu’s entities, but that’s not a bad thing by any means. There’s a comfort in knowing that I shouldn’t have any trouble since I already know how to play this franchise.
And while the middle of this story feels like it drags on longer than it should, it’s in service to an incredible finale that left me in tears alongside Kiryu. Few things can top an otherwise stoic protagonist just having an ugly cry, letting his feelings out the way any of us would. That’s not something we see much of in video games, so I appreciate the few moments that we do.
Marvel’s Spider-man 2
Anyone who knows we knew this would be on my list. Not only is Spider-Man my favorite superhero of all time, but Venom is one of my favorite villains of all time alongside him. Bringing them together with Insomniac’s signature standard of quality was the perfect recipe.
I also have to respect the dev team for choosing to take aspects of the Raimi Spider-Man movies, the classic and beloved Black Suit storyline, and remix them with elements from Kraven’s Last Hunt and the King in Black to create an original storyline all of their own. I don’t always agree with the choices they make, but I respect them. They pulled it off, and the resulting story was told well.
Of course, I also can’t deny that playing as Spider-Man while wearing the Black Suit is a fun power trip all of its own, gameplay reflecting the increasing brutality that the symbiote brings to the surface.
I’m a humble symbiote fan, and I was well served.
Lies of P
Where other FromSoft clones are content to simply copy the formula, Lies of P makes significant upgrades to the Dark Souls style of game design, such that I have regularly told people that From Software should be taking notes from Round8 Studio.
When playing the game, I can almost see the way they studied the Souls games that so clearly inspired their work and looked for pain points that could be tweaked or improved to create a better experience for the player base. One of the most obvious is that the last charge of the Estus Flask equivalent can be restored by carefully parrying and attacking enemies, rewarding skillful play by extending their time between rest points, or giving them the attention resource they need to finish that last push to the next one.
Regarding character builds, the developers made it easier than ever to adjust them as needed. Not only is character respec readily available at the cost of an easily attainable resource, but weapons can have their blades and handles swapped around to allow players to adjust to whatever the area ahead of them calls for.
Combined with strong world-building and a combat system that favors aggression, it was everything I could have asked for from a Souls-game. I look forward to seeing what this studio has to offer next.
Street Fighter VI
I didn’t stick with Street Fighter VI as long as I wanted to. Considering that I have mostly weeded my way off of fighting games as a whole the fact that I stuck with it for any time at all, even if only a little bit, is telling.
Doubly so since I historically have never been able to get into Street Fighter specifically because its six-button layout never agreed with me. Were it not for the Modern control scheme, I would still not be capable of doing so. I won’t be winning any tournaments, but I can at least have a good time with the game.
That was the first time I was ever capable of having fun with Street Fighter, and I won’t forget it.
Hi-Fi Rush
Truth be told, I couldn’t have asked for a better game to start the year off than Hi-Fi Rush. From the very first cutscene, I was already hooked by the vibrant, highly animated visual flair and stellar soundtrack that punctuated every moment.
And that presentation extends to the act of play as well, since every action from jumping across platforms to stylin’ on fools ala Devil May Cry is performed to the beat of the music, with multiple accessibility options available to the rhythmically challenged like me. With their help, I was able to find the beat and shred my foes apart.
Beyond that, Hi-Fi Rush put me in the headspace of the old Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch growing up thanks to its style. I had a smile across my features for the entire runtime and even made good use of my Steam Deck through it. It still astounds me that the game was released so suddenly, but if anything that only added to the charm.
The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story / Convergence: A League of Legends Story
It truly amazes me that almost everything set in the world of Runeterra aside continues to keep me interested in the world and lore of League of Legends, while failing to create any interest for me to try League of Legends for a second time. Riot’s creative team deserves all the credit for what they’ve built, especially in recent years, and both of these games are a testament to that.
I’ve placed them both here in this same slot despite being two wholly different games, in wholly different genres, developed by wholly different teams, because they share in that thread. Both of them take established canon in the world of Runeterra and use it as a jumping-off point to build new games and media with those characters. By and large, both of them succeed at that goal as well, delivering on that promise. Both Sylas and Echo have arcs in their respective works that made me genuinely care about them and their struggles.
I will never play League beyond the 2 hours I gave it, but the next time a game or TV Show is set in the universe (Arcane Season 2, I’m looking squarely at you in anticipation), I will be there for it.
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey came out in October 2018, and since I beat it (and later gave up on it after its first DLC), I have burnt out so hard on the series that I completely lost all interest I once had. I’ve yet to touch Valhalla, and frankly, I doubt I ever will. However, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage promised to return to the era before the franchise transitioned to Witcher-style RPGs with loot drops, colored rarity tiers, and character leveling/experience systems.
Ultimately, I still don’t care about the plot of Assassin’s Creed anymore, but I enjoyed my time playing Mirage. This is the version of Assassin’s Creed I want to see more of: 20ish-hour, focused experiences that emphasize the act of assassinating major targets using wits, stealth, and precision. It was a return to form for the franchise, getting in touch with its roots, but modernized with lessons learned in the over 15 years since the first game.
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
At first, I was convinced that Tears of the Kingdom was going to be little more than a sequel to Breath of the Wild with a few new mechanics. While that’s certainly true, those new mechanics dramatically change the way the game is played.
Specifically, the ability to build my own machines, devices, and sometimes even weapons using the fuse mechanic enabled puzzles and dungeons that were simply not possible in previous Zelda games. The focus on player agency and expression permeates the entire experience, even from the very start. Even if I’m not patient enough to build the death tanks and other incredible machines that other players have been able to, just knowing it’s been done is enough to spark joy.
I hope they continue to iterate on those building mechanics from TotK, because I have the feeling that will open up whole new avenues for future Zelda titles.
Viewfinder
The first time I took a photo in Viewfinder, and transposed it onto the space in front of me, was such a surreal experience that it sticks in my mind even now. Video games are the only medium in which it is possible to truly play around with concepts like these, throwing players into worlds where the very space around them is almost infinitely malleable. What starts as a simple mechanics grows and expands throughout the game, mixing in non-Euclidean geometrics and applying the use of negative space in ways that, while clever, never serve to overwhelm the player.
That was what truly impressed me most with Viewfinder. It would be easy to create needlessly complex and mind-bending puzzles that make use of its central mechanics, but the developers show restraint, avoiding that exact outcome. Generally, I’m someone who appreciates the artistry of a good puzzle more than the act of solving one, mostly because I’m not skilled at it. And yet, there were very few instances in Viewfinder where I found myself stuck and only one time where I looked up the solution on YouTube. This doesn’t happen with me very often, and for mechanics this unique to avoid turning me to the realm of online guides, they clearly made the extra effort to balance the difficulty of their puzzle design.
It literally made me think outside the box, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
Baldur’s Gate 3
If I did Game of the Year, there’s no question in my mind that Baldur’s Gate 3 would receive that title. Since it exited Early Access and hit full release in late August, my mind space has been dominated by the companions who traveled with me across the Sword Coast in pursuit of a cure for our shared infection by mind flayer tadpoles, similar to how Hitman (2016) defined the year it released for me. And if the internet is to be believed, I am far from the only one from whom that applies.
While it’s easy to talk about how well the game translated 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons to a video game, the truth is I don’t care about that. No, what I care about is my collection of beautifully damaged adventurers who I’ve built relationships with over the course of two complete campaigns. Though Neil Newbon’s Astarion was the one who won Best Performance both in The Game Awards and Golden Joysticks, the truth is that every single performance from the cast deserves credit for bringing all of their characters to life, including Amelia Tyler as the ever-present dungeon master, whose narration adds so much texture to the experience.
I could write about this game for ages, but it all boils down to one thing: Passion. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, from helping my allies work through long-held emotional traumas to using my training as a Monk to defeat a zombie bartender in a drinking contest with poisoned alcohol, there is a clear passion and joy that went into every single aspect of the game. As a player, those feelings are infectious, imparting onto me with every step on the journey.
I will never tire of telling stories from my experience with Baldur’s Gate 3, nor will I tire of hearing others share their stories, especially if in the telling they inform me of content I’ve never seen and likely never will. I can only hope it continues to live in my head rent-free.
The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog
There’s no reason why a Sonic the Hedgehog game released for free entirely as an April Fool’s joke should be anything approaching a fun video game, but here we are. I don’t have much more to say beyond that for this short visual novel. I can’t say I’m truly a Sonic fan, but I have a certain fondness for the blue blur that this one tapped into, with a self-awareness that made me smile and chuckle.
And really, that’s more than I could’ve expected.
Alan Wake 2
One might think that with Baldur’s Gate 3 occupying my brain for months on end, there’d be no room for anything else. And yet, “Herald of Darkness” and “Dark Ocean Summoning” by Poets of the Fall still find themselves playing in my head on a loop as I go about my daily business. Even if Alan Wake 2 was somehow a bad video, that relationship between Remedy and Poets of the Fall continues to pay off in dividends. If the Ashtray Maze from Control blew you away, then Alan Wake 2 surpasses even that with a segment all its own.
And honestly, that’s because the story of Alan Wake 2 is the story of Remedy itself. There are very few studios out there that consistently top themselves, pushing the medium further and further, the way that they do. Every element of their signature style, from the clever interweaving of live-action footage to the meta-commentary of fictional works, is present here.
Additionally, they are expanding by trying their hand with new mechanics. Alan’s Writer’s Room is a perfect example, where he takes advantage of flashes of inspiration and story hooks to rewrite certain areas, seamlessly transitioning between states in mere seconds. New protagonist Saga Anderson has a similar mechanic called the Mind Place, where instead she pieces together clues and profiles people of interest to figure out the mystery at the core of the story together. They’re each engaging in their own right, adding a layer to the tale’s presentation that wouldn’t be readily achievable outside of video games.
When asked to choose between style and substance, Remedy said that it didn’t have to choose. It could have both.
Goodbye Volcano High
Everyone capable of reading this will have lived through the existential dread that came from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. No matter who you were, you doubtless share at least a portion of my experience, doing your best to remain quarantined and isolated, keeping trips to a minimum, and isolating yourself from loved ones to keep them safe and healthy.
Goodbye Volcano High was developed while all of that was fresh in our minds, and it shows as the main cast of dinosaur high school students grapples with the impending doom of the meteor that will render them all extinct. Each of them struggles to reconcile their hopes for the future with the stark reality that they likely won’t be able to experience it. I found myself relating to most of them in one way or another. I might not be non-binary like the lead character Fang, but I understand their struggle to cope with a perception that their friends are growing distant as they get older and expand their interests. And I understand how badly some people, like a teenage version of myself, can cope with that.
It won’t be a game for everyone. Despite its generally hopeful message, it tackles very depressing subject matter. Still, it was an experience that I’m grateful for.
Octopath Traveler 2
A class-based RPG with a highly customizable party is my crack. Those are the words that will almost immediately catch my interest, especially when it’s a sequel to one of my favorite mid-budget games from Square Enix in the last few years.
Even better, almost every single aspect of the game has been improved. The eight playable characters have more personality than the group from the last game, as the developers seem more willing to play around with their archetypes. Also unlike the cast of the last game, they have far more opportunities to interact with each other. While I couldn’t picture why the eight travelers from the first game came together, this group was more connected to each other.
And mechanically, it improves upon the first game in almost every possible way. Though I didn’t finish this one 100% either, for much the same reason I didn’t finish the first, I was more than satisfied with it.
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As I said, despite how terrible it’s been for the people working in the industry, this has been a great year to consume video games. Unfortunately, not every game can be one of my darlings. Whether the game was at fault, or if there were other factors at play, it’s impossible to enjoy everything I played this year.
Some don’t meet the mark, like these. Again, in no particular order, my disappointments of 2023 are:
Starfield
I have been a long-time fan of Bethesda’s games. When I got my Steam Deck this year, one of the first things I did was install Oblivion and make sure all of my mods would work on it without issues because I knew I would want access to a game like that if I was ever on a long trip. Back in high school, I introduced my friends to Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and I must have played through both games at least 5 times each. In my college years, I used to make jokes like “That textbook is $60!? I can buy 1 whole Skyrim for that!”
I criticize Fallout 3 and Skyrim to hell and back for their sloppy worldbuilding, but at the end of the day I would not have played all of these games of much as I have if I didn’t like them: If I wasn’t enjoying the act of play itself.
If Starfield was just another Bethesda game, I might whine about the problems they’re still widely known for, but deep down I’d be content. Unfortunately, it’s less than that. On paper, all of the mechanics are here: Factions, companions, side quests, tiered loot, and perks acquired through leveling up. In practice, there’s a bizarrely hollow undercurrent to it all. The words that perpetually come to mind when I think of Starfield are “sterile” and “empty”. That’s my experience with the game, and it’s why I’ve had no desire to go back after completing the main quest in a weekend, despite keeping Oblivion installed on my Steam Deck.
I gaze upon the vast expanse of space before me in Starfield, and I feel… underwhelmed.
Sea of Stars
There’s nothing wrong with Sea of Stars. It has an engaging combat system, a charming cast of characters, a compelling central plot threat tying everything together, and a presentation that harkens back to the types of RPGs that I remember fondly from my childhood. On paper, this should be a game that captured my attention.
Which is why I find it so vexing that no matter how many times I tried, I just couldn’t bring myself to keep playing it. I wish I could describe exactly what kept me bouncing off Sea of Stars over and over again, but at the end of the day, it comes down more to a “vibes check” than anything concrete.
A long time ago, a friend of mine once reminded me that games are meant to be entertainment. If one is constantly forming excuses not to play a certain game, the odds are that they simply don’t want to play it. That’s something I’ve kept close to my heart ever since, and I use it as a guide for how I allocate my time to games or other media. Whatever the reason was, I kept making up reasons why Sea of Stars wasn’t the game I wanted to play “right now”, so it became far healthier just to move on.
Maybe one day, I’ll give it a second chance. Whims are fickle, after all. But that seems unlikely.
Final Fantasy XVI
Final Fantasy XVI is not a bad video game, with the kind of polish and production values many of us have come to expect from mainline entries in one of gaming’s most storied franchises. As someone who holds the Platinum trophy for it, I can say with certainty that I enjoyed my time with it as I was playing.
And yet, upon reflection on my experience with the base game (Note: As of the time of writing, I have not yet touched the DLC.), I’m left with a general malaise. When I just let the experience wash over me, I enjoy the spectacle of it all, with bombastic enemies and giant kaiju battles that showcase the developer’s cinematic flair.
But under even the slightest scrutiny, I start to notice how threadbare the total package is. Despite a combat system inspired by character-action games like Devil May Cry, I find that moment-to-moment decision-making is lacking. Where I would want to be thinking about how I can vary up my combo strings and incorporate taunts to increase my style ranking, I find myself instead mashing on the attack button as I wait for my special moves to come off cooldown so I can chain them once more into a big burst. Where each fight should be something I eagerly look forward to, I am instead growing tired and bored of the same enemies that I’ve been fighting since the first hour of the game, acting just as predictably now as they did 40 hours ago.
That hollow sense extends to the story, which doesn’t seem to know what it wants to do. From the start, it presents itself as this dark fantasy in the vein of Game of Thrones, where every major political power has some hidden motivation or agenda for playing against the others, and no one is entirely moral or upright. Rather than pay off anything set up during that window, the second half abruptly, suddenly shifts into a traditional Final Fantasy tale of saving the world from a murderous god who wishes to end all life. There is nothing inherently wrong with going in either direction, but both sides feel inadequately served in this exchange. The beginning isn’t properly paid off and the end isn’t sufficiently set up to have the emotional pathos that the finale is aiming for.
I could go on, but the general feeling that I get is that I don’t know if this project was worth taking so many people off the Final Fantasy XIV team to work on it. I know Yoshi-P’s team worked hard on it, but I don’t know if I see the results of the labor infused into the final product beyond a surface level.
Redfall
This one hurt. I’ve been a massive fan of Arkane Studios ever since the first Dishonored game. From that franchise to Prey and its Mooncrash expansion, to the incredible Deathloop, there wasn’t a game they made that I didn’t love.
And then, Redfall came out. To put the studio responsible for most of the best immersive sims in the past decade onto a bland, flavorless Left 4 Dead/Borderlands clone, but with vampires added to it, is such a colossal misstep that it’s no wonder 70% of the Austin studio who worked on it left the company. After playing roughly 1 hour and 50 minutes of it, I struggle to find a reason why I would recommend Redfall instead of one of the games that so clearly “inspired” it.
That’s not to say that it doesn’t stand apart from them. It certainly does, just not in a good way. Even in my short experience, I remember running into both technical issues like quest objectives not spawning in, and questionable design decisions like progress only going to the host(read: me), and not the friend I somehow convinced to join me for this short-lived adventure.
Such is why Redfall gets the distinction of being the only game I have ever gotten a Steam refund for.
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And thankfully, that is a much smaller list than I’m used to. I can only hope that in the coming years, the designers who were so unceremoniously laid off or otherwise mistreated this year can find places, even if those places aren’t in the industry, that treat them well. They deserve to be safe and secure in their work.
To all of you, good luck. And Free Palestine.
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