Another day of trial awaits us, and our client is still the prime suspect in a murder he didn’t commit. Perhaps it’s time for a Turnabout Samurai.

By sheer coincidence, my copy of A Profound Waste of Time: Volume 3 arrived over the holidays and one of the pieces, written by Gita Jackson from Aftermath, was about Shu Takemi, the creator of the Ace Attorney games.

According to her article, he has written almost 30 mysteries across all of the cases in the Ace Attorney franchise, which makes him one of the most prolific murder mystery writers of our age. I said he wrote about as many stories as Christie in the recording, but that’s a lie. Still, he does come closer to the greats of the genre than most others.

And when I think about that, it makes me wonder if his work will get the same level of prestige years down the line. He certainly deserves it. Few games ever make me laugh on replay as much as I’ve found myself laughing while streaming this one.

Congrats to you, Mr. Takemi-san. I hope you’re doing well.

In this episode, I lose my mind over seemingly trivial details, but I promise that there’s a method to my madness in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

I absolutely refuse to believe that the road was “blocked off” simply because there was a giant head in the middle of it. It should be entirely possible to walk around it to get to Studio One. Heck, it should be easy.

It’s hardly a major failing or even a plot hole. It’s just one of those contrivances in fiction that gets to me in a way it probably won’t get to most other people. Still, as hyperbolic as I am, this is not CinemaSins, and I won’t pretend it’s anything but a minor concern.

This is still one of the best murder mystery franchises in all of video games, if not the best.

Turnabout Samurai continues, and when we last left off we were in the middle of a murder trial. All we need to do is buy time for another day of investigations. Hopefully, our opening is somewhere in Oldbag’s testimony.

I remember the days of l33t sp3ak, and I wish I didn’t. Thankfully, in fiction, anyone who talks like that is definitely “sucksores”, so I can treat them like garbage.

Doubly so for the ones creeping on a 17-year-old girl! Let’s just say that I can’t wait to pick him apart at the next trial. And hopefully, you’ll be just as excited to join me for it.

Even in a year packed full of incredible new games, I managed to squeeze in plenty of time to either catch up on old games or continue to play live service games that I keep up with. But those games don’t usually get mentioned in end-of-the-year retrospectives. Likewise, there are many HD ports and remasters that are often hard to justify putting on the list of 2023 releases.

That’s what this is for, to shout out those games that don’t otherwise get a chance, starting with:

Sonic Frontiers

Another chapter in my long-running exploration of the question “Do I actually like Sonic games?”. I’m still not sure what the answer is, but I do know that what I played here is a good starting point. Though rough in a few key spots, I can see how, with some refinement and polish, a direct sequel to Sonic Frontiers could go a long way toward rehabilitating the reputation both Sonic and Sonic Team have been squandering over the years.

If a game leaves me smiling while I’m in the driver’s seat, it has to be doing something right, and that’s exactly what this one did.

Resident Evil 4 (2023)

The original Resident Evil 4 is such a milestone in the history of video games that it’s almost blasphemous to say this, but I’ve only ever played about an hour or so of that version. I know my time with this remake (which you can watch right here) is no replacement for that, but it’s going to be the closest thing I’ll likely get to it.

Capcom has thus far done excellent work with these remakes, capturing the vital essence and tone of the original work while modernizing it with the innovations in game design and presentation that we enjoy in today’s context. This one was no exception, especially since the original work was (in)famous for both being a large escort mission and popularizing quick-time events for the generation to come.

This was the one they absolutely couldn’t afford to get wrong, and though I don’t have first-hand experience with the original, those that do seem mostly happy with it. That tells me everything I need to know.

System Shock (2023)

Similar to Resident Evil 4, this is a remake of one of the most influential games in the history of the medium. The genre we now refer to as Immersive Sims, niche as they are, all share a common ancestry in the original System Shock and its sequel. While I have experience with System Shock 2, I never played this one.

Just like with RE4, I know this isn’t a replacement for the original version, nor should it be. However, my understanding is that the original version is from a time before WASD movement was standardized. It’s the kind of experience that is rough for someone in 2023 to go back to, so I instead took this chance to play through the history of one of my favorite genres on my own terms.

And I’m happy I did, because I felt the nostalgia despite my lack of direct experience, more of the era this game represents than the game itself. It was comforting in a way, like going back to a diner you remember from years ago and ordering the pancakes you had as a kid. That was System Shock for me.

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order

People who know me know that I’m not a big fan of Star Wars. I don’t hate the franchise, but I can’t say that it excites me the way it does many others around my age. So when others with similar views of the franchise to my own were saying that despite their disinterest in Star Wars, they were having a great time with Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, I did what anyone in my position would do.

I looked to see if I could get the first game cheaply and found that it was already on my account because it was free on PlayStation Plus. Imagine my surprise when I found that I started to grow fond of protagonist Cal Kestis and his little robot BD-1. Their story was well told, well executed, and surprisingly effective despite my relative unfamiliarity with the finer details of the world and fiction.

Imagine how that fondness grew further as I returned to the comfort food that is From Software’s Soulsborn formula. Sure, it may be a Star Wars skin on top of those mechanics, but that skin works.

The whole experience comes together well, and now that one of my friends has gifted me Jedi Survivors, I look forward to continuing with this series in the new year.

Marvel Snap

Though I have my qualms with the way the economy for Marvel Snap has been developing, the fact remains that I still enjoy spending my early mornings at work jamming enough matches to fulfill my dailies.

I’ve a mostly complete collection of cards at this point, and from that perspective, I enjoy watching each new patch and release impact deck building environment. Even when the game starts to grow stale, I can trust that the dev team will start to take action to address the problem cards swiftly.

I don’t know how gentle the game is for people who don’t keep up the way I do, or for players starting out, but for me, Marvel Snap is still going strong.

Dead Space (2023)

If I had a quarter for every time a remake of a beloved horror game was released in 2023, I would have two quarters. That’s not a lot, but it’s strange it happened twice. And both releases resulted in well-constructed video games.

Like the Resident Evil remakes, the team responsible for it made the wise decision not to create a 1-for-1 adaption of the original work, but with higher-resolution graphics, an updated script, and rerecorded performances. Instead, they chose to preserve the spirit of the original game, going through similar beats and keeping the tone and atmosphere while modernizing the experience with new level and set designs. Additionally, since protagonist Issac Clarke was a silent lead in the original and a voiced character in all subsequent works, the script was adapted to give him a voice and a more active role in conversations and decision-making.

Though horror games don’t frighten me the way they once did, I could feel the suspense that permeated every single encounter in Dead Space (2023). Every single drop of healing, ammo, and other resources felt controlled. Most major fights and encounters pushed my stash of supplies to its limit, and yet at the same time rarely can I say I ever ran out. Resource management, from both a player and designer perspective, is crucial to the fundamental gameplay loop underpinning the genre, and this team took care and attention to tuning that loop.

There’s no denying that between this and Resident Evil 4 (2023), fans of the horror genre ate well this year.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R

It would not be hyperbole to call Star Ocean: The Second Story one of the best RPGs to hit the original PlayStation. Though it doesn’t have the long-lasting cultural impact of its peers in the Final Fantasy franchise, fans of the genre hold it in high regard. While I didn’t play it at the time of its original release, I did play it via the PSP port from 2009, when I was still in high school. Even at the time, I understood that the hype surrounding it was well-founded.

So imagine my surprise when not only is it remade this year, in 2023, but said remake goes to great lengths to modernize itself for a new audience while still holding true to the core principles that made it so beloved in the first place. This is one of those rare updates to an old game where every single change they made significantly improved the overall experience. Random encounters are replaced with enemies that spawn to be fought or avoided. Instead of forcing players to manually travel to places they’ve been to previously, this version has a Fast Travel system and a map that handily marks which cities contain side stories to complete. Even the combat feels smoother than I remember. And for those in the know, they even made it easier to give Claude the “Nimble Fingers” trait so that players have an easier time crafting his most powerful weapons.

There was a love and care put into this version that is obvious from the moment I hit Start, and that held throughout my entire time with the game.

Vampire Survivors

It’s hard to argue with the combined 129 hours I’ve sunk into Vampire Survivors. Clearly, the dopamine machine continues to trigger that sweet sweet rush of hormones with every single run. Had Vampire Survivors simply sat on its laurels and done nothing, odds are I would still be more than happy with the end product.

But they didn’t. Since December of last year, the dev team has released three different DLC packs, each as readily affordable as the base game and each adding so much to a masterpiece that already felt feature complete. And that’s in addition to a ton of free updates which further augment the experience.

I’ve taken my Steam deck with me on several trips, spending hours at the airport or some other form of transit. And every time I turn it on, one of the first games I reach for is Vampire Survivors. It’s just so easy to get lost in a run and pass the time while listening to a podcast or something else.

It’d be insidious if I wasn’t having a blast the whole time.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how Marvel’s Midnight Suns is one of the most underrated and underappreciated games of the past few years. There was a point in time where I mistook my distaste for the MCU and the direction it took post-Endgame with a general distaste for Marvel as a whole. But this, combined with Insomniac’s Spider-Man games and Marvel Snap, has shown me that my love for these heroes is far from gone.

Through the first half of this year, Firaxis released four DLC packs for the game, each introducing a new character and a new chapter for a secondary story involving a vampire invasion. Naturally, one of those DLC packs was Venom, and as a consummate fan of the lethal protector I had to add him to my ranks.

Not only did they do my favorite anti-hero justice, making him one of my favorite characters to play, but they did the same for Deadpool and Storm (Morbius was even there too, but no one cares about Morbius). And together, each chapter formed an excellent story that kept me coming back for each installment, culminating in a finale that wrapped up nicely.

It’ll look for any excuse to return to Midnight Suns, and this was as good as any. And with New Game Plus now adjusted to allow me to keep my cards and decks, it might even warrant a replay.

Magic: The Gathering: Arena

Trust me, you’re not the only one surprised that I’m no longer playing Legends of Runeterra and once again playing Magic Arena. I can barely believe it myself, especially since Standard is no more fun or interesting now than it was last year. So what changed?

A friend of mine recommended that I branch out and try some of the other formats on offer, specifically Historic Brawl and Explorer. Arena might not ever support Commander as a format, but Historic Brawl is a fine enough substitute that I’m happy to play it. The fact that it’s an unranked casual format is another huge plus.

But what’s mostly kept me coming back to Arena is Explorer. Though I’ve mostly become a Commander player in paper, and the current Standard hasn’t satisfied me in a long time, I’ve missed 60-card formats, and this one is the one that’s closest to the power level I’m interested in playing. Since I’ve been playing Arena for so long, I’ve had ready access to a ton of different decks and archetypes. And while there is a ranked queue, unranked is all the fun I need.

That’s been the story of my relationship with Magic in 2023. I’m still heavily invested, but I’ve stopped sweating about it the way I used to. I have nothing to prove to anyone, so I’ll just happily take out my Abzan Amalia list and see if I combo off. And if I don’t, I’ll just scoop and move on.

Cyberpunk 2077 (and Phantom Liberty)

I, like many people, completely wrote off Cyberpunk 2077 when it was first released, plagued with so many technical issues it had to be removed from the PlayStation Store. In the summer of this year, friends of mine informed me that the game had started turning itself around, and it went on a deep enough sale that intrigue outweighed my desire to keep my money.

Between my original run this summer and my second run for Phantom Liberty, I have invested 109 hours into Cyberpunk according to Steam. It’s a shame that the technical issues and the story behind the “rehabilitation” of the game overshadow the actual story within the game itself because it’s still one that I think about from time to time. It’s thoughtful, dissecting how our actions can cause damage that we didn’t intend, and what we can do to amend or otherwise make up for that damage, assuming that is even possible in the first place when the world itself seems hell-bent on kicking us in the teeth if we give it a chance to. There’s meat on the bones of this plot. Phantom Liberty even further expands on that, with choices that are truly tough to make, without clear outcomes.

And if that wasn’t enough for me, slicing a bunch of corpo goons open with a katana certainly was.

Hitman: World of Assassination – Freelancer

I’ve been openly fanboy-ing about the Hitman franchise on the blog since 2016. I’ve also made no secret of my love for roguelikes like Hades. No one should be surprised to hear that I played a ton of the Freelancer mode when it was added to Hitman 3, now called Hitman: World of Assassination since it’s become a packaged product.

As Prey: Mooncrash and Deathloop from Arkane have successfully proven, the mechanics of the immersive sim can slide elegantly into the framing of a roguelike campaign. The masters at IO Interactive did a phenomenal job adapting Hitman to this model as well. Though it was not easy, I plucked away at it, attempt after attempt, playing for at least one or two hours every few days to make progress. 

I remember the first time I realized that there was a Silenced SMG in Dubai that I could reliably get to at the start of my campaign. I remember the times I barely escaped a level or killed a target before they could get away. I remember the countless losses that each had me starting my campaign over from the beginning. 

But more than all of that, I remember getting on the motorboat in Bangkok, guards on the prowl, unaware of who I was but acutely aware of the piles and piles of bodies I left in my wake in a prolonged shootout. That was the first, and thus far only campaign I have finished in my time with Freelancer. I was in a Discord voice chat at the time, and I spooked my friends with a sudden burst of excitement.

I have a third-party client on my Steam Deck to access my Epic Games Store account, just to have Hitman Freelancer installed. And when I want my fix, I’m happy to know that it’s right there.

Citizen Sleeper

In the first few months of the year, Citizen Sleeper released three free updates to the game, each adding a new storyline and set of characters to the Eye to further out both the world the dev team was building and the themes set forth by the game.

By this point in my time with Citizen Sleeper, I had already integrated myself into the Eye and the society inhabiting it, becoming a fixture. Even on a bad day, I knew that I could scrounge up the stabilizers and food I needed to make it through whatever came next. But even then, it was a life of uneasy complacency, as the new storylines would show me.

Sure, I was settled, but I was far from the only face, or even the only new face around. Recontextualizing this struggle for the common man to survive in the face of overwhelming indifference from the powers that be the way they did in these updates added even more texture to the original game, and thoughtfully at that.

It makes me look forward to the sequel.

Destiny 2

Unlike a lot of the other live-service games on this list, I didn’t stick with Destiny 2 for very long. While I was certainly enjoying my time with the game and the few campaigns I purchased, two major roadblocks stopped me from truly getting into it.

The first was the horrendous lack of onboarding. Were it not for the good graces of people I know who are really into Destiny, I would have been lost, without knowing what content the game has to offer, or how any of the myriad currencies work. Though, having said that, the truth is even now if I was asked what players can do in the game I wouldn’t be able to give a good answer to that question. During my time with the game, I had the distinct impression that it was focused solely on the active player base, so much so that new players were little more than an afterthought.

That feeling extended to the story and content as well. As someone who consumes a lot of media, I generally expect all of the information and character-building I need to understand a piece of creative work to be contained within said work. Because of the seasonal release structure, where story content outside of the base expansion is added through updates, and then removed when the next expansion drops, there are large portions of the story and lore of Destiny 2 that are just gone from the game with no way to replay them.

I cannot, and will never be able to, have the full Destiny 2 experience. Years of raids, special events, lore, character development, and storytelling have been routinely wiped clear from the game. For someone like me, going through all of that myself, discovering that narrative, is what draws me in. Even more than terrible onboarding, this knowledge that much of what I would want to see is forever lost shattered any further interest I had in Destiny 2.

And given the current state of Bungie, I doubt there’s much they could do to change my mind.

Fortnite

Let me just open this section on Fortnite by saying that Tim Sweeny is a piece of shit and what he did to Bandcamp and the other employees and businesses shut down for his avarice is disgusting. He should be ashamed of himself every waking minute of his life for using people that way.

Having said that, Fortnite has become a mainstay in my daily gaming, rarely for more than an hour on a given day, but just that small amount is more than when I’m on my own. But unlike many other games, I’m not always playing on my own. My friend group has started to meet up semi-regularly on Friday nights to jam a few hours together, always Zero Build because none of us are fond of the building mechanics. And when we do we always have a blast. Even on the rare occasions where we get blasted early, we can always just queue up to try again.

That said, I’m not sold on this transition to Fortnite as a platform. Though I enjoy the new Rocket Racing mode, the changes made to this Season seem wholly intended to get people to invest increasingly larger amounts of time on Fortnite, and if that becomes a continuing trend it will give me pause to reconsider my relationship with the game.

Final Fantasy XIV

Despite the untold hours that my PS5 has logged onto Final Fantasy XIV, the greatest thing I can probably say about it is that it’s cozy. I probably spend no more than half an hour most days playing the game. I do a daily, maybe a hunt train or a raid for the weekly rewards, and a few misc chores that can be completed in five minutes at most.

However, even now as I write this piece, I have it on in the back, my Hrothgar sitting by the docks outside of Old Sharlayan, though on another day he might be outside the Aftcastle in Limsa Lominsa. Something I didn’t understand until I started playing FF XIV was that it can be enough just to exist inside a space, listening to a calm background track while doing work or another project, occasionally glancing over to see other people wandering around and going about their own daily business.

Of course, I look forward to the next expansion coming out next year, and maybe critics are right to call out the general dearth of new content in Endwalker’s patch cycle, but none that matters to me.

What does matter is that a small, understated smile crosses my lips when I go to log in. That’s enough.

Armello

Back when Armello was first released in 2015, almost ten years ago, I was almost immediately hooked. I didn’t know about it back when it was Kickstarted, but I was the person in my friend group who would always ask if anyone was down to play a round of it, though it quickly became abundantly clear that most of the others were less enthused about the game than I was. As new characters and updates would come to the game year after year until development was completed in 2019 with the Dragon Clan and 2.0 updates, I would always be more than happy to dip my toe in for another game.

For a long time, I thought that was how my time with Armello would end. It sat that in my Steam library, always taunting me for not having a large enough group to get the most out of it, until an entirely different friend group from the first one expressed an interest in going back. And of course, how could I possibly refuse?

Though I lament that the team at League of Geeks, who developed Armello, was yet another victim of the tight squeeze happening in the industry, resulting in yet more layoffs, my enthusiasm for their game has been reignited.

So what do you say? Care to play a match of Armello or two? I already have it installed.

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Since Larian Studios is responsible for my favorite game of the year by a landslide, I felt it was only right to finally, after having it trapped in my Steam library since 2017, go back and play the game that first put them on the map in my circles. Even better, since it was Steam Deck compatible, I could play it straight from the comfort of my recliner chair.

And while the game is certainly rough, and far from perfect, I can see why people had faith in Larian when it was announced they were going to be the team taking on a modern Baldur’s Gate game. The quality of their writing and worldbuilding is plain to see, with enough twists and intrigue to hold my attention for the whole game. 

In particular, I find the idea that only one of the four characters in the player party is capable of completing the quest for godhood. Though that didn’t come to much in my solo run since I gained the respect of my party members, in a 2-4 player co-op run I can see how such a premise would create an uneasy tension as the campaign progressed.

That said, I also won’t deny that the combat system and encounter design almost had me quit the game more than a few times. Enemies, especially in the later half of the game, rely heavily on some of the most irritating status ailments like charm. The final boss in particular feels needlessly vindictive.

Additionally, I’m not fond of the linear progression system either, where most character and equipment upgrades boil down to pure number increases. In the context of CRPGs like this, I’m much more fond of upgrades that come with new abilities and skills that can increase the number of different things one can do in combat.

It’s a mixed bag, but the bones were all there. The foundation was solid. Given where Baldur’s Gate 3 ended up, it’s clear that Larian has continued to improve upon that foundation and refine it in dramatic ways. If they go back to Divinity, I’ll be eager to see how they further refine the systems they have in place.

Golden Idol Mysteries: The Spider of Lanka/The Lemurian Vampire

I must make a confession. When I played “The Case of the Golden Idol” originally, I had a walkthrough at the ready in a browser tab on the side from about the mid-point onward, when the game started to noticeably ramp up in difficulty. I’d like to say that I could have finished the game without it, but I know some of the logical leaps needed to fully piece the puzzle together would have not occurred to me naturally.

I won’t say that I avoided the same fate in the DLCs, but I noticed that I was less reliant on walkthroughs and guides than I was the first time around. I can’t tell if that’s a product of self-improvement or the developers growing more skilled at the art of creating cases and puzzles, but either way, there’s nothing like watching all of the details of the case lock into place to put a smile on my face. That’s especially true when someone like me can solve the finale of the DLC completely on his own without any support at all.

I look forward to what this team can do with this franchise in the future.

Echo/Echo: Route 65/Arches

Little by little, I’ve been delving deeper into the world of furry visual novels, and I had heard the name Echo come up often enough in passing that I was intrigued. Truthfully, I was expecting another game where you pick among a suite of romance options and maybe culminate in a sex scene or something of that sort.

I did not realize I was about to start playing a horror game. By the time I did, I was already far too deep in to do anything but continue, blindly compelled and fascinated by the story unfolding before my very eyes. With each route, new information is revealed adding new context to previous events and routes. 

And this continues today. Even though the game is completed, new works from the team at Echo Project are still being produced, which further the tale of the dark, small town of Echo located in the middle of nowhere. I’ve included two such games, Route 65 and Arches because I was able to play them to completion as well. Another one, The Smoke Room, is still in active development. Should it be finished in 2024, I imagine I will finally tackle that one as well.

Considering that I still reference Echo months after playing it, it’s certainly something I can recommend if you need a good scare and aren’t afraid of a bit of NSFW content.

———————————————————————–

I’ve long let go of the backlog as a concept. I have works that I would like to get to, but I also recognize I could spend every waking moment of my life watching, reading, or playing something and still not get everything done. As a result, I’m comfortable letting things go if I can’t find the time to get to them.

But I still like to make sure that I tackle the ones most important to me when timing permits, and so this column will probably continue to be as rich as the highlights/disappointments list. Here’s to a new year, and I hope that yours is a good one.

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.

Our investigation into the murder of Jack Hammer continues, and the trial begins! It’s time to go out and do what we do best: Point out when people are lying liars who lie.

Sure, we’ve created reasonable doubt, but this isn’t an American courtroom. We’ll need to go all the way, to uncover the true culprit, before we can acquit Will Powers.

And next time, that’s just what we’ll do.

We’ve managed to get off… of the charges levied against us. But it’s been at least a month since then and we need a client to help pay the bills.

Thankfully, it looks like we might have found just the Wright man.

Not much to add here since we’re still in the middle of setting up the next case, but I can appreciate that Ace Attorney goes out of its way to both acknowledge and subvert the trope that the killer has to be the one who isn’t conventionally attractive. Spend five minutes with Will Powers and it’s easy to tell the man doesn’t have it in him to commit murder.

It’s a nice touch.

The testimony of Redd White continues, and I promise we can break him.

Nothing quite beats the catharsis of watching a wealthy man fall victim to their own hubris, even if we have to drastically stretch the rules of both the Japanese and American legal systems to do so.

But we can’t rest there. There are more cases to be solved, and people who need defense attorneys to represent them. And we’ll be there to handle both.

Phew. We survived our trial and managed to discredit Ms. April May, but our troubles aren’t over yet. Our next day in court is coming, and we need to make sure we have the evidence we need for it.

Fun fact: I was right. “Blanco Nino” is literally “White Boy”

I could go on a rant about the kind of person Redd White represents, and how they do terrible things like ruin Twitter with absolutely insane ideas while pretending to be the smartest people in the room, but why would I do that when I can instead recommend Glass Onion, a movie that does a far better job than I ever could.

No matter though. He’s taken the stand. Now that he has, we’ll get’im.

We may be knee-deep in legal trouble with Edgeworth, but when push comes to shove we have two options. Either we back down, or we double down.

And mama didn’t raise no quitter!

If you think that Edgeworth has been acting unethically throughout this whole trial, you’re correct. That’s intentional because the Ace Attorney trilogy was written, in part, as a scathing critique of the Japanese legal system. More learned minds than myself can regale you with the particulars, but there are reasons that an often-cited statistic reads that 99% of all cases brought to trial in a Japanese court are ruled in favor of the prosecution.

One of those reasons is that prosecutors seldom ever go to trial unless they are 100% certain of the outcome, but the other reason is that the legal system, in general, is heavily weighted in their favor, and a lot of Japanese crime dramas, and media depicting their legal system, often go out of their way to point that out. There’s a reason that this game, Persona 5, and even the Judgement series all draw similar inferences and conclusions despite being written by entirely separate teams. Of course, I’m not a legal expert in any system of law, so I’ll reframe from outlined details that I’m not familiar with.

Whatever the case may be, we’ll continue our investigation next week. See you then!