I have a lot of feelings about video games in 2023. A lot of feelings about the state of the industry and the treatment of the people making the games we love to play. I’m hopeful that the industry will pull together and unionize and collectively fight to not be wildly exploited by the companies they make profitable through their talent, creativity, and tremendous work. We see you and we see what’s being done to you and it sucks fucking ass.
I played a lot of games this year and it’s been a good ass year for gamers. There are games that are supposedly amazing that I haven’t even had time to touch. There are also a number of games I’ve started, that I want to get back to, that I haven’t had the chance to finish yet. Out of all the games I’ve had the pleasure of playing, these are the games I enjoyed playing through the most this year:
When Breath of the Wild released in 2017, it became one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. The sense of wonder, exploration, and discovery were unrivaled. When Tears of the Kingdom was revealed to take place in the same world and as a direct sequel, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. I expected a fleshed out DLC type experience. Instead, it leap-frogged over everything its predecessor achieved and built upon it in a way that’s uncommon in video game sequels. While the bones of Hyrule were the same, everything in it was changed in interesting and material ways. The raw discovery from the first game was replaced with the vague familiarity of returning to a city you used to live in. It had been over six years since I last visited Hyrule and the amount of time that had passed in-game was about the same. In addition to revisiting old haunts, Nintendo introduced wholly new areas in the forms of countless floating islands as well as an underground world that was the same size as the original landmass of Hyrule. They stacked numerous new systems that let you feel so clever and powerful that sometimes you’d wonder if you’re breaking the game in ways the developer didn’t expect you to. They created a Legend of Zelda playground and tucked little surprises and rewards into every nook and cranny. They included a great story that built up the characters beyond what they’d ever been before. And somehow, through dark Nintendo magic, they made the game beautiful. I played Zelda alongside PS5 and Series X games like Dead Space and Jedi Survivor and despite the immense raw hardware performance capability gap between current-gen consoles and three gamecubes duct taped together, I found myself being more impressed and moved by the images being generated on a fucking Nintendo Switch. Falling from the sky, high above Hyrule, during a sunset, in awe of the view.
Resident Evil 4 was very good when it first came out on the GameCube, but as time passed, and it was re-released over and over, it became good, then okay, then something you’d load up for the sake of nostalgia but not play for more than a few minutes. With this remake, it is now, once again, very good. It’s surprising just how good it is considering how closely they seem to have followed the blueprints of an almost 20 year old game. It’s not doing anything new or exciting. It’s just executing the modern day Resident Evil formula to perfection. RE4 was when the series shifted from survival horror (and all the item scarcity that came with it) to a 3rd person action game. It’s Evil Dead becoming Army of Darkness (Reference to a horror series from the late 1900s). The story is absolutely absurd, but it’s played with a straight face that’s refreshing to see when every other game nowadays is doing the “Well THAT just happened” style of dunking on itself. This is a video game ass video game that you blast your way through while solving distinctly Resident Evil “puzzles” and soaking in a B movie plot. It almost didn’t make the list due to my feelings on it having waned since it came out in March, but playing through the Separate Ways DLC solidified its place in my list. By the way, the DLC is also fantastic and feels like a speedrun of the main game.
I played through a couple games this year with my daughter and Pikmin 4 was by far the one we enjoyed the most. We’ve played other co-op games where she had more agency over what was going on but she was happy to direct me where to go, tell me what to do, and provide support with her cursor through tossing items and throwing pebbles. Again, using wild ass Nintendo knowhow, the game looks great and full of character. The addition of the dog creature (despite its name being Oatchi, we called it Mochi) was also very fun. The game is Pikmin and Pikmin is a good time. My daughter was a red pikmin for Halloween this year and she also asked me to make her a Pikmin birthday card (You can see it here if you’d like) We were both enamored with this game and it’s hands-down one of the best gaming experiences I had this year.
I love Control. It was on my 2019 GotY list and after I replayed it start to finish again in 2021, I almost put it on my list for that year as well. Control is one of my all-time favorite games and I had immensely high expectations coming into Alan Wake 2. Obviously, it worked out because it’s on my list and what a fucking game. While I played the first Alan Wake when it originally released, it didn’t leave a lasting impression. Alan Wake 2 on the other hand feels like something that’ll be hard to forget. For starters, it’s visually stunning. The environments are some of the best I’ve seen and having played it on both a beefy PC with a 4080 as well as a PS5, it’s gorgeous to look at no matter where you’re playing it. Every location from deep forests to old diners are built with an incredible level of both detail and density of life. Graphics aren’t everything but they aren’t nothing either. Also, coming off the back of Control, I love that they’ve integrated the two game worlds into each other. I don’t need, or even want, everything to become a “Marvel Cinematic Universe”, but these two games very much feel like they were built to occupy the same space and so it works brilliantly and in a way that’s gotten me even more excited to see what the studio does next. Last note; I love how shitty they made Alan Wake’s writing.
I didn’t realize how much I missed playing rhythm games until I played Hi-Fi Rush. There’s something that feels right when you’re locked into a groove and Hi-Fi Rush nails that “on the beat” vibe perfectly. The world around you, the enemies, the combat, everything is operating in sync. A little dopamine blip of success every time you hit a button with perfect timing. The world is populated with charismatic, likable characters pushing along a fun story at a good clip. The cell-shaded art style is just exploding with color and it really feels like they’ve put in that last 10% quality pass that makes it shine. The game was just super fun to play and didn’t have any downbeats. Definitely a game of the year.
HEY! WHAT ABOUT ________!?
Again, there were so many great games this year and these are just the 5 I enjoyed the most. There are some games missing that I 100% thought would be on here but aren’t. For example, Baldur’s Gate 3. An incredible game that I’m loving the hell out of but realized it was also killing me. The beauty of that game is that you have so many choices that lead to an astounding array of different paths and while on paper that’s brilliant, in execution it leads me to a constant state of FOMO. I’ve grown up seeking every single thing I can out of a game in a single playthrough and this game was throwing a gorilla sized monkey wrench into the way my brain enjoys games. It definitely a Game of the Year if not THE Game of the Year from a collective perspective but not for me personally. Nevertheless, here are a few games that I want to shout-out for being incredible: