While 2023 was an incredible year for gaming, it was also a pretty poorly paced one in terms of game releases. The last 3 months alone saw the release of at least a dozen games I had a genuine interest in playing. Alas I only have so much time (and money!) so when a game lost my interest for whatever reason, there was no shortage of others to replace it.
This is a list of the games I started but didn't quite finish.
First up is a game that isn't in the wiki \o/ Just pretend this entry just says Star Trek Infinite.
Pre-release excitement isn't something I usually engage with for a long time. I'll have moments here and there, but really my brain has hard coded itself to just not care about things that are multiple months, or even years, away. There are definitely exceptions and Star Trek Infinite was one of them. From it's announcement in June my mind was racing with the possibilities. Checking the google news tab for Star Trek Infinite news became a near daily routine for me. The moment a release date was announced I threw my money at a pre-order faster than I ever have before.
Unfortunately, The level of my excitement didn't quite translate into me actually playing the game. Steam has my play time at just under an hour. I played the tutorial and a little bit more but was so overwhelmed by all the systems at play that I just ended up not playing the game. Not for lack of interest or desire though, I just wasn't in the right place mentally. It was just the wrong game at the wrong time for me. Which is a shame, because from what I've seen this might have easily been my GOTY.
Of the games on this list, I probably put the most time into this. At around 15 hours, I certainly put in some time with the Spider-Mans. Swinging around the city remains the best form of traversal in any game ever and the set piece moments in the story were definitely raising the bar from the previous 2 games. I wasn't not enjoying it, but I was definitely feeling the weight of the formula these games follow. It's certainly more of the same. There's no doubt that the game is bigger and prettier than ever before but I was still enjoying it less than either of the previous games. Which is surprising to me, as it's been 3 years since the last one.
Very Similar to Spider-Man 2 in my reasoning. It's a better, bigger, prettier version of its predessecor and while I'm definitely enjoying it, it's not something that is grabbing my focus the way the previous game did. I am slowly continuing it though, and every time I come back to it I think to myself "this is really good, I should play more of this"...and then I don't for weeks, even months at a time. I'm sorry Torgal, I love you.
What a year for Star Trek games. TWO WHOLE GAMES. The prophets are smiling upon us. From Ex-Telltale folk, Star Trek Resurgence was another game I actually felt the twinge of excitement for. A telltele-esque Star Trek game? Fuck yes. I played that Game of Thrones game they did and loved it, I could only imagine how good a game the Star Trek license would make. Right?! ............ Wrong! Kind of. The writing was certainly very good but the actualy game part? fucking awful. I had forgotten just how bad those telltale games played. Or maybe this is worse. A collection of asinine 'mini-games' that try to approximate various activites from the shows but just ended up repelling me from the game. I just wasn't willing to put up the the shitty shooting, or the shitty shuttle flying or even the walking around itself. It just felt so bad that I ended up stopping. Not to mention how buggy it was. This was at launch so maybe, hopefully it's fixed now but I'm not sure I'll ever find out.
As a Star Trek die hard fan it pains me that there are 2 Trek games here, but I guess that's just how the cookie crumbles. At least I still have the desire to return to the other one.
Played about 20 minutes before the electricity in my house went out. Was it a sign? Do the heavens themselves demand I not play this game?! The answer is no. I'm just an idiot who forgot to top up the electric meter. I look forward to trying this again in 2024 (and if it happens to be removed from both Game Pass/PS Plus shortly after I start it, THAT I will consider to be Divine Intervention)
I found the rhythm based gameplay incredibly cool and enjoyable... but I just couldn't stand the dialogue. In hindsight this should have been the type of game I just skip all the cut scenes but unfortunately I stopped playing before I thought of that.
There's a lot I liked about The Lamplighters League. The mix of real time and turn based action components was a neat twist on the genre that I hadn't seen before. The story and characters were also super endearing..... But after about 12 hours with no end in sight I started to question if this was worth my time. I'd like to say I'll return to this, and maybe I will, but Howlongtobeat says I have another 25 hours to go and that's just more than I want to tackle.
While I enjoyed the 2 hours I played of Cocoon, I just couldn't find it within myself to finish yet another quirky, unique indie puzzle game. I can recognise that it's cool and charming but at the same time it just felt so generic in it's uniqueness. I've played this game at least a dozen times before, despite the minutiae of the gameplay being something different. I'd like to say I'd return to this, but also I don't need to finish it to tell you that the ending is gonna be some fancy visual display accompanied by uplifting music that ambiguously hints at a deeper meaning to your actions. Given the name of the game, I'm guessing your character hatches or evolves and moves onto another form of being or some shit like that.
I'm not ashamed to say there was a time where I was a huge Harry Potter fan. They were among the first books I read and the movie releases were appointment viewing for me and my Mother. I also spent a lot of time with the early Harry Potter games on PS1 and PS2 so I was super receptive to the idea of another game cashing in on that nostalgia. Hell, I even got access to the game for free because of a work hookup. However much like the last book/movie, I think I've simply outgrown the franchise. Not for lack of trying mind you, This came out when my gaming schedule was quite lite so I had a spare dozen hours to try and get into it.... it just didn't take in the end the aggressive mediocrity of the game was just too repelling for me.
