Every year I say "this is the year I track every game I've played, rank them, and write up a nice GOTY blog for Giant Bomb." Then I do absolutely none of that. Life always gets in the way, but 2023 has been different. Life's been somewhere between good to great, and part of that has been having more free time. I've spent my free time finally investing time in the Giant Bomb community, tinkering with things like the Analogue Pocket and Steam Deck, and carving out time for regrettable pursuits like anime. I also bought Armored Core 6, but haven't played it yet. Maybe that would have made my list!

So before I get started a few notes. If I picked the actual game of the year for me it would be Elden Ring, again. After going NG++ on the Xbox release I went and did that again on the Steam Deck. I last remember being somewhere around level 240, able to run basically anything except Dex builds. The only game release I really care about is the Elden Ring DLC. I need it. Please let the leaks be true for a February release. The second batch of notes are the games that either didn't come out this year or I personally disqualified just so I could make a Top 10 list easier on myself. Those are:

• World of Warcraft Dragonflight and Season of Discovery: WoW has been in a real bad place for a real long time. The last two expansions have fallen somewhere between poorly designed and insulting (Castle Nathria is the exception here). Dragonflight was a return to the basics, mostly. The story was a bit of a reset, and much more chill than the typical universal threat the champions are fighting against. Dragonflight also introduced Dragon Flying which is truly a game changing experience. But the currencies. Stop it, Blizz. Just give us Heroic and Valor badges, and stop adding a billion currencies every expansion. Season of Discovery on the other hand is a remix of Vanilla WoW. New quests, hidden skills and abilities to find from future expansions (and sometimes never been seen). For someone that's been on WoW since the original beta this is a great way to keep me interested in Classic. My one issue is the graphics. There's no reason to not use the current models (which are already 10 years old) in this Classic Plus mode.
• Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2: A surprise Steam release! That's all I needed to dive right back into THPS on my Steam Deck. I have put hundreds of roms on my Deck via emudeck, but really all I need are the THPS games. I've gone through pretty much all of them since getting my Steam Deck, so adding THPS 1+ 2 to the library was a perfect compliment. Now, Microsoft, THPS 3+4 for 2024 holiday?
• Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty: I went back and forth on adding this to my actual Top 10, but in the end it's an expansion and fixing a broken game. It's an incredible expansion though. I put 80+ hours into this and just kept running side missions as an excuse to stay in the world and experiencing the gunplay. If I had let myself put it on my Top 10, it would have been 1 or 2.

And now the runners up for my 2023 Top 10 list!

• Cities Skylines 2: This just wasn't ready to launch. Performance was a mess. Steam Workshop isn't supported and the Paradox mod manager won't be out until next spring. The underlying simulation is broken in 100 ways. Even with all that, it's a lot of fun to just build a city. I expect to put 1,000 hours into this game over the next 8 years but it should not have been a 2023 release.
• Diablo 4: What is this end game? Why are the fast travel points taken away on seasonal characters? Why would I rather be on Diablo 3 running rifts on my Crusader than playing my Diablo 4 Necro? I can't point my finger on a single big issue with Diablo 4 but it feels generally like post sale monetization took precedence over a satisfying end game loop to pull me in. I don't know if I can say I expect this to have the Skylines 2 arc where I end up dropping 1,000 hours over a decade, which really bums me out.
• Star Wars Jedi Survivor: I generally felt like everything in this game took a little took long, but I still enjoyed it. Until what I assume is the final boss. I say assume, because I died repeatedly to this boss and it provided no check pointing during the battle...and the game kept crashing during the fight. During what looked like a very solid attempt to finally kill the boss the game crashed, and I just opened my Xbox menu, uninstalled it, and walked away. I will never know if that actually was the final boss.
• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: Jet Grind/Set Radio is one of my all time favorite franchises. I still hook up my Dreamcast and play it once every year or so. This was one of my most hotly anticipated games of the year, and it nailed it. Unfortunately they nailed a 20 year old franchise, and didn't sand down the edges. This is a spiritual successor, warts and all.
• Super Mario RPG: A game I loved as a teenager, and love now as an adult. It's a fun time, but it's just too slight to make my Top 10. I don't have any legitimate complaints with it!
• NBA 2K24: Yeah yeah. Casino game. Microtransactions. I get it. It sucks. But NBA 2K24 finally made a career mode where I could just make my own character, throw him on a franchise, and feel like an NBA player without all the shit on the edges dragging the game down. I didn't need to go practice in a gym between every game. I didn't go out into "The City" to do quests. I never felt the need to buy 2K points to level up. I just felt like a rookie that had good and bad games, but was consistently improving until I became a starter. Every year before this you felt like a 12th player for the Fort Wayne Mad Ants that suddenly was told to put up 20/10 and while guarding 2018 Harden.

Finally, my Top 10 counting down to number 1.

• Suika Game: Pure dopamine, until that one cherry flies into the atmosphere and ruins your perfect planning.
• Dead Space: A game I enjoyed, but didn't love, in it's original form. I had a great time with this remake but it sometimes the tight corridors left me annoyed with the combat.
• Spider-Man 2: The Sony big single player game has really fallen out of favor with me, but Spider-Man 2 had a decent enough story, fun (if messy) combat, and amazing juice while exploring NYC. I am not very interested in a Venom stand alone, but I am willing to have my mind changed.
• Alan Wake 2: As I type this, I have not finished Alan Wake 2. I adore the story, the vibes are 100% my shit, and Remedy has been a favorite developer of mine forever. But I hate playing Alan Wake. Not the game, but the character and his sequences. The sequences are just slow, combat is annoying instead of engaging, and really push me away from the game. I've been told I am to the end of the "plodding" Alan Wake portions, so hopefully I find the time to finish this over holiday break. Still, it's enough of a hindrance that it wouldn't break loose of a middle of the pack game for me.
• Dave the Diver: Well this is just a nice way to spend some time on the couch with your Steam Deck, watching some TV, and working up an appetite for some sushi. Another game I really want to go back to, especially since there's a Dredge DLC coming.
• Dredge: That's what we call a segue folks! The fervor for Dredge kept building from voices I trust, so when the DLC dropped I finally dug in. Another game that is perfect for the couch with a Steam Deck, the lights low, and something spooky on the TV. The ocean is already terrifying, so add in creepy villages, dark relics, and actual terrors of the dark and this is an easy sell for me.
• Mario Wonder: I had to think about it and...I don't think I've really enjoyed a 2D Mario since Super Mario World? Wonder instantly brought me the feelings I had when I opened my SNES and played Super Mario World for the first time. Just a perfect 2D Mario experience.
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3: I am a toxic COD gamer. I have just owned it and accepted it. The campaign mostly sucked. A lot of the old maps are sniper camp fests. But who cares. I take my old ass into those maps and rinse everyone and sit back with my grey hair and say "still got it, you sweaty trash ass tiktok clout chasing fucks." I have taken to drinking coffee and reading the crying about being "old" from 30 year olds on the Call of Duty subreddits, and smiling to myself. I will continue to love COD as long as my reflexes keep up and I can be silently toxic to the sweaty boys and casual cry babies. I accept my truth.
• Tears of the Kingdom: BOTW never hit for me like it did everyone else. I walked away from it with a dungeon left, and didn't tough it for like 4 years. Then I beat that dungeon and walked away again. I finally beat the game a few months before TOTK came out. TOTK clicked for me like BOTW never did....but with one huge caveat. Folks, we gotta admit the combat in these games is somewhere between mediocre and unacceptable depending on the enemy you're facing. I relied on cheese strats for many enemies, and others I have avoided completely. I reached the final delve to Ganon and just...stopped. Maybe I will go back in 5 years when the next Legend of Zelda is nearing release, and defeat Ganon.
• Resident Evil 4: The best Resident Evil game received the best remake ever delivered. I dug into every corner of the game, and when I finished it I dug right back in. Despite what I said earlier about Elden Ring, I just don't replay games. I really don't NG+ games, so when something like Elden Ring or Resident Evil 4 comes around and I feel the compulsion to immediately go back in then I know it is something special.

Finally digging my teeth into Giant Bomb, after being a dedicated user since launch. Once I have something worth discussing I'll return for more than quest points.