Games of 2023
Busy year! Didn't end up playing all that many games this year even though there were a ton of great ones. Seems like 2024 is gonna be a lighter year so maybe I'll get to the others then!
List items
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Been waiting for FromSoft to get back to this series for damn near a decade, and it absolutely didn't disappoint. Blasting around with double shotguns in a speedy lightweight mech was easily the most fun I had in a game this year. I'm a sucker for games with unique movement and control mechanics.
I'd still love to see them make the Armored Souls of all of us mecha lovers' dreams at some point, but was a true joy to find that FromSoft is confident enough to make a straight up Armored Core-ass Armored Core game after all their success with the Soulsbornes of the last decade plus.
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Honestly shocked by how much I enjoyed this game. Capcom had to knock this out of the park after the incredibly disappointing launch SFV had, and they absolutely did. It's a joy to play and to watch. My big punch lady Marisa was incredibly fun to take online and get further in ranked than I have with any SF game so far.
It's no Guilty Gear Strive, but it sure does make Strive look terrible in just sheer ability to play the game. Please, ArcSys, for your next game, just copy everything Capcom did here for matchmaking. For the love of god. No more dumbass lobbies, no more ranked tower. It shouldn't take so much effort just to play someone online in the year 2023.
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Incredible remake of one of the best games ever made. Not much more to say than that. It'll never replace the original in my heart, but loved playing every second of this.
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Great game that delivers exactly what you want it to. Fun, great vibes, best soundtrack of the year easily. Only wish they were able to polish some of the boss fights/fighting mechanics a bit more... and build out more of a full Tony Hawk-esque combo system, but that's a bit of a different direction to take here.
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Katamari rules. I'd never played this one before and it's probably the best one?
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Started this during my trip to Japan this year and never got back to it, hopefully next year I'll get back to it
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It's another Spider-Man game. It's still fun to swing around. Wing suit stuff was a little weird, feel like they should've just focused on improving the swinging instead. Spider-Man doesn't fly. He swings. Also weird how many one on one, small scale fights there were. Lots more parrying than I'd expect to need to do in a Spider-Man game. With everything we know from leaks it feels like they were trying to figure out combat and flight mechanics for their next decade of X-Men games.
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Very cool story, all the meme moments that everyone else has called out over and over again and performed at the VGAs are great. But this thing really falls apart when it needs to be a video game. Mediocre at best shooting and interesting but ultimately dull and brainless "mind palace" mechanics really let this thing down.
Feels like they wanted to focus more on the detective mechanics and really flesh that stuff out and make it interesting, but had to scale that back to build a shooter to make sure the thing would sell. And to make the visuals incredible, which they certainly are. Which is understandable, but just kinda leaves the whole package in a weird spot to me.
I really wanted to love it, but had a hard time wanting to go back to it after another mediocre hour of shooting and hitting X to put another set of pictures on a Pepe Silvia board in Saga's mind.
Hopefully the success of this game will allow them to branch out and try some new things on a sequel, and hopefully that doesn't take another 12 years to come out, because they were definitely onto something here.
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Great, solid Mario game. Honestly, though, really just serves to show how little effort and polish Nintendo's invested in 2D Mario games since New Super Mario Bros (outside of level design, which has been great throughout).
Like, why hasn't Mario had all these little flourishes to his actions for... a decade, at least? Why has it taken so long to get gimmick levels like this 2D Mario? What are we doing here?
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A good remake that honestly made me realize how kinda boring Dead Space is. Like, I know they added more interesting encounters and stuff here, but damn, was the original really JUST walking through corridors and shooting zombies for 10+ hours? That's really IT?
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