Games of the Mid-Year 2023: Celebrating More Also-Rans

Back in July, I took a look at some of the games on my work-in-progress GOTY list, and it seemed that I would miss the chance to write about them. Staring down both a loaded October and a swollen backlog of games released this calendar year, it seemed like a good time to make a sequel. It's possible a couple of the games end up being honorable mentions, especially the last one on the list. So let's pay tribute to some more good-but-not-great games that probably won't get their due in the final stretch:

MLB The Show 23

Ever since these games started appearing on Game Pass in 2021, I’ve taken a whack at them. Mostly because my Orioles are usually terrible and I want to rig a victorious season for them, but it’s also just relaxing to play as many baseball games as I care to. This season, they added a Negro Leagues mode that has a really cool presentation, much like the documentary-style clips in Age of Empires IV. I particularly enjoyed the Satchel Paige storyline, the high point of which was rendering the position players gathering around the mound for Satchel’s infamous “Bring ‘Em All In” stunt. The goodwill from this mode was upended in a later scenario, when the presentation made a big deal about Carl Yastrzemski facing off against Satchel, and then Yaz was nowhere in the lineup when I actually played (probably due to likeness rights issues). It was a reminder that at its best, this is still an annual sports game, with all the flaws and limitations of its peers.

But hey, how ‘bout them O’s??? Please for the love of god win multiple playoff series.

Planet of Lana

Of all the Limbo-likes, this sure is one of them. I did enjoy my time with this game (which I did not finish) more than I did with Somerville, but most of that had to do with the former’s commitment to staying in two dimensions. It was nice to have a little catlike pet but terrible to watch it get horrifically consumed occasionally. I think I wanted something a lot more chill, or perhaps more explicitly spooky, so maybe my ambivalence towards this game is indicative of my current tastes far more than any statement on the game itself. The central problem is that this game just doesn’t stand out from anything like it, and by this time next year I may have forgotten I played it altogether. I think the next time one of this micro-genre appears, I’m just going to skip it, because it’s clearly not what I want from a game anymore.

Inkbound [Early Access]

I love Monster Train, and I really love Hades. So when I heard the developer behind Monster Train was making their own Hades-like, I jumped at the chance to play it. There is definitely a good core to this game, where there’s a much more strategic turn-based twist on the roguelike room crawler gameplay, but it feels very incomplete. Hades has a strong sense of progression even on (and sometimes especially on) failed runs, and Inkbound didn’t give me that impression in the time I’ve spent with it thus far. I think there could be something really special here, and I can’t wait until it hits 1.0. But right now, I think it’s a skippable experience, particularly if you have Ember Knights available or want to start yet another new run of Hades.

Remnant II

I’m very much of the Tam School of Thought when it comes to Soulslikes: I like the Souls games, and the homages / imitators tend to miss a lot for me. The first Remnant game was a rare exception, one I found engaging in its own peculiar ways. Remnant II certainly offers vastly improved gunplay and an interesting array of skills, but it keeps the facet of the first game I found most frustrating: the boring palette. Your first world is randomly generated, and I was taken to a space station and/or planet next to a black hole, which was a cool idea for a setting. Unfortunately, it was very dark and unremarkable, like a budget take on Scorn. Once I beat the area boss, I figured the next world might have more variety. Naturally I found myself in a gray landscape of geometric shapes, and I sort of just fell off the game midway through this area. The Quick Look had a town that also looked pretty monochrome, so I think I’ve seen all I really need to see. Perhaps it would be easier to ignore if I had more time to play with friends, but I have two young kids who shouldn’t be watching this type of game. It’s a good game, but it’s just not GOTY material.

Diablo IV

It brings me absolutely no pleasure to include Diablo IV on this kind of list. The campaign mode is engaging in a way Diablo hasn’t really been before, and the cutscenes are incredible. The darker tone worked well for me, and the environments looked incredible despite a dark color palette (see my complaints in Remnant II above). The abilities were fun to use and synergize very well with each other. But in terms of having fun, this game was sadly a downgrade from Diablo III. I ended up feeling constantly underpowered, and it was very easy to get to the final phase of a boss after a long battle and die suddenly. The first major patch made me feel even weaker, reducing my desire to come back to the game. The first season was likewise a bit of a stinker, which I dabbled in but felt no desire to get much further. A lot of the game, including its side quests, end up feeling quite inessential in a way that even the radiant Adventure Mode quests from III didn’t. Perhaps one day, Diablo IV will reach the heights of its predecessor and give me more reason to come back for new characters. But for now, I’ll probably only play it to check out the occasional new season or for some couch co-op.

There are a number of games that feel like they belong in this kind of list that I won't get around to playing: Aquatico, Age of Wonders 4, Deliver Us Mars, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, The Last Case of Benedict Fox, Under The Waves, and The Lamplighter's League. If any of these are actually hidden gems, let me know!

I think that Diablo IV is a perfect example of a game that for whatever reason feels extremely over-designed. Any individual system in that game technically works, and you can even see the argument for designing it that way. However, it really feels like they were so focused on whether systems fit together that they forgot to think about whether that ended up being any fun.

As for your list of other games, the only one I've played is Wo Long. Skip it. It tried to combine Nioh with Sekiro and it just doesn't work on any level. Even before you get to the massive and unpredictable difficulty spikes, the central design idea was DOA. Nioh worked because all the weapons felt distinct and fresh from one another and you used the massive amounts of loot to craft an actual build. Sekiro worked (mostly) because the focus was so narrow.

In Wo Long, you get the worst of both worlds. You have all the loot bloat of Nioh but none of it matters. The weapons aren't really distinct because you're just parrying all the time rather than using them as weapons. The gear doesn't matter because the set bonuses are all extremely minor or so specific it's comical. On the other hand, the parrying isn't nearly as good or tight as it is in Sekiro and the game can't decide if it wants your characters stats to really matter or not.

It all makes sense when you realize the game lost the game director and lead designer in the middle of production. The two Joes that are in charge of it now were former team leaders that had very limited experience directing a game.

PERSON UP AND FINISH PLANET OF LANA! PLAYING GAMES IS A DUTY! IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FUN!

I played the first chunk of the Last Case of Benedict Fox. It's got a lot of style but I just couldn't stick with it because it's a little too clunky to control and the puzzles are annoying and obtuse. I'm so tired of games that don't really tell you where to go and what to do. There's a small group of very hardcore gamers that likes opaque design and they disproportionately get into making games and procede to make games that very few people get far into because nobody likes wasting their time trying to figure out whatever bullshit you think qualifies as a puzzle.

Every time I see Diablo IV I think about the fact that a potential Tony Hawk 3 + 4 was sacrificed (along with Vicarious Visions as a studio itself) to try to fix Blizzard and get Diablo IV finished. That Diablo IV turned out to not be great makes it sting even more. The people from VV and rank-and-file Blizzard workers who spent countless hours working on the game deserve better. They're clearly capable of making good games but were left with a gigantic mess to clean up through no fault of their own.

@ben_h: Diablo IV is an okay game that launched better than Diablo III (Metacritic confirms this was the consensus.) More importantly from Blizzard's perspective it made an enormous boatload of money on launch. I don't know if it's still making that kind of cash but VV's sacrifice was not in vain in terms of financials, which is the only thing that Activision cares about. Those developers probably hit their bonuses.

Now would I personally rather have VV still intact and Tony Hawk 3+4? Hell yes. VV could have made an original Tony Hawk game and revived the franchise. Instead they made...I don't know, probably some cosmetics for the horrible battlepass.

If Microsoft ever actually closes the deal for Activision my bet is that we see some dormant franchises revived and an attempt made to reconstitute studios like VV. VV type games make a lot of sense for Game Pass and Phil Spencer has already talked about potentially looking at some classic properties.

Politically I am against mega mergers, but I hate Bobby Kotick's vision for Activision so much. I want them to become the kind of company that can make cool mid sized games again, and Microsoft has shown with titles like Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush that it is willing to let its studios make those kinds of games sometimes.