The First quarter of 2023: Reminders of a decade or two ago
Introduction
I’ve toyed with the idea of doing “end of the quarter” list before, yet nothing materialized until now. Four months after calling back to the 1990s in my end of 2022 list, the first 3 months of 2023 offered reminders of relatively recent past, namely the years 2003 and 2013. Both years marked changes in yours truly’s consuming game media.
2003 was when I really started to read for amusement. Part of the reading done that year was the coverage of Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance on a PC gaming magazine titled Computer Game Strategy Guide. Also, Gamecube was something I wanted to have back then, for reasons I will save for later.
2013 was when I started to visit this site somewhat regularly and set up this account. It was also when I started listening to video game podcasts, first the now discontinued Gamespot Gameplay then Bombcast.
All five reviews of 2023 releases were written when I was intoxicated due to lack of sleep (To sleep, or to game. It is a question indeed.), so something I meant to express remained unwritten. Hopefully some of those thoughts can find their way here.
Number 5 Dead Space
How it stands in 2023: Nothing is worth 70 us dollars when it comes to video game software.
2023’s Dead Space stands firmly at the middle of the road in my mind. I don’t feel strong emotion about it one way or the other. Sure, I find the combat at times frustrating, but it’s not even frustrating enough for me to drop f-bombs in my native tongue while playing.
1979’s Alien can be jokingly classified as a better work place drama than science fiction horror story. The same applies to Dead Space, or at least the 2023 remake where player character Isaac Clarke would do the back and forth with his cop and spook colleagues. They are not friendship close, but the professional courtesy is believable enough.
Still with cheaper, grander and greener pastures of sci-fi horror out there, paying 70 bucks to this middling piece ain’t something I would recommend.
What it reminds me of 2013: Playing Dead Space, the 2008 one that is.
2013 was the year Dead Space “trilogy” unceremonially concluded. So “unceremonially” that the fiasco surrounding Mass Effect 3 a year before can be considered a celebration in comparison. That was after the game came out in early February. As for the before time yours truly threw themself a party by binging through 2008’s Dead Space and 2011’s Dead Space 2.
The 2008 original is of course the relatively low-key one of the bunch and I dare say the remake keeping that low-key sense ultimately did damage to the whole product. Dead Space 3 might deserve criticism as a whole, but the first half’s derelict fleet part is Dead Space reaching its full potential. The one single Planet Cracker Ishimura is too limited a setting, even compared to Resident Evil 2’s intriguing puzzle box of a police station. It’s in the middle ground where it gets the worst of both worlds.
What it reminds me of 2003: The cocktail of horror and sci-fi
2003 was the first year out of four when I bought the Chinese language magazine Science Fiction and issues including stories by Cixin Liu, who would write the Three-body Problem a couple of years after then, are the most exciting. They are sold as epics and I bought them as horror stories. I became a sicko went “This just ain’t it” on stone-cold classic like 1979’s Alien. I mean to be fair to that movie, it does inspire a lot of sci-fi stories in the 2010s. Including Ancillary Justice, the Hugo winner one year before Three-body Problem.
As someone who cultivated their taste for sci-fi horror in literal form, Dead Space’s habit of provoking cinematic inspiration alone is just a call for greener pastures.
Intermission 1
“And it’s available right now” is a trick well-suited for this era of digital distribution. If the corporate overlords dare to say “Fuck you, pay me” to my face, the least they can do is deliver the products right there and then. Of course, those cowards would do it if the brand is big enough. So, we are lucky to have two of those in the first quarter of 2023.
Number 4 Metorid Prime Remastered
How it stands in 2023: A stone-cold classic
By February 2023, I had made three attempts to beat Super Metroid. Farthest I had managed was the crashed ship where one has to restore the power to even have save points there. I would stop making attempts now that I’ve seen credits roll in Metroid Prime, since it’s basically Super Metroid set in 3D space.
2002’s Metroid Prime is truly a kind of its own. First person action adventure games to yours truly usually means physics based puzzles in Half-life games, so the visor and beam switch of Prime is a different beast entirely. Being able to look around while walking is a nice touch in the Remaster.
It’s strange, I played through A Link Between Worlds back in 2014 which led to me unable to get into Ocarina of Time. Just not able to beat Super Metroid led to me playing through Prime just fine. Well, I’m sort of an “one (type of) game most suitable for one perspective” kind of person. So, Nintendo’s “remaking” the same game with different perspective can only get me once.
What it reminds me of 2013: Branching out as a generation eclipse
2013 was the last year of Xbox 360’s life span and when I set up my Steam account. After 4 years of “technically all shooters”, it was time to branching out to turn-based rpgs and things like that. Prime would have made the mark for me to branch out but its presentation might fool me into avoid it.
What it reminds me of 2003: Wanting a Gamecube Part 1 of 2
I’m a PC hound to the bones, even Back in 2003 when I don’t have a PC powerful enough for gaming. The Playstation and Xbox titles I was interested in all would eventually come to PC, or so my 13 years old self presumed. But Nintendo has been the outliner since then. So for a cool looking title like Metroid Prime, I think I need a Gamecube.
The other reason for wanting a Gamecube is that the little guy was the only console I saw in person that year. Attending English courses outside school, and I did saw a Gamecube in its plastic glory at a classroom. It just looked like a laptop that can go around. Oh, well, I dare say the remaining titles on this title all do have that Gamecube spirit.
Number 3: Hi-fi Rush
How it stands in 2023: Where lack of hype is an advantage
Hi-fi Rush was the polar opposite to Halo Infinite when it comes to Microsoft handling marketing. The latter came out 3 years after its announcement to its detriment. Had that circle been shorter, yours truly just might have enjoyed it as the usual middling combat of Halo. Instead, I was a naysayer against the grain of so much undeserved praises. Hi-fi Rush on the other hand was announced and sold at the same time, and it does not feel cheap if the all-star Japanese cast for its rogue galley to anything go by.
The game is pretty solid character action that sort of repeated the history around Shinji Mikami. The director of Resident Evil 2 (1998) Kamiya went on to make Devil May Cry while the director of Evil Within 2 went on to make this. The 11 hours long playthrough had me grinning all the way through and I can’t imagine the game having the same impact if its marketing circle is any longer.
What it reminds me of 2013: Platinum just might not be it
2013 was the year Metal Gear Revengence came out. I didn’t play the game until 2015, after the Phantom Pain and it didn’t look good compared to the “Hideo Kojima Game”. The movement is clunky. Surely when it comes to robot ninja, Platinum focused on the R word while KojiPro went for the real ninja power fantasy. Doesn’t help that Platinum games’ camera is always bad. Kotaku’s Isaiah Cobert called Hi-fi Rush the “greener character-action pastures” and I agree wholeheartedly.
What it reminds me of 2003: When character action was a young genre and cel-shading was loathed
Well, technically speaking, cel-shading was also young back then but “loathed” was how the game media chose to remember the reaction back then. Wind Waker dubbed “Celda” and whatnot. Guess man-child of every generation is shitty in the same way.
In the not-so-distant past of 1970s, comics in Japanese went through a change called from manga to gekiga, or comedic drawing to dramatic drawing. The latter not only implies the more serious tone regarding story telling but was marketed to have photo-like realistic graphic style. Nerds back then thought gekiga would kill manga for good. Yet here we are, English speakers still prefer “manga” over “Japanese comic/graphic novel”. Just like how photo real can never be the only game in town.
Intermission 2
I’m a firm believer in marketing material for media should stay in the same media form as the product to be sold. Like in comic books, nothing promotes the first issues of Hellboy better than the free short comics given out at the Comic-con. Movie and tv trailers are practically montages to put butts in seats. For video games, I am an advocate for hands-on playable demos.
Of course, to someone had been playing on underpowered PCs before, demos are also a way to know if the rig can handle it or not. It is certainly the case with Resident Evil 4 on Steam Deck for me this year. Importable save file is another incitive to try out something one simply is not sure about.
Number 2: Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon
How it stands in 2023: the most pleasant product Platinum put out on Nintendo hardware
I think I said enough in my review. Just go to the product and read it. It’s still the only one there as the writing of this list. Funny how I enjoyed Zelda-likes more than Zelda games on the Switch. Okami’s shorter “run time” is what had won me over while Breath of the Wild felt long in the teeth. Link’s Awakening is something stuck in the past while Cereza and the Lost Demon is a fresh take on the A Link to the Past formula.
What it reminds me of 2013: Name 10 games better than Brothers
Ah, the infamous challenge Brad Shoemaker made to Jeff Gerstmann. Mr. Shoemaker decided that 2013 had 3 better games than Joseph Fraser’s Brothers A Tale of Two Sons, while yours truly thought there were 5. And none of us would have imagined a world where Platinum would make something plays like that. Well, that was 2013. By 2019, with Astral Chain being a single player co-operative game, the road to a filed down one in Bayonetta Origin is pretty clear.
What it reminds me of 2003: the most likely and unlikely one to come out on Gamecube
Pikmin, anybody? As in a somewhat top down polygonal environment where one must pay attention to more than one character.
Well, Gamecube can be seen as infamous for devs not to do anything with the dual-stick set-up. I mean Resident Evil 4 doing that is understandable, while Resident Evil 5 keeping the setting is the baffling factor.
The design and look of Bayonetta Origins would have slotted it nicely into the Gamecube library. But I guess it would be a multiplayer co-op game instead of a singleplayer.
Number 1: Resident Evil 4
How it stands in 2023: Now that’s a motherfucking video game
I uttered the counterpart of f-word in my native tongue regularly when playing 2023’s Resident Evil 4 due to frustration. And I think it’s the good kind of frustration. For one I went “fuck this shit” whenever some parasites shaded its human skin and became harder to kill. For another, whenever after I got through a fight by the skin of my teeth, I would pick the arena clear, look around and think thoughts such as “Ah, shit. Should have lured more guys to this explosive barrel”, “This goat path would have allowed me to thin the crowd a bit more before all hell breaks loose” or “This contraption can save me a lot of trouble”. I mean the Chainsaw Demo took me about 6 to 7 tries to get through yet things are dynamic enough that nothing feels repeated. It is truly impressive that the whole game keeps feeling that dynamic.
On paper, lots of the changes this current team made sound like hair puller, like breakable knives. Enemies in the 2005 games would take one bullet to be kickable, now they at least take two. Yet it all works better as a whole. This is Capcom’s ultimate close-quarter combat simulator as the time of writing, until something else can surpass it.
What it reminds of 2013: “Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt” for real this time. And also playing through Resident Evil 4, the 2005 one of course
It was a warm early Mayday in 2013 when I finally saw credits roll in Resident Evil 4, through the HD version on Xbox 360. That was not the first time I tried to beat this game, since I made as far as pass the Salazar fight on a borrowed PS2 in 2006. I had made about 3 attempts to play through that game again since 2013, but never made it past Chapter 1-2. Despite being still highly playable, don’t let all the praises in the world for this game fool yourself into not thinking it takes an effort to play this game.
The day I beat Resident Evil 4 on Xbox 360 also happened to be between Bioshock Infinite and the Last of Us. You know the two 2013 games about “Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt”, only it’s two kinds of bullshit in the Troy Baker led affairs. The line is entirely in the head of Bioshock Infinite’s Booker Dewitt, while the Last of Us’ Joel Miller deciding “Fuck you all, I’m keeping the girl” still bafflingly provoke discussion nowadays. Baffling as in you all sure want to attach a right or wrong judgement to a not so interesting plot point regarding not so interesting characters. I do know that the HBO series has something to do with you all talking about it in 2023.
Leon S Kennedy did not have a debt to settle in the 2005 game, but in 2023 one he does. Being a more direct sequel to 2019’s Resident Evil 2, 2023’s Resident Evil 4 had Leon clearly feeling that he got one-uped by a college girl on top of all the trauma he went through. Claire Redfield left Racoon City with Shirley Bakin at her side while Kennedy walked alone. So, saving Ashley Graham in the 2023 remake is not just a job, but a prove that he saves people as well. Thus he brought the girl home so his debt within can be wiped, despite the fact that Ashley almost became the second college girl that one-uped him in the 2023 game…
What it reminds of 2003: Wanting a Gamecube Part 2 of 2
Before Resident Evil 4 entered the death match for “the most re-released game of all time”, it was marketed as a Gamecube exclusive. I mean the PS2 port came rather fast and the first disastrous first PC port was not all that far behind. But all that was unknown in 2003 with the now dubbed “Biohazard 3.5” was shown.
Afterword: Good night. In case I don’t see you, good morning, good afternoon and good evening.
If this year does not have some real trick up it sleeves in its remain 9 months, I guess this one can serve as “end of year list” as well. With Resident Evil 4 out of the way, 2023 just became a clear slate as far as new releases are concerned to yours truly. It’s a really reliving experience since I was still recovering from fatigue caused by playing RE4 instead of sleeping as the writing of this afterword. A fatigue so damaging to my ability to write that I had to scroll down here and work on the less tasking afterword first.
PC gaming is apparently at a low point, yet again. Microsoft, or at least its Xbox division deserves the slow death of falling into an event horizon for pulling Ancient Alien shit again with Starfield. Sony’s biggest release this year is Spiderman sequel, the type of corporate interest driven comic book shit I’ve been done with for quite a few years now. Nintendo will establish the newly minted Seventy-buck Club by joining it with Tears of Kingdom. I’m sure it’s worth the money just like I’m sure that it will not be worth 100 hours of my time to see credits roll. Well, my 33 years old cynical, or cautious if you feel generous, ass can certainly use a break from keeping up with all that.
It does not mean that I would suddenly stop adding to the spotlights of this community. The backlog I had can certainly inspire me to write something even after some serious curation. I did promise to keep up with Best Direction at the Keighley’s, as well. So, good bye to winter. And in case no buzz made into my “plugged” ears, say hi to the 3 other reasons for me, wouldn’t you, generous strangers on the internet.
