GOTY 2023
2023 was a tough year for me. I laughed, I cried, but ultimately I'm still here, and I’m glad I got to spend some of it with YOU *points*.
Here are some shout outs to games that I had the opportunity to play this year, followed by my top 5.
Shout Outs
in no particular order
Assassin's Creed Valhalla
This game is large, has a unique setting, and makes you feel like a Viking. There is something very cathartic about sailing your longship around the English countryside murdering pseudo-templars and plundering riches, though not murdering civilians since that’s against the “rules”. It's fun, but if you’ve played any of the more recent Assassin's Creed games you kind of already know what you're getting yourself into. Once you’ve played the first 15-20 hours of it, you’ve more or less played all of it.
Surviving the Aftermath
Paradox continues to publish unique city-builder/strategy games and this sure is one of them. It's an interesting idea creating a society from the literal rubble and fallout of the old one, but it becomes a little monotonous after one or two playthroughs. As interesting as it is, this game feels a little bit like a glorified mobile game, with a clunky UI and some counter-intuitive and unexplained systems like population pathing. It’s a neat idea and I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure I'll ever pick it up again.
Tetris 99
99 people jump out of an L-shaped airplane, and they are ALL better at Tetris than you will ever hope to be.
Cities Skylines 2
I have hundreds of hours in Cities Skylines, and I imagine will have as much if not more in the sequel. The game as it stands leaves a lot of room for growth, and some of the performance issues on launch are difficult to ignore. However, this game is absolutely gorgeous and has some of the most in-depth and labyrinthian systems that I will one day hope to understand instead of just plopping roundabouts everywhere like I normally do in the previous game.
Satisfactory
This game will suck you in and kick you right back out. If you've ever played a factory-builder game like Factorio you know what that's like. Though it's still in beta, Satisfactory is a ton of fun to play and feels pretty fleshed-out as it is right now, though with some glaring exceptions like placeholder items and unfinished ore types. I would say don’t sleep on this game, but I would also say wait for the 1.0 release, whenever that day may come.
Top 5
5. Metroid Prime Remastered
I told myself a long time ago that the day I buy another Nintendo console would be the day Metroid Prime 4 comes out. Well, I'm still waiting for Metroid Prime 4 but I decided to buy a switch anyway. When Nintendo announced Metroid Prime Remastered and that it was releasing that very same day this past February I almost fell out of my chair, I felt a little vindicated in my decision to wait for Prime 4, though I had to wait a bit longer for my physical copy.
Metroid Prime Remastered plays exactly like the original, though with a fresh coat of paint, some cool collectibles/concept-art, and the ability to take Samus with me anywhere I wanted. Updated graphics plus the OLED screen on my Switch model make some of the areas absolutely stunning on the limited hardware the Switch is running. And the controls, a long contentious topic of all three of the Prime games, feels like the way the game was meant to be played even back in 2002.
Ever since Metroid Prime: Hunters released, I had been vying for more mobile 3D Metroid games (we’ll ignore Federation Force). Now that most 2D Metroid games are playable on the Switch, I’m hoping Nintendo goes for proper remasters of Prime 2 and 3, and maybe even one day Zero Mission on the Gameboy Advance Switch Online collection. One can dream...
4. God of War (2018)
Whether it’s my own nostalgia kicking in or some sort of repressed or forgotten memories in the deep recesses of my mind, sometimes playing a game gives me the feeling like I'm eating something. I’m not talking about associating games with food, like Call of Duty with Mountain Dew and Doritos, or Death Stranding with Monster Energy (thank you Kojima), I'm talking about how playing Super Mario Sunshine (one of my favorite Mario games and I'm not sorry) makes me feel like I'm eating a freezer-pop I dug out from the back of the freezer on a hot summer day. Or how playing Red Dead Redemption 2 feels like I'm sipping whiskey around a campfire, roasting marshmallows and making s’mores. If God of War were to evoke that similar feeling, it would feel to me like I’m eating a hearty bowl of stew. I can taste all the textures, the different ingredients all slowly cooked to perfection, and when I'm finished with my bowl, I feel completely full and satisfied. That’s what I think of God of War.
A compelling story with other worldly characters that tells a tale of grief in all its stages and about how the cycle of violence can persist through generations. An action-adventure game that takes you through the lore of Norse mythology as a stranger in a strange land. A coming-of-age story and father-son bonding experience over shared trauma. Climbing up a frost giant and beating literal Gods with your bare hands. These are all the ingredients of the pot that left me satisfied when I finished God of War. Did I want seconds? I guess I’ll have to wait and see when the sequel comes to PC.
3. SnowRunner
SnowRunner is the most stressful turn-your-brain-off game I have ever played. If you thought trucking steel pipes up the side of a mountain is a nice and easy task you have never been more wrong in your entire life: the road is made entirely out of mud, your gas tank is half-empty, your rear-passenger tire is deflated, and the tree you’re trying to attach your winch to, to try to pull your truck out of said mud road is just out of reach. It’s like Death Stranding but with trucks. No really. And although SnowRunner has fewer piss-grenades and Léa Seydoux (thanks again Kojima), much like Death Stranding, it’s about the journey not the destination.
I spent many hours hauling cargo across multiple maps, tipping my trucks off the side of mountains, getting my shipment (and my truck) swept out to sea, and attaching my winch from tree to tree like I'm some slow moving, 50-ton, rope-slinging Spiderman carrying wind turbine parts across the Arctic tundra. Each contract that you take is a journey and can be a quick 15 minute drop off or a several hour recovery ordeal, depending on how well you handle it. Does it hurt when my truck tips over 20 feet from the drop off point? Yes. I Just remind myself to keep on keeping on, and my worries go away.
2. Cyberpunk 2077 / Phantom Liberty
Cyberpunk has come a long way since its release. This year and the latest 2.0 and now the 2.1 updates are probably the most fully realized version of this video game we are ever going to get. I first played this game after much (but certainly not all) of the chagrin had died down and had my fun with it then didn't really touch it again. After the whole launch fiasco I was pretty hesitant to jump on the DLC for this game, but after trying out the 2.0 update in October I fell in love with this game again. The perks were more streamlined, all the cyberware modifications were remarkably better, the driving felt much smoother, and as an added plus for me, my recently rebuilt PC allowed me to turn on raytracing and I've been staring at these cyber-puddles ever since.
I finished the Phantom Liberty DLC a few days ago and I cannot stop thinking about it. The new locations, the new characters, the endings are all a gigantic step from the writing in the base game and more towards the core of the Cyberpunk table-top game and it makes me a little sad to hear CDPR is moving on from the game.
Idris Elba’s performance as agent Solomon Reed was great, but Keanu Reeves’ Rockerboy Johnny Silverhand really grew on me during the story, and as much as Johnny and I were at odds throughout the main story, it really felt like he had my back during this one and had a friend helping me process my thoughts on the growing complex and dire situation in Dogtown.
Going from the dilapidated skyscrapers to the cozy Moth bar, to the swanky Heavy Hearts Club, then taking the elevator to the crown jewel HQ of the despotic leader of Dogtown, Kurt Hansen’s Black Sapphire, are just some of the main places that are crammed into the tiny strip that is Dogtown.
The main thought that really resonated for me at the end of the DLC without getting into spoilers was the quote from Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the original Cyberpunk TTRPG, who said that Cyberpunk isn’t about “saving humanity, but saving yourself”.
1. Starfield
I spent a long time thinking about Starfield this year. I also spent a long time playing Starfield this year. And while it seems everyone on the internet has an opinion on the game, some of them valid, some of them not, I’ll try to summarize my thoughts about it and why it’s my number one pick.
I understand people’s gripes with the game and share many if not most of them: the points of interest are too few and too similar, vendors don’t carry nearly enough credits, resource management and base management is a pain, questionable writing, useless maps, the list can go on. I absolutely agree that the game deserves the criticism it’s been receiving since its release in September, though definitely not all of it.
The main story has its ups and downs, the characters are typical, but overall it has one of the most unique new game plus tie-ins I’ve ever experienced. And though some faction questlines left me with a sour taste in my mouth, each one was unique albeit completely nonconvergent, which leads me to believe there is much more to Starfield Bethesda has planned. But for all its faults, shortcomings, and good old Bethesda jank, I can’t say I've ever played a game at this scale and with this level of detail.
I can land at Neon, go to the Astral Lounge and pickpocket some unsuspecting corpo executive, take my ship back to the seaside settlement I built on some other remote planet where I can tend to my greenhouse where I grow hallucinogenic plants that I can harvest to upgrade parts of my laser rifle. Then I can dock with an orbital space station where I can upgrade the missile and shield systems on my spaceship, take a contract to hunt down some space pirates, then land at the wreckage of their obliterated ships where I can scavenge them for more resources. And when all is said and done, I can look up at the enormous gas giant I’m orbiting on the tiny frozen moon I’m standing on and watch in real time as the sun rises over the horizon. Sure, there are other games where you can do all those things, but not at the scale that you can do it in Starfield.
Starfield isn’t perfect, I never expected it to be, and I don’t expect it ever will be. It didn’t change my life or my perception of video games, and it didn’t really make me ask or think about any profound questions about humanity’s place in or among the stars. But there is no other game where I can get what I wanted out of it this year other than Starfield.
