Meet Julie Muncy, former contributor at Wired.com and present video game and narrative design consultant working for firms like Hit Detection. We were asked to tell you that she is, in fact, very charming and pretty.
Well, haven't done this in a while. Thanks to Giant Bomb, I am making my triumphant (?) return to Game of the Year lists after a several year absence from video game writing. As such, please bear with me, as I no longer understand where I am or what I'm doing. What year is this?
Okay. Okay. I can do this. Let's go.
10. The Fuse Puzzles in Dead Space (2023)
I have mixed feelings about the present trend of remakes. On the one hand, it's easy to argue that they represent a failure of creativity and the stagnation of the ability for the most commercially lucrative entertainment medium in the history of humanity to make decisions with any amount of risk whatsoever. And, like, yeah, that's all true. But, since getting involved with development consulting, I can't help but ask myself: what would happen if this didn't get made? Maybe something else would get made in its place, but maybe not. Maybe these talented, clever craftspeople and artists would just not have jobs. So, even as the critic in me laments the frequency with which remakes of old games dominate the conversations we have about the medium, I'm inclined to admire the care with which they're often created.
Enter this year's Dead Space remake, which features one of the most brilliantly bitchy horror mechanics I've ever seen in a game, remake or not. Imagine this: you walk into a room. It's probably full of monsters, and you have to cross it. It's big, and dark, and terrible. But the electricity's busted. You have two options: power the lights, letting you see your surroundings in this impossibly large mechanical hellroom, or you can power the gravity, giving you the ability to orient yourself in space--just, y'know, without being able to see shit.
This one innovation is so striking, and so mean, that I sometimes just sit, and think about it, and commit to writing a letter to the manager of video games complaining about it. If there's any way EA Motive could truly have paid tribute to the classic that is Dead Space, this is how: by being vindictive as fuck.
9. Life is Strange
I warned you that my grasp on linear time isn't so firm nowadays. This August, in the midst of a deep depression, I revisited and fell in love with Life is Strange (2015) all over again. It floored me.
Listen, Life is Strange is corny. It's awkward. It's, uh, sometimes pretty ableist in ways that make me uncomfortable. But it's one of the most moving trainwrecks I've ever been party to. I never got to have anything approaching a normal adolescence as a teenage girl, but Life is Strange, in filtering an idea of that experience through its surreal lens, manages to evoke in me nostalgia for something I never had. The feeling it gives me is quintessentially teenage in its intensity and illusive urgency: a sense of grief, melancholy, and love that is so large I feel like it might break me open.
Did you know the tie-in comics are also really beautiful? By way of sequel, they turn the story into a star-crossed interdimensional love story it always flirted with being. I know technically comic books "aren't video games" and it would be "irresponsible" to just devote the rest of this list to comic books but this is my list and
8. Hi-Fi Rush
Hi-Fi Rush fucks. It slaps. It bangs. It's one of like four games on this list to feature some sort of Twin Peaks parody.
I don't actually have anything else to say about this game. Some experiences are just so impeccable that your thoughts bounce off of them, like light off a mirror.
7. My Wife Telling Me About Playing 100 Hours of Dwarf Fortress
Are there even any dwarves in this game? I'm serious. Because, while I'm too stupid to sit down and play complex, numbers-and-logistics-driven simulators that are less video games than portals to absurdist fantasy dimensions, my wife is much smarter than me, and in their time telling me about Dwarf Fortress I don't think they ever actually mentioned dwarves. I remember rats, and giants made of stone, and I believe some sort of superplague? Cannibalism was definitely involved. More cannibalism than I'm comfortable with, frankly. Someone got thrown down a well, once.
But dwarves? Where are the dwarves? Probably all dead, now that I think about it. Superplagues and all that.
Anyway, I don't recommend playing Dwarf Fortress.
6. Shooting the Revolver in Alan Wake (2010)
I owe you all an apology. For years, I called myself a Noted Alan Wake Hater. Not that I didn't like Remedy (I adore Remedy), or because the premise of Alan Wake doesn't appeal to me (it does). Instead, I just thought it played like shit. Clumsy, meandering, frustrating. I said this in public places. I also said it in your house, once, to your dog, which I acknowledge was rude of me.
Darlings, I was wrong. Buoyed by my enthusiasm for the sequel, I replayed the original recently, and: it absolutely fucks? Like, this is the game Remedy made after the triumph of Max Payne, and you can tell. In addition to a mastery of tone and pacing, the combat is stellar. Specifically, that revolver. Every shot feels like an explosion, a vital hit of kinetic intensity that grounds the silliness of shooting shadow-wreathed extras from Twin Peaks. It feels amazing.
So, this is to say, I'm sorry. To you, my readers. To Sam Lake, wherever his suit is taking him today. And especially to that revolver. Man, that's a good revolver.
5. The Depths
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is three games, and The Depths is easily the best of the three. A legitimately menacing, impossibly vast subterranean underworld, it is the most engaging space I've explored in a video game all year. I get frustrated with contemporary Nintendo a lot, between the overly litigious cruelty of their approach to copyright and the broad, crowd-pleasing nature of their work. But the Depths, specifically, repudiates and reframes so much of what I don't like about how Nintendo makes games. There's friction here, real friction, legitimate threats and a constant need for the player to generate light to get around. It is, at times, actually scary, at times actually strange. And it does all that without ever fully sacrificing wonder, without ever compromising in its wistful, inviting tone.
I used to play Minecraft wrong. Instead of building things, I would generate a world to the most outlandish parameters available, pick a direction, and start walking. It would always unsettle me, poking around these unauthored authored worlds, hunting for the weirdest sights procedural generation could offer. It felt like getting lost in an empty Doom level. Like exploring that hallway in the Navidson House. It was sublime.
The Depths is the first thing in years to make me feel that way. I don't even need the rest of the game. I could wander down here forever.
4. The Moment I Stopped Playing Starfield
I'm trying not to be a hater. The people at Bethesda are, I am quite sure, immensely talented, thoughtful developers. But if there's one thing I learned from Starfield, it's that the interests of contemporary Bethesda as a collective are so anathema to my own understanding of what is good and beautiful and true about video games that I can barely recognize what they've made here.
I'll admit I didn't play Starfield for very long. But, in my defense, I loathed it. I'm not one to complain about loading screens, but Starfield relies so heavily on automated transit between disconnected, narrow environments that I wanted to scream. Every moment feels like the last moments of an open-world game, rushing across fast travel points to finish hidden objectives and unlock the costume where Spider-Man dresses up like a hot dog made of webs.
Except there is no hot dog. There's just more Starfield. It's Starfield all the way down.
But turning off Starfield? Oh, buddy. Turning off Starfield felt like leaving the DMV. You know, when you get out early, when you budgeted four hours for this bullshit errand but it only took you one. It's that moment when you start to wonder if you should get an early lunch or go take a well-earned nap. It's freedom.
3. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
Cyberpunk 2077, despite its myriad revisions, will always be a flawed product. Still, Phantom Liberty is the ultimate expression of everything that game can be. It features both twisty cyberthriller hijinks and two of the best performances live-action actors have ever given in a video game.
But best of all, it stays true to the core of what Cyberpunk 2077 has always been: a tragedy. We don't get a lot of tragedies in games, and that's a shame. A good tragedy is so cathartic, so stirring, so disquieting. A good tragedy can change you.
And that's what's special here, really, beneath all the controversy and robo-katanas. Even in its happiest or most thrilling moments, Cyberpunk 2077 never lets you forget that you're already dead. I admire that.
2. El Paso, Elsewhere
When I got asked to write this list, my first thought was, "Shit, guess I need to finally play El Paso, Elsewhere." I was right.
Look, I have a thing for self-indulgent art. Why kill your darlings? They're your darlings! Make shrines to them! Get them a nice box lunch and take them to see the sailing ships! Fuck it, kill everything that isn't your darlings!
El Paso, Elsewhere does precisely that. It is a shameless Max Payne imitation/parody that still manages to wring genuine pathos out of the extremely human pain at its core. Xalavier Nelson, Jr., who serves as creative director/writer/rapper/actor, gives a frankly stirring performance as the main character. It all just works, both as a genius homage and a remarkable game in its own right, and it does so because it has absolutely zero shame. Out of everything on this list, it's the game I'm most upset I didn't get to help write. (Call me, Xalavier.)
Also, this game has a great shotgun. Just saying.
1. Alan Wake 2
Alan Wake. God's favorite princess. Best girl. In my house, we call him "wet man," because he is never, ever dry.
He also happens to be the co-lead of one of the best games I've ever played. A workmanlike survival horror at first glance but with brilliant storytelling, creative level design, and some of the most beautiful technical art direction I've seen in my entire life. At times, this game feels like playing Twin Peaks: the Return. At other times, it's a musical. You know, it has layers.
I've heard the criticisms: It's pretentious. It's self-indulgent almost to the point of self-parody. It's both withholding and way too eager to explain itself. Alan Wake is one of the shittiest writers ever depicted in fiction. Why is he so wet. And to that I say: stop selling it to me! I already like it!
Alan Wake 2 is sincerely, almost violently itself. As someone who values sincerity in art more than just about anything else, that makes it perfect to me. It is the game of 2023, no questions asked. Come save your soul.
0. Pathologic 2
Actually, okay, hang on. Sorry, Alan. Pathologic 2 is a perfect work of art and the secret actual game of the year of every year both before and after its release.
Don't be mad at me, I am not Pathologic 2. I am merely her prophet.
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