Something went wrong. Try again later

bludgeonParagon

This user has not updated recently.

127 0 10 1
Forum Posts Wiki Points Following Followers

GOTY "Why Can't I Hold All These Incredible Games??" 2023

Everyone has already pointed out what an amazing year it was for game releases. Utterly stacked to the gills with stuff for everyone to play, an absolute glut of post-COVID lockdown titles that were forcibly given time to percolate for longer than usual and resulted in a calendar of remarkable quality and creative expression. And yet, everyone has also pointed how how exceptionally awful 2023 was for the people who made them, ad nauseum.

I'm here to add to that noise. The industry did not relent with the layoffs up until the eleventh hour of the year all the way up to the holiday break, which is some staggeringly dogwater behaviour - an astounding lack of care or empathy in pursuit of the bottom line.

I read upwards to figures of about 10,000 employees lost their jobs just this year and I don't care if it reflects a general contraction in technology sectors everywhere, video gaming deserves better than to treat the human beings who make up the creative lifeblood of this medium as little more than numbers to lop off on a spreadsheet.

Shout-outs especially to Embracer Group for gambling for Saudi investor money by hoovering up everything it could Embrace, and catastrophically harming its developers (in ways we may probably never know) when the chips were down. A runners-up shout out to BioWare and EA for gutting its teams before the completion of Dragon Age and the beginning of Mass Effect. I am if nothing else a shameless BioWare stan - I will fiercely defend Dragon Age: Inquisition, Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda's positive qualities until the day I die - and a developer team is always more than its individual rockstars. But reading about the firing of some of its most storied writers and workers, some responsible for some of BioWare's most iconic and beloved characters, felt shameful. Like many of the games we loved in 2023, I find it hard not to feel a little bitter about the absolute state of things, even as I eagerly await what comes next.

Regardless!

As a consumer, I was spoiled rotten for choice, and want to especially highlight what a smorgasbord it was for Game Pass. This year more than ever, I played and even (almost) completed possibly the most games I've ever done so for decades, with the most variety in genre I've experienced in years.

Maybe Game Pass has hit the wall in sustainability or the prices will skyrocket in the very near future. But even if I had paid the full, cool $180 for this year's subscription specifically, the sheer breadth and depth of titles I got to experience unironically saved me a small stack of cash I could spend elsewhere. (Mostly on games I wanted ownership of.)

List items

  • I have already spent an entire blog post evangelizing for this game, so I will keep this as short as possible.

    This videogame-ass videogame was such a violent throwback to an older generation of games it gave me whiplash. I was enarmored from start to finish. Its core conceit works almost perfectly in a way that solves so many of the issues from other, earlier rhythm-based games that it would feel like a new standard for future titles in the genre to follow - if it weren't such a niche genre to begin with.

    It oozes so much love and care in every corner of its 12-14 hour run (to say nothing of the incredible post-game additions and challenges). It didn't need to have lovingly-animated interstitials in between combat waves. It didn't have to license such a selection of lyrically-appropriate bangers, it could have just settled for its already-amazing original soundtrack. It didn't need officially licensed models from Gibson/Epiphone, and it certainly didn't need to do all this for a game priced at a fraction of the price of a full AAA title.

    As someone pretty musically inclined, I have thought about Hi-Fi Rush's immaculate sense of rhythm and style very literally multiple times a week, every week since it came out. It's such a triumph of design and a symbol of hope that, yes, game developers don't need to be pigeon-holed into a specific identity if they have the vision and focus to produce something truly off-kilter. The idea that a AAA-driven landscape can afford the opportunity to look inwards and direct that time and effort to produce smaller, more uncommon projects feels like something more companies should aspire to, lest we have to take matters into our own hands and start beating executives to death with guitars.

  • I have been an unapologetic Remedy-head since the days of Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, but until about 2 years ago Alan Wake was a glaring blind spot in my experience of Remedy games (I only vaguely remember being discouraged by the overall talk that the heavy cinematic action from the Max Payne games was de-emphasized).

    I'm glad I got that sorted out, because 1. it meant I went into this game with relatively fresh memories, and 2. that experience elevated this game into the pantheon of greatest survival horror games ever made.

    There's nothing I could really say that hasn't already been said by other people much more articulate than me, but when Sam Lake goes on stage for a presentation with the crispest tailored suit worn by a human being and uses the phrase "mind-bending" in his signature Finnish accent, that man absolutely means it. Alan Wake II's use of light-based game mechanics and level design with a complete disregard for logical physical space put my mind in a fucking backbreaker. Although the actual core combat itself is kind of rote (and actually kind of weirdly absent for long stretches of time), the playfulness and self-awareness with which the game plays with genre as an interactive medium is extraordinary.

    I don't like to be mean about this because auteurship in videogames is still kind of a sticky subject and this comes around to other cans of worms like language barriers and localization, but I think Alan Wake II makes anything that Kojima has done look like an absolutely infantile, fumbling effort. I'd say that this storytelling should be the blueprint that games of this genre should be looking to match, but with seriousness - I don't know how many teams can do the things that Remedy do, to the degree of mastery that Remedy have been developing for decades. I want to say that FMV GAMES ARE BACK, BAYBEE - but then the ones who been knew all along will look down at me and whisper, "they never left".

  • Every time I log into social media and check my video game feeds I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, because the volume of noise around how no-one cares about Starfield constantly seems to escalate to a fever pitch.

    I think Starfield is most definitely flawed in a lot of obvious and visible ways, but I don't think it is so much a bad game as it is a deceptively niche one. I think now, more than ever, we need to step away from grand, sweeping declarations of supposedly-objective quality and recognize ways in which a game was designed for a specific wavelength that appeals to some and is unappealing to others.

    Maybe it is just that this kind of outdated design is my specific kind of damage, but the expectations of the public for a new Bethesda IP to be structured in a way that runs completely counter to their engine has always felt a little bizarre to me. I see shades of the old-school, cell-based encounter design of early Fallout overworlds and I kick my feet a little as bounty hunters randomly warp in from nowhere or a lone traveller shows up with his spacefaring sea shanties for the nth time. I see a vast, procgen sandbox on a planet surface and feel satisfied by setting down my flag on a little patch of particularly picaresque landscape for resources and photoshoots. I guffaw like a loon when a little biohazardous monster freak shows up and I have to mulch it with a shotgun to extract its hooves or whatever. Then later I go online and see complaints about how the entire galaxy isn't an explorable contiguous space or that the deliberately barren planets are dull or that there aren't any interesting aliens or something.

    When people accuse Starfield of being regressive and completely lacking in creative ambition, I simply cannot jive with it. Sure, the things that Bethesda have directed their creative energy into appear to be outwardly cold and dispassionate, but I think all the mechanisms it adopts from its older games - the crafting, the base and ship building, the skill trees and perks, the magic powers unlocked by exploration, its gunplay - speak to an evolution of the familiar, channelled into a genre uniquely inspired by an older bygone era of mundane, "simulational" sci-fi (now relegated to niche titles like the X3 series and Elite Dangerous), the days where a physical space was added for the sake of its existence - to BE in that physical space.

    When Todd Howard says this was the kind of game he wanted to make, I fully believe him, and I think it's actually really fucking cool that he didn't necessarily make the kind of game that everyone else on social media wanted him to make.

  • I'm actually more of a Tekken ride-or-die kinda guy, but the way I see it, the quality and quantity of this package is a real all-timer for fighting games. Street Fighter V took so, so long to get to a good place, that it almost came as a shock to me how complete 6 felt. There are so many different ways for the game to teach, it feels like we are getting into an era in which any player can actually start to learn the methodology and psychology of a fighting game and its moment-to-moment decision making.

    Good tutorialization is no longer just tucked away in the corners of Guilty Gear and Killer Instinct. Good job, Capcom. You finally done did it.

  • You don't need to be of South Asian or even of first-generation immigrant descent to appreciate the heart this game exudes (though it definitely does, as they say, hit different). A quick couple hours of deeply personal storytelling around the struggle of reconciling old culture with a new life, told through the food we make for those we love.

    Cooking is many things, but (honestly, kind of like videogames!) I think it has a capacity for self-expression and communication in so many unspoken ways that people sometimes take for granted. Being able to get across what can't be properly said due to language or generational barriers is something I personally wrestle with many days of my life. Venba puts those daily struggles into words and verbs.

  • Over the last few years I spent a lot of time coming to the slow realization that my interest for JRPGs was dying. I still can't really articulate why - they're perfectly excellent vehicles for storytelling. I just... stopped playing them in favour of multiplayer games, I guess. I'm glad I picked up Sea of Stars from Game Pass on a whim, because it has reminded me what's there to love about this subgenre.

    I don't always like analogous comparisons, but it's basically doing for JRPGs what Shovel Knight did for sidescrolling platformers. It inhabits this incredible space of evoking our fondest memories of games from a vintage era, while sneaking in techniques and effects not technologically possible at the time to make it still feel polished and modern. I'm not as over the moon (heh) about these kinds of games like the diehards are, but it has rekindled my love for them, which is just about the best thing I could say for any game.

  • Just to say straight up, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is the furthest I've ever gotten in a Souls-adjacent game.

    I'm so fucking bad at almost all the FromSoft-likes. I bought Elden Ring out of obligation to The Discourse, beat a couple of bosses and realised that the game was going to occupy literally every waking moment of my next few months if I was going to ever have a chance of rolling credits on it. I'm not really wired to accept beating my head against a wall for hours and hours inside an aesthetic I'm only mildly interested in. I've come to recognize that I enjoy depth in my games, but a bottomless Mariana Trench of hidden lore doesn't really compel me the way I thought it would.

    This game sands down some of this friction enough for me to have spent a week or two tackling it. It looks dour and sour but its completely straight-faced Dynasty Warriors-like presentation thoroughly charmed me. It's Romance of the Three Kingdoms filtered through Sekiro, poured from an anime clownshoe with a complete disregard for any sense for its source material.

    I was The Protagonist who became buddies with literally every warring state. I became bros with every historical figure of note. I pursued the absolute FUCK out of Lu Bu. Like, three times! I even did it while perfect parrying for almost all of it! Good shit, Team Ninja.

  • Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty was the closest I got to ever beating a Souls-adjacent, but Armored Core VI is the first FromSoftware game I've actually rolled credits on.

    I'm a big robot guy in general. I'm not an Austin Walker level of fanatic, but I have been pretty deep in the mecha and mech genre since childhood, all the way back to Battletech, MechWarrior and MechCommander in the 90s. My enjoyment of things like Macross and Gundam came later, but my love for both is pretty strong.

    I played through a fair bit of Armored Core throughout my life - I was too young to properly understand the PSX games and even the early Playstation 2 ones were a little too obtuse for me to get my head around. I played a very hefty chunk of V and almost figured it out.

    Now, as an adult with a probably-fully developed frontal lobe, and with modern game design sensibilities meeting me halfway by smoothing some of its worst rough edges, I properly understand the things that Armored Core's numbers and verbs ask of me. Its general linearity and high-speed robot action speak to me in ways that FromSoft's souls-likes do not, even if nearly everything about the characters and the story still feels emotionally castrated and disjointed in that same signature writing style.

    Finally being able to complete one of their games feels like a big deal, and I'm glad this was the game to do it.

  • El Paso, Elsewhere wears its inspirations on its sleeve and absolutely fucks. The only reason why it isn't higher on my list is because I haven't played as much of it as I would like, but even from the 2-3 hours I played I could tell this was my kinda shit. I hope Sam Lake has played this as well. I bet he'd appreciate the hell out of it.

  • This game was straight lovely. A small little sidescroller I cleaned off in a day, carried by absolutely gorgeous, lush sight and sound, evocative visual storytelling and mild puzzling to keep the brain engaged. It definitely harkens back to a very overplayed genre of games from the last 1-2 generations, but everything here is so light and breezy I'd happily play twice as much of this if there was more to it.

  • This gets bumped out of the top ten mostly because it's still in Early Access and is being substantially rebuilt due to player feedback so I guess it's not technically OUT out, yet? But I honestly loved a lot about this game. The increased story focus is great, the character writing is really good and I think the Simon Says style of gameplay had a lot of potential to be really fun once the readability issues were solved.

    I loved Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! so much but it basically brushed up against my upper limit of tolerance for (admittedly self-inflicted) "punishing difficulty for a typing game" so I actually really appreciated David Galindo deflating that high-strung tension a little bit in favour of a more moderate challenge. Here's to hoping that big rerelease works out!

  • There are some legitimate narrative surprises and fun PvPvE moments in this third person hero shooter that I think the people who wrote it off as Just Another Wacky Capcom B-Game do it a disservice. The story is complete bonkers and is told in just about the most disjointed, half-assed way possible, but it's silly in just the right ways and commits to it 1000%.

    No, it's not Dino Crisis, but holy shit there are so many dinosaurs, man. Like, there's so fucking many of them pouring out of every orifice that opens up. You think there's any dinosaurs left in this area you cleared out? No? Check your foreskin.
Load Comments