Great games of 2023
Games I loved in 2023. Likely includes older games and Game Pass titles.
Games I finished always appear higher on the list than ones I only sampled.
List items
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I'm not a giant cat person, but Stray was fun. There's some boring cat interactions like scratching, but many fun ones like nuzzling legs or knocking stuff over. Stray gives you lots of space to cat around while also delivering a narrative with some tension-raising action sequences.
Initially enjoyed the intro and getting to the first town, but talking to all the robots didn't deliver enough story to pull me back regularly and I stopped playing for a long time. Eventually, I got out of the first town and that helped push me along for awhile. The action sequences between each town are very engaging but the town can be very slow. I forced myself to avoid trying to do everything in town (find all the music sheets) and instead focus on enjoying the being a cat and accomplishing my mission.
I thought the climax and conclusion were great. My kids watched me play some and they enjoyed it a ton too.
Took me 6 hours to complete. My kids immediately asked if we could play it again.
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Hype for the new game got me to pick this up again.
Enjoying the conversations between the main characters.
It feels a bit long and there's way too much open world filler. Atreus' attitude gets very annoying but it works okay for a clear character arc.
Enjoyed the conclusion.
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Having a blast regaining my Jedi skills. I'm enjoying the Souls-lite gameplay of resting and getting revenge to regain my XP, but the skill tree is pretty slim and I usually have all the skills by the time new ones unlock. But love how the combat is gradually getting more complex and the story is fun.
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Buggy (wrong gamepad icons, "swap sticks" option puts all controls on one stick, some perf issues), but otherwise really enjoyable experience. I like the characters, enjoyed their arcs, and had fun with the ride. Some of it was slow and could have moved faster, but lots of different locations.
Removed from Gamepass before I finished (at Chapter 12 - Knowhere to Run), but I wasn't sooo invested that I'd buy it to finish.
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Picked this up again from the beginning with my kids and having a blast. This game is definitely better with 3 players than solo, but can be quite stressful. Kids really love it though and the youngest is remarkably capable.
We hit an 100% crash going to the next area in Chapter 9, so we can't play anymore and I consider it finished.
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First: turn down the gun chatter immediately. I went one notch down and they still talk a bit too much.
High On Life's guns and grappling are some of the most fun parts. The guns are very different so you mix them up to try different things in combat. I don't think the enemy design pressures you enough to switch guns, but I still mostly enjoyed it.
At some point (halfway?), I got frustrated and turned the difficulty to Story. I didn't want to grind for pesos so I could buy health upgrades. Searching for chests is okay, but trying to 100% areas wasn't much fun (no map, but radar helps).
If you have gamepass, give it a shot and see if you find it funny. It will constantly throw jokes at you: some are funny, many are dirty, some fall flat. Definitely not for kids.
Finished it after grinding some chests to buy everything from Mr Keep and I think I should have just gone straight to the end.
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Absolutely loving Cocoon, but haven't finished it.
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Still plugging away. I'm drifting a bit after hitting the bank, but I am enjoying it. Managed to get back in enough to defeat Hornet. Now I'm feeling a bit lost.
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Enjoying the mystical writing and slow gravity leaping puzzle gameplay of Dandara. Great Steam Deck game.
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Playing with the kids. We've played 55+ hours of this game and I'm amazed how we keep coming back. Found some great coop levels this time.
Recently, my son was more interested in creating levels, so we did more of that.
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Started playing EarthBound again. I rented it as a child and only made it past Twoson. Playing occasionally with my kids on Steam Deck to finally experience the full game.
Haven't made it to Twoson yet, haha.
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Having a great time playing this with my son; he mostly took over the controls. There's lots of conflict with bugs around the house, but everyone isn't itching for a fight. It's a refreshing change of pace.
Didn't grab our attention enough to finish before it left gamepass, but more because it's not good for playing together. Definitely worth checking out.
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Picked this up again and found some shortcuts that have helped me want to keep coming back.
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Enjoy the tactics and the silliness with my oldest kid.
Didn't keep our interest enough to finish before it was removed from GamePass, but worth checking out.
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Playing with the youngest. This games controls are so wonky, but researching and exploring are tons of fun.
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Story is irrelevant to gameplay; unintuitive puzzles; awesome primary mechanic.
The gameplay is completely divorced from the storytelling, but it's fun to play. Some of the acting is very good and some of the lines are flat.
I like the 2d illustrations that paint in for cinematics and then sometimes transition part of the world to a different state.
I love hard puzzle games, but I've found a lot of the puzzles very unintuitive. It's a large world and I wander around trying to find what I need to solve a puzzle. A bunch of early puzzles didn't introduce mechanics so you either stumble on them or look it up.
But the world inside a world mechanic is awesome. I've heard A Fisherman's Tale is a better implementation of this idea.
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Makes your panzer mech feel weighty, but sometimes that can be frustrating. Consumable weapons are an interesting spell vs attack trade off.
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Not sure when I picked this up, but it's a nice simple cinematic platformer.
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Fun playing with the kids and letting them make decisions. Since there's no time urgency, it's a good consensus game.
Didn't have enough hooks to get us deep into it before the game left GamePass.
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Playing with the kids. This is a pretty great 4 player game, but can get very difficult.
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Playing with the kids. We started a second base and tried to make everything more organized, but have played a lot of other games.
We only just touched Update 8 (the UE5 upgrade).
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Enjoying some of the movement and love that there's an option to toggle skating instead of hold.
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Playing with the kids.
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Playing with the kids.
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Playing with the kids.
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Playing with the kids.
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Neat little puzzle/adventure game concept. Probably more suited to mobile than desktop and the ugly little characters aren't drawing me in deep.
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I like a lot of the storytelling and gameplay ideas, but the controls are frustrating on gamepad.
The menus are all fake mouse cursor controlled with left stick. It doesn't feel like it snaps to the right position at all and isn't nice to use.
Worse, the shooting is hard to aim because of no magnetism. When you're trying to throw a Molotov at someone, it's very hard to get it on target. Even the free camera aiming system doesn't help much.
The shooting controls feel like they're tuned for a turn-based game and are far too finicky for this real time combat.
I bet it all plays much better with a mouse.
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Playing with the kids. I'm not sure they're sold on it.
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Looks nice, but requires so many buttons held down for so long to climb that it hurts my hands to play.
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Playing with the kids. I think they lost interest. The story didn't really grab me either but the combat seemed like it might be interesting.
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I'm too terrible at the rhythm to enjoy this game enough to keep playing.
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I bet the stories out of this game are fantastic because the dialogue and world building seem great. I love the traits and backstory from the character creator. But actually playing it isn't great.
The game often freezes for several seconds as if it's loading, but it happens while walking and aiming in the same zone. Hit it multiple times while aiming at an enemy. Framerate is otherwise good on Ultra. Still get the freezes on Low.
The gunplay also doesn't feel very good. Doesn't feel like there's magnetism on aim or any stick input curve. I enjoyed shooting in "sub par shooters" like Bioshock but this is just bad.
The inventory is frustrating. The Misc category is mostly for vendor trash, but digipicks go in there. It's great to move items to companions and my ship (and sell from my ship), but a "Move/Sell All Trash" button would be fantastic. Also, some items prompt you for quantity when you sell and some just sell the one (maybe if you have > 10)?
Game is full of conversations, but the camera framing is really boring (straight on) or weird (two faces looking at each other and almost away from me).
Specs:
i5-4430
8 GB RAM
RTX 3080 12 GB VRAM on latest drivers
ADATA SU800 SSD - not m.2 drive
Starfield is installed to one SSD and Windows to a separate (but similar) one.
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