It was the best year for video games; it was the worst year for video games. The year 2023 will be remembered with joyful glee or utter misery, depending on which side of the video game you are on. Game developers probably had the worst year I’ve ever seen. Studio closures, layoffs, excessive crunch, and that’s on top of the other bullshit they usually have to deal with. Conversely, video game players had perhaps one of the best years in recent memory, so I believe this year was fantastic for playing games. I finally managed to get a PlayStation 5 and had enough time in the year to play some missed classics and old favourites. However, despite having the time to play through Ape Escape on a whim, there were some games I missed, so apologies to Pizza Tower, Octopath Traveller II, Tron: Identity, Dead Island 2, Street Fighter 6, AEW Fight Forever, Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition, Armored Core VI, Making of Karateka, System Shock, Robocop Rogue City, Fashion Dreamer and Chants of Sennaar. Maybe I’ll have time next year.

The Willies Awards

Best Game I Did Not Play: System Shock

System Shock is the perfect subject for a ‘from the ground up’ remake. System Shock came out at a time when 3D gaming on PC still had not been figured out yet, where choices were made that (with nearly 30 years of hindsight) made the game difficult to control, let alone play. But here comes the famed PC FPS port masters Nightdive Studios to lovingly remake the game with the same ideals and general concepts but with the ability to aim like a proper shooter instead of clicking around like a desktop, among other improvements. However, it came out at the end of May when I was still in my Tears of the Kingdom hole desperately trying to finish it before Diablo IV, so alas, System Shock remains unplayed. I do not doubt that when it goes on a good sale, I will pick it up and play the hell out of it.

Runners Up: Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition, Robocop Rogue City

Most Disappointing: Diablo IV

You know that scene in the Simpsons episode ‘Kamp Krusty’ where Lisa is shocked to find the camp serves gruel when the staff informs her that it’s actually ‘Krusty Brand Imitation Gruel’? I was in the mood for a mindless video game. I could just turn my brain off and hit the buttons until the numbers go up. So I paid Blizzard waaaay too much money on release day for what I consider to be the ‘Krusty Brand Imitation Gruel’ of video games: Diablo IV. A tasteless grey sludge that, while technically ticks all the boxes for a “video game”, is utterly devoid of any flavour or soul. I was honestly shocked at how extreme the mindlessness is. There is nothing in this game to engage or excite the player. You walk around a drab, bland environment, smacking all the different kinds of skeletons and weird little imps until a piece of gear that looks like all the other pieces of gear you have seen drops. After which, you get a 2% increase in whirlwind damage or whatever, and then repeat for 50 hours. I hope that Microsoft fixes whatever the fuck is wrong with Blizzard; otherwise, I am going to have to rename this award after them.

Runners Up: Payday 3, Redfall

Biggest Surprise: Tchia

The best surprises are the ones you don’t even see coming. Tchia was not even on my radar. It was just another random indie game about fishing and farming or whatever. But I had just bought a PlayStation 5 and happened to resubscribe during the month Tchia had just come out on PlayStation Plus. So, I thought I would give this a try. It was not the fishing and farming game, I was led to believe, but a fantastic open-world action-adventure game of the highest quality. I have never played a video game that felt so ingrained in the culture of the people making it. I truly felt like I was there on those islands, engaging with the people of Uma. Sure, there are games with better graphics, more engaging gameplay and fewer bugs, but even the biggest, most funded triple-A studios struggle to place the player in a place so thoroughly. The whole point of video games is to transport you to another world, and no game has done that better this year than Tchia.

Runners Up: Final Fantasy XVI, Persona 5 Tactica

Best Game That Did Not Technically Come Out This Year: Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

Insomniac Games is the best triple-A studio working today, and games like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart are the reason why. It is simply an incredibly polished, well-designed, gorgeous-looking video game. So many video game studios try to cram as much stuff in their games as possible. “This is an action-adventure game, but it also must have an RPG loot system, side quests, vehicle customisation, and dialogue trees, and it also must have a huge environment and multiplayer”. Insomniac basically just took the core concept of a standard platformer, added a few next-generation tricks and polished the everloving shit out of it. It is a tight 15 to 20-hour experience of excellent platforming action and an absolute blast. I don’t think it would have been my Game of the Year for 2021 if I had played it then, but it would have been in the discussion.

Runners Up: Boku no Natsuyasumi 2: Umi no Dai Bouken, Thief: The Dark Project

Best Character: Karlach (Baldur’s Gate III)

We all know that Karlach, on the surface, is that big-muscle, dominating woman type that every freak (including me) absolutely loves. She is the embodiment of that quote from Cowboy Bebop: “I love the kind of woman that can kick my ass”. But despite appearances, Karlach is so much more than a big muscle lady. She is a charming, intelligent, kind and emotionally deep person who stands out from a cast that is also filled with unforgettable characters. She is both a joy to be around and an essential character in battle. I don’t think she left my party a single time ever since I found her. The team over at Larian, as well as Samantha Béart, the actress who plays her, has created an absolutely fantastic RPG character who stands shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the best companions in RPGs. She is the Mordin Solus, Kim Kitsuragi and Eunie of Baldur’s Gate III.

Runners Up: Yunaka (Fire Emblem Engage), Clive Rosfield (Final Fantasy XVI)

Best Music: Tchia

The best video game music puts you in that place just by listening to it. When you listen to ‘Uncharted Worlds’, you are transported to the Normandy. When you hear ‘Beneath the Mask’, you are transported to Leblanc. The music in Tchia does that to me. Whenever I listen to ‘Ö ngo eka’, I am eating dinner with the dad on that little island. When I listen to ‘Sailing, ' I’m on the raft heading towards Aemoon. When I listen to ‘Chez nous à Weliwele’, I’m at that party in Weliwele. Quite a few soundtracks have that effect on me, but what makes Tchia’s music so different is that every song feels so personal and authentic. It feels like I’m listening to a New Caledonian playing traditional music for their children, which is an exceptionally rare quality in video game soundtracks. John Robert Matz has made something special with this soundtrack.

Runners Up: Final Fantasy XVI, Super Mario Bros Wonder

Best Additional Content: Hilltop’s English Translation Patch (Boku no Natsuyasumi 2: Umi no Dai Bouken)

One of my great regrets in life was not trying to learn Japanese in any serious capacity. Now, I lack the free time and drive to learn, so when a game I’ve wanted to play has a fan translation patch suddenly released, I am overjoyed. But this specific patch for Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 is beyond what a typical fan translation is in that it shames proper official licenced releases. This production is not merely translating the dialogue and being done with it; they did everything they could to preserve the original experience. For example, they took Boku's drawings he makes after every event and not only translated the written text but localised it so that it is seamlessly reincorporated back into the drawing like Boku himself wrote it. Half the time, companies like Crunchyroll and Netflix don’t even translate written text at all, and here we have a small group of unpaid volunteers who make that translation work almost invisible. Hilltop and those who help them are absolute masters of this kind of work. If I were Sony I would be hashing out a deal to make this an official release as soon as possible. Give this team all the money.

Runners Up: Future Redeemed (Xenoblade Chronicles 3), Chapter 4, Season 1 (Fortnite)

Fire Emblem Engage Award for Character Design: Alear (Female) (Fire Emblem Engage)

This category only exists because I want to gush about how much I adore the character designs in Fire Emblem Engage. Every character in this game is so over-designed, so bright and colourful, so gaudy that I just cannot help myself but love it. Almost every character has like four to five things that really did not need to be there or be designed that way but are there anyway. From Ivy’s weird little hat thing that covers half her face, Timerra, who has about 40 coloured balls hanging off her clothes, Rosado’s transgendered coloured hair cat ears and Panette's weird Halloween mouth thing she has going on. However, the absolute peak character design and the inspiration for this category is the Female MC Alear. Just look at her. Her white-gold cuirass that appears to go down into a mini skirt, armoured boots with stockings and a garter belt, and the most *amazing* red and blue coloured hair that is also somehow plot-relevant. Few game developers are brave enough to make a character look like that, let alone the player character and the character front and center on the box art. They are absolutely masters of their craft. Here’s hoping we get more designs like this in the future.

Runners Up: Timerra (Fire Emblem Engage), Erina (Persona 5 Tactica).

Best 'Video Game Related Thing That's Not Actually A Video Game’: Noclip Unearthing Forgotten Game Media

Danny O'Dwyer and the crew over at Noclip are doing the Lord’s work by unearthing and, more importantly, preserving all these video game events and trailers. Watching the 2006 Sony Playstation press conference in a video quality that could have easily been filmed in the last few years is absolutely mind-blowing. But it’s not just higher quality footage but stuff the public has never seen: A Knights of the Old Republic demo from 2001, a Neverwinter Nights demo from 2000, and numerous trailers for cancelled games. Stuff that would have never seen the light of day if Noclip hadn’t stepped in and saved those tapes. The best part is that Noclip has uploaded all those videos, unedited and uncompressed, for free on Archive.org. Most publications would slap their awful watermark logo on these videos, but Noclip is better than that, and the history of video games is now better for it.

Runners Up: Super Mario Bros Movie, Half-Life 25th Anniversary Documentary

The Atlus Lifetime Achievement Award for Most Baffling Decision: Unity Retroactively Charging Devs Per Install (Seriously, What The Fuck Were They Thinking?!)

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word ‘baffling’ means something that is “extremely confusing or difficult to understand”. That is a perfect descriptor of the video game engine maker Unity's decision earlier this year when they announced they would charge developers who use their engine a fee for every install. That’s already a baffling decision, but it’s even more compounded when that fee will be charged for retroactive installs, a choice I can only assume was the result of the C-Suite having a colossal case of massive brain rot. Like, seriously, what the fuck was going through their mind when they thought of that?! That decision has destroyed Unity as those who use it either change engines or abandon projects, leaving only those stuck on the engine to deal with this. They did walk it back, but you cannot really walk something back when you shoot your foot, leg, other leg and lower torso off.

And yes, this category will be renamed next year to the ‘Unity Lifetime Achievement Award for Most Baffling Decision’. Sorry, Atlus.

Runners Up: Konami Releasing Metal Gear Collection On Switch Running Worse Than Original Releases, Rovio Taking Down Angry Birds Classic Because It Was Too Successful

Most Anticipated Game of 2024: Metaphor: ReFantazio

This game had me at “Brought to you by the creators of Persona 3, Persona 4 and Persona 5”. The next game from director Katsura Hashino, character artist Shigenori Soejima, and music composer Shoji Meguro? Hell yes, I am absolutely hyped for this game. Persona 5 was a once-in-a-generation game, so I assumed that Persona 6 would be the next game, and while I am still excited about a Persona game done by an entirely new team, I am even more excited about an all-new experience. Unlike the previous game, Catherine, Metaphor will still be a JRPG at its core, so all the experience and knowledge from making the amazing Persona games will come together and make something truly special. I am dying to play this game, and if the announcement trailer is anything to go by, it won’t be long.

Runners Up: Persona 3 Reload, Spy X Anya: Operation Memories

Game of the Year 2023

#10 - Starfield

For many, including myself, Starfield wasn’t the game everyone hoped for. After waiting so long for Bethesda’s first original game in 25 years, I hoped for something better than ‘It’s good’. With that said, I still enjoyed my time with Starfield. It is still that immersive and detailed Bethesda-style RPG that I love that I cannot get anywhere else. I am hoping that with patches and the promised DLC, Starfield will have a Cyberpunk 2077 moment where, after a while, everything realigns and clicks together.

#9 - Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Future Redeemed DLC

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was my Game of the Year last year, so I was pretty hyped to see the DLC continue that with an all-new story. What I wasn’t expecting was such an excellent blend of the narrative and mechanics of all three Xenoblade games. The series has always had an issue with an over-bloated length, so having what is, in my eyes, a trimmed Xenoblade experience made an already enjoyable game more so. Add to that the series trademark combat systems and excellent music; you got quite the excellent experience in Future Redeemed.

#8 - Boku no Natsuyasumi 2: Umi no Dai Bouken

A fully completed English translation patch for Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 was released this year, so I am considering it a 2023 game. Boku 2 is basically a developer taking the summer vacation experience of a Japanese grade-schooler in the 70s and transporting players to that time. It’s probably the closest thing to an autobiographical game ever released. It invokes that scene of place and time so masterfully that it honestly feels that this was a real place with real people. While most of the credit has to go to Millennium Kitchen, the excellent translation work by Hilltop must be mentioned, for without it, no one outside of Japanese-speaking people would get to experience such a joyful video game.

#7 - Tchia

Tchia is the best example I can think of a developer taking an entire culture and transporting it into a video game. Every little piece of these game feels authentic and genuine, that it is almost scary that it was done with a small team. Everything from the clothes, the way people speak, and the music, to the environment design just radiates New Caledonia. But it’s not just a fantastic environment to walk around, but an excellent adventure and exploring game that’s basically a mini Breath of the Wild. It's easily the most impressive indie game I have played in a while; you all owe it to yourself to play Tchia.

#6 - Persona 5 Tactica

I love the Persona games, but not all the Persona spinoffs have hit, even if you ignore Persona 5 fatigue. But what makes Persona 5 Tactica different is that this is not some other video game with a Persona skin slapped on it as it was with Persona 5 Strikers and Persona Q2, but an entirely original and relatively better-than-expected Tactics game. It is one of those games where you need to have 5 moves ahead already planned out and when you execute those plans, oh how it’s satisfying. It just has the flow to it that makes the game feel so much better than it has any right to be. On top of the series' standard best-in-the-world graphic design and killer soundtrack, they went out with a bang if this is Phantom Thieves swan song.

#5 - Fire Emblem Engage

Fire Emblem Engage is basically a Saturday morning cartoon masquerading as a tactics game. It is so goddamn goofy and delightful that I just cannot help myself. All the characters are loveable dorks, the plot is filled with tropes to the point of absurdity, and the dialogue has that earnest cringe that just somehow works. But Nintendo couldn’t just stop there, so they made one of the best tactical battle systems ever made. Three Houses had an unexpectedly profound effect on me, and while Engage did not reach quite that high, it is still a fantastic tactics game. It also has Yunaka in it, pushing it up like 4 spaces.

#4 - Final Fantasy XVI

Final Fantasy XVI is that big, mainstream, stupidly expensive RPG that has been missing from the industry for the last few decades. It is a huge and narratively complex game that takes dozens of hours to complete and it has been the kind of game I have been yearning for years. That spectacle is the reason I bought a Playstation 5 so it had a lot of live up for and it met those expectations. A twisting narrative that makes you sit at the edge of your seat, fantastic characters and featuring some of the acting I have seen in a game, from multiple characters. It has a lore codex system that completely blows away everything else. Final Fantasy XVI is a game well worth buying a console for.

#3 - Super Mario Bros. Wonder

If the human emotion of joy could be pressed onto a Nintendo Switch cartridge, Super Mario Bros Wonder would pop out. I struggle to write something about this game without resorting to the most obvious thing in the world, but I cannot help it: it is a wonderful game. Everything in this game bleeds that sense of wonder, from the colourful graphics, incredible music, perfect controls, and wonder seed effects. Everything in this game just makes me happy during a period of hardship as we are currently in. It made me have a big stupid smile on my face the entire time I was playing, and I cannot say that about anything else that came out this year.

#2 - Baldur's Gate 3

Who would have seen this coming? Baldur’s Gate III is easily the best fantasy RPG I have ever played and I have played a lot. It is the perfect blend of complex game systems with a triple-A presentation. It has a fantastic complex but versatile combat system; it has an environment design that is both detailed and vast, it has the best overall voice acting this year; it has so many ways to complete objectives that it is mindblowing that it came out as functional as it did. Baldur’s Gate III was my most anticipated game last year, and it well earned that accomplishment. It will be a game I will keep coming back to repeatedly.

#1 - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I have never played a video game like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which is a funny thing to say, considering that it’s basically a glorified Breath of the Wild expansion.

There is this thing in video games that you often see where an increase in scope comes with an increase in rough edges. You see it all the time in open-world games: you get stuck in level geometry, you fall through the environment, NPCs are floating in the air, two trees are clipping into each other. It is something you just have to accept. Tears of the Kingdom is one of the most open video games I have ever played, and it did not do anything like that in the 70 hours I played. Despite being able to go anywhere, stick any random thing to any other random thing, or do any objective in any order, it all just works. Games with half this scope fall apart at the seams, but Nintendo has done the seemingly impossible and made a flawless massive open world with player mechanics that would wreck any other game, all while running on 7-year-old hardware that was underpowered at launch. It honestly made most other developers look like absolute clowns.

They made a vastly improved sequel to a game that, let me remind you, was Breath of the Wild, one of the best video games ever made. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is my Game of the Year for 2023.