There is an Irish Game from John Romero….
Okay I don’t know if that actually counts as Irish, I mean the dude just moved there but moving to a place doesn’t mean you become the thing. Whatever, I was just making a Paul Mason joke, settle down everyone.
Here’s some games I played in 2023, including the one I think is the best game I played this year that also came out this year. I am once again too lazy to really focus up on a numerical ranking, so you get arbitrary categories and at the end I’ll crown a winner which is also probably arbitrary if I’m being honest with myself and you.
The Game I’ve Started Too Many Goddamn Times Award: Persona 3 Portable
I’m going through a list of releases so these will be pretty much chronological in order, which is the only reason we’re starting with the PC releases of Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden. Because I’d had time to fall down an emulation rabbit hole, and because my Vita developed a habit of corrupting its save data, I think I’ve played the beginning of Persona 3 Portable roughly a million times. I have also (not surprising anyone) never finished the fucking thing. It’s good, but you already knew that. I don’t have anything to say apart from “I think the female MC rules” and “I think the P3P soundtrack is better than the other ones except for the new opening theme which doesn’t have shit on Burn my Dread.”
Best Grumpy Scottish Lady Representation
That’s right, it’s Hi-Fi Rush everybody! The game you definitely didn’t forget existed on account of 2023 having way too many video games. I’m not much of a rhythm game guy to be honest, but I do love me some 3rd person character action or whatever this is, and it helps that the soundtrack for the game is excellent. This thing came out of nowhere and ended up being a hell of a good time, and also Korsica is in it! Damn! That’s what we call a masterpiece, everyone!
The ”This Game Doesn’t Really Count but Come On” Award for Excellence
IOI did their “World of Assassination” release and put in Freelancer mode this year and surprising nobody, Hitman is still fucking good. It’s been good since 2016 though, which is why it only gets this little line. I am fucking terrible at Freelancer mode, as it turns out, but I still love it.
Game That I Have Absolutely Played While Stoned Out of My Gourd
Akka Arrh feels like a little miracle. Like, two or three months before it came out I was thinking to myself “you know who makes great games is Jeff Minter,” and then he went and was like “hey you know that game that Atari tested and abandoned because people didn’t like it or whatever? I’ve made that game again but it’s me, Jeff Minter, so you know it is gonna have some weird visuals and sounds happening to you.” The generative soundtrack is kind of wild – I’m not always huge on the way it turns out, but then it will surprise me with a hook or something that really hits. It helps that the game itself is pretty compelling, and my love of high score chasing means that sometimes I’ll try to beat a level without using a bomb. You can do that, and it makes you feel powerful. It’s also great on the Steam Deck, but you have to put in some custom launch options to get it to display properly (this does not actually take much effort at all and it is well worth it).
Best Game With Little Lord Boy
Resident Evil 4’s remake was pretty good, huh? I think it looked great, and plays great, and (mostly) runs great, although my computer fucking hates the rainy village section, like, goddamn. The changes they made to the game’s structure are interesting and for the most part much-needed, although I still maintain the game goes downhill after you kill the titular Little Lord Boy himself. Plus I don’t like the change to his design, give Salazar his dumb hat back! Still, if Capcom wants to keep putting out these remakes, I’ll keep buying them for sure (especially if they actually put work in to remaking Code Veronica or 0).
Best Garbage Cans
Honkai Star Rail has the distinction of not just being full of anime ladies, but it turns out it’s well-written and the game itself is actually really fun. I’ve fallen off of it more or less completely at this point, because the gacha grind always gets tiresome for me eventually, but I’ll always cherish the time I had spending way too much time investigating garbage cans.
Game That Made Me Think About Zelda II for Like the Millionth Time
Tears of the Kingdom, everyone! It fucking rules, it took what Breath of the Wild gave us and expanded on it considerably, plus it told a story I got really invested in! It helps that the mechanics were just incredible to play with, and having that moment where I realized “oh my god there is a whole-ass world going on underground” is hard to beat. That and how fucking scary that place is until you get to a point of knowing how to deal with things down there and then it becomes a place you gear up for like a real goddamn explorer. I love it! This would have been my game of the year any other year and it wouldn’t even be close, but as we are all well aware, 2023 had a lot of good video games in it. Also grown up Purah? Good lord.
Most Systems Shocked
The System Shock remake finally came out and more than anything else it understood the assignment, which was to take System Shock and make it play better but without sacrificing all the stuff that made it, you know, System Shock. I’ve maybe put like an hour into the original System Shock and it was a baffling experience – I didn’t play it as a kid so I had zero idea how fucking weird the control scheme got. Fortunately the remake is way more understandable to my rapidly calcifying brain. Plus hearing SHODAN again is always a delight. Good villain! Spooky game! Great environments! That pixelated look they went with for the graphics really sings, and the lighting is exquisite. A real triumph for Nightdive.
Best Transformation of an Antagonist into a Shitty Loser Gremlin, I Love Her
Holy shit is Street Fighter 6 a triumph. Mechanically solid and there’s plenty to do even if you don’t want to go online and get murdered repeatedly by people who have been playing the game for way longer than you. The RE Engine can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned, the game looks incredible and feels great to play, and Drive Rushing is a fine mechanic that is a masterful tool when I use it and a fucking crutch for cheaters when it is used against me. Again, in another year I would probably have this as my game of the year! It’s a shame that other good games came out and also that I will probably have to wait at least a couple more years before Sakura gets added to the roster. At least Juri’s in the game to give me the failgirl energy I need.
Game I’ll Definitely Get Back to One of These Days I Swear
Baldur’s Gate 3! I don’t have anything much to say about this game – I think it rules, but I also think I don’t have the roughly six hundred hours I will need to play this fucking thing. I’m in Act I somewhere and it’s great but I dunno I’ll get there eventually and be like “yeah this is good.”
Best Game That Isn’t as Good as Quake 1
Quake II got a remake and that was cool. I like Quake II but as I’ve said before, I like the vibes of Quake roughly a billion times more than the Strogg.
Best-Defended Core
Armored Core 6 is, once again, From Software making a good-ass video game with weird mechanics you may or may not know about and I guess you play through it multiple times to get the full story? This is also the game that people will come out of the woodwork to tell you that um actually Armored Core was always good and I’m gonna be real I just don’t have the patience to play old Armored Core games, not when this one plays about a million times better. Plus that boost feels so fucking good, it’s unruly!
Game That Surprised the Hell Out of Me
El Paso Elsewhere was a game I didn’t pick up for ages, but then I heard Xalavier Nelson Jr. on an episode of Remap Radio and I was like “this dude sounds like he knows how to make cool games” and I was right, as it turned out! Max Payne meets Quake and I was absolutely not prepared for the music to be what it is. A real fucking surprise (the good kind) and I need to get back to it at some point.
Best Expansion I Almost Forgot to Mention
The expansion for TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge came out and added a roguelite mode plus some new characters, and that’s everything I wanted out of Shredder’s Revenge. I had a great time with it, and even now I can pick it up and get some good Turtle fights in whenever the mood strikes me. Another big Steam Deck game for me.
Best Game I Would Absolutely Give Game of the Year if Not for Alan Wake 2’s Existence
SIGIL II, a game I have already annoyed my brother by talking about too much in the two days of its existence. I’m not kidding. SIGIL II is the best DOOM has ever been, which is probably because John Romero made it and that guy knows DOOM pretty fucking well. A testament both to his own level design talents and the way that John Carmack’s engine and Adrian Carmack’s spritework is still capable of producing gameplay and moments and visuals that are arresting is testament to just how fucking incredible DOOM was and still is. I finished it last night and I am already like “what if I fire this up again but this time play through with the MIDI soundtrack” and you know what I will 100% probably do that sometime this week.
Alan Wake 2 Presents the Alan Wake 2 Award for Best Alan Wake 2
This is my game of the year. I think I’ve probably thought more about Alan Wake 2 since it came out than I’ve thought about most things. It is the Twin Peaks: The Return to Alan Wake’s Twin Peaks. It is a miracle that we got this game after thirteen years of waiting. It’s got fantastic performances from its actors, it’s got Sam Lake experiencing more joy than anyone has ever experienced, and it frankly scared the shit out of me on more than one occasion. I’m not always huge on the combat and it’s a little buggy in ways that are profoundly annoying from time to time, but who cares? I will forgive games so much for doing compelling shit, and there aren’t many things more compelling than “I snuck a twenty minute surrealist Finnish film into my video game and you are gonna watch the whole thing because you’re just that pulled into it.”
The Dark Place is fucking crazy and I think that rules, plus Bright Falls has never looked so good and all the locations have a sense of place that few games accomplish. Every time I think about it I think about booting it up again, and now that the New Game+ patch is out you better believe I’m going back for another bite of this apple while I wait for the DLC to come out. Seriously one of the best goddamn games I think I’ve ever played, and I haven’t even started gushing about how good the fucking soundtrack is yet, but hey, if you’re gonna get POE to release a new song for the first time in like 23 years you are going to get me thinking “oh yeah this fucking whips.” Game of the year! I said it! It’s the game of the year!
Honorable Mentions: Games that aren’t really in my top games but I put time into them so here they are
Game I Play When I Don’t Feel Like Going for a Run
Fitness Boxing Fist of the North Star! THE COMBO
Souls Like Game I Played for Like Ten Hours Before Going Back to Elden Ring
Wo Long! I wish it were Wo Shorter, amirite?
Game That Made Me Depressed
It’s Redfall, everyone, the nadir of Games As A Service infecting a developer who consistently put out great video games and then shit out this turd of a production. I cannot fully articulate how disappointing it was to boot this thing up and have it feel so goddamn empty. Depressing! I didn’t like it! I haven’t gone back to see how it is now, I know they’ve put a lot of work into it, but frankly I’m depressed enough already without going back to this thing. Goddamn it Arkane, I need you to do better than this! I’m never gonna get a Prey sequel at this rate (not that I will ever get a Prey sequel anyway).
Game That I Should’ve Never Played in Early Access Because The Difficulty Was Fucked
Darkest Dungeon II, I want to love you. I think I probably will go back to you eventually, but I had such a miserable time playing it before they got the difficulty and mechanics tuned properly that I fell off and fell off hard. Ultimately I should’ve waited! I went back to Darkest Dungeon instead, which is still great. I’ll come back for you later, Darkest Dungeon II. I love the character interactions in this one, it’s a shining moment and kept me coming back even though I was having a miserable time.
Game I Played the Beta of and Then Never Thought About Again
Diablo IV! It… sure plays like a Diablo game! Yup! To this game’s credit, it did remind me that I owned a copy of the Diablo II remake Vicarious Visions did and then was like “yeah this is more or less what I’m after” and I never bought Diablo IV.
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