2023 Good Stuff Sparky Played
Hey! Am I back? Kinda! Probably! Yeah!
Here's a list of good games I played in 2022 I liked and maybe you would too. Check them out, or be responsible and save your money. Either way, you're a winner.
List items
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An easy contender for my GOTY (I never rank those lists based on games that came out solely in a year, but what I played in a year), Rune Factory 4 was very much the mold for future farmin' and monster whackin' games. There's a TON of story here, characters to befriend and possibly romance, lots of areas to explore, monsters to tame for your farm, farming to do, crafts to craft, and food to cook. In fact, there's so much of it I barely touched on the game's third act before I decided for my own sanity I needed to put it down. And surprisingly, apart from the humdrum JRPG story and the randomness of the food and crafting unlocks, most everything here - at least in the Switch release -is great. Combat is more of a focus than something like Stardew, and that's a good thing, as the weapon types feel varied, with more than a few seeing regular action from me as I found or crafted better equipment. The characters fall into a lot of trope territory, but they're heartfelt. The many seasonal activities have more of a mini-game feel to Stardew's repetitive events. World exploration is generally breezy, with a few labyrinthine segments thrown in to irritate me, I think.
All in all, a fantastic game. Don't let the kiddie looks or presentation fool you. There's a depth here that hooked me, and it should any JRPG fan, whether or not you like the farming aspects.
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What a freakin' game. Stuffed to the gills with upgradeables, new classes, and new environments, this is how you do a sequel to a beloved game. Not everything hits for me, especially when it comes to ranged classes, but when I'm vibing with a run, there's no better experience this year.
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Another pleasant surprise of an RPG. Lacrimosa of Dana spins a meat-and-potatoes story - you're shipwrecked by a massive monster on a mysterious island and must find your way off it - with meat-and-potato JRPG characters using a meat-and-potatoes action combat system that sees you dodging and parrying and mashing an attack button and... well, that's about it. But all of that is surprisingly good, given its somewhat vanilla nature. I found myself invested in the game's major mystery, and characters are all generally given enough time to be memorable. It's a bit on the grindy side, particularly if you're trying to keep up with some of the later side quests, and navigation through some dungeons is painful thanks to some multi-tiered levels that don't make a lot of sense at first blush. But overall, if you're looking for a rock-solid RPG that won't exactly become a beloved favorite but will occupy your time for a pleasant few dozen hours, this is definitely for you.
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The Steam launch was rough at first. I had a couple saves get corrupted and I gave it a negative review at launch for that. But I can't stop clickin' those cookies, and thankfully, the Steam version is a lot more solid these days. A fun diversion that I sometimes leave running while I'm writing or doing other work.
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A fun combination of slots and the rogue genre, Luck Be a Landlord scratches a lot of itches for me. It's a simple game on the outside but when your carefully crafted plan of synergetic match options gets torn asunder by a few bad item pulls, it can get surprisingly tense in a fun way. A great little indie gem.
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True Colors tries hard to recapture the best moments of the original Life is Strange (and maybe moreso its prequel Before the Storm). Unfortunately it doesn't quite reach those heights, or any of the studio's previous similar efforts. However, there are enough moments of pure, goofy joy here in its unabashed dorkiness to still be a recommendation, especially for its LARPing episode, one of the highlights of the series as a whole.
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There are some top-tier levels in Hitman 3, including the club and the often-talked-about murder mystery mansion, but it's more surprising how many misfires happen here. It feels a bit like they wanted to vary up a formula that worked very well in order to test the waters for something more action-oriented, and that's not the series's strength, at least in its current iteration. But as a conclusion to the modern Hitman experience, this is solid, if unspectacular. It's a shame there's so much work involved in bringing your data around to the game from the previous ones, as that was a definite highlight of Hitman 2. But hey, if this Internet idiot can manage it, so can you.
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I'd really like to spend more time with Infernax, but I think I might be at my theoretical limit to what I can endure, difficulty wise. That's not a knock against the game, as it's not my eyes or anything physical limiting me from beating it. It's just a hard-as-balls experience designed to be that way. If you like Castlevania or its various -likes, this is an easy recommendation. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and this wears its influences on its sleeve.
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Easily one of the best pick-up-and-play recommendations of this year. Again, it's a game I'm terrible at, but which you should definitely check out if you like endless wave games or rogue-likes. It does enough different to be interesting, and keeps it simple enough that anyone can pick this up and have fun with it. Gotta respect a game with minimal controls that still manages to be hugely fun.
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An interesting rogue-like that, again, I'm not any good at. I think, moreso than the others on this list, that's maybe something that could change, with practice. The runs are punishing but I feel like I'm screwing up more than the game is being cheap. In any case, this is a first-person rogue-like shooter, with various permanent upgrades and a nice selection of weapons and in-level upgrades that vary every run. I think it could use a bit more breadth in all of the above options, especially in its early goings when it needs to grab players, but there's a lot of room here for a great sequel.
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I played this and thought "that was fine." And that's about really the extent of it. This game is fine. The campaign is barely stitched together but in general I liked it, as it set up something potentially interesting (and world-resetting) in a future sequel. The grappling hook is the sole truly great thing about the single-player, but unlike most the world, I guess I never found anything egregiously bad about its open world setting or clearly missing narrative chunks.
That said, this is Halo. The lack of creative focus for this series is astonishing, and nowhere has it been as apparent as in this one. Halo should be better than "fine."
(Note that I played just enough multiplayer to realize I was godawful at it)
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Okay, I really played this one in 2021, but as I didn't get a chance to gush about it enough, I'm tossing it here. With a great style (neonpunk? Neon noir? I'm not sure what you would call it), a killer soundtrack, and run-based platform-shooter gameplay that is both challenging and rewarding, it's well worth a look.
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While a little light on content, there's a spectacular backbone to Gearshifters in its Spy Hunter-meets-upgradeables systems. It's a great time waster, with levels no longer than a couple minutes and a swift unlock system that sees you constantly tinkering with your loadout. A neat game with a lot of future potential.
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While the writing and characters are markedly better than Borderlands 3, there's a price in that it feels like a very truncated experience. Level design is short and straightforward, with little going on to the environments (though the overworld map, with its makeshift land details like a Cheeto blocking your bath, is pretty great). Instead of areas flowing one from the other, instead they feel oddly disjointed, and the random encounter system in the woods of the overworld feels like what it is - a way to pad out the length. The voice acting is superb (except Tiny Tina, who I guess is going to be rammed down our throats until the end of time), and the silliness of its setting leads to some great moments, like Andy Samberg's character announcing he wants to seduce a drawbridge into coming down.
I love the create-a-character system too, as it offers up a lot more flexibility than the previous rigid characters of the series. The classes all seem pretty solid too, though the slim number of options in the skill trees is a bummer.
It has left far less of a sour taste in my mouth than 3 ever did (seriously, fuuuuck that teenage siren character and what they did to Tales from the Borderlands' excellent cast) But I'm now firmly convinced no one left in charge at Gearbox really knows what made those first two games special, and instead is content to drag out bad idea after bad idea because it's meta and they think that's what sells. What this series can be at its best - BL1, 2, Pre-Sequel, and Tales - is slowly drowning in its worst.
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