Games I Touched in 2023
Fuck it, let's make more content on a website that just fired two of its most beloved staff because line go down.
List items
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(Started in 2022, Finished 2023)
Full thoughts available on a Deep Listens podcast on the subject. I enjoyed it! I played through on Easy, and think most people could hack it on Normal. It combines numetal, Frank Sinatra, Nomura fashion, and the plot of FFI with Souls-adjacent combat and somehow works.
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(Started in 2022, Finished 2023)
My spouse played through a chunk of this while my parents visited in late 2022, and I merely got the save file over the finish line. Pulls off a nifty story telling trick with zero text. Shame it tries to correct your perfectly reasonable sorting decisions before it lets you see more of that story, every chapter.
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(Abandoned)
So this is a harmless Zelda clone thing. Not a bad thing at all. My issue was, my cloud save broke the game. Maybe the instant resume function ate it? My game wound up in a state, around the halfway mark, where my inventory was empty and I couldn't progress past a basic gate to the next story beat. It would take an hour or so to get to that point again, but honestly That's Okay I'm Good.
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(Started in 2020, Finished 2023)
Yeah, those dates aren't a typo. Honestly could write 2009 on there if I felt so inclined, but that was on a PS2 in my first college house arrangement.
FFXII is one of the noblest failures in all of gaming. It's incredible that they got this thing running on a PS2. You also can't fault them for making a comfortable sequel, as this thing tries something quite innovative. Those innovations just didn't land for a lot of people. I think it's telling that mechanics from the XIII games survived into 7R and XV, while damn near every idea in this game is left in the dust. Still worth a gander. It tells a pretty good story, just spread entirely too thin over a gameplay loop that is solved around the time you can cast Bubble.
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(Completed in 2023)
I had to work through my adventure game aversion to get this one down but I managed it. There is a consistent tone and sense of place throughout that makes this compelling. You could handwave a lot of it as typical AnCap shit but the game is not afraid to get weird along the way. Or funny, for that matter. The Garretts in the mall are very, very good.
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(Started in 2023)
This was a gift for my spouse, who was "intrigued" by Tall Goth Lady. I didn't have the heart to tell her that Tall Goth Lady goes away forever after the first quarter of the game. Lo and behold her interest has fallen off precipitously since that going away!
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(Started in 1999 I think?)
I am playing the Xbox Serie release of this game. I managed to get as far as Control when I was a young person but no farther. I got as far as Bunker 2 on Secret Agent lately but that seems to be the point where I stop having fun, so I may just slap this on Agent and roll credits. I don't need them cheats.
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Started in 2005, Finished in 2023)
I remember borrowing this game from a peer in high school and not getting it At All. Just, water off a duck. Ten years after that, I played through all of MGS1 and liked it. Four years after that I played through all of MGS2 in a week and LOVED it. Four years after that, I finally rolled credits on MGS3. It's good!
There's perhaps a bit too much menu fiddle fuckery when you factor in the inventory system, the medical system, and the camo system. There's even a horrific moment where they set you up with a second person to manage and escort, with their own needs. That the game doesn't sink under these constraints is a miracle. There's a case to be made that it actually soars. The boss fights are the best in the series to that point, and the game was top of class in visuals and sound in its day. I think I'm still a 2 guy though.
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(Started in 2019)
This was a Jul gift from my spouse (then partner) in its launch year. I summarily touched it for an hour or so, then somebody jiggled their keys and I forgot about it. Incidentally I don't ask for games for gifts anymore.
Restarting this game, I find its pace to be... stately. Like a ship of the line, with its wide turning radius. Thing slow. I started as the cleric lady and her opening chapter is also basic anime cliche shit that is not doing much for me. Combat system seems neat, a spin on a press turn system. Getting to the next party member also took less time than I feared it would, so maybe there's space for this game. HowLongToBeat sure scares me though!
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(Started in 2023)
Some would say this is the best Crash Bandicoot game. I would say, in a series where many of the levels involve you running into the camera away from angry polygon cartoon things, there are no "bests". Let's see how I feel.
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(Abandoned in 2023)
What a thoroughly unpleasant brown and gray game. This studio got a lucky break with Horizon. It's hard to believe that game came from these folks. Let's ignore the obvious E3 trailer shit. The game looks pretty damn good, no lie, but that is broken up by several seconds of hard lock-adjacent loads every few minutes. The guns feel horrible. I feel like I am emptying entire magazines into enemies to down them, and their overwrought animations only slow an already sluggish feeling game down further. I am not a raving MW2, not even in its day, but that game demolishes the fuck out of KZ2.
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(Abandoned in 2023)
I'll grand you this was only after an hour or so of playing the physical copy I had (next to KZ2, both of which I picked up for Cheap at some point), but naw dude this ain't it either. I will concede this game feels notably better to simply move and shoot things in, and the added "white" coloring to the browngray tones of KZ2 help it along as well. But I still hate the time to kill on weapons, and think the movement still feels too sluggish. Neither of these games are also aided by their multiplayer modes being long dead. I understand those were fun. Cool. No good to me now in 2023. Both are on the trade pile.
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(Started in 2021)
This was a Jul gift from my spouse as well, the last one I shall ever hint toward wanting as my track record of playing these is so far quite bad. However, in playing Octopath Traveler for a few hours I realized just how much more more interesting SMTV felt so I swapped in that cart and I'm off to the races. I'm collecting them demons. I'm stacking my Agility! That seems like it is not the Pro Strat for V, so maybe I'll roll onto STR stacking.
This game also looks like it's running under an actual coating of petroleum jelly. Mad respect to the Switch for being Also The PlayStation 2.
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(Started in 2023)
I guess this will be the year I play The Bad Metroid Prime. I got that Trilogy reissue that was a semi-exclusive to GameStop circa 2014, so I'm playing this on a Wii. Not the same Wii where I played Metroid Prime Prime, mind, but a Wii all the same. So far readjusting to the controls has been a bit of a lift, but damn it if the Metroid loop of it all isn't slowly pulling me into this thing.
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(Started in 2023)
I got kinda stuck this year and started flirting with sports games. Specifically old ones on the original Xbox. A few YouTube folks suggested that Madden 08 was the last truly great entry in the series. Turns out it's a pretty good football thing if you like football. I started a career as a punter, got drafted to the Jets, and spent my time working on my coffin corner. I recreated all nine teams of the CFL in the game with the preset logos and outfits. Just fucking around.
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(Started and finished in 2023)
I can basically see what people were saying about this game after finishing it. I think it's a fine companion piece to Norco, fucking around in the broad "interactive fiction" category.
This game made me think about IF things and adventure things in general. I like this mode of game more than a straight point and click adventure game, though they are clearly cousins. And while your actions are dictated by random throws of dice, I for some reason find dice infinitely more tolerable than if this were done by draws from a digital deck of cards. Why do card based games drive me away? No idea.
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(Started [as in put in system and played first level] years ago, finished 2023 [in a day])
Okay, so as a Space Harrier deviant I have nothing to complain about here. They took the arcade gameplay I love, refined it from the previous Panzer Dragoon outing, gave it widescreen support, and added some replayability. An all time classic, no doubt.
However, it is hard to hold this game up after beating it in a single sitting and say "This was worth $50 and should have dissuaded PlayStation fans from buying another Sony product in the 1990s." Yes you can run through the game again to unlock the full evolution of your dragon, or see how far you can make it in Stage Zero, or try for 100% shootdown rates across every stage. But that stretches the playtime of this thing generously into the five hour range. The thrills were there, the value proposition for most people simply was not.
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