What a fantastic year for video games! I put together this list with friends back in 2023 and since then have built out a top 10 every year. Slow to start this trend but I do enjoy it as I finish games at the end of each year paired with GOTY podcasts from GB, Nextlander, etc.
Showing 1-10 of 10 items
TOTK takes everything BOTW did and flips it on it's head. I loved the creativity Nintendo wove through every thread of this game. They clearly saw all of the inventive stuff people were doing in BOTW and just made that the game. Plus they added a story that really grabbed my attention this time and the tears were flowing all over that kingdom when the credits were rolling, just beautiful work.
Remedy never misses in my book and Alan Wake 2 delivered all of the spooky scares I could ever ask for. The meta narrative tying all of the games together has me excited for the future releases, I'm loving the universe Remedy is building.
Swinging through NYC as Spiderman will never not be fun... and this time, I got to do it two times! Friendly Neighborhood Spider-MEN! Except when Venom rolls through... Insomniac continues to show their technical chops, visuals and performance were top tier.
Cyberpunk 2.0+ & Phantom Liberty were a revival for Cyberpunk and CD Projekt Red. This DLC hit as I was traveling to Poland for the first time and I got to visit their studio thanks to my partner's cousin and I will be forever grateful for that experience... Playing this wonderful DLC on my Steam Deck may not have been most ideal on-the-go experience, but it felt like the future to me.
A remake of my favorite Resident Evil game and a damn good one too. Capcom really cooked on this one and all of the changes enhanced the experience. I was grinning like a stupid idiot playing through it again and it felt fresh.
This was my first Armored Core game and man was it a hell of a ride. Launching a barrage of missiles, dashing all over the arena, slashing and smashing everything in sight was just pure bliss. Was the game hard? yes, but I loved every minute of it.
A sequel to one of my favorite souls-likes, I've been following Respawn from the beginning with Titanfall 1 and will continue to play their releases because of games like this. Great story and fun gameplay, just wish the release was a bit more polished.
Starfield, despite the flaws, pulled me into it's orbit for 100+ hours... Did it glitch, break, and crash on me fairly often? Yes, but there was a lot there for me to like that I couldn't stop playing it. Great faction missions, Ship Customization, Zero-G Combat, etc. So many times did Starfield surprise me with moments like a guy's jetpack rocketing him into a ceiling and exploding or yeeting a guy into space from a moon with no gravity.
Dead Island 2 is zombie bashing fun and even after all this time in the oven and many restarts, I think it ended up sticking the landing and exceeding my expectations. Good, dumb, fun.
Atomic Heart scratched that Bioshock itch for me in 2023 with it's utopian city gone mad story and overall weird but intriguing world. The gunplay was fun and I found the enemies to be diverse enough to keep it fresh. It does try a little too hard with the jokes, English VO can be rough in spots, and man is it horny... robot horny.
