Not to distract from the ongoing poll to decide the community's GOTY for 2023, but we usually also do our own rankings of games we've enjoyed during the previous year, whatever they were, whenever they were released, on whatever platform.
So, what are your top three / five / ten / six-and-a-half games you played in 2023, regardless of their age?
Good idea Rog, especially for people like me who don't get many games on release...
My favourite games played in 23 were, in no particular order:
Deaths Door. Absolutely fell in love with this gem of a game. Enjoyed it so much I platted it twice.
Arcade Paradise. Just for the sheer number of enjoyable arcade games that you get to play in it, and for that moment you realise you don't actually have to do the laundry!
Days Gone. My favourite open world game I played that year. Trying to sneak past a hoard, doing it wrong and the sheer panic of being swarmed by soooo many zombies.
Dredge. Short but sweet fishing adventure. Not really horror but more eerie vibe.
Deathloop. Took some time to get my head around but really enjoyable after the first couple of hours.
Signalis. Proper old school survival horror. Having to sneak or run through corridors back to save room coz you don't have any ammo or healing kits on you.
Headlander. Humorous and enjoyable metroidvania type sci-fi game.
For me, number 1 was the ever expanding "Elder Scrolls Online". I just like spending time in Tamriel, I think!
Number 2 was the epic, silly, over the top "Broforce" (completed now in partnership with my son apart from Threat Level Yam) and Number 3 was '"Diablo 4" which I'm struggling to get into on a long term basis. Perhaps I need to try it again.
Great topic especially as I don't often play current year games, well not these days anyway.
My hits for 2023 were...
Borderlands 2 VR - I was put off buying this as I read reports of problems on PS5 and as this is a digital only release without a demo I didn't want to waste my money so waited for a deep sale. Loved it despite already playing it to death on PS3.
Dead Space rremake - Fantastic remake.
Riders Rupublic - The best extreme sports game since SSX and lots of fun online, even with randoms.
It takes two (baby) - Not much to say.
Tchia - Surprised by how much I enjoyed this.
Grid Legends - A good racing game.
Table of Tales the crooked crown (PSVR) - My first venture in the land of table top strategy games. Good fun watching the animated figurines slash their way to victory.
Kena. As with Tchia I'm quite surprised how good this was. Had a very old PS2/3 platform game feel to it.
Ghost of a tale. A game where you are a mouse, very underrated gem.
My top 5 are fairly generic, but outside of this I have definitely played a few non-2023 gems.
Top 5 2023 = #1 Baldurs, #2 Lies of P, #3 TOTK, #4 Blasphemous 2, #5 Hi-Fi Rush
My non-2023 gems include Inscryption, Blasphemous 1, Hollow Knight, Slay The Spire.
Best niche game = an amazing P&C adventure game "The Last Will of Arthur Flabbington"... very influenced by Monkey Island and Thimbleweed Park, just awesome
@RogerRoger Great idea; I have always felt personal GOTY lists are sometimes more meaningful because in reality, most of us just simply can’t play all the games released in a calendar year. I really tried to make an effort to stay up-to-date and relevant in 2023 so that I could ‘participate in the conversation’ at the end when GOTY discussion occur, but even with my efforts of playing 8 games that were released in 2023 (some of which I only played small portions of), I still felt woefully ignorant of the entire body of work from the gaming industry last year. Part of that is due to 2023 being one of the strongest years for gaming in recent memory (and some have said the strongest ever), but also it’s just not possible for the average Joe like me to forego all life endeavors to keep up with what’s being released on 4 major platforms nowadays. This realization is why I set a goal for 2024 to go back to the previous years GOTY contenders so that I can A) form my own opinion if they were deserving of accolades, and B) curate my backlog such that I’m spending my time efficiently on the ‘best’ games.
So with all that in mind, I think I’ll have a much more interesting discussion for this kind of thread 1 year from now as I go back and play more of the modern classics.
And so, for my own 2023 gaming time, I’d say my number one game was not released this year, but a lot of my top 10 actually are ‘23 releases. Here’s the list (subject to change on any given day depending on my mood):
1) Dark Souls Remastered
This game lived up to its cult-like status, and I didn’t think it would. For a game this old (released in 2011!) it has really held up and, many argue, never been surpassed in the genre it popularized. I still think about this game, even though I completed it last January.
2) Hogwarts Legacy
My GOTY for 2023 releases, this love letter to HP fandom is just fantastic. It falls victim to the usual open-world hangups, but the attention to detail in staying within the HP lore made it a joy from start to finish.
3) Final Fantasy XVI
Although I am still not quite finished with the game (Seems like I have to be getting close coming up on hour 60), I absolutely appreciate it more and more with each passing play session. I reserve the right to pull it off the list if the closing hours fall apart, but somehow I doubt it.
4) Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Another game like HL that I just relished spending dozens of hours just roaming in the well-crafted world. Again, my fandom with the SW franchise does a lot of the heavy lifting to carry through the game’s shortcomings and lack of major innovation, but there’s enough new gameplay elements layered on top of the familiar formula to have kept it engaging for me.
5) Disco Elysium: The Final Cut
Many gamers’ GOTY for 2021, at a Metacritic score of 89 it’s sits in esteemed company with its own cult following. Although I didn’t quite find it an all-time favorite like many do, it’s still fantastic fun as well as extremely visionary and experimental. A few things pulled it down from the highest tier status for me, but I definitely appreciated my time with it.
6) Life is Strange 2
A powerful tale and worthy entry into the series that I just really like, even if I can’t quite explain why. I’m a sucker for coming-of-age stories, I think.
7) The Quarry
A pleasant surprise after its middling reviews. The game was really developed with a lot of care and high production value and the story and characters were actually captivating.
8) Stray
As a person who doesn’t even like cats, I was unprepared for how much I ended up liking this game. The Sci-Fi apocalyptic setting helped to make the whole thing much more fascinating and creative.
9) The Stanley Parable
So glad that I finally was able to play this classic. It’s one of the funniest and still one of the most imaginative games I’ve ever played.
10) Tchia
A solid open-world indie; I absolutely loved the fact that we got a game set in a Pacific Islander culture. Made by a team from New Calendonia, I really hope we continue to see diverse representation of cultures and civilizations that haven’t been seen before in gaming.
I didn't finish many games at all last year or any recent year really, but I do have two highlights that stood out as memorable experiences. I had a great time in 2023 with both Star Trek: Resurgence (courtesy of @RogerRoger) and New Tales from the Borderlands. I clearly have a type when it comes to what I look for in games, because those are not very different at all. Both sci-fi narrative adventures, though the former is definitely more serious compared to the latter's comedic tone. Both are great examples of making you feel stakes and like your choices truly matter, which goes beyond illusion as there's determinant story beats in each. More so than Telltale's fare ever had even though they made that shtick their bread and butter and popularised it. They feel like worthy successors to that formula and a good evolution of it. Despite some technical issues with the former, they provide well-written stories with fun and interesting characters. Both of them I can easily recommend to anyone into this type of game, so do make sure to go back for them if you think that might be you!
Played quite a few games in 2023 but below are the ones I actually completed with my musings:
The Quarry: Not quite up to the standard of Until Dawn but pretty close and a good enjoyable game in its own right.
Dead Space: Having never played the OG I was very excited for this and it didn't disappoint.
Resident Evil 4 Remake: Hands down the best Resident Evil game I've played, having hated the controls in the OG this was a revelation to play, Capcom can't seem to make a bad game at the moment.
Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light: A great mixture of FPS, Survival and Horror, looking forward to playing Exodus next!
The Division 2: Played through this with a good friend, game often shocked me how detailed it is, pretty good fun overall and the build crafting is top notch.
Steel Rising: Enjoyable if easy souls-like with lots of character.
Battlefield Hardline: Hands down my favourite cop game of all time, how I slept on this game for so long is beyond me!
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Edition: Utter masterpiece, played UC4 and the Lost Legacy back to back, great games with Lost Legacy just edging ahead due to its more tightly focused story.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus: Good old fashioned FPS fun.
Grand Turismo 7: My most played game of all time, singlehandedly due to the GT7 gang on a Sunday night.
Atomic Heart: Interesting, weird, quirky and one hell of an good time.
Alan Wake 2: Funny, scary, crazy, so well written, so well acted, a game and yet so much more than game, AL2 is by far the best game I played in 2023, maybe even the past 5 years, what an experience!
Have added a few to my "look for in sales" shortlist, and of course wholeheartedly endorse the mentions of Life is Strange 2, The Stanley Parable and Star Trek: Resurgence.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus: Good old fashioned FPS fun.
Interesting! The more I see others talk about this game, the more I'm convinced that it just hit me at the wrong time. I should really give it a second shot at some point.
Also, as somebody who's been tempted by Battlefield Hardline before, how long is its campaign?
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Oddly enough, despite having created this topic, I ended up playing (mostly) new releases this year, or at least new re-releases of older games. Well, let's rank 'em anyway!
The only two surprises should be Jedi: Survivor ranking so low (didn't even wanna list it, if I'm being honest) and Metal Gear Survive ranking so high (and what a delightful surprise it was). A solitary dishonourable mention goes to Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon, a sizeable DLC expansion which was genuinely unplayable at launch (it's since been patched, but still, yeesh).
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RogerRoger@nitram2k11
I didn't think much of Wolfenstein NC despite really enjoying the previous last gen entries. I did finish it but that is more me being stubborn than a reflection of the game.
As for BF hardline, I've had that in my backlog since I don't know when, never even fired it up so perhaps I should as I enjoyed the Bad Company campaigns although all the BF campaigns since then that I have played have been exceptionally poor.
@RogerRoger Great list and I do remember the surprising positive response when you played MG Survive, as well as the disappointment with the other ‘survival’ based title, of the Jedi variety.
Regarding Jedi Survivor, I remember your insightful review but I can’t recall if I ever touched base with you after I had finally completed the game. I think we swapped thoughts back and forth a couple times during my playthrough, but it took me a long time to complete the game (which is par for the course nowadays) and so I may not have circled back with final impressions. Although I mentioned them briefly above, I came away pretty happy with the game overall. The story had a few gut-punching moments and it was somewhat inconsistent, but it worked for me. I also never had the reportedly catastrophic performance problems and had only a few times when the frame rate got bad enough to impair gameplay for a few seconds. I might have had one or two crashes but I can’t recall if that’s just me being gaslit into a fabricated memory by everyone else’s dismal reports. Gameplay remained the games strongest component, along with the art design and dazzling locales. I ended up gravitating to just reliance on the dual blade stance for defense and quick strikes, coupled with the two-handed (I forget now what it’s called, but like the claymore style / Kylo blade. Edit: Crossguard…? I’m too lazy to look it up 😅) for slower but heavier hitting. I never quite got the hang of the blaster stance, which is a shame, but by the time it came along my muscle memory couldn’t quite make it effective in the tougher fights.
If they have a third entry to the series starring Cal, do you think you’ll be excited to play it or did Survivor sour the series enough that it’s lost all appeal?
Just curious of your thoughts, as always. Most of the time they’re in sync with my own, but it’s fine when we’re not too. 😄 On that subject, I’m looking forward to swinging through Spidey 2 as it’s propped at the top position on your list. So you must have really liked it! By all accounts it’s a fine-tuned evolution of the first two games and has a really strong narrative to boot. So I’m glad at least one of the two AAA sequels to beloved licensed games worked out for you this year. 😄
@Th3solution Replying in a separate post, as I'm not sure if the other user has played Jedi: Survivor and didn't wanna risk sending spoilers to their inbox.
Thanks! And I'm real pleased that you enjoyed Jedi: Survivor as much as you (eventually) did, and that its story worked for you. Honestly yeah, its technical performance was never as bad as the wider internet would have you believe. Its cutscenes were the worst offenders, but it's still receiving patches (in fact, it got one the other day, just after you'd tagged me) and I do intend to attempt a NG+ run at some point very soon, so I'm sure I'll find it much improved regardless. And same; whilst I mostly stuck with my preferred stances all the way through, and was pleasantly surprised to find that there were no roadblocks requiring me to change my choices, I did experiment with the Blaster stance and found it to be a little too unwieldy (and my reaction speed isn't fast enough to take full advantage of its cool-lookin' shoot-from-the-hip insta-kill move, either). I think you're right, I think "the Kylo Ren one" is called Crossguard, but I was all about the traditional Single paired with the Ahsoka-esque Dual Wield. I'll try and mix things up a bit better in NG+ (he says, knowing full well he won't).
As for me personally, though, the one-word answer to your question is "story". I'm far more interested in being told a great story than I am in playing a game; it just so happens that interactive gameplay can make a story more engaging and immersive than a movie or book, so here I am!
Which is why Spidey takes my top spot, because its story hit every single beat I wanted it to (and then surprised me by hitting a few I'd dreamed of, but didn't expect). It was bold, compelling, emotional, and left my soul well-fed. On the flip of that, Jedi: Survivor was a huge disappointment. Cal's journey became bland, predictable, and failed to capitalise on any of the potential left for him by Jedi: Fallen Order. I felt totally disconnected from him as a protagonist, which was an ugly shock, given how much empathy I felt for him before. He's different from Spidey in that he's not an adaptation of an established character and, as such, several of his "original" story moments should've been left up to player choice.
I also felt like they fumbled the ball with Bode, and whenever he and his daughter started singing that freakin' lullaby I wanted to fill my ears with wet cement (not the actors' fault; I just hate singing, particularly weak whisper-singing). The only sequence I truly adored was getting to play as Cere, who's always been one of my favourite characters, so it was even more of a kick in the pants when they immediately killed her in a cutscene after a ludicrously punishing boss battle (which was rendered laughably pointless by the fact that you had to restart it if Cere died) so, um... yay?
Put simply, if I placed 100% importance on gameplay, then Metal Gear Survive would knock Spidey's gold down to silver, and Jedi: Survivor would get bronze. It's a revelatory testament to how much I enjoyed Metal Gear Survive that it ranked so highly for me, given that its story is... well, I liked it just fine, but it wasn't exactly award-winning. It was enough; nothing more, nothing less.
Having said that, I'll probably get Jedi: Nemesis (or whatever they end up calling it) simply because I've come this far, and it'd be rude not to see the trilogy through. I won't rush towards it, though.
Sorry for being so negative about something you enjoyed so much! Thanks again, and really hope you enjoy Spidey as and when. Looking forward to seeing what you make of it!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Of the games I remember playing this year (didn't really keep track)
6. Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom
5. Advance Wars (first part of the Re-Boot Camp remake collection on Switch)
4. Resident Evil 2 (Claire route)
3. Dark Souls
2. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
1. Fire Emblem Engage
I spent a lot of time online airing grievances about TotK, but even given that, the time I spent with it was still incredible. Especially after remembering the older games more sharply. I went back and played about half of The Wind Waker and it felt almost unplayable now that I'm used to the new formula lol. People complain about the new games not having enough content in the open world, but the environments of BotW and especially TotK are packed with things to do and see compared to the barren sea of The Wind Waker or Twilight Princess' barren Hyrule Field. Still need to go back and finish it, though, as I hear the ending is pretty good.
People can dunk on Fire Emblem Engage all they like for the more... whimsical nature of its characters and story, but aside from the frustratingly hard skirmish maps, I was pretty enraptured by it from beginning to end. Definitely a return to form for the Awakening devs after the garbage fire that was Fates.
@RogerRoger Oh yes, the sequence when you get to play as Cere was really awesome. I think the Bode storyline was mixed, because I did find it a nice twist when he ended up as the villain. But I can see how it didn’t quite land in the end.
I think the third entry will have a lot of pressure on it to do something different. Whether that be to add some player choice to the narrative, or get creative with the gameplay loop - I just think if they roll out the same thing with bigger maps then it will be a disappointment. Unless the story can be developed into something transcendent
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
I barely played anything last year, much less games that actually released in 2023. And most of what I did was actually replay of some kind. In any case, the best games I played last year are as follows:
It Takes Two
Fabulous and full of joy. I loved how many different ideas were in this, and yet it all comes together. Really nice game, with the co-op gameplay and theme of working together nicely mirroring the story.
Control
Upon finishing Alan Wake Remastered, I was ready to move straight on to its sequel, but thought it would be best to play this first. I'm glad I did, as it's rather marvellous. Weird and unsettling, I guess I'd best describe it as a blend of David Lynch and Persona 5 without the anime trappings. The mysterious setting of The Oldest House is dominated by its brutalist architecture and the garbled stream of consciousness chant of the floating bodies that litter the concrete halls and chambers of the building. It took a little while to get into rhythm of the arcade-tinged combat. By the end I found it challenging but fair.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
This was actually a resumption of a roughly 30% complete playthrough I started in 2018, but had to suspend as it was a friend's copy and they needed it back. I finally got round to finishing it in anticipation of Tears of the Kingdom (which of course remains in my backlog, never change Sam). The game is tremendous. 'nuff said.
Fire Emblem Awakening
The first tactical RPG I've completed, so a little out of my comfort zone in terms of battle tactics and speed. I loved my time with it and look forward to playing other games in the series. The story is quite simple, but I found the characters very endearing.
Metroid Prime Remastered
One of my all-time favourite games, only very pretty. The same flaws are still there (mainly combat), but so are all the fabulous highs.
God of War Ragnarök
Found Boy irritating. Loved Kratos' new friendship and exploring all the nooks and crannies of the world.
Mirror's Edge
One of my Xbox 360 replays in the first half of the year. Already a brilliant game, the bells and whistles afforded by the Xbox Series X, particularly the 60fps gameplay, make its aesthetics and gameplay gleam and glisten all the more. There's nothing else quite like it.
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Topic: Your General (incl. Non-New) GOTYs 2023
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