THE TOP TEN VIDEO GAMES… of MMXXIII represent a brief respite from the mediocrity of the artform, a handful of substantive (or just plain fun experiences) within an ocean of exploitative horseshit. Before we get to the best, the Worst Disappointments of the year alongside the Best Remakes and Remasters might account for some games I’d played but didn’t end up ranking. Otherwise once the Top Ten shows up it only features games I’ve completed at least once and doesn’t include multi-player only or massively online games

Most DISAPPOINTING games of the year: The worst mistake I made in 2023 was basically just buying games which looked cool without checking whether or not they were “games as a service” and the place where this stung most was [#1] Diablo IV where it’d been clear the development of the game was focused on keeping up with current monetization strategies (seasonal content, endless rebalancing, etc.) and not refining the game itself which launched with a host of connectivity issues, terrible gear scaling, and about one third of a main campaign. When [#2] Darkest Dungeon II was in Early Access I’d made sure to watch a few hours of gameplay while failing to understand that it was a roguelite and less of an RPG than the first game, not only that but once I was deep in the game it became clear each boss was a bit of a puzzle which required certain classes, skills etc. which felt awful. I remember firing up [#3] Starfield for the first time and spending a good eight hours slowly realizing that “Fallout 4 in space” didn’t mean an open world, but an empty universe without any reason to exist… just like real life, eh. The first [#4] Lords of the Fallen game wasn’t all that bad, it had a clunky class or two, but this cut-and-paste enemy packed mega-nonsense Souls-like reboot is basically a journey through an AI generated painting, nothing connects right, the lore is inane, and it is such a mess there is no way to fix it. Though I am generally a fan of most Remedy games (especially Control) the level of shenanigans found within [#5] Alan Wake II feels like I’m playing an anime version of Secret Window (2004) and the power metal rock opera made me want to die, especially when I’d die and have to repeat parts of it.

The (best) REMAKES/REMASTERS of the year: It was the year of the “remake”, the half-assed remaster, and not the worst in recent memory since we’d gotten yet another version of [#1] Star Ocean: The Second Story, a 2.5D retelling where they probably should’ve touched up the dialogue but generally did well to revive one of my favorite PSX games, or, the first one I’d ever beaten. Likewise the remake of [#2] Dead Space wasn’t as -scary- as it was when I was a stoned teenager living in the woods back in the day but they’d done such a good job recreating the experience as a modern video game, of course much like Resident Evil 4 you can’t remake-away just how ridiculous those third person horror games were. We found similar quality of life improvements for [#3] Metroid Prime: Remastered, it was simply better looking and easier to control alongside some quest markers to make sure you actually finish the game. [#4] System Shock‘s remake was less impressive, a better looking way to play a virtually unchanged version of a game nobody has thought twice about since Prey (2017) released. [#5] Etrian Odyssey: Origins Collection is perhaps the JRPG + dungeon crawler niche’s best value proposition to date as it collects remastered versions of the first three Nintendo DS games in the series with new music, easier mapping, difficulty settings etc. I’m hoping they will do the same for the three Nintendo 3DS games.

My multi-player game of the year has been the same since 2013: Dota 2.

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Garl dies! — The main reason Sea of Stars wasn’t good, its lack of skills and meaningful character progression, wasn’t enough to gut it of its charm and decent enough storytelling. There are many reasons to hesitate, among them the strange way it has been overrated and of any Kickstarter project should be doubted for its pandering nature, though the developers of The Messenger seemed to get it right the first time with their last game. The “retro-inspired” turn-based RPG with nods to 16-bit classics is not anything new and that is to say there is nothing all that special about this game beyond its artwork, soundtrack, and the charm of its presentation per a long but never too involved experience. I say this while admitting I eventually equipped the modifier charms which made the game easier, and faster to skip through battles since the combat was incredibly repetitive. I could go on about the game, wrote a huge review I’d never published (next Backlog entry, probably) but the main conclusion was that it was flawed ultimately worth my time. Nowhere near as good as Chained Echoes (2022) but good enough to lump in with solid JRPG-inspired nostalgia.

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As it turns out Pizza Tower is kinda Wario Land 5 in spirit, a loose and floppy platformer which is a meme to start but also a lot of fun for its quick and clever level design, goofy animation style, and eternally one-upping itself sense of humor. Those ideas aren’t limited to bizarro-Mario, though, and there is some depth there for 2D platforming fans who want a good balance of fun, style and challenge. Would’ve put Tiny Thor here but it was basically just too difficult for my aging idiot brains.

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Another retro-inspired game but in this case a metroidvania fan making a first person RPG in the style of the King’s Field (alternately, Shadow Tower) series and doing well to both understand what made those original games fun in hindsight while also bringing the controls and combat more up to speed. I’m only familiar with Shadow Tower and Eternal Ring, so, this did a great job of making me want to fill in the gaps with more games of this type. After my first playthrough I’d basically missed huge chunks of the game, tons of obscure secrets, and I had enough options to the point where it would be entirely worth it to re-enter the gigantic maze of it all and go again.

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The Last Faith was the most difficult game that I beat in 2023 and as such I’ve some mixed feelings about the general balance of it in terms of modern 2D metroidvania games. The ramp of player progression versus the bosses is a shade more unfair than the first Blasphemous game without being as broken and unforgiving as Moonscars was at launch. The main reason to soldier on is the graphics and music to start but once you’ve geared up and begun to understand the different classes and use of magic the game makes more sense. That said it can be labyrinthine and cruel as its default and that’ll be rough as fuck for most folks. I wasn’t entirely sure if this would beat out Blasphemous II this year until I’d beaten both games, this one is just kinda jank and unfair enough that it’d felt impenetrable at times.

https://www.thelastfaithgame.com/

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“Crispy critters.” — Looting, shooting, puzzling around this dystopian science fiction first person shooter (“immersive sim”-adjacent) felt great once I’d gotten out into its semi-open world and began to understand how its world worked. The narrative was inherently political in its dialogues examining civilization, technology, control and how power changes hands it just didn’t quite land its mark when it became time to wrap things up and rushed the player to its end. Though I was highly critical of the game during my first playthrough it is a world I’d enjoyed and would return to so that I can experience it again, I only wish there were more options for loadouts/specializations.

https://www.deezer.com/us/album/410442347

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Lies of P is essentially a buttoned-up surrogacy for folks seeking a decent Souls-like game that lives up to the level of design and unforgiving challenge of From Software‘s 2010’s legacy. The controls are especially tight and responsive, the bosses are ridiculously difficult to learn, and every bit of the game feels severely punishing in the way that Elden Ring certainly didn’t as an open world game. Not everything lines up: The set pieces and the era don’t match the story, some things are French when they should be Italian, there is jank around every corner, yet it all comes together for a deadly and skill-testing experience which seems to have checked all of the boxes one might want when considering the appeal of this sub-genre/niche while also improving on the quality of life in some respects. That said, the original state of the game was unbalanced to the point that it’d earned a masochistic reputation before the overall challenge had been tempered. Your experience today will be different than my first beatdown through, as such, rumors of its difficulty will feel entirely exaggerated. I’ve no reason to return to it after 100% completion but it still comes highly recommended.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1938420/Lies_of_P__Soundtrack/

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A world turned upside down makes for a bigger game here on the sequel to my #3 Best of 2019. The art style isn’t as dark, the cut-scenes and animations are more convoluted, there are far more voiceovers and NPCs to the point that there is no mystery left. Blasphemous II is very much a sequel where more is better and a broader audience will be able to engage with this game without feeling terribly punished by it but we’ve lost the epic flamenco OST and blood-splattered mysterioso of the original for the sake of a game which does more and takes longer to reach a point of cohesion. My only complaint of the experience was that it was overall much easier for the sake of giving the player more options and places to explore wherein enemy density is low and currencies + experience comes fast enough. Having three weapons and having to swap between them within certain platforming sequences was rough to start but ultimately this is an easier approach overall and yet it still manage to be a fantastic game. At this point I’d almost rather have Blasphemous 3D than III, but whatever the studio does next I’ll be excited to play it.

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The game they’d promised us back in 2013, fumbled out as a broken mess in 2020, and mostly repaired over the last three years now has *checks notes* paid DLC. Count me in as someone who soldiered through the original game when it had all of its bugs and did so on a Playstation 4 Pro… for a hundred and eleven hours. Needless to say I both loved and hated Cyberpunk 2077 and now they’ve made it into an entirely different game in terms of loot, difficulty, skill trees, and various options. In version 2.1 your character is built differently, clothing no longer matters, and there is a separate passive perk system which updates as you perform skills which slot into one of several categories. Upon my return to Night City I’d quickly gotten back into the groove completing old jobs I’d never finished, having sex with my companion(s), riding the new Metro, and diving into the very long and worthwhile Phantom Liberty content felt like it was fundamentally the same experience but classed-up and finished, honed and way too easy. Since I’d 100%’d the game and rolled back a save to play the DLC content I had enough cash and good enough gear that I styled on every encounter, even when they catch you off guard a decent focus on any two skill trees will provide plenty of options for survival and destruction. If you avoided the game back in 2020 because it was a mess, go back and play it again from the beginning, 100%. This’d been a “dream game” for me which was never quite right and now they’ve made things exactly right in my eyes. I’m not ready to consider it one of my all-time favorite games but I’d be more than happy to spend another ~150 hours with Keanu doing it all over again.

https://www.cyberpunk.net/us/en/phantom-liberty

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Though the story has a distinct stopping point it is hard to say when Baldur’s Gate III should end and what I mean is that I probably could’ve spent a hundred more hours just dicking around and avoiding the conclusion to the final chapter if I wanted to. In terms of story this is more of a “return to Baldur’s Gate” than it is a proper sequel in my eyes (it is set a century after the prior game) as the gameplay has more to do with Divinity: Original Sin 2 than it does Baldur’s Gate II. Long battles, tons of loot, tons of builds, books worth of stuff to read, and a million reasons to re-play an entire section (and do better the second time) mean you could spend an eternity playing this game but… I never have more than four hours of free time in a row and that’d meant I pressed on through the last chapter and a half so that I didn’t drop the game entirely. Life’s logistics aside the first half of the game does such a great job of making each character endearing and intriguing, much in the way Dragon Age: Origins did back in the day, that I found myself already planning a second playthrough halfway through the first. Is it one of the best games of all time? I think your answer will be different depending on how much you loved the Divinity: Original Sin games, for my own taste there weren’t better written characters or scenarios in any other game this year.

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Playing through every Final Fantasy game has been an interest of mine since the fourth game released on the Super Nintendo though I’ve long given up on them being particularly good. As it turns out this was a great game, a too-easy action RPG which is idiosyncratic for the sake of full-featured spectacle, and they’ve given the nitpicker plenty to do if you end up enjoying the world they’ve built. Of course I wouldn’t blame anyone for preferring a game like Resident Evil 4 Remake for its bombast and production values or Baldur’s Gate III for its… everything it does absolutely right but this was the experience that’d stuck with me most after I’d played through so many other disappointing games this year as each’d either gotten narrative or gameplay severely wrong. Even if I could criticize Final Fantasy XVI up and down the street (it is too easy and plays like a television mini-series) there was a certain immersive value to the way it unfolded which the series has been lacking since Final Fantasy XII and I basically just enjoyed the ride through that much.

https://na.store.square-enix-games.com/final-fantasy-xvi-original-soundtrack-ultimate-edition-wave-2

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