Best Games of 2023 · 11:16pm Dec 14th, 2023
Alright folks, it's that time of year again, to look back and rank the best games I played this year.
I played a grand total of 14 games that achieved 1.0 release in 2023, so for once, I had to separate some chaff from the wheat. Same categories as last year. Let's go!
BEST YESTERYEAR GAME
Freedom Planet 2
For the final quarter of 2023, I was kicking myself for not getting to the two Freedom Planet games sooner. Last year’s sequel to the 2014 indie platformer takes everything that was amazing about the original, turns them up to eleven, and sprinkles in plot elements that its main inspiration, the Sonic franchise, frankly doesn’t touch with a thirty foot pole.
The ending of the game sparked a creative wildfire in me that resulted in over 20,000 words of fan fiction being written in under a week. While I remain hopeful for a third entry, I’m concerned that it will take just as long (eight years) to materialize.
BEST SOUNDTRACK
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
I had briefly considered giving Best Soundtrack to Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizons, but came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t exactly be fair to stiff Super Mario Wonder’s astounding music for a few, quite frankly, amazing remixes of Sonic tracks from 2022.
Any game’s tunes that makes my mom turn her head is a contender in my book, and the Piranha Plants On Parade is one of those gaming memories that you wish you could forget about and experience again for the first time.
Then there’s things like timing rapid wall-jumps to the half-beats in the Fluff-Puff Peaks Special Climb, that you never, ever want to experience again.
Long story short, absolutely every note in Super Mario Wonder is a joy to the ears.
BEST ONGOING GAME
Halo Infinite
This is pretty much a shoo-in at this point; Halo Infinite is the only live service game that I am continuing to play, and luckily, things just keep getting better. This year, we got two more seasons, the long awaited Firefight mode, and just in the past couple weeks, the rebuilt networking code is finally being phased in to the playlists.
Here’s to the next year, 343. I hope things just keep getting better.
TOP TEN GAMES OF 2023
10.
Baldur's Gate 3
The turn-based fantasy epic that so many people couldn’t stop raving about all summer and fall finds itself on the very bottom of my top ten this year. Don’t get me wrong, when this game is on, it’s on. But the unflinching adherence to D&D’s 5e rules is both it’s greatest strength and weakness. Even the lowest difficulty is particularly unforgiving.
The turn-based combat is fun and engaging right up until it isn’t, then bad random rolls take it right into overly frustrating tedium, and in my two dozen hours of experience in the first act as of this writing, there was absolutely nothing in between those high and low points. Whether or not you’ll have a fun time is, quite literally, a roll of the dice, and that glaring flaw, combined with how admittedly common save-scumming (reloading a save until you get favorable dice rolls) is in the community, means that Larian Studios’ latest adventure gets no higher on my best of 2023.
9.
Battlebit Remastered
Don’t let the title fool you; this is no remaster in the sense you might be thinking. This is the game on this list with the least amount of playtime, by far, at just over an hour as of this writing.
But I simply have to acknowledge the fact that after the disaster that was Battlefield 2042, just three people can give that community what hundreds of AAA developers have refused to in recent years. No other title this year has demonstrated better that it is ultimately not the graphics, but the gameplay that truly matters at the end of the day.
It only took me an hour to figure that out. If I was a Battlefield developer, I would be absolutely embarrassed.
8.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun
Coming in at the number eight spot is a franchise first for me, and it is entirely due to the old-school FPS flavor that I love so very very much.
This is 100% the Warhammer franchise masquerading as a Doom game, and it does that dance very, very faithfully as you spend nine hours or so turning heretics and mutants into so much pixelated piles of gore. Not much more to say than that.
7.
Hogwarts Legacy
Hoo boy. Where to start with this one?
At number seven, we have, no question, the most controversial title of the year, and also unquestionably, the very best Harry Potter game to date.
At its core, Hogwarts Legacy gives Harry Potter fans the gaming experience they’ve been asking for for years; to be a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You take the role of a fifth-year transferring in as you and your professor strive to solve mysteries surrounding a goblin rebellion.
Getting on my broom and taking to the air gave me a giddiness that I hadn’t experienced since driving Halo’s warthog jeep for the very first time.
Hogwarts Legacy was the best-selling game of the month not once, but twice, and nearly three times as it released for current gen consoles, last gen consoles, and impressively, the Nintendo Switch in February, May, and November of 2023, respectively. That proves not once, not twice, but thrice that when it comes to the best wand-waving, potion-brewing, magic education experience this year, that players really aren’t going to care about the politics and ideals of angry, offended internet activists who tried to do absolutely everything they possibly could to spoil and sour the experience for them.
That’s an important win in my book.
6.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
For sixth place, we have a game that I didn’t get to until November because, well, it took Respawn Entertainment the better part of six months after launch to get the game to a playable state for the majority of PC players.
But now that the performance has been kinda sorta ironed out, what is here is just a lot more of what made the first game so amazing, as you once again take control of Jedi Knight Cal Kestis as he continues the seemingly hopeless struggle in an Imperial-dominated galaxy for a story that is still set between the prequel and original trilogies.
The story very much takes on a second-act tone, and I certainly hope we’re not done with Cal’s story just yet. But when it comes time for the potential third entry in the trilogy, I certainly hope that Respawn takes the time to optimize and stabilize the game for all platforms.
5.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
Yes, as always, I personally allow DLC and expansions onto my top ten lists, and this one especially, because it’s the swan song for the best Cinderella story in gaming since No Man’s Sky.
Along with the hundreds and hundreds of bug fixes that this expansion brought to the entire game, Idris Elba gives an absolutely commanding performance as secret agent Solomon Reed.
In his words, “the game is fixed.”
Well, it only took two years. Just some words of wisdom to CD Projekt Red: the next time your marketing department wants to put out trailers that differ that much from the final product, castrate them.
4.
RoboCop: Rogue City
When developer Nacon put out Terminator Resistance in 2019, the majority of players were simply floored by how absolutely stupid-faithful they were to the source material. So when it was revealed that they were working on RoboCop, yet another beloved 80’s franchise, we got excited.
Long story short, they’ve done it again; throwing out the heaping scrap pile that was the third film, Nacon has once again given us a game that makes you feel like RoboCop. Press the run button? RoboCop doesn’t run; he just walks faster.
Is it a groundbreaking shooter? Of course not. But just like Terminator Resistance, authenticity comes first, and you can tell this was a labor of love.
I bought this one for considerably more than a dollar, and it was worth it. Period.
3.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Kart racing, tennis, soccer, golf, even the Olympics… Mario and company have seemingly done and seen it all. So when it comes to 2D platforming, where the franchise got its start forty years ago, it can be understandably challenging to make it feel fresh.
Somehow, Super Mario Wonder manages to give us ‘fresh’ in droves, with the power-ups, collectibles, and even entire levels doing mind-bending things to keep this game feeling new. Nintendo has also given players of all experience levels something to look forward to, with levels ranging from being a breeze, to almost all the way to ‘The Lost Levels’ level of ludicrously difficult.
To be succinct, simply 'wonderful'.
2.
Dead Space
Just like in some previous years, I’ve found myself splitting hairs for the top two games of the year. Without a doubt, the horror third-person shooter genre came out in full force this year with two very highly-anticipated remakes.
Dead Space removes the somewhat linear feeling of the 2008 game which took you from section to section, and instead gives players the entirety of the USG Ishimura to explore at any time, as long as you can find the clearance codes. But that doesn’t mean that just because you’ve previously cleared out an area, that it’s safe; the reanimated Necromorphs can pop out of anywhere, and the system that determines whether they will or not will absolutely keep you on your toes for the entire experience. Don't get me wrong, some of the scares happen exactly how, where, and when they did fifteen years ago, and I still jump. Yeah. You know the one. That goddamned fucking showerhead.
The success of this remake has given fans hope that they will treat the second game with an equal amount of respect.
But not the third game. They can toss that whole thing out and give us something a hundred times better than that abortion of a story was.
Game of the Year
Resident Evil 4
When the original came out in 2005, to say it made waves both inside and outside the Resident Evil community would be something of an understatement. Some would argue that the switch to over-the-shoulder third person perspective had started to push the franchise into a nine-year slump as Resident Evil 5 and 6 would lean more into action than horror, until Capcom switched things up again with a first-person perspective in 2017 with Resident Evil 7.
But there is no arguing with Resident Evil 4’s success, as it is one of the handful of games that has endured over five generations of gaming hardware, being ported a grand total of thirteen times.
So when they announced that it was the next game to receive the remake-from-the-ground-up treatment, expectations were frankly high.
In my personal opinion, Capcom has met, and in some places, exceeded all of those expectations. They were clearly so confident in their work that they did what so many developers and publishers are terrified of doing; giving players a taste in the form of a demo weeks before release.
Just last week, they also put out a free VR expansion that gives players a much more immersive way to experience this phenomenal game. Sadly, I lack the console and VR headset required, and that barrier to entry is easily over a grand.
Say what you will about remakes taking my top two spots this year, but it just goes to show; if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
Just make it look better.
Did you hear that Hogwarts sales might beat CoD sales this year alone?
Have you not played Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 yet?
Ever since rumors started flying around about a remake of Sonic Adventure, I've had the same opinion about remakes of solid games: if the remake sucks, you still have the original to fall back on. Now granted, SA1 could probably do with a remake, but it's still fine for what it was when it first came out. But it is nice that RE4Make turned out great. Pretty sure I've heard that it's different enough from the original RE4 that both are worth your time.
Yeah, still waiting for FP2 console ports. But if you're looking for a contender for next year's Best Yesteryear Game, have you ever played Celeste? The game will kick your ass (hell, the more optional stuff puts Fluff-Puff Peaks Special Climb to shame), but it's a solid platformer with a heartfelt story that a rather curious backstory with the creator.
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Technically my 2024 Yesteryear award would be for a 2023 game that I just plain didn't have time for before the year was up. Celeste is a 2018 game.
So looking ahead, the most likely candidates are Armored Core VI and Spider-Man 2.
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I do not have a PS5. If and when I pull that trigger, Spider-Man 2 and the VR version of Resident Evil 4 Remake are up first.
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And if you were wondering, the games I played this year that did not make the cut for my Top 10 are:
Diablo IV
Starfield
Forza 8
Power Wash Simulator VR
Power Wash Sim is very fun, but very niche.
The other three absolutely need more time in the oven before they can be considered done and fun.
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Ah. A bit literal, but makes sense. By that metric, Celeste wouldn't qualify even if you counted the release of the Farewell DLC. And yeah, Spider-Man 2 is a good candidate for that.