Games of the Year 2023

Johnny Legacy's Deep Thoughts

Games of the Year 2023 (And Other Assorted Gamey Thoughts)

As 2023 comes to a close, and this year being a rare case that I bought a lot of games fresh on the market instead of waiting a while, I thought why not put together my own Games of the Year list. Now keep in mind, this is only my list of the games I've played. There's a lot of stuff out there I don't play and some genres (FPS) that I avoid entirely. I only have a PS5 and PC, no XBox, no Nintendo consoles newer than the GameCube. If you don't see a highly rated game on here, it's likely because I haven't played it.

Speaking of consoles, an interesting thing that's happened to me since the PS5 has come out is how my gameplay habits have changed. 10-15 years ago I played way more PC games than anything else. That slowly started to even out more during the PS3 and PS4 eras, and now I'm at the point I play way more on console than PC. Some games, like Mass Effect with the Legendary Edition remaster, I've actually switched from PC to console. That being said, you'll find this list to be very PS5 heavy because of that.

Before we get to the list proper, a few other things I'd like to mention.

 

Honorable Mention: Best Remaster- Final Fantasy 1-6 Pixel Remaster

 

 

Technically this was not released this year as it was released on PC and mobile back in 2021, but it did finally go out on consoles where it belongs this year so I'm counting it for this year. Final Fantasy is my favorite game series of all time, but of these original NES and SNES games I had only ever played all of 4 and 6 before so this was finally my best chance to go back and play the series' early years. Now, are these new ports absolutely pixel *perfect*? No. The NES games in particular might have had their graphics modernized a little too much, but it's still a very good representation of the original games, and as you get into the SNES games they get closer and closer to the originals, especially in keeping a lot of that Mode 7 goodness. Fortunately the sound effects were kept the same and not modernized any. And the scores. Oh, the scores. Not only is FF my favorite game series, but the music from FF games isn't just the best video game music, it's some of the best film/TV/video game as a whole music ever. FF music will be coming up again later, but for these games what we got was an absolute gift- all 6 scores completely re-recorded with live orchestra, with the option to play the game with the original chiptune music as well. I'm not ashamed to say I dropped a fair amount of money to get all 6 remastered soundtracks and they were worth every penny.

Gameplay wise, these games are superb. They're all mostly true to the originals but have some small quality of life improvements, especially the early games. In FF 1 and 2 your characters will no longer attack an empty space like an idiot if an enemy is defeated before their turn to go. All the games support modern controllers with stick-supported character movement, have an auto-battle option to speed things up, and have new, more streamlined menus to make swapping equipment and spells easier and have a universal look across all six games. The new boosts (or cheats if you prefer) are also a big help for those who want them, particularly for 2's unique and eternally controversial XP system.

While I'm at it and on a roll I might as well give a quick review for each game:

1- The original is simple with a very basic story and characters, but sets the stage for the series very nicely. The big twist with Garland at the end is an early indication of the kind of huge, epic plots the series will become known for.

2- The first attempt at a larger, more intricate story with deeper characters and it works pretty well. Shame the experiment with the "you only get XP if you use it" system didn't work nearly as well. Biggest FF battle system flop until the disaster that was FF 8. But hey, it introduces chocobos to the series and that's not nothing.

3- The story and characters are more FF 1 style back to basics, with the four main characters always speaking like one person. The big note here is the introduction of the Job system, which will come back in a big way for 5. This game is also the first one to feature multiple worlds to explore, which will be a feature in all the SNES games. The score takes a major leap up in this game too.

4- The first FF game on the Super Famicom/SNES takes full advantage of the new console, with a much bigger story full of rich characters. Gameplay wise it's still getting there a bit. Despite the large cast you never have a choice in your party members, you're always stuck with what the game/plot dictates you have, sometimes to your detriment (how is Fusoya so frakking useless when he looks like he should be so strong, and late in the game when you need heavy hitters to boot). This is also the game that was famously released in two modes: Easy Mode, which was the basis for the original SNES localization, and Hard Mode, which was the standard in Japan. This remaster version seems to strike a bit more of a balance but it mostly plays like Hard Mode.

5- The pinnacle of the classic Job system. You only have the core four characters in your party the whole game (well, just about, *spoilers*), but you can change your characters' jobs and abilities at will with a huge range of options to suit a variety of play styles. The story isn't quite on the level of the other two SNES games but is still pretty good. Exdeath is a fairly weak villain in the series' history as he never has much motivation other than "I'm evil". At this point in the series you already expect something more. At least Kefka was just plain fucking nuts. Speaking of...

6- Final Fantay's first true masterpiece. An incredible story with a mid-game twist that was hugely shocking at the time, especially for something on a Nintendo console. A plethora of deep, interesting and well rounded characters, and for most of the game the ability to choose your own team for the first time in an FF game (my personal A team is Terra, Edgar, Sabin and Celes). Perfectly balanced gameplay. Possibly Uematsu's best score, and all in full orchestral glory for the remaster. The frakking opera scene. Almost every note of this game is pitch perfect.

Honorable Mention: The Indie Wishlist Backlog

Buying so many brand new AAA games this year meant that I didn't dip much into those smaller, more unique indie experiences that I love so much. For an idea of my indie tastes you can take a look at this article I wrote way back in the spring of 2020, the only other non-wrestling article I've posted on here so far. It's a bit out of date now but still mostly right. If I had done one of these articles last year, The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe and Return to Monkey Island would absolutely have been on the list. Here's a quick rundown in no particular order of games that came out this year that have been sitting in my wishlists that I might have gotten to this year if there hadn't been so many big releases I wanted, and I hope to get to soon:

Firmament- The second stand alone game (after 2016's Obduction) to come from Cyan, the developers of the legendary Myst franchise, one of my favorite series of games from way back even if I nearly always needed help with the puzzles. I'm man enough to admit that.

Rogue Legacy 2- I loved the original game even though it was hard as hell so getting the sequel at some point is a no-brainer. Like Mass Effect, the first Rogue Legacy is another one that made the transition from PC to console for me.

WrestleQuest- Mixing old school wrestling with a SNES style JRPG? You know I'm going to check that out.

Chained Echoes- A more traditional style old school JRPG. I've played other attempts like Cosmic Star Heroine and I Am Setsuna and both left me a bit wanting, but this looks worth a shot.

The Entropy Centre- Looks like another Portal clone, but a potentially interesting one. Plus it's not like we're getting a new Portal anytime soon.

The Talos Principle 2- I played but never finished the original, but mostly enjoyed its mix of puzzles and philosophy, and the trailers for the new one look pretty damn incredible.

Do Not Feed The Monkeys 2099- Why not? This would definitely be on the "unique" part of the indie list.

One More Thing Before the List: Most Anticipated for 2024

 

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth- The unquestioned #1. Apart from some small quibbles about the combat system and not being able to play full classic FF style combat in it like the original FF7, FF7 Remake was pretty much perfect. I have very high hopes for the next chapter.

Suicide Squad- This is pretty much only here because it's developed by Rocksteady, the same company that did another of my favorite game series of all time, the Batman: Arkham main trilogy (Origins was outsourced). I'm a little nervous about how this will actually turn out, but hopefully they'll pull it out. Having Kevin Conroy's last performance as Batman is certainly a draw.

Old Skies- The next outing from point and click adventure masters Wadjet Eye Games, I'm hoping this gets done in time to make it out next year but that's a coin flip at best.

Riven Remastered- When I upgraded my PC for the first time in almost a decade at the start of the year, one of the first things I played was the newest remaster of the original Myst. It was glorious. Earlier this year Cyan announced that it was starting work on a brand new, ground up remaster of Myst's sequel, Riven. The original still looks pretty good even today, and being able to finally freeroam through that beautiful world instead of clicking mostly static images has long been a gaming dream of mine.

New Mass Effect- I'm thinking it's going to be 2025 at the earliest for this, but it's Mass Effect, it goes on the list.

This article's taken on a life of it's own and I haven't even gotten to what I originally intended it to be about. OK, here we go. My personal, only from what I played top 5 games of 2023. Plus one. And spoiler free for anyone that hasn't played them yet.

Honorable Mention/Incomplete: Starfield

 

I've never been the biggest Bethesda fan. I've tried a whole bunch of their games, but the only one that stuck for any time was Skyrim, and even that was temporary. I poured nearly 100 hours into it the first year and a half to two years I had it, then that was it. Stopped playing it cold and haven't even thought of going back to it for years. I'm the type of person that loves to replay my favorites over and over again, so that's really saying something. I never turned against the game or started hating it, I just had my fill and hit a point that I was done with it. For good. But when Bethesda first announced a full sci-fi space opera in their style, I was instantly interested. Thanks to the generosity of a friend I got a PC copy the week it came out way earlier than I intended to buy it. I've only played the intro, the first space battle and part of the first mission so I'm not that far in. I'm interested, and I know that this is the type of game that the more you put into it the more you get out of it, but other things keep getting in the way. I'm hoping to spend a lot more time with this sometime later next year.

5. Star Trek: Resurgence

 

Star Trek and point and click adventure games have always seemed like an obvious marriage. Back in the early-mid '90s for the franchise's 25th anniversary Interplay developed a pair of Star Trek point and click games for PC, featuring fantastic graphics for the time and the entire original cast voicing their roles. A 25th anniversary game was also produced for the NES that featured a section with point and click inspired gameplay. Sadly, the Interplay PC games were made in very much a Sierra style rather than Lucasarts, featuring potential dead ends and annoying character deaths around every corner if you put so much as a pixel out of line. After that Trek games would focus more on other genres, until this year and the release of Resurgence, initially for PC, but it was later ported to consoles. My copy is on PC.

Developed by new studio Dramatic Labs, Resurgence takes a lot of cues from more recent Telltale releases, featuring realistic graphics that could be straight from a Rick Berman era Trek TV show, and favoring player story choice through dialogue choices rather than classic point and click inventory puzzles. The game focuses on two major characters: Commander Jara Rydek, newly appointed first officer of the USS Resolute, which is just getting out of a long stint in drydock following an, er, incident; and lower decker Petty Officer Carter Diaz, an engineering grunt. Having characters in two such totally different positions allows you to get very different perspectives on everything that's going on.

The characters and story are absolutely what carries this game. Nearly everyone on the Resolute's crew is interesting with fleshed out characters that develop over the course of the game, the alien races featured have an interesting backstory and the individual characters are mostly well done, and the legacy cameos work just fine. Pulling a significant part of the story out of one of the, shall we say, less fondly remembered episodes of The Next Generation is a bold move, but a very good one as they picked out an aspect that was rich for further exploration. The dialogue choice system works extremely well. The large beats of the story are going to be pretty much the same no matter what you choose, but the choices you make let you mold the fine details into whatever shape you want it to be in. There's parts late in the game when you're controlling Rydek on the bridge, in command, having to make snap decisions in a combat situation and it really feels like you're there in the middle of it all. In a lot of ways it's the captain simulator the early aughts PC game Star Trek: Bridge Commander tried to be and only moderately succeeded at. Being able to track your choices and their affect on both story and character through the game's website and compare them to other players is also a great feature.

Where the game falls a bit short is when they try to introduce other gameplay elements. Personally, I had no issue with the shuttle piloting sequences but know other people did. The worst part, for me, was the stealth. It's always the bloody stealth. Well, almost always. Particularly one spot late in the game where you're not only in stealth trying to avoid enemies, but also trying to figure out where the hell to go in the first place. Some of the combat parts miss the mark as well, no pun intended. In general, anytime the game strays outside its core gameplay style things can get a little wonky. That being said, this is definitely a contender for the best Star Trek game ever made. At points you feel like you're controlling a character within a TV episode, making the same kinds of decisions they make, and at those moments this game is at its absolute best.

4. Theatrythm Final Bar Line

Here we are back to my love of Final Fantasy music. As the name implies this is the final game in a series dedicated to the gloriousness that is Final Fantasy music, but the first one to be on a console rather than Nintendo DS so it's the first one I've had a chance to play. The gameplay is straightforward enough. You have either single press, double press, stick flick or press and hold triggers that flow along to the music, and have lots of difficulty settings to choose from. It looks easy, but is also deceptively tricky to learn. I had a lot of trouble at first figuring out the trick on the sliding triggers on the field levels. Once you get it down it's pretty easy to start Perfect Chaining stuff on Standard difficulty. It took me a while, but I've even got a handful of All Criticals on my record. 

 

As you're playing a combat party of your choice from across the FF spectrum battles regular monsters and bosses, also taken from across the series, with how well they do depending on how well you play. Miss too many triggers and it's a dead party and game over. It's a chance to build a sort of dream team of favorite FF characters to go into battle. Each character has a specialty, like physical combat, magic, healing, summons, or item collection. My A team, based on both personal favorites and my always wanting to have a balanced team in any FF game, is Cloud (7), Terra (6), Zidane (9) and Yuna (10). My B team is Lightning (13), Tidus (10), Vivi (9) and Dagger (9), and if I get in a spot where I need a healer for a quest goal it's Aerith (7).

One of the game's biggest strengths is the sheer variety of music available. There's a good amount of music from every mainline numbered FF game and their sequels, which alone would have been enough to make the game. On top of that there's selections from almost every spinoff game in the franchise, including arrangements from previous Theatrythm games, and even dedicated sections for both FF7 Remake and the various older FF7 spinoff games and movies. Even more music from non-FF Square games is available as DLC. I made sure to get the Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross stuff. It's an incredible archive. You can even listen to the music on its own without playing the game at all.

The gameplay is way more than just playing cues randomly, though. Each FF main game and spinoff has its own quests available with goals of varying difficulty for each piece from within the game. After you clear every cue in the quests you open up the Endless World option, letting you play as long as you can attempting to complete quests before your life runs out. There's collectable cards to get and feats to achieve. You can even collect airships from across the series and outfits for your mandatory moogle companion. Being an FF game there's an RPG character growth mechanic for all your characters, allowing you to level up their stats to fight more effectively and make quests easier. All in all, it's a superb game I'd recommend to anyone that's a fan of the FF series or interested in its music.

3. Hogwarts Legacy

As a longtime Harry Potter fan (the books at least, I was never wild about the movies), the announcement of a AAA PS5 game to take place in the Potter universe and put you in the role of a student at Hogwarts immediately got my attention. The reveal that it would take place in the 19th century, a previously unexplored part of Potter lore, allowing it to feature a completely original story and characters, only got me even more interested. This was the first of the many games I wanted to get to come out this year, and it held up against later stiff competition extremely well.

The game's first promise is to make you feel like a real Hogwarts student, and in that it succeeds very well. Exploring Hogwarts castle and the surrounding grounds is immensely satisfying, especially when rooting out the many secrets the castle has to offer. Never found that hidden swimming pool though. If you've watched A Very Potter Musical, and you should, you know what I'm talking about. But even doing little more than wandering around and enjoying the castle's sights is worth the time. One nitpick is I wish there was a better map system in the game, because even after hours of exploring it's very easy to get lost inside the castle. The way the Room of Requirement is used for this game is absolute genius, and a potential huge time suck if you're into interior decorating. Hogsmeade village is also a fun place to amble around and explore. That alone would be more than enough to make any Potter fan happy, certainly me, but the game goes *way* beyond that by including what seems like half the Scottish coast to open world roam around, featuring multiple villages, castles, ruins and a ton of other little things to find and do. In my opinion it's a little too open world. The sheer volume of stuff to do is almost overwhelming, and as much as I've played I've probably only seen about half of it outside the immediate area of Hogwarts. I also got dead sick of caves after a while and refused to go in any more.

The majority of the gameplay revolves around two things: combat and puzzles. Both of which, being a witch or wizard, require spellwork. Combat is undoubtedly the better of the two. Engaging from the start, increases in complexity and difficulty at a good pace as you level up and learn more spells, and later in the game you have a good variety of spells at your disposal to tackle opposition as you see fit. The puzzles, on the other hand, let's just say after a while I got really damn tired of floating platforms around trying to figure out what the hell to do, or worse, knowing what to do but not how the game wanted me to do it. The puzzles can get *very* tedious the further you get in the game. I got to the point where I'd avoid any sidequests that involved puzzles because I'd had my fill. You do learn how to fly later in the game, but it's limited to being either a convenient way to travel across the map or side/minigames. That's a shame, because flying in this game is tremendous fun. I would often fly between far flung locations instead of using quick travel. It's that good, and a good way to discover things to mark on the map for later. Hopefully a potential sequel will have more flying and fewer puzzles. I should mention the music here too, which does a good job of emulating the classic John Williams scores from the early movies while still doing its own thing, and I mention it here because the flying music is the highlight of the whole score. Because of the sheer size of the game there's a huge variety in side stuff to do, so there will be something to suit just about any gameplay style. Personally I tackled the dueling club and summoner's court pretty early, and most anything involving flying once I was able.

Another more iffy part of the game is the story and characters. The main story is good enough but not anything I'd consider outstanding. It does gets better as it goes along. It's a good thing that Hogwarts is such a fun place to explore, because a lot of the people you encounter inside it come off as rather....wooden. There's a small group of students, from different houses, that you slowly become closer friends with through optional sidequests and as you learn more about them they become more well rounded characters. I think just about everyone will agree Sebastian's story in particular is fantastic. The professors are a bit more interesting from the start but you don't get the chance to interact with most of them nearly as much. Still, everyone loves Professor Garlick. Overall, Hogwarts Legacy succeeded at most of what it set out to do, and I'm very interested in a sequel in the not too distant future. Hopefully one with a few of the kinks ironed out.

 

2. Final Fantasy XVI

 

I've resisted the push in the Final Fantasy series away from the traditional RPG menu combat to a more action-based style as strongly as anyone. It's a big reason why Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13-3 was such a huge disappointment for me, even with me being seemingly one of the few people in the world that loves FF 13 and also enjoyed 13-2. It's not the only reason, that game had a lot of issues, but it was a big one. FF 15 is the only mainline FF game, other than the two MMO ones, that I've never played and it was largely the continuation of action combat that put me off. Maybe one day. But when details for 16 started coming out, it looked so damn good that even with the action combat once again coming back I was pretty sure I'd enjoy this one. Fortunately I was right. By the time I was done I'd put right on 60 hours into it, the longest I've ever played the first run of a game. Even doing everything to platinum Ghost of Tsuhima, which also had its own lengthy main story, took "only" about 50 hours.

If you insist on having an action Final Fantasy game, this is the way to do it. It's engaging, pretty simple to pick up, and offers a wide variety of special moves to mix things up that expand as the game goes on. Unlike most FF games there's not much of a party to this one. You play as the main character Clive Rosfield, with your faithful hound Torgal always by your side and ready to aid in the attack. Besides them, other characters can come and go with you as the story progresses but there's also lots of times where it's just you. While regular combat is good, where this game really sets out to blow your mind is the giant Eikon battles. Summons are occasionally a crucial part of the story in FF games rather than just summon creatures, and 16 is one of those (Eikon is a riff on eidolon, which is what summons were called in FF 9). The Eikon fights are battles on a scale almost never before seen in video game history, true landscape altering kaiju sized fights. And that's at their smallest, they get even bigger. Be prepared to set aside a good 30-45 minutes each for the huge, multi-stage Eikon fights later in the game.

As always with Final Fantasy, there's a deep and interesting game world, great characters, and a massive story that forever alters the world these characters live in. Returning to a pretty straightforward European medieval style setting for the first time since really the 8 bit days gives this game a unique feel and was a great choice. The story goes back to a theme occasionally seen in past FF games, multiple nations vying with each other for power, and this one delves deep into the political intricacies more than ever. To aid with this the game introduces a wonderful new tool: Active Time Lore, where you can pause a cutscene and pull up a menu with background information on the characters, nations, and any other relevant information. It's a great tool for a first playthough, though personally I got through fine watching the scenes and then diving into the lore after. Later in the game there's a character in your hub solely dedicated to providing information on the political and military maneuvers currently going on. This is also the most mature and adult-leaning FF game to date. The series has never shied away from darker tones, even in the kid-oriented Nintendo days, but if the series were movies this would definitely be the first R rated FF game due to its swearing, gore and nudity. I also love the twist in your relationship with the crystals. In all the other FF games that have crystals you're trying to either collect or protect them, usually both. In this one, the overriding goal is the destruction of all the world's mountain sized crystal structures, called Mothercrystals, as seen in the above screenshot.

 

There's been a lot of criticisms of the sidequests, and some of it is justified. They start out extremely simple and don't seem to offer a lot at first, but as you do them more and more you start to learn more about all kinds of ancillary characters and the world in general, and by the second half of the game can be just as good as the main story. They also get you some great kit you can't get otherwise. The main reason my initial playthrough went so long was my insistence on finishing up all the possible sidequests before going into the endgame and I'm glad I did. The only side bit I didn't tackle was the Arete Stone, which didn't interest me too much as it was only replaying levels. My next time through I might spend more time with that.

Is it the best Final Fantasy game? No. I enjoyed it enough to put it probably mid tier, but in a series with quality standards this high that's nothing to be ashamed of. It was certainly good enough to take the #2 spot for this year on my list. But not quite #1....

1. Spider-Man 2

When Spider-Man was released on the PS4 in 2018 it perfectly filled the gap for an open world superhero adventure left by the end of the Arkham series in '15 in every way possible. Gameplay, story, characters, playing with the classic lore while adding new twists, it had it all. Miles Morales followed in late '20 and was a good stopgap to keep the series going while the next full game was being made. It was DLC length for a DLC price, but did a great job expanding Miles' character and setting him up to partner with Peter Parker in the full sequel. This year, that sequel hit, and it did not disappoint. For the most part. Hey, this is a review, I have to nitpick. Even my #1 game of the year.

 

Like most sequels, Spider-Man 2 takes most everything the first game did and makes it better. Web slinging around the town is just as fun as ever. Brooklyn and Queens are added to Manhattan to increase the area to explore. There's some cool new gadgets available to fling yourself around town with if you're so inclined. Literal slingshots. The web wings also work as good as advertised, giving you an option to glide instead of web swing. One nitpick I will say is I really miss the variety of the web options from the first game. Impact webs, electric webs, weapons I used a ton in combat in the first game are nowhere to be seen here and it's a shame. There's still some good gadgets available, but in my opinion they don't work quite as well. One huge new addition to combat is a new parry mechanic, giving you a defensive option other than dodging. It works well, but the timing can also be tricky to get down. Thanks to all the accessibility options you get in games now, instead of changing the entire game's difficulty I went in and expanded the window for a perfect parry a little bit, and that was all the help I needed. Peter also has new special abilities that are much like Miles' venom abilities, giving you some more options with him.

 

In the interest of keeping all this spoiler free I won't get into detail on the story but it's just as good as the first game, if not better. There's a couple of very good mini-story sidequests as well as another boatload of collectables to hunt for if you so choose. Though I do have to say one of them, at first, will almost have you pining for pigeon chasing from the first game. The game makes sure to give both Peter and Miles plenty of time to shine individually and together. For most of the game you're free to swap as you want. Most sidequests can be completed with either, but each also have specific sidequest stories only they can do. You're also dictated which one you can use for each main mission, but it's a very nice balance between the two.

So, nitpicks. Well first off, the MJ stealth levels are back and are just as annoying. She does get a couple of new weapons, but ultimately they still feel like a chore rather than a game highlight. But my biggest criticism of the game is the boss fights. The first game had tremendous boss fights, maybe even better than Arkham, that each had a unique style tailored to the enemy you were fighting. Not so here. I don't know if it was because they really wanted to showcase the new parry mechanics, or just plain didn't have time to plan out anything else, but all the boss fights in this game tend to play the exact same way. To make it worse, they've seemingly compensated for the lack of variety by making each boss fight much longer. Which only makes it worse. Most boss fights you have to take out 3 or even 4 full life bars with cutscenes in between, but when it comes down to it you fight every stage and most every enemy the exact same way and it can get pretty tedious as you get further in the game. I hate to say it, but the boss fight in the game's opening is probably the best one in the whole game, largely because it's different.

Still, that doesn't take away what an amazing experience this game is. Spider-Man on Playstation is its own full blown franchise now, and I can't wait for a likely third full game to wrap up the trilogy.

Well, that article turned into quite the beast. Hopefully you enjoyed it, and feel free to add your own list in the comments. If enough worthy games come out in 2024 look for another games of the year article!