2023 has been an incredible year to be a gamer without doubt one of the very best full stop but as an industry 2023 has been shocking with the amount of layoffs across the board, this shouldn't be happening with a industry that garners more money than any other medium.
Below is my personal top 10 games I played this year and few words on each to why.
10. Pikmin 4 by Nintendo
Pikmin has always been a Nintendo IP I've always liked but never really been that excited for a new game for until its out and becomes a zeitgeist moment, I've played all the mainline games and they didn't really catch me until the 2013 WiiU Pikmin 3 which i thoroughly enjoyed and didn't know that it wasn't a stockholm syndrome situation back then due to the WiiU having many few and far between releases to why I hold it high in retrospect but I played the Switch port 3 Deluxe last year and it still holds up well, With this new iteration they've used many features that made the past games unique (Day Cycles, Underground, Swapping Characters) and built apon them with a few new ones with the addition of Oatchi, New Pikmin types and New types of battles. It has very diverse biomes with some fantastic level design that always begs for another 20 minutes play when you are fully optimizing and putting what little time you have and getting every last moment not wasted, its a pure dopamine feeling.
9. Final Fantasy 16 by Square Enix
Out of the 16 mainline Final Fantasy games I can say with my chest that I've finished a grand total of 2, going into this game I was excited by the combat being more akinned to Devil May Cry and looking to be heavily inspired by Game of thrones dark mediaeval setting and also the pre release demo selling near enough anyone that played it.
The combat is more of a real time battle like the latter games in the series (13,15) and has some really cool strings you can pull together with the right eikons equipped My god the music in FF16 really carries every scene they're used in especially the Titan fights which by the end of the 35+ hour main quest do tire a some bit but with Masayoshi Soken pulling out all the stops he really elevates any scene. Ben Starr does a fantastic job as Clive the main protagonist of FF16 and really sells his journey through the multiple time jumps you play, The story while starting very strong by the end of it in my opinion is a major let down in the resolution to many character arcs and just the personal expectations the first half of the game was setting up for.
8. Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 by CD Project Red
I've had this game since its launch in late 2020 but with the games abysmal buggy launch
and inferior hardware to play it on, I waited until 2.0 to actually play the game. This game has an incredible vistas left right and centre and a fantastic open world to drive around and just watch all the NPC's go about there business, the upgraded Skill tree in 2.0 really delphs deep into whatever way you want to play Cyberpunk i.e. All guns blazing as a powerhouse, Hack and stealth your way in and out of combat, Avoid confrontation entirely or a combination of it all, It's also backed up by some great world building with some unforgettable NPC side missions and some great set-pieces in the main missions, I hadn't been this enamored by a WRPG since Mass Effect 2.
CD project have finally delivered what i assume they envisioned back for 2020 and with the successful release of the expansion Phantom Liberty, with the rocky misstep of Cyberpunk original launch hopefully they won't make the same mistake twice.
7. Hifi Rush by Tangoworks
The first big game of the year dropping as a shadow drop on GamePass, I'm familiar and love Tangoworks previous project The Evil within the game has a unique saturday morning cartoon artstyle that in 10+ years will still be timeless, the gameplay being based around rhythm based combat is such a cool and novel idea that works in anyone favour even if you arrent always in beat, the audio and soundtrack is without doubt one of the years best and also boasts some great boss fights.
Metroid Prime on the Gamecube is one of my favourite games of all time and every few years i go back and play it, This made sense to bring this masterpiece back into 2023 and available for people to play before Prime 4's release whenever that is... The game has been modernized with updated textures on literally everything which brings a 2003 game up to one of most impressive graphical game bar none on switch's entire library, This remaster also brings in a few new control schemes which help the game appeal to gamers who are nowadays used to playing FPS games with twin sticks, a minor gripe I have is only manual saves counting as checkpoints, like I know this game like the back of hand but even I felt a tiny bit frustrated dying to then notice I've lost 45 minutes of progress after this remaster I am very excited to see what Retro Studios can produce with Metroid Prime 4.
5. Cocoon by Geometric Interactive
My surprise indie hit of the year, I loved both Limbo and Inside then when the studio went their separate ways to develop games i was excited for more of the same, Last year Somerville while visually pleasing and having some hints of brilliance the prior 2 games had didn't really live up to my personal expectations but with Cocoon it did with its really simple but deep art style and thought engaging puzzles.
The game has incredible pacing, with it naturally getting a tiny bit harder each new puzzle but leveling out with you learning the games systems so it never gets out of hand with its difficulty and making you feel like a goddamn mastermind when you finish one.
4. Super Mario Wonder by Nintendo
I was a fan of the New Super Mario series especially WiiU which has some impeccable level design but my main issue with those games was the bland plain artstyle that really just felt like it was just a straight up botch job.
When Wonder got announced the animation was what i first got grabbed by, the way mario moved and looked like he gracefully floated throughout the fever dream levels, the main new point of this entry is the wonder seeds with at least 1 in every level and they switch up the natural flow of the game everytime, I dare say it but each time it happened the gameplay shifts were so good another developer could've made a whole entire game around it nintendo is usually like this, another new feature they added was a badge system that changed the way you controlled mario some of them were great additions to the snappy way a traditional mario feels and some just felt like a fun change of pace, I never really messed about with any of them bar the main staple the glide cap. without doubt Super mario bros wonder is the best of the 2D series.
3. Resident Evil 4 Remake by Capcom
The second game on this list that I hold the original game in my personal GOAT's list, The 2005 game is hands down the game I've replayed the most in my entire life, with my rose tinted glasses I didn't feel the need for a remake. This reimagining is a pretty tonal shift to what the 2005 game had, It leans more into a serious dark theme than the campy playful nature of the base material, The new knife parry is a fantastic addition which adds a more stylized way to combat, Some of the scenarios which are new to the game are great with finding a battery for the boat before the lake boss being one of them. Also the Separate Ways DLC was way better than anticipated, back in 2007 it was a 'nothing' mode that added nothing to the base game and reused old areas in a boring way but this version adds hours more of worthwhile content which make this a fantastic whole experience.
2. Alan Wake 2 by Remedy Studios
I never played the first Alan Wake until 2017 and even though i was very late to the scene i was totally enamored by it, Remedy have over the years with releases such as Alan wake, Quantum Break and Control become one of my favourite developers and with how much I've enjoyed the previous games when this was announced at the TGAs in 2021 i was a day 1 supporter.
I was staying on a media blackout for AW2 but the stuff I saw leak through to me about it looking like a perfect blend of twin peaks and true detective I was entirely 1000% in, This game is pure art in everything it does, storytelling, presentation and most of all execution, while the first Alan wake was more of a thriller Alan Wake 2 is straight up horror with it taking alot of cues from the more modern Resident Evil remakes.
The dynamic between playing as two separate characters during the lengthy campaign was great and the ability to choose who's story you wanted to follow with being able to swap out after certain story beats. As a fan of Remedy's prior work i was pleasantly surprised with the little hints and nods they placed around Bright falls with the Remedyverse.
Honorable Mentions:
Octopath Traveler 2, Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp, Gunbrella, Fire Emblem Engage
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom by Nintendo
Back in 2017, 2 weeks before the Nintendo Switch launched I was lucky enough to attend a Switch pre release event where they had many games on show but i spent a good 30 minutes of the hour slot i had played Breath of the Wild and after the game launched a couple weeks later i lost track of time and day and just entirely consumed it all, back after i finished the game i hailed it as my favourite game of all time which at the time did feel very honey moon period esque but i have held onto that opinion until today.
Tears of the Kingdom is the single best game I've ever played, I hate the feeling of Deja vu and always have. I avoid replaying games because of it, going into TOTK i was wary of the map literally being a near 1 to 1 Hyrule from 2017's BOTW. It might be series bias from myself but the way nintendo have defied my expectation of how they did it with out it feeling old or lazy is beyond me.
It probably comes down to a few ways of them sprucing it up with the 'Trifecta' of levels they had with the Sky, Surface and the Depths and how they were all seamlessly intertwined. some of the little details as the lightroots found in the depths gave hints to the shrines on the surface and puzzles in the sky unlocking chest locations for the depths and vice versa, there was always an overwhelming amount of ways you could approach the game before you even think of following the main quest line, the core new abilities they added with TOTK are features others would build a whole game behind with just 1 of them, Ascend is a godsend that i never thought id need until i was knee deep in a cave that id be trekking in for the past 20 minutes and wanted a quick escape or trying to climb while it was wet out, The fuse ability semi fixes many peoples biggest gripes with BOTW and the destructable weapons and makes even the most obsolete items in hyrule worth keeping in your bag just to see the possiblity of stat boosts or durability by fusing to a sword or stick.
The rewind ability was the best of the lot with it holding some of my favourite moments in the game, being on the surface and looking up at the sky and seeing falling debris you could follow it to where it lands and then climb atop and rewind the trajectory back up into the sky and onto a new island or finding a hard to get to chest. Rewind also helped with other things such as projectiles shot by enemies and sending them right back or getting your vehicle stuck in a crevice that it can't get out of.
While not up to the rest of the series highpoints the dungeons in TOTK are a hell of alot better than the one note lifeless dungeons in BOTW, most of them are a sprawling pocket of brilliance with a few of them even having a 'pre dungeon' a whole area which feels like one before getting to the real main course.
Personally the story in BOTW was my biggest disappointment with it leaning way too much into unplayable flashback scenes and nothing really more than that, TOTK has the best master sword moment in the entire series and the most satisfying end battle since Twilight Princess. A small nitpick i cant look over though is the apparent amnesia most of the returning NPCs have about what aspired in the first game for a game that feels like a straight up continuation it feels really weird no one mentions the calamity and what Link and Co did a few years back.
With all this said nintendo have beaten the sophomore slump of a follow-up to a beloved first game, which in my eyes makes the BOTW just seem like a glorified tech demo, I sincerely hope it doesn't take another 6+ years for another mainline Zelda game.
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