NOTE: While 2023 does not slack at all with the endless swath of impressive video game releases, it’s not without the cost of several thousands of job losses that’s been plaguing gaming and tech since the year began. Friends of mine have lost their jobs during this tumultuous period of transition so it feels weird to gush about the things that I love without acknowledging the tremendous amount of loss that looks to be continuing into the next year.
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Resident Evil 4
I’ve been on the record saying I’m a big skeptic when it comes to the remake / remaster / re-imagining kerfuffle. I am a firm believer that remakes dilute the original experience intended by the developer for the sake of streamlining the design, making it palatable for modern audiences. Without an easy way to access the original versions of those games, remakes are the ‘square peg in the circle hole’; where it serves the purpose of playing that experience with the omission of what made those original versions so revolutionary to play in the first place.
Fortunately, you can pick up a cracked cell phone from the late 2000s and somehow find a way to play the original version of Resident Evil 4, so this does not really apply to it.
Resident Evil 4 — Resident Evil 4 Remake, RE4M, Rem4ke or whatever — is near flawless front to back. Decades worth of gameplay iteration learned from Resident Evil 5 and onwards all melded together in a snappy rollercoaster of an experience, much like the Resident Evil 2 remake is. The reduction of the quick time events will always be a bit of a groan for me, but the inclusion of dynamic gameplay actions like the parry system and the spinel side quests do make up for the missing mechanics. It’s so good. It’s never not a satisfying experience to stun-confirm into group melee kicks or deflecting flying axes or shooting dynamite out of an enemy’s hand. I cannot wait to see how Capcom ports this game several times over in the next twenty years, because you best believe I will be there.
Dead Island 2
Let’s be real here: Dead Island isn’t the kind of video game franchise that’s a memorable choice out of everything else that happened during the year. Between all the pointless and outright poor spin-offs and remasters I didn’t have much hope that the ever-elusive sequel would do any good. When I heard the rave responses and praise that Dead Island 2 got at launch from critics and my own friends, I was genuinely shocked.
What Dead Island 2 does so well compared to other first person zombie shooters is that it really feels like a time capsule of an experience. The game that you’d be playing in 2012 is literally right there in Dead Island 2 — similar gameplay beats, similar crafting mechanics, similar combat down to a T. Yet the level of polish is so down-packed for this kind of experience that it’s honestly overwhelming, shocking that something like this could come from the Dead Island franchise.
Hitting things…feels good in this game! Slashing, bunting, burning, melting, knobbing — all of that just feels so right and responsive in a game about killing a whole lot of zombies. Before you get to that state of being bored with killing a whole bunch of enemies, the game immediately snaps to a new and fresh mechanic to keep the routine going. It revels in it’s straightforwardness, and respects the players time so much — no meaningless checklist questing, no resource gathering that’s mandatory to move the narrative forward etc. It’s very much a “what you see is what you get experience”, refined to the purest element. That’s what makes Dead Island 2 an extremely special and memorable game.
Street Fighter 6
I don’t even know what to say about Street Fighter 6 that hasn’t really been said already, so I’ll keep it short. There’s nothing better than playing something like SF6 after years of Street Fighter 5 trailing behind it. It’s fresh and innovative online implementations, it’s unique accessibility features in its ‘Modern’ control scheme, some of the most impressionable character design seen in the series since Street Fighter 3 and a thoroughly ambitious single player mode that punches above it’s weight. While I don’t think I can call it the best fighting game of the year with another fighting game on its list to challenge it, it’s absolutely the Street Fighter game I’ve been yearning for in a minute.
Baldur’s Gate 3
My experience with Baldur’s Gate and the Dungeons and Dragons franchise has a bit of a disconnect with it. I’ve played and enjoyed the previous two BG games and I absolutely have nothing but love for Capcom’s D&D titles, but I cannot for the life of me claim an attachment to the franchise like I would for BioWare’s Dragon Age series, or even the Fable franchise. So for me, in my 40 hour playthrough (which is barely scratching the surface of the main storyline) Baldur’s Gate 3 was a full primer of what the franchise can offer to me. The level of immersion seen in an RPG is unparalleled, enabling creativity I’d usually only reserve for Immersive Sims. Learning through friends or peers about all the wild stuff that you can do with the environment for miniscule solutions, or simply for the sake of the gag is truly overwhelming.
Then there’s the cast — the finest cast of RPG friends since Dragon Age 2. An ensemble of misfits and truly irredeemable, evil people — or on the opposite spectrum, vain and bespoke personalities that you must drag along with you through the game’s seemingly endless main narrative. Or don’t! The choice of playing it solo and skipping people is absolutely a choice you can make, and the experience changes all for the better — or worse, depending on how you carry yourself.
I think the biggest accomplishment that Baldur’s Gate 3 nails is giving your player character so much to define themselves with in establishing a personality. The character creator alone can go upwards to an hour if you let it. The kind of monk or paladin or druid that you want to me is laid all out to you through well detailed character sheets that, honestly, I’ll need to go back and re-evaluate the choices made for my starting monk character. If nothing else, it’s an impeccable RPG simulator.
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
I’ve written in thorough detail about why I like this game, and up to this point now it hasn’t changed a bit.
“What’s left of my experience of playing Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is what I feel to be a great game. It’s difficult for successors, whether dubbed as such by the developers or the fans that are anticipating the game, to live up to the highs of the game that its succeeding from. Despite the highs that Bomb Rush can reach there are some moments where I felt that the Jet Set series, Tony Hawk and even one-off experiences like Sunset Overdrive solved the problems that Bomb Rush often stumbles into. It came to a point as I met the halfway point of the game I was asking myself ‘is it really fair to call a game like this a successor?’ There’s certainly a massive deficit of action / arcade-focused sports games as well as 3D platformers, and experiences like bomb Rush are solely needed to replicate those experiences. But as a ‘spiritual successor’ did it need to be everything that its inspirations were and more? It felt weird to judge it on the merits of some cult hits released in 2001 or so because in the end, an experience like replicating Jet Set Radio is no different from replicating a game like Seaman, or Illbleed. It’s next to impossible, and sort of reduces Bomb Rush as sort of a lesser product off the jump. Which it’s not!
I finish up Team Reptile’s Bomb Rush Cyberfunk as a satisfied man. As the ending credits roll, as I see the talented men and women responsible for such a wonderful video game, I feel a sense of satisfaction that hasn’t been felt for a while. Recently, I’ve been seeing video game completion as something of a checklist; another accomplishment and another item removed from my ever-adjusting ‘backlog’ of content. Rarely does a game ‘ending’ really stick with me because I’m so adamant on moving towards the next accomplishment. Yet Bomb Rush is one of those gaming experiences for me where I put aside the controller and really relish in the fact that the experience is ‘complete.’ In a way, I don’t want it to end — this is the video game I’ve been waiting for what feels like 20 years now. This is a game that opens me up to different avenues of media that I haven’t explored in a long time, if at all. Even as a spiritual successor to SEGA’s Jet Set Radio franchise it doesn’t do quite enough to live up to an impressive mantle, but damn if it doesn’t come swinging out the gate with a sense of charisma and flair that few video games can emulate effectively.”
Marble it Up Ultra
Marble it Up Ultra is the expanded version of the extremely underrated 2018 release, Marble it Up! Which is a spiritual successor to the immaculate Marble Blast series. Fun fact: Marble Blast Ultra had a post launch dlc called Marble It Up! which I had only recently discovered when trying to re-install Marble Blast on my dusty Xbox 360.
It’s a simple experience, so my praises for Marble It Up Ultra are all on its tight controls and extremely creative, if not blisteringly challenging level design. You, this unstoppable marvel of a marble navigates hundreds of mazes and puzzle layouts to get from start to finish. Through speed challenges, slippery slopes, dangerous cliffs and insufferable collection levels may get in the way of your progress, the game gives you so many tools and tricks to navigate the stages at your leisure.
Marvel Snap
The Marvel-themed Card Battler hit 1.0 this year! I’ve been playing a lot over the course of this and last year but with the game feeling a lot more feature complete than it did at launch, I feel confident in speaking about it now. Marvel Snap’s insistence on providing a card battle in less than two minutes never really overstays it’s welcome for me. I find myself running quick sets on the side during work, during commutes and as a secondary game to run in downtime of my other games. (It’s been a very good Counter-Strike companion.)
The appeal of a Marvel -themed card game never really dies to me as an avid comics fan. It’s surreal and exciting to see no-name, meaningless Marvel characters like Stature or The Hood have appearances in a game that’s clearly designed for a broader audience. It’s not without it’s grievances, the card progression could be better for newer player and the randomization of variant rewards never really sat well for me, but I absolutely think Snap is a great introductory tool for people curious about the flow of card games.
Humanity
Humanity is a weird pick for me. I waited very late into the year to give the game a try despite being extremely impressed with the demo released prior to launch. As a game developed by Enhance, the studio helmed by Rez producer Tetsuya Mizuguchi, it already bursts out the game being an unconventional title due to it’s lack of rhythm as a focus. A real-time strategy puzzler that puts you to the task of guiding an endless line of humans from the start to the goal — with various level design elements meant to push you to the test. Your screen floods with a seemingly endless amounts of humans falling to their death, jumping, floating, swimming — all for the sake of the goal.
It’s a very beautiful game to me; colorless, blanche brutalist structures and obstacles lit only by the endless ensemble of humans of different shapes, sizes, and colors. The flow state of accomplishment — when everything just clicks for you — comes when you can finally manage to get the herd to stop killing themselves and follow your flow path to a T. As with all Enhance joints it’s never not satisfying to 100% stages and there’s so much more to the surface that this game is willing to offer. It’s my favorite puzzler this year.
Remnant 2
I’ve drawn myself out of the loop of anticipating Souls-likes after Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro’s release. As with everyone, I enjoyed Elden Ring, but I can still feel the urge to take a break from those kind of action experiences until the next FROM game or something truly unique in the style of those games comes to light. Just as it did with the original Remnant: From The Ashes, Remnant 2 arrives to scratch that itch. Another daunting action shooter that’s filled to the brim with secrets. Even in my first playthrough I felt that I didn’t really experience all that the game had lined up to me. There are so many routes, so many hidden zones and different biomes to explore.
My favorite element about the game is how much of a standout the art design is, not only to other Souls-esque action games but as a shooter to begin with. It’s this strange blend of dark fantasy and dark western, but it’s not afraid to throw futuristic elements or nature-inspired horror at you. At some point you could be in this dark, decrepit forest full of tree monsters …or you could be right in the middle of a Victorian-era horror showcase not unlike something like Bloodborne.
It’s an extremely confident jack of all trades. Highly recommended.
Granblue Fantasy Vs: Rising
Granblue Fantasy Vs. released in the beginning of the pandemic years and while a great package, it was obviously stunted by the misfortune of a global epidemic to be anything more than it was at release. Rising rectifies this and the game truly feels like it’s come into it’s own as a fighting game. Netplay and crossplay working like a charm, an expansive amount of unlockables and customization options, the addition of an additional full sized single player mode along with the old one AND the addition of a multiplayer party mode almost totally divorced from the main experience.
For me, playing Rising is unlike the experience I get from playing Street Fighter 6. If playing SF6 is revisiting traditional fighting game footsies and fundamentals, the lesson I’ve learned from Rising is that I should be a lot more confident in taking big risks in fighting games. Unlike SF6 or my favorite fighter of the generation, Samurai Shodown, it’s not a game where I can get away often with punishing jump-ins or whiffed normal for big rewards. So it’s good for me to have both SF6 and Granblue side to side to work out the kinks that I have with competing in a fighter. I think that’s why I love it so much — it’s something that pulls me right out of my comfort zone as a means of getting better at the genre.
Hi-Fi Rush
The best Xbox exclusive this year if that means anything to anyone. The best Action game this year. Some of the finest audio-design out this year. A fun, off-beat cast and an extremely entertaining narrative. All of this from a hot-dropped Rhythm-Action game from the least likely of sources.
With other rhythm-action games releasing in droves despite not quite getting the balance of satisfying action and rhythm flow down, Hi-Fi Rush nails the concept and communicates a very critical lesson to learn about inputting combos and commands in these kind of action games. Delay combos (think Dante’s alternate attack string in Devil May Cry) play an important part of maintaining the rhythm when combatting enemies in Hi-Fi Rush and it isn’t something you feel like you have to practice over and over to get the flow right mid-combo. The assistance of the rhythm meter and the persistent rewards you get from sticking to the flow are, to me, some of the best ways to communicate higher level play of these action games to the user. Hi-Fi Rush even effectively communicates the importance to defense, due to how the guard parry and dodge mechanics are tied to the rhythm of the game. Such an addicting feeling to time everything to par and hitting high rank rewards, something I haven’t really felt or enjoyed since the original Bayonetta release.
Everything is tied to the beat. The natural movements of the environments, the enemies, the platforming segments — it’s rare to see anything that isn’t tied to the music. The rhythm gives Hi-Fi Rush its life force, it’s way of sticking out of the crowd and capturing the focus of the player. It’s an amazing experience through and through, and I hope it sends the publisher the right message on what kind of games that the platform needs.
Exoprimal
The enjoyment I had with Exoprimal eclipses the frustrations I had with people when discussing this game on online platforms. Like I get it: another multiplayer shooter from a company like Capcom that’s been struggling to nail the multiplayer-shooter quota for a couple of decades now. I get that people weren’t expecting a dinosaur-themed game to not be anything like Dino Crisis or whatever, but I couldn’t vibe at all with this strange vitriol that followed the game whenever it showed up online.
This isn’t really a game for the Dino Crisis fans or Resident Evil fans either way. This is a game that evokes those long weekends playing Lost Planet 2 on the Xbox 360. A PvE/PvP hybrid experience, 5 players against a never-ending horde of Dinosaurs all played out through a persistent narrative that expands the more that you play multiplayer sessions. Unless you invest the time into it, you’ll never see much of the late-game offerings but a massive chunk of the narrative — which is WIDL — is missing to the player.
It’s a genius implementation; a cool way to integrate those narrative beats with the reward of finishing matches. A massive wheel of lore, cool cutscenes, and progression notches that eventually lead to climatic events that happen IN the multiplayer games — even going as far as to make massive, ten party raid battles MMO style.
Just a shame that a good chunk of the good that Exoprimal does will ultimately be pushed to the wayside but make no mistake; this was an incredible multiplayer game that I feel everyone should give a fair shake to.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Breath of the Wild wore the elements of several different immersive sims confidently on it’s sleeves, allowing the player to settle the main storyline in a matter they saw fit. Tears of the Kingdom, meanwhile, dons the player in a full coat of immersive sim confidence that rivals even the best of Arkane or IO Interactive’s ventures into the genre. We all love the building mechanics and the expansive, underground routes filled with powerful enemies and even more powerful rewards. My favorite element of Tears of the Kingdom, much like Breath of The Wild, is all tied to the exploration.
Tears of the Kingdom providing automation in the form of cool vehicles that are limited only by your imagination. With some wood, a couple of wind propellers and some grit, you can make a floating boat to get you to point A to B quickly. Or even a blimp or a makeshift jetpack. Some of the creations I’ve seen just for the sake of novelty were far more creative than what I could come with, but that feels like the essence of what this game triumphs in, and what other survival or crafting games should take notes from. The eureka moments that this game births are nothing short of spectacular, and well deserving of a sequel to an extremely important game.
Mario Wonder
Now this is the 2D platformer I’ve been waiting for from Nintendo since Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. It’s fresh, it’s not without its challenges and secrets — it spouts an extremely unique art direction that makes it stand confidently away from the other NSMB titles. Every couple of levels introduce new mechanics, new challenges to really stretch the limits of what a 2D Mario game could do.
It’s honestly something else at how Mario can just, get away with releasing perfect games on a whim like this.
