Baldurs Gate 3 and it isn’t that close, I really liked Tears of the Kingdom and finally getting to Cyberpunk too though
Yeah, I was absolutely astounded by how good BG3 was. It blew my other picks out of the water
Same for me. 650 hours in I’ve got the platinum trophy and golden dice and I started a new character yesterday (gith paladin) because there is still stuff i havent seen.
Wow, thought I'd be in the majority with this but Baldur's Gate 3.
Followed closely by HiFi Rush and Sea of Stars.
Disco Elysium for sure. The story enraptured me and the characters had so much depth
Yeah, enjoyed quite a few games this year, but nothing got into my head quite like DE. I hope so bad that we could expect some kind of follow-up to that masterpiece.
Dave the Diver
Good?
Favorite so far was probably Talos Principle 2. It was excellent, best movie of the year. And the puzzles were fun too.
I didn't realise it was out already! Hoping for a VR version though. The first one was amazing like that.
I loved Talos Principle 2.
Final Fantasy 7: Remake. I now understand what all the fuss was about and why it's probably the most famous out of them all (I might be wrong on that). I haven't played the original so this was a great introduction.
FF7 (original) is famous because it was a huge jump from 2d pixel to 3d models. The original iteration had tank controls, and the game was long. But largely empty and slowed down by random encounters.
The new one changed the story dramatically. The next game will further deviate from the original.
Dredge, surprisingly enough. What a memorable game
I loved this game. Still looking at the DLC. Control, Dave the Diver, and Heretics Fork are keeping me busy
Absolutely Disco Elysium. I don't think there will ever be another game like it
Honourable mention to Quake 2 remaster for being mindless fun
Seconding Disco Elysium. A lot of the ways I think about addiction are forever changed after playing that game.
Yes I agree. Especially the almost reasonable, even kind, voices telling you to use for your own good. That reminded me of the process of quitting after the worst of the withdrawal symptoms are gone - the next boss is your own mind and all its reasoning faculties telling you to go back
I was surprised how much I loved Hogwarts Legacy. I am not a big Potter fan, but this game really nailed that Universe. Even just wandering around aimlessly was journey of whimsical discovery. I have ToTK, BG3 and Cyberpunk 2077 all on the menu this year, but Hogwarts got the majority of time played by a long shot.
The broom flight was just stellar.
Definitely CrossCode, I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did. I still need to play the DLC.
It's so amazingly polished!
The Talos Principle 2. It's a game about communism. Play it.
I also really enjoyed Blasphemous 2. Great metroidvania with some gnarly Spanish Catholic art.
Cyberpunk 2077. Was sad when it ended will need to grab PL as by accounts it’s even better.
Got PL for my birthday this year and I'll list it for this post.
Lingo. It tickles my brain in wonderful ways. I'm currently working through the custom level Liduongo, sequel to an earlier map named Duolingo, and I continue to be surprised, delighted, and utterly perplexed.
It's a rules-based puzzler that doesn't tell you the rules buried in a confusing labyrinth. The only downside is that it requires a strong grasp of English, limiting its audience.
Lingo was amazing! My husband and I played through it together; he's better at 3d navigation so he navigated, and I'm better at word games, and we had a blast. We should try some of the custom maps!
Snagged Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy for $3.50 and have been enjoying it with the config files altered for higher damage/dismemberment with lightsabers.
Makes fighting force users really tactical because you have to avoid their saber too, dismemberment affects you and is an instant death. You can get cool kills like rolling underneath their saber throw and Darth Maul'ing them while they're unable to deflect you, etc.
Incredible Jedi power fantasy, as much as I like Fallen Order it just doesn't sell you on the fact that you have a lightsaber in your hands as much as Outcast and Academy do with the damage increased. Hell you can kill stormtroopers just by walking into them and moving your blade slightly, now that's a lightsaber!
Look up the Movie Battles II mod if you plan on taking that game online. It enhances the already great lightsaber combat and still has a pretty active community (I'm pretty sure you can also jump into single player with the mod for the quality of life features it adds)
Thanks!
As a kid I used to have keybinds setup in Jedi Outcast (bind k "NPC spawn stormtrooper")that would let me spawn different enemies on me while notarget was on and g_saberrealisticcombat at 3. Hours of entertainment till the game would inevitably crash from too many enemies
I finally took the time and played through the souls series. I'm still going through 3 right now but they are all great games (2 less so). I'm not a complete stranger to the series (I've beaten Bloodborne, Demon's Souls, Elden Ring, and Sekiro) but I've never actually sat through the main series. Gotta say it did not disappoint. DS2 had some moments that were a slog but even with the dip in quality it's still a great game, just the worst of the Souls-like games.
Also been playing BG3 and Disco Elysium in between.
Next few years are gonna have a lot to compete with in terms of the sheer quality of games I waited to play until this year.
Diddy Kong Racing.
Nice. I started Ratchet & Clank on PCSX2 yesterday. Holy hell is that Emulator a work of art. The graphical options for the emu make that PS2 game still shine and the gameplay is lotsa fun. Sadly the libretro core for Retroarch/Emulationstation bugged out for me and was slow compared to standalone PCSX2.
Also I'm still puzzled how it's possible there are so many retro-achievements for so many games. I looked up how to implement them and it's really complicated. I totally underestimated how big the retro games scene still is. I really want to get into the netplay thing.
I was certainly behind the curve here, but Horizon Zero Dawn! I was expecting some vagely Zelda like adventure RPG (and it was), but the story was so much more compelling than I expected. What a memorable game! I even got a second hand PS4 to play the sequel on... which I haven't for like 6 months now. >_< (Too many other things to do!)
I played it thrice on PS4. Got the free DLC and played the DLC twice. It's such a powerful idea to have simple attack/dodge scheme and fight all kinds of machines even on Ultra Hard mode. The story is just OK, predictable.
The sequel, hmm, can't say it's even mediocre.
'I lost my old equipments in the bag.'
Grow up, writers. We're not five.
They added more moves in combat but I don't like it.
The world is big and boring. I feel like to explore it before the main plot even begins but only for old time's sake.
Oh, and don't have too high expectation on playing it with good performance on PS4.
TOTK followed by Spider-man 2.
You never said new game, katamari damacy Cause im getting older and rarely if ever find a "must play" of current year
Baldur's Gate 3. Boring answer but it's just very goddamn good.
I'm on the second act and I think I prefer Divinity 2 so far. Not that it's a contest
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead - Sky Islands Mod: By far and away the most interesting survival singleplayer game I have ever played. Complex? Yeah there is a lot of stuff but don't let anyone convince you CDDA has an obtuse UI, it has easy to remember keybindings and the interface is easy to navigate. Can't remember the key to do something? Hit "?" and type the name of the action and boom there it is.
Sky Islands turns CDDA into a run based game (sort of like tarkov I guess? idk) and it is just what CDDA always needed for me. Instead of being free to roam the procedurally generated landscape of CDDA going wherever you want, each time you venture out from your island in Sky Islands you spawn in a random place and must make it to a portal home within a couple of hours or you die. There could be any number of obstacles in your way between you and the portal including zombie infested cities, swamps, craters, mass graves, massive fungal towers with deadly spores or shudders worst of all RIVERS... (No joke, surprise rivers you get stuck on the other side of will more thoroughly doom you than anything else).
If you reach the portal home you can only take back through the portal what you can hold in your hands and on your back. Stay as long as you want on your sky island before returning for another run but don't exhaust your critical supplies and remember that with every day that passes in CDDA the monsters grow more horrific...
Okay, but I've just created a functional train in the normal game, so that's one thing sky Islands don't have
Inscryption was really fun my friend bought it for me. Came out in 2021 though
In the last 10 years I have only played 5 games... Yeah, I'm a creature of habit with a potato PC. Portal 2 and Skyrim are the only ones I've played this year. Even though I play Skyrim more, I can't get enough of the characters in Portal 2 so that's my choice.
Hot Wheels Unleashed. More fun than I thought it would be, and the fan-made online tracks were wild.
Would you say the game is targeted at children? I'm curious about a new racing game.
Fun for all ages. There’s definitely a nostalgia vibe to it. It’s often included in things like Xbox game pass.
Baldurs Gate 3, hands down. I played High on Life this year too. Great game, but I haven't played anything but BG3 since I bought it.
Remnant 2. Loved every bit of it.
It's a toss-up between Dave The Diver, BG3, and Cassette Beasts
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart on PC. Brought back a lot of nostalgia but also stood on its own very well. I can count on one hand the games I've bothered to 100% and this is one of them.
Ooh. This one looks great. I'd parrot an excuse about how I "don't have the time", but that will always be true until I make the time.
Honestly can be completed in a week or two with after work evening sessions. Total story is only about 20 ish hours. So definitely not one to pickup at full price but on sale.
NO question, Flight Simulator 2020. Followed by Trackmania 2020. Apparently I have thing for the year of the pandemic...
I didn’t start playing BG3 ‘til October, but it’s all I’ve played since then and I have not looked back
Definitely Jusant. It was just such a perfect game for me when I played it, chill but engaging in exactly the way I needed it, and something about the story just went straight into my heart unlike any other!
I've only got a little bit into the game so far and man everything about the game just hits home. If it were just a bit bigger or more freeform it might have been my favorite. I love the weird but recognizable world! Reading letters that sound like they could be straight out of our future hit really well.
Unfortunately it trails a bit behind Seasons A Letter To The Future for me though because it's less open.
So I absolutely love Street Fighter 6. Almost every thing is done incredibly well(not the cost of dlc costumes though, that is fucking robbery). Has one of my favourite single player story modes, the best arcade lobby with actual interesting side stuff in it, fantastic netcode and on and on.
I also was to throw out a few other stand outs
- Granblue Vs Rising
- Crab Champions
- Baldurs Gate
- Spider-Man and Miles Morales
- Octopath Traveller 2
Have loved every single one of those.
I was pleasently surprised with Granblue. I played a bit of the original and thought it was decent, but Rising takes it up a notch. Plus I didn't even have to pay to play it. Free edition met all my needs for the game.
Songs of Conquest. A HoMM3-inspired turn-based strategy game, still in beta.
As far as games from this year Alan Wake 2. Im not done with it yet but it's making a solid case for being my favorite horror game of all time
Alan Wake 2 is a personal GoTY for me. Yes, BG3 is a better game. But I'd argue that Alan Wake 2 is not just a game. It's an experience.
Loved Control but never played Alan Wake. Just bought the first one recently so hoping to play through it then check out 2.
I did something similar. A word of warning: if you're expecting the elegant gameplay from control in Alan Wake, you're going to be disappointed. The combat is clunky and difficult for the wrong reasons. Go into it with an open mind.
Project Muse, and I became the best player in the world!
It's old, but I played Diablo II Resurrected on PS4. I started with small doses at a time then just went balls deep into it. I played for about a month and beat it with an Amazon.
I started to play it with a 2nd character but saw it was pretty much the same game with a different character. I mainly play Call of Duty with my dad other teammates.
By hours played, it's either Valheim or Baldur's Gate 3. Fallout 76 should get mentioned, as it was a lot of fun until it wasn't. Falling victim to the story lines sort of running their course and the game turning into a standard MMO grind-fest. I'll also mention Green Hell, which was a passable survival-crafting game with enough story to make a "play through" actually have a meaning. Even if that meaning had all the subtlety of a tactical nuclear weapon. It's also still seeing development, so it might be worth going back too. Finally, there was Raft, which was another fun survival-crafting game (is my preference in games obvious?), which also went for the subtlety of a water buffalo rutting. Again, fun while it lasted, but hardly worth playing more than once or twice.
Rogue Trader. It's a cozy traditional cRPG out to its fingertips. Walls of texts, static perspective and all those traditional goodies. Combat is engaging, the word ridiculous to absurdity and the characters almost over the top. As WH40K should be.
Jedi Survivor is the only one that I have gone back to multiple times after finishing.
Armored Core 6 was a lot of fun too, but the mission structure makes the game feel too small.
Elder Scrolls: Online. Yes, I know I'm ten years late to the party, but it's been a real blast! Never played an MMO before, and ESO has probably ruined me for other MMOs.
Not a "new" game, but a new modpack (for Minecraft Java) update for all the mods 9 where they added gregtech into it and lots of good others, and just enjoying the variety and complexity of the mods added, some like create mod and the ones that add on to create are getting fucking wild and awesome too. Love building weird ass contraptions because I can.
Shattered pixel dungeon
I had a surprisingly good time with DEATHLOOP, especially after having completed Prey 2017 earlier this year and being a little frustrated about some of the design choices that were made, and wondering if Arkane had finally lost their mojo.
I almost didn’t even want to buy it at first because it had received such mixed reviews, and it certainly took some getting used to initially, but once it clicked and I finally understood all the rules and what the game was asking of me, I couldn’t put it down anymore for like a solid week.
I had a blast with Zelda TOTK and Baldur's Gate 3 but my favorite was Armored Core VI, it was so demanding on the front end but super rewarding on the tail end and I even managed to get all of the S ranks and the plat on ps
Probably Antimatter Dimensions (10/10 incremental game) and Factorio with the Bob's/Angel's mod (basically Factorio but with 10x the recipies and lots of byproducts)
Favourite game I played in 2023... None really stand out to me, mostly because there were no new games which I wanted that stood out, I hadn't played before, or were new.
I had an inkling for Metroid and being able to play Dread and go back into Fusion was a unique experience.
Experiencing and getting bored with Outer World was also nice. Funny thing is I did the same thing with New Vegas so I guess it's par for the course with Obsidian games for me.
First time playing through and beating Arkham Asylum. Was testing on Linux and got sucked in, was a fun game, and I want to try City when I get a chance.
Was also in the mood to replay Antichamber too. Haven't touch that game in forever and I am glad I did. One of the few games I'd call the Gameplay Atmospheric.
Also got to play The Cosmic Shake, a wonderful through back to PS2 era 3D Platformers. I think this is the only new game I played this year.
Deathloop. I put it off for so long because so many people said “if you’re coming here looking for another Dishonored or Prey, you’ll be disappointed because the story and immersive sim elements are far more shallow” BUT HOLY HELL Deathloop is the most unique AAA game on the market. The metagame is amazing in that while the moment-to-moment gameplay is FPS/action-style, the game as a whole is really a puzzle for the player to solve through exploration and discovery. Fuck me it works so damn well.
Who the hell am I? How did I wake up on this island? Who’s yelling in my ear all the time? Why do I wake up on this beach every morning even if I die? The game makes you ask questions and doesn’t let you leave them unanswered.
The icing on the cake is the amazing combat with cool guns and amazingly fun supernatural powers. I may be in the minority but I also love the way that the invasion PvP mode works. It adds a really nice difficulty jump when the game might start feeling too easy. The only two complaints I have are that the multiplayer networking experience is definitely subpar with a lot of lag, and that the game holds your hand too much at the end. It shouldn’t give you objective markers telling you how to actually go about solving the puzzle, it should force you to figure it out and implement it on your own.
Hard agree with all of this. I've never been good at shooters, especially PvP, but the invasions always felt like more of a chess match than a true gun duel. Outsmarting some human player who's a better shot than me made for super memorable and satisfying moments.
I'll also add that the voice acting and dialogue were great. Dishonored is infamous for having limited voice lines ("shall we meet for whiskey and cigars tonight?"), and in a game with a time loop mechanic and limited maps, I thought for sure it would be even worse. But I was pleasantly surprised. It's still annoying for scripted events that repeat, but the Colt and Julianna banter kind of made up for it imo
Oh absolutely. The PvP was really about outsmarting (just like the rest of the game, nice cohesion) and sometimes boiled down to tense gun fights. Even then you could rely more on the slabs than the guns if you wanted.
The banter also really adds to the game. Reminds me of Evolve and how the varied character conversations and banter helped keep the matches from feeling extremely repetitive.
Maybe Fallout 3?
The one that’s standing out right now is Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane. It’s been a long time since the last Ace Attorney game, and for an indie project I think they did a good job of it (on the same subject, case 2 of the excellently made “Occult Crime Police” is out). TC takes place in its own fantasy universe and does some pretty good lore setup without getting in the way of good mysteries.
Just got to the slight hints of a romance between the characters (already teased by some of the Steam game art) and it’s a bit cute. There’s also implications they’ve been able to start work on a sequel.
Armored Core 6 topped it for me, with Tears of the Kingdom and The Talos Principal 2 as close runners up.
Amnesia: The Bunker for me. Close second would be Outer Worlds.
Quite a few good ones this year...
HiFi Rush was an unexpected delight!
Hogwarts Legacy was engrossing.
Either Sea of Stars or Baldurs Gate 3. Honorable mention for Tears of the Kingdom and Alan Wake II. Honestly just a fantastic year for games.
I played Inside recently. Sure games like RDR2 and Cyberpunk 2077 are great games but Inside deserves love too. I'm not trying to say it's underrated as I read it received awards and is listed as one of the best games, I'm just raising awareness for it.
Absolutely Cassette Beasts. An amazing monster tamer and the ost is easily better than anything else this year and that's just an objective fact.
Rogue Trader was fun and while I'm not a 40k guy the setting and system didn't hurt the game like DnD did to BG3.
Season A Letter To The Future was a great game too, about cataloging a small slice of the world before the kinda event that marks a 'before' and an 'after' in history.
Saw someone else mention juscant and it's up there on the list too, i wish it was just a little more open or freeform.
I've started playing Darktide. When I got it things were quite lacking outside of the amazing visuals, atmosphere, sound, and combat but the recent revamp of how you customize your character's playstyle and it really made a good game great to me.
Warframe, new content drops have been absolutely on point. Still blows my mind that it's free.
The cracked version of Judgement, Sega raised their prices here so I don't feel any remorse.
The Finals. It's a weird one for me considering I loathe free to play games. Overall it's been a good year in gaming. I thought Totk is going to be best game of the year, then BG3 came out and I was certain that would end up being the best game of the year (and I'm certain for many it is), but then I decided to give The Finals a try. For me it felt like a fundamental shift in online shooters, like a new baseline to compare shooters to.
On paper it doesn't seem anything exceptional. You have 4 maps with some variations on each map, 3 game modes and 3 classes each with a handful of weapons and gadgets. There's really not much content when you lay it all out, but the replayability is insane. The destructible environment and the tools to manipulate the environment has emergent gameplay going through the roof.
You can get really creative with how you want to attack or defend and it makes each match feel fresh. Sometimes you blow up the side of the wall and defend from the building across the street, sometimes you blow the roof to attack from above, sometimes you bring the entire building down to use the chaos to your benefit. You can use jump pads for an unexpected attack angle, you can put up barricades and defenses to block attackers. There's so much you can do within a match.
It has some flaws, but it's the most fun I've had in a shooter since some of the earlier battlefield games.
Prodeus, Chained Echoes, and Triangle Strategy were the big gems for me this year.
