Shoddy PC ports aside, 2023 has already been an amazing year for gaming.

This year started off not so great and has had some lows alongside its great highs. Several live service games shutting down early this year, Suicide Squad game being a generic looter shooter, Redfall being okay but buggy, Forspoken being not great, LOTR-Gollum being not fun to play.

People in general have soured a little on microtransaction filled live service games. Established IP-driven games will likely still succeed and rake in tons, but people will be wary about new IPs tied to live-service games that can disappear in a heartbeat.

Sorry if this is me being a negative Nancy, I am looking forward to what's coming next but I figure I should remind people this very recent history.

I guess I am just happy as we got some bangers like BG3 ,Zelda Tears of the kingdom and FFXVI this year. Also Starfield and Spiderman 2 really excites me. But yeah this has seen its fair share of shitty releases and scummy practices.
- speaking of ffxvi, how does it compare to ffxv?
- Hey, it is a great year for games and you are absolutely fine to be excited about it! Like you say there a lot of highs but I'm trying to keep things within realistic context.
I know its highly unrealistic, but I think the one thing I want above all else from the gaming industry is for studios, publishers etc. to keep quiet about upcoming releases until they have a finished or nearly finished product all set. That way the release date can, yknow, be the actual release date.
- Only time companies tend to do that is for game remasters/ports.
several live service games shut down

Another positive thing to happen this year in gaming!

We're finally out of the COVID dev lull! Or at least, we're currently in the window that all big games got delayed to. Lol

Putin fucked it up for the one title I've been waiting over a decade for. And it got delayed until next year. Again.

I'll say! I finally got around to Elden Ring, and it's everything I could have hoped for in an open-world Souls game. It lives up to the hype for sure.

Anything particular that stands out for you? I'm itching to get my hands on Baldurs Gate 3.

I am really looking forward to Starfield, I am a sucker for everything space. I also really wanna try out BG3 but a bit intimidated as I have never played a CRPG.
- It's very accessible compared to other cRPGs. D&D 5e was already designed to be beginner-friendly, and Larian just made it more beginner-friendly while also making one of the most open-ended games I can think of.
Hi-Fi Rush and more recently, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk have been a few other standouts for me, especially Hi-Fi Rush, absolutely phenomenal game

I mean, it's hard to ignore the "Shoddy PC ports" when it's your main platform and if that applies to you, and you mostly play big budget games, well so far, this year has mostly been fucking awful.

Being a Mac user, this year is indeed a good year.

I’ve been a very longtime WoW player but couldn’t stand the game anymore. I dropped it after a few months of Classic WOTLK (my personal fav) both out of boredom and because Blizzard contempt for macOS users

Finding a game that I love and runs natively wasn’t easy but it finally happened. I never was an hardcore gamer (except maybe in the early days of WoW) so I never felt the need to get a dedicated PC (I had a PC but it only ran macOS and Manjaro)

I’m currently playing Metro Exodus and BG3 (which I absolutely love even in EA). I also bought REV, NMS and Cliff Empire, but they weren’t for me.

The other game changer is Game Porting ToolKit which allows me to test a whole bunch of Windows only games thanks to a friend who added me to its Steam family.

Most of the games run smoothly enough for me (60FPS) so I guess the times I was thinking about buying a gaming rig are over. This money will go in some overpriced Mac option.

Anyway, I never spent that much money in video games. It definitely must be a sign.

Which Mac are you running on? I haven't gone through the game porting kit setup yet because it seemed like a real pain in the ass and I want confident the performance would be worth it in the end on my m2pro
- I got a 30 GPU cores M2 Max running the Public Beta of macOS Sonoma.
  
  I just installed Whisky and followed the guide.
  
  After that I just created a bottle and run Steam.exe which I then use as an installer and launcher. Super easy to use.
  
  Not every game is working OOTB yet, but I guess it’s a matter of updates. I didn’t dig too much for that reason.
  
  One weird thing I noticed is that CyberPunk is capped at about 30 FPS, no matter the settings.

The only thing I have been satisfied with is Baldur's Gate 3 and I lost interest before I completed Act 3. I'm so immensely fucking pissed off with Armored Core 6 right now that I'm considering uninstalling.
It's not that it's bad. It's actually a really well-made game. But it's fucking FromSoft, and it's their "games aren't shit unless they're infuriatingly hard" bullshit they've always been on.
I don't know what I was expecting. I beat Elden Ring and the bosses weren't on this level of nonsense.
And with the news that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 just got pushed back AGAIN, I'm not having a good year in gaming, no.
I need Starfield to be good or I walk away from gaming altogether until next year. It's getting to be not worth it anymore to me.

Mortal Kombat 1 and Mega Man X DIVE. Yeah that's my September plan

Mine is defo Starfield, MK1 when it gets a bit cheaper I guess.

What has been released this year that really got your motor running??

Street fighter 6, MK1, Baldurs gate, Re4 remake and Dead space remake,Hi fi rush, Spiderman 2 is coming up, Hogwarts legacy, I am also really looking forward to Starfield and Phantom liberty. Almost forgot Armored core VI and FFXVI.