This is a list of the video games I finished in 2023, regardless of when they came out.
- Dec 2022
- Observation
- January
- Final Fantasy XIII
- February
- Final Fantasy XIII-2
- Adios
- March
- F.I.S.T: Forget in Shadow Torch
- April
- Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
- Tomb Raider (2013)
- Rise of the Tomb Raider
- Fortnite - Mega City
- May
- June
- Vermintide 2
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider
- Gunfire Reborn - Artisan and Magician DLC
- July
- My House.WAD
- Street Fighter VI - World Tour mode
- August
- Quake 2
- Mass Effect
- Ghostwire: Tokyo
- September
- October
- Path of Exile
- Resident Evil 3 (ps1)
- November
- Go-vember! Racing Games - clears of Cruis'n USA, Mario Kart 64, Snowboard Kids 2, and Diddy Kong Racing
- Super Mario Wonder
- Risk of Rain Returns
- Honorable Mentions
- Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
- Against the Storm
- Guilty Gear Strive
- Baldur's Gate 3
I take a little bit of time to talk about each of them after the break! Long post ahead.
Observation
A polished indie sci-fi thriller where you play as a space station's friendly AI assistant. It gets weird, complimentary. It has puzzles but they mostly involve interacting with some novel technology interface on the station; more of something used for pacing effect than a test of your logic. A friend of mine watched me play this game while high and it was apparently quite the transcendent experience.
The Final Fantasy XIII Trilogy
Final Fantasy XIII (January), Final Fantasy XIII-2 (February), and Lightning Returns (April)
These are games about how much it sucks to be the pawn of power structures greater than you are, and the only way to be happy is to forge social bonds with other people in the same situation and fight the system. XIII was a risky game to make and a rough one to play. I think what it wants to do is not take for granted the idea that your world-saving adventuring party is automatically going to be friends just because they ultimately want the same thing. The playable cast are mean to each other in the early parts of the story, which combines with non-chronological scenes and some occasionally difficult combat encounters (eidolons) makes it a tough game to get into until the whole story is mostly over. There's also some quality-of-life problems that make the more-open areas difficult to navigate (which way is north?); the whole "adventuring" part of the adventure is kind of a pain. If you're interested in the trilogy I would say it's worth playing, but you can skip the endgame.
If you want to play this trilogy, you want to play it for XIII-2 and Lightning Returns, which are both just delightfully weird games. The pitch is "what if we took the world and characters of this Final Fantasy game and sent them all on a collision course with the inevitable end of everything?" There's a fun adventure to be had on the way to be sure--XIII-2 has a better-realized version of the original's real-time combat system and silly time travel nonsense, and Lightning Returns has a round-the-clock time management challenge that will keep you sweating to finish all the quests on your list. You might even think the recasting of Lightning from stoic soldier to servant of the goddess of death and chaos kinda contradicts the first game, which could be read as emphasizing worldly bonds between people over gods and worship. It's weird! There's definitely something bizarre and ungrounded about it. But as a complete work, you get to see these familiar characters try to deal with their troubles and fight for some kind of peace for their souls before the world ceases to exist. It's not always coherent but in troubling times like our it brings some comfort.
Aside: every game in this trilogy has a quality where battles can end up stretched over a very long period of time (like 20 minutes) if you don't figure out a particular strategy. I think this is because there's a lot of phase-based mechanics where being overly cautious means you barely get to do damage during the designated opening, and being too aggressive gets you wiped. I have no idea how much of this could be fixed by my playing fights differently or a modification that tunes the timings of fights, but it was a common enough bad feeling that it deserves mention.
Adios
Somber, short indie drama about an old man and crimes. It made me cry. I know folks who would love this game.
F.I.S.T: Forged in Shadow Torch
This platformer by Shanghai-based developer TiGames is a solid B-game that I think, unfortunately, might get forgotten in a few years. I do want to keep trying games from Chinese studios. Recommended mostly for fans of Shadow Complex and scruffy rabbits.
Tomb Raider 2013-2018 trilogy
Tomb Raider (2013) is a linear AAA action game that doesn't want to waste your time. It's not too bad for what it is! The pacing is good and the beautiful environments are fairly satisfying to move around in, even though none of the platforming is that demanding. The combat is decent, though it feels tonally weird to fight so brutally. That tonal weirdness is often remarked upon by game critics and I don't think this trilogy ever really resolves that. You've got to accept that Tomb Raider exists in a heightened parallel reality where the over-the-top violence is necessary for a random archaeologist to know.
Rise of the Tomb Raider, however, totally whips. The kind of action Lara gets up to feels less weird in this story with Lara being more confident and her adversaries being more obviously an organized, sinister group. I think of it as being a little bit like the Metal Gear series in tone. The survival elements the game introduced were alright, but the combat works well enough, and I love the puzzle tombs and the family drama.
That all brings us to the finale, Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Rise and Shadow are both graphical showcases, and the lush green South American landscapes are honestly a breathtaking achievement. There's some weirdness to the story premise and the game's pacing that is never quite resolved. The highlight is definitely the natural scenery and puzzle tombs, but most of the upgrades you get just help you in combat which is neither frequent nor difficult enough for them to feel rewarding. It is great to see daily life in Paititi but I can't pretend that seeing it from the perspective of a skinny British avatar of destruction isn't super awkward. Despite all this it's an acceptable end to the story arc of this Lara, and I can say that I'm a fan of Tomb Raider despite the problems it has.
I played a lot of Fortnite again
Fortnite is my junk food game. I just want a shooting game that is nice to look at and doesn't make me sweat too much. I am apparently willing to put up with a lot of advertising, product placement, throw-away content, in-app purchase pressure, and general market-force cringe in order to get that. The fact that I can be characters like Axo, Thunder, or Azuki does help--a lot. Having said all this, I think this wasn't a great year for Fortnite because of that stupid jungle biome present from June until November. There is room for debate as to whether I am engaging with this game through a layer of irony armor (bad) or just accept that I should not take it too seriously (good).
Get ready for 2024 when Fortnite builds off its fake-Valheim, fake-Rock Band, and Rocket Racing to become the platform of the metavorse (gag).
Warhammer: Vermintide 2, the sequel to Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide, including the downloadable content Warhammer: Vermintide 2 – Karak Azgaraz, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 – A Treacherous Adventure, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 – Chaos Wastes, and Warhammer: Vermintide 2 – Back to Ubersreik
It's fine.
Gunfire Reborn - Artisan and Magician DLC
Possibly the coolest owl in video games? Still lots of fun. Recommended if you can play in a group.
My House.WAD
An excellent horror experience built in the GZDoom engine, enjoyable by anybody who has played a little bit of Doom in the past. Without spoiling too much, it involves exploring a house that seems to react to your presence within it and digging into its secrets. Lots of creative uses of lo-fi graphics tech to illustrate memorable places from the real world.
Street Fighter 6 - World Tour
Street Fighter 6 is pretty slick; a great return to form for the series with an incredible sense of style and control options for anyone to enjoy a good fight. The game's single player campaign, World Tour mode, isn't a revelation but it is a fun way to explore the Street Fighter world and have fun hanging out with the weird cast of SF, while building up your confidence in your fighting techniques. I did mostly finish it just so I could say I finished it.
Quake 2
Look. The remaster is great. The 1997 campaign is fine, but in my humble opinion this version is worth getting just for playing through the new Call of the Machine campaign. I'm not sure what else to say outside of platitudes like "Quake 2 is the most Quake 2 game there is." Maybe the best classic-style, frantic FPS where you can jump around a lot? Well, I dunno, Dusk was pretty good.
Mass Effect
It's a fairly compelling sci-fi adventure with janky combat mechanics and pretty terrible side quests anywhere outside the Citadel. Worth playing to set up the trilogy but you don't have to linger. I do plan on playing the other two eventually, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet!
Ghostwire: Tokyo
This game does have the slight honor of being the first game I played through with text and audio both in French... but I can't say it's that much of an accomplishment. It turns out AAA games are designed such that you don't really have to read much, anyway. Anyway, there were two possibilities for this game that would have satisfied me: one was a genuinely haunting ghost story in imaginative environments, and the other was a tense survival game that unfolds into over-the-top action in the tradition of Resident Evil. I didn't really get either; my experience was this as a rote open world "gamer chores" game that succeeded in keeping me busy but didn't leave a lasting impression. In fact, I almost forgot to put it in this list. While there are some cool visual ideas here with the thread-twisting spells, it just didn't add up to me in the end.
Path of Exile
It's true, this ARPG is savagely addictive and could have negatively affected my life if it didn't have a proper ending! I will say that going through the crunch of making a build, collecting the appropriate gear, and trying to complete parts of the end game made this much more satisfying that following somebody else's build guide to the letter and trading for ideal equipment. It's not a "tactical" game to play but it's not completely mindless either. Is it dangerous to play a game with such an intricate, multi-layered loot machine? Yes. Player discretion advised.
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis
This was a replay. If I were to be spicy I would say that everything in this game is more interesting than its 2020 counterpart except its character dialog. Yet I would be insane to suggest people play the slow ps1 game with tank controls, right? Well, if you like puzzles, atmosphere, and the possibility of being stalked by a hulking, stomping mutant, this is the one. (Though I did find a lot to like in both games!)
Go-vember Racing Games
This year, I played many arcade-style and kart racing games in the month of November. I've collected my thoughts on them elsewhere, and I'll post them to Cohost before too long.
Super Mario Wonder
It's good! Having a basic set of controls that feel good and a lot of imagination packed into every single level makes for a pretty good time! I ended up earning 5 out of 6 ribbons because I am NOT doing that final bonus level. It is awful and I refuse.
Risk of Rain Returns
I am very glad there's a better way to experience the original Risk of Rain now! I've played through this many times with different characters and enjoyed it, but it's very much within my comfort zone so I don't have a lot of insight to impart.
Against The Storm
Super satisfying, super fun, and strangely calming considering the post-apocalyptic qualities of its setting. Might write more about it later since it has escaped early access now.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Honestly, I don't know if I'm getting any more out of this than I would have gotten from another Breath of the Wild playthrough. It shares a lot of that game's strengths and weaknesses except there's kinda-janky video game physics that you can glue together. The wonder of slowly moving through this world is just weaker the second time around. The challenge-vs-reward you get for solving puzzles or dealing with enemy encounters feels completely out of whack, little interactions with most NPCs feel tedious, and my heart completely broke when I realized that anything I build in the world would not remain there if I saved and loaded my game. And every shrine still uses one tileset! How did they fumble that? I will probably still try to finish it on the off chance that there is some great bit of story or good creatures, but I didn't feel the "Nintendo magic" with this one.
Guilty Gear Strive
This didn't come out this year, nor was this the first year I played it, but I watch a lot of matches when I'm trying to fall asleep. I feel like this game has an infectious positivity with characters getting over past troubles, moving on with their lives, and striving to be their best selves. This was probably at its peak in 2022 when you saw the triumphant return of Bridget and Testament being explicitly non-cis, but even today we've got characters saying things like "I'm revolting against my old self to find a new me!" It's joyous! Being happily queer is a part of your shonen fighting anime now. Anyways, Asuka is the wackiest experiment of a fighting game character I've seen in quite a long time and I often listen to "The Circle" on repeat.
Baldur's Gate 3
I started a playthrough with a party of 4 on release day, still going. This has gotten a lot of praise already so I'm just here to tell you that it's well-deserved. In the past I haven't gotten along well with the Forgotten Realms as a setting. I've seen it as a kind of workman-like, general-purpose fantasy world that gives players basically nothing interesting to do if you stick too closely to established canon. (Some time dabbling in Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition, a version of the 1998 game, reflected these feelings.) Baldur's Gate 3 single-handed changed my mind about that. It's got vivid characters, cleverly written factions, and some outright creepy or disgusting monsters. I already thought that 2017's Divinity: Original Sin II was one of the best big CRPGs ever made, but it had some idiosyncrasies to its combat system around armor and crowd control effects. I think the more familiar combat of BG3 and the added cinematic flair to its cutscenes will win a lot of people over. In both cases, tactical combat is fun as heck, and Larian has a real knack for setting up significant encounters with varied terrain and other twists to make sure none of them feel too familiar.
If I were to offer criticism, it's that this game has hella jank (compared to more structured tactics games or JRPGs, for example) and that the writing is probably stronger in scenes and chapters rather than the overarching storyline. Would you believe me if I told you that there are multiple factions, each represented by a charismatic individual, who are fighting for control over a macguffin that could change the fate of the world, and only you, the player, can determine how their conflict will end? To me that's less interesting than (minor act 1 spoiler) "should you help a woman who has entered into a bargain with a terrifying creature to revive a lost love, just because you think she is being exploited?"or "What is Asterion's deal, is he hot for me or not?" But this isn't a fatal problem, and I haven't seen the different ways it could resolve anyways.
Games like Baldur's Gate 3 are an anomaly--they are huge, expensive, rely on deep cuts into an existing IP, and are only really possible because of a string of multiple successes for at least a decade. (Not to mention funding for the game came from Wizards of the Coast, which means it indirectly has some of that Magic: the Gathering money. MtG is a fun game and a terrible product.) We should appreciate it as an exception instead of the new minimum bar of quality for video games.
But if there is one thing I want future CRPGs to take away from BG3, it's the ability for allies who are adjacent to each other in turn order to take their actions together, including in multiplayer. Share your turns! It really keeps the pace of play up.