Top Ten Games I played in 2023
I play a lot of video games, a lot of them good, a lot of them bad, and a ton of them are just kinda boring, but 2023 had a lot of great games that I truly enjoyed, so here are my favorites.
For those interested, I played 9/10 of these games here.
10. ASTLibra Revision
Starting off with an insane one. This game man. This game, of all the games I've ever claimed looked like the battlepass, is the most Battlepassian game of all time. You are a default RPGMaker avatar, fighting jpegs of giant ladybugs, in lands filled with stock backgrounds, listening to copyright free music. Whats the fuckin deal.
You would not believe how good the gameplay loop is. Every single Weapon, Shield, Armor, and Trinket in the game can be levelled, and when levelled, permanently grant you access to some form of passive skill you can use. So you spend a majority of the game bashing the local wildlife with whatever weapons you haven't Maxed yet, collecting their drops to use in random crafting recipes, and then going to the shop and purchasing every single piece of gear to use in the next area. The gear in the shop also requires item drops from specific enemies which also acts as a sort of grind / bounty mechanic, and I love to both grind and also find the most optimal, efficient way to grind. It's crazy how fueled by arbitrary rewards I am, but alas, I am. This game's gameplay loop is basically a sidescrolling ARPG, but it feels like end game for the entire game. I spent 80 fucking hours playing this.
I had my complaints of course, primarily the story and dialogue, it's painfully obvious it was written and created by one person. A lot of jokes end up just being "Woah she's a Girl and She's Got Tits", which, alright whatever, the story was written over 10 years by one guy so I put in the effort to ignore it. But I will never forget one line of dialogue that really stuck with me, where in the POST-GAME CHAPTER, (this game is insanely long) one of the Girl Characters is trying to wake you up and literally says "If you don't get up, I'm going to sit on your face and fart". Like, every tit and ass reference prior to this I went "yea alright man whatever", but that line right there really sealed the deal on me reading any amount of dialogue the game had.
My one major take away from ASTLibra is despite how it looks and sounds, 20 hours in, it didn't faze me anymore. It's absolutely crazy what the human mind can adapt and get used to. I was killing stock images of baby penguins and acting like it was a normal thing, crazy stuff. Anyway, this game drip fed me one of the very few video game systems I get unironically addicted to, and as a result, I had a great time playing the game. What a fuckin game though. Really.
I wrote in much more depth on this game in a steam review here, if you're interested.
9. Tyko's Dying Together
A somewhat short Doom WAD with no shooting. In years past, I would spend many hours scouring Itchio for anything interesting that wasn't a Horror Game, which, believe me, it's hard to dodge all the Horror games on Itch. But what I would often find were these neat little art games, where there was certainly an idea present, and the game was almost like a test run of that idea. These kinds of games were always fun to just play through, enjoy the visuals and atmosphere they created, and just kinda vibe to what someone had made. It's really a beautiful thing to get to experience what someone else has created, their thoughts and visions playable through my computer screen. Tyko's Dying Together is the epitome of that feeling for me. It rules to just be in someone else's world, rough edges and all. I absolutely love the writing in this game, and everything this game does honestly, and the use of Stock Images for literally everything hits a very specific sense of nostalgia for me that I can't quite explain. Maybe it's because I exclusively played Counter Strike Condition Zero custom maps for all of middle school, who knows.
It's crazy how if you give me a killer aesthetic and atmosphere, and have an NPC say GO TAKE A PICTURE OF A GOBLIN, I will instantly respond with "Yes Queen" and happily do every meanile task you ask of me.
8. Quake - DWELL / RE:Mobilize
Obviously Quake is a classic, and for someone like me, who spent many years of my teens and early 20s playing competitive Team Fortress 2, it's maybe the greatest FPS game ever created. This year I delved into a couple of custom campaigns, and discovered just how committed, and fantastic the map creators in the scene are at what they do. It's truly a shame that the custom campaign makers of Quake are unable to legally monetize their creations, because, aside from the engine and the weapons, they're practically their own full fledged games. It's so sad that anyone making a boomer shooter these days has to do it in Unreal or Unity, when the perfect feeling of movement of the Quake Engine can never be topped. DWELL was a brutally difficult onslaught the entire way through, and with the addition of Ironwail, a newer fork of Quake, the limits that previously existed for maps are essentially gone. There are maps in DWELL with over 1000 enemies, practically the size of 3 vanilla quake maps, and my nearly 10 year old rig was running the game at a clean 300fps with no drops. The advancements are insane, and allow for far more creative freedom for the map makers. DWELL was truly a great re:reintroduction to the game, I had such a good time with it (despite complaining about my arms hurting after every fight), that I then a few months later played another custom campaign called RE:Mobilize.
RE:Mobilize was a bit shorter of a campaign, but had heavy emphasis on systems that don't exist in Vanilla Quake, specifically wallclimbable surfaces, a hookshot, and bouncy floors. Just these three simple additions to Quake added so much flavor and nuance it was insane, and as I played, I got more comfortable with the additions and started remembering to make use of them more and more, the playgrounds for fights became so much cooler when I remembered, "Oh I Can Hookshot That", or "Oh I Can Jump Off That". Sadly, I don't get to play as much Quake as I might like as I love to tense my arms too much when playing, and it genuinely wears me out after enough hours. I'm not really able to soothe my ego enough to play on Normal or yknow, not fully try my best to aim. I get so into Quake it's crazy, sometimes I don't even notice that moving my whole body when I jump around. It's a feeling that can't be matched when it comes to singleplayer FPS.
7. Maken X
For some reason, I can't even begin to explain why I loved this game so much. Maken X is a first person tank control game on a console with one stick. I'm not saying it's the first to do it (because I literally don't know), but it did the Metroid Prime Lock On mechanic 3 years before Metroid Prime came out. It was practically a brand new way to move around in a video game for me, and despite a somewhat short first playthrough, the movement got easier over time, as it always does with any game labelled as Clunky. When playing Maken X, even if the mechanics felt clunky at times, there was this very specific feeling, that I was truly playing something I had never experienced before, and regardless of anything else, that gives me enough reason to throw it in this list.
The visuals are absolutely gorgeous, and Kazuma Koneko's character and creature design is stunning. I was so in love with some of these designs that I went and purchased the Art Book that contains them all. It has so many ideas that would later be executed in games everyone knows and loves, and yet it remains a somewhat forgotten relic of Atlus' library. I guess that tends to be the case for many of the Dreamcast games though.
6. Siren
Siren is a game that feels incredibly scary until you know what's going on. I was constantly on edge during every first run through a mission, taking my time, carefully trying to avoid getting caught. But the second, third time? Now I know whats going on, time to send it. Siren has this incredibly cool knack for letting the player gameify the game, so to speak. The game calls for replaying Missions in order to uncover side-objectives and secrets you actually need in order to advance. Once you get a hang of how the Shibito work, their usual patrol routes, how far they can see and hear, you don't have to be as careful. In fact, in many cases, once I had successfully done a Mission, if I needed to go back in, I would exclusively look for full running routes through the area, as waiting around for the safest moment would often lead to the Shibito patrols having different timings later on in the Mission. It's almost like casually playing through the first section of a Metal Gear Solid game, and then immediately after completing that section, you restart and try to come up with a speedrun route, looking for any consistent, quick way through.
In the same vein as a Metal Gear Solid master toying with the enemy AI, you really form an understanding of what you can do around the Shibito, and as a direct result of learning how to manipulate the AI, or even just having a better understanding of the AI at all, you lose a bit of that original Fear that was instilled in you at the start of the game. As the mystery of how the enemies work disappates, you're just left with the objectives the game has for you. Whether intentional or not, I quite liked this back and forth while I played, not only was it a fun change of pace to casually first clear a few missions and then try to route the secondary mission, but it also was a nice way to catch my breath as I played. Almost like a Resident Evil save room. This back and forth went on for the entire playthrough, and especially kicked in on any stage where you're left defenseless. So many small pieces add up to make an incredibly unique and impactful game, it's hard to keep it all in mind. I absolutely adored the use of Real People for the character's faces, it was offputting at first (completely fine for a horror game of course) but I quickly grew to love it as it fits the aesthetic of game to such a tee. Oh, and I absolutely love the UI elements, so incredibly clean and sterile in what is otherwise a quite haunting game, you would expect the font to look like cryptic runes or something with how the story goes in this game, but instead you just have Microsoft Excel, and I think that's way cooler.
5. God Hand
This game kicks ass. I would be lying if I said this was the first time I had tried to play God Hand, I had tried in the years past and was just, in general, much worse at video games than I am now. I made it maybe 3 chapters in before I forgot to keep playing.
This time though, I was determined. And better yet, I was better, stronger, faster, and more mechanically trained now than I was then. Games still hard as fuck though, obviously. But you get used to the difficulty, you embrace it, you crave to be at Level Die, because if you aren't at Level Die, you're nothing but a coward and a fraud. Grovelling is for suckers who can't dodge.
The interesting thing about Character Action Games to me is that I can never fully tell what is and isn't emergent gameplay. Was all of this insane shit always intended, thought out and planned to fruition? Or were the tools merely created, without the full picture of just how important they would become? I think about this often when I watch any number of COMBO MAD videos, but man, it's crazy to think they knew God Hand would play and look how it does when placed in the hands of a true master. I'm barely anything in comparison to those giants.
I digress, God Hand gets a lot of praise and respect these days and it's 100% deserved, I think more games should intend on making me sweat. And I don't mean that figuratively, every play session of God Hand there would come a time where I had to spend 20 minutes kicking ass and getting my ego checked, and by the end of it I would genuinely be sweating and my arms would be shot. Maybe I was mashing too hard. Who knows. God Hand fucking rules.
4. Ridge Racer R4
Everyone probably knows R4, or at the very least knows some songs from R4, it's one of the craziest soundtracks ever made for a game. I had played a fair bit of Ridge Racer 7 on the ps3 before I finally delved into R4, and it holds up. So fucking well. What I discovered in my playing is that Ridge Racer 7 is essentially the final evolution for the Ridge Racer series, it's as arcadey as an arcade racing game can get. You quite literally drift in and out of corners like you're on a fixed track, and that's great, no hate. But Ridge Racer R4 is exceedingly grounded in comparison. The most you get is a tight little drift if you really push it. The driving feels incredibly good and feels better and better the more familiar you get with the tuning of each car.
What shocked me most though, was that the story told in each difficulty was genuinely interesting, and good. There's a better story in R4 than some full singleplayer games I've played. Enki Gilbert is one of my favorite characters in any video game ever, and they manage to do this with 3 or 4 sentences after every race. I still don't know for sure if the Enki I got in my playthrough is the same type of Enki everyone else gets, though. For the first couple of races I was still getting used to the car and could only finish in 2nd or 3rd, with an occasional 1st. That lead to Enki hitting me with post-race messages like "C'mon son, you Have to be better. You know it just as much as I do, 2nd doesn't cut it." Those messages hit in a way that I can't quite express, but they felt so real. I can only hope someone else out there had the same experience I did racing for Solvalou.
As an aside, I recently discovered theres a secret extra song on the R4 soundtrack, except it never made an appearance until it was silently added to a newer Namco game, Go Vacation. Who knows why they decided to hide what is maybe the best R4 track from us for so long, but I'm glad they put it somewhere.
God bless Love Maze.
3. Mushihimesama Futari (God Mode)
Some would say it's one of the greatest shmups ever made, and it's the only shmup I believe I have enough time in to agree. Before Futari, I loved the idea of dedicating hours of practice to a shmup, learning a run, really pushing for a 1 credit clear or a high score I could be proud to say I had achieved. But despite dropping 30 hours in games here and there, nothing ever really stuck. I felt like I was cursed to wander around in the genre, never finding a game that truly called to me. A lot of shmup players get clears in just about everything, but everyone seems to have "Their Game", the one they know like the back of their hand, the one that makes their ears perk up at the sheer mention of it's name. I never had that, until I played Futari. Specifically Futari Black Label, and even more specifically, God Mode.
God Mode was the perfect balance of Harder Than Anything I Had Played Before but not Ultra Difficulty Hard. The moment I jokingly started up God Mode, everything felt doable, like it was a realistic enough idea to me that I could clear it. What spawned from that feeling was hours, days, and two or three weeks of really pushing myself to learn the run. There was a feeling I had never felt before for this game. An almost addiction like feeling, where every failure truly hurt. I was completely unfamiliar with this feeling at the time, despite my years of playing competitive TF2 and going to melee locals, but I imagine that my peers in those competitive scenes are all too familiar with this feeling. What's funny is that now, even casually, I can easily skyrocket past my first clear's score, the amount of nuance in the scoring system, and the amount of ways you can route and improv specific spots to play around the scoring system, makes it this almost free flowing experience once you truly wrap your head around it. It's a game that gets deeper and more enjoyable to play the more you understand and know it. That could easily be said for numerous other shmups, but I haven't gotten enough time in them yet. Maybe Battle Garegga will be that game this year.
2. Cruelty Squad
I truly won't know if this was the intention or not, but Cruelty Squad's message in my eyes is about how, when exposed to something long enough, your brain does a fantastic job of getting used to it. With Cruelty Squad, the entire game is about hyper violence and sludge, every level is beaming with putrid textures and sounds and music. The first 2 hours of Cruelty Squad gave me a headache, by 20 hours in, it was completely and utterly normal to me. I had adapted to the hyperviolence and embraced it, even. The sludge and disonant sounds had no effect on me anymore. All I Cared About Was Fishing, and the Stock Market.
Cruelty Squad is an incredibly interesting game to me. It's set up to be played like Hitman, but it has so many secrets and goodies hiding away that my first objective was never to Kill The Guy, it was to explore every crevice of every map. It's a game that begs you to explore and find all of it's deranged secrets, and it wants to punish you for doing so at the same time. Exploring the depths of Cruelty Squad feels a bit like reading the wiki for an unsolved murder, everything in your body is telling you you're doing something wrong, but curiousity takes your body hostage as you continue your trek down a road you can't recover from. I was obsessed with this game for a good handful of days while I played. I developed strategies for fishing in this game that were completely undocumented online, and then I caught every fish in the game. I was so used to the Nightmare Hell that this game is, it's genuinely jarring to open the game up now, months later. My body washed off the scent of Cruelty Squad already, but I desperately want to dive back into the sludge soon.
1. Void Stranger
Let me explain how I found out about Void Stranger to you. I was 5 days into a different game that I simply wasn't enjoying anymore, and for the first time in half a year, decided to check Steam for new releases. Void Stranger was there at the top, almost begging me to check it out. I had no previous experience with the System Erasure, the creators of the game, despite my Shmup Arc I hadn't even gone near ZeroRanger yet. This game wasn't even a genre I actively enjoyed or sought after. But I saw the trailer, heard the music, and knew there had to be more than a simple sokoban. Hell, even the trailer had some immediate hints to everything I ever dream of being in a puzzle game.
There is so much I want to discuss about this game. So much I want to explain and excitedly write every single detail of what makes this game special. I want to explain exactly what happens and why and how amazing it is to finally, fully comprehend every inch of the story and what it Means To Me, but I'm going to save it for another post. If there's any game that deserves it's own incredibly in-depth analysis, I think Void Stranger is it. I don't know if I'll be the one to be detailed enough, but this game Altered My Brain, and I've learned that the only way to find out, is to try.
What I can say for now is that once I started playing this game, it never left my mind after. I was accidentally putting in 8 hours a sitting, multiple days in a row, thinking about the game when I fell asleep, thinking about it when I woke up, dreaming about this game, until I had seen all I believed I was going to be able to see. After putting in basically a whole work week, 60 hours in 5-6 days, I was left satisfied with everything I had found and discovered.
Call it recency bias if you want, but after I first played Environmental Station Alpha, I instantly thought it was one of the best games I had ever played, and I still consider it so. Void Stranger is one of the greatest games I have ever played, and will ever play. Explaining the reasons why would spoil the reasons why, but even just the story alone left such an emotional impact on me, that months later I'm still thinking about it. I will be thinking about and mentioning Void Stranger whererever applicable for the rest of my life.