Top Games of 2023

It's been another incredible year of games. I haven't had time to play everything I've wanted to. There's been a few games that likely have made my top 10 of all time. There's a few I haven't played, that will likely make that list as well. 

Zelda Tears of the Kingdom have changed the sandbox game. No longer can Rockstar or Bethesda phone in their open worlds.  

Balders Gate 3 has moved the line of what a Dungeons and Dragons based RPG should be. 

And Resident Evil 4 Remake is a masterclass in pacing. 

I played many games this year. I'll rank them all. Remember, these are games that I played this year, not necessarily games that came out in 2023. 

The Backlot

29. Resident Evil 6 (Steam Deck): This is still one of the worst games I've ever played. I have maybe 3 hours before I can officially say I've beaten it and it's taking every ounce of will to get through it. 

28. Cruelty Squad (PC): Cruelty Squad is a great concept that ultimately doesn't work because the goals and systems are too obtuse without going to online guides.

27. Mario Vs Rabbids 2: Sparks of Hope (Switch): There's a lot that I liked in Mario vs Rabbids 2, but the overworld maps were confusing to navigate and ultimately took too long to get from fight to fight. 

26. Army Men Air Assault (PS1): I found a pristine copy of this game at a flea market and it's still a lot of fun to play. This could be a really fun indie concept. 

25. Bust a Move 2 (PS1): This is still one of my favorite puzzle games of all time. The progression saving isn't the best. You essentially start over anytime you boot the game up. But the gameplay loop is addictive and quick. 

24. Blue Dragon (Xbox 360): Blue Dragon was Microsoft's attempt to win over some of the Japanese market (along with Lost Odyssey). It's charming to go back to a JRPG done in the same way as some of the PS1 Final Fantasies, but updated mechanics. 

23. Quake 4 (Steam Deck): All of the Quakes got an update this year. I played Quake 4 incessantly during the PS1 era. It doesn't hold up as much as Quake 1 or 2. This is a game locked into a PS1 mindset that's hard to ignore with modern shooters.

22. Death Stranding (PC): I was intrigued by the story in Death Stranding, but the long periods of walking with packages on your back really killed my momentum on this game. 

21. Deep Rock Galactic (PC): Deep Rock Galactic is a ton of fun with a crew. It feels somewhat unfinished. The controls a little loose. Some really small changes would move this on up the list. 

20. Far Cry 6 (PS5): There's some really interesting stuff in Far Cry 6. The story in particular is an entertaining one. However, the Ubisoft check box map gets in the way of this being a classic. There's just too much map with too many dots on it. And the Stranger Things mission being integrated right into the middle of it doesn't really work. I was annoyed that I was locked into this 3 hour mission. 

19. Sonic Frontiers: Sonic was meditative, the ultimate Podcast Game. It reminded me of the PS2 platformers where you had to find all of the letters or tapes or whatever in the level. That being said, the combat was too unfocused. In the heat of a fight, I didn't have time to think about the button combos to actually do anything and end up button mashing. 

18. Slayers X: Slayers X is one of the first "Boomer Shooters" I played. It does an OK job. There are some levels that remind me of Duke Nukem 3D, but it leans a little too far into the Mountain Dew extreme dude from the 90s. 

17. Super Mario Bros Wii-U Deluxe: I revisited this as a multiplayer game. It's incredibly complicated to play some of these levels with 4 people and using a single Joy-Con, but it was fun. Just make sure you aren't with anyone who takes it too seriously. 

16. Diablo 4: I was really excited for Diablo 4. Diablo 3 eventually became a really fun game and I assumed Diablo 4 would launch with some of those lessons learned. There's just something missing here. The map is essentially a bunch of hallways with few wide open areas. Those wide open areas made Diablo 2 feel special every time you left town. The hallways sort of force you to the things the devs want you to see. 

15. Returnal: Returnal by yourself loses the fun fairly quickly. It's a 3D Roguelike that doesn't change up one play thought to another enough. It's the same 15 rooms just re-arranged. But with someone on the couch passing a controller, this is a blast.  

14.  Last of Us 2: This game unfortunately came out at the beginning of the pandemic and is likely one of the saddest stories ever told in video games. I returned having some autonomy from Covid prison. It's still brutal and unwavering and the pacing isn't quite right. Long stretches of nothing but exploration followed by long stretches of combat.  

13. Mario Bowsers Fury: This was a very interesting experiment. Imagine an open world Mario game that plays like Mario 64 or Sunshine, but every now and then Bowser shows up to wreck things and you have to fight him off while navigating 3D areas in the world. 

12. Firewatch: I've not gotten far enough in Firewatch to move this up into the top 10, but I'm loving how natural the characters seem. I know I'm headed for just extreme sadness, this has all the trappings of one of those, but the journey there is compelling and I'm willing to go along with it. 

11. Doom 64: What a treat Doom 64 is. It's rooted in the mid-90s level design, but is a completely different experience than Doom 2. It was like discovering a disk of WAD files I had never played. All enemies and sound effects were updated. 

10. Persona 5 Strikers (PS5)

Persona 5 Strikers is one of those Dynasty Warriors style games where hordes of enemies are thrown at you while you sort of swing your weapon around with reckless abandon, cutting through them. 

But, in between those sort of generic combat scenarios is a charming story with some of my favorite Persona characters about summer break. I had so much fun returning to my friends and can't wait to get further. 

9. Vampire Survivors (PC)

Vampire Survivors still has it's talons in me. We received 3 DLC packages in 2023 (and one in late 2022), and every time a new DLC comes out, I find myself playing "one more round" for several weeks. For a game that is a 30 minute loop, I've already spent 54 hours in the game and will likely put another 10-20 in this year as we just got an Among Us update. 

8. Hades (PC)

Hades is a blast. I don't know that I fell under it's spell as much as others, but I liked the gameplay loop. It's a classic, "Ehh, one more round" (Several of those games this year). 

You get finished with a run, instead of immediately turning off the game, you think to yourself, "Maybe I'll go talk to everyone and get my upgrades under control so I can jump back into the gameplay next time I play."

Then you talk to everyone and get a little treat of an upgrade, and lie to yourself saying, "I don't know if it saved after that, better play another round." And flash forward 90 minutes later and you've not made a ton of progress, but you've enjoyed seeing all the pretty colors. 

7. Cyberpunk 2077 (Steamdeck)

I stayed away from Cyberpunk for a while. I wasn't exactly the biggest fan of the Witcher 3 and all of the issues people were reporting just didn't seem worth it. It wasn't until I got a Steamdeck and wanted to get a game to really test it out. 

Cyberpunk is really good nowadays. It's a brutal world where humans are driving more toward machine everyday, but they somehow tell real human stories of loss, betrayal, and revenge. What's better is the NPCs don't have that sort of dead eyed Bethesda walking motion. When you walk into a club, it feels like everyone is living. When you walk down the street, you bump shoulders with characters. When you talk to people, they move their bodies and sometimes go about some of their tasks while talking to you. 

Some of the upgrades are unclear as to what they actually do. I've just been pumping most of my points into the same couple of paths hoping to eventually get some really cool abilities. 

6. Ghosts of Tsushima (PS5)

I don't know if I've ever played a game that feels like such a movie. Metal Gear Solid 5 is maybe as close as it's come. Ghosts of Tsushima may be my favorite aesthetic in any game ever. 

Sucker Punch perfectly captured what those old Samurai movies look and felt like. When you unsheathe your sword for a dual, it has a heaviness to it. When the cherry blossoms are captured in the wind, the camera swoops with them, creating a very fluid looking environment. 

The fortresses were challenging and fun. A modern take on the Far Cry base challenges. The side quests has interesting plot points and were more than just "get X of Y thing and bring it back" sort of filler. 

I 100% this game and can't wait for a sequel. 

5. Return to Monkey Island (PC)

Return to Monkey Island was such a nice treat. The comedy of the original series is all over this game. You're retreading some areas you've been to multiple times in other games, but they feel fresh. 

I love that the story is being told to Guybrush's kid by Guybrush Threepwood. It allows for some really charming embellishments by Guybrush, which feed into the comedy of the world. 

I enjoyed the 1990s adventure puzzles. Most of them were fairly logical, assuming you were willing to talk to everyone. Yeah, there were a few puzzles I got frustrated with, but I now had access to dozens of walkthroughs. 

The art style wasn't my favorite. Sort of blocky cell shading, but after a few hours, I stopped noticing it. 

4. Link's Awakening (Switch)

I didn't have reliable access to a Gameboy, so Links Awakening was just box art in my mind all these years. Nintendo did a fantastic job of modernizing this game. 

It's got beautifully bright cartoon style art work. 

The puzzles are logical for the world they are in. They are tough, but solvable.

The dungeons are well rounded. A good mixture of mazes and doubling back to open something teased to you before. The bosses are classic Zelda where they build on everything you learned (and gained) since the last boss. 

This is one of my favorite Zelda experiences I've ever had. Link's Awakening lives up there with Tears of the Kingdom and Wind Waker HD. 

3. Resident Evil 4 Remake (PS5)

I thought for sure I would tire of the Resident Evil Remakes at this point. It's the third one in about 5 years. But the RE Engine is proving to be an elastic tool that can be used for a wide range of activities. 

Resident Evil 4 Remake has some of the best pacing I've ever seen in a game. They feed you small skirmishes in between moments of peace and exploration and big set piece fights. 

Some areas have remained relatively unchanged. Some areas were completely removed or reworked, but the magic of the original Resident Evil 4 is in tact here. As someone that played Resident Evil 4 HD relatively recently, they've managed to make the game more fun and less of a grind. 

2. Baldur's Gate 3 (PC)

I loved the idea of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and can recognize why they are beloved games, but I always bounced off of them. It just took one really bad roll to complete throw me out of the game. 

Baldur's Gate 3 has capture the true tabletop feel. Bad rolls are not the end of your character, instead unlocking crazy results. For instance, I tried to get a forest witch to cure me of the brain parasite. She asked if she could kiss my eye. I let her, rolled terribly, and I lost all site in the eyeball. So my charismatic swashbuckler I built, now has a penalty to charisma, but a bonus to intimidation. 

In the older games, I would've save scummed this, but Baldur's Gate 3 makes you want to overcome these sort of set backs. 

Multiplayer should not work as well as it does either. Gathering a group of four people is some of the most fun I've had in a multiplayer game since Left 4 Dead. 

1. Zelda Tears of the Kingdom (Switch)

I hated Breath of the Wild. I had low expectations for the follow-up. But, as I'm a sucker for a hype train, I grabbed the new Zelda before a long plane ride and had my life changed. 

This game is easily in my top 10 of all time. I spent 180 hours in the world, completing most of the side puzzles. The main story was fantastic and had such a great twist. The weird Zelda NPCs populated the planet again. And there were actual dungeons again.

The tools given to you seem like things developers would normally be nervous about adding. Ascend, Ultrahand, Fuse are all tools that should break the game, yet the developers at Nintendo built rules around them and allowed you to use them anywhere you wanted. 

This game should be a buggy mess, but I didn't encounter a single bug during the game. The bar is raised (looking at Rockstar and Bethesda). The large open world has been evolved with Zelda (and Elden Ring last year).