2023 has been an interesting year for gaming. Now that the year is almost halfway through and our big June releases are out I’d like to discuss the best games you’ve played this year, but feel free to also mention your big disappointments this year.
Undoubtedly TOTK and RE:4R. Both amazing single player experiences but Zelda is really in a class of its own.
I know it’s a small title, but #PlanetOfLana is maybe the best game I’ve played this year so far.
Best:
- Hi-Fi Rush: Holy crap, I didn’t expect Shinji Mikami to make the best character action game since DMC3. From the soundtrack to the gameplay to the artstyle this game really stands out as something amazing.
- Pizza Tower: I’m gonna be honest, I missed the hype train for this game. I knew it was coming but I didn’t play any of the betas or follow the community, but once it released I was pleasantly surprised by its blazingly fast and addictive gameplay loop.
- RE4 Remake: I prefer the oldschool tank control RE games, but this is a pretty fantastic remake that stays pretty faithful to the original game.
- Dead Space Remake: GOATed. Reimagining the game as one giant open area instead of locked off mission zones really opens up the exploration aspect, and the random scares you’d run into while re-treading old environments caught me off guard every few hours.
- Street Fighter VI: I didn’t expect Capcom to hit it out of the park so hard. After the disaster of SFV leading to me quitting fighting games for a few years and eventually discovering Tekken/Guilty Gear I never thought I’d be back to playing good ol’ Street Fighter, but the systems are really well thought out and deceptively deep.
Disappointments:
- Diablo IV: I might be a little salty since it’s so recent but I’m not really jiving with D4 right now. The game feels like busy work, the scaling feels wrong and it just doesn’t have the QoL I expect from a billion dollar company. Maybe it’ll open up later, but with Path of Exile 2 around the corner I don’t need this game to be great.
- System Shock: The game is probably great. Issue is I bought it on Deck and the controller support is extremely half baked to the point where I am just going to shelve it until they update it.
- Last of Us 1 (Steam): It just doesn’t work.
How’s SFIV for someone that never played fighting games? Honestly interested in creating ng my own character and beat up random NPCs
SFVI you mean? Either way, I can’t really speak to it since I don’t engage with the single player stuff; I focus more on the competitive and social aspects.
That being said from what I’ve heard people really like World Tour, there’s a decent tutorial and training mode and the combo trials will help you learn what kind of things your character can do.
For me I have one game that actually fits both of these categories: Jedi Survivor. It’s the best game of the year in terms of story, gameplay, and lore for me personally as a Star Wars fan. However, it’s also the worst game of the year because it was rushed out the door and my PC can barely run it smoothly despite having a Ryzen 7 3700X and an RX 6800 XT.
