Year In Review: 2023

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My yearly personal record of game notes. GOTY? Armored Core, and it’s not close. That being said, what a fucking year! Seriously, some excellent overall quality.

  • Dead Space (Remake) – [8]

    A great and faithful recreation. The additional backtracking quests mostly improve the experience – the Ishimura is now an impressively connected single level, rather than stages separated by loading screens. However, the new random encounters (while a necessary evil) occasionally skew towards being annoying.

  • Atomic Heart – [5]

    It's hard to give this game a higher score than this, although I kinda want to. I had a lot of fun in the middle... 50% of the game, where the open-ish world presents an interesting blend of stealth, frantic battles, and exploration; I loved finding those Portal-style testing chambers. That being said, the game just has too much wrong with it – a real lack of polish in everything but art direction. Banger soundtrack, though.

  • Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse – [6]

    Good to finally get to play this one. I really disliked Maiden of the Black Water (I didn't even get very far into it) but this game had a nice nostalgia hit that reminded me a lot of Fatal Frame 2, one of my favorite horror games of all time. Anyway, I had fun with Lunar Eclipse, even with the dated, clumsy controls. Honestly, my biggest complaint is that the story puts forth a lot of interesting horror concepts, but doesn't really follow through with any of them; and it's a little convoluted.

  • Resident Evil 4 (Remake) – [8]

    This is an interesting remake – unlike Dead Space, it's less faithful to the original, but there's more of a throughline here from modern Resident Evils; it feels like a natural progression from 7, 8, and the remakes of 2 and 3. It takes some surprising turns, playing with expectations for those that are all too familiar with the original. A couple small complaints – some of the voice acting misses the mark in my opinion – but overall, a confident, solid modernization.

  • Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – [9]

    I feel like I'm in an awkward position, because I gave BOTW a 10 – and this game, frankly, feels even better than BOTW in almost every way. But – despite that – I think the overall quality of this game highlights the few problems it does has all the more. Some annoying UI issues really grated on me by the end (I wish I could favorite consumables for easy sorting in combat – or when I just want to make a fucking campfire!). Repeating story cutscenes were annoying, and some of the VO was questionable at best. Finally, the handling of the Sage abilities is so clumsy for such an otherwise skillfully designed game – why not just hold down A to display a quick-select radial menu for their abilities? Chasing after them mid-combat is basically untenable.
    But, I mean, there's not a whole lot here to say that hasn't already said by others; this game is simply an excellent open world with a ton of interesting and creative mechanics. And what an improvement for bosses and music compared to BOTW!

  • Darkest Dungeon 2 – [5]

    A flawed but... interesting sequel? Look, I'm not sold on the whole Oregon Trail vibe, with the long stretches between events mostly just being dead air of a wagon rolling forward. It also takes painfully long to begin a run – lots of faffing about with the wagon and various menu screens and shit. Worse still, a single (probably unsuccessful) run in this (hard) game takes far too long from start to finish, and kinda goes against the whole “quick to pick up and play” vibe that you usually want from a roguelike. It wastes too much time, and that makes getting screwed by bad luck or bad play way, way too punishing.

  • Baldur's Gate 3 – [7]

    Rough around the edges – some unfortunate bugs and terrible UI/UX choices. But, BG3 does a pretty damn great job at recreating an actual D&D experience within the confines of a finite video game. I also very much appreciate the balance improvements that were attempted; reining in 5e's short/long rest issues and improving internal subclass balance goes a long way to making this an engaging experience for D&D veterans. Hopefully mod support will help smooth out some of the more annoying and tedious UX issues, like sorting items, swapping party members, etc.

  • Armored Core 6 – [10]

    I have some small quibbles – some of the weapons could use a buff, especially when compared to some of the more beastly configurations. But overall, this is an immediately satisfying, nearly perfect mech experience. It's simultaneously hard and easy – it all depends on your build - and almost every mech type has a time to shine. Allowing you to swap configurations on death while still keeping your checkpoint was a simple but genius design choice.

    UPDATE: Balance patches fixed my only major issue with this game. Went from 9 to a solid 10.

  • Bomb Rush Cyberfunk – [TBD]

    I played this for only a session, and it kinda got lost amidst other new releases and a busy IRL schedule. Early impression was middling, seemed kinda jank, but in sort of a charming way. Need to give it another fair shake.

  • Blasphemous 2 – [7]

    Good sequel. I like the three weapon system, although I feel like maybe there might be a few TOO many of those Metroidvania-style backtracking mechanics. The “locked in a room” fights are also intensely frustrating and require a bit of brute force memorization of enemy spawns, as often an enemy will spawn and immediately attack you with what may as well be unavoidable damage if you have no knowledge of what's coming. Who approved those double bell guys pincering you in MULTIPLE locked room challenges? I just want to talk. (I probably died to that enemy configuration more than anything else in the game, getting stunlocked by them in a corner – not cool).

  • Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways – [7]

    The inexpensive price point (only $10 for ~4-6 hours of solid content) bumps this a point or two in my book. Overall, a solid experience that's ripe for multiple replays and speed running. The story is strained at times to make the whole timeline between Leon and Ada actually work, and unfortunately the worst parts of the DLC are half-hearted ports of original RE4 encounters that were missing from the remake (drill trap, laser hallway, the missing boss fight, etc). But, it can stand on its own as some excellent supplemental content.

  • Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty – [8]

    “The game is fixed” - sorta! I still had several bugs in this playthrough, although the base game is undoubtedly better than it was at launch. For the DLC, I enjoyed the story (especially the endings!) and loved the compact Dogtown map, which was dense with great dystopian environment art. The lowpoint of this DLC was the side missions – each one has an interesting set-up, but their structure is almost always the same: get hired by an ostensibly good person for a job, but then, twist! Turns out they were hiding info from you, then supposed villain gives you an offer to betray/undermine your client, and finally you choose to side with either client or villain for quest completion. It wouldn't normally be that noticeable, but presuming you're doing all these missions together as you binge the DLC, the pattern becomes very obnoxious.

  • Alan Wake 2 – [9]

    This is probably more fairly an 8, but AW2 does a lot that I really appreciate. The game doesn't rush you into action and combat, it takes it time, and strings you along with a delightfully campy story that wears its inspirations on its sleeve. Game oozes style. My biggest fear is I might have to wait 13 more years to see its conclusion! On the other hand, the combat in this game can be tedious and frustrating – the general combat encounter loop is “cycle through light sources and weapons until everything is empty,” as even with upgrades, the reload speeds in this game are painfully slow, and enemies are constantly teleporting in your face. The penultimate encounter with waves of enemies was particularly sloppy, even with NPC help. This game would be a 10 for me if the combat was a little better paced; and also, to be fair, I did encounter a few frustrating bugs.

  • Lords of the Fallen – [6]

    A testament to how difficult it is to get the Souls formula juuuuust right. Everything about this game feels slightly off, like it's ~80% of the way there. And unlike a Souls game, many of my deaths in this game ultimately feel unfair, or didn't reward cautious/smart play. There's just something about compounding annoyances: enemies constantly hiding around corners (so frequent!), platforming sections, bosses with attack wind-ups that just feel wrong – it all adds up to just making the game feel like a slog.

  • Darktide: The Traitor Curse Update – [8]

    A solid improvement! With this, I think its safe to say the game is mostly “done” and in a very playable state. It's not perfect, but its a great, flavorful foray into the Warhammer 40k universe.

  • Pokemon Scarlet: Teal Mask + Indigo Disk – [8]

    Solid DLC – the terrarium is basically a giant free-roam Safari Zone, which felt a bit nostalgic. Lots of upgrades and things to do. Teal Mask is a little lackluster, but Indigo Disk is excellent, and the epilogue is a nice, silly, and short send-off for the game.