The Top 8 Games of 2023

Welcome all to another edition of The 8 Ball! This week I’m here to talk about the best games of 2023 that I actually played. 2023 was generally an uneven year for me, due to a lot of medical issues so I didn’t play a lot of the actual “big” games of the year. Games like: Baldur’s Gate 3, Lies of P, Alan Wake 2, Super Mario Bros. Wonder/RPG, Dead Space, Starfield, etc. Not saying that any of those games would have made it, but if I did play them this list might be different. Let’s begin:

#8: Armored Core 6

Armored Core 6 is low on this list, simply because I haven’t played a ton of it. I did the first 7 or 8 missions then got a bit overwhelmed with other games I had to play and kind of forgot about it. Still, what I appreciated about the game was that it was actually fluid, fast, and didn’t have a janky control scheme. I remember playing Armored Core 1 back on the PS1, which, due to its time, didn’t have an analog controller. So you moved around with the Dpad to move up/down and turn left and right. R1 and L1 were used to strafe either right or left and R2 and L2 were used to look up and down. If gamers tried to play something like that now, their heads would explode.

#7: Forspoken

By no means is Forspoken a “perfect” game, it has a lot of issues, mainly with regards to the story and the main character being extremely unlikable/dumb. However, as I finished Final Fantasy XVI I realized that Forspoken is what they were trying to do in that game, and failed at. Mainly, creating an action game that actually has a big open world for you to explore and a combat system that is fairly customizable and rewards experimentation. I’m really not saying Forspoken is for everyone and, and if I was in a different headspace when I played it, I might I have hated it. But it was the right game for the right time when I did play it and it puts a few, much bigger/more lauded games, to shame.

#6: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I’m really of two minds about TOTK. On the one hand, I actually have stuck with it much longer than I did with BOTW. I understand the mechanics better, the trial rooms are more interesting and I really dig the whole sky/land/underworld stuff, on the whole. On the other hand, pardon the pun (since Link is missing a hand), the big new system in the game: crafting stuff, is terrible. Like, I can’t even fathom how people are building death machines, tanks, AT-STs and more, since I find the basic item manipulation to be so cumbersome and a huge chore. I did try to recreate some laser-spewing box I saw in a video and it took me over 2 hours, because the sides of the box wouldn’t line up correctly, the lasers would occasionally be at wrong angles, etc. As a game, it’s pretty decent, but as a build/contraption maker, it’s terrible.

#5: Spider-Man 2

Something about this game oddly didn’t click with me, which you might have been able to tell from my earlier review. Technically speaking, it’s a great game, looks nice, quick load times, etc., but the story was just a bit lacking and honestly, I was underwhelmed by the gameplay. They reduced the scope of this game from the first Spider-Man, and it just felt like a longer version of Miles Morales. Also, it just seemed like the heart of the story was somehow missing and that a lot of the characters were acting in odd ways. I’m still excited for Wolverine and I did get the platinum trophy in this game so maybe the DLC will resonate with me more.

#4: Everspace 2

I don’t think any space combat game is ever going to surpass Freelancer but Everspace 2 comes damn close. Unlike the first game, Everspace 2 actually has a story and some stakes to it. Also, it’s not a roguelike, so when you die, you don’t just start fresh. Fighting enemy ships is a lot of fun, requiring you to take down shields, armor and then the hull to eventually destroy them. There’s a decent trading system in the game, letting you ferry items from one system to another and sell at a profit. It’s just an enjoyable game all around, and if you’re looking for a modern space game, it’s about the best one in the market.

#3: Remnant 2

This is pretty high on my list, only because I was able to play it start to finish with a good friend. If I was playing it solo, it wouldn’t make it at all, since I couldn’t even beat the first boss on my own. But with a friend? It’s a fantastic game and one of the best Soulslike games around. It really has a lot of the same fundamentals as the first Remnant game, however there is now a fairly dedicated melee class, which my friend loved, and the bosses are far better designed and less spongy. Also, it got a very nice visual bump up with a lot more varied biomes and levels to explore. Overall, this game was a total blast to play through and I look forward to more content so my friend and I can play even more of the game.

#2: Hogwarts Legacy

If I had played different stuff this year, I’m not sure Hogwarts would be this high or even on this list. That’s not to say that Hogwarts is bad but it does have some obvious issues. The biggest two being: you have way, WAY too many spells and the game itself being too big and stretched thin. If this had been a concise, 20-30 hour game it would have been perfect, but it instead feels like 100+ hour game where I am constantly getting so much new gear as to make it all seem worthless and not going to classes, as such, instead I’m just blowing up spiders in random caves and doing some bizarre magical Chao garden nonsense. They really should have just made “magical Bully”, and have stuff like going to classes actually mean something, but they tried to shoehorn in an “everything” game and it loses a lot. Still, I have enjoyed my time with it, even doing the 50+ Merlin trials, just to increase my stupid item inventory.

#1: Resident Evil 4

I played through this game almost three times, that’s how good it was. First time, just to beat it. Second time, to unlock the Handcannon, and almost the third time using the Handcannon to decimate everything I came across. The remake managed to correct a few glaring annoyances of the original game, like the stupid boulder-running QTE, the health bar of Ashley is gone, and they made the knife actually effective. The only real problem with the game is the stupid arcade minigame/keychain system, since some of those things were really overpowered but it was semi-random of the items you could get. Still, RE4 Remake stands tall with the likes of Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Demon’s Souls as some of the best remakes and games of this generation.

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For comments, list which were your favorite games of the year and why.

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Top 8 Most Anticipated Games of 2024