This article coming out on the same day as another wave of layoffs, this time from Bungie, is an excellent view on the state of gaming criticism. Even if it were the best year for the products (there are several titles in the article that are curious), it’s definitely one of the worst years for the people who work on them.
I hope the current wave of unionizing keeps manifesting and spreads to the gaming industry, because this situation is dire and it’s only getting worse.
Even if it were the best year for the products (there are several titles in the article that are curious), it’s definitely one of the worst years for the people who work on them.
For sure. As an armchair analyst, it seems to be the result of getting out of the era of cheap credit and VC money. I don’t expect it to get worse, but I do think live services and enormous open world games ran out of money spreading their customers across too many games.
Just wait until the Discord VC really starts to squeeze
I’m not sure the worst year is specific to game developers though, the whole world is under economic squeeze, take a look at the layoffs in the tech industry.
This is definitely a matter of opinion. There have only been three games this year that I have been excited about which hardly constitutes the best year for gaming in awhile.
It was only one for me, Baldur’s Gate 3.
So yeah, very much a matter of opinion.
Baldur’s Gate 3, Spider-Man 2, and Super Mario Wonder were mine.
You’re doing better than me! I’ve not seen anything this year that I even remotely thought about purchasing. I’m glad that some people are enjoying this year’s releases though. It’s always interesting to me that writers assume that almost everyone automatically loves every hyped game.
What are you into? A game I’m looking forward to is releasing tomorrow (October 31st) yet I only know of it because of Steam’s demo event. It’s called Jusant and I’ve heard absolutely no hype for it.
The games that I tried for the first time and enjoyed this year were:
- Circuit Superstars
- Mafia: Definitive Edition
- Uncharted: A Thief’s Legacy Collection
Then the games that I tried and didn’t like:
- Gotham Knights
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Spider-Man Remastered
Games that I would be excited about if they were announced/launched:
- Kingdom Come 2
- Uncharted: The Lost Legacy 2
- XCOM3
My all time favorites list that I keep coming back to is currently this:
- Age of Empires II
- American Truck Simulator
- Civilization V
- Endless Sky
- Euro Truck Simulator 2
- Farming Simulator
- Just Cause 3
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
- Rise of the Tomb Raider
- Stardew Valley
- Tachyon: The Fringe
- The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
- XCOM2
I can definitely see why you’ve struggled so much since the common factors between the games you didn’t like are the most rampant in the industry right now. I’ve tended to find myself in a similar situation and would only remove Spider-Man from the list of not liked. Because of constant push-backs, I’m honestly not sure what the release forecast looks like at this point because I’ve refused to play into the hype train for a while now.
In case you haven’t already tried them, based on your favourites list, I’d recommend taking a look at Satisfactory and Jusant. The first is Factorio but in 3D so it plays into some of what people like about Stardew, in my opinion and Jusant is an interesting blend of Journey and Shadow of the Colossus from what I’ve played so far. It also has a rare thing called a ‘demo’ on Steam so you can at least easily and freely give it a try.
I’m hoping to eventually find something that checks all the right boxes! In the meantime, I still find a few that I really like here and there, and old favorites are always fun!
I’ve definitely seen Satisfactory before, I’ve just never bought it. It looked like it could be interesting, I’ll have to look into it a bit more. Jusant I hadn’t heard of, but I’ll check it out. Thanks!
You’ve got RPGs and strategy/tactics games listed as some of your favorites, but Baldur’s Gate 3 never caught your eye? How about Starfield or Cyberpunk, or the early access game Dread Delusion? Given tactics games and an interest in MGS, you could check out the Metal Gear collection or Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (or Shadow Gambit’s developers’ previous games, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and Desperados III, which I think I like better than Shadow Gambit). There’s Wargroove 2, if you like the Advance Wars brand of tactics. It’s 2D, but given your interest in other space games, you could take a look at another early access game (not on Steam) Starsector that a friend of mine got really into.
There’s just so much out there this year that I’m not sure who’d be left unhappy.
Something like Baldur’s Gate 3 could be an enjoyable game for me, but unfortunately the world didn’t click. A friend is really into it and let me play for a while, and it just didn’t feel like a good fit. I ran into the same problem with both of the Divinity Original Sin games. I’ve never been a big fan of most fantasy settings for some reason, although I do enjoy some of them. Dread Delusion, Shadow Gambit and Wargroove 2 could fall into the same category, although I would have to watch some gameplay first. Some of the advance information on Starfield looked interesting at first, but gameplay footage I’ve watched hasn’t made me want to buy it. I would be more excited if things would be a bit more seamless. I got Cyberpunk on sale a while back and put about 10 hours into it before I quit. I can’t really put my finger on what it was, but I just wasn’t enjoying it. I haven’t played it since that point, so it may have changed for the better. I already have the Metal Gear Collection with MGS4 for PS3, so the PC port won’t be anything I’ll pick up until it goes on sale.
The two older games from Mimimi both look interesting. In fact, I did purchase Desperados III on a sale, I’ve just never downloaded it yet to play between XCOM runs!
I either never saw or overlooked Starsector, so I will have to look into that one a bit. Endless Sky is top down, so it sounds somewhat similar!
Thanks for all the suggestions!
Starsector is definitely a sleeper hit building a cult following. I wouldn’t have heard of it if not for a friend of mine. If fantasy settings don’t typically do it for you, you can encroach on a lot of things that people like about Divinity and BG3 in the Wasteland games. Wasteland 1 is an old RPG that’s almost a text adventure, but Wasteland 2 and 3 are pretty modern. Cyberpunk also got a huge revamp right before its latest expansion drop, so even the original game’s RPG systems and world systems work very differently now, and there’s a lot of positive buzz behind it (I haven’t gotten to it yet myself, but I liked the launch version).
For fantasy settings, definitely don’t play Wargroove for the story, but one thing I learned to enjoy about fantasy stuff is it can create a rock/paper/scissors of strengths and weaknesses of classes/races that you can’t quite hit in most believable sci-fi settings. I never got far into Divinity, but one thing that really worked for me in BG3, apart from its production value, is that it doesn’t just bombard you with lore. It gives you the bare minimum setup you need to get going, and then it diagetically fills you in on the larger world as you go, with dialogue that doesn’t feel like an info dump, much like Game of Thrones managed to do. Plus, IMO, there are far more interesting tactical options in BG3’s combat than in XCOM; and I love XCOM.
I’ll look into the Wasteland games and see what I think, might be something I’ll enjoy. I have heard some good things about the 2.0? update for Cyberpunk, so I should probably start a new save and give it another chance. I enjoy some of the cyberpunk aesthetic, so that helps.
Interesting point on the fantasy classes, I hadn’t thought of it that way previously. I’ve never been able to figure out what fantasy elements don’t work for me, because it doesn’t seem to follow any particular logic! I may give BG3 a shot if it comes up on sale at some point, it might just be a slow build and I might just need a bit more time playing for me to enjoy it.
Is it because there aren’t enough good games or because you aren’t hyped by games anymore? For me between CS2 (counter strike AND cities skylines), Battlebit, the Cyberpunk DLC, TOTK… Thats already quite a lot of new good games coming out that I am hyped for
I’m hyped about several games, many of which will come out next year. I would not say that I’m not hyped about games anymore. I named three that I was excited about that came out this year. My point is that the premise of the article is silly from the start. A year being the best for gaming is entirely relative to the individual. This year was not even close for me. It sounds like maybe it was for you.
It is.
The last time the deck felt this stacked was 2017
Agreed. I’m putting 2023 in my pantheon alongside 1998, 2004, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. A great year for RPGs and fighting games, with the latter bumping up two of my favorites from previous years, Skullgirls and Guilty Gear Strive, a few notches via updates. Hi-Fi Rush is the first game in the character-action genre that clicked for me, and I’ve tried to make it click so many times before.
Hi-Fi Rush just consistently reminds me how comically bad I am at rhythm games. I love the game, but man I got burnt out because even though they made it “easier” for folks with no rhythm like myself, it’s still tough if you just can’t match the beat.
I am some kind of masochist though, because in the past I beat both Parappa the Rapper and UmJammer Lammy.
It hasn’t exactly been banger after banger for me personally this year, but I can still recognize how big 2023 has been and how much excitement there has been year-round, from Hi-Fi Rush’s shadow drop to Alan Wake 2 right now.
It’s also been a great mix of new properties and long-running franchises. Zelda, Resident Evil, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Baldur’s Gate, Mario, and even Armored Core all had well-reviewed, major releases this year.
I’m nowhere near calling 2023 the best ever–I think it’ll take a complete paradigm shift in the industry to ever top 1998–but a lot of people have been eating very good this year.
- Starfield
- Baldurs Gate 3
- Remnant 2
- Hi-Fi Rush
- Street Fighter 6
- Lies of P
- Alan Wake 2
- Laika: Aged through Blood
The list just keeps going, it’s been an insane year so far.
Nobody in this thread mentioning Pikmin 4 💀
Strange. I can’t find anything good to play.
What kinds of games are you into?
Good ass year for gaming, we don’t get to say that too often
It is but perhaps because the last few years were just lacking any great games. For me there wasn’t a single title better than 9 out of 10 since DOS2 until this year.
Everyone had just been dumping pseudo big, pseudo long open worlds with a boring story. And the main strategy games are ruined by corporate greed with countless DLCs (just check EU4 price with dlc).
This year though: Lies of P, BG3, FFXVI, F1 23, just great and I still have lords of the fallen to play.
our standards also went down over time
