2023 Is The Best Year For Games In A While (And Maybe Ever?)
2023 Is The Best Year For Games In A While (And Maybe Ever?)
From Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom to Alan Wake 2, the hits won’t stop coming
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.
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 💀
our standards also went down over time
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.
Good ass year for gaming, we don't get to say that too often