Games I For Sure Played in 2023, I Told You So
I had a bunch of games I wanted to get to in 2023 (listed here), and then a bunch of others that came about because it's got to be accepted that what? That life is hectic. Here they all are, in order of play:
305 Games
Fine, I guess, but I can't say I was overly enamoured with it. Not really into the visuals and the story stuff didn't grab me. I have to be really into a shmup to attempt to get passably non-atrocious at it, and I wasn't really into this, so I never unlocked the true ending.
A Hong Kong action movie-inspired Hotline Miami-alike sounds good, but this is just pretty clunky. Disappointing!
Full review here. The beginnings of a decent combat system alongside a ton of bloat and some truly woeful writing.
Full review here. The visuals aren't really my thing but this is a pretty good package! More content than you'd expect from a throwback shmup.
Full review here. This one was disappointing. Gaiden remains unbeaten.
Solid throwback run and gun. The one thing it really nails is the look and feel of its cyberpunk grime-world; I could absolutely believe that Brutal Deluxe are fisting Super Nashwan in an arena on the other side of the city.
Obviously cool, but I think I prefer the more straightforward mechanical simplicity of Devil Daggers. Still fun though!
Still-in-dev combined Star Fox and Space Harrier clone. This sucker looks great! Good music too.
Full review here. Very cool as a piece of D&D In Videogames history and also just as a game. Love that box art!
Not really my thing - I was never overly enamoured with the first two OlliOlli games either and the artstyle of this doesn't do much for me. I'd just always rather play THPS.
Interesting visual idea although it doesn't add up to all that much I think. Decent enough.
Quick replay. I was never as good as I wanted to be at this, but it turns out not playing for ages means you get even worse. Who knew! Great game though.
I like the idea of this one, but I don't know if I'm really all that into how it turns out. The subject matter is so grim and you are supposed to take it seriously, but a lot of it is also very silly and I don't know if it really works as a whole.
You'll work out the twist within the first minute, but this is a cool concept! I love goofy horror anthology stuff, wish there were more games like it.
Replay. Extremely janky indie FPS chiefly inspired by the John Woo lineage. The real draw here is the amount of community content - I dip in every now and again to see what new stuff is out there. This was one of those times.
I don't really jive with the game's sense of humour (beyond the core idea that trombones are funny) but the actual rhythm game is pretty fun and there's tons of player-created content. Can't ask for much else!
I was expecting a fairly standard run and gun but this is little slower and more methodical, which makes sense given the series it's part of. Goes on a little long for what it is but still cool!
It's very good to know that we can still get games like this from a big studio.
Trotting out "well it's not Gaiden, is it" for every other Darius game I play, but whilst this isn't Gaiden in terms of the look and sound, I'd say it's mechanically superior. Love capturing things!
Replay. Very good RPG with not-very-good combat that you can thankfully cheese the hell out of for the most part. Retains the grainy landscapes of Fallout and so it didn't look as impressive next to the lush backgrounds of the Infinity Engine games, but in terms of all the options available to your character and how you can go about your adventure, it's superior to all of them except Planescape. Great world too!
Replay - full review here. Just a case of having played much better in the same series and so it holds no interest for me.
Kind of went back and forth on this one whilst I was playing it, but in the end I think I decided that no, it is really good. At first I thought the overt, in-your-faceness of the capitalist satire was just a little bit ehhh, but eventually I considered that well, the nightmare is real and we're living in it, it's right in front of our eyes. We see, hear and feel the effects of it every single day. What's this game doing other than presenting things as they are? It's good. I'm encumbered with deep thoughts...
Full review (such as it is) here. I've played a bunch of Assassin's Creeds in the past but I just found this wholly offensive when I sat down to it.
Been trying to learn to play bass. Difficult! This has some decent tools and the ability to use custom songs is great but I don't think it's a real replacement for an actual lesson. Also you have to use the proprietary cable and it's garbage.
Replay. Hadn't went back to it since the initial release so this was my first time hearing the voice acting. It's very good, isn't it?
Combat and platforming are fine, but no more than that. Not something I'd ever revisit, I think. Seen a lot of talk about the "pixel art" of this and then you get in and it's extremely obvious that these are 3D models under filters. Get outta here with that fake shit!!
Replay - full review here. Not quite as high as FPR in my estimation - this one is sadly afflicted with Kenny Omega, after all - but still one of the best wrestling games you can play.
Full review here. Tempest is so cool.
Some of it is cool but I didn't really jive with it as much as I did Dark Souls. I dunno, it just feels very stripped down keeping the general feel of Souls but not having all the armour and weapons and extended RPG guff. I like the guff! Ended up getting quite bored with the combat by the end. Don't think I'll ever go back to it.
I like this one but I'm not sure I love it. Combat is fun, it looks great, but I feel like levels have so much filler when you're not hitting stuff. Have you ever played another game so badly in need of a sprint button? Good grief. Also for a game based so much around music, I can't actually remember any of it other than Invaders Must Die, which did make me wonder exactly how much money the Prodigy has made off that track by now. ALSO LOOK this whole thing is about being true to yourself, about rock'n'roll spirit, and the ending of the game is them all becoming employees of the world's biggest corporation. If this is a treatise on how "punk" is nothing more than a marketing term then okay, good work, you're correct, but I don't think that's the aim! Hmm!
It's more Tempest, and so it's good!
Replaying for the first time in yeeaaaars. Combat is the glaring weak point which is a shame given there's so much of it, but everything else is just sublime. Love the platforming, the puzzles, the locales, the colour palette, the gloriously foppish Prince performance. Gem!
Replay - full review here. First time touching this since it originally came out, I can't say I've mellowed on it over time. Just doesn't compete after replaying Sands of Time.
Replay - full review here. Not bad but I had to give up on it. Honestly, playing it immediately after SoT was kind of pointless anyway.
When I initially played this I got about halfway through because it's very short so I just went back to finish it for completeness' sake. Not something I would ordinarily play, I think I only started it to begin with because it was in my Steam library and I didn't know why.
Cool little text adventure. Went through it twice, the second time around despite doing way better I got a worse ending, because (SPOILERS) if you do too good a job of solving all the problems of the area, this allows the Burly Bastards of Big Business to expand into the region way more easily and gentrify everything. Maybe total strangers can't come into communities from the outside and magically fix everything. Much to think about!
Full review here. Nice little emptiness simulator that you go through once and never touch again. Glad we can all agree that French crime movies are good!
Replay. When I originally played this there was one achievement that bugged and wouldn't unlock and was the only one preventing me from getting 100%. Reinstalled and played a bit more to see if it would unlock this time. It wouldn't. Game's been out for three years now and there are still people posting that this is happening to them on the Steam forums to this day, so I assume I will never get it. This keeps me awake at night!!
I've tried one of the Compati Hero games but had never given any G Gen stuff a bash and had picked this up cheap in some sale. "No UC", the gut punch. "Wing, SEED and 00-focused", the uppercut. Tried my best but those are extreme hurdles to clear and the whole thing just feels somewhat low-rent and cheap compared even to SRW, which is absolutely not a series known for its overwhelming quality of production.
This is quite charming, isn't it? I find the idea of one student creating all these puzzles and mechanisms and intricate zodialogical-based symbol keys in extremely public areas of their high school very funny! I might play all of these.
Replay. Peak PS1. One of the most charming games of all time. One day we'll rescue him from the Moon...
Pretty impressive for a GBC port, honestly. Really doesn't feel all that different from playing the SNES games. They did a solid job with the music!
Pretty charming and completely shameless Agatha Christie ripoff characters/setting elevates a fairly standard point-and-click, but I didn't finish it due to a gamebreaking bug. Might revisit one day. The main theme is very good.
Replay. Watched the very excellent movie Monte Walsh and felt like jumping back into this. Hadn't given the online a bash on PC so I tried that. It's full of hackers and script kiddies and there's one horrendous bug with stables that has apparently been around for half a year at this point. Rockstar is one of the biggest developers in the world, haha!
EDIT: As of November I've read of a method for making your own private lobby and so got to spend a bit of time actually playing the online, being able to go near the cities without getting psionically set on fire, etc., and it was very pleasant. It's a very nice world! Having a wee fish whilst the mist is out over the lake...lovely...
EDIT: As of November I've read of a method for making your own private lobby and so got to spend a bit of time actually playing the online, being able to go near the cities without getting psionically set on fire, etc., and it was very pleasant. It's a very nice world! Having a wee fish whilst the mist is out over the lake...lovely...
Replay. Obviously has an absurd amount of charm with its series-of-cyber-tubes depiction of the internet and software, and the character designs are absolutely lovely, but the encounter rate in this is SHOCKIN and there came a point about 2/3s through (after that awful Elec Man dungeon) where I decided it was nice to revisit but it was time to put it down. Still gonna play the rest though!
I got a little model kit of MegaMan.EXE earlier in the year and I love it dearly.
I got a little model kit of MegaMan.EXE earlier in the year and I love it dearly.
Replay. Occasionally I have an idea for a character I want to make and then get into the creator and end up not able to get anything looking remotely decent, but this time I managed something I was fairly happy with. Lovely!
Threw this on because I was engaged in heavy research. Not exactly a standout wrestling game, but the Wikipedia page for it does have one of the funniest screenshot captions I've ever read.
Same as Power Pro - wanted to check if Mutoh was in this game in some capacity. He's not, but imagine my shock to find out that this famous entry in the famous Simple Series uses the same famous engine of the famous videogames Smackdown! and Smackdown! 2: Know Your Role!! This is a budget game and those were sold to us as state of the art!!
Had to doublecheck if this used the Smackdown engine as well. It does! I might go back to these at some point for a muck about.
Checking if Mutoh is in this one because he's in the first two. He was not. I played as Osamu Nishimura and gave boys the spinning toe hold til they begged me to stop. It's fine but you're better off with King of Colosseum 2.
Replay. A bit more arcadey than the other stuff from the time. Got to be one of the best looking wrestling games on the PS2!
Replay. Sometimes you just want to play a bit of DW, and I had one of those times.
Replay. Stuck it on for a bit as some friends bought it and asked for help with Godrick. Still can't say I'm too keen on this one.
Replay. Was 5 minutes out of bed when I got a message from a friend demanding we play Ultra so he could show off his Ken. I am sorry to say that my showing would have soundly embarrassed all the other mostly asleep SF4 players of the world.
EDIT: I have since started trying to learn Fei Long. Turns out I'm a total idiot for not just switching to this guy over a decade ago! Who knew!
EDIT: I have since started trying to learn Fei Long. Turns out I'm a total idiot for not just switching to this guy over a decade ago! Who knew!
Replay. Had one of those manic moments where you decide you're going to become really good at Spider-Man. Obviously you're not! Come on.
Very cool entry in the "makes you feel extremely smart when you're winning" genre. By that token, an excruciating entry in the "makes you feel extremely dumb when you're not winning" genre. It's good! Haven't played the DLC yet though...forgive me...
Replay. Went back to this again as they did a big update (!) adding custom modifiers for the survival mode and a whole load of balance changes. Isn't that cool! That they're still working on this extremely good game!
A game that very much demands you take it seriously despite, well, everything about it. David Cage-adjacent. Just watch the movie (I prefer Rear Window, I'll watch that instead).
Didn't like this one as much as Crimes and Punishments - maybe it's just having played that ages ago, but this one definitely seemed jankier. The overall story that runs through the cases doesn't really land for me - none of it really gets enough buildup.
Odious stuff. Crimes & Punishments and The Devil's Daughter are hardly perfect games, but they're a lot more respectable than this guff. Genuinely no idea who would have wanted this.
Deduction is a lot more linear than I'd expected - in the Holmes games you can interpret evidence in different ways and arrive at different conclusions, but here you'll just get a big INCORRECT noise if you try to make any connection that isn't the one expected of you. It's fine though! Short and sweet. Sunday afternoon gaming.
Pretty cool, although I was playing on pad so I didn't really get the Full Experience. Fun Bemani-like gameplay that makes it stand out from the GH/RB tribute pack, but the biggest minus for me was the excruciating lack of variety in the tracklist - all of it is Monstercat wub wub and after 60 tracks of this I am fully prepared to say this is the most obnoxious music in the world. Taiko remains undefeated!
Replay. Every time there's a big sale I throw down on one of the expansion packs. It's a sickness.
This game took 30 hours to finish!!! Would not have been able to predict that at all. Obviously very basic and a lot of the time you do end up contorting yourself around objects trying to find the one speck of dirt you've missed but it's fine, I got caught up on a lot of radio stuff I've been meaning to listen to whilst playing this. You need games that facilitate that.
It's obviously awful as a game, but this is the ideal of FMV content. The dorkiest people cosplaying whilst someone from the office films them. When a woman walked towards me in the street and all ambient audio stopped to let me hear the clopping of her boots across the wooden floor of whatever greenscreen room she was being filmed in, I knew I was playing a piece of Art.
Papers, Please but not as involved or interesting. Cost me about as much as a meal deal and took slightly longer to finish though so it's fine! For some reason this game has a (suitably insulting) reference to Francis Fukuyama in it.
Nah, no thanks. Being funneled from arena to arena and firing dinky weapons into enemies so they can be staggered into Press X to Awesome mode? No idea what folk see in this. Always read the music in this was good but I can't say I I thought much of anything I could hear between the constant glory kill muting. Nothing for me here.
Kind of Ys-like, which is good, although it overstayed its welcome a little for me. If dungeons were a bit shorter (the DLC advertises "the longest dungeon we've ever made", which means I am probably never going to play it) and they tightened up the pacing this would be real good. There's a couple of instances, one in the endgame which I found unforgiveable, where you're yanked out of what you're doing in order to take part in some unimportant side shit and it just knocks the wind right out of everything. Combat's good though!
First time going all the way through Telltale's eps. They're okay! They don't stray too far from the formula laid down by Sam & Max, but they do manage to capture the MI spirit pretty decently. Not a fan of the endgame though; episodes 4 and 5 being based almost entirely around back and forth backtracking feels like they ran out of ideas quick.
Very solid end (I assume?) to the series from Gilbert & co. I was surprised at just how much the game opens up in the final chapters and puzzles really start taxing you. I like the art! The ending is obviously very funny!
I'm usually not that precious about voice actors, but I will say that Dominic Armato is the only person who should ever voice Guybrush Threepwood. Glad he's back!
I'm usually not that precious about voice actors, but I will say that Dominic Armato is the only person who should ever voice Guybrush Threepwood. Glad he's back!
I bought a Quest 2 because I'm an idiot with nothing better to do and this came free with it. Can't complain for a free game! It's fun to shoot and dodge stuff inside Computer World. Namco should make a VR Time Crisis.
You point your hand and you hold the button and it makes the weeEEEEE noise and you shoot a repulsor ray. That's good! Combat can still be kind of a mess, though, and maneuvering during flight whilst also trying to shoot down incoming missiles and blow up the enemies firing them but also dodging the stuff you can't shoot down...well, it gets to be a little much. It's cool, no doubt, but maybe would have worked better with combat on rails or something. I dunno. I think it's kind of criminal that you can only change armour colours, you don't get fully reskinned suits. It's an Iron Man game, come on! When I pick Silver Centurion I want the big shoulders and the triangle chestpiece!!
Big part of the reason I bought a VR thingy, I thought this game was cool as hell when I was initially playing it and thought playing it in VR would be even cooler. I was right!
I'm sure people know the deal with this by now: it's Space Truck Simulator but you can also shoot things. Not the deepest game in the world, but extremely cool to just be in space and have all the giant structures and celestial bodies looming about you, and cruising through a system on your way to the next station is very chill. Should have taken a leaf out of Euro Truck Sim's book and had an in-game internet radio function, though.
I'm sure people know the deal with this by now: it's Space Truck Simulator but you can also shoot things. Not the deepest game in the world, but extremely cool to just be in space and have all the giant structures and celestial bodies looming about you, and cruising through a system on your way to the next station is very chill. Should have taken a leaf out of Euro Truck Sim's book and had an in-game internet radio function, though.
Replay. Checking out the Arenas update. I was hoping there'd be some kind of endless mode in there somewhere but what's there is still cool. Still a great game, who'da thunk!
EDIT: As of the 26th of April, I have 135/135 Arena medals. Feeling extremely powerful!
EDIT EDIT: Bought the PC version during the Steam sale and did it all over again. Please help.
EDIT: As of the 26th of April, I have 135/135 Arena medals. Feeling extremely powerful!
EDIT EDIT: Bought the PC version during the Steam sale and did it all over again. Please help.
I think the Meta store should have a big banner saying "EARLY ACCESS" on things, thank you! Bit basic but there's enough mods that let you stab enemies with all manner of things to keep a maniac occupied.
Very cool! Glad it has support for custom tracks, though, the base soundtrack is a bit ehhh and the DLC on offer is rough. Feels great when you get properly into the flow of a track.
Replay. Quickly threw on to see what it's like in VR and fly around the universe a bit. It's absurd to me that this game (well, it really plays more like a tech demo, but still) where you can fly from the middle of a city street to the furthest galaxy you can find exists, but no major studio right now can make a Superman game.
Apparently you need to be very fit to be a boxer. Who knew! I did two fights in a row and was wishing for death afterwards. Very mechanically simple but it's like 8 quid, worth a go.
Cool little rhythm shooter. It's fun and you work up a sweat but there's only so much they can actually do with what they've got here - not long before levels start feeling pretty samey. First level if very good if you want to feel like John Wick though!
Typical SNES beat-em-up, i.e. bad. Enemies only remain in hitstun when they feel like it, hitboxes are pure jank. Whole bunch of direct lifts from Streets of Rage and Final Fight.
Full review here. Not a game I have much if any interest in competitively, but I can't deny it's a rock solid release.
Initially played the demo of this on the Mega CD when I was a kid (didn't understand what a demo was, it ends right when one of your wingmen gets blown away and I always thought I was just messing up every time). Tried it on PC and it turns out that level was one of the last in the game, lol. Getting this working was a huge chore! Had to severely limit the framerate and lower the sensitivity waaaay down on my joystick. Completely unplayable otherwise, and still extremely difficult even with those changes. You simply cannot beat the OT's space battle music though.
More of the same from the first game, really, which means it's completely unforgiving and quite often infuriating. They've added proper live action FMV though, and there is limitless charm to scenes of people in Star Wars costumes standing about in mid-90s CG environments. The DF2:JK Effect. Lovely!
Replay. Threw it on since I already had the joystick plugged in. Still great! Still hard!
Every few years I check in to see if this can be decently emulated and hey! This time it can be! It's on the Internet Archive if you want a go. First time playing it in donkeys but I remember pretty much every detail of it - helps that it's short! Still a bunch of fun, the Boba Fett/Vader duels are still really cool. Everyone loved this in the arcade and they were right to.
Pretty thin as far as being an actual game goes, really more of a tech showcase for what can be done in VR, but that showcase is pretty cool (if extremely short) and you get to swing a lightsaber about so all good by me. Very funny to me that they got David Goyer to write this!
Full review here. Okay game that EA should be ashamed to have released in the state they did.
Pretty impressive for a shmup on the WonderSwan, but that's pretty much all I have to say about it.
Another game to play whilst catching up on podcasts or what have you, but maybe don't listen to them too loud, because the story and the crew dialogue is actually fairly engaging. It's cool to figure out the puzzle of taking a huge ship apart whilst also plotting to unionise!
Can't say I'm on board with these character designs but it's a serviceable enough Mega Man clone. Movement is decent but it seems like there's no weapon type weaknesses? No real reason to use most of what you unlock in that case, or at least that's how it looked from my playthrough.
£2 survival arena game that could have maybe used another couple of stages/bosses but transcends into pure gold solely for starting off with a voice sample from the English dub of The Street Fighter.
A little rough around the edges, but so was the first game. Just a nice little sequel that I assumed we'd never get!
Full review here. Gun nut catnip, but not much to it outside of that.
A relic of a bygone time. The best PS3 game of 2023. Okay, maybe it's not actually that good once you're more than a couple of levels into it, but the mere fact it exists as it does is worthy of praise, or at least respect. At the very least when you hear the voice acting and the dialogue that it's in service of you'll hopefully agree that this is how videogames were intended to sound and we should never have strayed from this path.
I like this stylistically, a beatemup with a Tough Crew of cool asskickers taking on weird biofreaks - the not-quite successor to Mutation Nation. It's pretty dull outside of that though, and there's a metric ton of bullshit gotchas. Leoneed Burns is a very funny name!
I appreciate those brave souls that are making FMV games in Future Year 202X, but this is sadly very bland stuff in all respects. Can't say I have much experience with Danganronpa so no idea if this is par for the course with this guy but I assume he knocked this story out in 10 minutes on the back of a napkin.
Interesting chaining mechanics with the shikigami, but I probably wouldn't go back to this one over some of the other Cave stuff I've played.
A bit more to it than Detective Chronicles, which was nice. May have said it for that game as well but I'd happily play a bunch more of these.
Mostly fine, but I wasn't really feeling it and didn't really want to finish it. The level design is decent enough and the new lighting is cool but I'm not into the new sprites (cacodemons look awful man! come on) and no music is a total killer. The dark ambient stuff probably came off well in 1997 but in 2023 nothing in Doom is scary so the atmosphere it's supposed to reinforce just isn't present for me and I wish there was farty legally distinct Alice in Chains instead. Also they lost the shotgun reload animations! Indefensible.
Played through the whole thing in co-op with a friend (only 9.2% of Steam users have done this!) and had an absolute blast. What an ugly, awesome game. Purposefully antagonistic to the player and yet never insults your intelligence!
3 Comments
@DeemonAndGames Thank you! I'd like to take the credit, but if I'm being honest the developers did most of the work.
...ok yeah I worded it in a pretty weird way... fair enough xDDD.
DeemonAndGames
4 months ago