Nonetheless my game time eventually expanded to over 50+ games in 2023. Some of the below are large games, some are small, in fact I daresay most of them fit the latter more than the former. I have cleared a whole bunch of stuff that has been on my radar for years now so in that sense I feel it was time well spent. What did I play and what did I think of it? Read on...
Sunless Sea: Zubmariner Edition (2018)
Kicking off 2023 with something of a random choice. Not a game I'd been wanting to get around to forever but one of those wildcards I'd been eyeing up in my game library for the few months preceding. An alternate history Victorian London sunk into the Earth, finding a strange shadowy under-sea within. You control your boat from a top-down perspective, navigating the seas of this perilous world as you go about your business. Complete errands, transport goods and intermittently meet a grim end in the shadowy fathoms of the deep. This was a worthy effort but I can't say the core gameplay really grabbed me as much as I would have liked. The atmosphere is evocative and the setting really intrigued me but the game itself is a respectable but unspectacular experience. Will definitely check out the sequel and Fallen London at some point though. Three screaming monstrosities from the depths out of five!
Cloudpunk (2022)
Sometimes appearances can be deceptive. Take Cloudpunk for instance, you load it up and are greeted by a cyberpunk city richly rendered in a variety of blocky 3D voxels and for a moment I thought this may be too much style over substance. Not a huge fan of the throwback aesthetic, the sheer look of the game actually won me over pretty quickly and then the game itself did so as well. You're a courier who traverses the neon city in their hover car completing jobs, paying debts and becoming increasingly embroiled in intrigues way above your pay grade. Traveling via hover car is a little too floaty (no pun intended) and the story is a little thin outside the main narrative but this game really won me over by the end. Sometimes getting swept up in a story is enough. Four cyber dystopias out of five!
Darkest Dungeon (2016)
Hard. Difficult. Frustrating. Challenging. Hard. All words I could use to describe Darkest Dungeon. Having originally tried this game during early lockdown I returned to it earlier this year and was swiftly reminded why I initially left this game unfinished. A stylish pulp aesthetic, brutal turn based combat and an ongoing focus on the battered mental state of your party as you navigate the cursed corners of an ancient family estate. I think I ended up liking this game more in spite of some of these game design choices rather than because of them. The Lovecraftian atmosphere is much appreciated but this game really needed one or two more allowances for the player to really get invested in it before shutting them down. An austere three tentacled horrors out of five!
Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy (2017)
Despite being a part of the OG PlayStation generation I never actually got around to playing the Crash Bandicoot games of the mid to late 90's. Only took me until 2023 and the release of this spruced up collection to remedy that so what did I think of it? Well besides the charming and endearing visual aesthetic, I was surprised to find that these games could be pretty difficult for something that seems so geared to sell to a young audience. This is 3D platforming that storms along at a decent pace for a few levels before hitting the occasional difficulty spike where split second timing and co-ordinatoon is ruthlessly extracted from the player and yes there were sections of this where I found myself swearing at the screen why do you ask? Anyhow it's a worthy collection and a real window into the idiosyncracies of 90's game design. Four excruciating death drops out of five!
Wreckfest (2021)
Speaking of the OG PlayStation generation, there was one cherished series of games that I did enjoy way back when and those were the Demolition Derby games. You don't have to try to hard to sell me on vehicular destruction but curiously it is a genre that pops up only rarely in modern gaming. So when Wreckfest was first revealed in Steam Early Access I was certainly interested. Again it was one of those games I toyed with briefly during lockdown and didn't finish and so I found myself coming back to it this year. It's well good this one even if it's lacking in depth in some areas. You drive cars irresponsibly, you crash them, you marvel at how these vehicles can still drive when so much of the car is no longer attached to the car. Coming back to this game via the PS5 version I found it to be a joyous experience even if it doesn't last as long as I'd like. Race and win a few cups and that was about it really barring a few goes at the multiplayer. It is vehicular warfare done well though and the closest thing we have to Demolition Derby in the modern age. Four pile-ups out of five!
Metal Wolf Chaos XD (2019)
This one hails from a rather different console, the original Xbox and a Japanese focused title at that. Originally released in 2004 for that region, this title didn't exactly make the Xbox a must-have in that part of the world but it did secure itself something of a cult status for its endearing plot and presentation and all of that is kept very much intact in this HD re-release for all modern formats. The President of the United States has been betrayed by his villainous Vice-President so naturally he goes to war in a ridiculously well-armed mech suit to save freedom and liberty for all. Cue hammy dialogue, an onslaught of explosive force and some deadpan humor that still hits pretty well two decades on. Gameplay was decent too if not exactly something you would confuse for a game released in the last decade. All in all it's great that games like this can still find an audience and I for one appreciate the effort made here. Four Presidential rocket punches out of five!
Redout (2017)
Super fast zero gravity racing in the vein of Wipeout and yes that's another PS1 reference. Something subconscious is clearly going on here. Anyhow Redout, a sensory overload where you constantly feel at the edge of your ability to cope with the onslaught of light and sound. It's fun, but fun tempered by fatigue. I'm not sure enjoy is the right word for this. I know there are are whole genres of games that pile on the stress in the hope that by overcoming it you achieve a sense of fulfillment and fun. Not sure I ever arrived at that point with this game though. The difficulty curve kicks in quickly and soon resembles a sharp Ascent into ungodly levels of challenge. Didn't 100% this one you might say. Three high speed collisions out of five!
WE ARE DOOMED (2016)
The first random wildcard game of the year plucked out of the dusty corners of my game library. Can't even remember how I came to acquire this one, maybe a free game claimed as part of my PS+ membership perhaps. Anyhow it's a modest twin stick shooter in the vein of a Geometry Wars and the suchlike. You vlast at waves of incoming enemies until they eventually overwhelm you and then you start again. Think I was playing this more in the hope of finding a hidden gem but such hopes did not materialize. It's fine, not bad but not really remarkable either. A worthy hour or two of gameplay followed by putting the game down and not really remembering much about it shortly after. Two overpowered laser beams out of five!
2064: Read Only Memories (2017)
A retro styled point and clock adventure with full voice acting, a decent soundtrack and a few decent moments to its credit. Playing your near future everyman Avery Mann (untrue) who wakes up one day to find themselves in possession of a talking robot. You navigate screen after screen of neat pixelart and text in search for the reasons why you ended up in this situation. It's all well put together with nice moments scattered throughout but it did miss a certain something for me. It wasn't lacking cocktail recipes I can say that much, someone programmed an awful lot of those into this game. So yeah not bad but not surpassing expectations either. Three obscure point and clock puzzle solutions out of five!
Beyond: Two Souls (2015)
If memory serves this game came out near the end of the PS3 generation which *checks notes* is a darn tootin decade ago now but that explains why I didn't get around to playing this at the time. Least I'll tell myself that's why I only got around to playing the PS4 re-release now like it didn't come out two years later. Anyways it's high drama with contextual button prompts and some decent acting. If you played Heavy Rain then you will get the idea. This was alright but like most games from David Cage and Quantic Dream I feel like someone in charge has some seriously frustrated ambitions of being a film maker with the game mechanics feeling almost inconsequential to the whole enterprise. Did I say the acting was decent? Two invisible ghost friends out of five!
Detroit: Become Human (2018)
The other half of my great Quantic Dream double bill of 2023, Detroit: Become Human was distinctly a step up in my estimation. The acting was pretty good, the game mechanics felt a little less superfluous and the film aspects felt like they were much better realized than in Beyond. For my money that high tension opening scene where you play as a highly advanced android thrust into a hostage negotiation situation has to be one of the best starts to a game that I've seen in quite a while. Other than the presentation was very Apple store but in a good way. If the whole thing feels like a rip-off of Will Smith's I, Robot however then I'm assuming that was intentional. Three AI uprisings out of five!
WATCH_DOGS (2014)
Think I may have mentioned before the advantages of getting around to some games long after everyone else has played them. The particular advantage of playing a game long after any given online furore has subsided is not to be overlooked in my view. More specifically WATCH_DOGS got it in the neck for misrepresenting the graphical quality of the game when it was first trailered way back when. It was quite the topic in the internet of circa 2013-14 and yes I would agree with the general critique itself. That said, this is a really fun open world crime game where your hacker vigilante can (mostly) seamlessly create havoc within the various systems of the city. Speeding away with cars in pursuit only for you to hack the traffic lights and create a collision behind you was something that never got old for me. Yes it didn't look as amazing as they made out at the start but it was still fun and that's not to be taken for granted in Ubisoft games. Four cyber security fails out of five!
Burly Men At Sea (2017)
Another game chosen from the wildcard section of my gaming library. Think I chose it more due to the title than anything else as I had literally zero expectations going into this one. A charming, stylised and whimsical gaming experience about three guys who go on a surreal comic adventure. Not a lot to this in terms of sheer mechanics, you explore, you choose a path, you make your way to the end of that path, you begin again. Definitely more about the journey than the destination and about exploring all the permutations of this particular journey through Scandinavian folklore. I enjoyed this for the brief time it lasted. Four manly beards out of five!
Titan Attacks! (2014)
Following one wildcard selection with another, this is Space Invaders with updated visuals essentially. Not hugely updated mind you, when I started it I thought I was playing a Flash game from the mid-noughties for a moment there. The gameplay is the time honoured format we all know and love coupled with a decent if unspectacular look, oh and a nice synth soundtrack which always scores you a few extra points with me. Apart from that not a whole lot more to say about this one really. It's a game with modest ambition and it exceeds those ambitions but only just. Three flying saucers out of five!
Hyper Light Drifter (2016)
Feels like I've been meaning to get around to this game for longer than should be possible. Top down retro styled twitchy combat shenanigans in a strange desolate world. Beautiful look to this game, great soundtrack and the aforementioned combat is finely executed. Yes I really liked this game, a genuinely great example of bringing together retro aesthetics with modern gameplay. The story is told non-verbally with no dialogue that I can remember, nonetheless the game never failed to make itself understood. There was a really deft touch in the making of this one and I greatly applaud it. Believe a sequel to this one is not too far off either so may check that out in the not too distant future. Five quick dodges out of five!
OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood (2015)
The original OlliOlli was a great game and one I sunk a lot of hours into on my beloved PlayStation Vita nigh on a decade ago. A neat look, some well tuned gameplay and a real sense of 'oh just one more go!' about the whole thing that really endeared it to me. As with most games on this list it took me a while to get around to this the first sequel and yes, it's more of the same. Skill based skateboarding tricks that require a cool head and nimble fingers in order to succeed. It's no radical reinvention of the wheel but the wheel still goes round like you want it to. Note to self, must check out the most recent sequel next year. Four face plants into the concrete out of five!
LA Cops (2015)
Top-down isometric kick the doors down and blast em before they blast you, all presented in the vein of a 70's cop show. Truth be told the retro aspect of it is mostly there for the presentation and not so much for the story. What little that exists of that is mainly there to provide minimal context for the blasting. there wasn't much to this one outside the core gameplay which was... alright. It got a mild laugh out of me and once done, it's not a game I'm liable to revisit. Two jelly doughnuts out of five!
MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries (2021)
Big robots and lasers and widespread destruction in the dystopian far future where wars have proliferated throughout the stars. Despite not being hugely into the lore of MechWarrior/BattleTech this game won me over in a big way. The look and sound of the thing is spot on, the rising tension of an ongoing enemy engagement as they chip away at your various systems, the adrenaline as you make a hasty retreat to the extraction point. This was all good stuff and a real testament on how to do the core gameplay justice in games like this. It's not perfect by any means, the presentation of the main story is bare bones and the difficulty spikes at times could be hard to fathom. However this is a case study for how a game can nail 'the feel' of the source material without slowing the action down. As I may have alluded to in my previous post on this game, this game was great. Five impractical but cool looking walking tanks out of five!
Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game - Complete Edition (2021)
To round off this part of my gaming year I played the game based on the movie based on the comic that was at one point delisted from online stores and then re-released in this current complete collection. Having loved the film and skimmed the comic I really wanted to like this game, especially as it seemed to have something of a reputation as one of the rare licensed games that wasn't a poor cash-in. Having played it, this side-scrolling button mashing combat spree, I'm not sure if I liked it so much. It looks great and clearly there is some affection for the source material here but the sum of the parts do not exceed the whole and it all feels too repetitive. The core gameplay is established in the first few minutes and never really evolves too far beyond it, making the entire experience a little too samey for me. Two evil-ex-boyfriends out of five!
Boy those were some games huh? Tune in next time for... more of them?
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