nearly every game i played in 2023, ranked
RGG studios edition
frankly backloggd is extremely slow right now and it's been agonizing to make this so i don't feel like spending a lot of time on this - notes for the games i feel like i have something to speak for, and i'll try and say as much as i can.
frankly backloggd is extremely slow right now and it's been agonizing to make this so i don't feel like spending a lot of time on this - notes for the games i feel like i have something to speak for, and i'll try and say as much as i can.
40 Games
a small thing, when i beat this game, it was over the course of a single weekend. granted, it isn't very long - but i was also just so immersed from the get go that ended up marathoning it.
when i got to arsenal gear, it was probably like three or four in the morning. i don't know about others, but experiencing that entire sequence in the dead of night was uniquely terrifying. dedicated horror games have never gotten me that tense before.
by the some incredible chance, my progression through the game happened be in pace with the time - the daybreak in that final cutscene on the bustling manhattan streets happened to coincide with the real life sunrise upon my neighborhood - in a couple of hours, i had gone from navigating the cold corridors of arsenal in pitch black to the credits, illuminated by a soft winter glow. raiden finally throwing those dogtags away was and is a uniquely profound moment for me, as a person. needless to say it was hard for me to catch up on sleep that day.
in the ten months that have passed since i beat MGS2, i don't think i have gone a single day without at least briefly thinking about it. as far as i'm concerned, it'll probably be that way for at least another ten months. some of the closest a game has ever come to no holds barred perfection for me
when i got to arsenal gear, it was probably like three or four in the morning. i don't know about others, but experiencing that entire sequence in the dead of night was uniquely terrifying. dedicated horror games have never gotten me that tense before.
by the some incredible chance, my progression through the game happened be in pace with the time - the daybreak in that final cutscene on the bustling manhattan streets happened to coincide with the real life sunrise upon my neighborhood - in a couple of hours, i had gone from navigating the cold corridors of arsenal in pitch black to the credits, illuminated by a soft winter glow. raiden finally throwing those dogtags away was and is a uniquely profound moment for me, as a person. needless to say it was hard for me to catch up on sleep that day.
in the ten months that have passed since i beat MGS2, i don't think i have gone a single day without at least briefly thinking about it. as far as i'm concerned, it'll probably be that way for at least another ten months. some of the closest a game has ever come to no holds barred perfection for me
1
this is like far and away this studio's magnum opus in my opinion. probably the only other game in this series with combat (besides Y2) good enough to make me want to revisit it — the dragon engine at it's absolute finest and a culmination of so many different design choices that have come and went in this franchise's history... makes me sad that gaiden ended up straying away from it in favour of the heavier, more street style combat of 6. aesthetically it certainly deviates from the original judgment's more traditionally noir style in favour of a more dark techno / traditional presentation but despite that i think it still manages to carry over a lot of the detective flick-y grit that was so charming about that game, keeping the more serious tone of the former (and Y1 + Y2) which is what i prefer from this franchise. some will chastise it for it's story and while it certainly does have issues in how it presents its' main arguments i think the core conflict of this is so much better than the other games (which tend to be a more black and white traditional Good vs. Evil) that i can walk away saying that it doesn't bother me that much.
does the first judgment have a more tightly written mystery? maybe, but the character-work here is so much superior that i think it events out. the main character death here is frankly the most harrowing in the entire franchise so i found it easy to sympathize with yagami even as he brought up the same argument over and over... a spoiler-free tendency to be vague about the previous games' events hurts it but ultimately this is the same developed yagami we knew from the end of the last game, who has already felt the consequences of people commiting heinous acts in the name of the Right Thing, so it's understandable why he's less receptive this time around.
there are problems in how he fails to address the villains' main argument, but to a degree i feel this is intentional — by the end of it LJ makes it pretty clear that it wants you think about whether or not yagami is strictly right... and more importantly, whether or not his work is truly done. amazing how this spinoff series managed to beat out the main games so quick for me
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3
unbelievable how talented of a designer shinji mikami is, re4's combat appears simple on a first glance but i can't recall the last time i've had this much fun with how a game plays just by itself, lining up hordes of enemies for that swift headshot into kick provides a feeling so cathartic it should qualify as a drug
4
i don't love it as much as MGS2, i think its more linear plot doesn't work as well for me as the former's unraveling conspiracy, but it's still a thinker for sure - one of the best displays of kojima's game design chops, I prefer the more arcadey strut to strut style of 2 but 3's sandbox is still extremely fun to play around with and it's a shame the series doesn't ever reach this level again, not hard to see why it's the metal gear that attracts the most challenge / ranked runs...
on the other hand, one part of this game i want to touch upon that i feel isn't appreciated as much is the visual direction — not because it looks good for a ps2 game or whatever, but because of its placement within the series. one could consider the dramatic irony to be the hook of mgs3 - the last game dealt with the digitzation of the world, censorship, identity, and now you're suddenly thrust back nearly forty years into the past. no patriots to speak of, no continuation of the any of the loose threads 2 left behind, we're just... here. somewhere else entirely. peering from a window into an era bygone, in the shoes of a character we had come to recognize as a villain.
yet the environment around us could not be any more dissonant from what we're experiencing, there's a deliberate disconnect from reality not solely tied to hardware limitations - everything is enveloped in this dreamlike haze - the lens we're viewing this all from is so foggy, almost as if it's vanishing before our eyes, and in a way it's reflective of the story itself, not to glorify the old days of war and espionage (mgs4 moment) but the events of this game are essentially the prelude to the entire metal gear saga, the patriots, les enfants terribles, the metal gears, etc... the last breath of a world that was not yet tainted by the presence of Big Boss. it's such a overlookable detail, yet so smart.
of course, the remake seems to be ignoring this outright and trying to make the game look as photorealistic as possible... one could argue that being the first game to be remade re-contextualizes its' place in the series (which on it's own is a stupid decision) but ultimately if they wanted to take advantage of that they should have gone in a much bolder direction with it instead of remaking it bar for bar... so don't forget what they took from you!
on the other hand, one part of this game i want to touch upon that i feel isn't appreciated as much is the visual direction — not because it looks good for a ps2 game or whatever, but because of its placement within the series. one could consider the dramatic irony to be the hook of mgs3 - the last game dealt with the digitzation of the world, censorship, identity, and now you're suddenly thrust back nearly forty years into the past. no patriots to speak of, no continuation of the any of the loose threads 2 left behind, we're just... here. somewhere else entirely. peering from a window into an era bygone, in the shoes of a character we had come to recognize as a villain.
yet the environment around us could not be any more dissonant from what we're experiencing, there's a deliberate disconnect from reality not solely tied to hardware limitations - everything is enveloped in this dreamlike haze - the lens we're viewing this all from is so foggy, almost as if it's vanishing before our eyes, and in a way it's reflective of the story itself, not to glorify the old days of war and espionage (mgs4 moment) but the events of this game are essentially the prelude to the entire metal gear saga, the patriots, les enfants terribles, the metal gears, etc... the last breath of a world that was not yet tainted by the presence of Big Boss. it's such a overlookable detail, yet so smart.
of course, the remake seems to be ignoring this outright and trying to make the game look as photorealistic as possible... one could argue that being the first game to be remade re-contextualizes its' place in the series (which on it's own is a stupid decision) but ultimately if they wanted to take advantage of that they should have gone in a much bolder direction with it instead of remaking it bar for bar... so don't forget what they took from you!
5
remake remake remake... starting to get really tired of hearing that
i'm going to bend out a little here and say that at i don't even hate remakes at the conceptual level. rebuilding something from the ground up again as if it were being made for the first time? sounds cool! the problem is most companies don't do this. remakes tend to be a more gross effort to revisit old games so often in an attempt to make them better, to obsolete them so to speak. what makes FFVIIR so special to me is that it isn't that at all — some hate it but they made a pretty bold choice here to try and make something genuinely fresh, and while whether or not that pays off will have to be seen once we reach the end of this remake series, i think so far it's been great - i had my doubts after stuff like crisis core but it seems like square actually does still understand the themes and characters of the original game and is elaborating on them in a way that feels substantial and adds to the discussion. much as i love og ff7 it's hard to deny that it's frustratingly centrist in its' approach to some issues that demand a more concrete stance but it seems like they're rectifying that here. most fascinating to me was the expansion of midgar - more than anything i think they did an amazing job at making it just feel good to Be Here, in Midgar, the tighter scope of this project really breathes life into the rotting pizza, and it ends up probably one of the most lived in video game worlds i've ever seen.
the bigger hook here for most people though is probably the meta elements... look yeah, i don't understand what the hell they're trying to say here, but i'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that whatever grand statement they're evidently attempting to make by the end of it isn't something that'll be cracked till it's over. i do think the way they incorporate the ff7 anthology here is surprisingly not obnoxious and while i'm a bit iffy on the whole split timelines things going into rebirth i have faith that it won't be as stupid as it sounds
i'm going to bend out a little here and say that at i don't even hate remakes at the conceptual level. rebuilding something from the ground up again as if it were being made for the first time? sounds cool! the problem is most companies don't do this. remakes tend to be a more gross effort to revisit old games so often in an attempt to make them better, to obsolete them so to speak. what makes FFVIIR so special to me is that it isn't that at all — some hate it but they made a pretty bold choice here to try and make something genuinely fresh, and while whether or not that pays off will have to be seen once we reach the end of this remake series, i think so far it's been great - i had my doubts after stuff like crisis core but it seems like square actually does still understand the themes and characters of the original game and is elaborating on them in a way that feels substantial and adds to the discussion. much as i love og ff7 it's hard to deny that it's frustratingly centrist in its' approach to some issues that demand a more concrete stance but it seems like they're rectifying that here. most fascinating to me was the expansion of midgar - more than anything i think they did an amazing job at making it just feel good to Be Here, in Midgar, the tighter scope of this project really breathes life into the rotting pizza, and it ends up probably one of the most lived in video game worlds i've ever seen.
the bigger hook here for most people though is probably the meta elements... look yeah, i don't understand what the hell they're trying to say here, but i'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that whatever grand statement they're evidently attempting to make by the end of it isn't something that'll be cracked till it's over. i do think the way they incorporate the ff7 anthology here is surprisingly not obnoxious and while i'm a bit iffy on the whole split timelines things going into rebirth i have faith that it won't be as stupid as it sounds
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8
as time goes on i find that i still prefer the grittier look of GC prime but there's no underestimating how insanely impressive this is for a console that's eight years past its' due. retro studios never misses and i cannot wait for prime 4
9
while it is a ways from my favourite series in the game, it was my introduction to this series and while in retrospect i kinda wish i had gone in release order i don't exactly regret starting with 0... hooked me on this franchise in a way that i probably won't be able to shake off for a while, especially with infinite wealth on the horizon - great on its' own rights, but most importantly to me a fascinating retrospect of the series as a whole as it demonstrates the stark contrast between past and future, the old and the new, and the tragic reality of our protagonists' lives, particularly kiryu as they unknowingly place themselves on the path to years of conflict and suffering. won't ever forget my first playthrough of this, the warm comfort of walking through bubble-era tokyo and osaka, getting roped into absurd scenarios as i worked my way along the path of the yakuza.
11
Huge Final Fantasy VII Fan Excited To Play Rest of Series for First Time
this was great! i mean, not like i expected any less going in, but i did have my doubts about the ensemble cast as i worked my way through the game... still though, by the end of it ff6 sticks the landing and more — so many iconic moments here, people bring up the opera section a lot but y'know what? for good reason !!! that shit makes me feel something, man.
not my favourite final fantasy thing overall but extremely easy to see why it captured the hearts of so many people, a triumphant farewell to the 2D era ft. some of uematsu's best work yet (and ever) ... dancing mad is absolutely ridiculous , one of those must-have gaming experiences
this was great! i mean, not like i expected any less going in, but i did have my doubts about the ensemble cast as i worked my way through the game... still though, by the end of it ff6 sticks the landing and more — so many iconic moments here, people bring up the opera section a lot but y'know what? for good reason !!! that shit makes me feel something, man.
not my favourite final fantasy thing overall but extremely easy to see why it captured the hearts of so many people, a triumphant farewell to the 2D era ft. some of uematsu's best work yet (and ever) ... dancing mad is absolutely ridiculous , one of those must-have gaming experiences
12
yeah!!!!! wonky pacing and evidently slapped together combat does little to mar probably the single most thematically tight game in this series - unbelievable, outstanding, incredible, and a hundred other synonyms for "good" i'm currently pulling from thesaurus that this was made in such a short amount of time, between playing 7 and the judgments i forgot that i actually liked Kiryu as a protagonist but coming to this reminded me and more, feels so culminative of kiryu's character in a way that 4, 5, 0, 6, and probably the hundreds of other finale ideas they had for him weren't, rarely does a series spanning this amount of time ever manage to stay fresh, but like a dragon does - even harder is sending off mainstays, but they've hit the nail square in the head here ... course i suppose it'll have to wait for infinite wealth but if this is the writing quality we can expect from that game i have nary a doubt that it'll be one of the strongest hitters so far.
"love letter" i think is kind of a tired way to describe something but i don't really know if i can come up with something more apt. rgg8 will save me .
"love letter" i think is kind of a tired way to describe something but i don't really know if i can come up with something more apt. rgg8 will save me .
13
wish so bad that this didn't kind of strain my hands to play ( idk why ! ) because i love virtually everything about it. undeniably simple but takes advantage of everything this medium allows us to do in such a beautiful and elegant way... something uniquely made for the Child and the Child in all of us, an encapsulation of when things were so much simpler, the sky so blue and the grass was so green, when we were all just little princes with our kingly adult parents and felt like we could roll the world up whole. nothing was known, everything was new - we were just as curious about the sunflowers as we were the sun Itself.
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na ...
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na ...
16
i Like this game but it's hard to deny that it just kind of came and went. a blip in the 2023 continuum which is a bit insane to say considering how it's a sequel to one of the most beloved games ever... obviously it's not reasonable to expect that this would be another reinvention of the series on the caliber of BOTW but i think TOTK could have really just benefitted from... doing more? this doubles down on the well received sandbox elements of BOTW but refuses to address anything else — besides building vehicles this really does play exactly the same as the first game, everything about it invokes a sickly feeling of deja vu and not the wondorous discovery that i think made so many people fall in love with BOTW in the first place... something accentuated by the sheer lack of things to find - small changes here and there don't stop this from being the same Hyrule, and despite being probably the most advertised feature of the game, the sky islands are... just kind of there!!! you have one, big, genuinely interesting landmass and then everything is like three of four prefabs that are copy pasted around the map a couple times. it sucks!
even bigger of a sin are the depths, which are so mindnumbingly boring to traverse and frankly just a useless addition in general - its main purpose, housing zonaite, could have and should have been repurposed into something else - ideally something much less grindy ... think it's a pretty teltale sign of how fucked the economy in this game is when literally everyone abused the dupe glitches before they were patched. why would you introduce these super impressive physics-based building tools and then gatekeep it behind hours of running around an empty plain breaking rocks? just doesn't make any sense to me!!!
look, at the end of the day, this is otherwise More BOTW. and call it controversial, but i Like BOTW. it's fun, it's good! but does being More BOTW constitute being a $70 sequel? probably not.
even bigger of a sin are the depths, which are so mindnumbingly boring to traverse and frankly just a useless addition in general - its main purpose, housing zonaite, could have and should have been repurposed into something else - ideally something much less grindy ... think it's a pretty teltale sign of how fucked the economy in this game is when literally everyone abused the dupe glitches before they were patched. why would you introduce these super impressive physics-based building tools and then gatekeep it behind hours of running around an empty plain breaking rocks? just doesn't make any sense to me!!!
look, at the end of the day, this is otherwise More BOTW. and call it controversial, but i Like BOTW. it's fun, it's good! but does being More BOTW constitute being a $70 sequel? probably not.
19
my first mainline megaten. honestly a lot different than what I expected but thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless - lots of things i could pick apart and prod at here but ultimately i think i'll wait till playing DDS2 to share my full thoughts on this one. admittedly being mostly dungeon crawling it was a bit exhausting going at this and it did end up taking up the majority of my december, so that'll probably be a ways yet still, but i'm glad i was finally able to finish one of these for once. i'm ready for the real world.
20
unfortunately between this and fo1 as my first real foray into the bethesda crpg world i don't really know if i can connect with them all that much but regardless this was pretty good... at the very least i'm glad i gave it a shot, the writing and commentary in these games is much more nuanced than i originally gave them credit for and it's extremely impressive how far they were able to go with the worldbuilding - post-apocalyptical fiction has gotten a bit boring for me in recent times but this remained thoroughly interesting for me throughout, especially seeing how things have changed since the events of fo1.
22
hard to overstate the wonders that this fresh coat of paint does for the 2D mario series considering how much of an aesthetic war-crime the NSMB games were, but ultimately it is still just a coat of paint. the wonder flower gimmicks are pretty cool, if not tiring by the end but overall the level design here is honestly not that big of a step above, say, nsmbu. now honestly i like nsmbu and i'd probably go as far to say it's the best game in that series, but i really wish they had went as hard on the gameplay as they did on the presentation. regardless, this is a good first step and a really fun time all around
24
honestly forgot this came out this year but i respect it a lot. the gameplay here is kind of shallow honestly - pressing buttons and rotating out character abilities without thinking in the midst of combat just Works and the platforming is woefully plain but it's honestly hard to dislike something this earnest, such an insane amount of passion and love for the era that it homages that i just can't help but be on board. dunno if i'll ever revisit this again but as a one-time experience it was a blast... i mean c'mon... there's a fuckin flaming lips song in here
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31
somehow my favorite thing to come out of this series in a while - not anything particularly special but a clean one hour romp that focuses on the parts of this' franchise's world that's actually good, which is the cast. as a mystery it's lackluster, but considering its' spot as a april fools joke (is "joke" the right word for this?) / passion project by the social media team i can't be too mean to it. minigame made me want to kms. s'pretty good!
32
honestly don't even know how to feel about a game like this. can be discerned as coming from a place of contempt but at the same time displays an evident, almost naive amount of appreciation for its' predecessors and their fans. i don't like mgs4 and frankly i find it hard to be generous towards it considering some of the appalling decisions it makes in regards to the franchise, but it is certainly unique as a case study on how a creator can become disillusioned with his own work... despite it's messiness it manages to still claw it's way to the top and solidify itself as the ultimate conclusion to this franchise, however divisive it may be
35
narrowly escapes the Biggest Disappointment of 2023 award by coming out ten years earlier... seriously i don't get it! the highlight is easily jamie christopherson's soundtrack, which is actually the only part of this game i will solemnly agree with people on the quality of , but otherwise while i don't play a lot of hack and slashes but this is easily like, one of the most boring ones that i've ever played. hours of mindlessly running through the same gray corridors chopping down the same three or four robots, enemy / boss design so hyperreliant on parrying that it made me want to cry... i know i'm a bit late to the party so maybe a lot of it was hype but i can't believe this is what people were hyping up in 2020. to think i almost played this as my first metal gear, to think that many people /did/ play this as their first (and only) metal gear... and this butchered ver of raiden is the only impression they have of him... sucks!
36
the biggest disappointment of the year for me. as a Certified Classic Sonic Dickrider i was really, really hoping that this one'd be good but this ended up probably being one of my least favorite games in the series??? not offensive per se but so downright void of anything even resembling thought or ingenuity that playing through it made me feel uniquely hollow. so soulsucking that it might have made me like frontiers more in retrospect.
i know arzest doesn't have the /greatest/ track record but seeing ohshima on a sonic project again excited me enough to feel like maybe this was the one... just maybe... unfortunately i could not have been more wrong. one of the most miserable co-op gaming experiences of my life, truly. dollar tree classic sonic. ai generated classic sonic. barnes and nobles classic sonic. it's bad
i know arzest doesn't have the /greatest/ track record but seeing ohshima on a sonic project again excited me enough to feel like maybe this was the one... just maybe... unfortunately i could not have been more wrong. one of the most miserable co-op gaming experiences of my life, truly. dollar tree classic sonic. ai generated classic sonic. barnes and nobles classic sonic. it's bad
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5 Comments
Because i am a hater .
enjoyed reading through all these🙂
No yakuza 2 note... sad...
Great list
Great list
Great list, seems like a good year
zepic3
4 months ago