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Ghostrunner: Project_HEL Wanted to play this before playing Ghostrunner 2, and it was a pretty cool little DLC for the base game. You play as Hel, one of the bosses from the main game, in the events that occur just before that game starts. Basically you're tasked with taking out the Climbers rebel group, the one the Ghostrunner is tasked with avenging in the main game. It plays more or less the same, but you can jump farther and dash farther, and like Link you can shoot your sword with power if you charge up a meter. All in all I'd say if you liked Ghostrunner you should definitely check this out, but it's not really bringing anything drastically new to the table. Grade: B+

Real Yakuza don't wait for 2024.

We have the overall GOTY, but figured we could also use one for our personal game of the year. For me the answer is easy: Armored Core 6 It delivered everything I wanted in a new AC game, biggest issue I had was with the new focus on more traditional boss fights, which were a bit annoying, although, currently playing on PS5, with the latest patch, and so far they're much better now, first boss was a tad too easy, but the rest have been much more fun. If you dropped the game due to boss fights in the first patch, I'd recommend giving it another try now. One thing I'd like to see them try is allowing you to play with different versions, in ACFA, you could choose which patch you wanted to play with, although for online you had to use the most recent, it allowed them to do fun things with some patches like an infinite energy patch, and (iirc) 1.4, AKA the missile patch. I really, REALLY hope it did well enough that we don't have to wait 10 years for a sequel or expansion. Runner up: Alan Wake 2 Any other year and this would have been my GOTY, if Alan had a giant robot that could reduce the dark place to rubble, it would have been the best game ever lol. Still, it was pretty close, both are awesome games that I love, and both came out after about a decade from the previous ones (though I guess AW had the remastered and American Nightmare in between lol), also, both were worth the wait.

One last game!!! Metroid Prime Remaster Fun fact: I've never finished this game before. I got maybe half way through on the GCN version (playing on a Wii) back in '09 or maybe '10 but stopped somewhere around the part where you see Metroids in tanks and the lights go out. I'm not sure exactly why! I do recall enjoying it. Maybe Uncharted 3 came out and I got distracted? Anyways, so essentially I've been playing a 20 year old game for the first time. When this game is great it's very great. Unfortunately it's also very tedious: Did you just walk back into a room you were just in? Fuck you! The enemies are all respawned. Seriously though, for a game that wants you to backtrack they sure didn't make it fun. Save points are few and far between. Defeated enemies will give you bombs when you need health or vice versa. The underwater section, without the suit that makes mobility easier, is SO slow. And then when you do get the suit the platforms are all still arranged for the old suit so you can easily over jump an fall all the way to the bottom. Speaking of the underwater section, I got about 75% through it and then the game told me I can't progress. Thanks for letting me waste my time! Want to get to the ice area from the overworld? Ha fuck you! See something cool that you can't get yet so you want to mark it on your map to come back to? Also fuck you! However, the world design is (mostly) great. The music is great. The power ups are awesome. Most of the bosses are cool (except Thardus who got stuck in a wall which made hitting it's weak spots very annoying. Visually the game is gorgeous Nintendo/Retro did a good job cleaning it up. I just wish they'd put some QOL changes into the game as well. Score: B+ That finalizes my list of games that I've completed this year: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - 2023-06-21 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - 2023-06-23 Super Mario 3D Land - 2023-12-03 Starfield - 2023-12-03 The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 2023-12-23 Super Mario Bros. Wonder - 2023-12-25 Metroid Prime Remastered - 2023-12-31 This is compared to three last year (both Pokemons and New Vegas) so.... I'm basically MetalCaveman or Pojo. Ok maybe not but as you can see I did pretty good in December.

GAME OF THE YEAR Yeah this one really couldn't have been anything else. I've never really been one for CRPGs but this one finally managed to suck me in. It's just such an enormous game with so much player choice and such great and memorable party members along with such deep and tactical combat that I really had no choice but to pick the same game most other people out there are picking. This one won the game awards for a damn good reason and I'm itching to replay it in co-op sometime. You could probably replay this ten times and have ten different experiences. The next Dragon Age or Mass Effect game has a hell of a tough act to follow after this one. RUNNER-UP I was fully prepared to put Tears of the Kingdom as the runner-up, and in fact I did just that in the poll for the other GOTY thread, but then I played Asgard's Wrath II and it just blew me away. Is it as big or deep as Zelda? No, of course not, but the thing is that Tears of the Kingdom was basically Breath of the Wild except better while Asgard's Wrath II, despite being a sequel, gave me an experience unlike anything else I've played before, especially in VR. It felt more fresh than Tears of the Kingdom did, so I just have to give it bonus points for that. It will probably be a long time before I experience combat that is this much fun again. Lots of VR games let you swing a sword around, but somehow it just feels so much better doing it in this one, and that's not even getting into the other weapons you get to play with in your loadout. Wielding a blade, a whip, a shield, a ranged weapon, and magic all at the same time against enemies who don't pull their punches makes battles more satisfying than anything I've felt in a VR game before. That's not even getting into the creative puzzles that will have you utilizing your god form, your mortal form, and your animal powers all at once to get through dungeons. This is probably the closest thing to a Zelda game we're going to get in VR anytime soon. HONORABLE MENTION I normally try not to put three games in a post like this but man, 2023 was just such a kickass year for games, maybe the best year since 2017. While I could put Zelda here and I would definitely say Zelda was the superior game in comparison, a Zelda game hardly needs to be given special mention. Outside of Nioh 2, Lies of P is the best Soulslike game not made by From that I have played to date. The atmosphere, the story, the combat, it all just scratches that Bloodborne itch in me that has been going neglected for ages. I think I ended up completing it five times before I put it down. It was pretty punishingly inaccessible at launch, but it has since been patched to make it easier for new players to get into it without hitting a brick wall. I recommend it to anyone who liked Bloodborne and I can't wait for the sequel.

Definitely less gaming this year, but I'm satisfied with what I played. 1. The Outbound Ghost 2. Vampire Survivors 3. Psychonauts 2 4. Dead Space (2023) 5. Yakuza: Like a Dragon 6. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 7. Resident Evil 4 Remake 8. Octopath Traveler II 9. Tails of Iron 10. Moonscars 11. Rocky Rodent 12. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 13. Final Fantasy XVI 14. Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth 15. Endling: Extinction is Forever 16. Street Fighter X Mega Man 17. U.N. Squadron 18. Ninja Gaiden (NES) 19. Chained Echoes 20. Sea of Stars 21. Toem 22. Lies of P 23. Blasphemous 2 24. Hime's Quest 25. A Juggler's Tale 26. Yarntown 27. Super Mario RPG (Switch) 28. Lost in Random 29. The House of the Dead: Remake 30. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Dredge This game is basically a more approachable version of Sunless Sea, which is definitely not a bad thing. You're a fisherman in what at first seems like a fairly idyllic little archipelago, but soon you realize Things Aren't Quite Right (TM). At its core it's what you might expect from a fishing game: you go out and fish, you bring your catch back to sell, you use the money to upgrade your boat, etc. However, at night the ocean is full of monsters that will attack your ship, and you lose sanity while you're sailing in the dark, but there are also valuable fish that are only available at night. You also discover a mystery to unravel that I won't spoil, but it's pretty neat stuff. The trouble is, I think it's simplified a little too much. The characters you encounter are interesting and creepy, and they do a very good job of creating an unsettling atmosphere, but there's just not enough of it. I wish the main quest was longer (I beat the game in just over 10 hours), and that there were more side-quests and characters to engage with. Obviously "I wish there was more" isn't a huge criticism, but it did leave me feeling a little unsatisfied at the end. What's there is good, it's just a little bare-bones. Grade: B+ And that's probably the last game I'm gonna get to take off my backlog this year.

Asgard's Wrath II This is it. This is the killer app, the system seller, the reason to buy a Quest. I'm sure a lot of people scoffed at Meta when they tried to enter the gaming space (and don't get me wrong, the Metaverse is still embarrassing), but if Oculus Studios keeps putting out titles of this caliber then Valve and Playstation had better step it up because this surpasses Half-Life: Alyx as the best VR game currently in existence. I don't know where to begin with how much I loved this game. I already thought the first one was really good, but this one is such a leap that it feels like the jump from Half-Life to Half-Life 2. Not only did they fix the few complaints I had with the first game, but they improved things that I didn't even think needed to be improved. Despite the name of the game, this time you're trekking through both the Norse and Egyptian pantheons, with the plot explaining it as Loki's machinations causing the threads of fate to unravel throughout the universe and it falls to you to fix it. The number of animal companions has been reduced to 5, but to make up for it each one can also be used as a mount to traverse the huge open maps. The developers claim this has a 60 hour campaign and yeah, that wasn't a lie. This game is enormous and stuffed with content. The one major complaint I had in the last game was the divine shield mechanic that required you to parry specific attacks to break the shields before you could do any damage. Divine shields still exist in this game, but they've been improved significantly. For starters, no enemy has more than one shield now, even bosses. Second, you can do chip damage to the shield with regular attacks. Third, there are multiple ways to open up enemy weak points, and if you hit those weak points then it not only does huge damage to their shield but it also refills your own. You never feel like you're just waiting for an opportunity to do damage anymore. Combat is fast, intense, challenging, and responsive. I can easily say this is the best melee combat I've ever experienced in a VR game, and since you're once again playing a god who possesses multiple mortal heroes, that means everyone has a different loadout to play with. Some of them are extremely creative and you would never be able to guess what kind of weapon some of them use. The puzzles are tricky but fair and boss battles are epic. The final boss battle is, once again, the best I've experienced in VR to date. As if a huge campaign that lasts dozens of hours wasn't enough, they also included a free roguelike mode where you traverse through a dungeon to compete for high scores, farm items for the single-player campaign, and complete challenges to unlock cosmetics for your godly avatar. Oh yeah, almost forgot, you can share your avatar throughout the campaign From Software style to show off your character or give hints to other players. They are also doing seasonal events for the roguelike mode so there will always be new things to unlock. This mode would be the full game for most VR titles and here they just threw it in as a side thing. It's fantastic. If I absolutely had to pick a negative point, and I am loath to do so, it's that it's not a graphical darling compared to the likes of Alyx. It doesn't look ugly, mind you, but as a native Quest game it has to work within the constraints of the hardware. The developers absolutely did the best they could with what they had to work with and what they managed to make is very impressive, but you still shouldn't put this on expecting Alyx level graphics. That's my only complaint, and it's not even really a complaint, more just me trying to be fair with my assessment. While the game also works on Quest 2, I am so glad I experienced it on the Quest 3, which not only got a graphics patch to take advantage of the extra power but the pancake lenses make it look so damn good. I can't go back to fresnel. Had I beaten this game when we were doing the game of the year poll this one absolutely would have made it onto the list, probably near the top.

Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad After finishing Zombie Slayers, I wanted to go back and play this one, found out it is backwards compatible so I played on by XOne lol. My first reaction was "this looks way better than I expected" obviously the Wii was never a graphics powerhouse, but I still thought this one would look along those lines, given that the series isn't known for cutting edge graphics, even so, I was pleasantly surprised with how good it has aged. Also, I did remember right, this game has a zombie whale boss. Another thing that surprised me, since I did not remember this one, was Reiko's character arc, in Zombie Slayers she has this redemption arc and acts more calm and more science/research/save the world oriented, while in this one she's just another one of the evil organization's minions. The last boss was also a surprise lol Overall, it was fun to see this game hold up so well, my biggest issue was that in Zombie Slayers you could use guns to deal with some bosses and enemies that would normally block all sword attacks, while in this one bosses can guard against gun attacks too. Grade: A+ Looking at some of the other games I'm playing, I'm fairly sure this will be the last one I finish this year, so, my list for 2023: Pokémon Scarlet Ghostbusters: The Videogame Remastered Dragon's Crown Pro Wish: Ishrafil Saga Waifu Uncovered Cyberpunk 2077 Moero Crystal H Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Seven Pirates H Bioshock Remastered Bioshock 2 Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild Seed of the Dead Daemon X Machina Hero by Chance Warlord by Chance Mortal Shell Seed of the Dead Sweet Home Wolfenstein Old Blood Prey (PC) God Eater 3 Lords of the Fallen (2014) Alan Wake 2 Armored Core 6 Resident Evil 4 (Wii) Onechanbara Bikini Zombie Slayers Onechanbara Bikini Samurai Squad 29 Games, not bad! A good mix of new, old and everything in between lol. Looking at my list from last year, I'm up by 14!! Granted, a lot of these were fairly short, but still, a decent list.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder I feel like this is what playing Super Mario World in 1991 would have been like. I mean, I'm pretty sure I did play SMW in 1991 or maybe 1992 at my uncle's house but I was 4 and dumb and didn't understand the difference between an NES and a SNES. So this is what playing Super Mario World would have been like when it was new and you understood the context of what you were playing. That is to to say, this game is very good. In any other year it would probably be a consensus as GOTY but alas 2023 was crazy. Grade: A++

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion This game is hard to rate. On the one hand, I found the combat fun, even the weird roulette power-up system that I thought sounded dumb when I heard about it. I also really liked the story, which is pretty compelling if you just accept it's complete anime nonsense. On the other hand, the game really suffers from being a port of a PSP game. The whole game is play for 15 seconds, watch a 30 second cutscene, play for another 20 seconds, watch a 15 second cutscene, on and on and on. It really interrupts the experience. For large parts of the game neither gameplay sections nor the cutscenes are long enough to really get into them before you switch back to the other. There was one point late in the game where literally in a cutscene my character walks out of room helping another character who's injured, I help the character sit down on the floor, it switches to gameplay where I walk 10 feet across the room to a door that is the only interactable object in the room, and as soon as I interact with it it switches back to a cutscene wherein I help the injured character back up and we leave the room together, I put him back down in the next room, where it switches back to gameplay and we repeat the whole process! (The next room was at least bigger, I guess?) Like why? Why not just make it one continuous cutscene? Rant aside, overall I enjoyed it, and I would still recommend it to anyone who wants more FF7 backstory. Just be prepared for it to feel pretty disjointed in its presentation. Grade: C, would have been a B+ if not for the weird structural decisions.

Resident Evil 4 (Wii Version) Controls take a bit of time to get used to, but once you do, it's pretty fun. Aiming is easier, specially with how the reticle changes colours when aiming at enemies or items. Other than that, it's RE4, you already know it's good. Grade: A+

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds I bought this game when it was released.... 10 years ago (wtf). I remember being really down on Nintendo at the time and not liking the 3DS at all. The resolution was crappy, it was uncomfortable to hold, and the 3D effect never really looked that good. So I played the game, grinded out rupees, bought all the items and then felt unmotivated to keep playing. Fast forward to 2023 and now I have a Steam Deck, which is much more comfortable to hold in my hands than a 3DS. Most 3DS games, including ALBW look really good in HD and the Steam Deck has no issue playing most games at 3x resolution. Well, the game itself looks better but maybe "looks good" is a step too far. The artstyle in this game is atrocious. It's the New Super Mario Bros of Zelda. I'm so glad Link's Awakening got a better art style in the remake than this game did. It's definitely a lowpoint in the series visually. Which is too bad given the whole painting theme with this game, it could have been their excuse to do something really creative and ambitious with the visual style. That said, gameplay is fantastic. I love top down Zelda, but have never really been a huge A Link to the Past fan, I just don't like the way sword combat feels in that game. Fortunately this is much more link Link's Awakening, Oracle games, and Minish Cap. The dungeon design is great, I especially liked Thieves Hideout, Dark Palace, and the Ice Ruins. Lorule, while dumb in concept, feels really fresh. The items you collect compliment the game well and it's focus on layers. You can also see some Breath of the Wild elements in this game. The treasure room challenges are essentially proto-shrines and collecting monster parts to turn into potions is something they'd elaborate on as well. Overall I feel I was too dismissive of this game back in 2013 but I'm glad I could play it now. The Steam Deck is great at breathing second life into some of these 3DS and Wii U games. Grade: A+