TheMightyEthan

Got Starfield in there as a combo-breaker on your Nintendo streak.

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.

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+

Gettin one in under the wire so it doesn't have to go in the 2024 thread?

Well that's me out then. I still haven't gotten through Alyx, which already feels too long for a VR game, and is only like 12 hours.

You say you're disappointed in the action combat of FFVIIR, but I say I'm fuckin hyped for Rebirth! (But no I agree, I'd like it better if it were active-time turn-based like the original.)

I've never been as big a fan of 2D Mario as 3D.

Do you just wear bikinis for fun, or is there a plot justification like with Quiet in MGS?

Chants of Sennaar This game is really freakin cool. It's a puzzle game where the puzzle is learning (made up) languages. Basically you wake up in a strange land where you don't understand the language, and you have to figure it out to figure out how to advance. You have a little notebook that records each new word you encounter, and you can make notes about what you think it means, and then periodically there are little puzzles where when you put the right words in it confirms the correct meaning so you can be sure you're right. Initially you start out just doing it based on context clues, but eventually you're also using little Rosetta-stone type inscriptions where you can see the same thing written in two different languages. Each language has its own syntax and grammar though, so it's not simply a 1:1 correlation from one to the next, you still have to work out which word means each thing. It's really neat, and you always have what you need to figure out the next part of the language. Other than a few stealth sections that I didn't particularly like, I enjoyed my whole time through. 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.

That makes sense, would certainly make sweeping the stick easier.

So I know nothing about fight sticks. Do the arrow buttons replace the stick, or do you need to have a separate stick module?

lol, I had both your votes in the actual tally, I just sight-counted wrong when I was looking at how many people voted for each game. Between the two of you it had 6 points, which actually puts it in 6th place. For some reason the top 5 were all neck-and-neck, then there's a pretty big drop down to 6th, then there's a 4-way tie for 7th. Here was my list: 1. Alan Wake 2 2. Hi-Fi Rush 3. Sea of Stars 4. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 5. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty SF6 was automatically disqualified from my list on account of being a fighting game and I don't play those.

https://forum.pressxordie.com/topic/7165-2023-pxod-overall-combined-goty/

You voted, and now we have the officially objectively correct 100% accurate top 5 games of 2023! It was neck and neck, with only 5 points separating the #1 slot from the #5. So, without further ado: #5 #4 #3 #2 and drumroll please... #1 Just for funzies, here's some more stats:

I can stop any time I want to.

Backlog schmacklog.

My backlog isn't doing so hot right now.

Sea of Stars This might well be the prettiest game I've ever played. It's made in a 16-bit style, and as I understand it is very much like the Chrono games, though I've never played those so I can't say for sure. Regardless, it's extremely charming, with lovely sprite work and amazing use of color. It's definitely one of those "every frame a painting" games. The world itself is varied and interesting, both in a gameplay sense and in a world-building sense. The story goes places, and I was with it the whole way. The battle system is also a lot of fun, being turn-based but with bonuses to attack or defense you can get by pressing A at the right time, which makes it a little more engaging, and an interrupt system for enemies by doing certain types of damage to them. I'm not a huge JRPG fan in general, but this one really hooked me, and I'd highly recommend it. Grade: A+

Alright, last call for submissions, I'll post the results tomorrow.

You know it!

I've been wanting to play this for a while, but it's never been on sale at the time time I was ready to start a new game, so I finally just said fuck it and bought it to force myself to play it after Sea of Stars.

I played FF7 Remake on PS4 originally, but I want to replay it before Rebirth and I want to be able to do it on Deck, so here we are.

Just a little tease, the top 5 are all currently within 4 points of each other, so it's still anybody's race.