Top 10 Games of 2023: Honorable Mentions and Other Stuff

Alright, let's do this. We're wrapping up 2023 forever.

Honorable Mentions:

Venba, dev. Visai Games

I feel bad leaving this off the list for such a petty reason as "length". I am usually of the opinion that games are much too long, meanwhile Venba is the rare exception that I thought was too short. Part of this problem is economic. $15 for seventy minutes of game is a hard sell when most other games offer much more content per dollar. There should be a space for short games, that is in theory the promise of things like Apple Arcade or the Xbox strategy. However, more than the price issue, I think Venba needs more scenes. This is a cooking game set around a South Indian family trying to hold onto their Tamil heritage while living as immigrants in Canada. If you've read my movie reviews, you'd know I'm really taken with stories about immigrant identity. Venba has a lot of heart and emotion despite its cutesy Cartoon Network aesthetic. There is a heartbreaking scene in Venba where you cook a massive meal for your increasingly-distant, more Westernized son, and he completely ghosts you, leaving you with a huge kitchen full of plates. There's was no sadder moment in video games in 2023.

Left me wanting more.

Cocoon, dev. Geometric Interactive

Cocoon is a puzzle game with a fun concept: you're a little bug guy who carries around orbs in a top down Zelda-y adventure. The big gimmick is that your orbs are also worlds that you explore. So you're jumping between multiple realms of reality, while using those very dimensions as tools in the puzzles. The green orb is a swampy environment that also powers the elevators. Cocoon is trying some things I think are good ideas. For one, it is a puzzle game that is very simple, very readable, it wants you finish it. It never gets into the intensely baroque and inscrutable territories of say, The Witness or Baba is You. Another fun thing Cocoon does is create several big boss fights without any combat verbs, and they're good bosses. The problem with Cocoon is that making things so "playable" means that we never get the depth of the concept. It is only towards the end of the game that we can have the surreal dimension bending of get orbs within orbs. Just as the realities are fully confusing and recursive, it ends. I also wanted more from this.

Sea of Stars, dev. Sabotage Studio

A western studio made a great retro pixel art Japanese-style RPG full of reverence and references for the past of the genre. That game is called Chained Echoes by Matthias Linda, which released in 2022, and it is a better game than Sea of Stars. Sea of Stars simply got beaten to the draw. There's still a lot that is really good about Sabotage Studios' version, I do not regret playing it. It's a beautiful game. It's combat is a lot of fun: it does the Mario RPG timing-based combat better than Mario RPG did it. One of my favorite things to do in a game in 2023 was use Sea of Stars' multiple tennis minigame attacks and have a huge combo. Plus the combat has a great rhythm, where you can recover MP with attacks so you're always building up magic attacks, using magic, and dropping limit breaks to keep up the momentum. The bigger problem is that Sea of Stars has a dull story. Every time you think it is finally going to do something interesting, it pulls back.

The ending is awful by the way. I might have been able to forgive it all, but that wet fart of ending cemented how little this entire adventure meant in the end. (The 100% perfect ending is no better, btw.)

Best Party Members of 2023:

Garl, Sea of Stars - Not everything about the story in Sea of Stars was bad. The best part of it was our chubby best friend with a heart of gold. Garl might be one of the weaker party members in this game, actually. But as a person, he's the best thing going around. He's a happy kid who is decisively not chosen by destiny, and still just wants to help out. You meet back up with Garl after years of training and he's brought snacks. Garl rules. Everybody loves him.

Cid, Final Fantasy XVI - There really aren't "party members" in this game, just semi-useful NPCs that follow you around, maybe draw aggro sometimes. However, I need to celebrate the existence of "Hot Cid That Fucks". He's so much cooler than the rest of this cast and story deserve. Ralph Ineson's voice is a special gift to all us children.

Geno, Super Mario RPG - Geno is such a bro. He's the emotional of core of the game. And he's the best black mage, you will never ever need to use the poor cloud kid once Geno comes around. Geno floating around the party in star form is an all-time great moment of friendship in a SNES RPG.

The Hunter, Midnight Suns - It is ridiculous how much stronger your OC is versus all the superheroes in Midnight Suns. They're the best healer on the team, one of their earliest attacks is a whip move that smashes enemies into each other, and eventually you get a monstrously broken sword spin attack that throws enemies in all directions. The rest of the Marvel universe ain't shit. I love chilling with Blade, he's a good guy, I wish him luck with banging Captain Marvel. He still ain't shit.

Best Boss Fights of 2023:

Titan, Final Fantasy XVI - I'm not doing a Dishonorable Mentions because the only game that really disappointed me was FFXVI, and let's be honest, the boss fights ruled. They were cinematic, anime as hell, preposterous in scale, everything you'd want from the Bayonetta-esque game this sorta is. (Since it isn't really an RPG). Titan features a whole Sonic the Hedgehog segment where you are a kaiju running on the tentacles of another kaiju that is kaiju-sized in comparison to you. Titan big.

Bahamut, Final Fantasy XVI - Yeah two from this game, this is the better one. An entire city gets wrecked. You go to freaking space. There's a fusion dance. It is amazing.

Kale, Hi-Fi Rush - The final boss fight of this game, also the best one. You get to start this one off playing as a kitty. That is a good reminder that in spite of everything wrong with the macroeconomics, video games are good sometimes. Kale is a great example of a final exam boss. He's a combination of everything you've learned so far, needing all your buddies to break his shields, real culmination of all your skills

Also shout-outs to the Korsica boss fight, for having the funniest event if you fail a QTE in video game history.

Fallen Hulk, Midnight Suns - Spoilers, sorry. This happens late in Midnight Suns, just when you think you've fully grasped the systems. Oh you think this is all a parade lap to the finish, you're unbeatable? No you're not. Turns out fighting a Hulk is terrifying. All game you've been fighting goons and monsters who mostly have strength in numbers. Not the Hulk. He's just bigger than you. You cannot beat him, you can only make him mad. The game has to write a ridiculous comic book cheat in the second Hulk fight to even allow you to win.

Climb to the Beat, Mario Wonder - I guess not really a boss fight, per se. Mario bosses are rarely very good. But this stage is ridiculously hard. It demands a level of perfection that I rarely care to reach in most games, I'm glad to have been pushed to the limit by this one. Nearly 100 deaths, truly Celeste C-side nightmare vibes.

Wildly Inaccurate Predictions for Top 10 Games of 2024:

Three of these games are already out, so I got work to do. Another will be out by the end of the month.

10. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, dev. Rocksteady Studios - Cannot stop thinking about this game.

9. Earthblade, dev. Extremely OK Games, Ltd.

8. Stellar Blade, dev. Shift Up Second Eve Studios - I am embracing my full dirtbag lifestyle, I like butts and am not afraid to tell you that I like butts.

7. Hades 2, dev. Supergiant Games

6. Hollow Knight: Silksong, dev. Team Cherry - Refusing to give up hope!

5. Metaphor: ReFantazio, dev. Atlus & Studio Zero

4. Mina the Hollower, dev. Yacht Club Games

3. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, dev. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio - I might call this "Yakuza 8" a lot.

2. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, dev. Ubisoft Montpelier - Hell, I'm gonna buy this very game tonight.

1. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, dev. Square Enix Creative Business Unit I - The demo is great, this looks amazing. The trailers have me so hyped. Sephiroth calls Cloud "a puppy" which both very homoerotic and Crisis Core survivors know what we're referencing here.

...

Anyway, I'll be back writing on this blog... at some point. Hopefully I'll have a review out before the October Spooky season.