2023 was a tough year to launch a podcast

We didn’t meet our original goal of covering a new game every month for a number of reasons, not least of which was the wealth of new releases we were playing in 2023. And since our Tears of the Kingdom recording was a one-off we’re not likely to repeat again in the future, we wanted to take a moment to look back at our fave new releases of the year.

Ashton’s Faves

Baldur’s Gate 3

If you put a Wand of Fireballs to my head and asked me to name just one game that was my favorite of 2023, I’d shed one dragon-sized tear for Zelda and then admit to you that it was Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3.

1998’s Baldur’s Gate kicked off my love affairs with cRPGs and BioWare as a kid, and its own 2000 sequel remains one of my all-time favorite games (and a likely candidate for a future episode). There was a time when I wouldn’t have trusted anyone except BioWare to make a third entry in the series, but those years seem like a distant memory to me now, and the Divinity Original Sin games convinced me that, if anyone were suited to make a follow-up to one of the greatest RPGs of all time, it was Larian.

Even after having dabbled with early access over the last couple of years, Baldur’s Gate 3 still managed to surprise me with how deeply it sunk it’s Illithid tentacles in my brain, and before I knew it, I had logged over 100 hours with the game, finished one campaign run, and still wasn’t ready to put it down.

Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t just my favorite game of 2023, it’s one of my favorite games of all time.

Tears of the Kingdom

2017’s Breath of the Wild is another one of my favorite games and easily my favorite Zelda game ever. I knew the sequel was bound to be a banger, but it wasn’t until that trailer that I really felt the hype creep in.

When I finally got the game, it became an obsession in an my household. I played it every spare second I had, and my daughters also all fell into Zelda mania. One of them actually finished the game before I did, asking for help only with the final boss of the game (proud dad moment).

I was surprised by how fresh the game felt. Despite how apprehensive I was about the mechanics they swapped out from Breath of the Wild at first, I quickly learned that the toolset Nintendo had come up with for players in Tears of the Kingdom was superior in virtually every way. Ultra Hand, which I had originally worried would turn the game I loved into a shoddy Minecraft clone, changed all the ways I approached puzzles in the game for the better.

To this day, my skull hurts from rolling my eyes so hard at those players who wrote the game off as DLC, and Tears of the Kingdom is another game that I’ll remember forever as not only one of my faves of 2023, but an all-timer.

Street Fighter 6

Would you believe that, at 37 years old, this is the first Street Fighter game I’ve ever really played? I mean, I can remember having a go at SF2 and, later, Alpha 3, but I never could wrap my head around the six different attack buttons and hitting back on the d-pad to block. As I grew older, I found an appreciation for Capcom’s fighter as a deeper, more elegant series than my preferred Mortal Kombat, but I’d moved onto 3D fighters like Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive and, later, to virtually no fighting games at all.

In fact, for most of my adult life, I thought fighting games were behind me, and I could only appreciate them from afar. That changed when I finally took a chance on Guilty Gear Strive last year, and as trailers started rolling out for SF6, I decided now was as good a time as any to take the plunge.

What I found in Street Fighter 6 was one of the tightest, wackiest, and most memorable fighting games I’ve ever played. I spent dozens of hours with the World Tour and arcade modes before even attempting online multiplayer, and I was rewarded at virtually every turn. Getting to know the game’s cast of characters in the single player modes was a particular highlight for me.

That said, the SF6 experience I had that solidified it as a new fave for me came thanks in no small part to its new modern control scheme, which makes the game accessible to fighting game newcomers. My wife and daughters and I took turns passing around the controllers on one rainy summer afternoon, dueling it out in local multiplayer. My oldest plays a mean Cammy, and I hope I’ve sparked in her a love affair with the genre that lasts for years to come.

Honorable Mentions

I’ve named my top three above, but I played a ton of games last year, loved many, and disliked relatively few. Diablo 4 met if not exceeded my expectations in nearly every way, at least as far as the campaign is concerned. I’ve never really been much of a service game player, and I’m still feeling burned out from Destiny, so I can’t speak much to the endgame, but I also don’t think I’m done, done with Diablo 4.

Jedi Survivor was a game I was eager to start but bounced off of due to its performance issues at launch. I fell in love with it over the end of last year, though, and I’m excited to see it through.

I also really enjoyed my time with Spider-Man 2, but I think its predecessors are stronger games over all, particularly 2020’s Mile Morales standalone title. The narrative was ham fisted and clunky by the end, but web swinging (and gliding)through New York has never felt better.

Overwatch 2 remains a weekly stalwart of mine, and I’d be lying if I said I don’t have a blast every time I sit down with that game. I’d also be lying if I said I was fully on board with the trajectory Blizzard continues to take with its hero shooter, but we’ll see what 2024 has in store for it.

I also managed to knock off a few pre-2023 games from my backlog, including PlayDead’s Limbo and a handful of other indie games like Hoa from Singapore-based Skrollcat Studio.

Eric’s Faves

Against the Storm

I’ve been playing Against the Storm off and on since it was released in early access back in 2022, and with it’s full release in 2023, the game is at an amazing place and worth your time. If you’re a fan of RTS, city building, and rogue-lite games, this is it. I know those genres don’t typically align, but Against the Storm balances these mechanics in a compelling way.

Your job is to build settlements and expand outward from the central city. After a certain amount of time, there is a storm that will destroy everything but that central city, removing your settlements but maintaining the resources you have collected. Each settlement has its own challenges as various races must co-exist and work together while handling the dangers found within the forest they are trying to settle.

I’ve enjoyed my time with Against the Storm, and I’m so happy they had a full release. I’m looking forward to the content they add going forward.

Dredge

What a pleasant surprise Dredge was. I had seen it around and saw some streamers play a bit and decided to add it to my Steam wishlist. One day, I wasn’t in the mood for any of the larger games I had or any GaaS waiting for me and wanted something smaller. Dredge fits right into that sweet spot and has a great game play loop and a self contained story.

As you explore this world, you encounter lots of unique characters and fish to catch and sell along the way. The characters give interesting side quests as you try to progress in collecting artifacts around the map. Managing your fear and madness while out at sea is a great mechanic and gives thalassophobia feels.

After it’s over, you’re left with a story that could be considered completed or that they could build on with a future sequel. If there is a sequel, I’ll be picking it up without hesitation.

Diablo IV

I’m a sucker for an ARPG and will always give another Diablo release a try. Whether I stick with it or not is another thing, looking at you Diablo: Immortal. With the release of Diablo IV, I was once again taken to fighting off hordes from Hell for shiny loot.

The gameplay feels more fluid than any previous Diablo iteration. Each class feels very unique, and the skill tree and subsequent Paragon board give a good balance between simplifying skill choices and flexibility in specializing into specific attributes. Also, horses! I love the customizations offered up for horses.

That said, I have critiques with itemization, micro transactions, and quality of life improvements that should have been present on release. Why Diablo needs a store for skins after paying for a full priced game is beyond me. Especially when your character is typically so small on the screen or surrounded by so many enemies that you can barely see that cool skin anyway. I have not purchased the battle pass or any skins for Diablo IV yet as it just has never seemed worth it. The base transmogs are really great, and I’ve been happy with everything I’ve been given with the base game.

After all that, I keep coming back each season to spin up a new class and run through the new content. I’ve really enjoyed it and can see it being a game that I keep in rotation if for no other reason than to run through the seasonal content every few months.

The Other Guys

Grand Theft Auto: V I finally gave a try this year. There is a lot to explore, and now I understand why this game continues to get so much playtime. The sandbox is incredibly well done, and you’re left to your own devices so often that you could spend a lifetime in this game and never even play through the story.

One that I’ve enjoyed playing with my kids is Hogwart’s Legacy. The feeling of being a witch or wizard attending Hogwarts, casting spells, and helping classmates is captured perfectly. While JK Rowling says horrible things, the developers and game designers have created a world that feels wholly inclusive. I’ve enjoyed the magic of this game and won’t stop until I’ve completed all of Merlin’s Trials.

In terms of games played, the through line of the year has to be Overwatch 2. Having played since beta, Overwatch continues to evolve and, in my opinion, get better with each iteration. I play this game every week and see no signs of stopping. I’m looking forward to the sweeping changes to competitive and new heroes we heard about at Blizzcon this year.

Nick’s Faves

The Big One

It’s hard for me to imagine a more hyped-up game that actually met and exceeded all expectations than Baldur’s Gate 3 (maybe Alan Wake 2, which I haven’t played much of myself yet). It takes the tired, old setting of the Forgotten Realms and makes it fresh and exciting again. Larian’s polish shines even brighter here than on their previous masterpiece, Divinity: Original Sin 2, in some places, particularly the hag quest line, which is one of the best quests I’ve ever seen in a game. But unlike the punishing, soul-crushing difficulty of DOS2, Baldur’s Gate 3 is accessible to almost anyone with just a decent PC or console and a passing interest in fantasy stories. You can even play it comfortably on a couch via Steam Deck, which does an admirable job rendering the game for a handheld device.

While the hardcore tactical challenges are there for those that want them, BG3’s real triumph is the breadth of its allure, not unlike 2022’s Elden Ring. It has something for almost everyone to enjoy from moment to moment, whether its the refined and enhanced D&D 5E combat system, the sheer number of branching routes through the game’s main and side story threads, or the extremely well-written, voiced, and animated companion characters. If you play as a bard, for instance, you can talk your way out of most major encounters in the game instead of fighting, and it’s somehow still very satisfying to do so.

The game falters immediately after its second act, but little wonder, considering the amount of time and effort it’s taken one of the best and well-funded “indie” studios in the business to get BG3 to this point already. I think Larian made the right call to focus on Acts 1 and 2 as much as they could before the launch date, and I have nothing but high hopes for their continued support of the game. I can’t wait to finish it myself, despite some of my pacing and story critiques about the late game content I’m currently in.

It’s been said many times elsewhere, but BG3 is the best translation of D&D into a video game we’re likely to get for a long time. It’s a new must-play in the gaming canon, absolutely, and a new personal all-time fave.

Old Jacket, New Leather

I’m not immune to the draw of the remake/remaster craze happening at the moment, and you shouldn’t be either, honestly. It’s not the kind of game preservation we deserve, but it’s maybe the kind we need right now. I was beyond thrilled to get to play Metroid Prime all over again. And amazingly, it mostly held up and surprised me with how fun it still is, with a modern control scheme and HD graphics to boot.

I was more tentative about the Resident Evil 4 remake at first, thinking like many that it didn’t need remastering. And it still doesn’t, but the remake is a great game in its own, separate ways. It recontextualizes and remixes many of RE4’s most memorable moments and characters, and I enjoy the representations in both versions for different reasons. Ashley, I think most would agree, got the modern, more realistic take that she always deserved, and the franchise as a whole is much better for it.

The modern rereleases of Quake 2, Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition, Gimmick!: Special Edition, and Trip World DX are much easier to justify, though, than a couple of GameCube bangers. They may be mostly straight-up ports, but each brings unique improvements that make them vastly-superior experiences to their original versions. Quake 2, in particular, was nearly languishing into obscurity until Nightdive and Machine Games brought it roaring back to life (and with a brand new single-player campaign episode, Call of the Machine). The KEX engine version is much easier and more fun to play, due to the many updates to the monsters, weapons, physics, controls, graphics, networking, development tools, and more. I’m very glad it got the facelift it deserved before Jennell Jaquays passed away, and I’m definitely going to make more of my own maps for it.

Even Rise of the Triad got a brand new, easy-to-use level editor as well as a new episode, and if you’ve never played it but like weird, old shooters where you can turn into a dog and bite occult Nazis, I highly recommend it. It’s uncanny as a half-way point between Wolfenstein 3D and Doom but worth experiencing to see how the Apogee team worked in those awkward constraints. Gimmick! (NES) and Trip World (Game Boy), both from Sunsoft and featuring adorable, plushy-like main characters, are two of the best platformers most westerners have never heard of. They finally get their due in their new releases, and Trip World even has a beautiful new full-color mode designed by the game’s original director, Yuichi Ueda. Gimmick! is easy to play casually now thanks to the new rewind feature, and it even has a dedicated speed-running ranked ladder mode for the real masochists out there.

Finally, Dwarf Fortress, which I still need to spend more time with, deserves to be called out here for the monumental effort it took to create a new graphics mode on top of the original ASCII graphics for one of the most complicated games ever. It technically released in December of 2022, falling into that awkward time at the end of the year when most awards have already been decided, but the developers at Bay 12 Games made a ton of updates to version 50 throughout 2023, with a super-exciting Adventure Mode still planned for release in April this year. Before the graphics update and Steam release, it was a lot less accessible to all but the most dedicated of players, but now anyone can finally jump in and watch their centuries-old, procedurally-generated, dwarf colony die horribly from monster invasions, which remains a thing of real magic, whether you choose to play with ASCII or sprite art.

Ninten-does it Again, But Bigger and with More

I won’t linger long on the two biggest Nintendo games of the year, as we did two podcast episodes on Tears of the Kingdom already, and Super Mario Wonder is the easiest game on my list to play and enjoy for yourself. It’s worth pointing out, though, just how wrapped up in Tears we all were for several weeks this past summer. Game developers and players alike lost their minds over the Ultra Hand power-up, which somehow lets you glue several objects together into your own, working contraptions without crashing the game and makes every aspect of the game more interesting. The Breath of the Wild-style exploration and child-like dialogue may still not really be for me, but I still spent my 40 hours in Tears and enjoyed it thoroughly from what I can remember of that blur of sky-diving and shrine puzzles. Mario Wonder, of course, is pure serotonin emanating from a screen into your fingertips, ears, and eyeballs, and I’ll definitely finish it this year.

Standout Mods

I won’t ruin much of the surprise of MyHouse.wad or pretend it’s something it’s not, but I can’t really describe it to you without spoiling at least some of the experience. You should know that it’s possibly the best community Doom release of all time, but that’s not why you should play it. You should play it because there’s nothing else like it, a House of Leaves-inspired, branching, surreal horror, meta-adventure delivered in a low fidelity, primal way that fits with Doom’s grungy, pixelated aesthetic perfectly. Every aspect of it is extremely well-considered and planned out, executed in a way that only cold, hard code, pixels, and MIDI can deliver. In my opinion, it definitely should have been in the best indie game of 2023 conversations alongside titles like Dredge and Cocoon.

Similarly unique and grassroots, Daggerfall Unity, which finally hit version 1.0 on December 31st, 2023, is a labor of fan community love to present an accessible, build-your-own-experience of a game that most would tell you is not worth revisiting for any substantial amount of time. The new Unity engine port, compatible with dozens of patches and bug fixes and including a built-in modding user interface, fix up a game that too long sat on Bethesda’s dusty back catalogue, and it’s completely free.

The game still admittedly lacks the verisimilitude, audacity, and atmosphere of essential games like Morrowind or Fallout: New Vegas and doesn’t even fully deliver on the power fantasy aspects of an Oblivion or Skyrim. But it makes up for it in sheer weirdness and tune-out vibes, more akin to playing something like Minecraft or Microsoft Flight Simulator than a “serious” RPG, unless we consider its experimental contemporaries like Might & Magic 6, Strife, and Ultima Underworld. They and Daggerfall released in the days of simple mechanics and simpler controls but misguided, grand ambitions, with Daggerfall’s world famously encompassing a landmass the size of a New England state, but with unique content density that would give even a Call of Duty-franchise executive pause. What you’ll find there won’t always be exciting or novel, but if you can get in the right zen-like mindset, Daggerfall Unity will gently pull you along for hours into its polygonal, dungeon abysses better than ever.

But if you’re still too weirded out by post-modern WADs and way too much walking, I’d still recommend Sigil 2, the latest published work by industry legend and one of Doom’s original creators, John Romero. It’s not the best Doom mod ever, but it may be the best new entry point for new Doom players, along with the original Sigil from 2019. And it’s a ton of fun in its own right, with John’s signature metal-infused, tough-as-nails encounters and tight, puzzle-like environments that would make a Destiny level designer blush. If you’re feeling over-confident in your FPS skills, I suggest you try Sigil 2’s challenges on Ultra-Violence difficulty and pistol start every level. I guarantee you’ll feel humbled shortly after. Several other new Doom works celebrating the game’s 30th anniversary came out this year as well, so if you’re still interested after defeating Sigil 2, know that there’s a bloody ocean of Doom content out there for you to discover. The 2023 Cacowards, the Doom community’s ranking of the best mods and wads of the year, are always a great place to start.

The Quake 1 mapping community, too, remains one of my favorite sources of inspiration and creativity. I wasn’t nearly as active in the Quake Mapping Discord server this year as I have been in the past, but that hasn’t slowed the flood of new Quake community jams, solo and team projects, mods, and releases in the slightest. With an awesome new sourceport like Ironwail and a shiny new website like Slipseer, it’s easier than ever to get into 3D level design and game development via playtesting, mapping, and modding for Quake.

Play in 2024 Time

What’s your favorite game that we didn’t play?!

What are you looking forward to most in 2024?

What would you like to see from us in the coming months?