The Best Games of 2023: Part 1
Typically I don’t write about things I’m playing until the end of year where I’ll sum it all up in one giant piece. I’m not doing that this year because frankly... there are a lot of very good games coming out in 2023 and I have a deep, sickly urge to talk about them.
I figured, seeing as we’re a little over halfway through the year somehow, that now would be as good a time as any to open up my notes app and break down the stuff in the list that I have titled, “GOOD GAMES YOU PLAYED IN 2023.”
Before we get going, I want to be clear that this list isn’t my final GOTY list, and just because I missed something in the first half of the year, that doesn’t exclude it from showing up later. For example a game like Dave The Diver, which is apparently quite good, would probably end up on this list but I just haven’t been able to squeeze it in. Like I said, there’s a lot of games coming out in 2023, and many of them are very big.
There’s legitimately THREE massive RPGs in this half of the year alone. It’s gluttonous, frankly.
Metroid Prime Remastered
Shockingly, this isn’t even the only re-release of a Gamecube game on the list this year. Nor is it the only remake of a Gamecube game this year, either. The 2000’s are the new vein from which companies can mine nostalgia points, clearly. However, in most of these cases, I don’t mind. Especially when the games are as good as Metroid Prime.
And in case you forgot, Metroid Prime is an all-timer.
I played this back in February when Nintendo shadow-dropped it after a direct, and it’s one of those games that I’m so glad I had another chance to take a look at many years after my first time playing it. I’ve never been a huge Metroid fan, as the, “Metroidvania,” genre hasn’t ever really appealed to me. For various reasons, I’m not very good at remembering where things are without some kind of waypoint system, and I’m also not a huge fan of moving on from content until I can come back later and actually take care of it. I much prefer being able to clear an area/level before moving on to the next. Which is exactly antithetical to the kind of game that this is.
However, the reason why this game did make it onto the list is that this year I’ve really found myself to be a lot calmer and able to focus on things in a way I really haven’t been able to for a long time... if maybe ever. And, allowing myself to spend a few evenings getting entirely sucked into Metroid Prime’s level design, visuals, and atmospheric score is what motivated me to see this thing through.
Not to say that discovering a lot about myself and my mental health in 2022 is the only reason for this, but I think that this breakthrough is a huge indicator about where I’m at these days. Which is to say-- broadly pretty good.
Usually when I play games, I have to have something else playing in the background like a YouTube video or a podcast. But I think Metroid Prime was a great primer for this year’s newfound intentionality that I’ve found with playing games and... appreciating other art in general.
It’s a game, and a genre, that not only lends itself to contemplation and dedicated exploration of a space, but it explicitly asks those things of the player.
I’m poking around in corners, not just because I’m looking for missile capacity upgrades, but also because I’m finding myself growing more and more curious about decisions behind the design of an ancient Chozo temple, or the placement of a particularly nice-looking waterfall. I’m pouring over codex entries that give the world so much flavor, and I’m excited by every new enemy I encounter because I want to know that their name is, and what their deal is.
All of these things are spaces I used to blow past, and tomes of writing that I used to button-mash to skip. Which isn’t always a bad thing in games, but it’s certainly a change of pace for me. I used to, and I still do to a large extent, play a lot of games with the mindset that I wouldn’t really care if most things were textureless gray boxes, so long as the game played the same.
But I gotta say... stepping out of the ship, into the rain, and hearing those haunting electronic beats really felt different this time. And I took a lot of joy in appreciating something in a way that I hadn’t before. The kid who played this game when he was 13 or 14 is certainly different from the guy who's playing this game at 25; which I guess... is the goal. And I think that’s going to be reflected in quite a few ways as this list goes on.
Resident Evil 4 (Remake)
The second game on this list overall, and technically the second (but not last) Gamecube game on this list is the remake of Resident Evil 4. Which, much like Metroid Prime, I would go on record as saying is one of the greatest video games ever made. But to be very clear, this is something I’d say far more strongly about RE4 than I’d ever say about any Metroid game, really.
I’m not a horror guy, at all. I’m a huge scaredy-cat. I am, however, a big Resident Evil guy.
Resident Evil 4 is the kind of game that you can replay every year, if not multiple times a year. It’s perfect. It’s breezy, fun, and thrilling. There’s a hundred ways to enjoy it, whether you’re playing for the first time, or competing against yourself for a faster completion.
I also think that it’s one of the funniest games ever written. Intentionally, or not.
So naturally there’s some trepidation when it’s announced that a game like this is going to be remade from the ground up. You worry that it’ll lose its charm, or that it’s going to be handled by people who might misunderstand exactly what it is that keeps the game feeling timeless. The remake of Resident Evil 2 was one of the best games of the last decade, so it’s not like I thought we were in terrible hands, but I also don’t think the original RE2 is nearly as good or (more crucially) as culturally and historically significant to the medium of as Resident Evil 4.
I mean we pretty much don’t have any modern action games, or at least we don’t arrive to them in the same way as we did, without Resident Evil 4. It isn’t just a very good video game-- it is in the canon of “games you need to play to seriously understand the artform.” And that might be a bit hard to appreciate considering the things that it brings to the table, like third-person shooting, quick-time-events, and its overall blend of cinematics with gameplay largely feel par for the course nowadays. But, that’s only because Resident Evil 4 is the reason every other game has those things.
So how the fuck can a remake that modernizes its controls, changes its writing, and broadly removes things like quick-time-events be any good?
Well, broadly, it’s that every change in Resident Evil 4 (Remake) feels heavily considered and ultimately makes for a game that is far more in-tune with the kinds of games that the original RE4 inspired. Whether or not you consider this modernization to be a good thing will determine how you feel about the rest of the remake, I’d imagine.
In my opinion, I’d say that the remake of Resident Evil 4 and the original are broadly different enough to where one doesn’t overwrite the other. The latter is campier but more invested in mechanical rigidity, while the former spends more of its runtime using modern technology to heighten the atmosphere and more closely align the player’s wants with Leon Kennedy’s newfound dexterity.
The original Resident Evil 4 is far more concerned with “being a video game,” while the remake is attempting to give players, “an experience.” Which I think illustrates perfectly the delineation between a pre and post-Naughty-Dog culture. Which is funny in a cosmic way, considering the fact that Uncharted and The Last of Us are the culmination of everything that Resident Evil 4 promised.
The world is less linear, but also more detailed. The writing is less silly, but the characters are much deeper. The shadows are darker, and the gore is messier. There’s less friction at every point of interaction and it’s not as scary as result, but it’s also a very well-made and entertaining action game.
Am I a bit disappointed that the little weird boy king isn’t as weird as he used to be? Yes. Does that mean that my favorite joke from the original game doesn’t get play here? Also yes. But I ultimately think that’s fine because the existence of the remake doesn’t delete the original game from existence. If anything, playing both versions of Resident Evil 4 is a great way to track the evolution of games over the course of just about twenty years.
I just spent a lot of word count talking about Resident Evil 4 (Remake) without actually really saying whether or not I think it’s a good game. And yes. I do. I think you should play it. Ten out of ten. But I also don’t think there’s much more to say about the thing if it isn’t in conversation with its own history.
DREDGE
Finally reaching something that’s new, and doesn’t necessarily set the entire world on fire. Although, this was something that certainly ate up a few sleepless nights.
It’s a game that really respected my time.
In my quest to Pay More Attention To Art That I’m Consuming, I found the loop of Dredge to be hypnotic, and its setting to be enthralling. While I think that Lovecraft-adjacent horror tropes can be used as a crutch in a very, “Rule of Cool,” sense, I think that this game is light-hearted enough to make for perfectly palatable window dressing on something that is very little more than a basic fishing tycoon/simulator.
That simple gameplay leaves you a lot of time to take in the atmosphere of the ocean, and to ponder the things that you’re seeing. Whether that’s a wrecked ship, the cosmic horrors of the deep, a mutated fish, or an eerie ghostly counterpart to your own vessel that’s seemingly always just within your periphery. These things, combined with some expert writing in the game’s quests, dialogue with NPCs, and other general flavor text, really turns a world that is quite simple visually (not to say bad-looking, of course) into a strong and believable horror setting with a very wry sense of humor about the whole thing. And it’s that sense of humor that really pushes the game over the line from “Lovecraft Game 36,” to being something memorable. It isn’t self-referential in the sense that it’s poking fun at its own shortcomings, but rather in the way that Dredge seems to understand the kind of game it is.
A game that is, at most times, relaxing and one that doesn’t overstay its welcome. You can complete the entire thing within a dozen hours or so. Something I appreciated a lot, especially looking forward to the rest of the year, and seeing exactly what was in store for me in the Spring.
STAR WARS: JEDI SURVIVOR
I really like Star Wars, as anybody who knows me is probably well aware of. However the last time one of these games came out, Star Wars was in a much better place, I think.
It was before The Rise of Skywalker, before the very bad Obi-Wan and Boba Fett shows, and before the absolutely underwhelming trajectory of The Mandalorian’s later seasons. Sure, it’s not a secret that Andor is the best Star Wars thing ever made, and the previous Jedi game from Respawn was a super strong foundation... but there have been better times to be a Star Wars fan. And it’s the combination of that, alongside coming out just before the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, that I’ve come to the conclusion that Star Wars: Jedi Survivor is definitely, “one of the most video games,” that I’ve played so far in 2023.
Let me be clear! That’s not a bad thing!
I had a ton of fun working my way through the story, and exploring each of the game’s environments. In fact, one of the set pieces around the middle of the thing is one of the most exhilarating things that I’ve seen this kind of game pull off since like... the train sequence in Uncharted 2.
The movement is a super fluid take on Uncharted mixed with the control of Celeste, and the combat is a really refreshing simplified version of the stuff you’ll find in something like Dark Souls, or maybe more specifically Sekiro. The exploration, funny enough, is basically just Metroid Prime again. The objectives, side quests, and collectibles are all typical fare for what has become the template for AAA open-world RPG-adjacent things.
People really liked God of War: Ragnarok last year, and they really liked Jedi Survivor this year. And ya’ know, despite rumors to the contrary... I am people. It’s true.
The story was, much like the first game, a very interesting take on the Star Wars setting which pulled from some pretty niche places including the relatively new High Republic stuff. Which, I’m sure, is part of some greater plan to prepare audiences for its live action counterparts in TV and film. There’s even a twist towards the game’s climax that genuinely caught me off guard and had me excited to see where the thing went. Although, I do think that the game does away with some of its most interesting threads early on in service of setting that twist up.
For a game that I really enjoyed playing, it’s hard not to write about it in such a clinical way. Because in a lot of ways, this game feels like it was clinically designed to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible. And that’s fine. Because it’s still Star Wars, and I really had a good time with it.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom
Okay. The big one.
To set the tone, I think that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild is one of the best games ever made. If not the best. I was almost certain that no game could ever do player expression, atmosphere, or exploration as well as it did.
So, when a sequel was announced, I was equally excited and wary of what that could actually even mean. Of course, I was probably more on the side of excited because if anything new was coming from the minds that made Breath of The Wild, I would be there day one. Then, there were the potential issues that could have arisen from Tears of The Kingdom reusing so many assets, and frankly, so much content from the first game. But even then, those fears proved to be baseless...
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom is a bigger and better version of Breath of The Wild in every form and metric.
This game was far and away my most anticipated of 2023, and without hyperbole it not only met those expectations but surpassed them in ways that I legitimately couldn’t have imagined. The world is more interesting to explore, the story is actually good, and the tools provided to players here give way to the greatest emergent gameplay experiences I’ve ever had the pleasure of discovering. As a result, even the simple act of solving a puzzle or crossing a wide gap feels like you’ve got one over on the developers. Even if you’re submitting the intended solution, getting to it in your head feels like you’re the only person who’s every tried it that way.
It’s not possible to count on a single set of fingers, let alone probably a dozen, the amount of times I had to stop and think to myself, “I can’t believe that this is a real video game,” and, “I’ve just seen something so unexpected and so confounding that I don’t think another game can ever provide this high again.”
I constantly struggle with finding a way to relate my experience with this game, and why I love it so much, that doesn’t just devolve into telling stories. And maybe it isn’t the worst thing that all of my praise for this game is delivered purely by way of anecdote. For a game that’s so beautiful, well-written, and atmospheric in all of the best ways, there’s nothing more indicative of its strength as an interactive experience than with my endless marveling at its technical achievements.
I’m sure you’ve seen the deluge of rickety contraptions that people have uploaded to TikTok, or read articles about just how impressive some of its physics simulation is. And really, on all fronts from a purely superficial level to a complete appreciation for its mechanical depth, Tears of The Kingdom is operating on a level that no other game in 2023, or even in the past decade has really been able to reach. Outside of maybe just Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. The latter of which is, of course, directly influenced by the former.
On the note of games which took a lot from Breath of The Wild, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the fact that a large part of the foundation upon which Tears of The Kingdom is built, mainly its overworld map, is reused content from the first game. I was never one to doubt Nintendo’s ability to recontextualize most of that stuff to make it new and interesting, and thankfully I was proven right. Most of my time spent in that game, especially during its early hours, I rarely found myself exploring a part of the map that I recognized. One very smart move that Nintendo made here was essentially starting players at part of the map where their journey likely ended the last time they played Breath of The Wild. Rather than starting on the peripheries of the map, and working your way inward, you start at the center and your objectives encourage you to work your way out in any direction.
Despite having these objectives, most of my enjoyment found in Tears of The Kingdom comes from what I can only describe as, “bumbling,” or maybe, “stumbling,” from one point of interest to the next. Sure, I wanted to get to the next major story beat at the game’s southwest corner, but the path there was both unclear and littered with a dozen-dozen distractions.
On top of that, I was motivated to reach the southwest corner of the map specifically because I wanted to see what had become of locations that I grew the most fond of during my time playing Breath of The Wild. I wanted to check in on Zora’s Domain, or see what was going on in Hateno Village, and find out what had become of the house I had tirelessly worked to buy and furnish.
With Tears of The Kingdom, Nintendo was able to use this asset recycling as a way to explore what the world looks like in the wake of the events of the first game. To emphasize the passing of time in a way that video games generally don’t get to do, or in a way that sequels are generally uninterested in exploring; largely do the nature of video game franchises requiring systemic and atmospheric overhauls with seemingly every entry. Breath of The Wild is a post-apocalypse story, and that makes Tears of The Kingdom a post-post-apocalypse story in some really interesting ways. Seeing characters who have grown older, established flourishing businesses, or even fallen on harder times made for a sequel that feels like visiting a place you used to call home in a way that I’ve seen very few ever attempt.
And when you think about the person you might have been in March 2017, and who you are now in July 2023-- yeah... things are probably very different!
It all ties into this idea that the game is about uncovering this ancient civilization, and reckoning with a problem that they left for our heroes in the present day. It’s a game about time, and its passing, and what we take forward. The lessons that are learned, and the lessons that are lost. So for this thing to be about a kingdom dealing with rebuilding, finding new leadership, advancing technologically, having their children come of age, and reckoning with changing cultures-- the asset reuse was not only a necessary limitation of the timeframe in which they had to build the game, it’s also thematically applicable to the stories being told here. It was risky, but it paid off!
This is the best game of 2023, I played it obsessively until it was finished, and there’s still a ton more time left to put into it. There’s really no contest. I’m sure that I’ll have more to write about this game some day, but for now, I’ll leave you with just the hope that you get to see everything this game does for yourself so we can talk about it.
Diablo IV
We’ve reached the part of the list where I’m gonna talk about games that I think will be very memorable to me come the end of year, but that I’m also still bouncing between. I haven’t finished the rest of these, so maybe they end up being worse than I thought. But it’s my list. So I don’t care.
Anyways, if you’ve ever played a Diablo game before you know that they are the equivalent to scrolling through twitter while watching very bad television. The gameplay is meant to be simple, and almost mindless, as you’re going to be doing a lot of it. Over and over again. Thankfully, I also play games like Destiny 2, so none of this is exactly foreign to me.
In a lot of ways, I’m probably the worst kind of Diablo player, however. I vastly prefer Diablo III over Diablo II, and I don’t particularly find starting new characters to be all that enticing an idea. So, when it came time to see where Diablo IV fell in the franchise, I was so relieved to see that it was mostly building off of the work Blizzard had done for the former.
I don’t have a ton to say about this game, other than the fact that I think the combat is very fun, and like always Blizzard is still nigh-unbeatable when it comes to presentation. It is genuinely a joy to sit on a discord call with friends, holding down the left mouse-button, and absolutely cooking hundreds of icky demons while gossiping about how our week has been. In much the same way that I approach games like Fortnite, I really think that Diablo IV is at its best when you’re a little bit not-sober, and get to excitedly tell everyone else about the neat sword you found.
I think, like most ARPGs, it's a bit too shallow to take much more seriously than that for my tastes. Which is a shame, because I do love a lot of the MMO trappings that they’ve added here, and I would gladly spend more time in its world if I could.
Final Fantasy XVI
Speaking of game series of which I am the worst kind of fan, I couldn’t be happier that the new Final Fantasy game is the thing that it is. My favorite Final Fantasy game is XIV, and the first one I ever really fell in love with was the much-maligned XV. Then, during the early parts of the pandemic, I couldn’t have been more at peace than when I was exploring Final Fantasy VII: Remake.
If you’re sensing a trend here, it’s that I really don’t enjoy playing turn-based RPGs. And, Final Fantasy used to be a series of those... but now it’s... sort of... not. And selfishly I couldn’t be happier about that because while I really don’t enjoy the pace of a turn-based action game, I adore the aesthetics and common tropes of the Final Fantasy series. From the menu designs, to the sound effects, and even the recurring creature designs for things like Moogles, Chocobos, Tonberries, and even Malboros oddly enough.
Then, there’s the common stories of a group of young people who get way in over their heads, and we spend a lot of time learning about them, and how they interact with one another. Usually, this culminates in these kids killing a god or two, but the actual themes of these stories are always very personal.
And I was always sad that I had to look at these things from afar.
Anyways, Final Fantasy XVI has combat that was designed by the guy who did Devil May Cry 5, and the studio that made Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Also the director of the game (the guy who is also in charge of the critically-acclaimed MMO Final Fantasy XIV) helmed this one, and he told everyone on the staff to watch Game of Thrones because it was gonna be like that.
So, in fewer words, it’s a pretty new direction for the franchise. At least... it appears that way on the surface. And this new direction leads directly to somebody exactly like me.
There’s hardly a party system, there’s no open world to explore, and probably 30-40% of the game is spent watching cutscenes which now feature lots of blood and people saying cool guy words like, “fuck,” and, “shit,” and probably, “dick.” But I gotta say... the combat is really fucking fun, and features some of the most jaw-dropping action set pieces I’ve seen in a long time. There are some things that happen in this game that are so crazy it might overheat your PS5, and that’s not a negative!
Also, the things that are going in this story, particularly the Game-Of-Thrones-esque political squabbling over territories is explicitly to do with the fact that there are giant magical crystals coming out of the ground in certain places, and also those crystals are protected by people who can turn into elemental gods which basically maps directly on the dragons-as-nukes thing.
Like, crystals, kids who turn into giant monsters, and leading a rebellion against an oppressive empire... it’s all Final Fantasy, baby.
This is another one of those games that I probably wouldn’t have been able to get through if I hadn’t discovered this newfound ability to sit-the-fuck-still and just watch something, or play something, and actually appreciate it. Like I said, a huge chunk of this game is cutscene, and the story is rather complicated. There are a lot of names and places to memorize, much like the actual show Game of Thrones. However, there is a handy tool which allows you to refresh your memory of this stuff at any time, and I use it a lot, but I’m still really cherishing the nights that I choose to spend with Final Fantasy XIV because its cutscenes are beautiful, and the story is actually pretty touching.
Also, as a funny aside, the feature that lets you pause any cutscene and read about the people or places involved? It’s called, “Active Time Lore.” And I think that’s really cute.
Despite playing quite a bit of it, I’m pretty early on still, but I can’t wait to get back to it. I just had a few other things pop up that needed more urgent attention. Such as my current devotion to another relatively older video game franchise...
The Entire Pikmin Franchise
Can you put every game in a series on one list? As a single entry on a list? YES! And you should have these games on your lists too!
Pikmin has always been a franchise that I completely dismissed. Not for any particular reason. Sure, I’ve never really clicked with real-time strategy games, and I have a severe phobia of ants, but I don’t think those are the reasons why I always relegated the series to, “the weird one Nintendo does.” It always seemed crazy to me that Shigeru Miyamoto cared way more about new Pikmin games than he did about new Mario or Zelda games, so maybe I resented it in some kind of sick way?
Regardless of the reason, I’m so mad at myself for having done that so consistently in my almost 26 years of living.
I had every chance in the world to play Pikmin, and now that I have for the first time with the recent release of Pikmin and Pikmin 2 on Switch, I am voraciously attempting to play them all in a newfound anticipation for Pikmin 4. A game that releases in just under two weeks. At the time of writing this, I’ve finished Pikmin, and I’m about 80% of the way through Pikmin 2. The controls have been clunky, and these games are a bit more stressful than I was led to believe, but on the other hand these are also some of the most funny and charming games I’ve ever played.
Even if I didn’t mention that these were originally Gamecube games, it would be almost immediately apparent anyways. Everything about these games, from their design to the presentation is so quirky and off-kilter in a way that Nintendo just hasn’t been in the 20 years since. The music is funky, the character designs are deeply strange in an unexplainable way, and even the writing has this grim sense of humor that they rarely deploy elsewhere.
The fact that the plot of Pikmin 2 is your boss sending you back to the planet you spent the entirety of Pikmin 1 trying to escape from because he took out too many loans, and now he has to pawn everything off is very silly to me. And then while you’re working your way through this treasure hunt, he’s emailing you about living under a bridge, and making friends with animals, and then those animals turning on him and stealing all of his stuff.
I actually laughed out loud while reading those emails, which is honestly a pretty rare achievement for most video game writing.
There’s a ton of darkly-humorous killing and borderline-upsetting cartoon violence that's perpetrated against the alien creatures you’re fighting and even the pikmin themselves. When you throw a hundred pikmin at a monster and it dawns on you that you’ve just sent them to their death, there’s this desperate scramble to scoop them up and carry them away like helpless baby animals. I also can’t help but think about the face you make when a group of pikmin, most of whom can’t swim, fall into the water and you’re forced to watch as they drown and their souls are released into the air one by one.
The actual strategy parts of these games are also deeply rewarding. There’s nothing better than coming up with a plan for how you’ll maximize your time during each in-game day, and then from the moment the sun comes up, leaping into action. Delegating tasks between multiple groups of pikmin and watching as they carry your spoils back to base is hectic, largely because of the very limited and clunky control options presented to the player, but it’s almost more triumphant to overcome the game’s obstacles because of those limitations. For somebody who loves to min-max their time spent with a game versus the amount of content completed in a single sitting, it’s a very satisfying gameplay loop. Even the inclusion of a, “restart from last save,” button right on the pause menu seems to suggest that players should take a lot of care in how they spend each solitary second of gameplay, which is actually pretty decidedly “un-Nintendo” of them.
These games are unbelievably cute, I’m absolutely obsessed, and I’ve already got my eye on a bunch of dumb Pikmin-themed shit to decorate my apartment with. I can’t get enough of these weird little freaky creatures.
Lastly, as far as my rankings for these games go, I’d definitely put Pikmin 1 over Pikmin 2 so far. We’ll see if the controls being possibly better in Pikmin 3 does anything for me, but as it stands the overall time limit in Pikmin 1 had a certain juice to it that I’m missing in the moment-to-moment with Pikmin 2. Without the looming threat of an actual game over/bad ending, I don’t have as much motivation to plan out those hectic and efficient days, which is a bit of a shame.
Okay! That’s it! Those are all of the games that I thought were worth nothing from the first half of 2023. It’s not nearly everything that I played, but it’s what left an impact. I could have talked about some honorable mentions like Battlebit Remastered, Destiny 2: Lightfall, Shadows of Doubt, Sons of The Forest, Starship Troopers: Extermination, and of course... Fortnite. But really, I won’t or don’t have much to say about those games at this time.
I played a bunch of Death Stranding back in January, too! But I definitely can’t start talking about that right now, either.
It has been a very good year for me, so far. And I’m really enjoying how relaxed and calm this summer is turning out to be. It took a lot of work for me to get here, and to take note of how to do that. I’m certainly grateful to the people who have been around to help and watch me, too.
Although, I’m mostly happy about all of that because it means I can enjoy the things I really want to without constantly being distracted or having to get inside my own head as much. Finding meaning and most importantly, joy, in art is something that I’ve struggled with for the past few years. But where I’m at now... I can’t stop thinking about it. And I think, even in just this small piece about a half dozen or so games that I played this year, the way I’ve been feeling probably comes through.
Which is to say-- broadly pretty good.
Can’t stop thinking about this dog from FFXVI.
