That’s right. After years of over promising and under delivering, I am here to tell you about the games I loved playing this year. If you only follow me on twitter, you will be surprised to learn that I have in fact played games that were not digital card games. I hope you will let me tell you about them.

A couple of things, though. This list was numbered when I wrote it, but it’s loose. I wouldn’t say they’re in Order. Also, this is a list of games I played in 2023, not necessarily games that came out this year. I guess that’s the thing about having a decades-long backlog, huh.

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

I’ve said a lot about Tears of the Kingdom already, so I’ll try to say something I haven’t already said, which is: Tears of the Kingdom is just a step above Breath of the Wild in every way. Every new ability is an evolution of its Breath of the Wild counterpart, except maybe the ability to pass upwards through solid objects, which doesn’t really have a comparison ability. It is also the best ability in any video game, turns out.

Out of fairness I will say I did not fully explore the god hand ability as a way to build vehicles. However, I did fully experience sitting in a discord call building Hyrule’s Dumbest Contraptions. Plus, every time I got to solve a puzzle by combining 6 trees into one extremely long bridge, I felt a sick sort of pleasure and feeling of accomplishment.

This list isn’t in order, except for this one, which is my favorite game of 2023. It has broken into my top 3 Zelda games, and may very well be number 1.

Peglin

An important thing you need to know about Peglin, a “deck-building peggle-like,” is that every time bad luck would end one of my or my friends’ runs prematurely, we would briefly complain before angrily declaring it our Game of the Year. We mean it, too.

Peglin, by way of being a pachinko machine, fully leans into how luck-based a run-based game already is. When a good build that should have gone the distance breaks bad, it’s extra heartbreaking. It’s the other end of that luck, though, that makes Peglin so easy to run over and over again. When you lose in Slay the Spire, the progenitor of X-building rogue-likes, it feels so much like YOU messed up. Everything about losing a run screams Skill Issue. In contrast, the way luck can swing a Peglin run is actually kind of relieving. My build wasn’t bad, my luck was. The game isn’t necessarily forgiving, but it helps ME forgive my bad build and move on to the next run. “Oh well,” I sigh, “the Game of the Year is just like that sometimes.”

Halos 1 & 2

This is gonna sound silly, but I have always wanted to play through the Halo trilogy on co-op. I’ve just never done it. I didn’t really play the series until Halo 2, and at that point I was playing the campaign on my own so I could rush to playing it online. I remember playing a little bit of Halo 3 with my brother but not well enough to consider it a fulfilling experience.

The Master Chief Collection is on Game Pass, so friend of the site Isaias and I decided we would finally Finish The Fight, and it’s important to note that Halo’s campaigns really do hold up. The original Halo is a bit clunky in 2023, but I was also expecting that. I looked forward to Halo 2sdays every week. It’s just an incredible game to play with someone else. In fact, I’m finding now that we were so in-the-moment that I did not take any screenshots of us playing Halo or Halo 2. The following tweet is the only media I shared apparently.

My only major issue is that we played straight through the first two games, which is a lot of Halo in a row. I’m hoping that I get to add Halo 3 to next year’s list, but I’m not rushing anything.

Lies of P

I could not get into any game in the Dark Souls series (including Jedi: Fallen Order which I just couldn’t enjoy) until Elden Ring, which I ended up giving a try after watching friends and streamers play so many hours that it felt like I had already played the game multiple times. But I loved Elden Ring. Seeing other people make discoveries and fight bosses did not make my own playthrough any less challenging or exciting. Instead, every time I watched someone finish a boss I thought, “Damn I want to try that.” Except Malenia. I simply did not need to put myself through that, so I didn’t. : )

I ended up downloading Lies of P for the exact same reason. I was already hearing buzz around how surprising it was that a Souls game where you play as Pinocchio (allegedly) felt so good to play. On top of that, I got the same “I wanna try that,” feelings watching people play Lies of P as I did with Elden Ring. So I did.

I was worried that the game’s increased focus on parrying attacks would end up turning me off from the game, but it’s actually been one of my favorite aspects of playing so far. When I successfully parry an attack in Lies of P, especially an attack that cannot otherwise be blocked, the game rewards me by making me feel really fuckin’ cool.

Also, you would think that a game adapting the fairy tale “Pinocchio” would be pretty cheesy, and… you know, it kind of is. But the puppets you fight early in the game have such cool designs, and the Stalkers (and their fashionable animal masks) kind of rule. I do want to read all of the lore items about them.

I’m still getting through this one, so it’s a later addition to the list, but I’m having a great time with it.

Splatoon 3

Splatoon’s aesthetics have always been tailored specifically to me. Bombastic colors, incredible soundtrack that blends genres into a sort of Splatoon’s Monster, a third person shooter that de-emphasizes KD over the more unique concept of “How Wet Can You Make The Battlefield?” I loved the original Splatoon’s single-player campaign, but just could not get into its multiplayer. It just wasn’t Call of Duty, which was the kind of shooting game I was used to at the time.

With the benefit of some 3-4 years since I was really into a traditional FPS, and looking for more games I could play with Isaias (if this blog goes on long enough you will Notice this pattern), I decided to give Splatoon 3 a try. Plus, I knew they had added Salmon Run, a PvE mode introduced in Splatoon 2 that I never got to play but looked very fun. Surprisingly, I really stuck to it this time around. I do think having time away from playing most shooters helped me better adjust to how much different playing Splatoon is, but I’m also pretty sure that, after 3 games’ worth of Splatoon, they finally added enough weapon/grenade/super combinations for me to find some I liked using.

Average Podcasters, via *Splatoon 3’s* campaign.

I also had a blast with Splatoon 3’s campaign. The most underrated thing about the Splatoon series is that their single-player content is top-tier. A series of puzzles that are perfectly crafted to use every aspect of the game. The little open-ish world in this one was fun to fully explore too. I’m not usually someone who tries to 100% something, but I found myself going back and beating every last level of the campaign well after I rolled credits.