Games of 2023

Looking at a lot of year in review lists, 2023 is another year like 2017 where a lot of very good games were released. I’ve started playing more games on “PC” now, although I went back to long time favourites (not least because the old Mac Laptop I’m playing on is not exactly a modern graphics powerhouse).

So of the five 2023 released games I played all were on the Switch and three of them were from Nintendo.

As is traditional, I've organized the games I've played into a few rough categories:

The Alright

Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp

 We’ve established that a) I like strategy games and b) I’m not *good* at strategy games. This leaves me with the exact position of “I kinda liked Advance Wars, but it’s harder than I think is fun,” so it’s alright. I’m also just hitting a point right now that I’d like to play strategy games that aren’t combat / warfare based. What does that look like? I’m not sure yet, but it’s making me think.

Mineko’s Night Market

 

I picked up Mineko’s Night Market hoping to play a light crafting / store management game. It is that, but honestly the technical problems on the switch are keeping me from enjoying it. It does an alright job of the crafting and store management, but it’s maybe a little too self aware for it’s own good and when it’s not being self aware it seems a little short on charm and personality (the only interaction with towns folk is them demanding things from you, often stuff you have to buy). The game feels a lot like the art took the lead (and the game is gorgeous) and game play and technical functionality got lost.

 

The Very Good 

Pikmin 4

Pikmin 4 might actually be great. It certainly hits all of the things that make me happy about Pikmin games and there is a lot of it. Sometimes Nintendo accidentally irons out the fun when they polish their modern games, especially those based on older series and I think they’ve done that here. They added in a lot of very good fun as they went, but it’s just less charming than the nonsense that was Pikmin 1, 2 and 3.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

 I’m not super in love with the 2D Mario games and Wonder has kinda followed along. There’s something in the mode of 2D exploration that just doesn’t make me want to spend a lot of time, the way I did when I was a kid. Based on Dan's PlayFrame Let's Play, I've tried to slow down and really explore the world, but I just find compared to exploration in something like Odyssey, or even 3D World, I’m not that engaged.

The Great

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Tears of the Kingdom is great. I think this it’s actually two great games which is kind of what keeps it from being excellent. It takes all of the things that were excellent in Breath of the Wild and improves on them. The game play is better, the story is better, the experience is better, the side characters are better. The Zonai building mechanic is amazing and a ton of fun.

When I play Tears of the Kingdom, just like when I played BoTW, I am totally absorbed in a way almost no games absorb me. Each moment of game play is fun and fulfilling.

The thing that holds me back, just a little but from totally and unreservedly loving this game is that it doesn’t feel like it matters. Riding a horse across Hyrule felt like a feat in BoTW, but in ToTK it’s a dumb thing to do because you can just *fly*. I played the game wrong, and hunted down the side quests when I should have just pushed through the main story, loved it and then delved so deeply into the world flying around on my flying “Akira” bike. I did it to myself, but there’s just that tiny bit of how much more I could have loved this game.

Sea of Stars

Mountains’re nice.

Chrono Trigger is still maybe my favourite game of all time. (No I’m not writing down a list, it’s more fun to warp it to whatever I need.) Chrono Cross was not the sequel that we wanted. However people feel about Chrono Cross (I myself feel at least 3 ways about it), at the end of the day the feeling and the heart of Chrono Trigger aren’t there.

Sea of Stars is made by people who understood that feeling and that heart. I spend so much of my time playing saying to myself “Yeah, that’s how that’s supposed to be”. So you meet a monster in the first bit of the game and he tells you not only that “mountains’re nice” but also that “this is the life,” and “man, you’re noisy.” Your teammates gather around the campsite and chat with you about what’s going on. You team up and combine your powers to clobber enemies that you stunned on the screen.

If Sea of Stars had no references to Chrono Trigger, it would still be a great game. Traversal is fun and the puzzle solving is just the right level to be satisfying without being boring or frustrating. I also think that a lot of the puzzles are unique to the game. I think the story is just a little shy of brilliance, but that’s because I’m 40-something now and I read a lot of stores.

Sea of Stars is a great game for anyone who likes turn-based JRPGs and it gets better if you liked Super Nintendo turn-based JRPGs and better still if you loved Chrono Trigger and wanted that true sequel of the heart.

Video Games of October 2023

October was a complicated month, so I wasn't thinking too much about what I really played. I did install steam on my Mac and so that was nice to expand the pool, although there's not a lot that plays nicely on my 2016 mac.

My top five games (by play time) for October were:

1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I'm reaching the ending of my first play through. Maybe should have pushed thought quicker, just to let the story go at speed. ToTK has been
   
   


2. Dicey Dungeons - This has been pretty good for quick pick up and play situations. The number of different ways to approach the core concept of role dice and use them to activate cards is fun alghough, I would love a design my own deck and just play with things, even if it would be stupidly imbalanced.
   
   


3. Pikmin 4 - Continues to be solid and I appreciate just how much there is. Have drifted off in the last little bit, but I'm sure I'll be back.
   
   


4. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - It snowed, and just to confuse everyone, rather than playing Ogre Battle, I played Tactics Ogre. It's a little thin for story, but the actual combat in an encounter is always fun.
   
   


5. Hades - Still great. Does not like my Mac's keyboard.
   
   

Here's my total play time for October:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Games of September 2023

I'm trying to focus on other stuff and be intentional with my play time, so my play time was down overall for September and most days I didn't play more than an hour. In trying to be intentional I'm trying to play things I find fulfilling and so I took a deep breath and installed Steam on my Mac Book. I'll eventually get my gaming PC fixed back up, but this will do for today (assuming the laptop survivies, it is a 2016 model).

My top five games (by play time) for September were:

1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I spent a lot of my time in Tears of the Kingdom wandering around and finishing things up. I'm not sure that hunting almost everything down on the first playthrough has been that good of a choice, but as always the moment-to-moment game play is good so it's usually fun.
   
   


2. Pikmin 4 - Pikmin 4 is a solid game. The only complaint I really have is that it's menu is on a different button than Tears of the Kingdom. It's a little bit conflicting because I *like* Pikmin 3 more, but as I said last month, I'm so glad to have this much more pikmin to play.
   
   


3. Final Fantasy XII - I didn't touch this much and I kinda didn't miss it. There are parts of FFXII which are pretty good, but it's slow and grindy and playing it never really feels that rewarding. I enjoy the concept of the game a lot more than I really like playing it.
   
   



4. Hades - Uh, so, I can play games on my Mac Book. I maybe *shouldn't* play games on my Mac Book, but I can.

   

   Uh, please ignore the melting Mac Book.

   But seriously, Hades is still really good.



5. Super Mario World - I'm not quite sure what's wrong with me that there are so few games that I really love the controls in, but I'm kinda fussy and sometimes Super Mario World is still somehow the game that fits.
   
   

Here's my total play time for September:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Games of August 2023

August is always a busy month and it's a transitional one for what I play and how. I tend to think about games for summer and games for fall and August always sits in the middle. My partner also traveled a bunch in August so, I didn't play much of Tears of the Kingdom, which she has mostly watched me play. Instead I picked up Final Fantasy XII, and also poked Pikmin 4. I also played a bit of Cursed Treasure 2 (remastered!) which has suggested to me that it's probably time to get my PC fixed up again so that I can do some medium screen gaming (also also maybe give some money to game makers that aren't Nintendo.

August was also not my greatest month for keeping things organized, so the data for the month is artificially reconstructed in places, but close enough for my purposes.

My top five games (by play time) for August were:

1. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - I find that I like FFXII provided that I don't invest too heavily in it. Which, if you look at my earlier thoughts on the game matches that, half-hour a day model. If you try to rush it, or to push through, the game pushes back and you find yourself under-levelled and under-equipped. It needs to be played slowly and steadily and you get to advance the plot once or twice a week.
   
   
   There's enough fun in it, especially now that I'm focused on gear and organizing gambits that I keep playing, but I find it makes it really hard to invest in the game. It's done not badly for my audio book listening, and to my watch times for PlayFrame and Noah Gervais.
   


2. Pikmin 4 - If I had a complaint about Pikmin 3 it's that there wasn't enough of it. Pikmin 4 is a brilliant answer to that problem in that a) it exists and b) there's quite a bit of it. As a bonus, c) it's an excellent improvement on all of the elements of all of the games. This is the best Pikmin game and it's really fun. I do wish it was a little better at tutorializing things (I know asking Nintendo for more tutorials is a dangerous game). I played like 10 hours not realising that you could switch to your dog co-captain (in addition to riding them and having them fight all your fights.)
   
   


3. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I mostly didn't play ToTK this month, but did pick it up a couple of times when I was feeling low energy or down. One of the brilliant things about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is how easy it is to jump in and find something interesting to do or find something interesting to see. I really appreciate that deeply absorbing nature.
   
   

Here's my total play time for August:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Video Games of July 2023

I felt a bit flat overall in July and mostly disappeared into the immense depths of Tears of the Kingdom. I poked a couple of other things, before switching over to Final Fantasy XII at the end of the month when my partner was out of town. 

I haven't been enjoying game tracking as much the last little while and I'm going to institute a cut off that if I didn't play an hour of the game I'm not going to write about it. (Unless I want to, it's my blog).

My top three games (by play time) for July were:

1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I've really been plumbing the depths of the side stories and experiences in Tears of the Kingdom. Just like Breath of the Wild the amount of good things to go and do is hard to imagine. I have really distracted myself from the main story, so that's starting to feel a bit vague, but I'm sure once I pick it up again the game will snap back into focus.
   
   


2. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vroom vroom. Spent a bit of time working on time trials.
   
   


3. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - I needed something to play that my partner wasn't too invested in. With Dan Floyd playing both FFXIV and FFXVI on Playframe I've been thinking about Final Fantasy more and figured it was a good time to pick this up on switch. Despite having played the first few hours not that long ago, it's interesting how much I've forgotten. I like the game but I can't say it's one of the most gripping, not from story or game play or style even.
   
   

Here's my total play time for July:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Video Games of June 2023

June was a relatively chill month. I mostly put in an hour or two on Tears of the Kingdom and also tried to get other stuff done. I felt pretty happy with the month. 

I've stopped recording mobile games. I've also mostly stopped playing them, but I picked up the full blown successor to "Seedship", "Beyond the Chiron Gate". It's a text-based game, where you make decisions about building a crew to investigate a wormhole network with the nifty little caveat that you can never go back to a system after you've found it. I've enjoyed it quite a bit, although the fact that some of the descriptions are repeated frequently enough that it makes it a little hard to get really invested in the lives of any of your little team flying through space. Certainly worth the price to play.

My top five games (by play time) for June were:

1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - ToTK has been really good. As I said in May, it a lot denser and more vibrant than Breath of the Wild. The ways they've expanded the core concepts in BoTW are really fun and there's usually at least "lne more thing" that I want to do every time I play. The story telling is also quite well done and they balanced the story with the messing around really well this time.
   
   


2. Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp - I played the first few missions and had some fun with Advance Wars, but then ground to a halt when I hit a level I couldn't solve. If you've been reading for a while, you'll know that as much as I *like* tactics games, I'm often not very good at them, and games in the Advance Wars style really seem to stymie me. I find I'm often slow to solve puzzles in a lot of cases, and tactics games that don't give me an unreasonable breadth of actions tend to be a struggle. I may go back, I think they did some good work in the rerelease, but the core game play hasn't been my jam.
   
   


3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vroom vroom, as always. Lately I've been looking for something that's easy to play but kind of interesting for those quick moments when I don't want to risk getting sucked into Tears of the Kingdom. Maybe time to look into reviving my gaming PC.
   
   


4. Donkey Kong Country (NSO - SNES) - Been watching Dan and Dan play through Donkey Kong Country 2 on PlayFrame. I figured I'd see how it felt to play again and how far I could get. SNES platformers from this era also kinda match for that easy to get into game I'm looking for. It's also intersting to look at how games from that era weren't good at really communicating with players how to do well (or even to play) which I think is a mix of a lot of business decissions (don't want those kids renting these games) and technical ones (we already have all the sprites we can have on screen). As a kid, DKC was really impressive, looking back on it from today it seems really limited.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for June:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Video Games of May 2023

Given that I put at least 300 hours into Breath of the Wild, it's probably not a surprise that I pretty much only played Tears of the Kingdom after it came out.

I'm excluding a bunch of dipping into to various Mario games because I needed some extra screen shots to acompany my Mario Memories.

My top five games (by play time) for June were:

1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I'm really enjoying Tears of the Kingdom. It has the same density of interest that Breath of the Wild did, but the variety of things to do and the interest of those things is much higher. The game feels more vibrant than its predecessor and it's delightful at practically every moment. Also, rocket shields.
   
   


2. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I played this a little bit while waiting for the Tears of the Kingdom release, but also to test out our new portable Switch dock. While I think Tears of the Kingdom is more moment to momefffnt fun, Breath of the Wild still has a beauty all of it's own.
   
   


3. Mario Kart 8 - Vroom vroom.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for June:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month: