GregHorrorShow’s Year In Gaming – 2023

2023 was one of the strangest years I’ve experienced for gaming, lots of great game releases coupled with a huge amount of unrest and job losses for the people actually making the games. We also had the completion of the Microsoft takeover of Activision Blizzard which, at $69b is one of the biggest deals the business world has seen, let alone the game industry.

There were a few titles I wanted to shout out that have been started but not finished – Sea Of Stars, which is an old school Zelda-like adventure game, Inscryption, a truly bizarre game in which you must try to defeat a faceless enemy at his own tabletop game and Alan Wake II, which I got for Christmas and am still too early to consider for this year’s round up (it is absolutely excellent so far though!).

With that said, I did finish lots of great titles in 2023 – so let’s get stuck in!

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The Devil In Me (2022) continues Supermassive Games good run with the Dark Pictures Anthology. A choose your own adventure style title set in a deranged recreation of a serial killer’s hotel, this is definitely up there as among the best in the series. The Medium (2021) had a really interesting parallel view mechanic, whereby your character was in the ‘real world’ and the ‘spiritual world’ at the same time. The screen would split and you would move the two characters at the same time. It was the story of a Medium who was investigating a mystery in an abandoned institute. Prey (2017) was a real treat, a first person shooter with a good story and interesting gameplay. An alien ‘mimic’ takes over and you have to survive long enough to escape!

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I found Tchia (2023) to be a wonderful game, a third person adventure set in a fictional land inspired by New Caledonia. You play as Tchia, a young girl whose father has gone missing. It has a brilliant art style which contrasts with how off the rails the story goes in the late game. You can traverse with a glider or alternatively use Tchia’s power to jump into birds or fish and get around that way. Great fun. I’ve never been to Japan but Ghostwire Tokyo (2022) showcases the city with a vivid recreation of Tokyo. Albeit one with empty streets after a freak supernatural event sees almost everyone disappear! All that’s left are ghosts and spirits prowling the streets. You need to fight them off using hand motions inspired by Kuji-kiri to cast spells.

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No Straight Roads (2020) was a blast to play – a music based third person action adventure game. Indie rock duo Bunk Bed Junction must save the city from it’s EDM overlords. With some memorable boss battles and some awesome songs, this was definitely a fun title that clocked in at around 6 hours. Short but sweet. I also really enjoyed Kena: Bridge Of Spirits (2021) a lot more than I thought I would. For a start the game looks gorgeous and I loved exploring the world. Unfortunately the platforming and some of the puzzles let it down a bit but I would still recommend this one for sure.

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In terms of online gaming, I’ve loved jumping into Deep Rock Galactic (2022) with friends. It’s a first person space mining game in which you play as a team of Dwarven miners, landing on various planets and fending off giant spiders while trying to do your job! Great fun. Of course old favourites Overwatch 2 (2022) and Battlefield 2042 (2021) both continue to be updated with new maps, game modes and (in the case of the former) new characters. Both are still a blast to jump back in for some ‘comfort’ gaming 🙂

My favourite new multiplayer discovery has been The Finals (2023). A ‘Ready Player One’ type gameshow / first person shooter in which teams of three try to secure and bank cash from across the map. It has huge destructability and lots of different abilities for the characters to use. It’s free to play, so definitely give it a try!

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Back on the single player front, I had a great time with Dead Island 2 (2023). I hadn’t played the original but that doesn’t matter here, you survive a plane crash in L.A at the outbreak of a Zombie apocalypse. From there it’s about trying to get out of the city – meeting a colourful cast of characters along the way and thinking up creative ways to kill hordes of the undead. Most fun, but playing solo during boss battles there were times you could tell the game was made to be played as 4 player co-op. Frustrating but not enough to stop me recommending this one! Callisto Protocol (2022) was almost my game of the year, telling the story of a wrongly imprisoned space courier – similarly to Dead Island, you must escape the prison when a deadly virus infects most of the population. The graphics here are some of the best I’ve seen and I liked the characters and story a lot. Sadly they reuse some of the bigger enemies over and over, which felt a bit hollow at times. Having said that it’s a pretty polished experience and if you liked Dead Space, I would definitely advise you to check this out.

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I was pleasantly surprised by Ratchet And Clank: Rift Apart (2021) which had a fun story and a lot of brilliantly designed weapons to use against the hapless enemies. Graphically it was stunning, a real showcase of the PS5 and while the Portal traversal was more limited than expected, I still thought it was a really cool mechanic. Goodbye Volcano High (2023) tells the story of Fang, a high school dinosaur whose life is turned upside down by the news of an impending comet. Can they get their band to a gig before the end of the world? I thought the art style was phenomenal and the music, original songs by the band, really was great. Think shoe gaze/boygenius vibes. It’s pretty short at 5 hours but I thoroughly loved this one.

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However, my favourite game of 2023 is Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023). Based on the mechanics of real life DnD the game is a fantasy set adventure full of elves, orcs and demons. You play as one character but control a party of up to four in battles, which take place in a turn-based setting. The thing that has blown my mind with this game is the flexibility of the systems and gameplay. You can pretty much do whatever you like and your in-game choices actually have consequences, which is quite a rarity for games. Not only that but every character you encounter in the world is fully voiced. While this is a sprawling title with tens of hours of story I would definitely recommend it to most people – it honestly has to be played to be believed.

So there you have it, 2023 is in the rear view – roll on 2024!

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GregHorrorShow’s Year In Gaming – 2022

Gaming was in a bit of a weird space in 2022. Attempts to unionize at games companies in the US were met overwhelmingly with hostility from employers and Microsoft’s attempted takeover of Activision Blizzard, which would reshape the gaming landscape, still looks vaguely on course despite some scrutiny from watchdogs in the EU and US. Some titles were still going ahead with full priced releases that would then be patched to improve the experience (Sonic I’m looking at you buddy!). It meant that there were plenty of negative headlines around the industry through the year and hopefully 2023 can bring some good news back to the gaming sphere.

In terms of games I’ll open, as usual, with a brief mention for titles that I started but didn’t finish. CrisTales is a fun, turn based RPG game that plays with elements of time – your character can move back and forward through time at the push of a button. Superhot is a fascinating title where time only proceeds when you move. The aim of the game is to use that ability to perfectly time your shots (and dodge incoming enemy fire) so that each level becomes almost a puzzle piece. I also continued to pump more time into Genshin Impact, still enjoying the story of that and find the gameplay/exploration quite relaxing. Getting new characters and updating existing ones is as addictive as ever and it’s free to play – jump in and give it a try 🙂

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These next titles aren’t really games you ever finish, that’s the point of them, but I enjoyed Frost Punk – though I was a terrible mayor of a post-apocalyptic frozen wasteland settlement. Almost everyone died and, in the end, they overthrew me and forced me out of the town! 😀 Darkest Dungeon I think is just such a good game. It’s a dungeon crawler in which you lead your band of mercenaries through a set of dungeons looking for treasure and clearing out monsters. The twist here though is that every character is different and some have negative traits that come out (Cowardice, Turning On Allies, Panic etc.) which add a wonderful (if sometimes brutal) element of randomness to the game.

One of my most played games last year was a mobile game! As someone who rarely plays on phone I cannot get enough of Marvel Snap. A card-based battle game where various Marvel heroes are represented and used to win points. Something I really like about this game is the art style of the cards and the fact it has a great mix of well-known characters (Captain America, Wolverine, Incredible Hulk etc.) but also a ton of lesser-known characters (like Jubilee, Agent 13 and Angel). It’s a fun and quick game – perfect for mobile.

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I had a great time with Supermassive Games’ House Of Ashes, one of the titles in the Dark Pictures Anthology. It was a 6-8 hour blast through a supernatural underground tomb during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Your choices can (and did!) mean death for several characters and it’s always fun to see how these games play out. I’d never played Alan Wake, so I was excited to get into the remastered version. Very enjoyable but you could definitely feel in the gameplay that it was a much older game. Oxenfree tells the story of a group of friends visiting Edwards Island for the weekend, where they encounter some spooky situations – I really liked this game, it has a minimal style but is worth checking out. In Stray you play as a cat, making their way through a robotic, post-apocalyptic sci-fi world. You meet a helpful robot along the way and must try to escape from the slums of the closed off city out into the natural world again. It’s a beautiful game with a great sense of style. And it was interesting to play as a cat, which doesn’t happen too often!

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With most online games moving towards some form of time sink Battle Pass, almost all my multiplayer playtime was taken up by Battlefield 2042 and the revamped Overwatch 2. Both games have had big gameplay changes – BF2042 now feels like the dynamic, explosive game it was always meant to be. In no other game can you parachute out of a helicopter, take out a few enemies and then jump in a jeep to speed to the next objective. It’s not perfect but they keep improving it and it’s a LOT of fun. The biggest change in Overwatch 2 was moving from 6v6 to 5v5. Having one less player on each team has increased the overall speed of the game and leads to more satisfying gameplay. The longer wait to charge your ultimate ability also helps as it makes them more impactful. It’s great and it’s now free to play. Unfortunately, that brings its own issues within game items (once received regularly just for playing) now costing up to £15-£20 in real money! Disgraceful but it sounds like they will be making some changes to that element soon.

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The Quarry was a much bigger game than the more recent Supermassive Games (see House Of Ashes, above) and as such had slightly higher production values and felt more polished. I loved the ‘camp counsellor/horror’ vibe, and the characters were well written and acted. Usually in these games I end up with one or two people left alive but I managed to get a bunch of characters through the night – this game was a blast! Hitman 3 was a fitting end to the series, no doubt I’ll return to it at some stage to play the non-story stuff but the main missions were brilliant, with some ingenious ways to eliminate your targets.

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I finally finished the epic that is Days Gone, the story of a biker trying to track down his wife in a post-apocalyptic world. Unfortunately, the game is just too long, clocking it at nearly 60 hours for my playthrough. I think if they could’ve moved 10-15 hours or so into optional side missions this may have helped. However, I did think it was worth sticking with and by the end I had the feeling that I would’ve played a sequel (though they won’t be making one). Deathloop was a really clever game in which you lived the same day over and over, trying to piece together a puzzle and break out of the loop you’re stuck in. Interesting mechanics and a great style were slightly let down by what was, in my opinion, poor gunplay. The shooting just felt off from the start and I ended up mainly using the knife for stealth takedowns – a viable strategy but with so many weapons it would’ve been nice to experiment a bit more. A slightly smaller experience, Deliver Us The Moon, was a fun exploration game in which you make your way through an abandoned colony on the Moon to try and save humankind back on Earth. A few unforgiving stealth sections sucked some of the joy out of this but generally it was a great game.

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Guardians Of The Galaxy was possibly the most pleasant surprise of the year. I’d heard it’s mix of story, combat and teammate control was good but I wasn’t expecting that much – especially as the characters didn’t have the likenesses from the movies. That turned out to be blessing and overall, the game was a joy to play. Upgrading, and calling on, your fellow Guardians just didn’t get old and the fact you could upgrade them to suit your gameplay was awesome. God of War: Ragnarök is exactly what I wanted from a sequel – it looks amazing and continues the relationship between Kratos and his son Atreus, as they mingle with famous figures from Greek mythology. If I hadn’t been laid low with COVID over the festive break I suspect I’d have finished this but I’m at around the 20-hour mark so feel OK with including on my list for 2022!

Cyberpunk 2077 had one of the weirdest, most prolonged journeys to me playing a game ever. If you’d told me upon its announcement back in 2014(!) that it would be among my games of the year I would’ve agreed, if you’d said the same thing in 2020 when the game launched as a buggy mess – I would’ve said you were crazy. But after a lot of polish and improvement, when I finally took the plunge in 2022, I found the game to be a brilliant first-person RPG. It takes a little too long to get going but then really opens up and the way you can develop your character and their relationships with others is great. I encountered minimal bugs but wish they had done a better job of communicating all the different abilities/implants and how they work. That said, it was great and I look forward to playing the new, upcoming content.

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It was a very close-run thing with God Of War: Ragnarök but my favourite game of 2022 was Horizon: Forbidden West. The continuation of Aloy’s story, set in the far-flung future after a World ending event, is an improvement on the original in almost every way. More to do, more characters to meet and a much bigger area to play in, mean that this is one of the best open world games I’ve experienced. The addition of ‘Mass Effect‘ style companion missions is most welcome and really adds to the feeling that Aloy has found friends to work with in saving the world. Exploring this huge world and battling against robot dinosaurs feels rewarding and the combat feels well-paced and fair – for the most part. There were a couple of wild difficulty spikes but nothing too frustrating in the end. I look forward to seeing where the series goes next but for now Horizon: Forbidden West takes my 2022 favourite game award!

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