Game of the Year 2023

My wife and I had a baby in October! This has of course been wonderful, but reader, I know what you’re really wondering—how did it affect your gaming this year? Well, it definitely had an impact. Playing PS5 or Xbox Series X games on the TV was largely out, as getting set up and settled in for a long gaming session has not been something I’ve had time for in the last few months. But my Nintendo Switch playtime has shot up, as it’s easy to play for a few minutes in the nursery while she’s snoozing. (Turns out bad smartphone games are also good nursery fodder; the less said about those, the better.) As a result, I was able to knock out Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Super Mario RPG in the months after she was born, along with a heaping helping of F-Zero 99 matches. I’m sure I’ll head back to the world of modern consoles eventually, but the Switch has been a fantastic companion during late shifts with the baby.

Among the console games I’ll play eventually are several 2023 releases I wasn’t able to get to, and which I think might have been contenders on this year’s list if I had played them—namely, Spider-Man 2, Resident Evil 4, and Armored Core 6. (I guess I need to find an eighth-in-the-series game to continue the pattern.) Stay tuned to next year’s “Other Notable Stuff I Played” section to see what I eventually think of them.

As with last year, I found myself with the (undoubtedly healthy) tendency to not instantly go out and buy every new hyped-up release, and instead really consider whether it was something I’d enjoy. Buying a $70 game only to suffer through it in order to maximize the “value” is no good. So, both last year and this year, there were widely praised games that I didn’t force myself to play, because they didn’t appeal to me—2022 was Elden Ring, 2023 was Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s awesome that so many people love them, and I’m glad the game industry is able to cater to so many different tastes. But they just weren’t for me.

What I want in a game, I’ve come to discover, is streamlined simplicity—clear goals, a well-defined possibility space, and a clean presentation that complements the gameplay. I want to be able to grasp the basics and get into the action fairly quickly; ideally, I also want to discover more depth and strategy as the game continues. All of my top five games this year meet those criteria to some degree.

Some of my favorite games this year I’ve been anticipating for years; others I didn’t know about until after they came out. Video game podcasts continue to be my most effective game discovery method, in particular those put out by Jeff Gerstmann, Nextlander, and MinnMax. The discussions on those shows helped me sort out which games were really worth a shot and which I could probably skip. Listening to smart and funny folks talk about video games was enriching and also, to wrap back to the start of this introduction, a great way to pass the time while on the late shift with our extremely cute baby.

Now, on to the good stuff—let’s look at my top five games of 2023.

5. Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp

Developed by WayForward. Released April 21. Played on Nintendo Switch.

The Nintendo Switch is a great home for GBA remasters, because what is the Switch, really, if not a gigantic GameBoy Advance? It really does feel magical to boot up Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp. This remaster collects the 2001 Advance Wars and the 2003 Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, games I played hundreds of hours of on a 2.9-inch launch GBA screen. Seeing them come to life in HD (and with a backlight!) on the Switch instantly catapults this game into my game-of-the-year consideration.

Advance Wars was the first US release in a turn-based strategy series that dates back to 1988’s Japan-only Famicom Wars for the NES (the console known as the Famicom, or Family Computer, in Japan.) In these games, you control military units (infantry, tanks, planes, ships, etc.) on a grid-type map, maneuvering them and battling enemy units. The goal is generally either to 1) defeat all the enemy units, or 2) capture the enemy’s capital. The units have strengths and weaknesses that influence your decision of what units to use and where—helicopters are great against infantry but will get shredded by fighter jets. Advance Wars on the GBA has clean, well-designed pixel art, and while the remaster has swapped the sprites for 3D models, the visuals are still sharp and maintain the personality of the original. The developers added very little to the games other than some around-the-edges quality of life stuff, but that’s fine—the games hold up wonderfully, and the audiovisual makeover is icing on the tactical cake. Special kudos goes to the music. The soundtrack of the original is burned into my memory, and it was delightful to hear richer versions of those classic songs.

Advance Wars’s moment-to-moment gameplay remains as engaging as ever. It’s thrilling to develop an overall battle plan, move your units into position, execute on the plan, and adapt to the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses. The turn-based style gives you infinite time to consider your next move, so there’s no time pressure—you just need to think tactically and come up with the right approach. I blitzed through the campaign in a couple of days and was transported right back to the early 2000s. I had such a good time that this one slots into my 2023 list at number 5.

4. Hi-Fi Rush

Developed by Tango Gameworks. Released January 25. Played on Xbox Series X.

Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm-based action game where you hit enemies to the beat of the soundtrack. The entire experience is suffused with music, with the gorgeous cel-shaded characters and environments all moving to the beat, too. The music, visuals, and gameplay all come together beautifully. The writing is assured and genuinely funny in a way that is rare in games, and the main character, Chai, is a delightful doofus. This genre of third-person action game is not usually something I’m into; franchises like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta have never appealed to me. But the stylish presentation and musical bent of Hi-Fi Rush drew me in, keeping me going as I learned the ropes and began to appreciate the gameplay.

A slight knock against Hi-Fi Rush came near the end of the game, though it was perhaps largely a me thing. I played through almost the entire story on the hard difficulty setting, and it was demanding enough to be enjoyably challenging. Tighter timing windows on the beat-based attacks forced me to sharpen my skills and enhanced the overall rhythmic vibe of the game. But then, the last boss was so dramatically harder for me that after several attempts, I just got sick of replaying it and cranked the difficulty down to easy so I could finish the game and roll credits. Maybe I was just impatient that day, but it really felt like a stark departure from the well-tuned difficulty curve of the rest of the game. Whatever the cause, it ended up leaving me with a slightly negative final impression.

Still, the overall experience was fantastic. This was one of those games I probably wouldn’t have checked out had it not been for a positive podcast review, in this case from Jeff Gerstmann. And even better, the game released on Xbox GamePass, making it extremely easy to try, and confirm that, yes, the game did indeed rock. Even though it came out way back in January, Hi-Fi Rush left such a strong and lasting impression that it makes my list at number 4.

3. Mars First Logistics

Developed by Shape Shop. Released June 22. Played on PC.

This is a game that simply ticks all the boxes for me. A clean, cel-shaded visual style? Check. (See also: last year’s number 1 game) An outer-space theme? Check. Simple, open-ended gameplay that nevertheless has clear, discrete goals to accomplish? Check. A killer synth soundtrack? Check. That’s right, Mars First Logistics has it all! This was my favorite gaming surprise of 2023.

So, what is this terrific game? In Mars First Logistics, you use a variety of LEGO-like parts to assemble a vehicle, with the objective of using that vehicle to transport items from one point to another. (On Mars, natch.) There’s no separate player character other than the vehicle itself; you’re either in the vehicle construction screen or you’re driving the rover around. The parts include basic stuff like wheels and structural elements, but also more complex mechanical components such as actuating pistons and rotating motors. Combining all this stuff can yield some real function-over-form monstrosities that are intuitive and fun to make and use.

Sometimes when games have open-ended problem solving like this, I get overwhelmed by the options. But in Mars First Logistics, the clear-cut goal of moving an object from Point A to Point B helped me focus my thinking on distinct problems. The items you have to deliver are varied in size and shape (huge oxygen tanks, pizza boxes that flap open, watering cans), so you often need to create a new vehicle for a new delivery mission. But sometimes I’d hit upon a design that worked for several deliveries in a row, or that could be easily adapted for the new task. This was always awesome, and it exemplified one of my favorite game design elements—making you feel like you’re super smart, and like you’re getting away with something, without actually breaking the game. (As with another game on this list, the physics engine’s mix of flexibility and forgiveness creates an enjoyable sandbox that rewards experimentation. I won’t identify the other game—let’s just say it rhymes with Belda.)

As noted above, the game’s presentation shines too. The cel-shaded graphics, reminiscent of a LEGO instruction manual, work great both in the vehicle-creation mode and in the driving-around-Mars mode. The synth soundtrack by Dan Golding is propulsive and funky—the perfect accompaniment for some serious engineering, followed by repeated awkward attempts to grasp a pizza box without the pizza flopping out. Oh, and also? The game is still in early access. I’m looking forward to seeing what the developer adds to the game, but in this early state it’s already rad enough to make number 3 on my list.

2. F-Zero 99

Developed by Nintendo Software Technology. Released September 14. Played on Nintendo Switch.

The F-Zero franchise and I have a history that I would describe as cordial. Mostly I played the GBA launch title F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, though I also tried bits and pieces of the SNES, N64, and GameCube games. For the unfamiliar, these are futuristic racing games where you pilot ultrafast hover-cars around tracks with long straightaways, tight turns, and occasional jumps. They have a great sense of speed, which was especially impressive on the then-new Game Boy Advance.

In addition to “F-Zero,” the other half of this game’s title is “99,” and that is because each race pits you against 98 competitors at a time; this is F-Zero in battle royale mode. (Just as 2019’s Tetris 99 did the same thing for the classic puzzle game.) As it turns out, giant chaotic F-Zero races are extremely fun! The start of each race is a glorious mess of hover-cars crashing into each other as they try to escape the crowded middle of the pack.

But let’s back up a bit. Nintendo made a lot of smart decisions here. First, the game is free for users of Nintendo’s online service, giving it the large day-one player base that is critical for a game that needs 99 players per race. Second, the developers elected to use the sprite-based visual style of the SNES original, rather than the fancier polygonal N64 or GameCube visuals. This creates a delightful incongruity, with SNES graphics being used for a game with a crazy amount of chaos onscreen that an SNES could never, ever hope to render. (The original F-Zero didn’t have any form of multiplayer, let alone a battle royale mode). This graphical choice also makes the game extremely readable in a way that it might not be with more complex modern visuals.

Third, while the gameplay is instantly recognizable as F-Zero, there are some smart tweaks that add more layers of strategy. The most notable is that as players crash together, they leave behind little yellow orbs called Sparks. Racers behind them can pick up these Sparks, and as they do, a bar in the UI fills up. Once it’s full, you can press a button to launch your car onto the Skyway, a track above the normal track where you can zoom along at high speed for several seconds without dealing with the heavy traffic below. This gives you a way to hustle past congestion, and the timing of when to trigger your Skyway adds a simple, engaging aspect of decision-making to each race.

I got a surprising amount of enjoyment out of the game’s meta progression, too. As you play, your accomplishments earn you some simple cosmetics, such as a new paint job for your hover-car or a new border for the “pilot card” that identifies you to other players after a race. For me this stuff was enjoyably minimalistic compared to the overcomplicated mix of earnable and paid cosmetic items you see in Halo Infinite or Call of Duty. I was engaged enough to want to earn these items, but I didn’t need to read a wiki or consult a guide to figure out how they worked.

I’ll take this opportunity to boast that I’ve managed four first-place finishes in F-Zero 99, and they’ve been some of the most thrilling moments in my gaming year. It’s unfortunate that, only a few months after launch, the player base is clearly shrinking; nowadays many races are more than half-filled by bots because there aren’t enough folks online to fill the 99 slots. You can feel the difference in races, as the bots aren’t as competitive as human racers. There’s also a psychological effect that makes the game less interesting when you know you’re not facing off against 98 humans. Still, F-Zero 99 has been an amazing experience, and it earns the number 2 spot on my list.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Developed by Nintendo EPD. Released May 12. Played on Nintendo Switch.

Nintendo, you’ve done it again!

My hype levels were fairly low in the months leading up to the launch of the latest Zelda game. 2017’s Breath of the Wild was such an incredible reinvention of the Zelda formula that it was hard to imagine how Nintendo might top it by either going further in that direction or finding a whole new direction in which to steer the series. Then the trailers and gameplay reveals started coming out, and I realized Nintendo is actually a lot more imaginative than me.

Tears of the Kingdom takes place in the same game world as its predecessor, but it adds new gameplay mechanics that double down on the physical interactivity that was already so impressive in Breath of the Wild. New powers allow you to 1) construct vehicles from objects you find in the environment; 2) attach items to your sword, shield, and arrows; and 3) fly upward through any ceiling and end up on the roof, whether you’re in a tiny shack or a huge cave deep inside a mountain. Oh yeah, and 4) cause a selected object to TRAVEL BACKWARD THROUGH TIME.

These systems interlock in ways that took tons of cleverness to design, and which make you feel extremely clever when solving problems with them. And they’re strung together—especially the vehicle-constructing power—by a physics engine that manages to feel totally freeform while also being predictable enough to be fun. If you can think of a way to stick pieces together to make a neat little car, there’s a pretty decent chance it’ll actually work the way you expect it to. This makes experimentation rewarding and fun, and it permits incredibly open-ended solutions to a lot of the game’s challenges.

I mentioned that the game takes place on the same map as Breath of the Wild, but that’s only partially true. All the ground-level stuff is basically the same map we explored in 2017. But Tears of the Kingdom also adds new areas to explore above and below that map. Above, there’s a series of floating islands that are home to various puzzles and treasures, and which are mostly good-to-great additions to the experience; below, there’s an underground region called the Depths that provided some of the most thrilling exploration I’ve ever experienced in a video game. Two things about the Depths. First, though you don’t know this immediately, the Depths span the same area as the entire aboveground map, and that’s because this underground region pretty much just mirrors the aboveground terrain. But this is OK because of the second thing, which is that the Depths are pitch black. Not just video-game dark, where you can sort of still see if you turn up the brightness slider a bit. No, the depths are truly, completely dark—until you, the player, use in-game light-emitting items to explore the space. For example, you can collect items called Brightbloom seeds; you can attach one to an arrow (here are those interlocking gameplay systems) and fire it, and then once it hits a surface it illuminates the area around where it landed. It was funny to grope around the darkness for a while, then fire a Brightbloom seed in a random direction, only for it to hit a wall a few feet in front of Link’s face and light up the immediate area. It was awesome and kind of terrifying to fire a Brightbloom seed and then see it sail away into the distance—or plunge into a massive dark pit—emphasizing the scary unknown of this new underground space. The Depths rock.

Here’s an early example of the amazing freedom and flexibility permitted by the game’s map and systems. At one point I was running around in the Depths in the vicinity of Death Mountain, shooting Brightbloom seeds and just generally looking around. I found an area with a rocky overhang, so I used the Ascend ability to launch upward through the ceiling, not sure where I would end up. As it turns out, Link emerged from a rocky floor only to be greeted with a “Fire Temple - Fourth Floor” title card appearing onscreen. Yes, I had inadvertently warped into one of the game’s dungeons. Not the entrance to the dungeon—but some arbitrary place in the middle of it. In past Zelda games the dungeons have been intricately crafted puzzle-solving experiences where you have to proceed in order from one room to the next. In Tears of the Kingdom I stumbled into the middle of one and had to figure out what to do from there. It felt like a true moment of, “Surely the developers didn’t intend for me to be able to do that.” I really felt like I was getting away with something. But the dungeon was fully solvable even when entering it in such a sideways fashion, so clearly they had, in fact, thought of that. This was one of my favorite moments in a game this year, and it was one of the reasons that Tears of the Kingdom is my favorite game of 2023.

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Other Notable Stuff I Played This Year

Starfield

I’d long been looking forward to Starfield, the new open-world RPG from Bethesda Game Studios. My reaction to the game ended up being very hot-and-cold. I had some truly incredible moments, mostly involving the space setting, some of the broader worldbuilding, and surprisingly the gunplay. Low- or no-gravity combat was thrilling. In one awesome encounter, I was fighting a group of space pirates on a moon with low-gravity; I had climbed up onto an industrial catwalk and was firing at the pirates below. Then I ran out of ammo for my guns, and I was low on health. I had a couple of landmines, but when you throw them, they typically just land a few feet in front of you. At least, that’s what they do under normal gravity. If the physics system worked as expected, tossing one of these mines on an airless, low-gravity moon would cause it to continue drifting on that same down-and-forward trajectory. If I tossed it from a height—say, from an elevated catwalk—it would gain a lot of horizontal distance in that long arc. I tried it, and it worked exactly as I expected, the landmine slowly gliding a hundred feet through the airless void and then detonating when it got close to a space pirate behind cover. I can’t stress enough how much this ruled.

But alas, there were relatively few of these moments. The characters and plot left me fairly cold, and the design decisions around how planets work and how you travel between them took away the sense of exploration I had in Skyrim or even Fallout 4. A very large portion of the game consists of looking at loading screens as you warp from one system to another; for a game about space travel, you just don’t see much space.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder

This just barely misses my top 5. It’s a wonderful game (pun intended, obviously), but it’s got a few things working against it on this list. Specifically, I’ve always been more of a 3D Mario guy than a 2D Mario guy, and nostalgia is admittedly giving Advance Wars an advantage in grabbing that number-5 slot. Still, I need to give Wonder its due—it’s the best side-scrolling Mario in a long time, with a visual refresh that gives the characters more, um, character; a broad selection of new enemies to stomp; and enormously inventive gameplay. The headline feature is the Wonder Flower. Each level contains one of these items; touching it has a unique and often wacky effect. For example, the level’s enemies might begin singing in unison, or Mario might morph into a sentient blob that can slide along walls. In the most mind-bending Wonder Flower effect, Mario begins walking on the walls as though you’re seeing him from above, adding a new and weird dimension to the classic Mario gameplay. Super Mario Bros. Wonder came out right around the time our baby was born, so I wasn’t able to dedicate long play sessions to it, as I might have in the past with a game like this. But it turned out to be a great game for playing one or two levels when I could grab a few minutes. It was nice to stretch out my enjoyment over a couple of months rather than blasting through the game in a weekend.

Super Mario RPG

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars for the SNES has a very special place in my heart. For me this was the original childhood “it’s dinnertime but I really, really don’t want to stop playing” game. As with many people I’m sure, this was my first RPG. At the time its simple storyline and streamlined mechanics made it easy for me to approach the genre; today those aspects appeal to me because I tend to prefer an easily digestible gaming experience over an RPG that takes dozens of hours to get through. I had great fun revisiting the game’s remake (which gives the visuals a dramatic improvement while leaving most other elements alone), though I was struck by how quickly it went. What felt like an epic adventure when I was 8 turned out to be a pretty breezy quest that I completed in just under ten hours at age 34. Part of that may have been because they seem to have tuned the difficulty down a bit, meaning the game presented very little challenge. I’m sure it also took me longer to solve the puzzles when I was a kid. Even though the game was slighter than I remembered, it was great fun to revisit these characters and places more than two decades later.

Data Wing

Here’s a good find from the Baby Era. During my late-night shifts, I’ve been digging more into the App Store’s selection of iPhone games, which are easy to play in the rocker while keeping an eye on a slumbering baby. By far the best has been 2017’s Data Wing, in which you steer a spacecraft through vector graphics courses by tapping the left and right sides of the screen to thrust in each direction. Fluid movement, neat gravity effects, and the especially cool idea that if you thrust when close to a wall it gives you an extra push, made it super fun to navigate the game’s courses. The sweet vaporwave soundtrack is a perfect accompaniment to the game’s visuals, too.

Earth Defense Force (franchise)

This one makes me feel like I should visit a support group—“My name is Arnold, and I enjoy Earth Defense Force.” OK, let’s get into this. Earth Defense Force is a low-budget franchise dating back to 2003 in which you play as soldiers in a force defending the Earth from aliens, most or all of which are gigantic bugs. Are the graphics rough around the edges; is the gunplay repetitive; is there a pervasive feeling that you’ve plucked the game from a CompUSA bargain bin circa 2004? Affirmative across the board—and yet, the handful of EDF games I tried (via the PlayStation Plus subscription service) were enjoyably mindless fun, at least for a couple hours. I got the most playtime out of Earth Defense Force: World Brothers, which has blocky Minecraft-style graphics but the same bug-blasting gameplay as the rest of the series. I’m not ready to wholeheartedly jump aboard the EDF train, but I’m glad that I can now see what the fans like about it.

Arcade Paradise

Incredible! This came out in 2022, and if I’d played it then, it certainly would’ve made my list of favorite games that year. In Arcade Paradise, you run your dad’s laundromat, which has a couple of arcade cabinets in the back. Gradually the business evolves to the point where it’s more arcade than laundromat, with an assortment of games lining the walls. The game has a fantastic sense of place. It’s a first-person game, so you look through the character’s eyes as you run loads of customer laundry, pick up trash, and empty your arcade machines’ coin boxes. The layout of the business changes over time, and you get to choose the placement of the arcade machines, so it feels like it becomes your own. The atmosphere is brilliant, with carpets, decorations, and arcade games that look and play super authentically. The arcade soon joined the pantheon of video-game locations where I feel an genuine emotional connection to the space, alongside the bar Serena from the Yakuza games and my house in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. And the arcade games themselves! The 30+ playable games are parodies and amalgamations of classic arcade titles, with pitch-perfect visuals and sound. They’re not all amazing, but they’re all interesting, and there’s a strong hit rate of fun games I returned to repeatedly. Arcade Paradise is a real gem.

Super Kiwi 64

You may have gathered earlier that I really don’t like games that get super complicated. It’s easy for me to get lost and lose interest when faced with a sea of obtuse stats, character abilities, skill trees, collectibles, etc. So if a game promises to provide a stripped-down experience, it’s got my interest. Thus it was with Super Kiwi 64, a 2022 platforming game with a throwback N64 style that I played on Nintendo Switch. You are a kiwi bird who has to navigate platforms and collect items. That’s it! The game has a low-polygon look, environments that are fun to explore, and highly enjoyable movement. You get a couple hours of playtime, and it costs three bucks. Right on!

Ridiculous Fishing EX

The original Ridiculous Fishing came out for smartphones in 2013. In it, you fish by 1) tilting your phone left to right to steer your sinking hook, dodging fish on the way down, 2) once you hit a fish, tilting your phone left to right to steer your hook as it rises to the surface, trying to grab as many fish as possible, and 3) once the hook reaches the surface and the fish you caught are all flung into the air, tapping the screen to shoot them with guns. (So yes, the game’s name is apt!) This year, an enhanced version of the game with improved graphics and more progression stuff came to the Apple Arcade service on iOS. I checked it out and had an absolute blast. The controls are wonderfully well-suited to smartphones, the gameplay loop is simple and satisfying, and the game’s entire vibe is super funny. This was a fun discovery this year.

Battlefield 1943

I wrote about this game at length last year. In 2023 I played a heck of a lot more, mostly while on the exercise bike; running around on Iwo Jima, Wake Island, and Guadalcanal turned out to be a reliable way to make the miles go by. But in December 2023, the servers for the game shut down. It’s now completely unplayable, and there has been much lamenting.