2023 was as exciting as it was hectic. Starting as early as January, as soon as one game finished dragging me down into their viscous tar pits of digital entertainment, another would hit the shelves, pushing me directly into a new, equally entrapping tar pit. By December, my to-play list was drowning in must-play triple-As and ♏unforgettable indies. But if there’s one thing gamers love more than playing video games, it’s talking about how mu🐷ch better their favorites are than your favorites. So get ready to hear what the REAL winners of 2023 are.
As much as I enjoy pretending to be egotistical enough to say that my opinion is the only one that matters, that’s nothing but a charade deep down. In truth, we have a whole team of editors at TheGamer who have 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:their own equally valid GOTY lists. On Decemb⛄er 18, we’ll combine everyone’s rankings to decide a site-wide winner.
Starfield
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield takes a lot of risks and experiments with new ideas beyond Bethesda’s usual scope. While some of those ideas don’t coalesce perfectly, It hasn’t ⛄stopped me from having tremendous fun building outposts, hijacking pirate ships dumb enough to attack me, and going on some surprisingly well-written quests.
Atomic Heart
Continuing the trend of debatable entries, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Atomic Heart was that game no one liked, despite how creative and polished it really was. It was a tremendously smooth FPS game with beautifully realized art direction. The unexpectedly clever narrative wa♓s just icing on the mechanical cake.
Lethal Company
Co-op horror is not the easiest genre to get right. But when someone does, it can make for some of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the most entertaining social experiences possible. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lethal Company nails that ideal ratio of fear and ඣcoordination. Besides, there are fewer sounds mo൲re beautiful than hearing my entire party curse me out for luring a hive of bees inside the ship.
Barotrauma
Barotrauma is anothe👍r example of the power a co-op horror game is capable of. Having to watch ship readings to ensure safety while strange and powerful creatures lurk in dark waters is terrifying. Trading room for shenanigans for the more complex side of submarine management, few games have so effectively captured the terror of the deep as this one.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life
Everyone gets a bias vote, right? I have been in love with A Wonderful Life since its GCN release in 2003, and this modern remake of the idyllic💟 farming game is everything I could ask for and more. From the charming characters to the rich ranching and farming experience, this will be my favorite farming game for a long time.
Honorable Mentions That Might Have Made It Had I Had Time To Play Them
The Legend Of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tears of the Kingdom resolved almost ev☂erything I disliked about Breath of the Wild (which wasn’t much) and threw in everything I liked about Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. I had nothing but a fantastic time exploring Hyrule in whatever machine I could construct from green goo and a blatant ignorance for physics.
Resident Evil 4 Remake
This one isn’t my bias vote because I’m not that nostalgic for the original game. But that doesn’t stop the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil 4 Remake from being such an entertaining blend of survival horror gameplay with campy thriller circumstꦜances. It’s got action, monsters, hot people, and backflips; all the makings of a GOTY tit♓le.
Pikmin 4
Pikmin as a series has always been one of the few titles to portray the notion of life as a monumentally tiny creature so beautifully, and Pikmin 4 does it best. With an adorable army of colorful plant-animal-things following me on a journey of exploration and adventure, this is one of my all-time favorite games on the Nintendo Switch. I also hold a special love for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:how they name everything.
Baldur’s Gate 3
It doesn’t take a 15 Insight check to understand why I might be super into 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s the most impressive RPG I’ve ever seen, with an engaging combat system, more branching pathways and influencing decisions than I can count, and a beautifully crafted world. It’s also the all-time best digital take on the D&D 5e system, which has🦋 been my favorite tabletop RPG for years n🍬ow. There’s a reason I don’t remember the entire month of August.
Amnesia: The Bunker
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Amnesia: The Bunker is horror, perfected. The dark, dusty ꦅcorridors of a war bunker made for the ideal hellscape for the cat-and-mouse nightmare it drops you into. The semi-open ended map, various randomly placed tools, and multiple ways to solve a ♑problem meant that survival and escape was more a game of outthinking the monster than ‘knowing the answer.’ I hadn’t played such a beautifully refined horror experience in years.
As I learned the rules and familiarized myself with the arena, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:fear made way for rivalry. I had a demon to outsmart, to play like an absolute fool. It was my hellscape now. By the time The Bunker spit me out, I was dirty, exhausted, and ready 🐻to g🍰o right back in for round two. There were challenges to complete and a beast to absolutely dunk on, after all.
