For consumers, it was an incredible year for video games as new and familiar IPs expanded the potential of machines like the PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch. For developers and studios still struggling to catch up with development crunches of 2020 and 2021, it was a very different story. Meanwhile, on the edge of the industry, the Meta Quest 3 dropped, promising a new gaming future in VR. But, at least for most people, the current world of gaming resides in normal reality with a controller in your hand. Because I know that my gaming, which includes probably 20-25 new titles a year, is remarkably limited when it comes to the industry as a whole, I asked gaming journalist and expert Alex James Kane to offer thoughts on some of his favorites too. We each picked three games we loved this year to highlight. (Sorry to my kids who adored “Spider-Man 2” and will yell at me for picking three others. It’s great. Just liked these a bit more.) Reminder: This is in no way comprehensive, just six games two people who love the form think should be remembered from 2023. – Brian Tallerico
“Thirsty Suitors”
It’s been a surreal year for video games, with publishers cutting jobs by the thousands and shuttering countless studios while, in the same breath, boasting that business has never been better. Even as a tsunami of acclaimed blockbusters began to arrive over the summer, one triple-A developer told me, “Everyone I know in this industry is laid off right now.” So in some ways the games of 2023 have been tainted by cognitive dissonance or, at the very least, a bitter aftertaste. But the best of them are undeniable, and it’s been a pleasure trying (and failing) to keep up with this year’s big releases, from “Jedi: Survivor” and “Tears of the Kingdom” to “Starfield” and “Thirsty Suitors.” That last one, from Seattle’s Outerloop Games, is a breath of fresh air in a medium stuffed with outrageously expensive, overlong works. “Thirsty Suitors” is an eight-hour story, roughly, about a young woman named Jala who returns to her hometown to sort through the rubble of her many disastrous failed relationships. Whatever’s in the air right now, that caused “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” to reboot Bryan Lee O’Malley’s beloved comic series by deconstructing it and healing the trauma of its characters’ past lives, bears comparable fruit here. Doing battle with Jala’s exes draws the player inside their colorful, dreamlike inscapes, complete with mythical stakes, guardian animals, and cheeky jock-jam theme songs. – Alex James Kane
“Jedi: Survivor”
No one is more surprised than me at how much I flat-out adored EA’s “Jedi: Survivor,” my favorite “Star Wars”-related product in years. Not only did the end of the last trilogy leave me cold, I have little interest in any of the Disney+ shows outside of admiration for the grounded nature of “Andor.” I’m not exactly a Lucasverse junkie. And yet I couldn’t get enough of the world of this game. It’s in the design of its open-world landscapes, places that feel like they hold new secrets, upgrades, and characters around every corner. And as my Jedi grew more powerful, I grew more addicted to seeing where the story took me next, until a familiar face appeared about 3/4s of the way through the game and I knew at that minute that “Jedi: Survivor” was making this list. If the “Jedi” games continue with this degree of entertaining escapism, maybe it’s not too late for me to become a massive “Star Wars” fan, after all. – BT
“Starfield”
This was the year I finally made the leap to PC, so since October I’ve been like a kid in a candy shop, embracing my poor attention span by trying a little of everything. Despite starting more games than I’ve finished, “Starfield” continues to hold my interest. I’ve spent over 50 hours with it, first with the main story and then with a litany of odd jobs and side quests. And if there’s a “right way” to experience “Starfield,” it’s to work your way upwards from the bottom of the quest log. Once you hit the main quest’s ending and enter new-game-plus territory, your perspective on Bethesda’s new NASA-inspired universe changes pretty radically. I wish I’d avoided those aspects of the game altogether, or at least for a long, long time; this isn’t the kind of game you want to race to finish. As with the launch version of “No Man’s Sky,” this common obsession with reaching the end of the universe, so to speak, is missing the whole point. “Starfield” has its weaknesses—with a thousand explorable planets, how could it not? But if you can approach it as a space-exploration sim with “Fallout” scavenging, satisfying gunplay, and a few too many structural similarities to “Skyrim,” there’s plenty to marvel at. Particularly charming is the reverence this new world has for old Earth artifacts, and Earth itself, which is treated less like a place than a late family member everyone’s still mourning. – AJK
“Resident Evil 4”
It’s a bit weird to include a 2005 game on a list of the best games of 2023, but the remake of this foundational game was the most purely enjoyable shooters of the year. The developers didn’t just slap a coat of paint on one of my favorite games of all time, they somehow made it better. When people ask me the best games of all time, “RE4” is often one of the first titles that I utter, and I’m here to tell you the 2023 version is even better. The team behind this masterpiece took the core story of the original and built out parts of it, updating the gameplay in a way that’s more likely to meet 2023 expectations without losing the essence of what makes this such a spectacular game. I love the “RE” franchise but the balance of survival horror and action was never better than in this game. And I just love the way the team at Capcom is treating these remakes, not like a cash grab but a way to update their games for a new generation. Whether they go back and overhaul “Resident Evil 0” (please) or forward to “Resident Evil 5,” I can’t wait to play it. – BT
“The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom”
The time I spent with “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” was awe-inspiring, on both an artistic and technical level. Yet it’s so dense with puzzles and crafting systems that I’ve still got a long way to go with it. If 2017’s “Breath of the Wild” was the open-world action-adventure formula cut down its Platonic essence, then “Tears” is a maximalist, Lego-like refusal to get too comfortable within that template. “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” is another game that impressed me a great deal this year, though I only recently got a chance to start it—as I said, there’s been no shortage of stuff to play. The hours I logged in “Baldur’s Gate 3” last month were as intimidating as they were astonishing; that’s not an RPG you want to try and hurry your way through. A third of my time on Steam this fall was spent playing the multiplayer in “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.” Which is a fun way to earn a playable Spawn skin voiced by Keith David, though you end up feeling like you’ve been living on diet soda and fast food alone. “Jedi: Survivor” and “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” were among my other favorites this year, as was “El Paso, Elsewhere,” an outstanding urban-fantasy shooter centering on a doomed romance, which in a video game can look a lot like Armageddon. – AJK
“Alan Wake II”
I can’t stop thinking about “Alan Wake II.” It’s a game that’s designed to haunt the gamer, and mission damn accomplished because it’s had a staying power in my memory more than most disposable video game experiences. It’s the “Twin Peaks: The Return” of video games, and not just because of how it relaunches a property that’s been dead for years but because it does so in a style that warps and questions reality. You play an investigator named Saga Anderson, who may actually be the fictional creation of a writer named Alan Wake, who has been stuck in an alternate reality since the end of the first game and has basically had to shift both that existence and the one on Earth to escape. In doing so, he’s unleashed an alter ego on the world that wants to see it burn. The ambitious narrative allows the developers to really play with the basic foundations of gaming, even including an unreal chapter that’s set against the backdrop of a live-action performance from Alan Wake and a heavy metal band. It’s breathtaking because there was nothing else like it in gaming, or anywhere really, this year. – BT
