What is your overall number 1 favorite game of 2023?

It was a very good year, and though I didn't get to play some of the big games that came out like Baldur's Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2, I feel good about my choice, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It took Breath of the Wild and made it better, and the new powers are genius. One of the few games I've played where I would say "one more thing" and end up playing for an extended period of time. Other open world games may have better technical achievements, but I don't find them as fun as ToTK. As for front runners, here are my top 5.

• Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
• Octopath Traveler 2
• Resident Evil 4 Remake
• Spider-Man 2
• Super Mario Bros Wonder

How about you, SW? What is your overall number 1 favorite game of 2023?

Baldur's Gate 3 is so far ahead that no other titles are even worth mentioning.

Shadowheart best goth waifu of 2023 as well, so it is what it is.

Quake II: Remaster

Currently Tears of the Kingdom. However I still have a whole bunch of other 2023 games that I have yet to finish so this could change.

1. BG3

2. RE4make

3. TOTK

Tears of the Kingdom hands down. Second place is Pikmin 4 then Super Mario Wonder was amazing.

BG3 is good if you like long story games. Just not my thing.

S: Tears of the Kingdom, Street Fighter 6, Pizza Tower
A: Against the Storm, Hi-Fi Rush, Fire Emblem Engage
B:Advance Wars: Reboot Camp, Jagged Alliance 3
C: Rain World Downpour
D: Cities Skylines 2
E: Baldur's Gate 3
F: Starfield

Anything at C or above was worth the time and money, D and below was disappointing/boring

BG3

Dead Space Remake (XSX)

Dead Space Remake. Shocking nobody here has mentioned it. Underrated 2023 game and probably overshadowed by Resident Evil 4 Remake.

Well, its TotK by default. Its the only 2023 game I played :P

Remnant 2.

Lets not get it mistaken, every single person that doesn't vote for BG3 isn't a real gamer.

The only thing BG3 got right was the roleplaying.

But with Roll20, that point is pretty redundant. Since it is hopelessly outclassed in Roleplaying by tabletop D&D as well.

Let's be real anyone who has a game running in the background to clock up hours "played" isn't a real gamer.

Dude, you're exiting gaming before Microsoft. You're on your last few years of gaming. Its not for you anymore, so your opinion about BG3 is meaningless.

@hardwenzen: Shadowheart is amazing. Took me like 70 hrs of hard work to bang her.

Jim Sterling said the right thing about Dead Space, and I normally don't consume his content.

"The Dead Space remake offends me.

"The most important aspect of this sentiment is that Visceral’s work is what I fell in love with, and I loved it in spite of everything its publisher did to destroy the series. Electronic Arts vandalized Dead Space, from desperate attempts to turn it into a multimedia franchise to unrealistic sales expectations to the disgusting monetization of Dead Space 3, EA’s pressure and meddling turned a once great game into a confused sellout of an intellectual property.

"After ensuring Dead Space would be a failure and shunting Visceral from one doomed project to another, EA would do what it does best and closed the studio.

"I hold that reckless, feckless, far from speckless company responsible for the downfall of both Dead Space and its developer. For EA to sell a remake of the original with a different team and try to profit off of something it so carelessly wrecked is, like I said at the start, fucking offensive.In sincere honesty, I want to give this game the lowest score I possibly could due to how insulting I find its mere existence.

"Splitting the critical difference between this remake as a pure videogame and as a galling example of EA’s cynicism seems like the best bet. This compromise is made all the easier by the fact that even when judged as a product in a bubble, I’m simply not impressed by a remake that improves little and offers changes I mostly dislike.

"Everything good about Dead Space 2023’s basic gameplay, combat, and narrative is a result of what Dead Space 2008 built. Most of what this remake adds is either less appealing artistic alterations or side content that generally amounts to unnecessary padding, and quite frankly I’d have been more interested in a remaster than a glitchy new take that’s less enjoyable and costs more. When you add the repulsive context of EA benefiting from a series it once destroyed right down to the developer, you get a game that leaves a sour bloody taste, even if it’s an acceptable mimicry of its predecessor."

Unlikely to quit soon. Just prioritize stuff that are more important.

Glad you like the game though :) But assuming that voting for something else in a year of excellent gamesl ike this makes one not a gamer is just... absurd.

BG3 just felt too watered down from the actual tabletop experience for my liking. Missing so many actions, classes, spells, races, and mechanics. So many things got buffed for no reason, and became so stupidly OP they trivialize the game.

Don't get me wrong, I can see why people like the game, your opinions on the game are valid. But personally, I found very little to like about it.

Haven't played an awful lot of 2023 games. I enjoyed HiFi Rush, Cocoon, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased his Name, Planet of Lana.

Didn't like Atomic Heart though.

Still have a lot of games to play from 2023 which I'll play next year.

Super Mario Bros Wonder. It has a lot of brilliant levels and the final boss fight is one of the best in any Mario game.

Resident Evil 4 Remake. follow by Robocop.

1. Baldur's Gate 3 - Contender for GOTD right next to Elden Ring, The Last of Us 2 and God of War Ragnarök. Total playtime = 225 hours, 2 playthroughs
2. Resident Evil 4 - The perfect remake of the consensus GOTY 2005 and one of the top 5 GOTDs of the '00s. Total playtime = 117 hrs, 9 playthroughs
3. Armoured Core VI - Total playtime = 26 hours
4. Lies of P - By far the greatest soulslike of any game not made by From Software. It might even be better than DS2 and Demon's Souls. Total playtime = 32 hours
5. Final Fantasy 16 - Best FF since FFX, if we exclude FF7R. Total playtime = 65hrs
6. Spiderman 2 - Total playtime = 15hrs
7. Star Wars: Jedi Survivor - total playtime = 28 hrs
8. Dead Space Remake - Total playtime = 35 hrs
9. Starfield - total playtime = 52 hrs
10. Alan Wake 2 : total playtime = 6 hrs.

I honestly feel like AW2 is highly overrated but I don't know what to put in 10th place.

2023 games I have not played include:

• Zelda TOTK
• Super Mario Wonder
• Robocop (might break top 10!)
• Ready or Not
• Hi-Fi Rush

I have not yet tested Robocop which looks really cool (will play it after xmas). I doubt Zelda:TOTK or Super Mario Wonder will make my top 10.

Ready or Not looks really cool but no of my friends play on PC :/

When your priorities are 2d side scrollers over one-in-a-generation-game such as BG3, you know you're very close to to quitting gaming, and find yourself playing golf or fishing instead.

You're constantly bitchin' about gaming not offering enough gameplay, and when BG3 overloads you with it (or ER for that matter), you moan about the game, and call it mid at best. You really don't know what you like and what you don't. Maybe get yourself gamepass for a second month, and continue your Starfield playthrough🤡

@fedor: This man metacritics.

It isn't about the quantity of gameplay but quality of it. Assassin's Creed offers a lot of hours of gameplay, none of it is any good. Same with BG3, hours upon hours of some of the most basic *** "tactical" gameplay I have seen.

Pizza Tower offers a much higher skill ceiling, superior feedback and a tighter gameplay loop compared to mediocre game mechanics found in RPGs.

D&D 5e is already a pretty bad ruleset when it comes to mechanics. BG3 watered down an already shallow TTRPG even further by removing a lot of functions. The strength of D&D5e is in its simplicity, which works great for a tabletop game (doesnt burden its players with excessive rules) but that simplicity does not translate well to a video game.

Edit: The most basic use of positioning and stealth does not make for a good tactical game. Even more so when you have some options that are so massively overpowered compared to the rest. Pretty much the only interesting choice to be made in BG3 is when to quaff those haste potions, but even that becomes redundant by the time you reach level 5. Unless you attempted a solo like I did (on my first attempt to make the game fun).

Very close between Super Mario Bros Wonder & Bayonetta Origins, but I'd have to give a slight edge to Bayo. Loved it that much.

@hrt_rulz01: Bayo is definitely one of the hidden gems of this year!

I barely played any 2023 games. A lot of catching up to do on my end. Mostly waiting for games to get patched up though.

Of the games I played in 2023, CP2077 is my fav, followed by Bayonetta Origins.

Xenoblade 3 Future Redeemed was also a nice send off for the whole trilogy. The story was mostly gibberish but it was a fun expansion. But seriously Monolithsoft: Clean slate for the next one please.

• TotK
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Octopath 2
• My Time at Sandrock
• SMBW

Star Ocean's pretty nice.

It’s a toss between Sea of Stars or Cocoon . Follow up are BG3, Spider 2 and Alan wake

Zelda.

Jedi survivor is the best game this year.

Damn, way too many good games. I've got to get back to BG3, so of those i've played, it's TotK.

My list is;

1. Alan Wake 2 (great)
2. Octopath Traveller 2 (great)
3. FFXVI (great)
4. Hogwarts Legacy (good)
5. Sea of Stars (mid)/ trails into reverie (mid)

I didn't play a lot of 2023 releases due to trying to clear backlog. These 6 games are all the games I played released this year. Right now on to Metro Exodus and KH Memory of Melodies and about few hundreds more backlog sigh....

Re4 remake VR or maybe Asgard's wraith 2

Resident Evil 4 Remake. RE4 is still one of the greatest games of all time. Nothing else released this year comes close. But since it's a remake, it's only fair to hand out GOTY awards to newer 2023 games rather than a remake of a 2005 game.

In no particular order:

Dead Space Remake

Dead Island 2

Everspace 2

Starfield

Robocop: Rogue City

WH40K: Darktide

Its actually with the remake that i've noticed how flawed the game was. For all these years, i always thought that RE4 was so far ahead of all the games in the same genre that comparing them isn't even fair, but not anymore. And while there were some things that were better in the original when compared to the remake, since the original came out during the "every game must have qte's", its just so bad, the remake is better for this reason alone.

Marvel's Spiderman 2. The game may have been overlooked at the awards. But this doesn't mean it's not a great game.

Insomniac has done a wonderful job with this game with 90 Metacritic score. I thoroughly enjoyed the game from the start till the end. The story, the visuals, and the gameplay were all epic. Miles and Peter's stories were beautifully interwined in this game. I have also played Batman Arkham and imo it doesn't even come close with the epic visuals and gameplay of this game. It is truly a next gen wonder.

The best thing I found about the game is that the trans scenes in the game are also not as glaring as in some other games like TLOU2 or FFXVI. Insomniac doesn't shove woke content down people's throat that is praiseworthy.

Marvel's SP2 is my favorite Spidey game ever made that has made PS5 a worthy console for me. Thank you Insomniac and thank you Sony.

Other games I enjoyed playing this year include RE4 Remake, Street Fighter 6, Super Mario Wonder, and Zelda TOTK. 2023 has been a phenomenal year for gaming. Let's hope the next year brings as much joy to us gamers as this year.

I agree 💯 percent with your views. The game was overhyped and due to this reason alone I will never follow the GOTY hype train again. I considered downloading the game but decided against it as I found the gameplay to be utterly boring. It was worse even than BG2 that I enjoyed playing a lot.

@SolidGame_basic: Absolutely it is. It's a shame it's been forgotten in GOTY discussions.

Forgotten cuz its shallow, and you're only praising it cuz it says Nintendo on the box. You're not fooling anyone.

@Maroxad: that's an interesting opinion...it's like people who read the books before a movie came out, like Harry Potter or LOTR, call the movies trash. Maybe the actual table top board game is the same way?

One thing I disagree with you is starfield. It's S class...maybe SSS class, let that sink in.

Probably Final Fantasy 16. I have not played BG3 yet.

@hardwenzen: Please go away.

One Piece Manga vs Anime comes to mind :P

But yeah, I might have had more respect for BG3 if I just didnt have this nagging feeling about how watered down the game felt from proper D&D. So many tools were missing, limiting the ammount of options compared to D&D proper, if I tried doing what I did in the tabletop games, I would just break quests, with NPCs flat out disappearing infront of my eyes and progress not registering thus rending the quest unfinishable.

Worse yet, they threw in so many poorly thought out buffs, that some options were just broken. As in so OP you could essentially finish a fight on turn one. With 0 tactical thought.

Haha, glad you enjoyed Starfield :) There is no such thing as a wrong opinion my friend!

Sta86ield