The Best Dang Games I Played in 2023

Alright, here it is. The top ten. Not in any particular order, but...ehhh...kinda in order...

Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line (Switch)

Dragon Quest II seems to get a bad rep as being "the worst" Dragon Quest, which frankly gives me a lot of hope for continuing onward with the series - if this is the worst Dragon Quest has to offer, then I've got some truly excellent games ahead of me. The story, the tone, and the world of Dragon Quest II is at once grim, with extremely high stakes, but presented in such an upbeat fashion. Guiding the three cousins through the world their heroic ancestor once helped save is a delight, save maybe those last few "one wrong turn and you gotta restart," maze-heavy caves and towers you can plunge off of. A difficult but incredibly enjoyable adventure, and one that's stuck in my mind since finishing it.

Final Fantasy Adventure (Switch)

Funny that, after finishing Final Fantasy, I would opt to play Final Fantasy Adventure "as a joke" (???), knowing full well it was more of a marketing name for the US en lieu of calling it Seiken Densetsu, and wind up enjoying it a bit more than Final Fantasy, and far more than FFA's hallowed sequel, Secret of Mana. Cribbing heavily from the Legend of Zelda style, Final Fantasy Adventure manages to be absolutely compelling throughout, overcoming its general clunkiness to tell a relentlessly melancholy tale of a young man and woman seeking to avert the end of their world, at great personal cost to themselves and those around them. That it manages to do this with a somewhat clumsy translation, and a constant need to juggle items and weapons in the menus, feels like a testament to how much greater it manages to be than the sum of its parts. For something I fired up on a whim, I'm incredibly glad I saw this one through (and I gotta dust off my Vita and play the fairly straight remake, Adventures of Mana - what that game does to rehabilitate the somewhat basic, repetitive music of the original...dang, it's just fantastic).

Sword of Mana...nah. Nope. Not messing with that.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (Switch)

Y'know, I'm still kicking myself that I've had a copy of this on hand for over a decade, and only now have gotten around to it. Bringing all of the style and wit of Shu Takumi's work on the Ace Attorney series, Ghost Trick's death-averting, supernatural Rube Goldberg puzzles can, admittedly, wear a little thin by the end (it's ultimately a game of trial and error, and you'll have to pound your head against the puzzles until you find the solution the game wants), but its cast of charming characters and the constant twists and turns of the plot are more than enough to push through. 

Missile the Pomeranian...what a good character.

Final Fantasy I Pixel Remaster (Switch)

Fitting, I guess, that after 20+ years of dabbling in various Final Fantasy games (VII, XII, V, mostly) that the first one I would finally finish would be, uh, the first. Having only really put a significant chunk of time into the more futuristic Final Fantasy VII, I was surprised to see how...classical fantasy, I guess, the original Final Fantasy really was. Dwarves! Elves! Dragons! The story it has to tell is fairly basic, but the world it builds is vast and diverse, sending you everywhere from deep under the sea to temples in the clouds, and ultimately into the far flung past. In the same way I adore the simplicity of Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II, there's something so neat, so concise about how Final Fantasy plays out, that I stuck with it constantly until I finished it. Absolutely holds up (well, maybe better given the quality-of-life updates with the Pixel Remaster, but let's say at its core it's still solid).

Super Mario Wonder (Switch)

"Hey! You just wrote about this!!" Yeah I guess so! But it was one of The Best Dang Games I Played in 2023, so here we are, and I'll keep it short, I promise. Super Mario Wonder is an absolutely gorgeous and delightful game that hopefully signals, at least in some ways, a general direction to come for future Super Mario games. While I still have my doubts where this will sit for me in the long run (I wouldn't put it above Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. 3, at least right now), for the moment, this was one of the most fun and enjoyable games I played all year. So, that's gotta count for something!

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch)

I had some pretty considerable doubts about the next Zelda game being a direct follow-up to 2017's Breath of the Wild, reusing most of the map, enemies, weapons and other assets. And, like a fool, I was proven terribly wrong - Tears of the Kingdom smartly reuses the vast, enormous world of its predecessor and adds, in many literal ways, far more layers to it. From the shattered islands in the sky, to the mainland and newly added caverns that dot the map, to the somewhat terrifying (though ultimately a bit dull) deep land far underground, Tears of the Kingdom takes the map I didn't even fully explore in the last game and packs it to the gills with things to find, things to do. I haven't even mentioned the absolutely insane Ultrahand mechanic, which lets you fuse items you find in the world to not only build vehicles or robotic monstrosities, but circumvent some of the game's puzzles entirely with the trusty "big ol' bridge made up of 20 pieces of wood connected with magic snot." After decades of a general consensus of grumbling about how hand-holdy the series has become, Tears of the Kingdom feels like it offers a magnitude of freedom and choice that it might not ever be able to match again.

The story is a hell of a lot better, too, this time around. Damn...maybe I'm ranking this too low on my list, now that I'm thinking about it...

RoboCop: Rogue City (Steam)

Probably my most pleasant surprise of the year, RoboCop: Rogue City gives me some hope that maybe, just maybe, games based on old film licenses can be alright, after all. RoboCop: Rogue City doesn't exactly do anything new as far as the game goes, and it has some rough edges here and there (a share of bugs, some occasionally bad voice acting), but what it ultimately winds up being is...well, fun. I don't know if "playing as somewhat undead robotic cop Alex Murphy" is a power fantasy anyone has (and maybe I don't want to know anyone who does), but Rogue City grants it, offering just enough of a challenge throughout to make mowing through the goons threatening Old Detroit feel like an accomplishment. The story and characters are easily the best they've been since the original film, leapfrogging RoboCop 2 and 3 with ease. I don't know! It shouldn't be a hard sell to say "oh hey, that new RoboCop game rules," but the lineage of past RoboCop games alone would give anyone pause. That I haven't seen this pop up on more Best Of lists this year is kind of a bummer. Give it a shot!

Detention (Switch)

Every year I try to overcome my cowardice and play through at least one (1) horror game, and this year, that game was Detention. Detention's tale of a girl wandering through a haunted school during Taiwan's White Terror period ultimately winds up being far more than it initially presents itself as, with various ghosts and monsters slowly ebbing away to far more terrifying realities, of choices and the consequences tied to them. There have been countless games that have tried to ape 2001's seminal Silent Hill 2 (many of them lesser entries in that very series), but Detention is the first I've played that seems to really get what Silent Hill 2 was going for, narratively, and I would dare say even surpasses it, in its own humble way. A short but absolutely fascinating game, with two endings that manage to be devastating in their own ways. Maybe I can work up the courage to make Red Candle's next game, Devotion, my horror game for 2024...

Tinykin (Switch)

Tinykin! One of the first games I finished this year, Tinykin embodies the greatest assertion in gaming - "the best thing you can do in a game is be a little guy in a normal sized world" (quote attributed to, uh, me, I guess). Tinykin is, for lack of a better shorthand, a sort of Pikmin-alike, where you venture around the interior of an enormous house as astronaut Milodane, interacting with the various, diverse, and very funnily-written bug inhabitants of the house, and collect a number of the titular Tinykin (small little critters who can lift objects, build bridges, and channel electricity, among other abilities) to help navigate the world and overcome obstacles. The game is relentlessly colorful and upbeat (at least until the somewhat somber revelations of the ending) and a joy to explore around. I mean, I'm telling ya! Being a little tiny guy in a normal-sized world! It's good stuff!

Street Fighter 6 (Steam)

When I was a kid I would go across the street to my friend's house to play Street Fighter II regularly. My very first journal entry in first grade, utterly illegible in text, had a very legible TV with a Super Nintendo showing Blanka fighting Chun-Li. That game grabbed me in a way no game really could until I played Street Fighter Alpha 3, then the various Street Fighter IV entries. Street Fighter V, I think we can collectively agree, was a tremendous misstep (tragic for me, given it brought back R. Mika and Karin), but now we have Street Fighter 6, and...Street Fighter is back again, baby, it's good again! Bringing back a considerable chunk of the original Street Fighter II cast, peppered with one or two IV and V alumni, and introducing a group of new, instantly-likeable characters, Street Fighter 6 avoids the pratfalls that Street Fighter V took out the gate of strictly appealing to the hardcore crowd, and offers something for everyone. The game is, in so many ways, more accessible than ever, with in-depth tutorials and a new "Modern" control scheme that simplifies the classic controls so players can focus less on complicated inputs and more on what makes the meat of a fighting game - timing, spacing, and knowing what moves to use when. The World Tour mode, a sprawling open-world brawler mode set primarily in Capcom mainstay Metro City, is hard as nails at times and relentlessly weird, pitting your customizable character against box-wearing goons and faulty refrigerators run amuck in the subway. The fights themselves are incredibly colorful and dynamic, and the character designs are easily the best they've ever been. Given how bad it felt like Street Fighter V stalled the series out (to be fair, they...kinda managed to get it to a somewhat good place, in the end), Street Fighter 6 feels like its given the whole 30+ year old series a new life.

It's also why this isn't the "The Best Dang Games I Finished in 2023" list...that World Tour mode is tough!

And that's it! I doubt I'll finish another game between now and the end of the year, so I think this write-up is pretty much buttoned up and...

Oh hell I forgot one.

Hitman: World of Assasination - Freelancer Mode (Steam)

Okay, bear with me, one more time. Hitman (2016) is a game I've evangelized since it came out. It's easy, I guess, when your more-or-less all-time favorite game winds down after seven years of new content (between Hitman, 2018's Hitman 2, 2021's Hitman 3, and all three games now being consolidated into Hitman: World of Assassination), and yet drops a new mode right at the beginning of the year, to kinda just forget about it. Shame on me, though! Freelancer mode is a wild take on everything that's come before it, allowing you to take on campaigns against various syndicates across the levels from all three games. Your targets are randomized, and the weapons and items you've become accustomed to being present for the last seven years are either swapped or missing altogether. For someone like me, who has played these levels forwards and back countless times, this is horrifying, and it's great. Freelancer mode forces you to truly improvise, and not just rely on the well-worn Hitman mechanic of being a sudden wrench in a well-oiled machine. Where conventional Hitman levels would have your target be some sort of VIP, with an elaborate route and plenty of opportunities, Freelancer mode will pit you against...some guy leaning against a railing, in view of everyone. A maid in the Italian mansion in clear view of an armed guard. Some guy standing around with a towel by the toilets. You can do your best to do a clean assassination, maybe distract or lure them to some quiet place out of sight, but often it's simply not an option. Sometimes you've got no choice but to stand just off to the side, hurl a kitchen knife into their skull, and run for your life. It's messy, and when things go wrong, they go wrong in the way they always have in Hitman - catastrophically so. And if you beef it? You lose all your gear you have on you, and start over again. It's infuriating. It's invigorating. It really is a culmination of all your Hitman skills, put to the test.

Y'know what, screw it. They merged the three Hitman games in 2023. It's a 2023 game. Hitman: World of Assassination, game of the year, of all-time. Sorry, Dragon Quest II, but I gotta.