The best and the worst

 

This year in the world of gaming should probably win some sort of unique commendation, for not only bringing to life some of the greatest examples of the medium to feast our eyes, but also some of the absolute most degenerate spawns of Satan to torment us incessantly. Actually, no- Satan is too easy of a get-out card. In fact, from what Televangelists preach, Satan would probably make really sick video games if he could just slap together a development studio. I'd totally follow 'SatanSoft.' (Bet he'd make really cool and long-winded JRPGs where the final boss is killing god.) The worst of this year was birthed within the heretical maw of The Archenemy, spat out to corrupt and taint our perception of what a half decent game even is. To engage with one is to forever sully oneself. And to buy them is to directly fund the enemies of Mankind.

So as you can likely deduce from the ratio of my introduction, in this space you get a lot more mileage starring sideways at the terrible than you do wistfully smiling on the grand. And it makes sense, there's always so much more to talk about on the buffering waves of 'potential' and 'what could have been'- then there is praising what is already there. Afterall, we're pretty much pulling our examples of what could be improved from the completed and gleaming, which makes all of these conversations somewhat circular. Still I strive for something resembling balance and so I'm going to try and dance on the blade's edge and capture the best and the worst of what is the 2023 slate of Video Gaming- which from the look of things right now, might just be the last 'hurrah' before an impending dry slate. (GTA 6 won't be there to save 2024 unfortunately.)

One of the early big wins of this year was the very controversial Dead Space Remake which did the impossible and was actually good whilst the spiritual successor, The Callisto Protocol, was only 'alright'. The game took what it needed to from the original and updated everything else to bring the franchise roaring into the modern era with frightening deftness and aplomb. The game was almost as solid of a remake as Resident Evil 4- which took the premise of it's game and totally remade the meat of the game to better fit the modern sensibilities of gamers. The Resident Evil Remake franchise has been nothing but hits so far though, so I guess I shouldn't have really been surprised that they made their splash once again. Love myself some Resident Evil, who doesn't?

Unfortunately this year also saw us finally reach a game that was threatening to hound us for years now. Forspoken, the last hurrah for the team behind Final Fantasy XV, managed to sneak in near the end of January with a game that just didn't fit it's era. Writing from the mid 2000's, a premise from the cliché bucket and gameplay that failed to inspire in any significant fashion- it's failure felt somewhat predetermined, and it's consequences for that failure proved depressing as the makers were dissolved. In fact, this year (excluding Dead Space) it really wasn't too hard to see the disasters coming from a mile away. Forspoken never managed to inspire confidence in it's marketing and neither did Redfall, which failed to rise beyond the lukewarm reveal presentations and slipped in a 'rough launch' just to sink any chances the game might have had. Just another miss on the Xbox road to exclusive AAAs.

But back to some of the best. This year saw the drop of a game that no one saw ever actually happening- the definitive Harry Potter game which brought the open world wizarding school experience the franchise begged for up until now. The game made wizard play fun, brought the movie environment of Hogwarts into a tactile 3D space and laid the groundworks for a new revolution of Harry Potter games to come. Personally I find all the datamined info about everything the team left out even more exciting than what they managed to keep in. Proper RPG choice and consequences, managing reputations- Hogwarts Legacy 2 has every potential to be even better than the first game was, and that is the mark of a fresh game developer with legs under them- when their initial success is paved in their future. Portkey games ruled the spring.

And then Gollum came to ruin the Summer. Gods, who has managed to do the impossible and forget Gollum? A game that felt so ridiculously doomed from conception that our minds kind of did all the leg work in lieu of marketing and just said "This is obviously going to be some sort of high-art game like 'The Last Gaurdian' or 'Death Stranding'. It can't be as dumb as the concept sounds.' And then when it launched, incredibly the game was so much worse! (How'd they do that?) Hardly functional, creatively catatonic, systematically bare- the game was probably morally bankrupt too, but I've never met anyone who survived long enough to see the credits. To think this was the game destined to win worst game of the year for months, only to be outdone by two even worse releases in the following months! I used to think Gollum was a tragedy, now I realise: it's just tragic.

Which brings us to the best game of the year. The one which reminded the entire damn industry what gaming is about. Baldur's Gate 3, you knew it was making the cut! Spectacular replayability, reactivity, choice and consequence, great gameplay, gorgeous presentation- a straight A in practically every variable. Baldur's Gate is the kind of game that goes down as decade defining, and I have no doubt that every other game this year has been made to look just a little bit worse for sharing the same year as it. Baldur's Gate turned out better than I could ever imagined and the endless acclaim and success it has received are endless testaments to that fact. People are still trying to second guess themselves about how deserving of all it's awards the game was, and the conversation keeps falling back into the positive. Somehow, someway, Baldur's Gate ruled supreme.

And then The Day Before happened. You know, I think we all needed a game like that just to put things in perspective. Out of all the trash games, the disappointments, the hardly functional trainwrecks, at least all of those games were touched by people who cared at some point about anything. But The Day Before can never claim that title. Because it was a scam. From conception to birth. And in an inverse to the Baldur's Gate situation, I kind of think that all the rest of 2023 is made better in comparison. So yes, even in the throws of absolute defeat- some positive notes of worth persists. Because out of every game we received, all are made better by the existence of The Day Before, however briefly it touched us. Talk about a genuine Christmas miracle!