Last day of the year, so it is, once again, time for the 2023 Year in Gaming recap.
Because of one singular game, my relocation to a new city, and major Dragon Builders 2 project, I only made time for a few new games this year. Hope to do better next year now that these three things are behind me.
6.
Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer (Switch): D-
This looked fun, but it is actually very hard and unforgiving, even with the beat turned off. I couldn't tolerate more than an hour or so before I got too frustrated with easy death. As much as I love Zelda games, the free Nintendo Switch Online Game Trial told me all I need to know that this game is not for me.
5.
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince (Switch): D+
I only played the demo, but its sufficient long that I think it qualifies as a fair test of the game. I was incredibly psyched for this game when the trailer premiered in the June Nintendo Direct: a Psaro backstory! But boy does it disappoint. The graphics for both characters and environments are a huge step back from other Dragon Quest titles: worse than DQ11, Treasures, and the Heroes games and comparable to the Builders or other spin-off series. The battles are also slow to develop and there's too many of them, making navigating the wilds between one area and another more of a chore than an adventure. The demo didn't advance the story in the 5 or 6 hours I played as much as I'd hoped and ends before introducing either of the two big baddies that are mentioned but never seen, or the third character in the party: the humorously named, Toilen Trubble. Speaking to other DQ fans, the demo seems to have done more damage than good, as I wasn't the only one who was turned from "probable preorder" into "wait and see". Given its self-published by SquareEnix and not co-published with Nintendo, there's a very good chance it comes down in price rapidly through 2024, so I'll probably be able to pick it up again later and not pay full price for a so-so game.
4.
Franken RPG (PC): C
Easy and very short (less than one hour) with some funny inside jokes. It has a sappy ending though that is way too long (about a quarter of the game's length is the ending sequence.) If you've got an hour and just want something free and stupid to play, this will do.
3.
Super Mario RPG (Switch): B-
An overdue remake of the original. Some nice new features to make combat more tolerable, but aside from updated graphics that's it. Its still very short and really could have benefited from a bit of the FF7 Remake style with added side quests or challenges. I'm not certain it provides a long enough adventure to really dictate a $60 (USD) price in today's market. If I wanted to play an RPG, $60 is much better spent on something like the Xenoblade series, which are ten times as long.
2.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch): B
A fine Super Mario Bros 2D entry, somewhere between the brutal single-player New SMB game and the easy NSMB2 and multiplayer Wii and U games. Every stage having something whimsical is a nice way to prevent the stages from becoming repetitive and the use of both bubbling and undamageable characters gives novices a chance to play with more skilled players. Unfortunately, I found the stages either far too easy, far too short, or just aggravatingly hard - which is indicative of poor playtesting and balance.
1.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch): A
Nearly perfect but a few really "Ugh" moments. Some of the puzzles should have been harder, or developers blocking cheating them with smaller doors, corners in hallways, or other restrictive means to avoid bringing items with you from one area to the next to make things easier. The difficulty seems to generally scale downwards as well as you acquire more companions when it should go the other way. There should have been a better homing device for finding wells and caves, as only guides and maps can truly help a player find them all. Hyrule felt big enough without adding both sky and the Depths - you can really get sidetracked dozens of hours between tasks. The long loading pause (over a second) that occurs when falling from overworld to Depths is rather disturbing - BotW didn't have this happen and was designed for the lesser Wii U hardware, so seeing it happen on Switch is a sign that engine improvements were not made to account for more capable hardware. Overall, longer and more interesting battles than Breath of the Wild offered, but not as solid of a story or adventure as BotW. BotW shares top billing in the series with games like Ocarina of Time, but TotK is going to have to settle for second tier because of the rough edges that weren't fully smoothed out to make for a more compact and enjoyable experience.
Most Looking Forward to in 2024:- The Plucky Squire (TBD) - This is my most anticipated title of 2024: it looks cute, looks like it plays well, and expands upon the Link Between Worlds idea of jumping out of bounds of the normal environment. I keep hoping for some news on release date to better plan the year.
- Princess Peach: Showtime! (March 22) - I'm hoping this has some fun gameplay like the excellent Super Princess Peach. SPP has been long overdue for a sequel and if this doesn't measure up it will be a huge-missed opportunity and let down on behalf of Nintendo, who only seems interesting in letting the guys do all the hero work. If it ends up being a very basic game with cosplay dress-up as the hallmark feature then Nintendo should expect a lot of hate mail. It's almost certain we'll see more in a Nintendo Direct between now and mid-March to get a better idea but so far it's on my potential pre-order list.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (TBD) - If it has new features. If it's merely a port like Super Mario RPG then I'll be greatly disappointed. It's a great game - to the point that almost everyone who has played all the Mario RPG games are in near-universal agreement that Thousand Year Door is the best of the bunch. People who missed it on GameCube should get it for Switch, but don't expect me to buy it without additional features: I still have the original.
- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (February 29) - still on the list from last year, since it didn't make it into 2023; very strong chance I don't buy until later in the year though, perhaps Black Friday or something depending on timing of other releases
- Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory (out now) - surprise unannounced release just before Christmas, I had thought this game all but cancelled. But it does exist and I remember the Paranoia RPG tabletop game being slapstick comedy at its highest so I'll probably give it a shot when it runs a big discount after a few months.
- Tinykin (out now) - I just bought this a few days ago in Steam's winter sale so haven't had a chance to try it yet but it's been on my agenda for about two years.
- Pikmin 4 (out now) - I'm kind of waiting for this one to come down in price a bit, or my calendar to clear up to warrant full price. I enjoyed the previous Pikmin games, I just haven't had the time to squeeze in this one yet. (And Tinykin is so similar I may have to sit on Pikmin 4 a while longer.)
Rumors/Things we did see come true in 2023:- Super Mario Bros. Wonder - I had mentioned in last year's review that 2023 would mark six years between mainline Mario series games, and we'd never gone to seven before. Sure enough, we got one in 2023.
Rumors/Things I want to see come true in 2024:- New Nintendo Hardware - All signs pointing to 2024 finally being the year. If not then they might well allow Sony back into competition for first place.
- Metroid Prime 4 - This has been on the list for a while, but with new hardware on the horizon and both Mario and Zelda out of the picture as a launch title, a Metroid game might well be the perfect solution (barring a new Smash Bros title.) If hardware launches without either Metroid Prime 4 or a Super Smash Bros entry then I don't have any idea what Nintendo is expecting.
- Dragon Quest Builders 3 - Hopes are getting faint. The five year anniversary passed not long ago and still no word from SquareEnix on a sequel to arguably the best spin-off game they've ever made (at the very least, the one with the longest standing appeal) But as time goes by and we get closer to Dragon Quest XII, hopes diminish. Given how horrible the reviews for Infinity Strash were, and good sales but generally unimpressive reviews for The Dark Prince, SquareEnix's DQ team really should get back to doing a game that is a near certainty to out-sell and out-review them both.
- Dragon Quest XII News - Speaking of which... Its now been two a an half years with no screenshots, concept art, or anything. For the previous several mainline Dragon Quests, this process started well over two years in advance of release. Either SquareEnix is keeping a much tighter lid on things this time, or is expecting us to wait until 2026, which is disaster. At this point, a 2024 release seems unlikely, but we gotta get some news to calm fears as the DQ line is not looking very strong of late.
- Dragon Quest X Offline English/European Localization - This would certainly solve the above problem. And it seems more possible now than this time last year, thanks to the Korean Playstation store leaking Korean and Chinese ports were coming some months ago. Since it would be an atrocious backstab to translate to Korean and Chinese but not English as twice promised already, if that leak was true then North America and Europe should finally see DQX in 2024, correcting a multi-year title gap and solving the confusing parts of DQ11 and Treasures that make callbacks to DQ10 that western players don't understand.
- Kid Icarus: Uprising Remake or Sequel - More of a personal wish than practical expectation. But as time goes by it seems Kid Icarus, along with F-Zero, have just been retired by Nintendo. (And so Pit and Captain Falcon should also be dropped from the next Smash Bros game roster if they will have no new games, or at minimum moved to paid DLC if inclusion is absolutely required.)
The Annual "Let's Not Do This Again" Award:Bogus year-end-reviews from the game companies. What started as a neat reminder a few years back has become something of an annual tradition. And that's great,
when its accurate. Nintendo seems to have done a good job with it this year - accurate for my playtimes and I only knew one friend who complained a gametime reported as 50 hours should have been 60, which seems close enough to simply be misremembering. But my oh my, the other guys. Playstation, for the second year in a row, was off by
hundreds of hours, which totally obliterates any measures shown in the charts. And Steam, despite getting the hours played correct, butchered their own charts by not ranking games equally. You can't tell me that the six factors I enjoyed the most, with the top three that so overwhelm the bottom three and come from one game that was played for only 12% of the time, while those bottom three factors were from another game comprising 88% of game time. Thats proof positive that game A's factors are valued at 15-20 times as much as game B. Shouldn't an hour of Game A equal an hour of game B? If you're recording hours to base your charts on, it certainly should. And yet doesn't. And the fact that someone at Steam had to purposely set these factors for each game indicates full knowledge that games aren't valued equally, which is purposely misleading your customers. And if any of that valuation is being used to promote sales or provide discounts to certain game companies making certain games, that's called fraud and could lead to serious legal trouble. So next year, lets knock it off with this stupid non-useful information. Playstation needs to get their hours recorded correct and Steam needs to treat all games equally. If you can't do it right, don't do it at all.
Payoff of the Year:Nintendo taking the time to get the physics engine of Tears of the Kingdom right. Besides the free falling being far superior to Skyward Sword and good use in a few very clever and fun Shrines, the ability to glue lots of pieces together to make gigantic vehicles and weapons of doom was just fantastic. Tell me you didn't watch at least one video this year of the crazy contraptions people were building in TotK. This got more buzz for the game than any amount of positive reviews. (And yet, God of War series wins GotY again with a rather meager physics engine and nothing that really separates it from the previous entry.)
Backfire of the Year:Sure enough, the decision to delay Starfield to late 2023 doomed the Xbox Series S/X to last place in the console races. While Switch continued to crush and PS5 moved merrily along with its discounted God of War Ragnarok bundle though the second half, Xbox kept struggling despite a marquee game. Things got so bad that now Microsoft has significantly cut the price of the X, just to get some sales and stay relevant. No one is buying Xbox hardware, and thus no one is buying Xbox software and so Microsoft is losing out on license fees. There are now about twice as many PS5s and Xbox S and Xs, which is an insurmountable lead. Face it Microsoft: it's time to get off the dance floor and follow Sega's lead into the software-only gaming business.
Moment of the Year:Personally it was completing my project island for DQB2, a project that lasted nearly two years. But beyond that probably hearing the news my nephew was going to get a Switch for Christmas. Despite me not being much of a multiplayer gamer, it will give me the chance to play some games with him remotely and become his gaming tutor of sorts. We're still working on the specifics of which games (Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart seem most likely) but this will give us a chance to play together since we don't see each other as often as I'd like.
What will 2023 most be remembered for? (Besides key games):The end of E3. The organizers of E3 acknowledged that it won't be coming back in 2024, or ever again. The cancellations due to COVID and poor organization in the few years since to put together a suitable streaming solution caused all the big players to move over to Summer Game Fest, which has already basically replaced E3. What was once the year's biggest show-and-tell in gaming is now done. I only hope that Sony and Nintendo can now reengage and make SGF what E3 used to be when all the big players were present. Nintendo and Sony never missed an E3 until COVID. Nintendo had a great show every year, laying out its holiday plans and sharing the majority of its secrets in the pre-Direct days. And its where Sony had the infamous "Two-ninety-nine" mic drop that all but ruined Sega. E3 will be missed.
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