What a year for video games. 2023’s releases haven’t stopped sinceTears of the Kingdomlaunched in May. We had a few reasonable entries before then, such as Sea of Stars,Dredge, Dead Space, Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime Remastered, andStar Wars Jedi: Survivor, but the last six months have been jam packed.
If you haven’t been keeping up, summer and autumn brought Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, Lies of P, Lords of the Fallen, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Mortal Kombat 1, Viewfinder, Alan Wake 2, Cocoon, Diablo 4, Final Fantasy 16, Ghostrunner 2, Pikmin 4, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Starfield, and Baldur’s Gate 3. Not all of these are Game of the Year contenders, but I’d love to dabble in each to see what they’re doing, how they’re bringing fresh ideas to the medium, and why they’ve garnered legions of fans.
The problem is, I just listed 16 games that were released in the past six months. Some of them are short – Dredge orCocoonare easily able to be finished in a week of casual play – but there are multiple 100+ hour adventures on the list, before you take into account your inevitable second and maybe third playthroughs ofBaldur’s Gate 3.
Mylack of a PS5already cuts Final Fantasy 16 andSpider-Man 2off the list, so I’ll schedule a month to play bothwhen they come to PC in around 2025. I reviewed Starfield, so that’s one checked off, but I’ve barely made a dent in Baldur’s Gate 3 due to a hectic review schedule that started immediately after its release. That’s my next port of call, but where does that leave the likes of Mario and Alan Wake?
Tip: You don’t have to play games you don’t think you’ll enjoy. I’m not a fan of horror, so I won’t subject myself to Resident Evil 4, no matter how impressive it is mechanically
Even if you kept up with all the games being released in the first half of the year, the torrent of titles bearing down on us now is impossible to fathom. Nostalgia dictates I must play Mario before the year is out, and an aversion to horror means Alan Wake 2 probably falls to the wayside while I paddle in the shallow end eating flowers and turning into an elephant.
I play a lot of video games. It’s kind of my job. So if I’m struggling to keep up with this year’s offerings, I dread to think how many stellar experiences casual players are going to miss out on. And it’s going to be the smaller games and indies that go under the radar, as they so often do. I’ve heard great things about Cocoon, and yet I can’t see when I’m going to get a chance to play it amid the Christmas rush. I liked the first Ghostrunner, but it’s likely I won’t see how its sequel iterates on that cyberpunk-styled, Titanfall-esque gameplay until 2024 at the earliest.
I’m also starting to think about my Game of the Year list. Describing games as ‘GOTY contenders’ is incredibly reductive and tells you nothing about them, but this is the time of year when I attempt to pick up any games that my colleagues have loved but I passed over at the time. Sea of Stars is one such game, as are Paranormasight and A Space for the Unbound. But surely I’ve got tofinish Baldur’s Gate 3before backtracking to January?
I haven’t even factored in cost to the equation. While we’re often provided review copies of games we’re down to review, the same is not the case for general features. I bought Baldur’s Gate, I’ll buy Mario Wonder, and I’ll do the same for Armored Core 6 if I get the time. But, despite my love of chunky mechs, I think that, too, will be one for 2024.
This is a good problem to have. Developers are catching up after pandemic-induced delays and our consoles and PCs are brimming and ready to burst with fresh, exciting games itching to be played. But I know I’ll miss out on some of them, and that thought worries me. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed that 2024 starts off slowly so I can cram in a bunch of this year’s games.
