Narrowing this list down was tough, but these are the 10 best games we played all year.
2023 was a great year to play videogames. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom finally came out after an excruciatingly long wait only to blow everyone away immediately, the iconic survival horror game Resident Evil 4 returned with a fantastic remake and Dungeons & Dragons fans got to feast in the now-smash hit RPG Baldur’s Gate 3. Those three games alone would make any year a great one for me personally, but we haven’t even scratched the surface of what we played in 2023.
We played (and reviewed) many, many games this year. It’s difficult to narrow our favourites of the year to a mere 10 games, but we’re going to do it anyway. These are the 10 best games we played in 2023, in no particular order:
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Who know a Souls-like Star Wars could be so much fun? Respawn Entertainment did. In Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, we see the Apex Legends developer iterate upon Fallen Order's best ideas. Cal Kestis is now a seasoned Jedi Knight, five years after the events of Fallen Order, as he takes the fight to the Empire through what seems to be a futile series of Rebel attacks. The campaign is Star Wars at its best - a galaxy-trotting adventure with some of the best side characters this franchise has to offer coming together for a greater purpose..
Survivor polishes up the series’ pitch-perfect Jedi gameplay with more lightsaber combat stances, much-needed customisation options and more puzzle variety. It’s everything a sequel should be, and it even manages to be a properly meaningful entry in the Star Wars universe by diving into lore from the High Republic era. This game was a lot of fun, and it also happened to have one of our favourite bossfights of the year - not that we would spoil it here.
Alan Wake 2
It took 13 years for Remedy Entertainment to deliver a sequel to its 2010 horror-survival game Alan Wake, but the wait was well worth it. Alan Wake 2 picks up the story of its titular best-selling novelist 13 years after the first game, during which Wake has been trapped in an alternate dimension called the Dark Place. The game follows his attempts to manipulate the flimsy reality of the Dark Place using his writings, while an FBI special agent in the real world named Saga Anderson investigates a series of ritualistic killings sprouting up in Bright Falls.
Alan Wake 2 is a masterpiece in survival horror, with a story so full of twists and turns and gameplay so rich in ingenuity, that it feels like it’s hit the reset button on the entire genre. Walking through the Dark Place and hearing monsters whisper Wake’s name is eerie enough, but exploring the forests of Cauldron Lake and hearing creatures growl in the dark is something else. Remedy clearly packed 13 years’ worth of great ideas into Alan Wake 2 with little to no compromise, and it shows.
Read our review of Alan Wake 2 here.
Final Fantasy 16
Final Fantasy 16 feels like a breath of fresh air for a franchise that already reinvents itself with every entry. Instead of playing as the usual squad of teenagers bent on saving the world, you play as an adult trying to get revenge for himself. Instead of featuring turn-based combat and a deep gear system, the game focuses on action-packed real-time combat with swappable kits. Instead of a whimsical adventure across a fantastical realm, we get a grim journey through a battle-worn continent hanging on the edge of an apocalypse.
Some of this year’s best moments in gaming are found in Final Fantasy 16’s bossfights, which go massive in scale with long, action-packed setpieces and a booming soundtrack to accompany them. It’s a treat to watch Clive Rosfield set out on a path of revenge before slowly opening himself up to the people around him, and unearth the secrets of his traumatic past. Final Fantasy 16 delivers a memorable story that we plan to treasure and revisit when its DLCs drop next year.
Read our review of Final Fantasy 16 here.
Starfield
Starfield sees Bethesda departing from its usual pattern of making The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games one after another, all to work on something wholly new: a sci-fi RPG that takes players into the vast reaches of outer space. While the game has allotted its fair share of criticism to date, one can’t help but marvel at the scale of this game. Thousands of planets have been procedurally generated and lie out there for players to explore, and even if that’s not their bag, the handcrafted cities scattered across the galaxy house plenty of quest-giving NPCs to keep them busy for months on end.
What Starfield gets right, it gets very right. Exploring how impossible it can be to govern entire planets across a star system is interesting, and the game does have a few great questlines that explore just that. One memorable quest chain involved the UC Vanguard battling a monster movie-like epidemic, while another sidequest had me negotiate between a resort planet and a stranded starship like a member of Starfleet. There’s a strong sci-fi fantasy here for fans of the genre to dig into, even if it’s not all that fleshed-out.
Read our review of Starfield here.
Resident Evil 4 Remake
Resident Evil 4 is an almost-perfect game, but its remake is a masterpiece. While cut content can be an excuse for players to revisit the original, the remake has otherwise surpassed it entirely. Leon S. Kennedy’s quest to save the President of the United States’ daughter Ashley Graham from being kidnapped by dangerous villagers is a timeless one, and Capcom has taken everything it’s learned from recent Resident Evil remakes to polish it up for another generation. Every single character in this game - from Ashley to Luis - feel more fully-realised in this game than the original, and so much more loveable for it.
The scale of this remake can’t be underestimated. On top of the new content Capcom added to keep things fresh, the publisher has updated Leon’s arsenal and increased the challenge provided by his enemies to match what players can do with modern controls. The excellent pacing is what really makes this game shine: just when you think the game is done surprising you, you enter a rundown laboratory where this year’s most terrifying sequence in gaming awaits. If you know, you know.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom lived up to fan expectations, and that’s worth some praise considering expectations were sky-high to begin with. After giving players a massive sandbox to play with in Breath of the Wild, Nintendo opted to expand upon Hyrule vertically in the sequel, giving Link new places to explore both in the sky islands above and depths below. In doing all this, Link hopes to find Zelda and stop Ganon from bringing about the end of Hyrule… again.
Tears of the Kingdom’s draw - aside from adding an entire open world beneath its old open world - is how much fun it is to just build things in this game. Using new abilities given to Link over the course of his journey, players can fuse all manner of items together to make larger tools, and that extends beyond weaponry. We’ve seen people make giant mechs, roast Koroks on giant torture devices and build spaceships in this game. You certainly can’t do that in Breath of the Wild.
Dead Space (remake)
It’s so good to have Dead Space back. Motive Studio’s remake of the iconic 2008 horror-survival game follows engineer Isaac Clarke as he enters the mining ship USG Ishimura to investigate a distress call and find his girlfriend Nicole Brennan, who was last seen on board. When he realises the crew has mutated into bloodthirsty corpse-like creatures called Necromorphs, Isaac has to fend for himself, save his teammates, battle growing psychosis, find his girlfriend and find out exactly what happened to the Ishimura's crew. Not necessarily in that order.
The Dead Space remake might have fallen through the cracks this year, which is understandable considering just how many must-play titles dropped since its release, but it is by no means dispensable. Motive Studio has served up a strong reminder of what makes Dead Space a seminal entry in the horror-survival genre, and this remake improves the original on all fronts so it plays better than ever before. This is a lovingly and masterfully-made remake that feels even more intense to play through than I remember it being in 2008.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Insomniac Games really outdid itself with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. After a solo Peter Parker adventure and a solo Miles Morales adventure, it would’ve been a tough ask to give fans a sequel that only let them play as one or the other. Thankfully, Spider-Man 2 lets you play as two equally capable Spider-Men, both of whom are endearingly supportive of each other in and out of combat. The story makes a point of showing us that friendship alone isn’t enough, however: Miles and Peter will need to learn to work as a team before New York can be truly saved.
Spider-Man 2 is a sequel with a lot of balls in the air. The game puts its own spin on a timeless villain - Venom - while propping Kraven the Hunter up as New York’s latest big bad. It also separates Peter and Miles by giving them different hero kits, and lets you swap between both at any point during gameplay. The map has been expanded to include Peter’s home in the suburbs, the visuals are the best they’ve ever been and both Spider-Men now have access to dozens of unique suits that each have an array of alternate designs. This game is everything a Spider-Man fan could possibly want, and it comes with an impactful story campaign that drives home exactly why Peter and Miles deserve their heroic mantles.
Check out our spoiler-filled breakdown of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 here.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
We’re counting Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty’s story campaign in Dogtown as its own game this year, considering its length and breadth of content. Setting aside the many improvements introduced in the 2.0 update, Phantom Liberty feels like a pivotal addition to V’s journey. Cyberpunk 2077 emphasised that Night City's most ambitious dwellers can only become legends by going out in a blaze of glory or burning out early, and Phantom Liberty allows V to build their legend up further before either of those things happen. How can V not be a household name after getting involved in an espionage plot with the President of the New United States of America?
Phantom Liberty runs a tighter ship than the main campaign, telling a fast-paced story with a small crew of memorable characters that lets you make meaningful decisions to impact the narrative. Some of the game’s best quests are exclusive to this expansion, and the same goes for the people you meet. Phantom Liberty sees CD Projekt Red finally confident enough to write a story deserving of its setting, and I can only hope the developer repeats its success in the sequel.
Baldur’s Gate 3
If there’s one game that ran away with the year in terms of mainstream success, it’s Baldur’s Gate 3. Larian Studios’ Dungeons & Dragons RPG instantly won our hearts this year not just because of its colourful companions and gorgeous world, but because of the sheer breadth of choices it afforded to every player’s journey across Faerun. You can be a Bard who insults your enemies to weaken them, a Monk who beats them to death relentlessly or a Rogue they never see coming. That’s without taking into account the game’s races, spells, talents, skills and more factors included to tune your characters to the exact degree of your preferred playstyle. Charm the socks off NPCs, pickpocket them for gold and kick bosses off a cliff. The entire game’s motto seems to be: why not?
If the game had done less for its companions however, it might not have become as successful. The ability to romance Shadowheart, Astarion and the rest of your party has built entire communities online revolving around their favourite characters and their complex personalities. Every choice the player makes seems to have an impact, which means that first-time players can often stumble into their endgame romance blindly - not that it actually matters when all of them are this great! Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t just our favourite RPG of the year, but one of our favourite RPGs in years. Full stop.
Check out our impressions of Baldur’s Gate 3 here.
Special mention: Diablo 4
We endeavoured to make this a Top 10 list, which naturally means a whole bunch of really fun games from this year had to be left out. Diablo 4 was one such game we very much enjoyed playing through (multiple times!) this year. Blizzard's talented art team brought Sanctuary to new-gen platforms with lavish visuals and an enthralling atmosphere that kept us hooked to the campaign from beginning to end, which was in itself a satisfying setpiece-laden adventure starring a fairly compelling villain - Lilith. While post-launch patches have ranged from pretty great to mind-bogglingly terrible, we can't deny that Diablo 4 gave us some of the most fun we had in gaming this year.