The space elements were a big part of the marketing. I knew better than to expect atmospheric flight or anything but simple space combat, but intra-system travel being only done in menus and the space sections being put in small lightboxes with planet renderings was rather shocking. That’s 20th-century stuff. It’s especially bizarre given how much of the Bethesda magic has leaned on roads in the past, and there aren’t any roads outside of cities. Even the cargo runs are 100% in menus, without talking to a single person.

Us space sim types would tell you it took a few steps back as far as genre standards go. And I wasn’t even expecting much on that side of it.

Starfield only getting one nomination–and in a category it has no chance of winning–is not at all what I would have expected going into this year.

I don’t know if that speaks to how nuts this year has been for new releases or to how much Starfield fell short, in light of the fact that its player counts on Steam are starting to fall below Skyrim.

Well, a bunch more talent just hit the job market with The Escapist melting down, too.

I encourage anyone that hasn’t yet to try any subscription-based journalism for a month just to see how different the writing is when it’s not beholden to advertising and SEO.

Heh, yeah, that’s one of the popular styles right now. I’d rather see more detailed sprites.

“The Big Cheese is the Dark Souls of poses” from the Destructoid review gave me a good chuckle. Unfortunately, The Big Cheese was also the Dark Souls of poses back in Smooth Moves, and it’s not encouraging to hear this game might be just as fiddly.

This November isn’t as stacked for me as last year’s, but I think I’m still going to wait on this one a bit.

I just finished Atelier Totori. Third game in the series I’ve tried, second I’ve finished (after Rorona). I mostly nibbled at this one (did much the same with Rorona, especially early on) but I liked the story and characters a lot more here. I laughed, I cried. The progression system was much more interesting, too. Even with all that, the UI/UX is just plain brutal. I really hope the next game I play in the series is better about this. I’m also quite surprised that I did almost everything with months to spare, considering everything I heard about how strict the time limit is in Totori.

A friend and also just finished our Baldur’s Gate 3 multiplayer campaign (her first run, I had a lot of hours in it before she started). Amazingly I still don’t think I’ve fully gotten the game out of my system yet.

WarioWare: Move It! comes out in a few days and I’ll likely be picking that up right away. Other than that, I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll finally pick up Phantom Liberty.

It hasn’t exactly been banger after banger for me personally this year, but I can still recognize how big 2023 has been and how much excitement there has been year-round, from Hi-Fi Rush’s shadow drop to Alan Wake 2 right now.

It’s also been a great mix of new properties and long-running franchises. Zelda, Resident Evil, Diablo, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Baldur’s Gate, Mario, and even Armored Core all had well-reviewed, major releases this year.

I’m nowhere near calling 2023 the best ever–I think it’ll take a complete paradigm shift in the industry to ever top 1998–but a lot of people have been eating very good this year.

I’m on a continuing multiplayer campaign in Baldur’s Gate 3 and I’m also playing Atelier Totori.

It’s amazing how much new stuff I’m still seeing in BG3, and I’ve gotta be in hour 350 or something like that. I’m playing with a long-time video gaming partner and I’m just letting her run with it because I’ve already played through the game.

I really started to get into Atelier Totori once it started rolling, but I’m beginning to run out of steam. I’m really missing some of the UI/UX improvements that were in Atelier Rorona DX, and I also feel like the combat isn’t quite as sharp for some reason. I’m genuinely interested in the story at this point, however. If it wasn’t for that, I probably would have just jumped to Meruru.

When I got my PSX in 1997, the games sure felt like a good deal at $50 after paying $70+ for cartridges for years. I only got one new game per year at full price for my SNES. I also generally felt happier buying on PC because new games were also less than consoles for a while.

Now with the indie scene, there is a lot more variance, even though I also occasionally grab top-shelf releases. I still think FTL might have been the best $10 I’ve ever spent on a game. At the same time, I paid $60 for Persona 5 Royal right at launch even though I had played the original game, and I still thought it was incredible value.

Yes and no. My second play had countless new characters–three of them playable–several new zones, and a ton of new gameplay. I was constantly finding new places, new encounters, new conversations. I know there are still several zones I haven’t poked around in.

The main story beats don’t change much but there are still a lot of branching paths to get to them. Hell, you could even completely skip the goblin camp if you wanted.

Game studios just don’t do the kind of extra work to cover player choice like Larian did here. It’s why the game made waves in the industry. I’d say unless you really went over it with a fine comb the first time around (125 hours or more), it’s absolutely worth revisiting at some point.

I like Disco Elysium. I like BG3. They are much better narrative RPGs. I also feel absolutely no desire to go back and replay them.

Really? This is crazy to me. I get Disco, but outside of intentionally regenerative games (such as roguelikes/lites), I don’t think I’ve had my hands on a more replayable game than BG3 in years. There’s so much you don’t see in a given playthrough.

It is, and it doesn’t, but one of the important functions of journalism is a public accounting of details such as these and engendering conversation thereof.

Since you’ve played P4, Persona Q might be a good on-ramp into Etrian Odyssey. It’s essentially EO’s gameplay with personas, characters and skills/spells from P3 and P4. Q2 has the P5 characters as well but only the Japanese voices (which is why I never got around to it).

So this is a de facto price increase? From a manufacturer that just reported a record high annual profit? 175GB (the slightly increased storage) hasn’t been worth $50 in years.

This generation sucks. I was already annoyed that we probably weren’t going to see price drops with this or the Switch, but I certainly didn’t see a price increase for an unproven hardware revision coming.

It’s the

It’s too bad you didn’t like the narrative structure with the calls in CP2077. That one ending uses them (or I guess you could call them voicemails, considering) to devastating effect. One of the most harrowing sequences I’ve seen in a game. It might have even saved a couple of lives.

1998 was such a monster year because it spawned so many big franchises, including two that were arguably the genesis of e-sports. It’ll be a while before we know how 2023 measures up in that regard, although there’s not much new stuff this year that might have legs. Hi-Fi Rush and Starfield, maybe?

I’ve been thinking for a while that this is probably already the best year since 1998 though.

This isn’t exactly giving me high hopes that Jedi: Survivor is going to be playable on PC anytime soon…

I first played Cyberpunk after 1.3 came out so I never had that early bad experience so many did (I only ran into one major bug, blocking progression in one sidequest). It was also my first introduction to anything in the Cyberpunk setting so I didn’t know what to expect, but I quickly fell in love with it. Even without Phantom Liberty, I’m sure I still have a half dozen major sidequests on top of the nomad origin story that I haven’t done yet.

I’m pumped for this, especially after being a bit disappointed in Starfield. I’m ready for graphics that pop again, the amazing facial animations, the fluid combat, and more Cherami Leigh. Hell, I’m ready to hear the character creator music again, lol.