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[calistan]

Apologies in advance if everybody's had enough Top 20 lists, or if this one has already been posted (I've been offline for the holidays) but I thought this deserved a thread because Ars Technica is arguably the best-written tech website. Also this has some esoteric choices, and is almost certainly the only Best Of list where you'll find a game for the Playdate.

(I've linked the ones I'd never heard of. Puzzmo is a really weird choice, it's a sort of Wordle daily puzzle website thing.)

Ars Technica’s best video games of 2023

2022's relative drought leads to an absolutely packed year of major epics.

arstechnica.com

Best Game of 2023
Baldur's Gate 3

The rest in alphabetical order
Against the Storm
Alan Wake 2
Brotato
Chants of Sennaar
Cocoon
Darkest Dungeon 2
Dave the Diver
Diablo IV
Humanity
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Pikmin 4
Puzzmo
Spider-Man 2
Starfield
Street Fighter 6
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Venba
Viewfinder
Yoyozo

 

[Jinzo Prime]

I guess that Hogwarts Legacy was just in my imagination all along.

 

[Meicyn]

I guess that Hogwarts Legacy was just in my imagination all along.

Had Baldur’s Gate 3 not shipped this year, it would be my GOTY. Was the first game I went out of my way to platinum in years. I am all in on a sequel.

 

[Kings Field]

 

[BennyBlanco]

SF6 not getting enough love in GOTY lists. It’s fucking awesome.

 

[rofif]

I guess that Hogwarts Legacy was just in my imagination all along.

No Hogwarts
no ac6
no lies of p
no ff16
no resi4
no dead space
and yet another ignorant populists who ignored forspoken (although thats everyone)

but there is starfield.... yeah they can burn.
don't know what year they've played but it's not fucking 2023

 

[calistan]

No Hogwarts
no ac6
no lies of p
no ff16
no resi4
no dead space
and yet another ignorant populists who ignored forspoken (although thats everyone)

but there is starfield.... yeah they can burn.
don't know what year they've played but it's not fucking 2023

They do mention that there was a longer list of about 50 games that could easily have made the cut. And regarding Starfield, they explained that pretty well:

Because of its comparatively narrow appeal, Starfield doesn’t quite reach the same “Game of the Year" heights as the wildly popular Skyrim. A formula that worked for a wide audience 10 or even 30 years ago has become a niche in a more vibrant and varied gaming landscape.


But all told, it's an outstanding game for a certain type of person, so it still makes our list.

Given that most unbiased (non-Xbox) lists ignore Starfield, but there's an active thread here full of people who've played it for hundreds of hours, I think it's a fair choice.

 

[Chiggs]

Diablo IV

Edit: And Starfield!

 

[calistan]

Diablo IV

There's an explanation for that too. The whole article is worth a read.

Diablo IV won’t have the cultural impact that Diablo II did, but it landed in a very different time, when competitors inspired by Diablo's halcyon era are giving it a run for its money. Sure, that means it's just another action RPG amid various competitors now, but that Blizzard polish means it's undoubtedly the most accessible option—and one of the most entertaining, too.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Of course it's BG3. If you don't have it #1 then I know your list is bullshit.

 

[Punished Miku]

Everyone who touches Against the Storm raves about it. Hope it hits console at some point.

 

[Ogbert]

Automatically disqualified for putting Diablo 4 in the list.

Absolutely massive turd of a game.

 

[nemiroff]

After putting Against The Storm in the Steam store cart I noticed it's already available on PC Gamepass. Pretty nice.

 

[Aces High]

Bad list.

 

[Krappadizzle]

Of course it's BG3. If you don't have it #1 then I know your list is bullshit.

Automatically disqualified for putting Diablo 4 in the list.

Absolutely massive turd of a game.

So conflicted with Diablo 4. I had a really fun playthrough with my Pops and brother, but the thought of playing through it alone...doesn't really grab at me. But it does have some really amazing art and music and some of the animations look really great.

 

[nial]

Humanity deserves some love.

 

[Mister Wolf]

So conflicted with Diablo 4. I had a really fun playthrough with my Pops and brother, but the thought of playing through it alone...doesn't really grab at me. But it does have some really amazing art and music and some of the animations look really great.

Diablo 4 not having a matchmaking system like 3 killed any interest I had in it after buying it.

 

[acm2000]

I guess that Hogwarts Legacy was just in my imagination all along.

I'm playing hogwarts for the first time atm and while good it's def no GOTY contender

 

[Hudo]

Some years ago, ArsTechnica made same really cool game dev interview videos. That was the only reason I ever interacted with them (on their Youtube):

E.g.








Among others...

 

[Soodanim]

You know what though? Instead of wanting every list to be the same and list all the big names, I have no issue with less known but genuine favourites of writers being chosen.

I'll take it a step further and say I'd much rather see a list where the likes of BF3, RE4, SF etc aren't there at all. At least there's a chance of seeing a game you didn't know about that might be fantastic but lost in the AAA hype of it all.

What do you really get out of seeing the same list every time? Does it affect your day if Ars Technica don't include a game you purchased?

 

[gaming_again]

There's an explanation for that too. The whole article is worth a read.

So it's rated highly for being accessible. JFL.

 

[NotMyProblemAnymoreCunt]

I guess that Hogwarts Legacy was just in my imagination all along.

How is that game? I bought it off a Steam Sale recently

 

[Fess]

there's an active thread here full of people who've played it for hundreds of hours, I think it's a fair choice.

It’s no doubt a divisive game, they’ve done a great summary, spot on.

Starfield ​

Bethesda Game Studios; Windows, Xbox Series X|S

I don’t think 2023 has had a more divisive game than Starfield, the latest from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrimdeveloper Bethesda Game Studios. Detractors say it's slow-paced, old-fashioned, and janky. People who love it say it's relaxing, immersive, and compelling for the long haul. It's immensely popular with a certain crowd, but the butt of memes and jokes for another.


Enlarge / Starfield has some breathtaking vistas, if you know where to look.
For this love-it-or-hate-it game, put me in the love-it camp. At its heart, Starfield is a retro game firmly rooted in the design dreams and philosophies of the MS-DOS titles of the 1990s. Its structure has more in common with 1996's The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall than it does with 2011's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. There's something missing from that era in many other modern AAA games: the relaxed pacing, the long-term planning, and a particular sci-fi aesthetic that is on the opposite end of the spectrum from space operas like Star Wars or Star Trek.


Like the games from which it draws, Starfield wants a lot of your time, and it expects you to set your own pace and figure out its intricacies on your own. The more you put in, the more it rewards you. The game's vast character progression system and even vaster playspace allow for hundreds of hours of zoned-out relaxation, but it's also the first Bethesda Game Studios game to get anywhere close to cracking what gunplay action should actually feel like. It gets a lot of things right.

The galaxy Starfield presents to the player accurately reflects the desolation of our own, but it's peppered with details in the art and dialogue that contribute to making one of the more believable sci-fi settings we've seen in games recently. Inon Zur's superb soundtrack draws from the best of the best in the science fiction canon, too.

Because of its comparatively narrow appeal, Starfield doesn’t quite reach the same “Game of the Year" heights as the wildly popular Skyrim. A formula that worked for a wide audience 10 or even 30 years ago has become a niche in a more vibrant and varied gaming landscape.

But all told, it's an outstanding game for a certain type of person, so it still makes our list.

-Samuel Axon

A lot can be said about it’s shortcomings but it still gets my #1 spot this year, spent over 200 hours on this thing. Stopped playing it in early December though when I started playing BG3 instead, but I jumped back in yesterday and now I’m hooked again. Was just supposed to try a mod but ended up playing for 6 hours and went to bed 02:30 like some teenager

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Starfield? Sorry, you lost me there.

 

[twilo99]

After putting Against The Storm in the Steam store cart I noticed it's already available on PC Gamepass. Pretty nice.

I tried it on gamepass and while it’s not my thing the game does seem pretty polished overall

 

[twilo99]

Oh and would you look at that.. yet another Starfield thread! I think I know what our collective New Year’s resolution should be…

 

[rofif]

Humanity deserves some love.

I played the demo in psvr2 and it was really AWESOME this way.
The thing I see online is that people don't know it has real vr mode. The demo required you to enable vr despite enabling it in vr.

 

[calistan]

Oh and would you look at that.. yet another Starfield thread! I think I know what our collective New Year’s resolution should be…

It's weird how acknowledging Starfield sends some people into a rage, whereas listing Venba passes without much fuss.

Venba is 90 minutes long and has almost comically basic gameplay - drag the ingredients into the correct spots, like an educational web game aimed at pre-school kids - but this isn't the first list I've seen that cites it as one of the best games of the year.

If a critic gives a nod to Venba, he's probably being pretentious and arty, but if he rates Starfield then he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about, right?

 

[StereoVsn]

There's an explanation for that too. The whole article is worth a read.

Man, I found D4 utterly boring when I tried it for couple different free trials. And I actually liked D3 (after AH got booted).

 

[calistan]

Man, I found D4 utterly boring when I tried it for couple different free trials. And I actually liked D3 (after AH got booted).

It's not for me either, but my friend who I used to play a lof of CoD with has become obsessed with it to the point where he's racked up something like 26 days of play time on Xbox. He has a full-time job and young kids, but that stat still increases by about a day every week.

I have no idea what he sees in it, but I think he'd probably say it was the best game of the year.