Hey, did anyone notice that this was a really good year for video games? Who knows! Here are the ten best games from a wild year, and only half of them are first-party Nintendo games!
Give me a WarioWare game and I'll at least like it. Even with one of the more disappointing entries – like previous Switch title Get it Together – there's a fun mystery about what stupid thing the game will make you do next.
The difference between a good WarioWare game and a great one is whether or not you see yourself playing it after the initial phase of discovering all the minigames. Not only does Move It have a lot of great action-based minigames, but it also has some surprisingly solid multiplayer modes. One is basically a Mario party but with more random nonsense, which is impressive. There aren't many Switch titles quite suitable for making yourself a group of slightly to severely drunk friends laughing and looking like asses. It's a game I can see myself pulling out for random play sessions years from now.
If WarioWare is a barrel of hundreds of minigames, then Dave the Diver feels like a handful of minigames… I don't know, bigger minigames? I thought I had an analogy I could work with there but it fell apart. Anyway, this “indie” title feels like several disparate games coming together into one surprisingly cohesive package. This episode works great – go diving and collect fish, then head to a restaurant at night and serve up some sushi. It gives you that “OK, one more round” feeling which makes it the perfect airplane toy.
Eventually it gets a little ponderous and long. It kind of fell flat after I kept adding systems for twenty hours, but the scope and depth of the game is really impressive. Maybe I'll come back to it sometime in the future, but for now I'm just glad I got it to help me time travel across several flights in the last half of the year.
When I was putting four or five hours into Alan Wake 2, it was initially ranked second on this list. There were several reasons for this – annoying light mechanics during Alan's parts, a story past the point of cohesion, etc., but it's undeniable that Remedy created something special here. Many of the games in the studio's catalog are referenced or deeply integrated into the story in a way that feels additive. They've always played with in-game FMV elements, but it never looked better or more relevant here. For all that “We Sing” has been referenced, performed on stage, and praised in the months since its release, it's still impressive to see a moment so different and so different from anything seen in a game before.
It's not a perfect game, and it lost several marks for me in the end, but Alan Wake 2 is memorable in ways that the vast majority of big-budget releases want to be.
I think many (myself included) expected the MK1 reboot to be more difficult than it was, but with such an “if it ain't broke don't fix it” approach it's hard to get mad when it's this good. Mortal Kombat has always been known more for its style, characters, world, and argument than its fighting mechanics, but the new Kameo system really helps it appeal to genre fans of different ability levels. I've never been a fan of fighting games of Evo's caliber, but a timely playthrough of Kameo Attack always makes me feel like I've done something right.
Netherrealm also included a great mix of franchise favorites with some of the most gruesome deaths ever. It's strange that after this many games and hundreds of deaths, this series still manages to shock with its disgusting and hilarious animation.
Nostalgia played no role in my enjoyment of this new release. I've played it exactly once, and it was in one sitting during my time Guinness World Records Mario Marathon (Back when they meant something.) Due to the circumstances, I barely remember anything from the game, so I went into the remake with fresh eyes.
Hey, it turns out that Super Mario RPG is great. If there were more JRPGs like this, I probably wouldn't have hated the genre growing up. There's barely any talking, the talking there is charming and funny, and things you can do during turn-based battles. It's also 11 hours long. Let's go back in time and make all JRPGs look like this.
It kind of surprises me to see a Mario game so “low” on my list, but then again, it's not a mainline entry so I guess it's not shocking. But wait…just because it's not a main line doesn't mean it's not great! Wonder has more charm and infinitely more ideas than any of the “new” 2D entries. It's full of new enemies, badge abilities, Wonder Seed ideas, and somehow has great online multiplayer. Like most Mario games, it's 100% fun.
I'm still eagerly awaiting the next big 3D mainline entry, but this definitely helped me get my Mario platforming fix until then.
I have played this game on almost 30 platforms. It was great every time. Now it's a lot better. I loved it so much that I dusted off old review clips to talk about it at length.
Wait why didn't anyone tell me about this series? It's been around since 1997 and this new one is incredibly good. I went in with no expectations, just planning to play 15 or 20 minutes to get a vague idea of what it was like. I loved it instantly, then loved it even more when I killed that walking building, then started a new bonus game, and now I've just downloaded it to my Steam Deck so I can play it on the go.
If you haven't played it before and expect it to be similar to other games, get that out of your mind and start playing without any preconceptions. It's just an amazing action game that makes you feel like the coolest guy in the world.
Pikmin 1, 2, and 3 are great, but 4 is when I went from “I really like this series” to “Oh my god, I love this game.” I knew I was going to play it, I knew I was going to love it, but I didn't expect to love it so much that I was thrilled to learn that there was a lot to do after the credits. Everything comes to life in this game, from the Pikmin species to the dogs to the environments and treasures. It's full of joy to the max and can serve as a 'turn off your brain' session or you can treat yourself to an intense, time-honored Dandori battle. It's one of my biggest surprises of 2023 and I love seeing how many people are coming to the series for the first time thanks to it.
Predictable #1 but predictable for a reason. This game raised the bar overall – not just for Zelda games, and not just for action/adventure games, but for what a game could do and how it could make me feel. I never thought Breath of the Wild could definitively top this tier, but there's no doubt about it. I looked at the one game that topped Link to the Past as my favorite game of all time and said “Okay, now let's make it all better.”
My initial concern was about using the “same map” as BotW, but boy, I didn't realize how misplaced that concern was. Not only does it radically change most of the world, but it also adds two entire other worlds above and below the “old” map. These are just the geographic updates. Perhaps most significant are the updates to abilities, which make BotW's abilities seem like limited novelties by comparison. Ascend and Ultrahand are obvious highlights, and the Zonai devices add a lot to the improvisational nature of the game.
It's the biggest and best sandbox I've ever seen in a game, and the mission itself is much more detailed and satisfying than its predecessor. Gaming as a whole has yet to catch up to Breath of the Wild, so I expect Tears of the Kingdom to be the new high for the industry for a very long time.
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