Remaining glued to Baldurs Gate 3. Enjoying a playthrough as a battle bard.

Did fire up Foxhole again to get into some trench combat. Had a ton of fun doing mortar support.

Favorite game of the year? BG3, hands down.

I’m playing Far Cry 6. Finally finished the Paint the Town side quest! It turned out to be one of those that took way to long to finish. My wife and I are also playing It Takes Two.

On a bit of a side-scrolling trip these past few weeks: Mario Wonder, Metroid Dread, Yooka-Laylee, etc.

The two big(ger) games I’ve played this year are Street Fighter 6 and Mario Wonder which are both fantastic. I haven’t played BG3 or the latest Zelda or any other major releases, but my partner and I were all in on SF6 for weeks. Wonder, though, is a great throwback to what made us both start gaming: very easy to pick up and play, things to collect, and a tiny bit of grinding.

I’ve been playing a bunch of games this week.

First, I did go back to Tunic and got the good ending, and I’m glad I did, because now the little fox was happy. I had to look up hints or the solutions to some of the puzzles though, some of those were just too cryptic for me.

Then I tried two Vampire Survivors-likes, Pathfinder: Gallowspire Survivors and Soulstone Survivors, both of which I played on my Steam Deck. Also, both are in Early Access.

I only did a few runs in Pathfinder. I might just be bad, but maybe the game isn’t really suited for the Deck right now. There are tons of enemies that shoot small projectiles, that are just a pain to see on the small-ish screen, so dodging everything can be a pain. It also felt like the hit boxes aren’t that good right now, but again, that might just be me, I didn’t play the game for too long. I’d have to try the game on my desktop PC to check out how it plays there. One thing of note though, this game has local multiplayer, which might be interesting to some people. When you’re playing alone, the second character sticks to you as a companion and just deals some extra damage. I also have to mention the menuing in this game, on controller it’s complete garbage. Sometimes you select some menu category with triggers, change sub-categories with bumpers, sub-sub-categories with the D-Pad and then the actual thing you want to select with the stick. I had to constantly check where I was and what I had to press, which sucked.

The other, Soulstone Survivors, was a lot more fun for me. You get up to six weapons, and also upgrades for those weapons and generally for your character. In this game, weapons can have “tags”, like melee, area, electric, whatever, and upgrades can affect one specific weapon, all of them or everything of a certain type, which can be neat. There are also tons of small QoL details, like highlighting which weapons get upgraded, a summary for your stats in a run or how much damage your weapons are doing. That last point is neat, because you can keep replacing your weapons, even when you already have all six, and if you don’t want to, you just get a normal upgrade. When not in a run, there’s just tons of meta progression with a gazillion different materials. You can unlock characters, weapons for those characters, a skill tree, something called runes, which I have no idea what they are, and maybe more. Menus also suck, although mostly because everything is just crammed full of stuff and a bit too small on the Deck. It’s not as bad as Pathfinder though.

Next, a small game I saw while going through the Steam Discovery Queue, Froggy’s Battle. This is a Roguelike, where you’re playing as a frog on a skateboard, that’s going around in a loop. You kill enemies by bumping into them, or with weapons you might get at the end of a level. The game is really short, I beat the boss after a bit more than ten runs, about 90 minutes, although there’s a hard mode, which I didn’t do. The main difficulty, in my opinion, comes from the controls, since you’re riding a skateboard in a loop, so you’ll end up upside down, which flips some of your controls. When the loop is filled with enemies, it can get pretty chaotic. The game has a bunch of different control schemes, so you can try to find whatever works best for you, so it isn’t terrible. Doing sick kickflips, while wielding a magic wand, is pretty cool.

Finally, I started Diablo 4. I’m playing a Druid, because eventually I hope to punch everything as a werebear, although right now I’m punching stuff with stones that I summon from the earth. Even though I’m almost level 40, I’m still pretty early in the story, because I just run around in the world, doing side quests, going into the dungeons and whatnot. I’m trying to focus a bit more on the main story, just so I can get the mount and get around the world faster. While I am a KB+M elitist and mainly play on my PC, I also installed the game on my Steam Deck, and it runs really well on there. I turned everything down, expect like textures, so it doesn’t look as bad in closeups, but I’m basically always at 60fps, with room to spare. Only in the bigger city do I go below 60 sometimes, which is also pretty much the only time when I hear the fan turning up. Playing on controller is also pretty neat, except for the menus (again). It’s also a game with native ultrawide support, it’s nice to have a modern game, where you don’t have to look for patches or fixes, to fill the whole screen.

As for my favorite game of the year (that was released in 2023), it has to be Baldurs Gate 3, not much really came close.

I just picked up Again the Storm a few days ago and have been enjoying that. I like that the settlement building isn’t drawn out like other strategy games, and I don’t really feel bad about it when I lose since I can still earn perks and bonuses that persist throughout the campaign.

GOTY for me is definitely Balder’s Gate 3. Enjoyed it start to finish, and there was enough content that my second playthrough didn’t feel like a rehash of the first.

• Alan Wake 2 (PS5)
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS5)
• The Division 2 (PC)

I heard the fixed the crashing issues on Division 2, so will try it again.

I just got an ergonomic mouse after struggling with wrist pain for most of the year, so I’m putting it through its paces in Pillars of Eternity. I’m loving it so far, but it gives you vague notions of “this is really tough, so come back later” for a few different areas, but I don’t know how much later they mean. I’m nearly level 6, and I know the level cap for the game before the DLC was 12. Do they mean come back at level 8? Or level 12? Or 14? I’ve still got plenty of other areas to explore first, but I’d still like to know…you know? I’ve also only got 5 party members, so I’m on the lookout for a sixth.

I’m still trying to hit master rank in Street Fighter 6. Inching closer, in diamond 4 now.

I beat Wargroove 2. It’s a solid iteration on the previous game, and I’d recommend it if you want more Advance Wars with the bonus of being able to play it on better hardware than a Switch.

Baldur’s Gate 3 was my favorite for the year and one of my favorites ever. It was just too hard to top.

Snowrunner (still)! Only a few missions left on Island Lake, then I can explore Drummond Island 🚚

I also played Pavlov VR a bit on PC to see if there were many more players from Christmas. Ran into a few new PS5 users that were fun. I hope the servers don’t die out, PC players are already a minority in the crossplay maps!

Kerbal Space Program 2 and Dark Souls 3.

KSP2 released their science patch this month that adds missions and a progression path to work through. It’s a lot more fun now that there are goals to work towards, and the missions are much better than what KSP1’s career mode offered.

I’ve been co-op’ing through DS3 with a buddy, which has been a fun way to tide us over until Elden Ring’s DLC comes out. I just wish there was a similar seamless co-op mod for DS3. Neither of us are interested in PvP, and it’s a little tedious to have to go through everything twice.

Diablo 4: Season 2 - Still working on farming for Midwinter Blight. I’m 70 proofs away from having all the items.

Alan Wake 2 - I chose this over the Dead Space remake as the first game to play on my new Xbox X, and I’m so excited to finally get to play it. I’m a huge fan of Remedy’s library, with the exception of one or two games that I haven’t played. One of my best friends, who loves the first game, has also been playing this as well, and we’ve had so much fun going back and forth pointing out pieces of lore and references to each other.

And hearing James McCaffrey’s voice has been bittersweet. I enjoyed his work with Remedy, and it seems I’ve picked up this game at the right time to really appreciate it.

I finished (again) God of War 2018. I thought it was going to sour on me, just like how my 2nd playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn did (and subsequently my 1st playthrough of Forbidden West). But no, it’s still a very good game. Combat is simple but still satisfying, side quests aren’t excessive like Forbidden West, story is still good but less intense than TLoU. My only complaint is that the fast travel is just way too slow. I’m looking forward to Ragnarök now.

My top is probably FF16, I have soft spot for this type of siblings story, also loving the Asura’s Wrath section.