Your year in gaming

[Gooberking]

So what was people’s experience like with games this year?
Not as a top 5 list or anything, just things in gaming that feel notable for you for any reason.

Maybe it was an old game that you finally got around to, or maybe that super popular game was a dud as far as you are concerned. Kind of whatever gaming was for you, saying as little or as much as you want about it.

And if you are looking forward to anything up coming, toss that in as well.

 

[Gooberking]

I had a lot of fun with gaming this year. I don’t think I played anything I just didn’t like though there were plenty of things I didn’t really get that into.

My high and low for the year was early on with Rumbleverse shutting down at the end of February. I was all the way in on it. In its short life I tore up 2 controllers, bought a Series X, and it’s my second most watched Twitch game next to SF6 despite it only being live for two months this year.

My soulsborne needs were covered well with Wo Long and Lies of P. I really like both. I think Lies of P is objectively better overall as a recommendation, but Wo Long is probably personal GOTY. A couple of bosses felt like BS, but I liked the fast combat, and the overall look and theme of the game. I played through it twice in a row, which is not something I typically do. I love photo modes in games, and Wo Long has both one of the best photo modes I’ve ever used, and some of the best content to shoot. The PC version seems to have a couple of frame rate bugs, and one of them trashing the framerate after using the photo mode that was pretty annoying to deal with.

I tried playing Nioh 2 after, but I’m not sure I understand how to play it or it wasn’t clicking or something. I’m going to try again - eventually.

I always play the fighters, so I did plenty of that. SF6 was the one I went the most in on this year, and currently bouncing between it and GBVS:R, though I’ve not played much of either this month.

I finally picked up Sifu a couple of weeks back, and it took over my life for a bit there. I could see playing it, SF6, Wo Long, and Lies of P.

 

[Felipe_Gewehr]

Man, I tried playing wo long (as I absolutely LOVED Nioh 1 and 2 and played through all of the dlcs as well) but I just gave up halfway. It felt very bullshit in a dumb way at times, like needing multiple frame perfect parries in sequence, otherwise you lose 75% of your health instantly. Two mistakes in a row? GGs, start all over. (Mind you, I also had no problem finishing Sekiro, and even beat the infamous optional Owl memory, so parries are not a big deal for me usually).Much less build variety compared to Nioh as well. Massive disappointment for me - here's hoping Wu Kong comes to scratch that asian souls like again.

Anyways, my gaming year was divided between Wo Long, Warframe, a bit of Elden Ring while I wait for the DLC, a very brief period experimenting with Starfield (that I would soon discover is unplayable without an SSD) and then MK1. These days, I've become so selective with games that I usually end up playing a single new title a year - in the past, that number easily surpassed 15 titles lol.

 

[Gooberking]

Some parry stuff was hard in the game initially, but really didn't seem that bad once you were familiar enough with the game. Like the tiger enemies were pretty scary initially, but after playing through the game, I was pretty confident rolling up on one. Everything is pretty lethal in the game so you can't goof up much, but it feels good once you get good enough you basically know you are going to beat hard enemies down. That contrasts to about 3 bosses that felt stupid and artificially difficult. Not sure you can get good enough to expect an outcome. They modified the game and magic enough after release I'm not sure how it all fits together now.

 

[LEGEND]

This year flew by.

I was all in on Yu-Gi-Oh, Master Duel, Omega and irl paper for the first half of the year. The format got pretty stale and the price to keep up was just not worth the enjoyment I was getting anymore. Dinos best deck

Then SF6 came out, played that for a few months but kinda lost interest because how much of a chore it is to play at a high level. Every single match has more constant mental stack than anything in MK1.

Played MW2/MW3 and rouge-likes such as Gungeon, Nuclear throne and Wizard of Legend. Simple games that are great to kill tiny bits of free time and unwind, and for some reason are the only games my wife enjoys playing or watching me play.

Was excited for Starfield and enjoyed playing it, but single player games just aren't doing it for me recently. I always feel like I could be doing something more exciting and engaging.

 

[Felipe_Gewehr]

Some parry stuff was hard in the game initially, but really didn't seem that bad once you were familiar enough with the game. Like the tiger enemies were pretty scary initially, but after playing through the game, I was pretty confident rolling up on one. Everything is pretty lethal in the game so you can't goof up much, but it feels good once you get good enough you basically know you are going to beat hard enemies down. That contrasts to about 3 bosses that felt stupid and artificially difficult. Not sure you can get good enough to expect an outcome. They modified the game and magic enough after release I'm not sure how it all fits together now.

Yeah I think the game just didnt click with me the way Nioh 1/2 did. I think I stopped at a boss who had a horse in phase 1 and reminded a lot of that Gyobbo dude in Sekiro. The tigers get easy after you know how to parry their 4 claw sequence, but it is quite annoying how if you mistime a SINGLE parry, you better pray to have enough stamina to dodge away and quickly, otherwise you are either stuck blocking the other claw strikes (and you WILL get poise-broken!) or will just take the full damage, which usually means death lol.

 

[Juxtapose]

For me, I've done a significant amount of gaming through 2023. Almost all of it was in the Xbox ecosystem (spread across my Xbox Series X, PC, and Xbox One X), and Xbox released their "year in review." For me, my stats are as follows:

2023 Highlights

Total playtime: 1,148 H
Total games played: 23
Total Gamerscore: +7,830
Total Achievements: 404
Reward Points Earned: +54,610 (that's $56.89 CA earned)
Top gameplay month: November

Top Genres I've played

36% Shooter
24% Action & Adventure
14% Fighting
14% Role Playing
12% Other


I'm in the top 5% of players for hours played. Top 5% of players for Gamerscore earned. Top 5% of players for Achievements unlocked.


Most Played Games

Mass Effect Legendary Edition at 217 hours.
Gears 5 at 134 hours.
Gears Tactics at 133 hours.

I'm in the top 5% of active players for the above 3 games.


Going through the remasters of the entire Mass Effect trilogy was a great nostalgia trip, and I've really gotten into the modern Gears of War titles; they're fantastic fun in both single and multiplayer. I'm currently enjoying a slow first playthrough of Diablo IV, and in-spite of it's flaws I have been enjoying my time with Mortal Kombat 1.

I was very impressed with both A Plague Tale games and did 2 playthroughs of them, and also spent far too much time in Diablo II: Resurrected (which I stopped playing in November simply due to purchasing Diablo IV. I also had quite the nostalgia trip with the remaster of Quake.

The only game to truly disappoint, and it was a game I started last year and took forever to finish due to lack of motivation, was Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered (PC - Steam). I have yet to bother with the DLC.


For gaming in general, this generation truly is an odd one. Aside from the fact that cross-gen is still going on (though we are seeing a slow phase out of it), the 9th generation really does not feel like a new generation at all. Rather, it feels like a late generation refresh of the 8th generation. That's not an awful thing, just odd.

In terms of looking forward to upcoming stuff, for officially announced games at least, the only ones I can think of are The Elder Scrolls VI and Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred, and both are a year away or more. For unannounced but inevitable items, I'm looking forward to the next Gears of War title, I'm curious as to id Software's next game, and the story expansion for Mortal Kombat 1.

 

[Gooberking]

Yeah I think the game just didnt click with me the way Nioh 1/2 did. I think I stopped at a boss who had a horse in phase 1 and reminded a lot of that Gyobbo dude in Sekiro. The tigers get easy after you know how to parry their 4 claw sequence, but it is quite annoying how if you mistime a SINGLE parry, you better pray to have enough stamina to dodge away and quickly, otherwise you are either stuck blocking the other claw strikes (and you WILL get poise-broken!) or will just take the full damage, which usually means death lol.

Lu Bu maybe, which is plenty far enough in to know if you like it for sure. I hear he was a wall people get stuck on but I didn't quite understand that. I think he might be the "fairest" boss in the game. Mostly has high heath to give you lots of time to screw up, which you can't really do much of. There are way more infuriating bosses on the other side of him. I can't compare to Sekiro. I've put a few hours into it, but I feel like I just couldn't understand what it wanted and didn't get much of anywhere. Similar thing to Nioh, where I felt like the combat wasn't making sense.

I was having similar issues with Lies of P initially, but getting into other weapons and deep enough into it to start upgrading, things started adding up. I'm still really annoyed that they put out the game without being able to rebind the movement keys on keyboard with no sign they ever will. I had to play the whole thing with some remapper that kept not registering my key up events making some buttons randomly stick. On the plus side, Lies of P got like one patch a few days after launch and that was it because it didn't need to fix much of anything. It actually dropped in fully working order.

 

[Gooberking]

I remembered (was reminted) I also played Mortal Shell. I liked that quite a bit too. You could tell it was a little smaller of a soulsborne but the hardening stuff was an interesting spin on the combat. I don't see it as having as strong a replayability factor as others, but as a once through, I had a good time

 

[kantboy2]

I played waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much DMZ.

That was my year in a nutshell.

 

[ItsOri]

Honestly it was mostly Strive, SF6 and MK.

I went hard on Destiny 2 when lightfall came out, mainly running raids, but burnt out by like April.
I'll get back into BG3 eventually I just don't have time

 

[Jynks]

My year in gaming was much the same as always.... I actually spend a LOT of my gaming time doing boardgames and rpgs... but I will limit this to computer games.

These are my fav games this year.. in no particular order. The only thing that links these is I played a MASSIVE amount of them it and loved them.

Chaos Gate : Demonhunters (steam)
Midnight Suns (Steam)
Spiderman 2 (PS5)
Uncharted 4 (also played 1-3) (PS5)
Stellaris (Full DLC) (steam)
Industries of Titan (epic)
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (steam)
Starfield (steam)

For fighters it was
MK1, MKp (mugan), SF6, Darkstalkers (arcade portal steam), MBTL

Truth is I mainly boardgame and play strategy games on PC... and fighters on PC.. but I got a PS5 (my first console) so have been playing a lot of PS5 recently.

 

[Mongrel]

Lies of P was so gad damn good. Easily my game of the year. I think it's the first soulslike not made by From that really hit the sweet spot. Everything from the art direction to combat was top notch. Other than that you got your remakes: Resi 4 and Dead Space. The most played game for me though was Elden Ring...again.

Just counting playtime it was Elden Ring 144h, MK1 77h and SF6 74h.

 

[Gooberking]

Lies of P was a good ride. Only thing that really bothered me was the Brotherhood fights constantly autolocking onto the guys 5 miles in the background from who you were trying to focus on standing right in front of you drove me crazy. Why is "Don't ever under any circumstances switch locks" not an option? It didn't really cause issues anywhere else.

I'm kind of wanting to do another run, but I canceled Game Pass after beating it and have to renew or buy a copy.

 

[Tony at Home]

Bad year for gaming for me just because of how busy I was with work.

I barely gamed at all until the end of the year. But then it was Mortal Kombat 1, Alan Wake 2, and Baldurs Gate 3

 

[Marinjuana]

This year was unbelievably stacked

 

[xWildx]

Pretty disappointed in this year’s gaming life overall. Dead Space and Resident Evil were good, but since they were remakes they didn’t really blow me away.

Spider-Man 2 wasn’t anything spectacular to me. I felt like it was graphically inferior to the previous games (yes, even with the pretty skyline), and the story was questionable.

Hogwarts Legacy was fun, but I got bored of it too fast. The neighboring towns and villages just weren’t interesting enough when there was so much more than could’ve been done in Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest.

We all know how Diablo 4 is going.

MK1 is an unfinished, mess of a cash grab. And while it has its moments of fun, I’m really not a fan of the variation system cough excuse me, Kameo system, among other things.

Been having a lot of fun with Predecessor since it finally opened to beta on console, but I fear old age might be getting to me as I just can’t get excited for games as much as I used to. Still need to finish Alan Wake, and I’d like to play Lies of P, but I hear it’s even more difficult than something like Bloodborne and I don’t know if I’m ready for that lol

 

[Gooberking]

Pretty disappointed in this year’s gaming life overall. Dead Space and Resident Evil were good, but since they were remakes they didn’t really blow me away.

Spider-Man 2 wasn’t anything spectacular to me. I felt like it was graphically inferior to the previous games (yes, even with the pretty skyline), and the story was questionable.

Hogwarts Legacy was fun, but I got bored of it too fast. The neighboring towns and villages just weren’t interesting enough when there was so much more than could’ve been done in Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest.

We all know how Diablo 4 is going.

MK1 is an unfinished, mess of a cash grab. And while it has its moments of fun, I’m really not a fan of the variation system cough excuse me, Kameo system, among other things.

Been having a lot of fun with Predecessor since it finally opened to beta on console, but I fear old age might be getting to me as I just can’t get excited for games as much as I used to. Still need to finish Alan Wake, and I’d like to play Lies of P, but I hear it’s even more difficult than something like Bloodborne and I don’t know if I’m ready for that lol

About the only thing I know about Spiderman 2 was from the "10 minute gameplay reveal" right before launch that was actually a 10 minute cinematic.

You definitely have need to be 1/10th masochistic or a super gamer to take on Lies of P. Especially if you refuse to use the Specters on bosses.
I'm 1/8 masochistic minimum so of course I refused the helping hand.

 

[Jynks]

About the only thing I know about Spiderman 2 was from the "10 minute gameplay reveal" right before launch that was actually a 10 minute cinematic.

Probably was gameplay... the set pieces in that game are amazing. Like when you are chancing these helicopters over water with Spiderman 1. When you not playing they look like a cut sequence, but you are actually in full control (as in not a quick time event)

You definitely have need to be 1/10th masochistic or a super gamer to take on Lies of P. Especially if you refuse to use the Specters on bosses.
I'm 1/8 masochistic minimum so of course I refused the helping hand.

Yeah i do not even understand those souls-like games. I mean I do. I get way people like them but it is so far from what i consider fun. I would rather go to my kids band recital than play a sould-like. I get enough aggravation and frustration in the real world!

 

[Gooberking]

Probably was gameplay... the set pieces in that game are amazing. Like when you are chancing these helicopters over water with Spiderman 1. When you not playing they look like a cut sequence, but you are actually in full control (as in not a quick time event)



Yeah i do not even understand those souls-like games. I mean I do. I get way people like them but it is so far from what i consider fun. I would rather go to my kids band recital than play a sould-like. I get enough aggravation and frustration in the real world!

I am using "cinematic" pretty loosely in that case. It was some water chase scene that looked a lot like the "push button here to prove you are paying attention" kind of play. When me and my friends saw it were were all unsure "game play" was the most honest framing of that slice, and seemed unlikely to represent the core gameplay loop.

Maybe there is more going on there than the not uncommon "push buttons here" sequence, but I don't really consider those "gameplay" perse. But then I'm more into stubbornly fumbling my way through a soulsborne or getting beat up by better FG players. It's not a dig at the game, or even the type of scene, just felt like bad framing of an advertising piece that turned into my only real association for the game.

 

[Marlow]

It's been a strange year for me. I'm super excited at the launch of MK1, but I've barely played due to family things taking priority. And as excited as I am, there's just been other hobbies or things I've been getting into that seem to keep me from being able to play video games regularly, which is kind of what you need in order to even casually be decent at a fighting game or enjoy it.

If anything the most "gaming" I've done is play and learn a bunch more about chess.

 

[xWildx]

About the only thing I know about Spiderman 2 was from the "10 minute gameplay reveal" right before launch that was actually a 10 minute cinematic.

You definitely have need to be 1/10th masochistic or a super gamer to take on Lies of P. Especially if you refuse to use the Specters on bosses.
I'm 1/8 masochistic minimum so of course I refused the helping hand.

I really want to. I’ve played all of the Souls titles (minus Sekiro) and Bloodborne is my absolute favorite. But I’ve heard LoP has some… almost poor, boss design when it comes to anticipating/reacting to their attacks.

 

[Gooberking]

I really want to. I’ve played all of the Souls titles (minus Sekiro) and Bloodborne is my absolute favorite. But I’ve heard LoP has some… almost poor, boss design when it comes to anticipating/reacting to their attacks.

Not sure about a couple of them. Most are fine though you got to learn what's up and not screw it up much. Plenty are cool. A couple are sus, and one near the end was more an unbelievable bore of a fight as opposed to being a problem

 

[Eddy Wang]

outside of sf6, GT7 and some ps extra games I haven't really spent much in gaming, my play did increased when I got my ps5.

I'm 3 pieces away of finishing my racing dream project, a g923 it's on sale and i can afford it, the problem are priorities, after that i can purchase the vr2 and build a racing rig, then i can invite ppl over to experience driving, it was something I'm aiming for to when i move, but would be cool to have the pieces as the time goes.

we'll see, anyway, I've played
mk1 (already deleted)
sf6
tekken 8
GT7

evil within 2 (never played this one before)
tried assassin's creed china, valhalla
death stranding (that was a lot of fun)
ace combat 7 (fun as hell)
(spiderman miles morales)
Returnal (did not finished)
Demon Souls (it's kicking my ass)


replayed
The Last of Us 1 and 2
All uncharteds
DMC5 special edition with turbo on
Resident Evil revelations 2 (here at home we love mercenaries missions, trying to complete the game to unlock and play along online)


Planned
RE4 remake and separate ways (at some point i will play it)
F1 2023 (when i get a racing wheel)
Ninja gaiden collection (i used to own it, i want it back)

 

[Juxtapose]

We all know how Diablo 4 is going.

Since I don't follow social media at all, I'm curious as to what people are saying about it.

Spider-Man 2 wasn’t anything spectacular to me.

The "magic" of Sony's first party titles has definitely passed. I'm glad to see people finally recognizing them for what they really are: just games.