2023: Short Reviews of Games Completed This Year

Mass Effect Legendary Edition

(100% completion: 100 hrs)

10/10

A replay of one of my favourite series, though the first time with the remastered collection. It's strong points go without saying: story, characters, fun cover shooter gameplay, and the graphics still hold up. The updates made to ME1 were great improvements while not losing its unique RPG feel compared to the others. If I had to pick I'd say ME2 will always be my favourite but I think every game has its own strengths.

Ghostwire: Tokyo

(main story & selected side missions: 13 hrs)

6/10

This was an interesting concept and had a good atmosphere. It was at its best when the horror came to the fore, particularly the free DLC side missions at the school. Once I got the hang of it, the first-person magic combat was OK.

I'm not big into anime / Japanese games generally, found the story and dialogue to be the usual fare in that respect. The controls felt off to begin with, so I had to look online for recommended settings to make it handle somewhat close to a modern game. The open world was an icon fest, too many side activities with no real indication of which ones were worth doing - I'm glad I found other's recommendations to play through the side story in the school.

Marvel's Midnight Suns

(main story & DLC campaign: 65 hrs)

9/10

The tactical turn-based gameplay here was some of the best I've played, like X-COM but with arena battles using the heroes' abilities at your disposal rather than being ultra-methodical. Each character felt suitably different with satisfying animations. Being able to unlock and upgrade new abilities (cards in each hero's deck) was a nice gameplay loop. The Abbey home base was fun to explore as it progressively opened up over time. I appreciated the difficulty system where you could crank it up anytime for higher rewards (although I did lower it again near the end as I felt the hardest difficulties contradicted the hero fantasy).

The story and dialogue was usual comic-book cheese, I ended up skim-reading the more I played since there was a lot of yapping. The relationship system was not of much interest to me, but thankfully there are useful guides online for quickly optimising this part of the game.

God of War: Ragnarok

(100% completion: 50 hrs)

9/10

This game felt like an improvement across the board on the previous, exactly what I hope for in a sequel. The main story and characters remained engaging, and I enjoyed the side quests and activities too (nice to see an open world game value quality over quantity). The combat was the biggest upgrade, with far more enemy variety plus it encouraged the player to make full use of all the weapons and combos available. As expected the game looked fantastic and had blockbuster setpieces.

I was glad in the end they finished the Norse story in two games as I think novelty counts for a lot in gaming, and can understand people who found this too similar or safe.

Gotham Knights

(main story & side missions: 20 hrs)

7/10

This was better than I was expecting, but still clearly a level below the Arkham and Spiderman games. I found the story missions and villain case files to be well done. It was nice to be able to play as different heroes for a variety of fighting styles, which did feel reasonably different (but could've been more). The occasional detective puzzles were actually quite good and a rare improvement on Arkham's classic "detective mode" shortcoming.

The MMO-style design choices - crafting, gear drops and upgrades, busywork quests - didn't add anything to the game and I appreciate would turn many people off. I tolerated them, and felt doing the bare minimum required wasn't much of a grind at all. Though locking the movement abilities (gliding) behind this sort of thing was egregious given how important it is to these open world superhero games. As recommended, I played it on an easier difficulty to make the combat feel more Arkham-style but it still felt watered down either way.

Alan Wake Remastered

(main story & DLC chapters: 10 hrs)

7/10

Picked this up after hearing such great things about the second game and having enjoyed Control a few years ago. The game has a good atmosphere and is well paced with the TV-style episodic structure. I appreciated the mix of action and slower sections that later story games like Last Of Us would go on to perfect. The combat was better than I was expecting - the flashlight mechanic was satisfying, and it felt rewarding going from struggling against single enemies early on to taking out groups with stronger weapons by the end. The DLC epilogue chapters also stood out in terms of expanding on the light-dark gameplay and dreamy setpieces.

The combat sequences did get rather repetitive in the later stages, and I was expecting more mind-bending sequences and variety as the game went on. I'm not hugely in to Stephen King-esque mysteries, and the story and writing quality weren't anything special to me (though in fairness this game predated most of my favourite narative-driven games). The remaster was good for the most part, it was a very smooth experience though I was surprised it didn't have HDR given the game was built around light and darkness.