When you think about seminal years in gaming, a few instantly come to mind. There’s 1986, the year that gave us 8-bit classics like Metroid, Dragon Quest, The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, and Adventure Island. Or there’s 2013, which brought modern epics like Grant Theft Auto V, The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, Dota 2, and revamped Tomb Raider. In a world where gaming is a commodity, with more platforms in everyone’s grasp and development tools available to the masses, it takes a lot to stand out. But 2023 will stand out, as a year where there’s a windfall of top-tier, industry redefining games that will set the pace for the years ahead and promptly provide fodder for your favorite internet historian’s next two-hour treatise on a year in excellence.
In truth, gaming is in its honeymoon period. Having survived the transition to 3D, then HD, the industry has settled in a healthier place. Free-to-play and massively multiplayer online games (MMORPGs) exist in harmony with cinematic single-player experiences that rival theatrical and streaming offerings alike. It’s also prime time for indie games, with a new wave of artistic visions coming to life from small teams looking to make their mark on the medium.
If 2023 in gaming had a central theme, it’d amount to something akin to “old meets new.” Reinvention, revivals, remakes, and remasters are peppered just about everywhere. But unlike Hollywood, a “redo” in gaming isn’t a dirty word. In fact, the nature of gaming as a technologically driven space means that revisiting older work to give it extra oomph can be a good thing. It means bringing new tools to the process that can properly bring to life stories that were only told in meager form before.
As always, there were some bumps along the way. Huge titles came and went without delivering on their potential. Smaller games that created flash-in-the-pan hype fizzled out. Even some of the year’s best games started strong, only to falter with post-game updates, creating their own uphill battles after initial success. It’s all part of the process.
When drafting picks for the year’s best games, it’s caveated that this isn’t all of them, nor does it include perpetually evolving games, like the many faces of Fortnite, or downloadable content endeavors like Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty that singlehandedly salvaged an entire game’s reputation. But thematically, they fit the bill, so imagine those as an addendum.
So, without further ado, here are the 20 of the best games of 2023.
When you think about seminal years in gaming, a few instantly come to mind. There’s 1986, the year that gave us 8-bit classics like Metroid, Dragon Quest, The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, and Adventure Island. Or there’s 2013, which brought modern epics like Grant Theft Auto V, The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, Dota 2, and revamped Tomb Raider. In a world where gaming is a commodity, with more platforms in everyone’s grasp and development tools available to the masses, it takes a lot to stand out. But 2023 will stand out, as a year where there’s a windfall of top-tier, industry redefining games that will set the pace for the years ahead and promptly provide fodder for your favorite internet historian’s next two-hour treatise on a year in excellence.
In truth, gaming is in its honeymoon period. Having survived the transition to 3D, then HD, the industry has settled in a healthier place. Free-to-play and massively multiplayer online games (MMORPGs) exist in harmony with cinematic single-player experiences that rival theatrical and streaming offerings alike. It’s also prime time for indie games, with a new wave of artistic visions coming to life from small teams looking to make their mark on the medium.
If 2023 in gaming had a central theme, it’d amount to something akin to “old meets new.” Reinvention, revivals, remakes, and remasters are peppered just about everywhere. But unlike Hollywood, a “redo” in gaming isn’t a dirty word. In fact, the nature of gaming as a technologically driven space means that revisiting older work to give it extra oomph can be a good thing. It means bringing new tools to the process that can properly bring to life stories that were only told in meager form before.
As always, there were some bumps along the way. Huge titles came and went without delivering on their potential. Smaller games that created flash-in-the-pan hype fizzled out. Even some of the year’s best games started strong, only to falter with post-game updates, creating their own uphill battles after initial success. It’s all part of the process.
When drafting picks for the year’s best games, it’s caveated that this isn’t all of them, nor does it include perpetually evolving games, like the many faces of Fortnite, or downloadable content endeavors like Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty that singlehandedly salvaged an entire game’s reputation. But thematically, they fit the bill, so imagine those as an addendum.
So, without further ado, here are the 20 of the best games of 2023.