It's a new year, which means the Best of 2023 lists have come out. With so many lists out there, who has time to read all of them?
Turns out: we do. But because you probably don't, we rounded up all the Top 10 lists we could find, smashed 'em together in a big spreadsheet and spat out overall Top 10 lists for the year's best albums, books, TV shows and movies. You're welcome.
The Best Games Of 2023
10. 'Pikmin 4' from Nintendo
Think of it as a light, colorful real-time strategy game; sometimes you'll need to wield a certain type of elemental Pikmin (like the turquoise ones who can freeze water) to clear a blocked path. Elsewhere, you'll need to muster them in tight battalions to fend off the flesh-eating amphibians who want you dead. "Pikmin" might not be "Tears of the Kingdom" (what is?), but it's a tiny triumph.
9. 'Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon' from FromSoftware
Coincidentally, this year I found myself in an obsessive trance to watch all the mecha anime I could find. From "Code Geass" and "Gurren Lagen" to "Neon Genesis" and "Witch From Mecury", I was desperate to find a game to get the fixin' for my itchin'. And then From Software graced us with Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon. When I say this is peak mecha gameplay, I mean it. You will not find a game this year that matches the feeling of playing "AC6."
8. 'Cocoon' from Geometric Interactive
"Cocoon" is an astoundingly smart, ingeniously creative adventure where you are tasked with weaving different worldstates together to progress across an astoundingly-beautiful biomechanical tapestry. It's one of the best puzzle games of the generation and a stunning debut, a team leveraging its past experience working on "Limbo" and "Inside" to deliver a truly unforgettable, dreamlike adventure.
7. 'Street Fighter 6' from Capcom
All I wanted from this game was for it to feel right, be better than "SFV" at launch, and not suck so bad that it would make watching tournaments miserable. Well, turns out this game feels perfect, plays like a dream, looks perfect, has the right vibe, has good online and EVO was great. The single player mode turned out to be a dud, and without any patches for balance playing against Kens over and over gets dull. But I'm sure the bones on this game are solid enough to make it one of the best fighting games ever, and for a long time too.
6. 'Spider-Man 2' from Insomniac Games
While the previous two games were already incredibly intuitive, Insomniac somehow managed to improve the gameplay even further with the addition of web wings, and a reconstructed gadget and power wheel which makes taking down enemies a much smoother and more immediate process. While the game may be a little shorter than "Spider-Man," the side quests are more meaningful and work better within the context of the game's themes on the finite nature of time. Ironically, "Spider-Man 2" is a game you just won't want to end. When it does, we're left with the greatest superhero game ever made.
5. 'Resident Evil 4' from Capcom
The year began with a bang when Capcom released its remake of "Resident Evil 4." Already considered one of the greatest games of all time, it was hard to imagine how Capcom could improve upon the original. After all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But three remakes in and Capcom has developed a surgeon's eye for what to change and what to keep in place, ditching some of the campier elements — like the giant robot Salazar — from the original, but leaving the pitch-perfect setting and pace untouched. "Resident Evil 4" is arguably Capcom's best remake yet, quieting anyone who questioned the necessity of this remake in the first place.
4. 'Super Mario Bros. Wonder' from Nintendo
A character and series that has been the subject of constant change, "Mario" came along this year and reinvented itself again. "Super Mario Bros. Wonder" is the latest mainline 2D "Mario" game, and the first in several years to drop the "New SMB" moniker that its 2D entries have been saddled with. That name feels like a conscious choice when you actually play "Mario Wonder" because, wahoo, this one really is different.
3. 'Alan Wake 2' from Remedy Entertainment
At heart, "Alan Wake 2" is a game about confronting despair, and it meets that goal head on at every turn. The game's ambition is most visible in the way that it doubles down with two uniquely playable characters, whose perspectives overlap as one, Alan Wake, attempts to rewrite the plot of the nightmare world that he's trapped in while the other, [FBI] agent Saga Anderson, investigates the chilling results of his reality-warping powers. Across "Alan Wake 2's" spiraling narrative, in which art imitates life and vice versa, the fully realized use of an unreliable narrator gives weight to the sublime survival horror aspects, a porous world in which monsters bleed freely through holes in reality, and fiction attempts to fill the void.
2. 'The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom' from Nintendo
"Tears of the Kingdom" feels like someone holding my hands very close as they lean in to whisper, with eyes twinkling, "Can I tell you something?" The ride was wild; I laughed, I cried. And I can't wait for the next time, when it's completely different.
1. 'Baldur's Gate 3' from Larian Studios
As you might remember, "BG3" was one of my most-anticipated games going into this year. It didn't just meet my lofty expectations, it blew the doors off. Larian Studios raised the bar for role-playing games in our modern age, and the sheer number of meaningful decisions on offer here makes other big developers look weak in comparison.
Honorable Mentions
- "Dead Space" by Motive Studio
- "Star Wars Jedi: Survivor" by Respawn Entertainment
- "Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty" by CD Projeckt RED
- "Starfield" by Bethesda Game Studios
A Note On Methodology
We wish we could say there was a super fancy algorithm that combed the internet and did this for us. But the truth is that the entity doing the internet combing was a human Digg Editor, and calculations were performed by an Excel sheet that ingested and re-ranked all the lists we fed into it (briefly: #1 ranked items received 10 points, #2 ranked items got 9 points... down through #10 ranked items, which got 1 point; items on unranked lists all got 5.5 points).
[Image credit: Illustration by Rangely García; From Left: "Resident Evil 4." "Baldur's Gate 3," "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom," "Super Mario Bros. Wonder"]
