My Favorite Game From Every Year I've Been Alive Part 8: 2023 to 2025
We've made it to the present (as of writing)
Old Man Yells At Games
This one’s a lot more negative than the last ones, but there are still some good games to discuss.
2023
2023 was a year full of games I found intersting, personally, but I’ll start with everyone’s favorite section: The stuff I didn’t play!
Starting off with Forspoken. I swear this was a good year. Forspoken was a… game. Third person action/adventure, horrific dialogue, terrible soul less graphics, generic fantasy setting. Some vague magic elements. Certified triple-A slop. It got clowned on for its horrendous dialogue (rightfully so), but some said the gameplay was okay. I didn’t play it, but the gameplay looks incredibly boring. The whole game looks like a complete waste of time.
On that same wavelength we got Starfield. Another one of those open world Bethesda RPG things that are light on everything. Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle. You travel around a mediocre world to take on mediocre missions where you do mediocre shooting in service of a mediocre story. This is bread and water soup, and the bread wasn’t even toasted.
Moving on from the games I didn’t play because they look like torture, we got the games I didn’t play because my backlog is too long.
First is Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. It’s Jet Set Radio. Grind around a city, do tricks and spray graffiti while listening to a funky soundtrack that includes music by Hideki Naganuma, the composer for the original Jet Set. It seems like fun, should get to it at some point.
Dave the Diver was a surprise hit that released this year. Run a sushi shop at night, and during the day, you forage for ingredients under water. It’s a neat concept, with some interesting gameplay loops. I got a taste of this game in the unlikeliest place of all: a mobile gacha game crossover. It had an event in Nikke: Goddess of Victory, which included a mini game which was basically a small version of Dave the Diver. It was fun. I haven’t gotten around to it because I forgot about it. This game had some controversy because it was published by Nexon, and people were arguing if it counts as an Indie game or not. I’m not sure on that end.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was another arguably indie smash hit. It’s a massive RPG from the creators of the Divinity series, which are also massive RPGs. Form a party and take on an epic quest that is a faithful adaptation of Dungeons and Dragon’s mechanics in videogame form. I haven’t played it because it’s a 100 hour behemoth, and I ain’t got time for that.
This was also the year of Lethal Company. One of the first in the revolutionary Friend Slop genre, where you and three other friends get spooked for funny YouTube clips. I didn’t play this because I don’t have any friends- I mean- it’s not my cup of tea.
What did I play this year, if not those big releases? Some indie nonsense no one’s heard of/cares about? You betcha, buddy. It wouldn’t be a Load Last Save article without irrelevant games!
The Ninja Saviors was a remake of a game for the Super Nintendo. It’s a 2D Sides-scrolling beat-’em-up where you play as a mechanized ninja android. Demolish dozens of soldiers and thugs through seven stages of arcade action. It’s pretty straightforward, but a lot of fun. It’s not exactly a remake, it’s more like a remaster. It spruces up the graphics a little, adds some new features and two new characters. Good stuff, overall. Tengo Project makes good games. Go check them out.
There’s Turbo Overkill, a first person shooter where you have a chainsaw leg. Speed through cyberpunk levels shredding countless bio-mechanical monsters. You get a nice arsenal of weapons to play around with, great mobility, a kicking soundtrack and some great level design. I recommend checking it out. I’ll review it at some point.
Hrot was another first person shooter. This one’s a lot less mobile than Turbo Overkill. More like a traditional boomer shooter, heavily inspired by Quake. Shoot irradiated monsters in Czechoslovakia in this horror-adjacent shooter. It’s a good time. I wrote a quick little recommendation for it as part of the 2025 Christmas series. Read it here.
Chants of Senaar was a puzzle game where you used language to solve problems. It has a nice, unique art style, great music and the gameplay is simple, but effective. I wrote a whole review for it, which you can read here. I recommend checking it out.
I also recommended Kill the Crows. It’s a single-screen arcade shooter where you shoot evil crow guys in the wild west. An enjoyable, short arcade game you can get for $5. I also recommended it for the Christmas thing. There are a lot of games from this year that I covered here. Even more in the extensive favorites and runners-up section.
To round-off the small indie games section we got Stonks 9800. It’s a relaxing life sim/job sim/idle game where you play as a Japanese stock broker in the 80s. Buy low, sell high, watch the little lines go up and make enough money to buy a house, a car and anything else you might want. The game is getting some notoriety now thanks to its great aesthetics. There’s also Amy, the cute secretary that talks to you during the game. It has some light dating sim elements, too. It’s still in early access, as of writing this, but it gets updated frequently with new features added every few months. Worth checking out.
This year gave us fighting games, too. Street Fighter 6 came out to mark a new chapter in the now 30+ year old franchise. It’s a bit of a mixed bag of good fighting and some dumb mechanics, but I still enjoy it. I’ve written about it several times, and keep playing it on my off-time. It worked well on launch, which was surprising, given how poorly Street Fighter V performed on release.
We also got Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising. This long titled game is another fighting game, set in the Granblue Fantasy universe (it’s a mobile game). This is an updated version of Granblue Fantasy Versus (without the rising) which added some new features, more characters and better netcode. It also messed with the game’s core systems and shifted it from a more neutral-focused old-school fighter to something more in line with a regular anime fighter. It’s still more grounded than most in its genre, but its offense was made a lot more oppressive, combos got longer and damage was turned up to ludicrous levels. It’s still fun, but it has its rough edges, like dash-in light attack (66L).
Speaking of mistaken updates to games: Overwatch 2. I wasn’t much of a fan of the first one, but I did play it, and I also gave its sequel a shot. I didn’t like it much. A lot of the same problems were carried over from the first, along with a slew of new imbalances that come from the game shifting from 6v6 to 5v5. Having your tank countered in a rock-paper-scissors way isn’t fun.
Out of all these noteworthy games, which one was my favorite from 2023?
My pick for 2023: Pizza Tower
Mamma Mia! That was an easy pick! This game is fantastic. It takes heavy inspiration from Wario Land, but it manages to do its own thing. Great controls, great levels, it’s full of wacky, creative ideas and it has a ton of soul. It’s a rare game that can be enjoyed casually, and it really shines when you learn to play it and go for speed run clears.
I could go on and on about it. In fact, I did. I reviewed it back in 2024. Read it here.
Runners up:
Roboquest. This roguelite first person shooter has you shooting your way through hundreds of robots. It’s fast paced, really tough and an an overall excellent game. There’s tons of stuff to unlock, different characters to play as, co-op, tons of weapons to discover and some great movement. Highly recommended.
Deadlink. Another fast-paced first person shooter roguelite. Shoot robots here, too, but it’s cyberpunk themed. Take on challenging arenas where you fight for your life using a clever resource system that encourages you to play aggressive. I wrote a small review for it as part of the Christmas thing. Read it here. I highly recommend it.
Hi-Fi Rush. This extremely charming rhythm-based hack and slash is a ton of fun. It’s like a simplified version of Devil May Cry where you time your attacks to a beat. It feels like a PS2 game, in the best way possible. Its core gameplay is straight forward, but satisfying and polished. It’s brimming with charm, with goofy characters and a cheesy story that is kind of dumb but also comes off as sincere and heartfelt, the graphics are wonderful, the music is top-notch and it’s a blast to play all the way through. Hi-Fi Rush gets an easy recommendation. I should review it at some point.
En Garde. Another fun, cartoony hack and slash with Saturday morning cartoon energy. Play as the swashbuckling Adalia de Volador and take on guards and noblemen with your fencing skills. Kick people into pots, swing from chandeliers and dazzle them, or take them down with regular old sword skills. I gave it a glowing review, which you can read here. Yet another easy recommendation.
This was a great year of games, at least for indie games. The bigger stuff was a bit… lacking. We need less triple-A slop, and more small games with worse graphics made by people paid more to work less. That’s where the real gold is hidden. Let’s see if 2024 brings us more, of it’s just a stinky snore.
2024
We got big releases! Big, stinky releases! The gaming industry is recovering from the effects of the pandemic, and they’re back to their regular bowel movements, giving us the best of the best gaming has to offer, all for the low low price of $60!
Starting off with Rise of the Ronin. Nioh was Team Ninja’s first souls-like. It combined the formula with more action-heavy combat and set it in a dark, yokai-infested Japanese setting. Then Sekiro came out and did the same. Now Team Ninja answers back with a Sekiro-like. Is it any good? Well, take Sekiro. Now, imagine if it sucked. That’s Rise of the Ronin. It has an open world that dilutes the gameplay and makes you travel from mission to mission to pad the runtime. Combat relies heavily on parries, like Sekiro, but you can’t move out of the way most of the time since enemy attacks track magnetically. There’s a Diablo-style loot system, like in Nioh, where you get constant junk dropped in your inventory that may or may not have more numbers. There are a ton of fighting styles and weapons to use, but you have to unlock them slowly. They’re drip-fed over hours and hours of gameplay. This game’s huge, but it’s padded to hell and back. It’s an hour of gameplay stretched out over 90. Very stinky, no good.
Stellar Blade was also a stinky action game. Before I talk about Stellar Blade, I have to go on a tangent.
This game proved to me that most Internet game critics are slop consumers that don’t know what they want. You see, there’s these game reviewers that claim to be against how modern gaming sucks nowadays. Old games were better, they claim. They look at a game and claim that it sucks because it doesn’t have titties or because the story has woke elements. They would constantly rail against these kinds of games. They don’t want Forspoken, that game’s woke. If they made games like they used to, it would be better. I always thought this sounded like a bunch of nonsense. They’re not engaging with the game as a game. They see it as a pawn in a stupid Internet culture war. They don’t dislike the game because the mechanics suck, or because it’s a mess of filler, they say it sucks because it’s “woke”. I thought that if a game as bad as Forspoken came out, but it had a chick with huge knockers in it, they’d love it, because they don’t play games. They argue about them.
Turns out I was right. Stellar Blade is a crappy game, but the Internet critics liked it because awooga bazooga, big booba and ass. I usually don’t weigh in on those kinds of culture war/political topics, but I will do so here. First off, I don’t know how having a sexy girl in a game is political. Titties are apolitical. Second, this game stinks. I wanted to like it; it’s an action game with pretty graphics, cool monsters and yeah, the girl is hot and I wanted to look at her, but the game is just so boring. The combat is stiff (boner joke), you only fight things with parries and basic attacks, there’s constant “exploration” that kills the flow of combat, constant cutscenes and all that bad stuff. It’s a very poorly made action game that misunderstands all the fundamentals of combat. But hey, she wears a skin-tight suit, therefore this game isn’t woke, therefore it’s good, apparently.
To complete my fence-sitting journey, I’ll say the other side is bad, too. This game isn’t bad because it objectifies women, or because it promotes unrealistic body standards, or because it’s gooner-bait. It’s bad because the core mechanics leave a lot to be desired.
We now return from our little break to talk about Tekken 8. It’s another triple-A disappointment. I got this game on release, because I liked Tekken 7. I was excited for it. Then I played it. This doesn’t feel like Tekken. It’s mostly about throwing out big, safe moves, you can’t sidestep most attacks, the Heat system is annoying and mobility overall was toned down. Matches devolve into what looks like a slugfest inside a phone booth as both players throw out big, gorilla attacks with no real care for spacing. Not to mention all the dumb 50/50 coin flip situations where you guess wrong once and lose 90% of your health. I don’t like it.
Multiversus came out this year. A Super Smash Bros style platform fighter featuring characters from Warner Brothers. You could have Lebron James fight Arya Stark. The game won Best Fighting Game at the Game Awards this year. Nothing bad happened with this game. It’s still going. Forever. Bugs Bunny fighting Rick and Morty, and they’re dancing, dancing. They say Multiversus will never die.
Zenless Zone Zero came out this year. It’s a huge mobile gacha game. I played it for around 30 minutes and didn’t think it was interesting. You press one button and that’s it. It’s the videogame equivalent of jingling keys in front of a toddler. Except the keys here are anime titties, and the toddlers are unemployed 20-somethings.
Speaking of free-to-play key jinglers: First Descendant. A looter shooter where the characters are all Korean models. It’s like Warframe, but with plastic surgery. I played it for a lot longer than I’m willing to admit. It’s dumb, but decently entertaining to play with friends. It’s engaging enough to keep you playing, but repetitive enough that you go on auto-pilot and can talk with your friends. It’s a podcast game.
There was Black Myth Wukong. It’s yet another souls-like. Or is it a Sekiro-like? I don’t know what this is. People claim it was an action game like Devil May Cry, with combos and style, but from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t look too interesting.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 was another big release I didn’t play. I’ve heard not so good things about it, but I liked the first one, so I might check it out at some point.
I did play Slave Zero X. I wish I hadn’t. I wrote about why I dropped and refunded that game in an article I wrote a while back.
There was also Call of Duty Black Ops 6. These games keep appearing, and people keep buying them by the million. All I know about this game is that it’s a complete aesthetic mess. You can play as Beavis and Butthead and shoot Nicki Minaj with a futuristic rifle. It’s like if Fortnite has less soul. It’s a corporate product made by automatons and consumed by people who might as well be automatons.
Marvel Rivals was another corporate shooter that released this year. It’s Overwatch again, but with Marvel characters. It was a massive game for a few months. I played it with friends for a bit, but it’s not my thing. It has the same problem Overwatch did where both teams sit and poke at each other until their ultimates are up and that’s it.
There was a re-release of Horizon Zero Dawn? Why? That game is only 7 years old. I can barely see any “improvements” in the re-release. They just yassified Aloy a little. What an absolute waste of resources. Graphics haven’t improved in a decade.
Last but certainly not least we have Concord! The greatest game ever made. An incredibly original idea: a sci-fi hero shooter, wonderful cooldown-based abilities, slow combat, beautiful characters that everyone loved, an incredible art style that looked like a low-budget cosplay contest at a UFO convention, it was a sure hit. It released to massive hype, and everyone sang and played instruments, and Concord was dancing, dancing. Concord said he’d never die. Then a week went by and the game was shut down. Years of work gone in an instant. Millions of dollars poured into a horrible idea for a boring game in a saturated genre. A great snapshot of the games industry at the time. Triple-A games have to stop. I’m serious. They’re disgusting. We don’t need to spend millions making bad Overwatch clones, you numpties.
We also got Dragon Age: The Veilguard. A big, fantasy RPG that looks like garbage, plays like garbage and has a script written by a group of illiterate chimpanzees high on paint fumes. I’ve never played a Dragon Age game, and I doubt I’ll start with this one.
Most of these games sucked. What did I pick for 2024?
My pick for 2024: Helldivers 2
Sometimes Triple-A games get it right. One out of every 20 games. Not a good percentage, but every now and then, when the stars align and everything goes right, you get a decent game. Helldivers 2 is proof of this. It’s an excellent third person shooter with meaty, satisfying gunplay, it’s challenging, it has a lot of different weapons. The games as a service thing is a detriment, since it’s getting updated constantly, and those updates aren’t always improvements, but it’s a solid time. Fun with friends, too.
I wrote a review for it, which you can read here. It’s the first thing I ever reviewed on this site!
Runners up:
Starward. It’s Gundam Versus, with anime girls. It’s a lot of fun, but incredibly hard to learn. Its player base is practically non-existent, too, which makes finding a match a pain. It’s also a gacha. Look, it has a lot of things working against it, but I like it. The core gameplay is solid.
Metal Slug Tactics. A tactics game based on the Metal Slug franchise. It does a great job of translating the run and gun aspects of the arcade game to a turn-based tactics format. I recommend it and wrote about it on the Christmas thing, read it here.
Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom. Super Mario 64, but with a taxi. Super Cario 64. I also wrote about this for the Christmas thing. I wrote about a lot of games for that. Metal Slug Tactics is great, go play it.
Balatro. A roguelite poker deckbuilder. A simple, genius idea with wonderful execution. I wrote an entire review glazing it. You can read it here.
KILLKNIGHT. An arcade-style shooter where you survive waves of horrible monsters. Its mechanics loop into each other, it’s intense, it has a simple yet effective scoring system and it’s overall a great game. Go play it. I wrote about it, go read it here. I should give it a full review at some point.
Shadow of the Ninja: Reborn. Another Tengo Project ninja game. It’s a platformer. Tough, with great levels, challenging enemies and hellish bosses. Great old-school gameplay that will test your skills. Amazing presentation, too. I wrote a full review. Go read it here.
That was 2024. Yet another year of great indie games set against a backdrop of absolute garbage triple-A slime. All the money in the world can’t buy you any taste. These games have no style, no grace, absolutely not worth touching even for free. Then we have indie games made for 10% of their budget, with smaller teams, and they’re miles above those crappy, corporate products.
Onwards to 2025.
2025
Now we’ve reached the end of this series. I could keep writing summaries for 2026, 2027 and so on, but they haven’t happened yet. It would be like that one scene in Space Balls where they watch the movie as it’s happening. The other years will be done one at a time. For now, enjoy the summary for 2025.
Starting things off with the release of the Switch 2. Nintendo’s long-awaited follow up to the insanely popular Switch is finally here. I didn’t get one, so I missed out on all the wonderful Switch 2 games like Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza and… that’s it? Mario Kart and Donkey Kong? I mean, they look like fine games, but that’s what the console launched with? There’s Kirby, too, that’s cool. You can play the Yakuza games on it, but I wouldn’t buy a Switch 2 for Yakuza. I can play those anywhere else. I can’t play Mario on PC or Xbox (legally, at least). Only time will tell if the console is any good.
Monster Hunter: Wilds was another game I didn’t play. It’s Monster Hunter World, but with even less color, more cutscenes and more of an emphasis on story. It also runs poorly. It doesn’t sound like something I’d be interested in.
Same with Avowed. Obsidian is a company that everyone keeps telling me is the greatest. They make the best RPGs. I’ve played some of them, and seen the others, and I can’t really find any of that RPG magic. Are they like Blizzard, where they made some amazing games back in the 90s and have been resting on their laurels ever since? I don’t get it. Avowed definitely won’t change my opinion on them. It looks like an unfocused mess with no real core identity. Graphically, it also looks like the most Unreal Engine 5 game ever made. A friend of mine who loves RPGs told me to steer clear of this one, and I heeded his warning.
I didn’t play Blue Prince, but not because I didn’t want to. The backlog is out of control. I’ll get to it at some point.
Civilization 7 came out this year, too. I didn’t play it. I’m not going to pay $70 for a base Civilization game. I’ll wait for a few years until the definitive expansion comes out, then I’ll give it a shot. Even then, it’s not a guaranteed thing. It looks like it builds off Civ 6, which I don’t like. Maybe I’ll save the money and use it on something else.
That something else won’t be Ninja Gaiden 2 Black. “But Roger!” you exclaim. “Ninja Gaiden 2, the greatest game ever made, is back! In remake form! How could you not love it?”. It’s Sigma again. This is the twentieth time they re-release Sigma. I don’t care if they put gore back in, it’s still Ninja Gaiden 2: Sigma. The objectively inferior version. I want the original. Until the original is back, please don’t call me.
This year also gave me another Ninja Gaiden disappointment with Ninja Gaiden 4. I know a game is bad when I have to keep playing it to see if I like it, and I have been chipping away at Ninja Gaiden 4 for a while. I still don’t like it. The weapons are limited and samey, combat is mashy, enemies are annoying, the new camera supposedly fixed the problems with the previous games but enemies still manage to hit you from off-screen, the aesthetics are awful, Yakumo is a shitty protagonist, there are too many one-button platforming sections, and even playing as Ryu feels bad. The boss fights are long and boring, your damage is too low but you take too much damage, every combat encounter feels the same and the sound design is weak and flaccid. I can’t find anything to like about it. It’s so bad that I want to write a full, proper review for it, but that would mean playing the game in-depth to get notes, and I can barely stand it for more than ten minutes at a time. After NG3 and Yaiba, I said this series should remain dormant, and I meant it back then. I REALLY mean it now.
This year gave us Supervive, a MOBA combined with a battle royale. Made by a huge team of ex employees from Riot and Blizzard, this game took the world by storm. It had a huge player base and it was the talk of the town for a few weeks. Then the advertising budget ran out and everyone forgot about it. Player count dropped off a steep cliff and the game is set to be shut down in 2026. It lasted longer than Concord, at least.
SplitGate 2 seems to be going down that same path. Sorry, it’s not SplitGate 2 anymore. It’s SPLITGATE: ARENA RELOADED. They took the money they made from the original SplitGate and said they would make a new high-quality game with it. They made SplitGate 2. It’s a first person shooter with portals, but now the maps are bad. They’re smaller, less vertical and with less surfaces to put portals on. The game was retooled into a weird semi class-based shooter. It plays fine, but it’s a downgrade from the first. Shouldn’t have messed with a good thing.
There was a remake of The Talos Principle. Why? That game’s only… eleven years old. Oh, it’s over a decade old. I remember when it first came out. The original game is good, I can’t speak on behalf of the remake. The original still runs well on modern systems, so I don’t think the remake is necessary.
This year also saw the release of Hollow Knight: Silksong, the most anticipated game of all time. No one could believe it, but it was finally here. The greatest game ever. Then a lot of people started complaining because it was too hard. Was it too hard, or is this a case of “hollow knight fans play hollow knight for the first time”? I’ll tell you when I play it. If I play it.
Out of all these wonderful, exciting and high-quality games, which one did I pick as my favorite for 2025?
My pick for 2025: Clair Obscur Expedition 33
Wait no! I haven’t even played this yet. Get out of here!
Sorry about that. That game shows up anytime a winner is announced. It’s like a virus.
My real pick for 2025: Peak
Climb a mountain, have fun. It’s ingenious in its simplicity. A great hangout game.
Runner Up: Virtua Fighter 5 REVO. It’s Virtua Fighter 5. Again. This game is almost 20 years old at this point, and it still beats every other fighting game, and it’s better than 80% of videogames released after 2006. See why I’m so negative?
Conclusion
Here’s where I end this overly long, convoluted retrospective on any notable game I could find across my 30-something years on this Earth. Up to today, when I’m typing this in 2026. I’d have to go back and read the whole series, but from what I can remember, it was quite the ride. Starting off with decent games in the 90s, then a huge mess of classics around the 2000s, then a marked decline around the early 2010s, to finish off with a completely split industry in the 2020s. We got multi-million dollar games on one side, indie greats on the other. The multi-million dollar ones are all boring, derivative trash that runs poorly and plays even worse, and the indie ones tend to be entertaining games you actually want to play.
I don’t mind that too much. Doing this series has reminded me of all the great games I haven’t played. I have a backlog that stretches back to 1991. Games could stop being made tomorrow and I’d still have enough to play until I’m 90 years old. The other day I did a quick calculation of how many hours worth of RPGs are sitting in my library, unplayed, and it’s around 1,000 hours. On unplayed RPGs alone. Not counting all the stuff that got added recently.
In my opinion, games are getting worse and better at the same time. Triple-A is getting noticeably worse. Gone are the days where you could spend $60 on a big name franchise and get something worth playing. Any big, new IP has a 90% chance of being a huge disappointment. Just a bunch of boring, soul less junk running on Unreal Engine 5.
That’s if you’re not actively looking for the good stuff that’s hidden away. The ones that don’t have millions to spend on advertising. As long as good indie games are being made, there will be something new to play.
And as long as I feel like it, this blog will be around to tell you about any game I find interesting, be it because it’s great and you should play it, or because it made my blood boil and insulted my lineage.
Go out there and play good games. They exist, you just have to look. If all else fails, know that there are over 40 years of games you haven’t played yet. Your new favorite might be lying in some dusty old basement somewhere, waiting for you to pick it up. Or emulate it, most likely. Just don’t tell Nintendo I said that. They’d kill me.