Kef's top ten games of 2023

What a lovely game! I played through Jusant in about three sessions over the course of a weekend, and it was such a refreshing, relaxing experience. This is the perfect breather game, for when you want to take a break between big, overwhelming epics, or bombastic games that are full of explosions. Highly recommended!

This is easily the most obscure entry on my personal game of the year list this year, but I hope if you haven't heard of it, you'll give it a shot. The Fabulous Fear Machine struck me as something like Civilization or Risk filtered through an old-school, Tales from the Crypt comic book art style. It's the perfect grand strategy game for conspiracy nuts or fans of the paranormal.

Gacha games aren't for everyone, and with as many of them as I review, sometimes I feel like they aren't for me either! That said, there were a few pretty great ones that I played this year, and Reverse: 1999 was definitely one of the best. The solid turn-based gameplay is elevated thanks to a fun story and absolutely gorgeous art.

Insomniac's second open-world superhero adventure—or third, if you count Spider-Man: Miles Morales as a full release—impressed me almost as much as the first. The world itself was a little stale, but they've captured the feel of swinging around and throwing punches as both Spider-Men so well. The plot that's packed full of comic book melodrama and twists and turns is just icing on top of an already enticing dish.

Geez, there were a lot of great Soulslike this year, even without one from From Soft itself. (Sorry, Armored Core is cool, but not counting that as a Soulslike). Anyway, I haven't played all of them yet, but I feel confident that Wo Long is likely to remain my favorite. I just can't get enough of that awesome Romance of the Three Kingdoms setting, and Team Ninja has really perfected making their games almost maddeningly difficult but so satisfying to master.

It has some haters, but count me among the many who loved the new direction for possibly my favorite gaming franchise ever in Final Fantasy XVI. Awesome characters, a twisty plot full of political intrigue, incredible action combat, and so much spectacle—it's everything I've loved in Final Fantasy games from the time I was a kid, and it looks better than ever. What's not to love?

The modern-style remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 made so much more sense to me, but I was skeptical of Capcom doing a remake of Resident Evil 4. The original is already near-perfect! Well, joke's on me, because it's somehow even more perfect with a 2023 sheen added. Playing through this was an absolute blast, with just enough new elements added that I felt some surprise mixed in with my nostalgia. Absolutely must-play.

How does MiHoYo do it? First they conquered the world with Genshin Impact. And now they've knocked it out of the park for the second time in a row with Honkai: Star Rail. Even though it's a much more traditional gacha and switches to turn-based combat, Star Rail is eons ahead of the competition in of pure polish, style, and accessibility. Like Genshin before it, it's the kind of game that makes me absolutely stunned that it's free-to-play; there's much worse games with much less content that cost more money than I've ever spent in Honkai: Star Rail. If MiHoYo can do it again with Zenless Zone Zero in 2024, I'm going to be stunned.

Ok, this one is pretty obscure too, but it also deeply deserves more attention. This fantastic little horror game puts players into the role of a small-town radio station host trying to keep their cool and guide citizens to safety while a killer is on the loose. The setup is very similar to the underrated 2008 horror flick Pontypool crossed with a slasher like Scream or Halloween. And the game does a great job of constantly coming up with fresh ways to get the player to interact with and help characters throughout its short run time of five to six hours.

Apologies for ending my list with double horror games, but a.) I love horror and b.) Alan Wake 2 feels like the kind of game that was custom-made for my tastes. I love that it expands from the (slightly) more straightforward horror of the first Alan Wake and embraces a much weirder approach, pulling on everything from David Lynch to Lovecraft to police procedurals along with the expected heaping helping of Stephen King. It's not just that it's a great horror game though. As my colleague Ian Boudreau explained so well in his review, the best part about Alan Wake 2 and its biggest surprise is how it pushes on the boundaries of the medium as a whole. More than any other game that I played this year—I see you, Baldur's Gate 3, soon—Alan Wake 2 toyed with my expectations of what it would be and what games in general can be. It's the kind of game that gets me excited all over again just to PLAY games, which makes it the best candidate for my personal number one game of the year slot. Let's see what 2024 brings!