FG User's GOTY 2023!

Will hopefully start Jusant proper this week. Now I don’t have to manage flipping between a Switch game and an Xbox one, given both use visual prompts on screen.

Baldur’s Gate 3

I’ve not finished it yet, but it’s the game I’ve spent the most time thinking about when I’m not playing it - usually a good sign it is both compelling and has lots of depth. On top of that, I’ve also often found myself thinking about how I’d approach a second playthrough differently. The last game that did that to me was Dragon’s Dogma, but BG3 has vastly more choices to make.

Most of all, it’s the quality of the writing and characters (and the brilliant cast who brings those characters to life) that does it. A thoroughly brilliant game.

Honourable mentions:

Horizon Forbidden West Burning Shores - really enjoyed this, but absolutely recognise that that enjoyment is in direct correlation to how much you liked the main game. In my case, I enjoyed them a lot! It moved Aloy on well as a character, delivered some spectacular visuals and was well worth the asking price.

Metroid Prime Remastered - just a quality remastering of one of the best games of all time. While the wait for MP4 looks like being a long one, it was a joy to come back to this.

Hogwarts Legacy is definitely top for me. TotK second, Forza and FC24 hanging behind. Spider-Man 2 would almost certainly be top but I'm waiting for it to get cheaper.

We just need a Bloodborne 2 Rob. With more dresses. Then you'll be sorted.

Most of my time is still spent in MSFS 2020. Think I may have finished one game this year....

Jusant was small and perfectly formed. Pleasantly surprised to see it ran pretty smoothly on my XSS, since I 'donated' my XSX to son #1.

Think 2024 will be another year of smaller games until MSFS 2024 turns up of course.

I'm trying to think to the start of the year and drawing a blank (what did I play!!), so at the moment it would be a toss up between Spider-Man 2 and Lies of P. I've only just started Hogwarts and I need to get back into BG3 as I've only clocked a few hours so far.

Street Fighter 6

It’s just fucking brilliant.

I didn't even really like Starfield all that much, yet my liking for looting, quests, lock-picking & generally sneaking about shooting raiders, I mean spacers, still meant I put about 100 hours into it. 

You should play it, it’s fucking brilliant.

Only new game I played this year was Starfield and it was very, very dull after a while.

Edit: Reads up a couple of posts.... oh yeah SF6. Thats a good one.

Why is cyberpunk funny?

Launched in a mess on PS4 and Xbox one.
Instead of abandoning it they spent the next year+ constantly patching it and now have re launched the game with multiple upgrades and launched an epic expansion.

All whilst communicating with the community of cyberpunk on what they were doing and why.

Yeah it shouldn't have launched at all on the old consoles but as far as community support they are up there.

Exactly. All they did was fix the mess they released and get it to what was originally advertised.

Although talking of NMS. What a fucking arc. Those guys deserve their own award anyway. Tirelessly, for YEARS, releasing free updates on their game, to the extent it's now far and above what was even originally promised.

I'll never bother to play it again of course, I simply can't be fucked. There's no denying what they've done though.

I agree that Cyberpunk doesn't deserve a place on that list, as CDPR simply brought the game to the standard in which it should've launched to begin with.

Yes, the expansion seems to be very good, but it was a paid product (unlike all the No Man's Sky updates, which were free).

As for not releasing on the "old consoles", CP2077 was originally announced in May 2012 - at that point, the PS4 and the Xbox One were unreleased, next-gen machines! It was always scheduled to launch on those platforms, and the failure to make sure it ran properly on them was CDPR's alone.