GOTY 2023: Nick Remembers Some Games

Silicon Sasquatch

A big ol’ N for little ol’ me

As 2022 drew to a close, I was possessed by the spirit of unrealized desires. I set a new goal for myself: I would watch 50 movies in a single year.

I’ve always been good at delaying gratification, so much so that I often put off culturally and intellectually enriching activities just because I’m worried I’ll enjoy them too much — that I’ll, god forbid, burn through all the good things before I’m even remotely close to death. It’s a foolish instinct that’s rooted in perfectionism, which in turn is rooted in, well, all kinds of harmful nonsense.

Anyway, I achieved my target. In fact, I doubled it. I saw plenty of contemporary movies, and I also delved deep into a wide range of old classics and forgotten gems. I enjoyed my time watching exactly 98% of them — that’s pretty good! And I can now say I’ve properly kickstarted a new habit: I’m goin’ to the movies again, folks.

It sounds so, I dunno, painfully normal to say this, but I’ve gotta be honest: setting goals really works. And goals are really important! It’s surprisingly easy to fall prey to distractions and pointless routine in their absence. But when I declare to myself that I’m really gonna do something, and I go through the requisite motions — write it on a piece of paper and tape it to my wall, or tell enough friends that I’ll feel guilty if I don’t follow through, or whatever — more often than not, I achieve what I set out to do.

Which leads to my current problem.

Fresh off the rejuvenating and enriching results of my film journey, I spent the end of December wondering what worthwhile goals I could set for myself in 2024. I first thought of other media: had I been neglecting books? (A little bit — I only finished 17 books in 2023, barely over half of my goal.) What about music? Yeah, I’m kind of out of the loop these days; I’ll see what I can glean from Stereogum and whatever remains of Bandcamp’s editorial team. But goals for either medium didn’t feel very compelling to me; I’d rather just set an intention and see where that leads me.

Okay, so…what about video games?

Well,

Part 1: I don’t like playing video games very much right now

But we have to talk about them. So:

Here’s a list of pretty much everything I played last year, sorted in alphabetical order. In the interest of brevity and scannability, I’ll be using my own proprietary emoji system to describe these games:

🏆 — A great game
🙂 — Hey, I had fun!
🤠 — Yeehaw! (Cowboy friendly)
🌲 — I often thought that I’d rather be outside instead of playing this
💔 — A letdown
😲 — A big ol’ surprise!
🧠 — This one got me to thinkin’
📝 — In this game you will take Notes
🥲 — Ah, just to feel something once again
🚮 — Do better

And here’s the list:

1. Alan Wake 2 🏆🙂🌲🧠🥲

2. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon 🙂🤠

3. BABBDI 🙂🤠😲

4. Baldur’s Gate 3 🙂💔

5. Castlevania: Rondo of Blood 🏆😲

6. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 🏆

7. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon 🌲

8. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance 🤠🌲🚮

9. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow 🙂

10. Cocoon 🌲🚮

11. Counter-Strike 2

12. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty 🤠🥲🧠 (I spent some time thinking about this game in more detail here)

13. Diablo IV 🌲💔🚮

14. Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intermission 🙂

15. Final Fantasy XVI 🌲💔🚮 (read my review of this very bad game here)

16. F-Zero 99 🙂😲

17. God of War: Ragnarök 🙂🥲

18. Hi-Fi Rush 💔🚮

19. Humanity 🙂🧠

20. Jusant 🌲💔

21. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom 🏆🙂🤠🥲🧠

22. Lies of P 🚮

23. Marvel Snap 🙂🧠

24. Marvel's Spider-man: Miles Morales 🚮

25. Metroid Prime Remastered 🙂🌲

26. Octopath Traveler 2 🙂

27. Pseudoregalia 🌲

28. Quake II: Enhanced Edition 🙂🤠

29. Resident Evil 4 🙂

30. The Roottrees Are Dead 🧠📝

31. Sea of Stars 🌲💔🚮

32. Starfield 🤠🌲

33. Strawberry Jam (Celeste mod) 🙂😲

34. Street Fighter 6

35. Super Mario Bros. Wonder 🏆🥲😲

36. Super Mario RPG (2023) 🙂

37. Theatrhythm Final Bar Line 🙂

38. Thirsty Suitors 💔

39. Void Stranger 🏆🙂🥲😲🧠📝

40. Yakuza Zero 🏆🙂🥲

41. Yakuza Kiwami 🙂

42. Yakuza Kiwami 2 🙂🥲 (I also reviewed this one!)

43. Yakuza 3 🙂🥲😲

44. Yakuza 4 🙂

45. ZeroRanger 🏆🙂😲

Here’s my personal top 10 list for games that released in 2023:

10. The Roottrees are Dead
9. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
8. Quake II: Enhanced Edition
7. Baldur’s Gate 3
6. Super Mario RPG
5. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
4. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
3. Alan Wake 2
2. Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Game of the Year: Void Stranger

Man, I’m bored. Are you bored?

Well, forget this. Let’s talk about something else.

Part 2: Controlled demolition

I have successfully blown up my life, or had it blown up for me, a handful of times now. I regret to inform you that it’s not the kind of thing you get better at.

I lived in another country for most of 2023. I’m now back in the United States. Although I’d hoped for a smooth re-entry, things have instead been slow, frustrating, and confusing. I had to give up a lot to move overseas in the first place, and I left just about everything else behind on my way back here. I’m still coming to terms with what that means.

One thing I heard before moving abroad is that you’ll never feel completely at home wherever you end up, nor will returning to your home country ever feel completely like “home” again. In my experience, that’s the truth.

I landed back here on unsure footing, teetering on the edge of what’s commonly called “middle age.” Being middle-aged doesn’t mean I can’t do anything; it just means that everything I try feels even more important. The skewed way my brain interprets the world these days is: if I mess up now, that mistake has a multiplying effect on how the rest of my life will go. Each failure is more devastating now than it used to be, each success more vital. Do I want to be able to retire? When I was younger I would tell myself that I don’t care about retirement, that I want to find fulfilling work instead. But I was young and didn’t yet realize I was taking my health for granted. And now, frankly, I don’t think fulfillment is necessarily on the table any longer: I think I equivocated too much, waited too long for perfection, and sold myself short too many times.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about all the paths I wanted to take when I was younger — paths that led organically from my strengths and deepest passions. Playing music was a huge part of the first half of my life, and then I all but abandoned it. Writing, too; I had so much promise as a writer, if many of my teachers and friends are to be believed. (Though I’ll admit I’m a bit afraid of what you’re thinking right now as you read this.) But I let both atrophy out of fear, and, I admit, a certain grounded pragmatism. The world doesn’t pay writers and musicians well, and in this country, not getting paid well almost always means living a more precarious life — one where your health and future are poker chips on the table.

Anyone who works for a living exists in a sort of limbo state: usually lacking fulfillment or stability in one or more key areas of their life, but unable to make the puzzle pieces fit just right and achieve homeostasis. I want to always appreciate the many things I’m fortunate to have right now, even as the things I don’t have loom large in the background. I believe it’s important to set goals, but the hardest part isn’t deciding what they are; it’s waking up every day and choosing to work toward them, all the while fully aware that you don’t have, and may never have, the things they point toward.

A big part of me still wants to make games. In fact, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few months. But the work I’ve found, creatively and intellectually rewarding as it is, has been inconsistent and unsustainable (someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this). I can’t keep this up forever. But what can you do? It’s hard out here.

Part 3: Place your faith and embrace the Void

The best game I played all year — the one and only game I deeply connected with — is Void Stranger. It is an experience that not many people I know shared with me, though they did their best to give it a fair shake. It’s been an important lesson for me, one that gets all tangled up in the ancient parts of my understanding of myself: I can like things that other people don’t like.

I would love nothing more than to write or speak for hours about how wonderful this game is, but I honestly don’t know that I’m up to the task lately. Thankfully, game composer and designer Lena Raine already did a stellar job of that.

Meanwhile, I did my best in our Game of the Year post, but as I was writing I realized this isn’t a game I can be very objective about. It found me and provided what I needed at just the right moment. Even its faults, which I’d be happy to enumerate, are at least interesting to me. It’s like when you go on a promising few dates with someone and realize they’re not just someone you like but something far more significant than that.

That’s what Void Stranger is to me: significant.

Void Stranger is a game about navigating a labyrinth. It’s also about a bunch of other things, many of which would be a shame to disclose up-front. But I can at least note that it’s heavily inspired by, if not outright allegorical to, Dante’s Divine Comedy. The above screenshot is a quote from Inferno, when Dante Alighieri and Virgil are wandering through the first circle of Hell, Limbo. This is — according to Wikipedia, because it’s been a million years since I read it — where the virtuous pagans resided. They were good, righteous people, but they were not Christian. Into the bin they went.

To be good but to not be deemed correct is maybe the root of all tragedy. I lived abroad in a good place, but it didn’t feel correct. I came back to a place that used to feel correct, but it no longer does. I’m working in a field I’ve always harbored a deep passion for, but it’s highly unlikely I’ll be able to sustain myself in this field. I’ve applied to grad school with a vague but genuine desire to do something completely different with my life, but my doubts grow as each day passes since I submitted my application. I’m most employable in an industry controlled by petulant would-be god-kings and a cabal of impossibly wealthy investors, most of whom have recently chosen to deprive hundreds of thousands of their workers of a livelihood in order to spike their share prices to stratospheric new heights.

I mention these things not as an attempt to garner woe-is-me sympathy but to illustrate several of the many dimensions that this condition of being separated from the building blocks of a fulfilling life can take. We have no hope and yet we live in longing.

Each of us dreams of certain things. Most of our dreams aren’t particularly outlandish. For me, it’s simple: deep, genuine, nourishing connections with different people; a lifestyle that grounds me in my body, my community, and my bioregion; and the means to find meaningful work and revitalizing play in the days ahead. I’ve had some of these things at various points in my life, yet I remained unfulfilled. Eventually, I found myself in a place where it seemed impossible that I would ever have them again. And so I deemed my life good but not correct.

When we get stuck, and when our dreams feel endangered, we can either sit tight and hope things get better or we can make the difficult decision to try something else.

I haven’t enjoyed playing video games because there’s a massive lack of resolution in my life right now, and games feel like a distraction at best. Many cornerstones of my life remain up in the air. And I recently came to understand that it’s not because they fly with their own wings but because I’m juggling them.

So I find myself in this bizarre situation where I love games — I care deeply about them, and I’m compelled to keep expressing myself in this medium — but I cannot find hope in them right now. I may need to look elsewhere.

One of the things I loved about my movie journey last year was how bountiful things felt. After so many years removed from this medium I loved, I had literally hundreds of films waiting for me that I was thrilled to finally see.

The games will be there whenever and however I’m ready to come back to them. But there’s a whole life out there that I want to bring shape and definition to, and it’s not going to happen unless I make it happen.

I don’t know where I’ll be writing next year’s update from or what I’ll be spending my days doing. But I know that, no matter how it looks or even feels sometimes, I’m not stuck anymore. The work is already happening. I’m already doing it.