Despite lay-offs and the end of a gaming mainstay, 2023 was a year filled with brilliant video games.
Gamers have been spoiled for choice in 2023.
The past 12 months have produced so many hits you’d have struggled to complete half of them, let alone all of them.
That did not necessarily mean a good year across the whole industry: thousands of staff in hundreds of companies lost their jobs, and we also witnessed the permanent end of E3, the massive conference that was once the biggest event in the gaming calendar.
In such an eventful year it is easy to lose track – so here are some of the biggest games of 2023.Baldur’s Gate 3
This role-playing game stunned players and critics with its depth – many players easily racked up 100-plus hours in the Forgotten Realms, the Dungeons & Dragons-based setting for the game.
The level of detail, vast customisation options, and flexible story impressed critics most: Belgian developer Larian made it possible to experience a completely different set of characters and choices each time you play.
Read more: What was it like to act in Baldur’s Gate 3?
Few were surprised when, in December, it picked up Game of the Year at the gaming industry’s biggest awards ceremony – but it wasn’t an outcome many would have foreseen at the start of the year.
« Baldur’s Gate 3 was an unexpected success that took the world by storm, » said gaming journalist Helen Ashcroft.
« There’s a strong narrative, choices that matter, a beautiful open world, an incredible score and voice acting, interesting and varied quests, and so many different ways to play and story threads to explore. »The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
When the rest of the world said that Nintendo’s handheld console, the Switch, was too old to impress, the Japanese company said: « Just watch this. »
Tears of the Kingdom is a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, which is considered one of the best games of all time. This new game took the original’s vast open world and added the ability – called ultrahand – to craft contraptions by fusing together pretty much anything you can find.
That sort of freedom usually terrifies developers because it creates so much room for things to go wrong. But it worked, despite the ageing Switch hardware.
« Ultrahand is one of the best additions to the series and the things we can make with it are hilarious and useful, » says Scottish Twitch streamer Argick.
« There’s so much to do in the game and you can do it in pretty much any order you want without the game trying to push you elsewhere – I’ve still got to explore the rest of the depths. »Alan Wake 2
Just when we thought triple-A games were becoming safe and stale, along comes Alan Wake 2.
It is a bit like Finnish studio Remedy’s previous leftfield works, but with an extra layer of weirdness splodged on top.
The supernatural horror narrative, told through the eyes of two main characters, made a lasting impression. The sumptuous presentation, mix of gameplay and live action, and wider themes made it feel like one of a kind.
