Greetings, patrons!

Anyone who knows me knows that I play mostly older games and I’m hesitant to jump into the brand-new hotness. Thus, it should come as little surprise that my list of games for 2023 is mostly stuff that was released in or prior to 2022.

Games I Played in 2023

This section is for games that I played without using mods (or MOSTLY without using mods) and that are the “newest” of the bunch, being mostly 2022/2023 releases.

Gotham Knights

I wanted to LOVE this game. The concept is superb — Batman is dead, and his closest assistants (Tim Drake/Robin, Barbara Gordon/Batgirl, Dick Grayson/Nightwing, Jason Todd/Red Hood) have to become Gotham’s new protectors. However, the “live service” approach to this game drags it down into the dust.

The basic gameplay is fairly mid, but it does have some of the elements that made the other Batman games great; fluid combat, detective sections, and stealth. However, none of this really comes together. The story is fine (I enjoyed all the reveals even if some of them were heavily telegraphed), and the animations/framerate seemed to work fine on my (admittedly top-end) PC.

What kills this game is the fucking grind. To improve your gear, you need materials, some of which is rarer than others. All of your basic items have both a level and a rarity, meaning you spend way too much time hoping for just the right quality gear to drop at your level. The grind it awful, especially once you complete the main story and you’re just cruising around Gotham looking for random crimes to solve.

My recommendation: Do not buy.

Solasta: Crown of the Magister

This game is quite fun if you love D&D. You get to make characters for your entire party (maximum of 4 people) and there’s some cutscene events that take your choices into account. 

However, do not mistake this for a Larian-style engrossing RPG. There’s just a thin coating of story over the mechanics of D&D 5e. It’s enough story to be enjoyable, but barely. Often, I had to force myself to care about things going on in the world.

The gameplay is pretty good, and it actually reinforces the idea that light is crucial to fighting effectively in D&D 5e. There’s a nifty little mechanic about faction reputation that helps you acquire better gear, though it is confusing (I recommend using a guide).

I’ve played through the majority of the main campaign about three times, but never finished it. Largely because I discovered I had made an unfix-able error with the reputations of the factions for the gear I wanted.

My recommendation: Buy on sale, don’t expect a lot out of it.

Sniper Elite 5

Full disclosure: I’m a huge fan of this franchise. I’ve been playing it seriously since Sniper Elite 3 and I believe that 5 is the best entry in this series by far. Sniper Elite uses stealth and shooting mechanics and largely involves you, as the sniper Karl Fairburne, killing the hell out of lots and lots of Nazis during WW2.

The variety in weapons, ammunition, modifications to the weapons, the gear you bring on your loadout (ranging from bandages to land mines) means that you can play this game in very different ways on each playthrough. You can go loud and proud, or super-sneaky, or a mix of the two, or challenge yourself to use only melee or non-lethal means to clear the map.

Sniper Elite 5 also added an amazing new mode where other players can invade your game as a German sniper, trying to kill you while you’re trying to accomplish your mission. It changed everything about the way I play through a map and the tension when you are invaded is amazing. The maps are great, too!

My recommendation: Absolutely buy it, with all the DLC.

Wrath of the Righteous

Owlcat is one of my favorite studios making games today, and they’ve knocked it out of the park with Wrath of the Righteous. Their previous game, Kingmaker, is one of my favorite RPGs of the past few years, and Wrath is right up there with it. Wrath of the Righteous uses Pathfinder as the system behind all the characters and combat, making it very familiar to D&D enthusiasts.

Like Sniper Elite 5, there’s many different ways to play Wrath of the Righteous. The sheer variety of characters you can build is staggering–there’s over a hundred different class/subclass combinations! Plus, there are the “Mythic Paths,” an overlay of themed abilities you can pick up that are divided into six or seven different choices.

The story in this game is very good, and the companions are largely excellent. I’ve played all the way through this game three times so far, and I wouldn’t mind going again for a different mythic path (I’ve done Angel twice and Trickster once and I’m tempted to go again with Angel).

Lastly, there are some pretty sweet mods out there. One of my favorites turns your character into an Isekai Protagonist (which can be hilarious).

My recommendation: Absolutely buy it, with all the DLC.

Mods Breathe New Life into Old Games

I’ll admit it; I like using mods. Some games (like Fallout 4) are really only fun for me if I can mod the hell out of them. Other games (like XCOM 2) benefit greatly from combining numerous mods to the point where it feels like an entirely new game.

Fallout: New Vegas

This game is a goddamn classic from top to bottom. However, it’s also over ten years old. That means what makes this game worth playing today are all the amazing mods that are available for it.

Here’s a list of the mods I used last year to play Fallout: New Vegas:

• A World of Pain: Adds tons of new locations, new quests, new gear, new enemies to fight. Absolutely awesome.
• The Someguy Series: The New Vegas Bounties adventures are worth an entire DLC on their own. Someguy also has additional quests, followers, and locations that are an auto-include for me whenever I want to play some Fallout: New Vegas.
• Willow: Simply the best companion available as a mod.
• The High Desert and The Road North: Hilarious questlines and new areas! Strongly recommended.
• New Vegas Stories: This mod adds some ambient quests and NPCs you encounter throughout the Mojave. It doesn’t impact your playthrough as much as the other mods because it feels like a natural extension of what’s already in the game.
• Headhunting: A fun bounty-based series of side quests.
• Underground Hideout New Vegas V4-4: Amazing player home mod.

Battletech

This is an older game that I enjoyed a lot, but I felt like I had mastered it to the point it was boring to play. Then, I heard about a mod called BTA: 3062.

BTA 3062 is one of those mods that makes the entire game feel fresh and new. It adds TONS of new battlemechs and expands the mech bay to where you can customize many different aspects of your lance. In fact, BTA 3062 offers you something really impressive: you can field an entire COMPANY of mechs, up to 12 plus 4 battle armor squads. That’s huge!

This mod expands the map, adds new factions, adds new missions, adds special pilots, adds gameworlds and gameworld duel contracts, adds new weapons, new armor, just on and on and on. I’m so damn impressed with this mod I ended up writing a couple of fan guides for it as I sunk dozens of hours into Battletech playing through all the content. I’m still playing this game when I need a break.

Your Video Games of 2023?

If you would, please take a moment to let me know some of the games you played last year, and if any of them stood out as good, bad, or indifferent.