Games I played in 2023
Well, I managed to post this about 2 weeks later than last year. I generally start writing in January, but it takes a while to make the time to put the thoughts down on paper. Another year, another list of games played, many on a laptop as I spent more time away from my desk in 2023 than I had in previous years. Not too much to say here so lets get into it:
1. Dwarf Fortress
The entrance to the fortress Torchriver
My early memories of playing the Dwarf Fortress steam release are like a fever dream because I had a fever. Delirious with my first bout of COVID-19 (having shunned people for two full years) I tried to watch as many videos as I could before purchasing the game. I still went in ignorant of so many systems. After 400 hours I have still yet to find any Adamantine. The learning curve on Dwarf Fortress is steep but the community is great, and the daily questions thread on the Dwarf Fortress subreddit was a great help.
Dwarf Fortress is a colony building simulator, you start with 7 Dwarfs and some supplies, you pick a place to embark and the you strike the earth and attempt to build a fortress. There are many things that prevent you from building the fortress you want, but by far the most dangerous is you yourself. I lost my first fortress when attempting to channel water underground, I learned that water can go through tiles diagonally and flooded the place completely.
There is a lot to dig into in this game. Crafting, economies, agriculture, politics, crime and punishment. The stories it generates are interesting, like the person who had a necromance get into their clothing factory (the necromancer was able to reanimate the wool as the game treats this as a deceased animal body part). The complex simulation often throws up interesting problems that you can try and solve, or just ignore and watch the chaos unfold. The first time a were-gecko arrived at my fort I ended up having to wall off my militia squad, carve arrow slits into the wall and then have my marks dwarves execute the poor infected dwarf when he transformed. Suffice to say everyone got traumatised and no one was happy.
Mebzuth, militia commander and certified bad ass
Dwarf Fortress is one of the few games I think I could play for several hours at a stretch. Normally I am done after an hour or two, but with Dwarf Fortress I think I could just keep going because there is always just one more job to do. Oh, I should finish those new bedrooms. And learn how to make musical instruments. And streamline the brewery operation. This was easily my most played game of 2023, representing 30% of my total time in steam (although some of that was probably alt tabbed). If you want something a bit more thoughtful, and fancy learning a heck of a lot of things (including some useful facts about geology) then Dwarf Fortress is well worth a look.
Check out this Dwarf Fortress interview by Noclip
2. Rocket League
The heyday of rocket league was a special time. We all sucked at the game, and I don’t think I have ever laughed as hard in front of a computer monitor as I did when we got six people together to play 3v3s. Rocket League is weird in 2023. Lousy with microtransactions yet they are completely ignorable. The game itself is still fantastic, easy to learn yet hard to master. The skill ceiling in rocket league is very high, so where in the past i have played ranked exclusively, i found myself just going for casual matches. In some ways this is harder as there are people in casual who a) won’t let you touch the ball and b) barely ever touch the ground. There are a few wrong ‘uns as well, abuse and toxicity seem to present in just about any multiplayer experience these days. In spite of this, I have a laugh in Rocket League, and it is not unusual to meet a random like minded player, party up and play together for an hour or so. I miss the old days of playing with mates, but I feel Rocket League is always worth dipping into now and again.
3. Project Zomboid
I played a lot of Project Zomboid in 2022, and I guess I did the same again in 2023. I don’t really have much more to say about it 12 months later. I am really looking forward to the B42 update. I played a bit of multiplayer in 2023, but I think I prefer it as a solo experience. Diving deeper into mods has helped keep the experience fresh for me. Mods like 10 Years later, and expanded helicopter events have changed the game enough to keep it fresh. And I still have not been to Louisville!
4. Dredge
In 2023 I went through an HP Lovecraft phase. Lovecraft is one of those authors who (like Wodehouse) I hear referenced all the time but who I have not read. Amazon Kindle offered me his complete works for a paltry sum, and I dove in. I quickly realised that what I had was a)just about everything he had ever published and b)in alphabetical order, so not really helpful if you did not know the work already. I skimmed bits and bobs, and read the stuff I had heard about. Cosmic horror written in the in 1920’s, suffice to say it was pretty racist stuff (here is a good article about it if you want to read more VOX - Lovecraftian horror — and the racism at its core — explained).
Dredge is a game I spent 20 highly enjoyable hours with. A fishing game with an engaging cosmic horror narrative attached, it has one of the most defined atmospheres to a game I have seen - a really well established sense of place. You potter around a series of islands in your small fishing boat, catching different types of fish, placing crab bots and occasionally dredging up things from the sea bed. A day night cycle linked to an insanity mechanic, and a host of weird NPC characters mean that you are planning your trips carefully and always have something to do.
Dredge is a game that to me is like Red Dead Redemption 2 in that I really enjoy just being in the world (although they could not be more different in scope and scale). I have not tried the DLC yet but will likely save that for a second play through at some point (hopefully when I have forgotten much of the game in a year or two).
5. Darkest Dungeon
To quote Billy Conolly, for me getting into Darkest Dungeon was like trying to get famous in America: “Bastards won’t let you do it.” I had tried on two separate occasions to get to grips with this game as I knew it was turn based and popular with the XCOM crowd. At the start I found it impenetrable. I did not really understand how to fight, and the YouTube tutorials I watched did not really help. I think reading Lovecraft (and finishing Dredge) were the things that spurred me back to have another go. As an aside, one of the things I have been looking for in games this year is ones that run well on a laptop. I have not always been in the same place as my PC, and having engrossing games available when away from home has been a godsend.
Once I got into Darkest Dungeon, I ended up playing solidly for 3 months and putting in over 100 hours. I will probably go back for another playthrough at some point, and the sequel will get checked out as well when I see it in the Steam sale. Darkest Dungeon is dripping with atmosphere. It pours out of the game in the writing, the narration and the art. Bleak and impressive, it still compels you to press on to the end of the well written story. Urged on by your ancestor cum narrator, you must undertake visits to a series of dungeons to unpick the mystery of what is happening to the crumbling estate you have inherited. All of the Lovecraft tropes are here and well deployed - cosmic horror, abominable fish people, ancient horrors and occult practice.
What took me time to learn was how to use and build your party. Stacked in a row of four, each member has a role to play and there are plenty of synergies between the 18 available hero classes. Once I started to understand the mechanics of the combat, reading further on Reddit started to make the whole thing make sense. In addition to fighting enemies you must also manage the mental health of your heroes. Too much stress may yield unpredictable results, some good, some catastrophic. Managing your resources and your troupes stress while facing encounter after encounter of deformed monstrous enemies is topped off by the narration. "Monstrous size has no intrinsic merit. Unless overexsanguination be considered a virtue." The Narrator is ever quotable. So yes, lots of fun to be had here. I did not get all of the DLC yet so will hopefully revisit this one again in the future.
6. Vampire survivors
I would like to think that I am rarely a passenger aboard the hype train. I often listen to podcasts where people describe wildly popular games, yet find myself coming to them a year or two later. With Vampire Survivors I started playing maybe 4 months after it became popular (and at the urgings of Russ). It did not hurt that this was yet another game that ran well on a laptop.
This was my first ASS (auto survival shooter) game, as I suspect it was for many people. The game has you navigating a character through levels as you spew bullets (automatically) and select power ups whilst dodging vast hordes of enemies. I read (or heard) that the creator had previously worked in creating online casino apps and wanted to apply some of the same design principles of dopamine reward design to a video game. In that, he was successful.
That being said, I did not fall as deep into Vampire Survivors as other people did. I failed to kill death, i think i stopped at the first roadblock hard level and did not move forwards. Maybe I was hampered by not looking up builds online, maybe I wasn't motivated enough to do so. I feel like I had a fun 20 hours with the game, and got around half of the achievements (if that is any metric for progress). I would like to try some more ASS games in the future, maybe the Deep Rock Galactic one.
7. Battle brothers
This one came out of left field for me. It is my second most played game of 2023, with 200+ hours. Yet another game that runs pretty well on a laptop. I think i had it recommended to me by Steam based on my past interest (obsession? -Ed.) with XCOM. Battle brothers in a turn based hex grid strategy game with a meta layer of trading and faction management. You are in charge of a mercenary outfit in a mid fantasy world. Mid fantasy because while the vibes are game of thrones, there are still Orcs, Giant spiders, magical crones and other fantastical foes to fight.
This game is hard. Like PC games of the 90’s hard. I have spent all this time with it and I still feel like I barely understand how to play. Reading the subreddit does not seem to help either, as they are all obsessed with Fat Newts (Fatigue Neutral characters) and I would not recognize one. So I play on the easiest difficulty settings and the game still kicks may ass all over the map. Your job in the game is to build up a mercenary company, take contracts, win renown, get rich and retire. As you recruit brothers to your company (henceforth referred to as bros) you become attached to them, and of course they can get injured, crippled or perma-die.
Each battle is about several things - positioning your bros, supporting each other, melee defence and morale, etc etc. Each enemy has a certain approach needed, and the process of trial and error is long and bloody. What amazes me about the game is that even if you run company for 200 days, beat a late game crisis, have a full roster of battle hardened bros with good gear… you can still get hammered and annihilated in a fight you thought that you could win, destroying your company and ending your run. I think Battle Brothers may be the most frustrating game that I played in 2023, yet it kept me coming back. I will probably play it again this year. Who knows, maybe I will even improve?
8. Horizon zero dawn
It is great to see the Sony first party releases making their way to PC, even if we have to wait a year or two. The next big thing in open world games is likely to be GTA 6, and I am sure the PC folks like myself will have to wait 12 months for that one as well. Hoping to scratch the open world itch, I spent almost 30 hours with Horizon. Unfortunately I bounced off it pretty hard.
The world is beautiful and richly detailed. The running around is fun. Harvesting robotic prehistoric megafauna is interesting, it is far from mindless point and shoot stuff. Yet I think this is maybe what drove me away. Having to keep track of the different elemental weaknesses, what weapons I had, what resources I had, what resources I needed… it rapidly came to feel like a chore to play. I thought the story was good (but not good enough to force me through what I did not like abo
ut the game), the characters well rendered. Maybe this is one I will go back to at a later date (although i said the same about Middle Earth: Shadow of war, but have not touched it since 2018). Perhaps I have been spoiled by open world games such as Red Dead Redemption 2. I certainly found the side activities in that more engaging than in Horizon.I am glad a tried this game, but I am not sure if I will go back. A great game is in there, but it is not for me.
9. MechWarrior 5 mercenaries
The Battletech franchise was always going to be well set up to take advantage of computer games. Created as military sci-fi in the 80’s to accompany a tabletop wargame of the same name, in this future planets and factions settle their disputes by going to war in giant walking machines with individual pilots: Mechs. I have read more of the Battletech books than I care to admit here (there are 154 in total), and whilst some are good, many are not. The HBS Battletech game is my second most played according to Steam (I think Company of Heroes might beat it overall but my time with that largely predated Steam). So I am pretty familiar with the world and its systems.
So I was surprised when I found it really hard to get into Mechwarrior 5. My mistake was trying to play on an Xbox controller. I was having trouble lining up the most simple shots, and straight up had a bad time. Switching to mouse and keyboard for my second attempt to play (I purchased it in 2022), it was like switching on a light switch - suddenly everything made sense and I had a great time.
Similar to HBS Battletech, in this game you are setting up a mercenary company and travelling around the inner sphere and periphery taking contracts, salvaging mechs, hiring pilots and trying to get good. The game is semi tactical - you can wade in guns blazing, but if you want to play smarter you can - staying at range, ordering your lance mates around to daw fire or engage different groups. On my first run through the campaign I skipped mods but for a later career mode, mods like WAR FX and AI enhancements improved the experience dramatically. Also a shoutout to the YAML (Yet Another Mech Lab) mods that seriously expand mech customisation and chassis.
Even in vanilla though, I had a really good time with MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries. It's odd because I would say objectively Horizon Zero dawn is probably a better game. I think the mindless violence of MechWarrior, soundtracked by butt rock guitars, is just what I was looking for. Stomping across a lunar surface at top speed with 90 degree torso twist as you ripple fire SRMS into an opposing mech is just good dumb fun, and I am here for it.
10. Read Dead Online
I just read last years post and apparently I did not play Read Dead Redemption 2: Online (RDO) in 2022. I could have sworn that I dip into it around once a year, but there you go. The older you get the less reliable your memory becomes. RDO is at this point abandonware, the unloved second child or Rockstar Games who constantly lavish attention and updates on its older, more successful sibling, 2013’s GTA5. Yet RDO provides a richer online experience in may ways, despite not having had a serious update in years now.
Something about the world of RDO is just pleasant to spend time in. I could not really recommend RDO to other players as a great experience. It works for me, and I made it work better for me by blocking some ports on my firewall. This means that when I play RDO I am in a solo lobby without any other players, just leaving me in the world by myself. Sounds crazy right? There are a couple of good reasons to do this.
By and large the RDO player base are cool people. Tip your hat at another player as you pass on the street and you will likely get a wave in return. If a player sees you working with your hunting wagon, they might just drop off a nice carcass for you. However a small percentage are innately hostile and will shoot on site. Griefers. RDO tries ato address this with features like parley mode and passive mode, but they don’t do it for me - I would rather remove the griefer element altogether. Another benefit of the solo lobby is the legendary animal system - they spawn more frequently if you are the only person on the server.
The gameplay loop of a solo RDO lobby is pretty basic. Log on and check the daily tasks, decide what you want to do. Do some hunting fro Cripps around your camp (in a solo lobby you can pretty much pick your precise camp location). Maybe do some bounties or treasure hunting, perhaps tasks for Harriet the Naturalist. Within an hour you are done. It is about the least stressful game I have played, and that world is a fun one to relax in.
11. Xcom chimera squad
Another game snapped up in a Steam sale and consigned to the backlog. My love of XCOM started with the 2013 Enemy Unknown and since then I have played loads, including the Long War, Long War Rebalance, and Long War of the Chosen mods. According to Steam, that is over 1,300 hours of XCOM. Going in, I knew Chimera squad was going to be different. Gone are the guerrilla warfare tactics, in their place is a SWAT style breach and clear assault game. Chimera Squad are a law enforcement unit on post invasion earth comprised of human and alien members. Think Alien Nation meets the SWAT films and you get the idea.
I found this to be a perfectly serviceable XCOM game, but after 24 hours of play time I was done without the need to go back to it. The campaign is fine, and I find the reuse of assets from the first two games to be both nostalgic and (hopefully) a smart money saving move. The meta layer is interesting but not engrossing, and the witty dialogue between team members gives the game a Saturday afternoon cop show feel. I’m glad I played it, I had an ok time, but next time I feel the XCOM itch I will be back to XCOM Enemy Within Long War Rebalance - maybe the best XCOM has ever been for me.
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