Elijah Gonzalez is Paste’s assistant TV editor and a regular contributor to our games section. Today he shares his personal picks for the top 10 games of 2023.
2023 is coming to a close, and in many ways, it feels like another nightmare year in a long procession of nightmare years. Beyond the dire headlines elsewhere, journalism and media criticism continued its financial tailspin in the games sphere, resulting in numerous outlets being gutted or closed down for good. Meanwhile, droves of talented devs were laid off even though we just finished writing all those headlines about how game publishers have been printing money for the last few years. Yes, I understand how ongoing inflation and interest rates work and why the bean counters claim they needed to cull their workforces in response to these forces, but it’s not hard to envision a different videogame landscape where instead of allowing shareholders to gorge on profits until they’ve completely sucked marrow from the bone, some of that money could, you know, be set aside so the developers who brought in those profits don’t need to be fired when there’s mild financial headwinds?
However, while it’s myopic to only look at the quality of game releases to determine how “good” things were for the medium, it’s still very much worth celebrating the great work people did, as this was undeniably a very impressive year for videogame releases. One of the best many have claimed, specifically regarding the marquee titles that managed to unite playing habits across increasingly disparate media diets. We had plenty of sequels that more than delivered on long-building anticipation, unexpected success stories, and an untold number of smaller projects doing interesting things that probably won’t receive the full attention they deserve. I played some of these games. As always, not as many as I would have liked, but still quite a few. Some of them hit on a deep level, immersing me in spell-binding mysteries, horrific hellscapes, or cultural circumstances that came from the heart. In others, I played as a little guy who ran around, which was also very fun and sorely needed. Let’s dive into the games that have me yelling from the rooftops, “Please play this weird little indie and/or large release you probably already know about!”
(Also, congrats to Baldur’s Gate III, which I’ll preemptively name my favorite “2023 Game of 2024.” It’s been in my Steam library for months, but I haven’t gotten a chance to check it out yet. Hopefully, I’ll get to know that vampire elf twink soon enough.)
10. Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo
Considering the overwhelming number of games released every year, there will always be plenty that don’t get the attention they deserve. I’m not exactly sure how well it performed, but the general lack of chatter about Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo makes me worry it falls into this camp. It’s a horror-tinged adventure game/visual novel that uses metatextual tricks and a well-constructed central mystery to subvert expectations. While I’ll avoid specifics, I’ll just say that director Takanari Ishiyami’s previous work on Metal Gear Solid and a long line of detective games is apparent in this one’s clever mechanical and narrative twists. Beyond these cerebral turns, this narrative lands thanks to its ability to convincingly mix tragedy and the macabre with anime-style earnestness, resulting in a unique tonal blend that feels like it was brewed with my personal preferences in mind. If you enjoy horror and visual novels, please check out this dang videogame.
9. A Space for the Unbound
One of the best trends in the modern videogame industry is that it feels like works from all over the world are finally getting their due, allowing developers to tell stories about their own specific cultural experiences. An excellent example is A Space for the Unbound, a narrative-focused adventure game from Mojiken Studio set in ‘90s Indonesia that uses gorgeous pixel art and a cast of sympathetic characters to paint an achingly particular picture of this time and place. We follow Atma and Raya, two high schoolers who uncover a strange phenomenon that threatens their small town. Over the course of this story, it’s hard not to internalize every corner of this neighborhood, from the local arcade full of Street Fighter references to a bridge foregrounded against an impossibly vibrant sky, these backdrops dripping with nostalgic details that make them feel pulled from memory. However, more than just delivering an idealized vision of the past, this well-rendered setting ties us to the emotional journey of its cast, building towards reveals about the dark sentiments lingering in their hearts. It may be a slow burn early on, but it all culminates in a powerful climax that thoughtfully handles depictions of mental health issues like depression, making for one of the most moving finales in recent memory.
8. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed
I didn’t play many games that weren’t released this year, but I’m glad I made time for what turned out to be my 2022 GOTY, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which struck a chord through its heavy dosage of anime nonsense and surprisingly thoughtful digressions on the necessity of tearing down regressive political systems. Future Redeemed is a DLC expansion set before the events of the base game, but it manages to transcend the perfunctory aspects of most add-ons and prequels. By following a crew of freedom fighters who we know won’t be the ones to right this world for good, it becomes an affecting tale about the heroism of contributing to a cause you won’t see the fruits of directly. Through its cast of loveable goofballs and ability to build on the previous game’s themes, Future Redeemed lived up to the legacy of its predecessor, and became one of my top 10 games of 2023.
7. Venba
Despite hearing heaps of praise about it in advance, Venba still knocked me on my ass. This story celebrates Tamil culture through its cuisine, following Venba as she assembles dishes from a damaged cookbook and half-forgotten memories. The food looks delicious, and the accompanying soundtrack is a delightful sonic snapshot of the past, but what surprised me most was the rawness of this immigrant family’s experiences. Specifically, we witness how discrimination and cultural pressures create tensions between our protagonist and her son Kavin, as the former struggles to understand her child, and the latter pushes his parents away to “fit in.” While there are plenty of universal overtures to this intergenerational tale, these specific frictions rang painfully true with aspects of my own upbringing (in my case, with my grandparents) and helped me work through lingering baggage in a way that few games do. Venba is a testament to the power of stories about personal cultural experiences, and here’s hoping for more that are just as granular and beautifully told.
6. Super Mario Wonder
As a big fan of platformers, I have a somewhat blasphemous confession. Although many 3D Mario titles rank highly among my all-time favorites, the series’ 2D entries have rarely resonated with me in the same way. Maybe it’s the long shadow of the repetitive New Super Mario Bros. era, but up until now, I would have taken a twitch platformer like Super Meat Boy or Celeste over the mustachioed plumber’s side-scrolling outings almost every time. However, despite this bias, I was utterly smitten with Super Mario Wonder. At its core, it feels plucked from a parallel universe of game design. While most releases from big publishers attempt to monopolize your time by building out increasingly massive worlds filled with repetitive tasks, by contrast, this one prioritizes hand-crafted novelty above all else. In any given area, I wasn’t sure if I’d be subject to a musical number, genre-shifting shenanigans, or whatever other psychedelic daydream, resulting in playful, out-of-the-box sequences that left me entranced. It’s probably the most condensed fun I’ve had with a game this year and a rare case where I was compelled to reach 100% completion.
5. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
Piloting death-dealing mechs is a classic videogame power fantasy, but there’s something different about how they come across in Armored Core VI. An obvious point of differentiation is that the Cores are smaller and faster than many giant robots found elsewhere, manifesting in eyeball-melting displays of afterburner ballet as you weave between missile barrages, lasers, and gleaming plasma while pressing what seems like every single button on your controller. But even beyond this, these machines are distinct because they feel disconcertingly alive. As you plunge deeper into Rubicon’s depths and do things you may not be able to take back, the cockpit slowly subsumes the pilot, irreversibly melding flesh and steel into a single being of mass murder. Are the Augmented Humans still in control as they pull the trigger, or have they been lost in a tangled nest of circuitry? Although FromSoft’s works are frequently about going from an unimpressive nobody to the most powerful person in all creation, there is salience to how Fires of Rubicon implicates the player in the pursuit of perfected violence for profit. Whether it was the hours I spent tinkering with mechs or the thrill of finally deploying my creations to the field, I was pulled into this world of corporate-sponsored killings in a way that’s difficult to forget, which is why this is one of my top 10 games of 2023.
4. Misericorde: Volume One
As good as 2023 was for videogame releases, particularly at the AAA level, I couldn’t help but compare it to last year’s lineup of brainworm indies such as Signalis, Citizen Sleeper, or Norco, which stuck with me long after credits rolled. Thankfully, Misericorde, a visual novel set in a 15th-century convent, helped fill this gap. Like those previously mentioned works, this one completely absorbed me in its setting, eventually resulting in a desperate search for similar stories to help alleviate the painful wait for its next chapter. By fully entrenching us in the brutal circumstances of an anchoress forced to leave her cell and help solve a murder, it interrogates the biases, worldviews, and hypocrisies of its monastic backdrop. In the process, it establishes a cast of characters who prove just as complex as its political machinations, making it difficult to pinpoint the killer while also ratcheting up the tension over who they might target next. Misericorde’s nuanced protagonist and well-crafted milieu make it one of the most sharply written games of the year.
3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Like many people, Breath of the Wild left a mark for me as it broke from open-world trends and delivered a rare space worth getting fully lost in. It’s difficult to capture that same sense of discovery twice, but Tears of the Kingdom pulled it off. Despite using the same map as the previous game, it filled in details with subterranean caves, secrets hidden in the clouds, and a massive stygian underworld. This revamped setting paired perfectly with the ability to engineer rudimentary vehicles to explore these nooks and crannies, further stoking the freeform creativity at the heart of this journey. And perhaps it was due to my lingering attachment to this backdrop, but I also felt much more emotionally invested in the well-being of the people who lived here, my time spent scouring Hyrule’s cliffsides, deserts, and valleys establishing this as a place I wanted to help preserve—and making Tears of the Kingdom one of the top 10 games of 2023.
2. Alan Wake 2
Alan Wake 2 is one of this year’s critical darlings, and it’s easy to see why. In an era where expensive games are increasingly limited to narrow archetypes, it feels like a complete aberration, defined by gonzo aesthetics and concentrated dosages of strangeness that are diametrically opposed to what’s commonly found at the top of the sales charts. It confidently uses visual language to mix campy live-action footage with striking imagery, resulting in captivating sights: the blurry vision of a railroad tunnel bleeding into a forest, illusory faces haunting impossible backdrops, shadows calling out against a neon-backlit rendition of NYC. Not only do its aesthetics feel novel, but so does the entire thrust of its narrative, which folds in on itself as we delve deeper into the looping logic of this postmodern nightmare. It captures anxieties about the unforeseen consequences of art and externalizes the alienating sensation of being a character in someone else’s story. And while its many self-referential touches threaten to devolve into navel-gazing, it grounds us enough in Saga and Alan’s journeys to keep things on track. It’s the culmination of Remedy’s house style, a honed beam of oddball energy that reminds us that big games can still be about anything we imagine, and one of the top 10 games of 2023.
1. Street Fighter 6
As the series that ostensibly created fighting games, a new Street Fighter is always a big deal for genre aficionados. Street Fighter 6 readily met this hype, placating a discerning audience by offering nearly everything we could have asked for. The latest entry marries the deliberate pace the franchise is known for with clever new mechanics, like its ingenious meter system, which creates tactically deep pressure cooker matches. I’ve already put in over 200 hours and look forward to learning more of its intricacies in 2024. And beyond its appeal to fellow FGC sickos, this is undoubtedly the best the series has ever been at onboarding newcomers, with a meaty single-player mode that doubles as an extended tutorial and the Modern control scheme, which lowers execution barriers.
However, perhaps its single biggest distinguishing characteristic compared to other big-budget fighting games is how it reduces the little frictions that add up over time. Its online play delivers smooth matches through one of the best implementations of rollback netcode we’ve seen, it has a robust training mode, its ranked progression systems are generally well-designed, there’s crossplay, you can queue matches from just about anywhere, and so on. Although some of these bells and whistles sound minor, their absence has slowly killed my enjoyment when playing many of its peers. Through its tense core gameplay, roster full of memorable newcomers, ambitious story mode, and abundance of well-considered features, Street Fighter 6 has set a new bar for the genre and opened the door for newcomers in the process.
For more year-end coverage, check out games editor Garrett Martin’s top 10 games of 2023, assistant games editor Moises Taveras’ top 10 games of 2023, and Paste’s best games of 2023.
Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves videogames, film, and creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.