Oh crystal ball, tell me when the years are less black. In front of the horror theatre where every year seeks to surpass the previous one in terms of atrocities, fortunately that there are still virtual refuges to escape. MaG's team is back on the safe 2023-year-old industry values Made in garage AAA production. Hasard of calendars, this year the video game bomb his torso more than ever. As if there was a need to explore other possibilities. 2023 has everything a tour de force where the genres decline to infinity. Are we living the crazy years of video game? We share our revelations, heartbeats and expectations for 2024. For newcomers, do not hesitate to flirt between the links of our critics so as not to miss anything from this extraordinary year.
Contents
KillerS7ven balance sheet
WHAT IS YOUR RESENT FOR THE YEAR 2023 IN THE IMPITOYABLE WORLD OF JV?
The video game is one of the cultural works that most sustain nostalgia, if not the reactionary fiber of players convinced that the golden age is over. « Ah, that was better before! » They said. Really? With the deluge of late years, however, it was no longer known where to lead the editorial staff. There were for all tastes with very large sizes like Baldurs Gate, Final Fantasy, Zelda, Starfield, Super Mario Wonder, Alan Wake 2 not to mention the wonderful remakes of System Shock and Resident Evil 4. Some studios like From Software have even come back to their first loves with the excellent rubbish Armored Core VI, from their comfort zone dark soul Like.
On the inde side, it was also a tidal wave with sacred surprises like Hi-fi Rush, Chants of Sennaar, Cocoon, Viewfinder And I'm passing by. In many ways the year 2023 was indecent as the proposals were numerous for the pleasure of the players but to the great damn of the studios dedicated to scarf to find a window of visibility in an overloaded release calendar. With such a carbble, there is no doubt that there should be victims in the next accounting report. How many dollars spent to appear a few seconds in the Game Awards, you know this ceremony even more fake than Cyril Hanouna's set.
This new edition was illustrated by its mercantile side which frustrated indecency. The pastry cardboard decor of these oscars of the poor was still frightful with a video of the show where an indecent countdown ended with a « Please wrap it up ». Elegant. Industry stakeholders are complaining on the networks, while advertising campaigns and the star system had – they – gable on the street. Josh Sawyer in charge of Obsidian studio (Feeling, Pillars of Eternity, etc.) split with an incendiary tweet against the practice of the Game Awards and the lack of respect of men behind the works celebrated by Geoff Keighley. If the video game matures over the years, its promotional framework is increasingly stinking. So little by little we talk more about the games of a particular creator, there is still a business way to make the authors aware of their work.
WHAT IS YOUR YEAR'S DECEPTION?
My first disappointment is me... I wish I had taken more time to launch the last one. Zelda and Alan Wake 2, two games I was looking forward to. I will not fail to catch the shot in 2024 when I return from my traditional winter adventures, far from the Alsatian cold. Otherwise, it may be a counter-current opinion but if we talk about disappointment, I think without hesitation about Sea of Stars which has done – something rare – to pick up before the platitude of its history as its soporific and redundant mechanics.
Nostalgia has a good back: certainly the game of Sabotage takes the formula of the great JRPG of the 1990s but he never manages to touch what made their essence. I was so eager to love him, I who praised their previous game The Messenger, spatio-temporal journey between the 8 and 16 bit eras combining humor, daring and chiseled gameplay. With Sea of Stars, I had to grieve after about ten hours of play. It's not enough to swing a licked art pixel to seduce the old breakers of the JRPG, yet you have to have a coredesign worthy of that name? But did the developers really have something to tell?
WHAT ARE THE 5 GAMES THAT YOU RETIRED THIS YEAR?
As announced from the beginning of the game, difficult to decide without having played all the above games, something difficult to reconcile for who has a semblance of social life. First, I keep excellent remakes. Resident Evil 4 and its decomplexed DLC Separate Ways Remember how a game of nearly twenty years old still holds the high dracée of contemporary GST, not to say that it exceeds them in terms of rhythm and gross pleasure. The DLC with Ada even gave hope for a new and new episode that would teach us more about its history. It would already be more original than a remake of Resident Evil 5.
Among the quality changes, we must salute the road taken by Square Enix for a while. The remake of Star Ocean is the very example of the right student in this field. Triangle Strategy and Live a Live had already placed the cursor very high. By choosing again a graphic bias between nostalgia and modernity, the developers managed to transcribe part of the charm of the PlayStation era. The artistic direction is full of details and the colours shine on Switch Oled. The system of fighting and personalization of characters enjoys a crazy wealth that should delight system lovers. Beautiful, rich and playful, Star Ocean can easily get among the best JRPGs of the year!
At the height of summer, I also enjoyed the last Armored Core directed by From Software. Before it was updated that it was said to be fared with its double shotgun bursting as said by Ummagumma, I took a crazy pleasure to go through the game at full speed. The title guarantees a full-bodied challenge: action. Without time dead, demanding and visually beautiful, it's the slap that nobody expected. Devilly addictive, Armored Core have possessed the author of these lines who finished the main campaign in just a few days with as high as twenty-five hours of play in two and a half days. The sign of memorable works?
With its rich colour palette and texture flats, Cocoon succeeds immediately in imposing his style. One likes to evolve in its fantastic universes where puzzles chain with flexibility unique to the great games. The gameplay is declined until its concept is exhausted. Every world is interconnected inside and outside could be said. Shining both in form and in substance, Cocoon Reappropriate some elements that made Playdead's success while opening its own path. All the wealth of Cocoon comes from his ability to communicate his worlds with the player. The game speaks to us in silence and we have to listen to it. The mark of instant classics.
And if we had to give in to the dictatorship of the top, Cocoon would be elbow to elbow with Super Mario Wonder who pays for the luxury of playing with his own grammar. Kind of like the first in the class who would challenge himself. On form, Super Mario Wonder He's been dreaming about Mario 2D for ages. With this new opus completely freed from the legacy of the world's best-known plumber, Nintendo proves that he is perfectly capable of joking players' habits, even with his flagship mascots. After Zelda Breath of the Wild who renewed the frankness, Super Mario Wonder in this same perspective, where the only horizon is that of unbridled imagination. Each level equals an idea. Even if the game presents a superficial challenge, Nintendo is on the right track to give new impetus to its queen franchises.
WHAT IS YOUR COUPABLE PLEASURE?
If GTFO I had made the nose bleed in terms of difficulty Last year, it is another horror game that will have captured about thirty hours. And yes, Aliens Dark Descent is a formidable game in its last mode of difficulty that should make the most experienced masochists cry. Damn it's hard, but what a video game experience for any fan of the franchise Alien. We rarely felt as threatened as James Cameron's overarmed marine squad. You can switch from a controlled situation to an expeditious Game over. As good old Ash said, « I won't lie to you about your chances of survival, but... you have my sympathy... ».
When I was almost 33, I finally really played a Killers Creed. Will I die less stupid? Not sure. So far, I had been quite hermetic to the franchise despite very real qualities to transcribe an era until the smallest architectural detail. It was inadvertently that I found myself playing ten hours in a row. Assassins Creed Mirage, squatting the couch of a friend affected by a phase of trembling. Beautiful prowess for my part, while I do not especially hold Ubisoft in my heart (euphemism). Then, of course, the game session was not completely sober (hum) but it is necessary to return to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.
Despite its assisted gameplay and its pot-de-colle climb, the city is splendid and I took on the game of « relay » between two game over. To my surprise, exploration is much less dictated by an intrusive HUD and its indicators for the blind who were so prone to irritating in the presentations of Watch Dogs and co. We are given information that we must take advantage of by observing places like the last Zelda. And it makes immersion much more natural, even if it gets lost in the desert.
Open-world obliges, one can obviously do the guignol and it's all the more fun with the stupid AI ofKillers Creed, signature of Ubisoft for too long (coucou Far Cry). Nothing like throwing a corpse over his next victim before jumping on him like a jaguar ambushed. A technique that has proved its worth among the most respected assassin Bedouins. Since we're on the bench of confessions, playing a pompette will have allowed us to cross all Baghdad and its surroundings – on the back of a dromedary please – to find broken shrapnel in the four corners of the desert. It's also confusing the main objective with the auxiliary quests... Yes, my guilty pleasure is to have gone through the whole map.Killers Creed For no reason. All this to win an outfit out of an unlikely marriage between Dead Space and Destiny, chic to 9nd of course.
WHAT ARE YOUR ATTENTS FOR 2024?
In particular, I expect Silent Hill 2 of the Bloomer Team, a studio that has already proved its worth (The Medium, Observe, etc.). But before I did, I promised to make the original, black cross on my player hunt and heresy that's been chasing me since Ummagumma harassed me to launch the game on emulator. Otherwise I'm a little tired of waiting for the next one. Hollow Knight whose radio silence is disturbing. I remain very curious about the future productions of God Kojima: his ghost game we were talking about here and next Death Stranding.
The magic of Twitter (apart from being owned by the anti Bruce Wayne), is that you can follow indecent developers and see their game evolve from notebooks of intent to gameplay proposals that fill with good ideas. It is by chance following recommended accounts years ago that I discovered Doku (insert link DokuGamesLTD). Indeterminate for more than twenty years, he religiously offends on Out of Action, a multi fps that cultivates the right ideas with shovel.
Hyper pushed physical motor, (manic) detail worries, the title is engaging. With its original concepts that make think of the barred side of a timesplitters for the arcade but with a "realistic" fiber tempered by one side Max Payne, out of action has chosen a Cell Shading Elegant that recalls the beautiful hours of XIII. The game has a punch and precision that burst from the AAA Ffs. Go see his chain, it's worth the detour. Out of Action Will he reconcile me with a crushed kind of multi-generic fps?
I'm also very excited about Stellar Blade whose artistic direction makes me hope a very good Stock. The title seems to juggle between the references not to say that he eats at all the rakes. Yet I don't know why but he still manages to pull his pin from the game. Still mistrusted because Koreans and Chinese have already used us to sumptuous trailers for mixed results, especially when the studio is unknown to the battalion. At Capcom, 2024 should also be the opportunity to learn more about the mysterious project Pragmata as well as the promising Dragons Dogma II. On Dotemu's side, Metal Slugs Tactics makes me salivate impatience and seems to check all the boxes of a good tactical. As regards GTAVI, it will be for 2025 or 2026 on PC, it gives us time to see at least three world wars coming by then...
Ummagumma review
WHAT IS YOUR RESENT FOR THE YEAR 2023 IN THE IMPITOYABLE WORLD OF JV?
I keep 2023 the memory of an extremely prolific year for video game. As a player's memory, I don't remember having lived a year so rich in various and varied releases. It must be said that there was for all tastes, both on the AAA side and on the inde, with a good visibility given to the genre of survival horror with titles like the remakes of Dead Space and Resident Evil 4, or the very good one Amnesia: The Bunker. It was therefore necessary to shorten his nights or multiply the afternoons of leave to keep pace, especially as certain titles like Baldurs Gate 3 or System Shock demand a significant investment. By adding to the current outputs the catch-up of works released in previous years (Subnautica, The Long Dark, What a slap), I've played a lot!
So I would say that 2023 was a crazy year for the players, but certainly less so for the small indie studios. Imagine the puzzle of choosing an exit date when you have a very limited communication budget. Even if your game is good, it is not said that he manages to distinguish himself from his competitors in the stream of exits. There is also an indigestible side to see all these releases succeed and when I think I sometimes feel the same unease as when I connect to the Xbox Gamepass app for PC that vomits dozens of jackets to the face of the barge. Moreover, it must be noted that I almost never use it.
This may seem paradoxical, but I would prefer that 2024 be quieter, because I intend to go back into old cult works like the sacrosanct first trilogy Resident Evil. I also intend to restart a New Game Plus dAlan Wake 2 in difficulty Cauchemar or go looking for dobscurs point ‘n click that would still be unknown to me, like the game X-Files 1998 seems very nice.
WHAT IS YOUR YEAR'S DECEPTION?
Even among the few games that fell from my hands, none really disappointed me this year because I did not expect much. No, my big disappointment of 2023 was not a game but a equipment, I named Meta Quest 3.
I wasn't on my first helmet. I already owned and then sold two PS VR as well as an Oculus Rift S. I had not played in virtual reality for three years and I was happy to discover new titles. It was a little cold shower to realize how little the VR scene had moved (if we put the mods aside, I specify). I took a monumental foot on Resident Evil 4 VR I advise anyone who wants to live what will perhaps be the most fun and arcade experience of his life. This game is definitely a monument. I will however let him rest for a good decade, because I know him absolutely by heart and that it is not at all my favorite episode.
There's something really disappointing in the idea of re-typing a VR helmet at the end of 2023 and realizing that Half-Life Alyx is still the most ambitious VR game, while it was released in early 2020. And Meta's strategy isn't gonna help. Indeed, we find ourselves with a focus on the video games that run natively on the Meta Quest and with a relegation to the background of the VR PC, much more technologically ambitious. So we find ourselves with ugly versions of PCVR games or with mainly public oriented titles and very little inspiration. I challenge you to find someone who wants to play VR basketball rather than actually... I will retrace the VR market in five years, crossing my fingers for an evolution in the direction of the players and for greater investment by the publishers in this sector with crazy potential. For the moment, disappointment is paramount.
WHAT ARE THE 5 GAMES THAT YOU RETIRED THIS YEAR?
I thought it would be difficult to make a choice, but after a few seconds of reflection, the verdict is without appeal: System Shock is clearly my game of the year. I've lived System Shock In my guts. I was obsessed with this game. I've even dreamed of it many times. Even today, when I listen to his splendid soundtrack, my gaze is lost in the void, as I remember this hardcore labyrinthic journey and engulfing in progressive rock. A radical and absolutely unforgettable work, as I explain in my review.
In second place, drum bearings, I call Alan Wake 2 On stage! Ten years of waiting and what a result: a brilliant work, at the same time counter-current of the first and paradoxically in its continuity, all coated with a lynchian staging of the most beautiful effect. A risky bet for a title that targets the general public. Hat to artists and Remedy for believing in their work.
Then come Baldurs Gate 3 which I approach from the end after about 80 hours during which I did almost all the secondary quests as well as all the quests related to the characters of my team. If we were to sum up Larian's last-born in a word, it would be the downside, especially in the freedom of choice offered to the player. Everything seems possible in Baldurs Gate 3, and there is no good or bad choice, an adventure in your image in short. So I took a crazy pleasure in playing a druid adoring nature and protecting animals, a role that I played seriously throughout my adventure, even if I occulted all those who exploited them. Being able to communicate with them, it was possible to talk to them. A real happiness.
Special mention also to romances and quests of characters, among the best written that it was given to read. Personally, I fell under the charm of Shadow, with which I chose to live a monogamous relationship. I only regret a game maybe a little too easy in Normal mode, more permissive than a Pillars of Eternity, which remains my favorite CRPG despite its much austere coating.
In 2023, I also took a lot of fun with Kona 2: Brume. Better mastered, magnificent and exciting in its retranscription of certain aspects of Aboriginal folklore against the background of Quebec culture, the title of Parabole m的a captivated. I never get tired of crossing the huge snowy plains alone, the title recalling the excellent The Long Dark in some respects. A game that I recommend to all lovers of mysteries and large depopulated spaces. Note that the entire game is doubled in Quebec by talented actors. The trailer of the game below is unfortunately not available in French.
Finally, I had an excellent time on Stasis: Bone Totem, a ‘n click point of science fiction/horror to the very singular universe, which takes place in the abyss and gives us a very personal narrative. Not to be missed. My review is available Here.
WHAT IS YOUR COUPABLE PLEASURE?
Every year, I will take a tour on itch.io to download about ten horrific short games and each time I take a monster foot to explore this underground scene bottled with slashers and jump-scares that offers regressive games without any moral limits. This year, The House from Spring Rabbit who picked up many smiles. Trailer below!
WHAT ARE YOUR ATTENTS FOR 2024?
I have so many expectations for 2024 that I would need pages and pages to describe them all. I will therefore only quote my five greatest expectations in alphabetical order.
First of all, I expect a firm foot Baby Stepsby the creators of Ape Out, which made us play a chimpanzee fleeing from an animal testing laboratory, on a frenetic jazz background. Ah, how happy to kill those specist lab morons. Change of registry with Baby Steps, which promises some crazy laughs.
Pacific Drive is probably the most expected game in 2024. It must be said that the promise of tuning his car in a post apocalyptic survival game subjected to extremely dangerous weather events with an experimental dimension to the Outer Wilds has enough to leave dreaming.
Well, if not, the 1.0 of Sons of the Forest WHEN? I'm waiting on a firm foot.
Tenebris Somnia is presented as a 2D survival horrator punctuated with live filmed scenes. The trailer is very eager and, with such a pitch, creators Andrés Borghi and Tobías Rusjan have my full attention.
Finally, how not to wait The Lost Wild, which seems at first sight to be a sort of Alien Isolation in which our fragile, defenceless character will have to escape very realistic dinosaurs. A survival horror with dinosaurs, what more can you ask for?
Moreover, in another register, I am very worried about the remake of Silent Hill 2, which I think will only disappoint, as the original was a UFO who had made the low computing power of the PS2 an inherent element of its atmosphere. At the sole view of the trailer of the remake, everything that made the identity of the original (grain of the image, unsaid, emotional suggestion by the palette of colors and sounds rather than by zooms on the character's face, slowness and j It is as if all that was at the time suggested was now naked under the beam of a projector. In fact, I even hesitate to do so much the original is an important work for me, and still absolutely fascinating and relevant today. In any case, it is always a pity to see a work reinterpreted without the participation of the original authors. To see, so...
I also stopped waiting Hollow Knight: Silksongfor my mental health.
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