My Favorite Video Game and Books of 2023
just because
Look, I came down with food poisoning or an awful stomach bug this week, so productivity is already at an all time low. Great way to start 2024.
Easy enough for me to just copy and paste some spreadsheet data here and get on with resting on the couch for the weekend. Happy new year indeed!
Disclaimer: Many/Most of these video games and books were not released in 2023. As much as I love gaming and reading, I’m always very, VERY behind on these two facets of culture, as it takes so much longer for me to finish a game or read a book than it does to watch a movie or listen to an album. So these are just going to be a list of ALL the things I played and read this year, regardless of their publication dates.
My Favorite Video Games of 2023:
** Unfinished or abandoned
1. Elden Ring
2. Disco Elysium
I think I finished this one sometime in the first week or two of 2023, but it still counts. I wanna do a retrospective writeup on it someday, because so much of this game STILL infects my dreams frequently.
3. Scorn
4. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
5. Metroid Prime Remastered
6. Returnal**
I’m very close to wrapping this one up. I tend to botch rogue-likes and make it ten times harder for myself as I unlock the wrong items at the wrong time and get stuck on something simple. It’s taken me 20 hours to get through something everyone else finishes in 10.
7. Neon White
8. Cult of the Lamb
I almost did a whole writeup on this one as well. I have never felt SO GODDAMNED STRESSED OUT by a video game before. Trying to maintain a healthy cult while also having to plow through some really challenging battle trees was…a lot.
9. Outer Wilds
Such a beautiful game and I want to give the DLC a shot. But I feel like a moron. I needed SO much help getting through even just one solution to this puzzle. I feel like I’d waste a lifetime trying to figure out another.
10. Tunic
I’ve never resolved my mixed feelings on this one. I adored the difficulty curve and the visuals and the sound and yadda yadda yadda…But that ending (either one) is incredibly frustrating. Especially after making me do that whole “replay the whole game again but in Dark Mode” bullshit.
11. Kirby and the Forgotten Land
12. Fear & Hunger
13. Manifold Garden
14. Blasphemous
15. Subnautica**
I'M SORRY. It’s heretical, I know. But I do not get this game. I wasted so many hours on the most basic principles, trying to build air pipes from the surface so I could dive deeper, and never got anything to function properly. And the storage containers are so limited that I was never able to figure what was priority material and what was junk.
16. World of Horror**
17. Hogwarts: Legacy**
I only started this one a few weeks ago. While I do enjoy some aspects, I realize now getting it on the Switch was a massive mistake, as the visuals resemble that first Harry Potter game for the PC back in 2001.
18. Ghost Song**
Gorgeous aesthetic, frustrating mechanics.
19. Iron Lung
Whole lotta buildup for just that one scare, huh?
20. Death Stranding**
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll try revisiting this one day. But the ‘walking simulator’ genre will never be my thing, and nothing about the obscure worldbuilding was appealing.
My Favorite Books of 2023:
1. Blood Music by Greg Bear
2. Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Okay, I technically haven’t finished this one yet, but I’m HOOKED. Absolutely my style and aesthetic in every way. I just had to put it on pause while I plow through a quick read this month for a Book Club meeting.
3. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
4. Recursion by Blake Crouch
5. Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima
6. Books of Blood by Clive Barker
7. The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin
8. Working Girls by Trixie Mattel & Katya
9. Blade Job by Lucas Mangum
10. Pictures of the Shark by Thomas H. McNeely
11. Limited Edition of One by Steven Wilson
12. Manhunt by Gretchen Felker Martin
Honestly, I think averaging at least 1 book a month is a solid pace for me — most years, I spend so much time outlining and writing my own works that I tend to forget to read others’ — and this is probably the year I spent the most time gaming since I was a teenager. Granted, being furloughed for the better part of 3 months helped.
I’ve already got a lot queued up for 2024, though. For gaming, I’m planning on tackling Dredge, the Resident Evil 4 remake, the Dead Space remake, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Super Mario Wonder, and Baldur’s Gate 3 over the course of the winter and spring. But books for me are more about whatever I’m keen on getting my head wrapped around in the moment. For now, it’s Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, followed shortly by returning to Hyperion. And then likely diving straight into Fall of Hyperion, because I can already tell I’m NOT going to be able to let that story go for a while.
More reviews to come soon.