2023: A Year in Gaming
I’ve not been very consistent at doing these for the past few years back on TheNerdRock but I’m bringing them back for CraigPlaysGames. A Year in Gaming isn’t about the wider industry as I’m no journalist, that’s a lot of information to trawl through and most of it has been very negative – something I do want to talk about, just at a later point.
Think of this year in Games more as a YouTube Rewind or Spotify Wrapped, but for me and the games I’ve played in the year of 2023.
A Good Year for Games
You’ll hear and see from many outlets what a good year for games this was, and I fully agree. Even better, I actually managed to play a good amount of them. Naturally there’s still loads of games I didn’t get to try, even ones I bought (a bad habit I need to break in 2024).
My Game of the Year list is already out (Which you can read here ……………….), so there’s not really any surprises or big reveals here. As someone who adamantly doesn’t like horror, having Dead Space, Alan Wake II and Resident Evil 4 in my top 5. Maybe I need to rephrase how I explain that. It’s nice to see how many indie games and AA titles ended up on the list too.
The goal next year is obviously to play even more of the year’s releases, but it’s always a tightrope to balance new games, the back catalogue and urges to return to old favourites.
Challenges, briefly
Something I started on TheNerdRock, which was one of the major victims of my waning enjoyment of that site, was a list of challenges in video games I wanted to do. I did get a couple done in May – Batman: Arkham Asylum in full stealth and playing Dishonored with different success parameters each chapter.
I’ve looked over my list and decided which ones I want to keep going into 2024.
Stay tuned for an article detailing the challenges I wish to try.
100th Platinum, Most ever Platinum’s
2023 marks the year I beat my personal milestone of 100 Platinum trophies. This is something I started taking seriously and was saying was my goal in Early 2021 I believe. Starting 2023, I was sitting at 69 Platinums (nice), which meant I had an uphill battle to obtain 31 more by years end. I just managed, with Platinum 100 coming on New Year’s Eve.
31 Trophies also beats out my previous record for number of Platinum’s in a year, beating out 2022 which had 17. A couple more and I would have equalled 2022 and 2021 combined at 33 but alas. I have big plans for trophy hunting in 2024 which I’ll talk about at a later date.
Stay tuned for an article talking about my 100 Platinums.
Hello, VR!
2023 was the year I bit the bullet and bought a PSVR headset, mostly to test the waters for a PSVR2 purchase. Considering I’ve bought a PSVR2, I guess the tests were successful. I’ve not played a vast amount of the PSVR’s library, in part to a lot of the major titles already receiving ports to the sequel system. I did play the big titles like Astrobot, which was incredibly fun. Astrobot on PSVR2 could be a real system seller. I’ve got to say that while the move controllers are fine for some games, their limitations really show in other titles. I’m excited to get to PSVR2 purely for analogue sticks.
Caught them all, Gotta use them all?
It’s no secret that I absolutely adore the Pokemon franchise, and it was this year I finished all the main line games I’m going to play (Platinum and the Gen 2 remakes onwards) ending with SoulSilver, Black and Black 2 as well as the Scarlet/Violet DLC. My Pokedex is also up to date including the two Paradox mythicals – just waiting on Petcharunt in the Epilogue update in January.
I only bring this up as it’s my general plan to use every single Pokémon (the most evolved form at least) in the series. There are 1025 Pokémon as well as 56 regional forms, totally 1091. Taking away legendaries and Pokémon I’ve already used, that leaves 324 to go. That divides up nicely to 54 playthroughs. It’s a good thing I don’t intend to give up Pokémon any time soon then.
With all that said, roll on the regular content and hope 2024 is another good gaming year!
