First, I did go back to Tunic and got the good ending, and I'm glad I did, because now the little fox was happy. I had to look up hints or the solutions to some of the puzzles though, some of those were just too cryptic for me.
Then I tried two Vampire Survivors-likes, Pathfinder: Gallowspire Survivors and Soulstone Survivors, both of which I played on my Steam Deck. Also, both are in Early Access.
I only did a few runs in Pathfinder. I might just be bad, but maybe the game isn't really suited for the Deck right now. There are tons of enemies that shoot small projectiles, that are just a pain to see on the small-ish screen, so dodging everything can be a pain. It also felt like the hit boxes aren't that good right now, but again, that might just be me, I didn't play the game for too long. I'd have to try the game on my desktop PC to check out how it plays there. One thing of note though, this game has local multiplayer, which might be interesting to some people. When you're playing alone, the second character sticks to you as a companion and just deals some extra damage. I also have to mention the menuing in this game, on controller it's complete garbage. Sometimes you select some menu category with triggers, change sub-categories with bumpers, sub-sub-categories with the D-Pad and then the actual thing you want to select with the stick. I had to constantly check where I was and what I had to press, which sucked.
The other, Soulstone Survivors, was a lot more fun for me. You get up to six weapons, and also upgrades for those weapons and generally for your character. In this game, weapons can have "tags", like melee, area, electric, whatever, and upgrades can affect one specific weapon, all of them or everything of a certain type, which can be neat. There are also tons of small QoL details, like highlighting which weapons get upgraded, a summary for your stats in a run or how much damage your weapons are doing. That last point is neat, because you can keep replacing your weapons, even when you already have all six, and if you don't want to, you just get a normal upgrade. When not in a run, there's just tons of meta progression with a gazillion different materials. You can unlock characters, weapons for those characters, a skill tree, something called runes, which I have no idea what they are, and maybe more. Menus also suck, although mostly because everything is just crammed full of stuff and a bit too small on the Deck. It's not as bad as Pathfinder though.
Next, a small game I saw while going through the Steam Discovery Queue, Froggy's Battle. This is a Roguelike, where you're playing as a frog on a skateboard, that's going around in a loop. You kill enemies by bumping into them, or with weapons you might get at the end of a level. The game is really short, I beat the boss after a bit more than ten runs, about 90 minutes, although there's a hard mode, which I didn't do. The main difficulty, in my opinion, comes from the controls, since you're riding a skateboard in a loop, so you'll end up upside down, which flips some of your controls. When the loop is filled with enemies, it can get pretty chaotic. The game has a bunch of different control schemes, so you can try to find whatever works best for you, so it isn't terrible. Doing sick kickflips, while wielding a magic wand, is pretty cool.
Finally, I started Diablo 4. I'm playing a Druid, because eventually I hope to punch everything as a werebear, although right now I'm punching stuff with stones that I summon from the earth. Even though I'm almost level 40, I'm still pretty early in the story, because I just run around in the world, doing side quests, going into the dungeons and whatnot. I'm trying to focus a bit more on the main story, just so I can get the mount and get around the world faster. While I am a KB+M elitist and mainly play on my PC, I also installed the game on my Steam Deck, and it runs really well on there. I turned everything down, except like textures, so it doesn't look as bad in closeups, but I'm basically always at 60fps, with room to spare. Only in the bigger city do I go below 60 sometimes, which is also pretty much the only time when I hear the fan turning up. Playing on controller is also neat, except for the menus (again). It also does have native ultrawide support, it's nice to have a modern game, where you don't have to look for patches or fixes, to fill the whole screen.
As for my favorite game of the year (that was released in 2023), it has to be Baldurs Gate 3, not much really came close.
Sekiro. It ruined other souls like for me. Even DS. Combat felt like dancing, QoL are very good, even better than Lies of P that people kept praising about QoL.
Quake I, now remastered. I reinstall it frequently and it was one of the first games I tried on Linux, and it works flawlessly even though it came from a Microsoft-owned Bethesda-published Id. There’s something hypnotyzing in how responsive it feels so I don’t get bored nor with originar, nor with pretty new levels. Even boomer shooters don’t scratch it just like this game does.
Probably Celeste to anyone that has anxiety. I know it’s probably not the most profound representation of anxiety, but it’s a nice little game, it’s nice to feel seen and there’s a chance that some of the stuff in it will help.
I was so impressed with Metroid Dread, like seriously. As a long time fan of the series I was going to buy the game anyway but it's just such an impressively polished and put together piece of art. I was deeply impressed with it. I'm also a big fan of the direction it's taking the lore into.
Edit: can't get the spoiler tag to work so I just removed the second half of my comment sorry
I didn't mind them that much, I viewed them more as a puzzle than a combat. It helped break up some of the run and gun of the rest of the game and you always knew you were getting a cool ability when you got through it.
That said though I'll admit the last couple EMMIs did give me a really hard time with many, many resets. But I did get through them. And once I even managed to get the perfect parry and escape after getting got by the EMMI and it was extremely hype.
I didn’t see it so nothing was spoiled. I’m trying not to read the guides but I do want to know when the last PNR is in case I need to explore a little.
I'm coming up on the end of Wargroove 2. It's a solid iteration on the first game, with a few new units and mechanics. It's some solid Advance Wars gameplay, and arguably better.
I started playing The Outer Worlds basically right after Starfield, and it's hard to come up with anything that Starfield did better, honestly. This is just a better version of that, for the most part, and with a good sense of humor on top of that.
I've been trying to get to Master rank in Street Fighter 6, and I'm in Diamond 3, inching closer. I'll get there in due time. This game is great for a first version, but it sure would be nice if the input reader was more consistent and if Zangief's lariat hit behind him.
I started playing The Outer Worlds basically right after Starfield, and it’s hard to come up with anything that Starfield did better, honestly. This is just a better version of that, for the most part, and with a good sense of humor on top of that.
Lol, I’ve actually been thinking of replaying it at some point because as soon as I started becoming frustrated with Starfield, I remembered that we already have a way better “Fallout in space” game.
Also, Parvati is my fellow ace BFF. So fucking happy I got to connect with a character, help her find romance, and not be the fucking center of attention for once. Wish RPGs did that more.
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