It’s that time of year again (which is to say, really way too late into the following year to be wriitng a Game of the Year list, as is my custom) when I finally put down into words what my top 10 favourite games of the previous year were. And what an insanely good year of gaming it has been. I don’t remember a year so packed with Game of the Year worthy games. In fact the game in 5th position seemed a potential Game of the Year winner past the halfway point of the year before it slowly but surely was pushed down the list.

Eligibility Criteria and PSVR 2

This was a confusing year in terms of eligibilty for me as many of the games I played were ‘new’ on PSVR 2 but existed previously on other platforms. Click this paragraph to expand this section and read about how I determined which games would be eligible, or simply ignore this section and continue on with the list, as I’m sure 99% of you will do.

Usually these lists are relatively easy. I only count games that were released in the year in question. If they were released on a different system in a previous year, I generally haven’t counted them as they aren’t ‘new’. However last year I obtained a PSVR 2 and returned to VR gaming, and given the sheer number of games that came to PSVR 2 (many of which being ports from Quest, PCVR or PSVR1, or were VR versions of flat games that came out in prior years) I needed to determine which of these would be eligible. So I settled on the following: A PSVR 2 game would only be eligible for Game of the Year if it met one of the following 2 conditions:

1. The game was not previously playable in VR on any platform prior to 2023 (for example, previously released hybrid/flat games such as Gran Turismo 7 which received a VR mode in 2023, and brand new VR games such as Barbaria),
or
2. The game was previously playable on another VR platform, but along with launching on PSVR 2 in 2023, released a significant update in 2023 as well. This doesn’t mean DLC or just an update to make PSVR 2 compatible, I’m talking adding content to the game for free along with releasing on PSVR 2. For example, Walkabout Minigolf is not eligible (despite releasing constant paid DLC) because it’s essentially the same game as on other VR platforms. Same goes for Puzzling Places. Maybe I’ll make a top 10 PSVR 2 games list at some point and give those games a chance to shine.

So with those self-imposed rules out of the way, let’s roll.

10. Super Mario Bros. Wonder(Nintendo Switch)

Let me ask you a question. Do you like 2D Mario games? If you answered something along the lines of ‘I did, 20 years ago’ then do I have good news for you: 2D Mario is back!
I was fully prepared to skip this game having been underwhelmed by 2D Mario games for a while now, but the mass amount of positive reviews made me cautiously optimistic, and I’m glad I took the plunge. The first few levels had me worried – they were too easy and without a challenge these games fall very flat. Fortunately, that didn’t last and while it never got super difficult save for a few bonus/unlockable levels (the wall jumping time challenge level in particular had me pulling my hair out), it at least wasn’t -easy- as the game went on, at least not if you were trying to get all the Wonder seeds, which you should.
No, it isn’t as good as either Super Mario World or Super Mario World: Yoshi’s Island on SNES (the latter of which is the best Mario game ever made, and I won’t hear any differently), but it IS the best 2D Mario game since.

9. Dave The Diver (PC, also available on everything else)

I first heard about Dave the Diver in a work meeting. One of my colleagues mentioned being a gamer. I asked what game(s) he was currently playing. Being that he’s a bit younger than me, I expected him to say Fortnight or Apex Legends or whatever the kids are playing these days. He instead replied with ‘a game called Dave the Diver’ and I immediately dismissed his gaming credentials. But because I’m nothing if not a curious beast, I then checked Steam and saw that it was sitting on an an Overwhelmingly Positive review score with reviews that were absolutely raving about it. And they were right to rave. Dave the Diver is a very -cool- game. It’s not perfect by any means, but the fish catching loop and progression system is wonderful, and the way the game keeps adding more and more elements as you progress is even better. Plus, did I mention how simply COOL it is? Because it is that. Cool.

8. Gran Turismo 7 (PSVR 2)

So this is going to be somewhat controversial, because while the base game of Gran Turismo 7 is fine (and also came out 2 years ago, now you see why I had the eligibility section at the start of this), there are certain caveats to this being a top 10 game. The first, and most obvious, is that you need to play the game with a PSVR 2 headset. The second is that you should also (although this isn’t completely necessary) use a racing rig (steering wheel and pedals). This means that Gran Turismo makes it into the top 10 list for 2023, but requires spending about $700 on a PS5, about $850 on a PSVR 2, about $50 on the game itself and (for anything half decent) at least $500 on a racing rig. So yes, to play this game in the way I’m strongly recommending here IS going to cost you… a little over $2,000. Bargain!
But man, it IS great. You’re probably just going to have to trust me.

7. Alan Wake 2 (PS5, also available on everything else)

The only way to properly write a review for Alan Wake 2 would be to write a few sentences to enthrall you, and then randomly have a jump scare pop out at you and scare the life out of you and then continue on with this paragraph but this time AS A MUSICAL NUMBER, and then near the end of that hit you with another jump scare.
I have seen someone refer to this game as ‘Jump scare: The game’ and that’s entirely accurate. It’s brutally scary. And in a way that I never expected. After all, I’ve played games like Slender: The Eight Pages and Resident Evil 7 in VR. This is a third person game, which should mean it’s really not that scary – but they manage to get around that by shoving jump scares right at the screen rather than the player, aiming them at you rather than the character you’re controlling. And since you’re looking over the character’s shoulder into the middle distance, you’re completely unprepared for something to jump at your face. It’s really super well done, in the worst of ways. It seriously might be the scariest game I’ve ever played, at least as far as jump scares go.
It’s also got a really good story, controls pretty well, looks gorgeous, and is super Lynchian which I’m always going to appreciate. Might have finished higher on my list, but I haven’t actually finished it yet after I mistakenly decided I wanted to try and platinum it which meant I put it on hold and still haven’t gone back. We’ll eventually see if the ending brings it up even higher (stay tuned for the Game of the Decade list for that one, I guess). Either way, bring on Control 2.

6. Dredge (PC, also available on everything else)

I first saw Dredge on the PAX Australia indie games show floor in 2022, and just from a brief glimpse at it I was pretty confident it was a game for me. Mainly because it’s a well known fact that I really enjoy fishing mini games. I think every game should have a fishing mini game. So a game that seemed like one big CREEPY fishing mini game? Sign me up. And sure enough, when I got my hands on it early in the year (in fact it was the first game I played) I loved it. So much in fact that I considered it a contender for Game of the Year. And it was STILL in the number one spot until around November, before finding it’s way falling down the list through no fault of its own – simply because this year is one of gaming’s finest. I even told the devs (Black Salt Games) that it was my current Game of the Year when returning to PAX in 2023, telling them that (at the time) it was beating Baldur’s Gate 3. They thanked me, but suggested I was quite wrong. And well, you may have noticed that Baldur’s Gate 3 hasn’t appeared on the list yet, so clearly I eventually agreed.
The thing I liked most about this game was that it gave me the day/night system that Dying Light 2 so sorely messed up. It made me actually fear being out after dark, which gave it a wonderful race against time mechanic every time I went out fishing. And while the ending could have been stronger (or, endings) there is a DLC I haven’t yet played and I’m looking forward to getting back into. Oh, also there was a Dredge DLC for Dave the Diver which I also haven’t yet played, but that just added to the coolness of Dave the Diver even more.

5. The Talos Principle 2 (PS5, also available on everything else)

I loved the original Talos Principle. In fact it’s probably the biggest regret of mine from all the games that just missed out on my Game of the Decade (2010-2019) list. So I was pretty hyped for this game, even though I wasn’t quite sure where they’d go with it considering the ending of the first game. I needn’t have worried though, because the story continues and improves upon the original in every way. And now with multiple characters, meaning far more dialogue, to go with more puzzles than ever before. The best thing about the game isn’t the story though (although that is a plus), it’s that the puzzles are fantastic. They’ve managed to find the perfect balance to force you to throw yourself against a brick wall for a bit, but then eventually get it and think you’re a genius before giving up entirely. Some of the puzzles you’ll breeze through, and then others will take you far longer than you’d care to admit, and apart from some of the very tedious overworld puzzles (2 or 3 of which I Googled, I will admit), they all seem very fair. If you can’t work it out, it feels like it’s on you, and eventually when you do, it feels great.
These are some of the best puzzles in video games, and if you like puzzle games, you’d be mad not to pick this game up. Bonus if you like big philisophical questions about what it means to be human, as well.

4. Chants of Sennaar (PC, also available on everything else)

I have never played another game anything like Chants of Sennaar. It’s a puzzle game – a point and click… adventure, I guess. But the main mechanic is that you can’t understand anyone else because you don’t know their language. So you basically have to work out what everyone is saying and write it all into your journal to eventually piece things together and progress. It’s done very well. Like Talos Principle 2, you will feel a sense of great achievement whenever you solve anything – getting a page of words correct (and verified) feels wonderful and often opens up more opportunities to progress or figure out what other words mean. It’s somewhat hard to explain, but if you like language based puzzles or just language in general, this is absolutely a game you must play. Also it’s just kind of beautiful in general, with a wonderful art style and fantastic underlying message to boot.

3. Spider-Man 2 (PS5)

Every time Insomniac release a Spider-Man game I’m always criminally unhyped. I wasn’t super interested in the first one before playing it, I wasn’t planning on even playing Miles Morales until I had a last second change of heart when collecting my PS5 on release. And this game I had actually crossed off my ‘to play’ list due to time constraints and the ONLY reason I played it was because someone unexpectedly lent it to me when I’d basically finished playing every other game for this list, so I felt I had no excuse not to. And this is actually insane because every game has been great.
The first game I really enjoyed, but then got SO caught up in trying to do the immense amount of side-mission/collectable tasks that I never finished the main story line. I got burnt out on it, took a break, and forgot to ever go back. With Miles Morales I didn’t make that mistake – just focusing on the main storyline, and I really enjoyed it. With Spider-Man 2, I followed the same plan I had with Miles Morales, except I enjoyed the game so much that after I finished it – I ended up continuing to 100% the game and get the platinum anyway, ironically.
This is a great game. This is a much better game than I expected. When everyone was commenting on Spider-Man 2 not winning any games at the Game Awards, I hadn’t played it yet, and basically thought ‘well duh, it’s probably good, but the competition is insane this year’. Now that I’ve played it, I realise just how rough that it. I still understand it, but boy, it’s got to be a tough pill to swallow for Insomniac and everyone involved. The story is great, the gameplay is fantastic, the progression/upgrades system is awesome. It has a multiple protagonist switching system similar to Grand Theft Auto 5 and does it just as well, and of course as always the traversal system is elite. I would go as far as saying it’s the best traversal system in any video game ever. It’s just so much fun to swing around New York I thought I would never even use the web wings, but the web wings just make it even better. You can also fast travel (once you unlock it for each region) and it’s INSTANTANEOUS which I’ve never seen before in an open world map. Kinda hilarious that the fast travel works so well in a game where you’ll almost never want to use it.
There were also less bugs than I experienced in Miles Morales (which had a couple of bad bugs that forced me to reload a previous save) but that doesn’t mean it was entirely bug free. After I’d finished the game and started unlocking every suit all at once, apparently the game wasn’t prepared for this and I buildings started becoming see through and I’d often fall through the world. Luckily I was almost finished with my platinum run by then. Oh, and also, this happened:

2. Baldur’s Gate 3 (PC, also available on PS5 & Xbox)

It’s not really a surprise that Baldur’s Gate 3 is on this list. If anything, the only surprise is that it’s not number 1, as it is on the lists of so many others. It’s basically won every award and won the hearts of gamers everywhere by being what many are calling the greatest roleplaying game ever made.
When I played developer Larian’s previous game, Divinity Original Sin 2, it was several years after it was released and I knew I’d stuffed up for not having played it sooner – because it almost certainly would have gotten my Game of the Year had I played it during its release year. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake with Baldur’s Gate 3, especially when this game is set in a more familiar Dungeons and Dragons setting. And I could go on about how great the ‘open world’ element is, how great the characters are, including voice acting, or how (mostly) faithful the mechanics are to Dungeons and Dragons, but all you really need to know is that this deserves to be in the conversation for best RPG ever made and will help define all RPGs made going forward.
So… why isn’t it number 1? Well, I have to confess a few things. Firstly, I haven’t finished the game. In fact I’m not even into the third and final act. And so depending on what happens in that act my opinion of the game may get even better, which may have propelled it to the top spot. However the reason I haven’t finished is because my ‘main’ game is a co-op game, and during the course of the playthrough we all found ourselves with babies which put a huge time strain on us. And we agreed not to play ahead of the main game with our solo games. So… I’m in limbo.
But despite this, the co-op mechanics work great (even if it can be frustrating at times when you’re trying to do something and one of your party replies with ‘oh I’m in jail now’), and solo the game is just as good if not better because your companions are all top-notch and add tremendously to the game. It is very clear this is an exceptional game, even if I haven’t yet finished it, and I am very eager to see how it ends.

1. No Man’s Sky (PSVR 2)

Last year I copped some flak for naming Elden Ring my Game of the Year, being called ‘basic’ for choosing the game basically everyone else did.
Well, be careful what you wish for, because this year my Game of the Year is a game that came out 8 years ago, and I don’t think even made my top 10 back then (it finished 12th, but did get one award, as below).

So how exactly is No Man’s Sky resurfacing now? Well, if you’ve somehow been living under a rock for the past 8 years and only remember that No Man’s Sky was released to scattered boos, or somehow missed it entirely, and you happen to have almost an hour to kill watching a video about video gaming’s greatest redemption story, I strongly recommend you watch this.

If you don’t have an hour to kill, just know that it’s a comeback story for the ages. If you remember No Man’s Sky as being a bunch of samey brown and green planets, take a look at this short clip I took of the second planet I visited in my recent play-through. It’s beautiful.

But that alone isn’t enough to put it to the number 1 spot on this list. The reason it’s here is because of the Playstation VR 2. VR is very clearly the best way to play this game. There probably isn’t really a good way to describe what this is like in VR without experiencing it yourself, but just imagine this scenario.
You are wandering around a strange new planet by yourself. Thanks to the immersion of VR, it feels like you’re really there. Everywhere you look you see weird creatures and plants, and you’re not sure which (of either) are friendly and which will kill or poison you. You walk up to your spaceship, get in, physically pull the cockpit shut (with your actual arms), look down at the joystick (or yoke) and throttle, grab them, power up, fly up into the sky, look left and right watching the clouds fly past and checking out the wings of your spaceship (trying not to feel too light-headed or nauseated if you haven’t gotten your VR legs yet) You then blast through the atmosphere into space. And from here you go can anywhere.Which of the planets in this galaxy will you explore next? Or will you warp to a new galaxy entirely? But before you can decide, something that looks a lot like a deathstar warps directly into your path. You panic, and go into a sudden dive, plummeting back down into the planet and almost crashing into the mountains before pulling up at the last second.
No Man’s Sky has had no less than 27 named major updates since its release, with three of them (4 if you include one for Mac support) released in 2023 alone. One of these was for PSVR 2 support (although this was later massively improved upon as it wasn’t the best initially) and others introduced things such as corrupted planets, a pirate faction, a new race, and more. I haven’t yet seen ANY of this. I haven’t even built an exocraft yet (vehicles you can use to drive around planets) or captured a freighter or found a Stargate (yes they exist!). There’s so much more to come and I couldn’t be happier to name No Man’s Sky on PlayStation VR 2 my 2023 Game of the Year.

Random other awards!

Best looking game: Alan Wake 2 (or Kayak VR: Mirage, if I ignore my own eligibility rules).
The Rocket League Award (Best ‘ongoing’ game): No Man’s Sky, obviously. It’s the first year in forever that I played no Rocket League. I’ve changed, man.
Game that I probably should have played before making this list: Star Wars Jedi Survivor. Though I also never played the first one. I had this one right here, but just couldn’t justify this list taking any longer.
Weirdest game that I wish I could find a spot for on my list: BOKURA. This is a fantastic game that the less I talk about the better. It’s cheap and on Steam. If you’ve got a friend (it’s co-op only) to play this with, give it a go and try to go in blind.
Most disappointing game of the year: Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Yes, if you were paying attention, the sequel to my 2015 Game of the Year, and #5 game in my Game of the Decade list, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, wasn’t anywhere in this list. Why? Was it a terrible game? Was everyone else who was raving about it lying? No. It’s a good game. A great game. But it’s also the same game. Yes, they added some pretty good building mechanics, and all new sky islands and a huge underground world. But… it was still the same game. Same enemies, same BOSSES basically. Slightly more story elements (compared to the borderline none of the first game) but it wasn’t enough to cover for the fact that I was playing the same game in the same world with what felt like a pretty decent DLC pack. Still finished 11th in my GotY list, mind you. But way short of expectations.
Worst game of the year: Warcraft Rumble (Android). Gross pay to win trash. Blizzard, you’ve done it again!
Most anticipated game of 2024: Legendary Tales (PSVR 2) and Pacific Drive (PS5). Both of these games are already out and I have no idea what else is coming out for the rest of this year (seems like it’s going to be a slim year with Sony already announcing no big IP releases in the next 12 months, for a start).

Every 2023 game I played, chronologically:

Sun Haven (PC)
Tchia (PS5)
Dredge (PC)
Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (NS)
Baldur’s Gate 3 (PC)
Warcraft Rumble (Android)
Sea of Stars (PS5)
Venturous (DOOM mod) (PC)
HUMANITY (PS5)
Endless Dungeon (PS5)
Slay the Princess (PC)
BOKURA (PC)
Chants of Sennaar (PC)
Super Mario Bros. Wonder (NS)
DAVE THE DIVER (PC)
Alan Wake 2 (PS5)
Kayak VR: Mirage (PSVR2) *
Walkabout Mini Golf (PSVR2) *
Horizon: Call of the Mountain (PSVR2)
Gran Turismo 7 (PSVR2)
No Man’s Sky (PSVR2)
Puzzling Places (PSVR2) *
Barbaria (PSVR2)
The Talos Principle 2 (PS5)
Diablo IV (PS5)
Spider-Man 2 (PS5)

* Games with an asterisk are not eligible as per my eligibility criteria at the top of this post