While I am still enamoured with Street Fighter 6 (for good reason), SNK is not sitting on their laurels and has announced their competition to SF6: a new edition of Garou Mark of the Wolves. G:MOTW was a late hardware NEO GEO title along with Last Blade and Last Blade 2 and it absolutely rocked. I feel it was a stronger and more compelling game than Streetfighter 3, and we played it on ton on the stand up at work for years.
SF6 is going to be tough to compete with as it is an instant classic on so many levels, butt I have a soft spot for GMOTW and I’m hoping this captures the magic again of the first one.
Ah 2023, a great year for gaming at least, even if looking at the news on any given day was a complete shitstorm. As expected, I’m fixing to go through my favorite games for this year both board, card and video variety as well as movies and favorite book (not from 2023). We were starved for choice in everything this year. If there’s an interest, here is my 2022 version and beyond
Board Games
The game we played the most this year, per play at least, was A Study In Emerald 2nd edition, which is just proving again and again to be one of the best multiplayer deckbuilders there is. I love Ascension, but Study In Emerald, if you can handle just a WEE bit more complexity, is just off the hook with replay value and backstabby fun in and hour and a half. There are still cards I’ve never seen before in play after 30+ plays and I still laugh when Cthulhu blows the shit out of London yet again. The game will be rehashed by CMON next year and we’ll see if that stands up to 1E and 2E of Study in Emerald. That said, the best game FROM 2023 is….
My favorite so far (I don’t get to play much, so something may have slipped by) is Stationfall. This is just a complete hoot to play and absolute madness. It has a high learning curve, so make sure that someone in your group really knows the rules. I’d love to get more plays of this, but it’s on the long side for game nights. Absolutely crazy game and goes against EVERY standard bullshit clone of Viticulture that is fills nearly every kallax game shelves right now.
Books
I did not read much this year, finishing only like 3-4 books. My favorite this year was my re-read of Treasure Island with the N.C. Wyeth illustrations. A profound romp through a fairly realistic story of pirate treasure. I kids book for sure, but I needed something light before I started in on the classic ‘The 30 Years War’ by C.V. Wedgewood.
Movies
I barely watched any films this year for lots of reasons, but two stand out, Godzilla Minus One and The Dungeons and Dragons movie. I didn’t see Sisu or a lot of other great films (well, probably great) including not seeing the French language adaption of 3 Musketeers, so I gotta give it to the D&D movie, which I’ve seen twice now and it holds up well, knows exactly what it is and has tons of Easter eggs for fans. I really never saw this coming, that D&D would be such a great cheesy trash film instead of just unwatchable trash. Make more please, a lot more.
This movie is definitely more 13th Age than 5th edition and folks should take note of that. Crazy set-piece battles > hide bound, balanced encounters with 100% predictable magic systems and bog standard combat effects. 5E and it’s ilk isn’t what you want in your games if you liked this film.
Video Games
This is a double game of the year, and it’s because both of these games are so incredibly different that I feel justified in deeming both the game of the year. First is, of course, Street Fighter 6. I’ve already expounded on the game, and I just can’t wait to play it more after I play it for awhile. It’s easy to pick up for beginners and while I play primarily locally, it has a solid online version as well. Absolutely top drawer– and again like the D&D movie, I never thought I would say this!
The second is a sleeper– Jagged Alliance 3. While I haven’t played Balder’s Gate 3 yet, I never really got into the RPG games all that much other than Temple of Elemental Evil, so I’m holding off. I know BG3 will be awesome, but having put about 20 hours into JA3 so far with MANY more on the horizon, JA3 is the GOTY for sure. It is EVERYTHING I have hoped for in a JA follow up title since 1999. These guys did everything exactly how they were supposed to and if you were a fan of the older games, you will be blown away– not at first, but within a few hours when you see how well everything is designed. I’m going to do a full review when I’ve finished the game so that’s all I’m going to say for now. Incredible.
Hottest Chick on the planet 2023
It’s the same as last year, was the same the year before that, will be the same next year: Rebecca Bagnol.
Finalment! I have beaten the Elden Ring, which took me months too long and many, many tries against Malenia, the Fire Giant and some other boss I can’t remember any more.
It goes without saying that the game is a masterpiece. The attention to detail, the unbelievable scope, the number of bosses, the incredible amount of build options and weapon combos, the multiplayer (both partying up and PVP) and especially the rather interesting purgatorial storyline. It is a really good time to be alive and able to wield a mouse and keyboard or controller, I will say that much. Is it my favorite From Software game? No. I think even after all the fun Elden Ring is, Bloodborne is still my number 1, but I need to go back to it and play again and see if it stands up to ER.. and then finish Sekiro or Armored Core… did I mention it was a good time to be able to play video games? Will I play through ER again? Certainly, with stupid builds that can only make it with tons of help from other people.
One of the issues for me is that the game is… too long. I feel like the battle with Morgott should have been the natural end of the game, and the first DLC should have been up to the Fire Giant, Malekith, Malenia and the Elden Beast. These are generally good bosses, but for the base game? I had my fill of ER when I beat Morgott in May of 2022 for awhile and set it down except multiplayer with a second or third toon to jagg around with. It took me a long time to get back to the game and when I did, I think it wasn’t with the same fervor as the first 2/3rds.
That said, the final battle with Malenia, the probably 100+ tries against her were really epic, attempting different tactical paths, failing, trying new ones, failing, going back and beating up bosses I missed to get certain items, then going back and failing and finally running into the fight with no spells and just the GUTS Sword (and a mimic tear…) and getting a bit lucky with dodging the Waterfowl during her second form and then blammo– the hardest From boss in the can!
Unlike Bethesda games, From doesn’t necessarily care if you miss a bunch of stuff, so they hide their big dungeons quite well in ER, and the first instance of this in Stormveil Castle was pretty eye opening for me– the majority of the castle and dungeon beneath was not only totally optional, but fairly difficult to find to boot. This theme continues throughout the game, which is both good and bad. Good because the sense of exploration and discovery is certainly there all the time, especially after stumbling across the giant hole left by Radahn getting his arse kicked. Bad because– you miss stuff. If I didn’t have Nathan around mid-game for multiplayer, I would have missed tons of dungeons, just walked right past them. Later I was a bit more careful and was looking for particular items for my GUTS sword build. I think a bit more GO THIS WAY for some of the dungeons would have helped so I wasn’t looking online for hints all the time.
Favorite Bosses list:
Radahn – worth buying the game for just this
Redwolf Radagon – yeah, easy fight but really fun boss.
Godrick – just a jerk that needed to be put down for good!
Godskin Duo – Made me think of some other skinny and fat guy…
Malenia – can’t deny it, this was a good fight.
Well that’s it on ER for now. This is a lifestyle game for many people and for good reason, it is absolutely excellent. I can’t wait for the DLC and it’s hard to imagine what they could even do that they haven’t done before.
Sometimes stuff comes out of nowhere and ends up being critical move forward for an entire genre. Notably Warcraft 3, while eagerly awaited, was far better, and had much more influence on future games/gaming than anyone could have expected even in a genre (RTS) that had been run through by 2003 like a 2 dollar whore.
Street Fighter 6 just may be this type of historic game in the fighting genre. I thought the hype around SF4 was great as it brought a lot of people both into and back into fighting games, especially ones that weren’t Tekken. SF5 just didn’t do it for me and I barely played it, mostly as the graphics looked actually worse to me than SF4. This version is something else.
First off, I was intimidated by the new systems (drive rush, perfect parry, etc.) but having played with people that were completely new to the game with just a few matches of play able to pick up on perfect parries and the drive rush, one can see how easy these are to start to use. Since most folks can’t even do a QCF nor a DP consistently, these are single or double tap button presses that the opponent must respond to or he will take a beating, making a newer player able to effect the match regardless of lack of other knowledge.
Second, the feel of the game, the weight of the hits, characters, effects, is simply outstanding. I’m not going out on a limb already to say that this is probably the best 2D style fighter ever made and I am not, generally, a fan of Street Fighter over King of Fighters or some of SNK’s other games (Last Blade, Samurai Shodown). SF has always been super slow to me, with very limited mobility on the screen and tons of positioning plays which just bored me compared to the much more dynamic KOF that has many different types of jumps, dodging (which makes approaching easier and faster) and a focus on fast play. No longer. SF 6 resolves ALL of those issues, making it much easier to move across the screen and engage with the other player. Fireballs and zoning are still a thing, but they are not the ridiculous spacing play that (intermediate) players suffered with in old games.
Lastly the graphics– the characters look incredible, and as we play more we will forget just how good they look, how amazing the animations and how awesome the fanservice is! It’s been very fun to see how the characters evolved as they have ‘aged’ from the original SF Alpha series where all the characters look like little kids.
Overall, not just highly recommended, but give the game a try as I very much believe SF6 is going to be considered one of the best fighting games ever made. And I leave you with some high level Chun Li, who I think so far is the strongest character in the game, but we’ll see as EVO and other tournaments hit.
We used to LAN a lot, like once a month. Now it’s once per year only BUT there are some advantages in comparison:
There is more alcohol than everyone can consume during the weekend
Food is in abundance beyond imagining
Instead of a flop house style weekend with everyone sleeping on the floor under their computers, it’s in a real house with actual real rooms.
Weed items are effectively legal and plentiful, but no one smokes
It’s fucking great to play with EVERYTHING painted for once. GODDAMIT!
We started out with some various board games, but when everyone was in attendance we threw down the 2nd annual 7-man Talisman game which was, again, EPIC. Last year I had taken tooooo many mg in gummies so I was fucked up and just wanted to lie on the couch hence was quite glad when my character was killed off. This year I was BEER fueled and tried to go for the win, but my only claim to fame was killing off the hated PROPHETESS before she could bust out onto the scene and become unstoppable.
In the end, the Vampiress racked up the kills and destroyed everyone. I’m not sure anyone even went to the middle region, let alone the center. This is a very fun way to play with lots of players who don’t mind getting eliminated (to go play other stuff together after). It is very random though, but buy the Talisman ticket, take the fucnk ride.
We didn’t get many other board games except a good round of Dungeon Degenerates which degenerated into a TOTAL PARTY KILL about half way through the adventure. We were up against 6 monsters and didn’t use some of the items that could have put us in the W column, totally underestimating the enemies and getting destroyed. Great game and one that should get some more plays. The psychedelic board is a world of wonders.
The LAN type games were again dominated by Counter Strike and CSGO as it should be. We had old ass laptops and that’s about all they could run, so we took advantage of having 7 of them and had a blast co-op vs the bots with bots added (manually) every time we won a round until it was a proverbial SWARM. I preferred the CSGo with the more refined weapons and physics (let alone the graphics). Even on these old laptops, that ran just fine.
We did play QUAKE which was eye-bleedingly awesome but my skills at least were real rusty compared to other people (if they had skills in the first place that is). My loss at Q3A though was real bad. The verdict was that I had played too much Virtua Fighter and not enough Quake over the last year. My issue is I have to keep my skills up for VF because I have punk kids that I play in that, not so much with Quake.
For console stuff, we got in some great sessions of Tobal 2, always an amazing game to play and re-learn. It still holds up after all these years and for me at least, blows Tekken away. In Virtua Fighter 5 though, as noted above, I ran the jewels on the other players just from often playing and having timing down. It’s the anti-button masher, so you have to know when it’s your turn and not your turn or you get transanaled. I’m not sure the other players had all that much fun getting beatdowns when I chose random characters… We did get some DOA for the fanservice boob bounces and while DOA 6 is fun, it’s just so much slop compared to VF. Next year I want to have some type of fighting game tournament with something just stupid nuts like My Hero One Justice or Brawlhalla.
Keneda brought some chicken fight game that could handle 4 players + but I think I was drunk when we started and just threw the controller down and yelled at the TV and left to go play Donkey Kong in the basement region. I got some folks to play Dragon’s Crown and you just really cannot appreciate the largest breasts in a video game without actually seeing them in motion. It’s a great game, but I’m not sure even those sweet lovin thighs or sorceress’s breasts could hold people’s attention away from Counterstrike.
Despite the fact that after a series of 60-70 degree days there was a massive snowstorm and only Matt and I got out of there in time, I believe in my heart it was a successful OLD PERSON LAN.
EVO Japan had some great choices for games this year.
KOF XV
Here is an amazing King of Fighters final where Kyo just wrecks. Other than B.Jenet and Kyo, I really don’t like any of the other characters from the final match but in KOF casual, there are so many to choose from, it doesn’t even matter.
Virtua Fighter @ EVO
VF is the best fighting game there is, but it hasn’t had a new version since Virtua Fighter 5 in 2005!!!! (updated for PS4/PS5 with new graphics a few years ago). The fact that this game is at EVO is simply another testament to how good it is.
This is a LOOONG video, but if you are interested in solid English commentary and some awesome matchups, with a bit of a surprise victor, give it a watch.
Samurai Shodown (2019)
This is SUPER long and has only Japanese commentary. but it’s a good view into the current meta of Samsho as there are very few characters that make it to this level. Charlotte, Shiki, Baiken (from Guilty Gear), Genjiro, Yoshitora, Rimruru (bleh) at the top and Basara, Hibiki (from Last Blade), Warden and Cham Cham here and there. Baiken was selected by the winner last year, so in the final it would have been great to see Shiki take her down.
Next year will see Tekken 8 and Streetfighter 6 for sure so likely at least one of these games will be dropped from the roster to make room. EVO USA is in August, so we shall see what goes down there (only KOF XV from the above list is included).
Right after Elden Ring came out I had to take a trip and was away from my PC. I grabbed the Switch for my kids but remembered I had Dark Souls on it. The Switch, from many, many hours of whatever the fuck the kids play on there was messed up with a really bad drift-stick on one of the sticks that made DS nearly unplayable. Somewhere at some random Walmart in Indiana, I found a HORI Split Pad Pro and not only did that solve the drift-stick, it made Dark Souls a far better experience to play without the stock controllers. Very much recommended for everything unless you are worried about it fitting inside your little case (like if you have to shove it up your ass when you are sent to prison), otherwise the HORI sticks make everything play better.
Build
I was mulling over the build to use but when Pinwheel dropped the DAD mask (1/3rd chance), I knew what had to be done– Giant Dad with a fucking Chaos Zweihander. It’s a LOT of work to get all the pieces, and for new players of Dark Souls it is NOT worth it, just get the rest of the stuff and do a lightning Zweihander instead. Why? The Chaos Zwei scales off HUMANITY which means you have to run around with 5-10 humanity all the time. If you drop your souls and can’t get them back, you are farming fucking RATS in the depths for hours and hours to get what you need to hit hard enough to win.
Rings: Havel’s Ring, Wolf’s Ring
Armor: Giants + the Dad mask
Shield: Grass Crest
Weapon: Chaos Zwiehander, a bitch to create, and a bitch to use but hit’s so hard…
bastards!
Bosses
This is my second time all the way through the game so I was familiar with just about all the bosses I fought. Most of the bosses I thought were scary the first time were pushovers and some I thought were easy earlier were challenging.
Fatty Demon: Easy, but punishing later versions make me still hate this guy (like the Erdtrees)
Taurus Demon: Super easy.
Capra Demon: STILL a bitch to defeat, took me a lot of tries, not because of the Capra, but because of the dogs
Insideout Dragon : a tough fight, but the first real “boss” in the game so it better be. I lost a lot of souls during this battle for sure.
Bell Gargoyles: this was really easy, and I remember emotionally suffering in my initial playthrough.
Iron Giant: Not too bad but took me a lot of tries.
Queelag the topless: I used the summon because that one is so silly (a lady with a cleaver with a sack over her head) and she wasn’t too hard. Took me a few tries for sure and of course, that’s after Blighttown so you are always emotionally drained before fighting her, but at least there’s cleavage.
Ceaseless Discharge: this is a trick boss, so really doesn’t count. He’s easy if you know what to do and just a sad sack of fiery shit really.
Smough and Orenstein: Well… I summoned the Sunbro for help and followed the basics: Kill Orenstein first, don’t get hit by Smough and it worked out. This took me countless tries the first time through so I made sure I was good and ready for this battle, including walking in there with 10 Humanity so the Zwei was hitting hard. Big risk, big reward of the beautiful chest ahead.
Yeah, I look REAL good.
NITO: one of my favorite bosses in the end game because he’s pretty easy and also scary. Advice I got was to not go in the room to trigger the big skellingtons. Getting to NITO was terrible for me though…. ugh, Tomb of Giants was worse than Blightown this time.
SEATH: This one was tough, but I just stayed near his leg and kept circling and took him down. I had forgotten the whole prison thing so that was again a surprise!
FOUR KINGS: Super easy. I remember having a ton of trouble with these guys the first play through. Just hit them again and again.
hey I’m one of the good guys right? right? …
Demon Firesage: what an asshole. I kept getting the RNG on his AOE and it just killed me over and over and over. This boss I didn’t like too much because it felt ALMOST unfair.
Fire Centipeed: I lost 10 humanity the first time fighting this jerk, but summoned Sunbro again and we took her down.
BED OF CHAOS: this is my least favorite fight in Dark Souls. Just being constantly pushed off a cliff is not great fun. You can’t do anything but just suffer through this one and get it over with.
SIF: funny doggy. Not a tough fight. Maybe he’s the only good guy among all these bosses and you’re the bad guy.
Gwyn Lord of Cinder: For the final boss, he seems intimidating at first even for my second play through the game, but after playing Bloodborne where you MUST parry as part of normal play, this was a very easy fight that took only two tries! I just parried him over and over and had enough health to tank the shots I missed on… and the chaos zwei with 10 Humanity.
Come at me CHIZZLE CHEST!
Final verdict
The Switch version of Dark Souls is excellent, plays great, performance is fantastic. It’s all there and right in the palm of your hand and really good if you get the Hori controllers. If they work well with DS, they will work well with Breath of the Wild and everything else.
Why on earth would I pick the GOTY for 2021 to be a remake of a game that came out 10 years ago? Because this game is still the best fighting game there is and we played the shit out of it regular since it came out last summer.
Any time my kid’s friends are over and they feel like playing a fighter, they always select Virtua Fighter, and, until this summer, we had to lug out the XBOX360 in order to play it. What’s more, these kids couldn’t go home and play/practice the game so the only time they could play was at our house. No longer! With the release of VF Ultimate Showdown, modern consoles get this absolute gem ad infinitum.
When it first came out, I was skeptical– especially after the Warcraft 3 debacle by the now collapsed and sold Blizzard Activision, and I was confused why they didn’t just port it direct instead the overhauling of the graphics. As a test, I played the 360 one for a couple hours, then switched to the new one, then switched back and it’s just as responsive and plays exactly the same.
Graphics wise, it’s an update that definitely modernizes the characters and stages, but in some cases not for the better. First off, a lot of the male characters look great with the exception of Akira who does not look quite right at all to me. However, ALL of the female characters look much worse than their 2010 versions in the face region. I do not like the way Vanessa, Eilene or Pai look at all, Sarah is the only one that turned out sort of OK. I think they need to keep working on the faces for all the characters.
Bling wise, there’s a fraction of the character customization in the game compared to 2012’s version– no longer can I bust out Vanessa barefoot in a wedding dress or customize her to look just like Sarah so it’s hard to tell who the other person is actually fighting (haha!). There is a 10$ Yakuza costume pack that adds some new threads, but overall a minor disappointment.
That said, they created/recreated blocky Virtua Fighter 1 style character models for all the characters (including the new characters added from VF2 onward) and that’s fantastic, I can play with the VF2 version of my old main, Lion, but with his full moveset from VF5. Baller!
While the access to this game on modern consoles is the core reason why this was selected as GOTY, the second main reason is really critical– since this game sold so well SEGA is now thinking hard about a Virtua Fighter 6, which should be the end goal of all humans in the coming years.
Online play works great and I’ve had ZERO lag issues, my losses are my own fault and not like I yelled at the TV at the time, ping based. My online play is limited because I have access to local, albeit short and small bean, players.
Recent interest in the game has picked up, and while this new version is definitely not Virtua Fighter 6, I’ve just been super pumped to be able to play this online and locally since it’s release. It looks great, with the exception of some facialisms, and plays, as always, fan-fuckn-tastic. If you have never played a Virtua Fighter game, it is not hyperbole in the slightest when I say it is the best fighting game ever made. It’s three buttons, it’s easy for beginners to pick up and play (together) and have fun and shockingly deep for intermediate and expert players. Below is an example of me fighting against two 11 year old kids that switched off using the controller.
Ten days ago was the second Beta/Demo for King of Fighters 15, a now ancient and renowned series of fighting games that used to come out with a new version EVERY SINGLE YEAR from 1994 -2003. It made the switch (for real this time) to 3D with XIV and while that game was good, it didn’t look all that great and had some pretty wonky new characters. What’s more it didn’t FEEL like KOF to me, something was just off…
In contrast, KOF XV looks good and plays exceptionally good. The first demo was fun, but had a few issues (it being a network test beta after all). To give it the college try, I went back and played a few of the older King of Fighters during the same weekend as the demo to see how the feel of the games compared, and while I think KOF 13 (the last sprite-based version) is my favorite gameplay wise, 15 is a close second place.
The toughest thing to do for one of these fighting game companies is to move from 2d to 3d, which only a few series have done successfully (Street Fighter with SFIV, Guilty Gear with Xrd and Strive). A lot of both soul and gameplay can be lost in translation which can be seen in the Street Fighter EX and early attempts at King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown. While most of those are OK games, they really could not hold a candle to their 2d versions when they were released. Nowadays, with the crazy good looking 2d games that Arc System works are putting out, we don’t even think about the struggle it was to get games to look as good as their 2d sprite-based counterparts. SNK has struggled like any other company and I would say nothing looked particularly great in 3D until Samurai Showdown 2019.
Gameplay wise, 3D games that mimicked 2D fighters tended to be slower than their 2D counterparts and rarely felt all that great. Meanwhile full bore 3D fighters worth bothering with (Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Tobal, etc.) were fun straight out of the gate and didn’t have ‘better’ versions to compare them to in the first place. Newer 2d games using polygons instead of sprites have certainly solved this issue and here we are with a good looking and extremely playable KOF!
Here’s some babbling about the game from the demo:
Character wise, I stuck with the old standbys, and I really don’t think most of the new characters are all that great (and there were a ton of lame ones added to KOF 14 that didn’t make it to 15 so far), with the exception of Meitenkun, the sleepy kid who falls asleep during his own supermoves. INSTANT MAIN.
