Moises Taveras’ Top 10 Games of 2023

By Moises Taveras | December 28, 2023 | 1:35pm

Video Games Lists best of 2023

2023 was a phenomenal year for games, and it was simultaneously a horrendous one for the people who make them. Much has been said about the toll this year took on the creators of my favorite things in the world, but I’ve yet to say much myself for fear that I’d have little to add. I still don’t quite have the words. I’ve got instead an ire and resentment towards the powerful few who’ve punched holes in this landscape and offered nothing to fill it. Nothing to comfort the blows of the lives they’ve upended and ruined. And yet despite the terrible reality of making games, everyone delivered nonetheless. Whether they made it to the end of the year intact or not, developers never stopped giving us some of the best games ever and the most appealing fantasies to lose ourselves in. If you’re a developer, I’m sure you don’t hear it enough, so thank you so much for what you’ve given us. Without further ado, here are my picks for the top 10 games of 2023.

10. Jusant

Don’t Nod’s mountain climbing game Jusant feels like a full body experience. The triggers, which in any other game are defined by verbs like “punch” or “aim” or “shoot,” instead control the grip of your corresponding hands. Climbing isn’t as simple as pressing forward on a vertical surface, it’s rhythmic and full of split-second decision making and considerations. This rhythm entranced me, blurring the lines between realities in my head as I squeezed the triggers for dear life, wholly believing I’d actually plummet from the couch in my living room in Brooklyn if I let go at the wrong time. You know how sometimes you’ll be playing a tense game, need to peek around a corner, and find yourself mimicking your character and craning your neck around the TV? I had a similar experience the entirety of my time playing Jusant. Lunging from one handhold to another, I reflexively found myself pulling back and then jumping forward in my seat. In one of the later chapters, one particularly long, beautiful and harsh climb basically left me winded, though the reality was that the palpable tension of the sequence subconsciously made me hold my breath until I hit a checkpoint.

9. Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name

Like A Dragon Gaiden is both cursed and blessed by familiarity. It’s so much like the games before it that it’s predictably fun, boisterous, funny, well-acted and directed. It is also a bit tame, especially by the standards of the series, rarely pushing in terms of narrative and character in the bold ways Like A Dragon has become well-renowned for, making for a welcome-if-unnecessary side chapter in Kiryu’s story before what appears to be a conclusion for everyone’s favorite ex-yakuza. But even if it falls short in some unfortunate places, this “budget-sized” installment in the series is just as wonderful and bountiful a place to jump into and fall in love with its inane brand of magic.

8. Thirsty Suitors

Then there’s Jala. Thirsty Suitors frames her as explicitly flirty and cool as all hell. Among her abilities in battle is a taunt where she flips and lands seated before feigning cat-like behavior to generate thirst from her opponent. Once they’re thirsty, she can follow up with an attack that has her project a basketball and literally dunk on them. When she shocks her enemies, she can instead hit them with her skateboard. She’s the cool and alternative skater girl I dreamt up when I was younger and wondering what my type was. She’s a vision. She also eschews many of the tropes of romantic characters in games, who are sometimes flattened by the need to be appealing to players by being the multi-faceted protagonist of the story. Sometimes Jala is even unlikeable, lending her dimensions that make her feel like a real person. Rather than turn me away from her, it only solidifies the crush I’ve developed on this character who skirts the line between reality and fantasy wonderfully.

7. Final Fantasy XVI

Final Fantasy XVI isn’t short of reasons to be hesitant about it, but despite them, it sings better than you might think. The story may suffer from the classic Final Fantasy dilemma of tackling a lot of characters and trying to find a time and place for them all, but also holds nothing back in regards to its main themes along the way. The developers may stumble on their way to realizing a fully diverse cast, but that cast is also hugely talented and commands their scenes when needed, bringing layers to characters that could’ve been afterthoughts or simple fodder. Even when Final Fantasy XVI turns away from most of the systems that would make it a compelling and tactical RPG, it embraces a deeply rewarding combat system that lets it be expressive in its own way entirely. It’s a button-mashing, occasionally awkwardly sexed-up and mature action game that seems at least a bit ashamed to fully be an RPG, opting instead to fill the space those systems would occupy with timed button prompts a decade out of touch and endless spectacles. It is, at once, this cosmically confused product on one hand, and the most self assured thing on the other. In other words, it’s an RPG fitting of the era, and one of the top 10 games of 2023.

6. Hi-Fi Rush

Hi-Fi Rush is my dream game come true. I’ve always been a sicko for action and rhythm games, but have admittedly only excelled at the latter since music was a significant part of my upbringing. And though I’ve always heard the analogies about combos in action games being rhythmic, few games have ever taken the actual step towards visualizing that in the way Hi-Fi Rush does, or made it as simple to understand. That is just the first in a long string of things that the game gets right. Setting players up against a metronome that’s brought to life in the world around you makes the game feel magical, and by extension you are magic for harmonizing with it. I loved, for example, during one particular combo that needed me to hit the light attack four times with a rest breaking it up into two segments, that the rest was realized in the character model, clearly delineating when it was time to continue. Because of the constant visual and audio aids, slapping enemies with your magnetically assembled impression of an electric guitar to the beat has never made it simpler to execute short but satisfying combos, only made better by many of their flashy finishes, which also demand accuracy to land most efficiently. I swear the game will have you counting beats, and I often caught myself head banging ever so slightly to Hi-Fi Rush’s impeccable score while wailing away at enemy encounters.

5. Sea of Stars

Early in Sea of Stars, your crew’s newfound lore historian tells a fireside story about a cursed pirate ship named the Vespertine. There was a mutiny aboard the Vespertine, led by its navigator against the captain before the crew and ship were caught in a never-ending tempest and then disappeared from this plane of reality. Every now and then, the Vespertine briefly appears to the naked eye, before disappearing once again. Selfishly, I heard this story and immediately thought, “I want to take that ship for myself. I want to storm its deck and take out its ghastly crew. I want to free the Vespertine from the never-ending storm that encircles and sail away with it.” Imagine my absolute delight, when hours later, my party of adventurers boarded the Vespertine and claimed it for themselves. This cuts to the heart of what I love most about Sea of Stars: it’s a rollercoaster ride through the most picturesque and fantastical journeys in the history of RPGs, becoming itself a hallmark adventure and worthy standard bearer moving forward. It isn’t perfect, but it’s the most fulfilling RPG I’ve played in a long while, as well as the rare retro-styled game whose inspirations make it soar rather than sink; that makes it one of the top 10 games of 2023.

4. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

In spite of it all though, CD Projekt Red has struck it out of the park. Cyberpunk 2077 finally shines the way it was always meant to. I hate talking in anything that resembles platitudes, but Phantom Liberty is an honest-to-goodness triumph. It’s not just the narrative I hoped for out of the original game, it’s everything it ought to have been. It properly sands away the rough and occasionally raw elements and designs of the base game and sharpens its best parts into a weapon like little else. It doubles down and makes it clear this is a world worth telling stories in. It more prominently and earnestly wears its heart on its sleeve, all the while delivering characters and consequences that hopefully ripple outwards in brilliant and bold new ways. It’s everything I could’ve wanted Cyberpunk 2077 to be.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Tears of the Kingdom almost refuses to let you outright fail. This is an extension of a similar philosophy players found in Breath of the Wild, though that game and its tools had to be admittedly stretched to fit it more neatly. It immediately blows the doors wide open to players, invites them to play, and even defy that simple directive to do essentially whatever the hell you want. No matter how mundane or extravagant the fantasy, Tears of the Kingdom is always primed to make it a reality, and in doing so, it kind of eliminates the notion of any fail state. Instead, every “failure” is a chance to innovate, turning every would be ending into an opportunity to force a solution how you see fit. Sure, there are intended ways to do these shrines, and I’ve done plenty within those narrow confines, but the greatest victory is using my own head and ingenuity to triumph. Whether you’re a genius engineer or some idiot with far too powerful tools, Tears of the Kingdom has already proven that playing to your own beat is better than anything it could’ve prescribed or mandated. And that, folks, is truly freeing and wonderful to experience.

2. Venba

Venba cut right through me. It laid bare so much of the baggage I’ve held as the son of immigrants, as a first generation American, and as a brown kid growing up in America. It speaks through food—just about my favorite thing in the world—about connection and the difficulty of maintaining them. It accomplishes this and more in a runtime equivalent to a long movie and with a paltry budget by comparison to the blockbuster games shoved onto everyone. I’m not kidding at all when I say that the future of games ought to look way more like Venba than it currently does.

1. Alan Wake II

2023 held no shortage of fantasies to occupy my time. I got to be a secret agent, a wannabe rockstar, and a Solstice Warrior among them, but I think I derived the most purpose from being a tortured writer. I already am that after all, or at least as tortured as anyone pursuing a career in media can be. Yet Alan Wake II‘s vision of being a tortured writer doesn’t look like being locked in a room pacing back and forth (to an extent) so I’m more partial to that version over my own. Instead, Alan Wake gets to traipse around a nightmarish New York, fight shadows, and look for the light. Something about that resonates with me. And that’s why Alan Wake II tops my list of the top 10 games of 2023.

For more year-end coverage, check out Paste games editor Garrett Martin’s top 10 games of 2023, as well as Paste’s best games of 2023.

Moises Taveras is the assistant games editor for Paste Magazine. He was that one kid who was really excited about Google+ and is still sad about how that turned out.