In a year that’s been dominated by all-time great single player games, it can be hard to pick and choose just a smaller group of them as the best of the best. Here, however, that’s exactly what we’re going to do, so join us as we go through what we feel are our favourite single player games of the year, in no particular order.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM
One-upping what’s considered by many to be the greatest game ever made is far from an easy task (to put it mildly), but Nintendo did it with surprising ease and confidence. Tears of the Kingdom builds on the masterful bones of Breath of the Wild to deliver an adventure that’s mind-bogglingly massive, complex, addictive, and epic. With a new set of abilities, incredible open world design, and a bevy of content that can best be described as “all killer, no filler”, Tears of the Kingdom is easily one of the best games ever made, just like its predecessor was.
PIKMIN 4
The wait for Pikmin 4 was a long one; so long, in fact, that there were some who had begun to wonder whether it would ever even release. It did release though, and boy was it worth the wait. Pikmin 4 is a glorious and unique game, combining real-time strategy and action-adventure elements to deliver a thoroughly addictive experience. A bevy of quality-of-life improvements and significant gameplay enhancements come together to deliver what’s easily one of the best games in the Switch’s library.
FINAL FANTASY 16
Like pretty much every mainline Final Fantasy game, Final Fantasy 16 has proved a bit polarizing among the series’ fanbase, but for our money, this is an excellent game. With its darker, grittier fantasy world it crafts an identity that we’ve seen very rarely in this series, and within that world, it tells a truly compelling tale, thanks to an excellent cast of characters, even if the writing can stumble a bit at times. On top of that, you have the stylish, aggressive combat, which proves that Final Fantasy can be just as great of an action game as it can be an RPG.
BALDUR’S GATE 3
As the revival of a beloved dormant franchise, and as the next big game of a developer with a proven track record, Baldur’s Gate 3 had obviously generated a fair bit of buzz prior to its launch, thanks in no small part to its promising early access period. Even so, no one could have predicted that it would be the behemoth it turned out to be. Very rarely do you see a video game capturing the controller chaos and unrivaled freedom of a DnD experience as well as Baldur’s Gate 3 does, whether that’s with its world design, is bevy of excellently designed quests, its freeform combat, or its impactful and ever-present choice and consequence mechanics.
ARMORED CORE 6: FIRES OF RUBICON
After putting out a string of masterful Soulslike action RPGs over the course of nearly a decade and a half, in 2023, FromSoftware pivoted back to the franchise that originally put it on the map with Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon. And as you’d expect from the legendary developer at this point, it turned out to be a hell of a game, perhaps even the series’ best ever. Its core gameplay loop might be a radically different one to what From fans have grown used to, but if what you’re looking for is explosive action, spectacular bosses, expansive customization, and grueling difficulty, Armored Core 6 delivers that in spades.
RESIDENT EVIL 4
Capcom has been on an unstoppable roll with its Resident Evil games for several years now, and it may very well have hit entirely new heights for the franchise with this year’s remake of Resident Evil 4. Reimagining a game that has this kind of a legacy is an unenviable task, but Capcom did it with the sort of confidence that only a Capcom remake can. Feeling simultaneously fresh and nostalgic, radically different and blissfully familiar, true to the original and entirely new, the RE4 remake is nothing short of a masterpiece.
DEAD SPACE
Speaking of excellent remakes of all-time classics, 2023 was also the year that saw EA and Motive Studio bringing back the original Dead Space in glorious fashion. As a remake, Dead Space is a fairly conservative one, but really, it makes the exact right amount (and kind) of changes it needed to to improve upon what was already a great game. From zero load times to its one-shot camera, from a breathtaking visual upgrade to the addition of new optional content, from Isaac Clarke being voiced to stronger connections to future instalments, Dead Space does pretty much everything right in terms of remaking a beloved classic.
ALAN WAKE 2
2023 was a stellar year for survival horror games, as evidenced by some of the games we’ve spoken of here already, but there is, of course, another notable one that also deserves all the praise in the world. After nearly a decade and a half of trying, Remedy Entertainment finally managed to release Alan Wake 2, and to say that it was worth the wait would be putting it mildly. Very rarely do we see the kind of bold ambition and unbridled creativity that Alan Wake 2 so proudly exhibits, and the fact that it accomplishes that while also being a legitimately well-designed survival horror game makes it that much more of an impressive and unforgettable experience.
STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR
It’s a shame that so much of the discourse around Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was about the technical issues that it launched with (which persisted for several months afterward), because though it certainly did have problems in that arena, it was, ultimately, an excellent game. Jedi: Survivor improves upon its predecessor in every way possible. Combat is improved thanks to the addition of lightsaber stances and a larger variety of enemies, exploration is improved by the game’s blend of Metroidvania design and larger, more open-ended spaces, while traversal is improved by the addition of several new movement abilities and Force powers. To top it all off, Jedi: Survivor also tells a captivating story, while also delivering some of the best and most jaw-dropping set-pieces we’ve seen in a game in quite some time.
MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN 2
Insomniac has taken to the Spider-Man universe like a duck to water, and with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the developer once again outdid itself in nearly every way possible. With two unique Spider-heroes to play as, the sequel delivers twice the fun, endowing both Peter and Miles with explosive abilities that make combat an absolute blast. Meanwhile, the webswinging mechanics take a radical step forward as well, not only thanks to the addition of the Web Wings, but also the sharp increase in the speed at which you move through the city. And when you throw additional elements like Venom, Kraven the Hunter, and a well-told story into that already delicious pot, you get what’s easily one of 2023’s standout releases.
CYBERPUNK 2077: PHANTOM LIBERTY
Cyberpunk 2077’s redemption arc has been incredible to witness, and nothing exemplifies the game’s extreme turnaround better than Phantom Liberty, which, in many ways, is exactly the sort of game many of us were hoping Cyberpunk 2077 itself would be when it first launched in 2020. A riveting and expertly told story, a vibrant and meticulously crafted open world, consistently thrilling combat and stealth mechanics, memorable characters who elevate an already excellent story to even greater heights- Phantom Liberty hits in all the ways it should have hit, and then some.
SUPER MARIO BROS. WONDER
The Super Mario franchise’s line of 2D platformers had grown disappointingly stagnant and predictable over the years, but with Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Nintendo swung in the exact opposite direction, and swung hard. This is a game that keeps swinging for the fences, every step of the way. The gleefully bizarre Wonder Seed mechanic and the dumbfounding creativity it leads to combines with ingenious level design and a smattering of trademark Mario charm to deliver a game that, in spite of being a sidescroller, manages to reach the heights that you would ordinarily expect from a flagship 3D Mario platformer.
HI-FI RUSH
None of us had a colourful rhythm-based action game from the makers of The Evil Within on our 2023 bingo card, but not only was that exactly what we got in the first month of the year, Hi-Fi Rush also turned out to be one of 2023’s brightest gems. It’s a game that anybody with an Xbox or a PC absolutely needs to experience. Its rhythm-based action is as fun as it is stylish, its music and audio design consistently hit the highest of highs, the visual style and animations are absolutely gorgeous, and the story and the cast of characters are, surprisingly enough, also one of the game’s biggest strengths. 12 months ago, we couldn’t have known Hi-Fi Rush would be the game it turned out to be, but now, it’s hard to imagine the Xbox Series X/S library without it.
STARFIELD
Whether or not Starfield is able to replicate the best of the best that Fallout and The Elder Scrolls have had to offer over the years might be up for debate, but viewed on its own merits, this is a game that’s brimming with things that we couldn’t help but fall head over heels in love with. An endless stream of compelling quests, a massive galaxy brimming with captivating lore and worldbuilding, addictive systems in the form of ship and outpost building, combat that easily surpasses anything BGS has ever put out in the past, rewarding and layered progression mechanics- we could talk for hours about all the things that we love about Starfield.
LIES OF P
Over the course of the last decade or so, many studios whose name isn’t FromSoftware have tried to do what FromSoftware has done with the Soulslike subgenre, but very few of them (if any) have managed to do it as well or as effectively as Neowiz did with Lies of P in 2023. Combining its Pinnochio trappings with the gothic aesthetic of Bloodborne and the structure and mechanics of the Soulslike genre as a whole, Lies of P creates an unforgettable experience that may very well be one of 2023’s biggest surprise hits- in that it manages to surpass even the lofty expectations so many had for it in the lead-up to its release.
