Greetings dear reader,
I started writing a small round-up of games I've played in 2023 and perhaps where I would “rank” them in some arbitrary order. As I started writing this thing however, eventually it turned into more of a chronological (yet still fairly self-indulgent) walkthrough of games and experiences that have shaped the last year, for better and for worse. What follows is a journal.
This year personally was such a damn trial. The winter season at the beginning of 2023 was truly a test of my will after years of tests. Fortunately, as everything straightened out into the spring, the year gave way to so much healing.
Some healing in body, mind, heart and soul, where I finally started feeling like Jacob on my own two feet again; and some healing brought forth by Resident Evil 4 on the Wii because that game absolutely slaps and –-
Beat April 4th, 2023
I've been chipping away at this with my pal DN for ages from October 2022 to April 2023. I've felt drawn to play and have this game "under my belt" as having experienced it as part of a mid-2000s cultural games canon. This game was, and is, absolutely huge and influential on action game design since it originally came out in 2005. The thing is, I do so poorly with horror; I have a tenuous fascination but when it comes down to it I freeze and cannot bring myself to steel and be okay. I'm constantly fighting my fight-or-flight response.
Here's the thing: I had to get a Resident Evil (RE) sicko in DN to be my guiding light. Fortunately, DN LOVES being the RE sicko and having beaten the game numerous, numerous times, he was glad to partake.
This inspiration to start on the Wii version in June 2022 came from a curiosity to play this action-horror on a platform that not only offered great controls for aiming (as I deduced from researching fan feedback on this version before the remake came out,) as well as the novelty in playing this over-the-top action on the Wii. The Wii was highly influential for me as a kid. I was the Wii kid. The Wii was for me – a kid. So the incongruent nature of suffering a terrible fate by getting chainsawed in half in RE4 is wild on this thing. This was cool for DN too, as he's never actually seen the Wii version be played so he had an academic curiosity for this version as well.
After a pathetic attempt at trying the game solo in June 2022, I begged DN to sit in on sessions between October 2022, December, February 2023, March, then April 2023. We snacked on this thing.
This was a special time personally as a ritual, as we had gone through such a turbulent time during that Fall/Winter period. Even just for a few hours on the weekend mornings when our schedules aligned, sitting together and laughing, squealing, white-knuckling through RE4 was a golden part of the year as the weather was dreary and things were on fire in other parts of my life at that point this year. I owe this game a lot for bringing me back into the fold and getting wheels straight for the rest of the year, and I'm grateful for that.
For that momentum to build into February 2023 to roll into RE4 again, there was some quiet exploration and some examination on my part at the outset of the year. A perfect time for a game to fall into my lap.
Beat March 13, 2023
Okay, so January 2023 was completely buggered. Work was on fire with no end of that in sight. A truly bizarre breakup experience. Some thoughts on moving to the Lower Mainland. Friend circles were introduced and continued to thrive throughout the year. That growth has been nurtured, but at that time we were so messy, friends.
That's why taking a mosey through Metroid Prime Remastered was sick!
Retro pretty much remade the original GameCube release!
It has pointer controls!
It moves so well!
It looks great, runs well, and is super polished!
The atmosphere, sound design, and level layouts were super fun to just exist in!
I went hog wild in January playing this. Aching in the headspace of being so burnt out at work that winter allowed me to give myself permission to just chill and enjoy the environment that developer Retro Studios had worked so hard to craft here (I will share this sentiment with another meticulously crafted environment explored later this year.1) While working on this myself as well as RE4 with DN, the springtime blessed me with bangers.
I'm excited to see what Retro's been cooking with Metroid Prime 4 after they've been working on it for ages, taking their time.
–
1 It's Red Dead Redemption 2.
Beat March 26, 2023
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I managed to pick this side-story expansion to Lost Judgment up on a small sale, as I was curious how the often-speculated beat-em-up style of the Like a Dragon (formerly Yakuza) series would fare, starring our favourite detective himbo Kaito.
It's just okay! Which bums me out! I'm just not convinced that Kaito has the roundness of character to carry a solo story, and I was hoping that even a short story wouldn't need to rely on the extreme melodrama that Like a Dragon is known for -- even the Lost Judgment detective tropes couldn't save this one.
We even rely on "we gotta fight over the love of a woman" stuff here. Are we really doing this in the Current Year? What are we doing? GAH I dunno man. It kills me to type this as I went in with the best of faith and expectations. At least Like a Dragon Gaiden rules.2
–
2 This was the last game I played this year, so it's coming much later down the line.
Beat April 17th 2023
Okay folks, now we are hitting that Spring 2023 momentum where the Good Stuff Really Hit The Spot.
Back in England, I borrowed a PS4 copy of the Resident Evil 2 Remake from a colleague and I just could not hack it getting through, even with an encouraging audience of friends on the couch. RE2 is different from RE4 by way of its atmosphere instilling genuine dread. The action-movie camp is not present in this place. Instead, a creepy art museum-turned-police station (huh?) riddled with the most inconveniently-placed creeps is here.
My resolve through RE4 was the key foundation in building the confidence to get through RE2 Remake. Returning to the remake with that horror vocabulary and some coaching from DN once again was enormously helpful; I'm very pleased to say that eventually, I built enough momentum to finish it on my own. What a ride. As much as RE4 is more my speed in terms of balancing the cheesy action-horror tone, I am proud that my palette and nerves developed to roll through this. Incredibly well-made.
Early May 2023
I had a pretty unhelpful series of counselling sessions in the spring, really trying to nail down hang-ups I was working through this year in trying to quiet nagging feelings I had about my place personally and professionally here in town.
It's so difficult to guess and truly nail a moving target. It's equally difficult for me to take the risk of uprooting my life once again. It's one thing to move somewhere and know that you can move back, pick up those pieces, and rebuild a man. It's another to become homeless as your loved ones are scattered in the winds and you may not know where to turn to, and you've already risked so much and had your heart broken in the calendar year.3
So you stay and you wait a summer and see what's out there for you again, a second summer just for you. This time it was different. This year you develop a tan on your white-ass feet. Your Birks feel great, finally, after spending so much. You visit a pawn shop with a friend4 and, on a whim, decide to buy that inflatable kayak this summer because you thought that
only to realize that as you are both walking west down Highway 33 from Asher Road holding this 50lbs box, y'all look so over-the-top, and break down the box on the sidewalk and organize the carrying bag. The bag is huge as you hoist its burdens on thee as if a Samwise. A trek ensues (to be honest, I forget how I got that box home.)
Outings this summer, getting to know people (dating) reintroduced notions of
“Jacob As I Am Now and Have Been”
rather than
“Jacob As I Was In The Recent Past [of 2021] and Now What”
and that slow realization that came with the work involved to be healed, to get to that state – it came slowly. I would say that it was deliberate but it came from not only time but also from meeting folks (dating) and understanding that truth to yourself on what you want and who you are, that you could fall in love anywhere, but it has to feel right this time. It has to be because I feel like so much more is at stake this time. Meanwhile, you get an email update on the proceedings of the Old Life and you feel nothing, like you had turned the page already by just breathing and lo and behold you've already been reading the next five pages of the next chapter. This surprises you a bit.
This explains the gap between entires of games here as I was too busy getting burnt to a crisp outside this summer.
–
3 Not the only time this year either, haha.
4 A celebrity appearance by DN, once again. I'm typing on the EBus at 6:32 pm as this thing is zipping through on its way to Salmon Arm. I'm going the route of Kelowna - Vernon - Armstrong - Salmon Arm - Falkland (I reckon) - Kamloops.
Hopefully, we get there by 8 pm. This bus was delayed 4 hours. I grabbed a burrito bowl and chatted with L as I had not eaten, and went back for 2 pm and they said another few hours delay. I got an eggnog latte at Blenz by the ORL and started typing this thing. The small bit of writing I've been thinking of doing for months. I'm looking to stay til Sunday.
I've brought my running gear and am curious how the trails (?) will be. Most likely I won't run on the highway even with my high-viz. I'm a lunatic. It's been peaceful writing on this bus, however. Most chill EBus ride. Affordable, too, versus last year. C's not coming til January: “The difference between four hundred and a grand.” Makes sense to me. – Author's note: I did this run and it killed me. Felt great though.
5 It was.
6 It was.
Beat May 28th, 2023
25 minutes before my first appointment with my counsellor I had loaded up a copy of Tears of the Kingdom onto my Switch. Pleased that I had managed to get this up and running, I jogged to make sure that I'd make the appointment in time.
The meeting was just some maintenance, you know, when you catch up with a new counsellor on the latest charcuterie of delectable flavours in your trauma. We were feasting. I had seen this same counsellor when I was 20 in the summer of 2016 in-between jobs, wrestling with the vocabulary of independence and living for myself. I was only a tadpole. Later that summer in mid-late August I'd undergo residence advisor training in the most emotionally vulnerable, honest, and radical change I would endure in a span of two weeks. I was primordial soup in a flesh prison that first week in August. By the fourth week, I was a flesh prison but now my name was Jacob. Every year since has pretty much built on this prototype with small, rickety additions.
This time the counsellor politely feigned recognition from six years prior and he continued to speak in platitudes. I walked back home, in my head about this, and decided to boot up Tears of the Kingdom. This was before its wide release so nothing could be looked up in this wild west.
Yeah, the game is great, and I played a lot of it in May. You can trip over many think-pieces and find it at the top of so many Game of the Year lists this year. I had my fill and have since put it down – I'm unsure if I'll get back to it! It had its time and place for me on the eve of the summer, just as its predecessor Breath of the Wild served as a similar beacon for summer's beginning in 2017.
Summer 2023
I started going to the gym this summer with a pal, and we've been pretty consistent in going 2-3 times a week. This project in keeping ourselves accountable and his guidance were crucial in rewiring my brain synapses this summer. It also helped that Twitter finally, sadly, died so that my brain could finally write new memories in a healthy mind and body, rather than being terminally online. Thank fucking god. Now we just send memes of the most shredded men being self-deprecating that they still can't talk to women. I feel great.
Beat August 16th, 2023
IMMORTALITY flew onto my radar this year while listening to Jeremy Jayne discuss it on the Noclip podcast, detailing the work that group did on their documentary around the creation of the title. Jeremy has an incredible way with words when it comes to critiquing the games and art he comes across in a manner I wish to attain. Fortunately, just before IMMORTALITY left Game Pass back in August, I was able to run through it and see what all the fuss was about.
I managed to get through it in a couple of days – and perhaps it did not resonate with me in the way I would have wanted, or even close to how Jeremy was enamoured. The technical feat that these folks shot on-set, pre- and post-production footage for three feature-length films, and tying these together as the player investigates ties between all these clips is remarkable. Without a doubt, I am highly impressed that this thing even got made as a piece of metafiction that the \player can use to investigate the fates of the actors within the fiction. That said, when things get off the rails, it's cool – but it just didn't land for me, and I think, somehow, I stumbled upon the ending in the dark, a fluke.
Maybe I feel strange about IMMORTALITY as I started it as I was on the outs with someone romantically, realizing that it wasn't set to be anything more in a way that was going to really work. This marked the end of this summer of shenanigans. It led eventually to something that burned incredibly quick and bright, and into the Fall, the return of someone who left as quickly as they reappeared. More turbulence after a summer of getting back out there. It felt good this time around. I feel more sure of myself this time around, and even though IMMORTALITY didn't quite land, that's okay.
Beat September 19th, 2023
Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) somehow has been laid as this enormous mental project for me to complete, ever since I came back to the country. I felt as if I had to put so many games or TV series on hold because, eventually, I would need to set aside the mental time, energy and attention to fully experience RDR2 in a manner I felt it had “deserved”. I think I feel that way for a lot of media that is part of some sort of critical canon, this compulsion to always read closely, to not just relax and enjoy the ride. There was a mystique created around Red Dead Redemption 2, about its production values, the sheer grind and burnout it created during its development.
I think the big stink it was wrapped in for me is that it is a project started during my old life; that I had expected to complete its journey in that context, with that company. It had all this baggage when I returned to the country and a dark feeling that I couldn't tackle it myself – just not yet.
The time came in those weeks in late August going into September when I was working through burning out myself at work (again) as the academic year started, with the briefest yet passionate relationship cooling down. In the quiet times during that period, I found RDR2 again. Not only was it the layered masterpiece I had built up in my head, I found myself in the exact headspace I needed to mosey around and experience this story. I thoroughly enjoyed the slow pace, and I was moved as tragedy after tragedy occurred, OH it was so heartwrenching! My god!!!
So much labour went into crafting RDR2 and it was an absolute treat. After all was said and done, I am happy to have hung my hat on this and laid it to rest. I had such an enormous weight of expectations in “properly experiencing” the game in my headspace for so long. With RDR2 done, as much as I enjoyed it, I couldn't help but feel this intense relief in the cavity left as I closed the book started so long ago in the past. It was time to move on to something new.
Late September 2023
Something clicked in my head nearly instantly once I rolled credits on Red Dead Redemption 2. With the weight of expectations gone, I started thinking about what I wanted to work on, something I have always thought may have been interesting to get into outside of the screen.
What's been great is that I have built up momentum with exercising since the summer, and as I got into that routine, I thought that just literally going out and running would be great.
During the lockdowns in Northwest England in the months between March and June 2020, we were given the good grace of one (1) government-allowed daily Going Outside to Exercise quota so that we weren't all going insane. Living in Chester and newly unemployed, the brightest parts of that dark time were the easterly walks along the canal by the train station our apartment was across from. Cheshire was truly a stunning region, and I thoroughly relished those walks even though, at the time, I was wracked with stress, as we all were.
Part of me thought that the paths along the canal would lead to great running. I reckon I was correct, but with that time's depression, I could never muster up the motivation and funds given that I was unemployed, there was no mental room. Those paths ought to have been prime.
Living in Nottingham and peers having running as their hobbies and describing themselves and I as naughty, twinky men, I thought – what the hell – let's give it a shot. Then I moved back.
So, in the Fall this year having passed through the barrier, the weight I had laid on myself with all the stuff, the shit, stemming from that time – I shed a whole lot of that. And, oh look, it's marathon season. I was inspired, as I had held on to so much, had waited or put on pause so much, but now I felt that there would be no better time to start running than now, today, or maybe this week, once I buy some running shoes and shorts and maybe a fitness watch so that I don't have my god damn phone flinging around.
In earnest I started running in early August tracking my small runs for myself. I am aiming for my goals to run a 10k race in the spring, and shoot for a half-marathon in the Fall, or the spring after. I am going easy on myself in this regard, giving myself some time, and not being too frustrated about not making a perceived amount of progress. This is coming easier to me because I feel like I am doing this for myself, for Jacob, because I can, and because it's fun.
It's the most real I've felt since I've returned. I'm flying as I sprint down the pedestrian bridge at Parkinson. It feels so, so great, even though I am dying and sweating so much. Rediscovering athleticism. I am feeling this way now, during the Winter, as I am geared up and comfortable (I count my blessings that it's been an incredibly mild Winter this year.) I am not naive that the summer is going to be hell. The world may be on fire again. That time will come. For now, I'll continue to push.
This past weekend (as I am now writing this on my way back from visiting my Dad) I ran over 10k in one session for the first time, running on both roads and the gravelly beach in Savona on Kamloops Lake. I walked a bunch, but what the hell, I did it. And I'll do it again.
I'll probably make my “long runs” into 8km/5 miles for now, as those last two kilometres were gruelling. I'll build it up some more, then those 5kms during the week will be no sweat.
Beat September 20th, 2023
I was touched by Venba as a story of an immigrant Indian family starting a new chapter in eastern Canada in the late 1980s.
I 100% do not have the lived experience as a Canadian immigrant trying to make it here, and to grow up having a hyphenated identity, to feel that pressure, having to Anglicize my name. I did not feel that Venba was enormously twee; I appreciated its warmth but also, from how I felt, its restraint in depicting the violence of forming a Canadian identity.
The sparse, one-way text thread between a parent and child also resides in my phone, to my shame as well.
There was deep care put into this title, I would highly encourage playing it.
Year-round
Fortnite has been a glorified group voice call for a circle of my friends from a specific work cohort that changed my life 7 years ago.
The game in its garish Intellectual Property Hell is perfectly crafted to be quite a hoot while never being patterned - at least to my brain - to kill my soul (unlike Rocket League.)
This year, Fortnite was, frankly, the couch lay-down where my buddies and I mapped out and worked through our Significant Life Changes this calendar year. I'm looking forward to, and am sincerely hoping, that the game will continue to be this space where we can be honest with each other.
Below, you may find some movements we discussed in-game, while I had Padme - with Natalie Portman's likeness from Star Wars Episode II: The Attack of the Clones - do the Griddy:
–
7 It was!
Beat November 18th, 2023
Alongside an absolutely incredible title, Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name is set as an incredible lead-in to the eighth mainline entry in the nearly 20-year-running Like a Dragon (formerly Yakuza) series.
Earlier in the year, playing through the Lost Judgment DLC and how non-plussed I felt about the side story, I was a little worried about how LAD Gaiden was gonna go – however, I knew nothing about the true scope of this midquel. I went in with open expectations and damn!! I'm pleased with how this turned out.
LAD Gaiden focusing on a lead-up to a planned final send-off for Kiryu in the forthcoming LAD 8 allowed for heavy-hitting examinations on exile, self-realization, agency, and the despair of isolation. I was super touched by the end, especially with performances by Takaya Kuroda, who we've heard through the vast amount of Yakuza/LAD titles over the decades. LAD Gaiden also balanced the Godfather x Simpsons tone just as well as any entry before it; even if the game is quite lean, relative to how enormous relatively other entries are. LAD 8 is supposedly time-suckingly huge, so we'll see.
This was a great treat to end the year off! Not as heavy as finishing 2022 with Norco or Kentucky Route Zero.
This fall, I picked up the RE4 Remake suuuper excited to dive in as if to fill the void Red Dead Redemption 2 left in my heart, and in the academic sense of experiencing a new version of an absolute banger I played in the spring with the original.
This game does rule, but I feel I picked it up at the wrong time because I was so spent after RDR2 and that whole journey. And frankly, I feel like the Wii version was just SO damn good, and that I ran through RE2 Remake and its strengths, that ultimately I have just been so RE'd OUT in 2023!
I have had D sit with me for this one too, and while that's been a blast, I'm 11 hours in now and I have this sinking feeling that in the end, I will always prefer the original. This is okay! The remake of RE4 is still so solid, and I'm excited to finish it out this year.
I'm currently working through Jusant and it's been an absolute treat after LAD Gaiden. This game has stunning level art and lighting, with light bouncing off the natural surfaces and shapes of the spire you are working tirelessly to climb. Also, the Ballast is such a cute lil' guy. I love him. I'm gonna cry if I think about it too much.
Disco Elysium is the next “academic”, close-reading title I want to tackle next this year. I bought it on Steam years ago but my laptop just can't run it in a way that's too distracting. The Switch version doesn't fare too much better; I thought that having a title with its strength in its lavish text residing on a portable console would be the best way to experience it. Turns out, just as I did with Kentucky Route Zero in 2022, I just don't play games in bed. I'm tired, you can't get me to do that.
Fortunately, the Xbox version was on sale and I started it for the 5th time, and maybe I'll actually stick with it. I'm wary of all its praise and the freedom you have in how you can fall politically in the game; I just don't feel like being a fascist. It doesn't sound like a great time. However, I have wanted to see what all the fuss is about, and now that I have a living room arrangement to play it, I will dive in when the mood comes.
I have such fond memories of early 2021 when LAD 7 dropped, playing through the English dub and being thoroughly impressed with it. It was truly the first JRPG in years that I sunk nearly 80-90 hours in; I never thought I would feel compelled to do so in adulthood, with everything else competing for my time. I remember grinding in this game via PS Vita remote play from the PS4 when I was sharing a screen and how satisfying that was; how the characters cracked me up and got to me with their melodrama. Real anime shit. It was a blast!
Supposedly with LAD 8 coming out in January 2024, it's set to be another big boy. This is great! I'm just not going to get it on launch. I have bought only a handful of full-priced games over the years and it just hasn't turned out to be worth it, so I am preserving my FOMO for LAD 8 until sometime later this year when it does eventually go on sale! I'll dive in then, and it will be glorious.
Ta-da! Damn, I've been working on this piece for ages. Thanks for reading 🙂