Game of the Year – AKA Ping

My Games of 2023

By Ping December 11, 2023Video Games

I didn’t play Tears of the Kingdom and I’m tired of starting these posts this way.
The new Zelda is by all accounts a masterpiece, an enhancement of everything great about the previous one with new sandbox mechanics seemingly made to be shared on social media. I don’t doubt my friends when they rave about it. I think I’m just… not interested?

I’ve come to terms this year with the fact that the way I engage with video games as a medium has become closer to my relationship with books. Both are too long to invest time into ones you’re not enthused about. Both are much easier to play/read a year or two after release. As much as I would love to quit my job and spend all day keeping up with the entire industry, I have too many other priorities these days.
If I were starting over, I probably wouldn’t even be making this list. But I have to. Loving video games has been a significant piece of my identity since I first played a Game Boy in pre-school. I don’t know who I would be if I let that go.

With that attitude, I’m going in a slightly different direction this year. Here is my Year in Games: all the games, old and new, that best defined my gaming experience over the last 12 months, in roughly chronological order of play.

My Top Games of 2022 of 2022

By Ping December 5, 2022Video Games

This started as a top X video games post, like I used to do when I played video games regularly. I like to do these write-ups regardless of how much I have to say about new releases. It’s tradition at this point, sure, but mainly I find it valuable to organize my thoughts about video games and my evolving relationship to them. Video games used to be my life. This year, according to my Backloggd, the number of games I played eligible for this list barely broke double digits.

In other words, I didn’t put away enough this year to justify ranking them. I’ve been finding it harder and harder to squeeze as much artistic fulfillment from video games as I now get from films. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a decently enjoyable time waster, but I can’t shake the feeling timewaster is all it is. I’m never going to think about it again.

But I do still think about Outer Wilds regularly. And Sayonara Wild Hearts, and the Persona series, and Death Stranding in its own weird way. It’s not that there’s no artistic gratification in games, it’s that I am failing to find them. (Maybe I should get into the interactive fiction scene. They seem like they’re having a good time.)

So when there is a game, even one game, that completely reinvigorates my interest in interactive storytelling, that alone justifies publishing thist list. Here are the games that have been on my mind the most this year. For all six I explain why they’re worth your time. For five, in case you’re as busy as me, I give you an excuse to skip them.