9 Years of Shadows tagged posts

Games of the Year Award 2023

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince

It’s time for the only Games of the Year awards that matter!
… Just kidding, no GotY awards matter. But I like doing them (which does, in fact, make this more relevant than the VGAs), so here we go.

I am choosing 5 winners, and then one TOP GAME OF THE YEAR winner, just to attempt at variety, and then posting all my honorable mentions which are games I liked but that weren’t GotY material. This is obviously going to be based on games I played myself (which is still over 50 games, even though I reviewed very few of those). So if there’s a game you liked and it doesn’t appear as one of my winners or honorable mentions… it’s because I didn’t play it. And I probably didn’t play it because it was obviously bad.

As far as notable games I skipped one that aren’t bad (or probably aren’t bad), there’s still a few of those. I skipped on both Like a Dragon games, Baldur’s Gate 3 (I will get it at some point), Persona 5 Tactica, Remnant 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Lies of P, Dave the Diver and probably a bunch of other games that were pretty popular and probably-good. Also didn’t play FF16 which… I’ve not been convinced it’s good, but I’m waiting for the PC version so I will review it when I do play it.

And there’s a few obviously bad games I didn’t touch, like Alan Wake 2, Starfield, Redfall and Diablo 4 (I played the beta, it was not good, so I skipped on the full game). And of course there’s some bad games I did play, like Forspoken and Sonic Superstars… or that were fairly subpar like Spongebob Cosmic Shake.

As a general rule, remakes and remasters will not make the list unless they’re substantially different from the original, but some might make it into the honorable mentions.

Anyways, time to rant quickly, then go through the winners and stuff. LET’S GO!

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Games coming out in March 2023

Resident Evil 4 remake

I’m not getting much out as far as posts recently. Somehow increasing my “games I didn’t review in 2023 post” without actually making full posts. I’m progressing through a few games. I’ll try to get some things out, there’s some games I’m playing and some games I want to play that game out in the last month-ish, but some of them are pretty long so I dunno. I’m gonna try. In the meantime, at least “games coming out soon” posts are pretty easy to do.

For March 2023 I’m highlighting: 14 multiplats, 3 Switch games and 3 PC games. It sounds like a good amount, but as far as big releases, this month is pretty quiet. There’s 2 games I’m getting. So I might be able to catch up a bit with all the other shit from february I didn’t get to and review yet.

So let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

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2023 HYPE GAMES – Interesting upcoming games

Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society

Well the GotY stuff is done, so not much is left to do this year other than… get hyped for next year! I also have 2 reviews that I’m writing, and the january release list. So I’m doing stuff!

2022 was a pretty fun year with a lot of pretty solid games. 2023… I’m not quite sure if it’s lining up to be quite as good, but it very easily could. There’s a good number of really interesting games coming up, but I’m actually not sure about big badass games yet, as a whole.

So I’ll do my yearly usual post, giving my top 6-ish hyped games, make a big list of big-to-small games I’m interested in, and make a list of big games I’m not interested in. Just trying to get excited about the future and stuff.

So let’s go!

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Games coming out in November 2022

Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet

Okay, October wasn’t that busy as far as reviews, and I think we’re gonna be in a moment where I have to build a backlog though because there’s lots of big long games coming out soon. I also have a post of games I played but haven’t reviewed this year, I’ll post that probably in December. I’m playing the new Mario + Rabbids game now, and both Bayonetta 3 and Star Ocean are out this week, and then November is not lacking in games I’ll play and review… The problem isn’t that I don’t have games to play, it’s that I don’t have enough time to play them and review them in a timely manner.

So November… Actually a lot of games. Some big ones too. Here I’m highlighting: 13 multiplatform releases, 4 Switch releases (5 if you’re weird) and 3 PC releases. There’s 8 of these I’m buying for sure, plus a few maybes. It’s gonna be busy.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

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Games coming out in October 2022

Bayonetta 3

I’m still not quite getting all the reviews out that I want, though I did get several posts out this month anyways. At this point I’m just planning on making a post near the end of the year with very quick paragraph-long impressions of them for games I skipped reviewing. Still, there’s some games I want to do full reviews of, such as TemTem and DioField Chronicle (which I’m probably close-ish to the end). Plus, of course, there’s stuff coming out, and games I haven’t played yet that I will (like Freedom Planet 2 and Metal Hellsinger), so I have a lot of potential content coming still. Good stuff!

October feels a bit less busy than some other months this year, but there’s still… stuff. Basically, this is gonna give me a bit of time to catch up. So for October I’m highlighting: 17 multiplats, 7 Switch games and 4 PC games. As far as what I’ve getting… there’s 4 I’m getting for sure, and a couple maybes.

Let’s go!

*EDIT 09/29: Added a PC game*

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

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