Cognition Dissemination: The Few Games I Finished in 2023

The year 2023 is set to end within hours, with 2024 just on the horizon. But I’m not here with this post to discuss the state of the world and life situations, both tumultuous enough to a barely tolerable point. I want to talk about the video games I played.

Well, the few I played throughout the year. Perhaps I truly became an adult by turning 40 this year, because I finished less games in 2023 than any previous year, and it’s not even close. It didn’t help that I just didn’t feel like playing anything for a good chunk of the year, and spent that time watching anime, TV shows, and movies, in that order. That’s likely the true culprit. I’ll briefly talk about the almost-literal few titles I made it all the way through, a list (if you want to call it that) that surprised even me in its shortness after it typed them all up.

 

Judgment (PlayStation 4)

I played and enjoyed Yakuza 6 in December 2022. I don’t like to play open world-style games in the same franchise too closely to each other, so I started Judgment about six months after finishing it. It was as great as I’d expected from the franchise at this point, with solving cases in the main story and on the side with detective Takayuki Yagami being a joy. Not to mention the solid combat system, where the team at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio finally give a character more than one fighting style in the Dragon Engine. There were a few hindrances, like Yagami getting permanent injuries that required expensive bandaging to cure — not great when money was scarce in the early game — and the Keihin Gang encounters being too frequent. But it was a great time, a great first game after taking a six-month break from video gaming overall.

 

Assassin’s Creed Unity (PlayStation 4)

I first tried to play Assassin’s Creed Unity in August 2016, but I just couldn’t get into it despite my earnest shot. The game, I felt, had earned its reputation as a misfire from Ubisoft after the publisher didn’t know what direction to take the series in for the first then-new-gen installment in the franchise. But it’s sometimes true that time heals wounds, as this game’s reputation has turned around in the time since it originally released. After giving it another shot, I agreed. That’s why I finished it this time.

Granted, it still has its flaws. The controls are a little clumsier than I’d like, and I’d say the same for the combat. There are also times when the game’s narrative treats the revolutionaries as the real villains, with serious “Antifa are the real fascists” vibes. Those aside, it’s a lot of fun, and Paris (and its outskirts) during the French Revolution is a beautiful city to explore and play around in. It was also nice to go back to play a tightly-knit Assassin’s Creed title now that the franchise has largely (though not entirely) embraced the massive open world RPG format in games that last well over 100 hours. Unity could still use some polishing, but it turns out there was a solid title underneath after several polishing patches.

 

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner — M∀RS (PlayStation 4)

I wanted to play Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon this year. I could not afford to play Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon this year. But that was okay. Impressions from the streets known as “Twitter” (and by another name I simply will not call it) said that anyone who wanted a title to hold them off until the new Armored Core game arrived should play Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner. So, I did (after it went on sale) on PS4. And it was good.

Hell, it was great. ZoE2 is a high-octane mecha battle game that rewards quick reflexes and fast reactions, all to make for a short-but-rewarding experience. The story and aesthetics couldn’t do a better job showing how it was from Kojima Productions circa the PlayStation 2 era in the early 00s, with mechanical designs and backdrops that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Metal Gear Solid 2. It was a great and tightly-knit game that could have used some better voice direction. It couldn’t have been clearer that Konami didn’t give the team anywhere near as high of a budget as they provided for a Metal Gear game, but they nonetheless made a great mecha action title.

 

Persona 5 Strikers (Switch)

I had Persona 5 Strikers in my backlog for the longest time, and intended to play it earlier this year, months after finishing Persona 5 Royal on Switch. I only got around to it in November, fittingly around one year after I started Royal. Part of me still wasn’t sure of how the Persona format would transfer over with Warriors-style combat, despite previously hearing praise for this particular game. I have to say that developer Omega Force did a splendid job with it.

The game really is essentially Persona 5 with Warriors combat, though with a shorter in-game schedule that takes place over a five-week timeframe. It makes several more adjustments and adds other features, like the ability to leave and return to dungeons (something I didn’t realize until halfway through the first one) and cooking. At its heart, though, Strikers is just more Persona 5 with altered gameplay features, in all the best ways. I appreciated that it was considerably shorter than the main Persona 5 title and especially Royal, but honestly, I wouldn’t have minded if it went another 30 hours. I didn’t want it to end, the true hallmark of a great game.

I’m hoping Omega Force takes another stab at a Persona game sometime soon, regardless of whether it uses Persona 5’s themes. In the meantime, I should start playing Warriors-style games again. Fate/Samurai Remnant looks like a solid one in this style.

 

Super Mario RPG (Switch)

I’m still making my way through the Super Mario RPG remake on Switch as of this writing, which I started on Christmas Day. But I might have it finished by the time you read this, depending on my progress through the final two areas. This is, to no surprise, a great remake of the original Super Nintendo title. It’s unambitious through how it’s nearly a 1:1 recreation with updated graphics and a few extra quality-of-life features, but that works for triggering nostalgic feelings for anyone who played the original. The SNES title was my very first Japanese RPG, the title which taught me that I liked the genre.

The game is short and easy by the genre’s standards, even compared to other SNES RPGs. But that wasn’t something I realized when I was younger. I had the damnedest time adjusting to the timing for extra attacks and blocking enemy maneuvers again in my older age, but I got it down eventually. The game remains a great first-timer’s JRPG, and I can only hope that legacy carries over for the younger audience now. Perhaps they need something with more modern design elements, though. Maybe it’s time for a brand-new Mario RPG on the next Nintendo platform.

 

The Unfinished

There are two games that I started this year, but didn’t finish for whatever reason. One is Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, which I didn’t stick with because… well, I have no idea why. I played enough to know that it’s a solid strategy game, one that stops playing around in terms of its difficulty by the time I reached the third world.

Another was Celeste, a tough-but-fun platformer that won several Game of the Year awards when it was first released in 2018. The game put my fingers to work harder than any other title this year, but it only rarely frustrated me heavily thanks to the solid checkpointing and unlimited lives. I couldn’t imagine this game being as enjoyable otherwise — for me, anyway. I dropped it when I realized I wasn’t obtaining enough Crystal Hearts to continue progressing.

I plan on returning to and finishing both sometime in 2024. Whether I actually will is another question. Plans have a habit of being derailed, after all.

 

Damn, that really is a small crop of games. I’ll go ahead and blow one of my New Year’s Predictions here and pledge to finish at least three times this amount in 2024. This one will go alongside the New Year’s Resolution list to use my free time far more wisely compared to whatever the hell I’m doing with it now.