top 10 games i played in 2023
(written 12.31.23)
hi!! now that 2023 is coming to an end i thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about my favorite games that i've played for the first time this year!! here is my top 10:
1. pikmin 4
it's rare for a game to hold my attention for that long, but i spent 45 hours playing this came and nearly 100% completing it. i just loved everything about this game so much!! the visuals are amazing, the gameplay never gets old and there are always new things being introduced, the story is great, and i love all the characters. (yonny and louie are my favorites C: psst i'm getting a louie plush he and spamton are going to be friends) i played pikmin 2 earlier this year and couldn't get into it but i want to play the whole rest of this series now. also i love dandori ;u; when i'm not getting something done efficiently in real life i think to myself "dandori issue" and then i do it better. i may be turning into a leafling. 10/10
2. super mario bros. wonder
this is definitely my favorite 2d mario game! i love how interesting and expressive they made the artstyle. all the different abilites you can unlock are fun to play around with. i'm very happy they removed the level time limit so you can focus on taking your time and looking for collectibles if you want to. the different things that happen when you find a wonder flower are always surprising and fun! the music is great too. i'm not sure i can ever play a new soup game again lol 10/10
3. bugsnax
i did write a review for this a while ago (i haven't written reviews in so long gahh i've been meaning to!! i miss it) but to summarize: it's very very fun to run around trapping all the bugsnax and figure out what you have to do to catch each one. the excellent voice acting and the in-depth personalities make the characters feel like real people. the humor is also hilarious. bunger??? bunger bunger bunger 10/10
4. little friends: puppy island
THIS!! OHHH this game....i have wanted "nintendogs on the switch" for so long and my search for something that could fill that void has been fruitless until i discovered this!! you can collect dozens and dozens of different unique puppies. you find new ones walking your puppies out on the trail, and they're always covered in dirt. you take them home and wash them to find out what they look like, so there's a surprise element to it! i've gotten some very pretty dogs. you can play with them and dress them up in lots of fun clothes! i enjoyed giving each dog its own unique outfit. taking your dogs for walks is fun and you have a good amount of freedom to explore. you can improve the stats your pups have, kind of like how you can take progressively longer walks in nintendogs. plus, new pups have their stats scaled with your progress, so little to no grinding! this is a vast improvement over the first little friends game (even though there's no cats in this one). yes there isn't actually THAT much to do and the minigames get annoying, but collecting cute puppies and playing with them is enough for me. 10/10
5. wandersong
i love this game because it's just so fun to. well. wander around. and sing songs. your character can learn lots of silly dances that you can do at pretty much any time, even during serious cutscenes hehe. and you can sing different notes with the right stick - you do this to solve puzzles and defeat enemies, but it's also so much fun to just do and even sing along with the background music. the story was also really great and had a big impact on me. 10/10
6. the legend of zelda: link's awakening
i talked about this already in my blog post about picking games from my backlog to play, but basically the world is really pretty and it's a lot of fun to progressively unlock new abilities and solve puzzles. the puzzles are challenging but not TOO challenging. i only got stuck a couple times! the story is great too. i've never played through a zelda game so this was really cool!! 9/10
7. warioware: move it!
my favorite warioware game besides get it together! the motion controls make for a lot of fun (even though they're iffy sometimes). this has the fun factor and great humor of smooth moves without the overly brightly-colored art x.x i really enjoyed it!! plus it's kind of a workout lol 9/10
8. super mario galaxy 2
again, i wrote a review for this one C: basically i loved the first mario galaxy, and this one is like that but even better!! riding yoshi is really fun, and this game has more incentive to explore the levels than the first. 9/10
9. we love katamari reroll + royal reverie
i just really clicked with this one hehe. it's fun to keep replaying levels and improving your score!! also a very fun game for my family to watch. "did you just roll up those people?" soundtrack slaps too! 9/10
10. frog detective: the entire mystery
more specifically, frog detective 3. the first game was nice. cute and funny but kind of lacking. the second game was better and had a more interesting story + i loved putting stickers on my notebook hehe. the notebook also made things more cohesive. the THIRD one though had the absolute best story and i thought it had a great message about prison. oh and frog detective gets a boyfriend :) i thought that was cute. i love how in all the games you have a magnifying glass and it's even on the cover, but it really doesn't do shit except let you look at bugs you find more closely. (the bugs are funny though. they've got little faces!!) my one big gripe is how sick the darting back and forth between images of characters during conversations made me feel. 9/10
and yeah!! those are my favorite games i played this year! you can check out my ranked list of everything i played this year on backloggd, and feel free to ask me about specific games or whatever. BOY it's hard to remember what i like about these games...i tend not to remember stuff once it's been like a week, and most of these i finished months ago. really, pick a book i read more than a week ago and ask me about the plot and the characters. i don't know!! it's gone!!! i blame public school.
happy new year!! and happy anniversary to my site :D