2023 - A way late year in review post!

Alli Grant Est. 5 minutes (996 words)
year in review 2023 games movies shows books
A combination post of everything for 2023, since I missed it and never caught back up.

Alright! Let’s just get these all out of the way in one big post, shall we? No need to create a bunch of backdated entries for a few years ago, and by setting that precedent now I won’t feel the need to for the OTHER years I want to backdate as well.

books

I am ashamed to say I don’t have anything recorded? I know I was reading my usual webcomics, but most other series I had been following all ended and I hadn’t picked up new ones yet. I don’t think that it’s actually possible I went through the year without reading anything of note, even if it was only one or two books, but… I guess maybe?

games

Oh dang. Okay, so like, what a year. I guess the thing that stopped me from writing the year end posts was that I had written up some individual games writeups, since Armored Core 6 came out. I stand by everything I said about it and Diablo 4 (a real stinker) both. Cassette Beasts, Inscryption, Tunic… I can’t actually speak positively enough about all of those.

I want to replay Tunic for the first time. Again and again. I wish that was possible, because that game is … Okay, the problem with Tunic is that if you haven’t played it yet, you need to go into it with as little information as possible. If you have, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Tunic recreates, for adults, the experience of playing The Legend of Zelda on NES for the first time as a kid in the 90s. Not from a nostalgia standpoint, but from the standpoint of like, pure wonder and amazement and having to puzzle things out while barely having the vocabulary of video games and, well, even words to be able to research how to figure things out. If you have a group that’s not played it that you can all puzzle things out together, that’s even better – if you like video games at all, I think Tunic might be one of those rare “must play” experiences.

Tears of the Kingdom also happened. I’m going to be honest, I like it more than Breath of the Wild while understanding why someone might not. I played BotW a little too completionistly, which meant that the easy aspect of it really stood out to me. While I did a bit of everything in TotK, I didn’t convert my orbs to health/stamina nearly as readily or stock up on some of the best food infinitely, which meant that I cleared the game with like, 6 hearts and no armor upgrades. That was a blast. The furry bait was just a bonus.

I wasn’t able to get into Hi-Fi Rush personally. Maybe the timing is just off on my TV audio or something.

The Jedi Fallen Order / Survivor series is pretty good for both a Star Wars licensed game and a 3D Metroidvania. I wouldn’t say they’re the best ever, since most of the hidden stuff is honestly just cosmetics and there’s only so much that you do with progression unlocks, but… They aren’t the worst.

I had fun with Forspoken’s combat/movement. The game wasn’t nearly as bad as most people said, it’s just like, a 6-7/10 at best and one of the early games that fell into the new game price hikes. It didn’t stand a chance in that environment.

movies

Holy crap, I apparently watched a million movies in 2023! I’m a little disappointed in myself that I never got around to writing this then, because, like…

Marathoning the John Wick series ruled? Buster Scruggs was a lot of fun as a movie anthology? Old Guard was enjoyable action slop? Honor Among Thieves was actually really good as a DND movie?

shows

Like usual, I hadn’t really watched a whole lot! I had forgotten we started Vending Machine back then, though. It was fun! MASH is actually the source of most of my personality, so I was showing it to the family since they’d never seen it.