Tbh that's a low bar to pass. The newest CoD flopped pretty bad and Rockstar has been too busy with GTA6. Almost every other notable release was either a flop or a smaller studio or indie title.
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While that might be true, 2023 was an year filled with great games and yet Hogwarts Legacy is first, and Call of Duty is 2nd.
As for notable games of the year that weren't flop (in no particular order):
- Spider-Man 2
- Baldur's Gate 3
- Diablo IV
- FF 16
- Armored Core 6
- Street Fighter 6
- Alan Wake 2
Not to mention:
- Resident Evil 4 Remake
- Dead Space Remake
They may not be to your taste, but they all rated very highly. I haven't included any Nintendo games, cause they don't share digital data. Their numbers are based only on physical sales.
That's actually fair. I barely pay attention to AAA gaming to begin with, so most of these games just weren't on my radar. I just thought "oh, Starfield was the big hyped flop of the year, of course there wasn't much AAA competition"
No worries. Of all the games mentioned above Starfield was probably my most anticipated. But it let people down.
Those Nintendo releases this year we're bangers:
- Tears of the Kingdom
- Super Mario Wonder
- Pikmin 4
- Super Mario RPG Remake
- Metroid Prime Remastered
Plus the DLCs for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came out this year.
Great year for gaming IMO. But yeah, all of these are niche enough that I wouldn't expect any of them to be top sellers.
On the other hand, I know at least one non-gamer that got a Switch just to play Hogwarts Legacy.
Been waiting to pick it up cheap second hand. Not interested in financially supporting it.
Just... pirate it... 🦜
Honestly, considered it even though I haven't pirated a game in like twenty years. But when I found out the the person who cracked the game is also a hateful bigot, I didn't even want to download their work. Nah, I'll buy it second hand.
Would have tried it out if the author wasn't a transphobic piece of shit. Might pirate it.
Might pirate it.
Wait till you learn about who cracked that game.
I did. it was alright. Worth it if you want to explore hogwarts and surroundings.
Also, the erstwhile lead designer was a far right agitator.
Is this game really that good? I’ve been holding out on buying it.
No.
It's extremely popular because it is a well polished Harry Potter game; something the world has been begging for for a long time. It does invoke that sense of magic that the films do so well, so if you're just looking to get a fresh hit of the Hogwarts world it's great. There are also a lot of really interesting and well designed characters. Most of all the world, particularly the castle, is beautifully and lovingly crafted.
The game buried beneath all that polish is a pretty basic-ass RPG. It is crammed with filler fetch/find quests. The dialogue system is just another exhaust all options non-system. The combat has some really cool ideas on paper but I personally ended up mostly mashing buttons against one of like 5 generic enemies most of the time. Also the only customization in this RPG is your appearance.
It's not a bad game by any means, but i wouldn't say it's great either.
As much as I enjoyed the game, I cant deny anything said here. Pretty much sums it up
I also agree with the above statements. The best way I could describe it is that while the gameplay wasn’t all that spectacular, experiencing the game world was definitely a treat, and made me smile like I did the first time I opened the first Harry Potter book or played the first games that game out on PS1!
Oh big time, I told myself going in that I wasnt going to also listen to all of the audiobooks again but I definitely did
Haha! I actually listened to the audiobooks on the lead up to the release to get myself in that warm and cozy mindset for the game. Those books are like comfort food for my soul.
Im basically always juggling back to back harry potter and wherl of time read-throughs
I recently learned of the wheel of time series!
Can you give me some of your opinions on it? I made it to book 3 of Lord of the Rings, and just couldn’t put up with the purple writing any longer. Segments just seemed to drag on and on and on just to get through some dialogue that could’ve been said with a lot less flowery prose. It was charming at first, but I couldn’t put up with it any longer by book three, at least going back to back. I will finish it one day though! 😭
Ill preface with the fact that overall I think it's more than worth your time, and is one of the greatest works of fiction ever made. That being said, it takes a little work to read as it is a VERY long series, and does a lot of worldbuilding. There is a point towards the middle where the "depth of field" of the story increases dramatically, and from my experience and my friend who has also read them, that is typically a burnout point. There isnt as much prose as in Tolkien's works, though some of that is just cultural/temporal, but Robert Jordan was definitely in love with the story and takes the time to describe things fairly often. Im confident you're likely to greatly enjoy the first three books and the last few books, but the middle could be a stumbling block.
Additionally, if you aren't aware already, RJ passed away before the last book(s) could be finished and his wife arranged for Brandon Sanderson to collate all of the drafts and notes and conjure up a conclusion, which could definitely be something to consider. Personally, I was already a Brandon Sanderson fan before I read WoT, and I loved the ending.
One last thing, if you are deterred by the series or not ready to try it yet but still want a less-daunting rec, I love to recommend the Licanius Trilogy by James Islington. It is a reasonable length, it is one complete story, and it is just 🤌. End rant
edit: I forgot to mention that I am an audiobook-oriented person and greatly prefer them for the wheel of time. They're narrated by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading, and they are EXCELLENT narrators.
I got it on sale in December and think it’s worth it. I’m not a huge HP fan by any stretch but was impressed by the mechanics, they’re fun. Though as the game opens up you start to spot the tedious shit all open worlds tend to throw in to keep you busy. I just ignore that shit.
Thanks! I hate when open works games do this. I might skip out on it for this reason.
I've been enjoying the game as well. Not so much the story, or even "day by day" quest line its had. Once you get into the game and it opens though as the last guy said, it also has a lot of fun activities. You can also customize youre own "room" with the many magical creatures you can find as well.
If you liked the books, and just want to enjoy the game to feel what it might be like as a wizard than its an awesome game.
My wife is a big Harry Potter fan but has mixed feelings about it. She described the game this morning as not great but not bad either, with great graphics, but also with an indecisiveness to it that suggests too many cooks in the kitchen.
With that said, that's just one opinion. The game seems outstandingly popular. She felt it's worth the money if you can get it on sale in her personal opinion.
My wife and I had the same opinion. Magical to run around the castle for a few hours and do the early classes, surprisingly good combat mechanics, but then... Nothing.
It is really hurt by the inclusion of brooms. They necessitate a huge world so you can't cross it in a minute, but then it's too spread out and empty. At least in Ghost Recon my world-design-crippling flying devices have rockets and gattling guns.
You may hit the nail on the head, once you get the broom you just breeze past everyhring. The forbidden forest may be the most dense content wise on foot, everything after that does feel more sparse as it was designed with the broom in mind. All in all I still enjoyed the game and got my moneys worth out of it, I did pick it up rather cheap on a sale
And then for some reason they decide to give you some worse modes of transport later on for fuck knows why
Totally agree with this. The first few hours were great but then when you get the broom and you see the huge open space that’s just really lacking. I really wish it never went to that scale.
It's a casual game that lets you run around the world of harry potter casting spells at people and things, solving puzzles, and wearing silly wizard clothes. If that sounds good to you then it's good.
If you aren't sure, wait for a big sale. I quite enjoyed the game, but other than being a massively-popular IP, I'm not sure why it's getting so much acclaim. It's big, it's Harry Potter (with all the attention to detail that usually gets), and it's an RPG. If it wasn't HP, it'd be another good indie game, and that's it.
It's a standard open world game. If that appeals to you and you love HP then perhaps.
It's fun, lemmy/reddit screeches (rightfully so) about JKR's views but that doesn't mean the game itself is bad.
Culture warriors would rather play a mid rpg at $80 than admit that JK Rowling is a bigot who is bad at world building.
She is a terrible bigot, and a loud one, and that sucks because she also produced a cultural phenomenon of my childhood, and while the canon of HP is only just barely pretty okay sometimes, it spiralled out from there and SO MUCH of the media and culture I've consumed and existed within since then has been informed by it.
So yeah. If there's any comfort, let it be that any money she gets from this comes from explicitly affirming a trans woman through the work, as well as implicitly affirming any trans players through the character creation options. Small comfort maybe, but she is far away.
That's how I justified it to myself.
That, and there was an entire team of people working on this game for years, trying to make it the best vision of theirs as well as making it fit within the pre established world.
Number 5 in switch after just a few weeks is crazy