![]() We might be years away from Bloodborne 2, but at least we have something to savor the memory. Its name is, literally, “Parade Master.” Lies of P knows where its bread is buttered, but it also wears its cloying, dark-Victorian aesthetic with respectable gusto. One of them is a gigantic, disfigured wind-up toy soldier. A whole bunch of terrifying boss encounters against twisted aberrations haunting this cursed city? Absolutely. A cast of duplicitous NPCs dispensing elliptical dialogue hinting at larger, cryptic forces at play in this universe? Yep. A complex, integer-heavy character sheet that can be extrapolated towards a huge variety of combat systems? Check. There is no shortage of video games eager to ape the Dark Souls formula, but Lies of P is the only one headstrong enough to transport the tough-as-nails swordplay system to … a clockwork Dickensian dystopia? With a main character who looks quite a bit like Timothée Chalamet? All the pieces are right in place. There is a coziness to Insomniac games that keeps me coming back, year after year. But in an odd way, I don’t mean that as a gripe. The design is too safe and the mechanics are well worn. It turns out that webbing a would-be bank robber to a subway wall before he can pull the trigger on his revolver still feels awesome who would’ve guessed? Is Spider-Man 2 transcendent? No, not quite. You take control as either Peter Parker or Miles Morales, and you’ll untangle another fiction-spanning Marvel tale - with a cornucopia of familiar characters - while taking breaks to fight crime all over New York City with one of the simplest and most acrobatic combat systems ever designed. They’re always good - a perfect evolution of the web-slinging bedlam of the mid-2000s licensed tie-ins to the Tobey Maguire films, which were locked into the disc drives of every PlayStation 2 around the country for years. I’ve almost run out of ways to talk about Insomniac’s Spider-Man games. The next few years are set to be major for the gaming industry - Nintendo may soon announce its post-Switch console plans and Grand Theft Auto 6 will return to Vice City in 2025 - but we still fully expect 2023 to go down in history as one of the best years to play video games. This year we traveled the Milky Way, played Dungeons & Dragons, got behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car, fought dinosaurs in a mech suit, explored Night City without any game-breaking bugs, went web-slinging across New York City, tripped out with Mario, and enjoyed a bit of Hylian engineering with Link and Zelda. Major releases, offbeat indies, consecrated remasters, and long-gestating sequels kept us plenty occupied, with many gamers declaring this the best year for video games in their living memory. Photo-Illustration: Franziska Barczyk Photos: Epic Games, Larian Studios, Round8 Studio, Nintendo, Tour De Pizza, Capcom, Insomniac Games, Nightdive StudiosĪfter a down few years for the industry largely thanks to COVID delays, 2023 was surprisingly flush with exciting video games.
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