Here are seven of the very best videogames of 2023

Crikey, where to start. There’s a writer who’s been trapped in this small town where his creations are coming to life, right… Actually, no. A couple of FBI agents are investigating some ritualistic murders, and one of them looks exactly like the fictional cop written by an author who went missing close to where the murder took place, and - still with us?

No? Great. That’s exactly what Finnish narrative powerhouse Remedy Entertainment is going for. An action-adventure-horror that follows a dreamlike logic, rendered in fidelity levels that’d make a Marvel movie CG sequence blush.
 

Role-playing games. It sounds obvious, but they’re at their best when they actually let you play a role, and not simply ‘all-powerful god-king of the realm, destined from birth to save the entire universe’. That’s where Larian’s new one really shines - it lets you lean into the non-traditional characters you create. Lusty dwarf who couldn’t give two shivs about doing the right thing? Play on. Arrogant elf who’s actively trying to sabotage the rest of your co-op party? No harm, no foul.

D&D rules have never felt so exciting. And that’s including that weird span of time just after Stranger Things came out when everybody started pretending they grew up playing tabletop games.

Rally games are hard to get right. They’re often a bit too floaty and forgiving, and the collisions in most of this sub-genre would make Isaac Newton cry into his hands. Not WRC, though. This is the Codemasters team that made Dirt Rally 2.0 rolling up its sleeves and showing everyone how you do it. Perfect driving sensation, incredible stages that eschew those tunnels of trees for Insta-ready open spaces, and a car collection to make your heart sing.

Oh and it carries the WRC license, which means it accurately models the real stages. Driving them was one of the more intense experiences in TG’s 2023. For all the perspiration and expletives, WRC, we thank you.
 

It’d be quite annoying, if it wasn’t so brilliant. Zelda games have a way of turning up, shooting a lofty look at what the games industry’s been doing for the last five years and then effortlessly improving it with their own left-field take. Breath of the Wild made open world games feel like thrilling adventures again. Then Tears of the Kingdom stacked a load of them on top of each other and let you build a hover bike to get about on. Supremacy achieved, once again.

Being a Nintendo game, the pervading wholesomeness takes a moment to acclimatise to if you spend most of your time unloading automatic firearms into insurgents in COD. But the little details really get under your skin - the health-boosting recipes Link cooks by the campfire, the sway of the grass in a storm, the slapstick comedy of rolling boulders off mountains to splat the Bokoblin camp below… And the ability to build actual cars and just razz about treating the whole game like Outrun.

Back in January, not many of us would have guessed a remake of a 1994 sci-fi horror-shooter-RPG thingy that’s been in development since 2015 would make the end of year red carpet. But that just goes to show what long, dark nights and a diet of leftover pigs in blankets does to your judgment. System Shock was a revelation.

It reminded us of important things about old games. The ways we had to actually engage our brains to get about in them and solve things - and how nice that felt. System Shock’s a firm but fair parent - by refusing to hold your hand, it lets you slowly build up survival skills of your own accord aboard Citadel Station. You’ll need them too - after all these years, SHODAN’s still an absolute piece of work.

The meat and potatoes of the licensed annual racing game seem simple, don’t they? Chuck in the latest tracks and liveries, rub out the ‘2’ and add a ‘3’. You’re laughing, but elsewhere in the industry it feels like games aren’t far off doing exactly that.

Milestone, meanwhile, decides to double down on its famously challenging simulation of a famously challenging motorsports discipline, and makes MotoGP 23 a preposterously detailed and genuinely exhilarating addition to the canon. AI riders are just that this year - trained on deep learning AI to pick braking points and lines for themselves, leading to some divebomb moves that would make even Marc Marquez suck air through his teeth and grimace.

Beautiful, deep, uncompromisingly challenging - everything we want a racing game to be, even if it is missing those extra two wheels.

We knew the next Crew game was going to be good. They always are. Ubisoft Ivory Tower has a way of sprinkling mad ingredients into its driving game batter, and like an eccentric chef, somehow making them work. What we didn’t know was that The Crew Motorfest was going to be a bona fide, cancel-your-plans-with-dear-friends life sapper.

It is, though. Thanks mainly to Grand Races, an inspired melange of PvP race and moshpit where 28 of you try to cross the finish line first across epic multi-vehicle events, clattering into each other like angry toddlers on a bouncy castle every time the road goes wiggly. Winning Grand Races was all we thought about in September, and for that feat Motorfest earns its place in 2023’s gaming pantheon.