#top games of 2023

[notajinn]

Top Games Played in 2023 - Number 10: Dragonball Xenoverse 2

10. Dragonball Xenoverse 2 (Switch)

I've never bounced off a game as hard as Dragonball Xenoverse 2. In fact I played maybe 2 hours before giving up on it, so this is not going to be a nice review.

What I Like

The main reason I bought this game is to have a Dragon Ball character creator. And I think the character creator is solid. You get a few different races to choose from including weird ones like Buu and Freiza's. Pretty good options for customizing, including hair styles from nearly every DB character. And different races also play differently, so it's not just cosmetic.

You also get multiple slots, so you can create multiple characters.

I also think the graphics in general represent the series well.

The idea of the story where an enemy is trying to do "what if" scenarios and you have to stop them is a fun idea because you get to be part of those what-ifs.

That's all the positive stuff I can think of.

What I Don't Like

I hate the controls. And this is a fighting game, so bad controls completely sink it. Compared to the Budokai Tenkaichi series, there's way too many things you can do and it just doesn't feel good to push buttons. It's more of a bad feeling than anything I can logically explain, but it's bad enough that it stops me from playing more than the first mission.

I can't even bother getting further into the story to see if it's good or bad beyond the concept because I hate playing this game.

Final Thoughts

I bought this for around $10, and I think that's a decent price to pay for a Dragon Ball character creator. So I'm going to pretend that's all this is. I recommend it if you find it this cheap and want to make your own DB OC (and really, which one of us doesn't?)

[lpgarbo]

Here's every game I played last year, mostly ordered. The stars are there for things that made me go 'wow!' in either a good or bad way.

[rhynehoward]

favourite game day outfits 2023: a'ja wilson

[mushyooms]

day 4: dodge

[bravo-seven]

"I'm up to doin' my fuckin' job, kid. You should try it sometime."

MW3 gifs 5/?

[werewolf-cuddles]

Gotta love Nintendo bitching about Yuzu allowing over a million people to pirate The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before launch, as if the game didn't sell 10 times that at launch.

They're literally just using that as an excuse to go after emulation again. And the scary part is the idea that this time, they could potentially succeed.

Yes, Connectix and Bleem set legal precedent for emulation being ruled as fair use, but those cases are over two decades old. If Nintendo actually wins their lawsuit against Yuzu, that could set a dangerous precedent for the legality of emulation.

Anyway, it is always morally correct to pirate Nintendo games.

[blmpff]

KIM JI HOON 27.06.24

[ambivartence]

NEW YEAR NEW GIF CHALLENGE RULES: give your 2023 music review by showing your fave boy group, fave girl group, fave soloists, fave debut and most played song of the year, then tag some friends to do theirs!

tagged by @woodziecup and @xiaojuun <3

tagging (no obligation! sorry if u did one of these music round-up compilations already 🙈): @blonde-riwoo @dakbees @hohowonho @hwichanis @insoeng @irlvernon @kimjiwoong @leewonseo @lee-minhoe @lloveorloved @mattwooks @mjyunie @nctsworld @pookiez @quokki @seonghwacore @shnryjn @shorelinnes @starcatching @strayklds @sunghanbin @wayvs @xuseokgyu

[alexissara]

What A Year For Games! Top 10 Games of 2023 For Little Lesbians Like me!

I am on and off again with video games often switching between years where I am really into games and years where I am snoozing but I started to dedicate myself to finding and sharing more sapphic art so people can stop saying it doesn't exist lead me to playing tons more games and wow I played so many fucking amazing games this year it was an extremally hard year to pick a top 10 games. Now these aren't a top 10 sapphic games, it's just the best 10 games of the year, on an objective scale because I am the goddess of this world and there for right. Not all of these games will have come out in 2023, it's games I played in 2023 why limit ones self?

These games are roughly in order by how confident I am to put them on this list but each of these games did something different than me so I wouldn't say that a game is "better" rather than what I got out of it at the end of playing felt biggest.

Stray Gods

It's a musical, it's a video game, it's Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical. This game is a really fun little Greek myth story telling experience with an neat interoperation of myth and the characters to provide a fun experience to people with or without attachment to the stories. The dynamic music changing to your choices is a really cool concept although I wish more of the songs were a bop. I also wish the game explored the idea of polyamory like the Greek gods were not monogamous and I see no reason I can't kiss Freddie and Persephone in the same playthrough. What is there though is still compelling, fun, and engaging with a great set of characters across the board romanceable and not.

Pokémon Emerald Rouge

Pokabbie's amazing Pokemon Rom Hack that shows the utterly wild shit possible for Pokemon experiences we could get. It's amazingly fun to do runs of Pokemon where you catch new pokemon, fight trainers and get to then recatch that species to use in later runs. It's a really great gameplay loop that really just uses what's fun about pokemon and allows for a lot of different run customization which leads to the loop not getting stale and makes it easier to find particular pokemon you want. This was my favorite Pokémon experience this year.

Street Fighter 6

Street Fighter 6 has some of the worst monetization to date in fighting games. However, despite that it provided a lot of fun to me this year playing the base game's amazing World Tour mode and in enjoying the greatly designed new characters who I hope become Street Fighter staples. All while making my favorite SF character Juri even better with new interactions, a little bit of progress to her story and more. I hope that World Tour mode encourages a lot of other fighting game devs to step up the single player experiences in Fighting games and I also hope [as seems to be the industry trend] that "modern" controls take over. It was so nice to be able to do all the special moves consistently and more easily feel like I was in control of the game rather than feeling light I was fighting my hands to move out an input.

Drums Of War

I sure do wish a Fire Emblem game came out in 2023, it's been so long since Three Houses and Hopes is amazing but not the SRPG gameplay I came to love. Well if there was a Fire Emblem game I am sure it would have ENGAGED me, wait, there was the amazing Fire Emblem rom hack Drums Of War. Parrhesia utterly killed it with this take on Fire Emblem. The heart of the story being an emotionally damaged lesbian and the dancer with a big secret who fell for her makes for an utterly captivating romance paired with a real "war is hell" story that really does it's best to show you how fucked all sides of this conflict are until the player finally gets to forge their own path forward. Roxelana and Calista would be among my most favorite Fire Emblem lords if I was ranking them alongside all the lords of the series with both characters being utterly delightful and some charming side characters too like Estrelle. The gameplay itself aired a bit on the harder side to what I like but regardless I had a great time with the majority of maps and by the end of it I think I finally managed to get with the curve of the difficulty even if I wish there was an easier mode.

Cassette Beasts

The soundtrack alone would put this game on this list but luckily it has even more than a soundtrack. The whole cast are really charming, I totally fell for Viola and the other characters all have their own special charms. The game has plenty of faults I talked about in my review of it but despite the flaws of the game basically right until the very end where it massively declined for me this was one of the best games in all of monster tamers for me. The DLC was sadly not so great that came out later in the year but I didn't mind giving the extra money to the devs when the core game was so good. The monster taming is fun, the gameplay feels flexible enough for you to find the niche you like to play in and become really good at that niche, it allows for a lot of flexibility from folks who wanna swap partners all the time to people who will find their favorite characters and monsters and stick with them. I really hope the developers keep moving forward with Cassette Beasts and making new strives forward with their concepts because of all the indie monster tamers I've played this is leaps and strides above the rest.

En Garde!

This extremally short little romp is a compelling experience that is just a little bit longer than your average modern block buster. It's a simple and sweet swash buckling game where you play as a bisexual vigilante woman with a big crush on a sexy pirate woman trying to stop the oppressor of the people's evil schemes. Each chapter is like another adventure of Zoro short and puppy, fun and with ever so slight tension but you know the hero will come up on top. It's a really good experience and it has some great accessibility features for folks with reflex issues like me to still be able to enjoy it. The music is staller, the voice acting is fantastic, it's a great package that instead of padding itself out fills every second with greatness.

Luxaren Allure

I am a massive fan of turn based RPGs, I love getting to look at menus and think about my actions, being able to multitask while I play, enjoy a big juicy narrative and so I was very happy to play a JRPG style experience that's all about lesbians. An amazingly fun concept for a JRPG plot where one woman's beloved whom she chickened out of confessing too gets corrupted by an evil power and she is tasked with being the hero to take her out. This gives the interactions and the end goal a sense of uncertainty, will this be a sad case of tragic yuri, will she find joy with someone else, will she be able to save the woman she loves from this evil power, will she submit to the evil herself to be by her side? Everything feels uncertain with just this little angle added to a fairly typical JRPG formula. All while on the side having an adorable romance between a naga and a human girl giving us the good good lesbian sweetness between the dramatic tension.

Baldur's Gate 3

I am so often the contain, the noted hater but not on this day, nay I say, it was pretty fucking fun. The game is flawed, pretty flawed, like it's got a lot or fantasy racism shit I hate, it's tied to an IP I hate, it's got so many bugs that happened on my own run but if there is one game from this list I will probably think of the most and play the most in 2024 and beyond from this year it's probably this game. The games depth of interactivity, the wide breath of options, and the mods, oh the mods, the many many many mods, this game has so much to do and will for a very long time. It's rare to get a truly great multiplayer game and this game also provides that, this is a fantastic experience for playing online with others and makes for really great runs. Then there is the romances, oh the romances are really great, the girls are all fantastic and the side queers are super brilliant too. It's just a really fun video game and it does a good job exploring trauma and different takes on abusive relationships and overcoming [or succumbing] to them.

Thirsty Suitors

What a fucking great game, while the gameplay is mostly quick time events it does an amazing job of making each aspect of the game feel distinct from each other. While skateboarding in general kinda sucks in this game the combat and cooking all feels really great. Then there is the vocal performances and writing which are all fucking stellar. It's really great to see a fully fleshed out and fully real feeling queer woman who has had messy exes of all genders and has done a lot of fucked up things in her time. Jala's road to redemption with her family and exes all feels really great and this is a special story and I realized sometime after there is some level of variance too that I could have seen if I made some different choices. It's really great and even if it's not a dating sim like I thought it might be it's still a really great little thing. Then you factor in all the cool queer brown people in this game and wow, like I felt so scene by this game like the angry mess Tyler is speaks to my little transbian heart, the high fem lesbian struggle with family that Diya has I could feel echoed in my own life, I just, wow, it was great. I am so happy this game exists and I will likely always see this among the best narratives in all video games.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

My game of the year, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood fucking blew me away. In a shocking twist of fate while I complained about a lot of endings this year I didn't like my original ending for The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood either but then that drove me to go from liking the game to loving it as I ran the game again in spite of it, fueled by spite alone I felt a sense of determination, I would change my fate! This thematic fortune telling game where you make your own cards, help people or end up seeing a fate that only hurts them, I knew how to play it, I knew the systems now, I understood how the cards worked, the truth of my powers and the price I agreed to pay and I'd use all of that to make the happiest fucking story possible for Fortuna aka ME. So I dart through the game, I help the trans woman be herself and happy, I get my hot butch girlfriend, I help everyone out with their life problems crafting only the best cards possible to make sure I can give the best fates possible and then I hit the end point, the time to pay the price. I say no, the game says, you have to, I keep saying no, and then I draw my cards again and shape fate and in that I defied fate, made an ending I could be happy with, a better world for all my fellow witches, and so my story ends with my friends back by my side [probably gonna be a polycule] and a whole lot to look forward to. What a fucking experience, what a cool fucking game.

If you want to help me enjoy more art then consider checking out my Patreon or Ko-fi .and giving me a little bit of cash so I can do more of this kind of writing but also like make lots of my own art, art is hard to make and costs money and like maintain my chronically ill and trans body also takes money so anything helps, thank you.

[lurkingshan]

Not sure how many of these you'll have, but Top 5 'if they had sex right now, it would probably be less gay than whatever the hell is happening here' moments?

Hmmmm I think I do have a few. First, let me be a curmudgeon and say nothing is gayer than actual gay sex lol. But those moments when characters give their very gay intentions away or just lay it on extra thick are always so fun.

Yai and Jom making flower garlands, I Feel You Linger in the Air

When having him literally read porn to him didn't get through, Yai moved on to doing the gayest activity he could think of. He really wanted Jom to pick up what he was putting down.

Jae Won teaching Ji Hyun how to surf, The Eighth Sense

That was an awful lot of unnecessary touching, sunbae.

Tinn dressing Charn in his fussy blouse, Laws of Attraction

Honestly it was hard to choose just one scene from this show but I think this one takes the cake.

Hantae pledging his life to Baram, Sing My Crush

Fellas, is it gay to take one look at a sad cute boy and dedicate the rest of your life to making his dreams come true? ...fellas??

Mhok feeling up Day's hands, Last Twilight

Sirs. What the fuck.

Ask my top 5 anything in bl

[simmyfrobby]

What are your top 3 nhl teams with the best vibes?

ooh ok. yea. fun. love this. im going to declare all my biases upfront: im a pens, bruins & wild fan so obviously my nr 1 is:

minny

they have flower. they have kaprizov. they go on homoerotic little holidays together. they have two deweys and one foligno. their captain is pretty and everyone is short. every game is somehow embarrassing. even if they win. especially if they win. 11/10 cant lose.

nr 2: philly

i dont follow them or root for them but i will have nightmares about the dog mask every day for the rest of my life. also they made drysdale come hang out w them during the all star break and that was cute. also the conga line. hardass coach but we stay silly. 9/10 solid vibes.

nr 3: yotes

jason zucker lives there.

[notajinn]

Top Games Played in 2023 - Number 1: Super Mario RPG Switch

1. Super Mario RPG Remake (Switch)

This one isn't fair. The SNES Super Mario RPG is one of my favourite games ever, so a faithful remake is almost guaranteed to be better than any other game already.

What I Like

Most of this is just what I like about the original Super Mario RPG because a lot of the game is unchanged.

I love the battle system incorporating timed hits. You still get to take your time on your turn deciding what to do, but the additional input being able to majorly affect the battle keeps you engaged. This is especially important in the late game and new post-game given you're pretty likely to die without good timed hits.

The writing in the game is the quality you'd expect of something that released in the same generation as Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. It's lighthearted, fun, and includes a good sprinkle of cool moments. The game mostly revolves around new characters like Mallow and Geno, and they manage to be some of the best written characters in the Mario series despite being in only one game. Even some of the enemies like Croco and Belome return later in the game and get their own tiny character arcs.

They did a good job keeping the weirdness of the original SNES art style while updating the graphics to the current gen.

SMRPG has one of my all-time favourite video game soundtracks.

I mean, what else can I say? The gameplay is good, the writing is good, the music is good, the graphics are. Those are the four most important parts of any game.

As far as new stuff is concerned, I'm happy they added a post-game at all! The new content has writing that matches the rest of the game well, and there are some cool bosses. It's also legitimately hard content which is nice for an otherwise pretty easy game. I love that one of the post-game bosses is Booster since you otherwise skip his boss fight in the main game unless you fail a mini-game.

There's one major change made to the combat system in that you can switch party members during battle. This actually makes the game feel very fresh since otherwise I always kept Peach in my party for emergency heals, but now I just swap her in when I need healing. This let me play much more aggressively.

They also added a party-wide super meter. These are fun animations and useful moves, but mostly unneeded given how easy the game is.

Plus it's way easier to move around with a control stick now compared to having to use the D-Pad for 3D in the SNES game.

What I Don't Like

Across the board, the new remastered soundtrack is worse than the original soundtrack. This could just be nostalgia. Fortunately the game lets you toggle between Remastered and Original soundtrack at any time.

The game maintains the strange difficulty spike at the Sunken Ship. It's not hard, but it goes from easy to "I need to try now" very quickly.

A few of the post-game bosses are bullshit and require extremely precise timed blocks to not take crazy amounts of damage. It's also a little annoying to always have to travel to Frogfucious after each boss to find out who the next boss to fight is.

The Casino remains an annoying area to unlock, and one that doesn't really reward you with anything good. Not even a Flower Tab.

Final Thoughts

It's one of my favourite games touched up and with some new content. What's not to love?

[theosconfessions]

TOP 23 OF '23

i thought this looked SOOOO fun and you know how when youre editing story posts and youre like man photoshop let me out . thats me right now so this is a good break haha !

thank you to my lovelies @nitrozem @citylighten and @havenroyals for tagging me in this! ive only had this blog since the summer. so while my older one that i abandoned ive had since 2012 ive only rejoined simblr recently. and the amount i love you guys ? its soo much. i love seeing how creative you guys are. i love your stories. i love your sims. you inspire me and im looking forward to continuing my sims make bad decisions into 2024 haha!

i also have more posepacks to put up but anyways. im going to post the unedited ones bc its just easier. these are some of my faves

im going to tag @lynzishell, @plumbewb, @bubblepopsims, @duusheen, @fl0pera, @dandylion240 and anyone who wants to do this because id literally sit here and tag you all

Theo becoming a parent in his sixties

2. river sleeping with his best friend and these two falling quicker for eachother than dusty and theo.

3. jami and marlee..... dude... just dude. jamis going to be back in the story soon so ill give a run down before i reintroduce him

4. scarlett in this hair.

5. lillie coming back into theos life

6. dustin and theo being dustin and theo

7. scarlett being a bitchhhhhhhhhh and absolutely destorying her dad on a live feed

8. dustin being a daddddddddddddddy

9. and subsequently more dustin and theo

10. jami and his way too good for him girliepop

11. chloe being my everything

12. jami and chloe being my fave duo

13.this pic of scarlett glaring at the boys

14. when it was obvi to blake that he caught A LOT of feelings for riv

15. again dustin being a daddy

16. just because it kinda makes me sad

17. eloise biting scarlett

18. theo watching his own season of the bachelor that lillie was on :3

19. midnight festivities

20. jami with mini chloe

21. more midnight snacks

22. theo with bb eloise and dirty dishes everywhere. so true of them

23 just hot hot.

[bloodbrown]

I wish I could take a megaphone and scream out my appreciation for all of the small updates and community engagement that Neowiz and the dev team have had with the Lies of P community. Because I really cannot express my joy enough every time they drop some extra goodies into the game for us just because.

[skysometric]

my 2nd favorite game that i played in 2023 is...

In Stars and Time

i'm not much one for rpgs. i love their deep and complex stories! but i often find when playing them that the fights are either overwhelmingly complex, or too much of a grindy slog. it takes a very special kind of rpg to catch my attention, and In Stars and Time was one of them.

the core concept of the game is that you're stuck in a time loop at the final dungeon of a greater adventure. my first thought was that, surely, having to replay the same few sections of the dungeon, fight the same few enemies, would exacerbate my usual rpg exhaustion. paradoxically, this did not turn out to be the case; the time loop has checkpoints that allow you to rewind further back and then skip forward to where you were, using your number of defeated enemies as a resource. this alone was a godsend and allowed me to skip around as much as i needed to without any of the adventure getting stale.

the rpg system itself is dead simple. there's no mana or MP to keep track of; special attacks simply need to recharge over X amount of turns. the three elements are rock, paper, and scissors – that's not even an allegory, they are literally rock / paper / scissors. each character specializes in using certain types effectively, and if you can use the same type of attack 5 times in a row as a party, it activates a party super that both heals and deals tons of damage. it's an incredibly fun and deep system for how simple it is to keep track of, especially as your party members grow and learn new moves!

all of these smartly designed systems helped to ease my usual rpg hangups and get into the story… and Oh My God. The Story.

i will not spoil a goddamn thing. but i will tell you what i most loved: the characters, and the setting.

once in a while i'll see a writing-advice post going around tumblr that says to think of the little details when you're writing a larger story. what religions does your world have? what other countries are there, and how do they get along? how are the people in your world reacting to the major story beats? how does your main cast get along? how do they get on each others' nerves? what's the cringiest trait each one of them has? do they keep secrets? what are their memories of growing up? it's clear that the author took this direction to heart, creating a rich setting full of life and history!

and this is exactly where the timeloop concept SHINES. each loop you get to try something different, explore other options, to see how your party and the world around you react differently. if you check that bookcase you missed before, it has a whole conversation about life in one of the other countries. if you try the mean dialog option (perish the thought), you learn about a character's trauma in more detail. sometimes even the same actions have something new when you do them a second time… a third time… a fourth time. each loop enriches the characters and their history, deepens their humanity.

and then you begin to wonder. what else are you curious about… and how do you find the answers? how can you help your party members with their problems? what do the people outside of your party think of you? why DOES the main character hate croissants? it's a depth first dive into this wonderful world and its inhabitants; each new thread you dig up is rewarding in its own way.

long story short, i took a risk on this game, and i'm SO happy i did. if you play games for the story, In Stars and Time is your sleeper hit for 2023. jump on this!

[legendaryvermin]

top 10 video games:

not strictly new. but the stuff I enjoyed most this year.

1. Sea of Stars - JRPG by the folks who made the Messenger. perfect economy of storytelling, good combat that takes notes from Paper Mario and Chrono Trigger

2. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk - Tag and Grind that could teach Sonic a thing or two. amazing game, finished it twice!

3. Chants of Senaar - Puzzle game about language. You learn and translate 5 languages while climbing a tower. super satisfying to have breakthroughs in understanding.

4. Ninja 5-0 - Lost GBA gem. This game kicks outrageous amounts of ass, and has a cool grappling hook. what more could you ask for?

5. Skies of Arcadia - Steal this mana system. also, what a delightful romp, very Dragon Quest.

6. Jedi Survivor - This game learned so much from its predecessor! it switched from a Soulsborne lens to a more Metroidvania one and I think it really paid off.

7. Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon - Friendly enough to be familiar to people who haven't followed the series, adversarial enough to get you to try new bullshit. also, spoilers, but one of the bosses is a Roomba.

8. Tears of the Kingdom - It's Banjo Ka-Zelda: Nuts and Bolts, and that's a good thing. in any other year this might be number 1.

9. Ghost of Tsushima - A wonderful set of gorgeously told short stories let down by a trope-laden and western-gazey central story that seems to fundamentally misunderstand samurai in Japanese history.

10. Baldur's Gate 3 - I reserve the right to use this again next year because I'm literally still in the underdark. it's this low because it's still D&D, for good and for ill.