Game of the Year 2023: WE DECIDE

it's the end of 2023 and time to think back on the many great games that came out this year so many that it's hard to choose a favorite except that we've done exactly that with each member of outside Xbox and outside extra picking a favorite game from the year so watch on to see which games Jane Mike Luke Ellen and myself chose as our top title this year and let us know your personal pick for in the comments my game of 2023 is Boulders Gate 3 hooray I'm not ashamed to say it few more ever Glimpse what you're about to see why would you say something so so bra it's everything I love about the fantasy genre everything I love about D and D everything I love about role playing games it's got like Rich deep characters Rich deep systems based on obviously the granddaddy of RPG systems and um it's also a wonderful like educational tool for DND D like bonus actions who knew bonus actions Mike knows what a bonus action is thank you Boulders gate I spoke to Johnny actually before we were about to play uh D and D for ox Venture the other day and we were talking about how you know even as you know experienced D and D players especially in Johnny's case Boulders gate still kind of revives your interest in some of the kind of like finer points of like the finer mechanical points of how D and D works as a assistant I'm not I'm not saying it's a complete one to mapping of like the D and D rules into a video game but I think it's it's probably the best and closest uh anyone has ever come to doing that I saved you and I'm here to save you again I think the writing is is just Sublime you know in a way that constantly impresses it's constantly making like interesting choices and unexpected choices and the characters are are so beautifully done like literally and you know figuratively um tell us about the romance who have you romanced as for my other quirks well we can figure those out in time I haven't romanced anyone yet oh my God which is what gets it a nine out of 10 instead of a 10 out of that's a a beautiful Segway there andy to talk about I actually really respect and admire how hard to get everyone is playing in Boulders Gate 3 because doubt don't get me wrong I love a love me a BioWare Romance moment but I think it does better than most at avoiding the really really transactional sort of setup you know what I mean where it's like it's not hard to romance someone in a BioWare game and I love those games what you have to do is talk to them talk to them enough times right and I respect and admire Boulders gate for you know being a little more sophisticated about it thank you very much it's such a luxury ous like luxuriantly made game that I feel privileged to be able to pour hours and hours of my time into it the absolute is more dangerous than you can possibly conceive it threatens all who live it threatens the gods The Weave the very fabric of the universe itself hi everyone it's me Andy and I'm here to talk about my favorite game of 2023 uh well one of my favorite games of 2023 cuz I was going I was thinking of talking about another game but I'm pretty sure someone else is going to talk about that one so I'm going to let them do that and I'm going to highlight another game that I would like to talk about which is Allan Wake 2 I knew it would be here like I saw it in a [Music] dream not Resident Evil 4 well yes okay good thing to bring up because survival horror is probably my favorite genre and this year we saw a remaster remake of Resident Evil 4 which I would say is probably my favorite game ever Resident Evil 4 like the original the remaster is excellent but I have already played Resident Evil 4 a lot uh so I kind of it was like retreading Familiar Grounds I had a really good time really enjoyed it we played through the entire thing on the channel and the DLC so yeah I played through it on my own play through it on the channel so I finished it like twice over had a really good time love that game but for me Alan Wake is more interesting it's doing more different stuff good stuff good yeah some good stuff some bad stuff but it's always interesting in a really compelling way it's one of the weirdest games I've ever played but in an incredibly compelling way the game if you're unfamiliar with it it's set in the Pacific Northwest um in the sort of woods up near SE attle that kind of part of the world like Oregon Coastal Oregon that kind of stuff and everyone in it is so incredibly Finnish ILO voted businessman of the Year by the bride Falls Herold and yako stay at home Dad I'm proud of that and obviously remedy who make it are a finished Studio there's a a bit where you go to a a theme park based around coffee and all the employees are finish the people who own it are these two brothers who are incredibly Finnish so can some local history at the well where two serial killers once hit the dis bodies of their murder victims it's not haunted I'm like remed if you want to set a game in Finland you could could probably do that if you wanted I'm sure people wouldn't mind and yet it's this weird like Finnish Pacific Northwest like mange Arty the janitor from control is in it a lot [Music] okay then catchy tune just like hanging out and it's the way it's structured is you've got these different chapters and we play some of them with Saga Anderson who is an FBI agent he plays some of them as Alan Wake who's sort of Trapped in uh this dark place that he's trying to sort of write a story to to get his way out of um I've already talked about it on a video with Luke but I can't tell if Alan Wake is supposed to be a good writer or not like all the excerpts from his books are like incredibly cliched hardboiled detective novel stuff but and yet he's treated as this like genius writer he'd be caught murdered they got him they didn't get him he was reborn out of hate he was there but he was risen sent to find the light switch up from the lake that was not the lake everyone in the universe thinks he's the best writer ever he's the most bestselling author of all time so that's sort of endlessly fascinating to me what's going on there and then like the variety is just so unusual and so compelling like one chapter you'll be like going through the sort of Stormy Woods in uh the Pacific Northwest you'll be in a theme park you'll have to descend into a haunted well and then you'll switch to playing as Allen and you'll be going around a a haunted hotel and it's uh it's got these really interesting Mechanics for both characters so Saga Anderson she has a one of those like boards where you put up photograph and you link things with with red uh string and you've got to sort of piece together what happened in your cases by that whereas Alan wake's got a completely different mechanic where he discovers story elements that he incorporates into a plot board and you can there are certain scenes within the level that you can like change the actual Reality by switching out plot elements so you'll be in for example the haunted hotel and uh you'll be in a corridor and it'll be set up for like a play or something and then you'll be like you'll take the play element out and you put in the haunted element and suddenly it'll be like lit with red light and there's blood up the wall because there'll be something there in one of them that isn't there in the other so it'll be like blocking the corridor but then in the haunted element it's taken out the stuff that was blocking the corridor the scene had changed there's some really odd unusual puzzles to solve and the whole thing feels like a a sort of weird hazy fever dream um but it's like it looks incredible the soundtrack's really good it's so Innovative in the way and like Fearless in the way it'll just do completely random stuff like one of the chapters is just a musical section from what IED you grew up nice and sheltered with mama's pretty stories and you're made fcker yes and you walk through basically a series of like shifting screens with like this music video with Alan Wake and this like this fictional talk show host singing a song about what's going on in Alan Wake and then there's the band the old gods of Asgard um are playing it's it's got such enormous euro vision energy uh and you make your way through this whole thing and then you have to sort of incorporate the plot board elements to like get a a final climactic chorus to the song which will pull you out of it and the whole thing ends with a gigantic dance number that Sam Lake the director of the game is in dancing well I might [Music] add and I was discussing this with Jane where it's like other utter like hideo kajima would never put themselves in the game with this kind of level of like goofy self-deprecation uh which I really admire David cage danced at the end of fenhe w w yeah enest I think yeah he may have been thinking it was good um but it's it's just it's so fascinating and then that the whole thing ends with this like climactic um chorus and then you get sort of thrown to the end of the level and artti the janitor is just there like humming the song heral of darkness in this sort of empty studio and you walk out the door and it just goes end of chapter I've never seen anything like it in another video game and I think that's why I wanted to highlight it as my game of the year because it's you know you I've been playing games for so many years it's not often you see something completely new and completely unusual that's constantly like surprising you and delighting you as you play through it and that's really what I'm getting from Alan Wake it's just there's so many like individual things that I'm like why is this happening what is s lake is in it as like three different characters is this this who I think it is uh Alex Casey who is an FBI agent who works with Saga Anderson he's her partner he's also in it as as playing the fictional character Alex Casey who is a character in Alan wake's books and he's in it as Sam Lake who is an actor who is playing the role of Alex Casey in the film adaptations of Alan wake's books that means so much to me I'm a huge fan of your books it's so confusing and complicated and there's no need for it to be so confusing and complicated but it is and I'm like why is this like this I need I'm going to play like six more hours to find out so yeah I think in terms of a game that's got its hooks into me the most this year uh it's all awake I'm think I've not finished it yet I'm thinking because it's only just come out but I'm thinking about playing it right now I want to go home and play it those who know me probably won't be very surprised by my choice for Game of the Year 2023 it is of course lies of PE what [Music] yep look tears of the kingdom was amazing I had a great time with it but the game that surprised me the most this year and that I just could not stop playing was the the Pinocchio one was the Pinocchio game I don't know what to tell you if tears of the Kingdom were so good why did I get bored well I'm not say I'm saying lies of PE is my favorite I've LED I've lined up all the things I was going to you've lined up all of your tears of the kingdom heckles and now you're scrambling to Heckle Li of I can't believe you've done this I'm sorry I'm sorry so there are games that I really enjoy playing uh games like tears of the Kingdom Spider-Man 2 uh balers Gate 3 and then occasionally there are games that I just feel like I need to play and I'm not sure when I am playing them if I'm having fun I it just satisfies a sort of lizard brain basic need that I have to be playing that game immediately and lies of P was one of those games for me this year I I demolished it I sort of I thought about it all the time when I wasn't playing it and I played it for hour every day and yeah I had an absolute blast and was totally surprised by its existence concept title title and the fact that I had so much I really didn't think I would have so much fun I I would never have guessed that I would be saying it's my game of the year to be fair you are a huge Pinocchio San I am a huge Pinocchio fan the fact Mike jetto yes I do yes and he's a father fig to Me Andy is my Andy serves as my conscience them them all so Li of P opens with a bit of text on screen that says like to the great writer Carlo Kodi who is the bloku wrote Pinocchio but I think we all know that's not really who should be getting a shout out at the beginning of lies of P because this game is a total ripoff of the from software Dark Souls e bloodborne sakiro RPGs it takes everything that it wants to from those games level design the atmosphere the weird inscrutable NPC quest lines um and most importantly combat which is a sort of mix of Dark Souls bloodborne and actually a lot of sakiro a lot more of sakiro than I I thought would be there but that's not to say that it has no original ideas it has one original well one original idea is making a video game about Pinocchio that's pretty bold the second original idea it has that I think is really really excellent is the weapon system and I know this is a bit sort of boring in system Z so I'll justy try and be brief every weapon that you get can be broken in half and you can like mix and match and assemble them with diff like with other other weapons with a few exceptions for like special boss weapons the blade of your weapon determines its attack power while the handle determines its like scaling which if you play these sorts of games no like depends how much damage it deals out depending on your character's personal stats so like if you put a lot of points into strength and you have a strength scaling weapon you're going to hit really really hard with that this system what it means in Practical terms is that you sort of settle in on a handle that you quite like the look of because the handle also determines like the move set so something that just kind of feels good to play with and sort of suits your style and then as you go through the game and get new weapons I was just constantly sort of like popping a new blade on it like this is the only one of this type of game that I have played where I really really felt like I could swap weapons and mix up the weapons and I actually had that flexibility and that I wasn't being punished for a failure to sort of devote myself wholly to like one play style so I went to like a point in the game my weapon was like a big horrible sore Cleaver that was enormous and at another point it was like a big Axe and the axe was made from like dead puppet arms it was so horrible it was brilliant I loved it it's not it's not a perfect game there are some things that aren't great about it that I will sort of quickly cover off now cuz I really do think it's a pretty astounding achievement this game um it takes a little bit too much inspiration from Dark Souls in the way that the last quarter of the game is a significant dip in level design and like enemies get a bit repetitive I don't know if they felt that they had to do that to be true to the it's not a Dark Souls game if you enjoy the final third of it there are a lot of different systems in play which is fine and gives you a lot of different play Styles at your disposal but you're always picking up upgrade materials for x or y or Zed and it does mean that you very often have to go back to the hub World which is a hotel to upgrade something or other you you very often you you get like 2 minutes further into the game you'll be like ah I've got to pop back to the bloody Hotel again also NPCs talk too much they waffle on it gets quite annoying how did he get around however it's a different story when a single puppet does the Grand Covenant break or did someone if it's the but those are basically the only complaints I can think of it has atmosphere out the woo it has some really really impressive and memorable boss fights it feels brilliant to play it looks beautiful and I think fundamentally it just never stopped being funny to me that I was playing a game where an extremely like grim and brutal game where I was Pinocchio and everyone else was characters from Pinocchio that gag did not wear thin for me I'll give you two examples of how I think like this thing was done really well they're both sort of a bit spoilery but I don't feel like that's necessarily going to be like a big problem for for these kind of games one is the the the rarest weapon in the game the hardest weapon to acquire is you can get this portrait of Pinocchio when he was a little boy and it goes up in ja Pet's office and as you go through the game the more you tell lies a nose grows out of it a wooden nose grows out of the painting and if by the time you reach the end game you've told enough lies it turns into a glittering golden weapon called the Golden lie that you can snatch down from this like portrait and sort of wield as a deadly weapon which is so Choice sounds good it is good and the other the other thing and this is probably the best I felt playing a video game all year is the there's a post credit scene where you just get to there's a very brief post credit scene that just cues up what I imagine will be the sequel It's Dorothy from The Wizard of O rocking up rocking up at the like her sort of red the ruby slippers kind of like doom and then s like you just see the heel snap and I burst out laughing but beneath that sort of ironic love is a genuine hype for the Dorothy Souls like I I can't express how much I'm looking forward to the sequel to this game or DLC or whatever it turns out to be where you are just a sort of death dealing Dorothy from The Wizard of ours and that oh my God there's going to be like profaned Tin Man of the dark wood and like there's going to be a Cowardly Lion NPC or so it's going to be so many munchkins will die so many munchkins will fall to my blade but yeah I'm I'm here for it let's take what else is out of copyright that can be a give me the Winnie the Poo bloodborne um yeah I was super surprised by this game I didn't expect it to be nearly as good or engaging as it was it had some great ideas very original I enjoyed all my time with it bring on bring on Dorothy well seeing as someone didn't choose it I get to choose it my my choice is obviously zelder tears of the [Music] [Applause] Kingdom I loved breath of the world I got to play it a lot later than everyone else because Luke had our copy and I'm mad about it but what what was really fun for me it's fine I'm fine I'm fine it was 2017 It Go but when tears of the Kingdom came out I was like immediately in on it really really loved it um and I think what I loved about it is because like we were all so used uh to the kind of the world um but they they tweaked it they tweaked it how they managed to like hide it from everyone cuz they were just going ooh look at the sky look at the clouds Isn't that cool and we were all like excited about being in the sky and skydiving and then you get to the game and they're like oh by the way there's another high Ru down there and it's full of enemies have [Music] fun with like cool unique areas there's like a dungeon down there with a big boss battle it's so it's so good and I really enjoyed you know playing at the same time as everyone else and the just enjoying the discourse enjoying the community and everyone sharing things and like it felt like a real privilege to be able to do a job like this where I just got to like talk about it for ages and make loads of videos about it and I know the outside extra slightly turned into the Zelda channel for a bit but I'm sorry I was enjoying myself I'm sorry remember we made that big stick we made a big stick that was really fun no no you got to be wo wo wo no no basically I loved uh the approach that Nintendo had with this game and that they were like we're going to take breath of the wild uh and break it but in a good way we're going to make it so that you can cheat your way like sort of like cheekily give you abilities like no longer will you have to like worry about having to climb up a mountain go in that cave whoop go up and uh use your little like ceiling uh Warp thing and go straight up and you can climb to a completely different part of the map done immediately the amazing creative things that people were sharing and just like the fun silly things that people were making like just giving people a lot of flexibility um it kind of like in adding all of these extra things it made it extremely accessible I think some people um who might not have enjoyed breath of the world because it was a little bit big and a little bit overwhelming these extra tools RS kind of made it easier for them to like jump in and just be like yeah let's play about is it just it was like an actual big toy box as well as a Sandbox game and yeah I I loved getting more of the story I loved all the new boss battles um I loved getting just so many Fun Collectibles and like the characters as well just I met so many funny NPCs uh that really you know make this world feel very very real you know to sound like bit pretentious um but like it really does it really feels like a fun place to go and I'd like to go on holiday to Hyrule you know go go to Hero Village have a chill time go you know get some uh like new clothes and CC's probably stay away from the depths yeah there's uh there's a lot of bad things down there but lot of cool Minds a lot of cool things to see down there I found sometimes the the kind of like upgrading system could be a little bit grindy at times at times but overall um I think uh it was a very well balanced game it was a lot of fun and I just really enjoyed jumping straight back into a lovely world that I really enjoyed and had a lot of fun memories with and uh just creating even more wonderful memories and absolute ton of videos cuz I just wanted to talk about it I was like please everyone play this game so I can talk do you about it please please please and uh yeah it was great cuz everyone did and uh it was wonderful I really enjoyed it love you link hello viewers it's me it's me hi it's Mikey c um yes I'm here with that's weird um I'm here with my you're trying to get going no no little late in the year for a new catchphrase um yes my game of the year is Street Fighter 6 or to pronounce it correctly Street Fighter 6 Street Fighter 6 which is how the guy does it is that why you wore no shoes today it is I'm actually wearing my Street Fighter shoes and my Street Fighter 2 t-shirt um in honor of my game of the year because I have gone full Street Fighter sicko here I come I'm not very good at it obviously I'm never good at games but I suck less at this Street Fighter than I have sucked at any Street Fighter game ever before we go reive expert I did receive some expert uage from my friend King Jay uh during one of our live streams that was actually super useful he really help out there we go so so you're you're you're now applying being more patient and just seeing what they're doing and look what's happening yeah it's true it's true but uh I've been playing a lot of like ranked online matches not doing particularly well but kind of very much enjoying the process of getting better um I think it's just the thing I love about Street Fighter 6 is that everything you do in that game feels amazing so like all of the punches and kicks feel great the special moves feel great sorry no the drive impacts feel great responding to someone else's Drive Impact with a drive impact feels even better not so bad like they've just tuned it to the point where all of the moves feel amazing and you're having a great time and also the thing I love about Street Fighter the days is all of the street fighters are having a great time you see that everyone apart from Ken who lost all his money in crypto man talk about pathetic I got totally played but they're all like super happy it's really funny like for people whose job it is to get hit in the face and then hit other people in the face they're all having an amazing time like when my favorite character is Kimberly and when she wins she's like oh my God I won I can't believe it oh my god did you see that I won she's having a brilliant time um so it's just like it's just fun times it's as if you know I'm sure most real world fights are very unpleasant you know outside of Pub car park everyone's had a a skinful of alcohol and they're raging at each other and trying to hit each other horrible horrible situation in Street Fighter these literal street fights everyone's having a brilliant time they're lovely and they they sort of they're almost at the point where they congratula the person who just knocked them out what I love about the world tour mode is you go around like Metro City and every like the main hobby for everyone is just fighting everyone's hobby is fighting yeah exactly and so you'll go up to the guy running the um the pizza stand or something and just like Dragon punch him and then apparently you having a fight yeah he's like I love this oh he's a level three yeah fight him yeah fight him um yeah World Tour Mode's a really good point as well cuz um it's sort of two games in one uh Street Fighter 6 and it was really interesting hearing it described as like all the sort of traditional Street Fighter stuff and particularly like online play ranked online play is sort of seen as like the end game content right that's the stuff you are supposed to play when you're good at Street Fighter um i' I've skipped to that bit even though I'm not that good at Street Fighter but World Tour is supposed to be the bit where you pick this game up as a total Noob having never played a Street Fighter game and it's it's fun it's sort of like a a yakaza light sort of Adventure where you're running around an open world challenging people to fights there's little RPG elements there's items you're learning new skills you're making friends with the existing cast of Street Fighter like I said everyone loves each other and is friendly even though they're all so kicking the the you know the rude stuff out of each other um the piss yes they're kicking the piss out of each other um and it it's it's just lovely it's the the entire world tour mode is a joy it's really silly and fun nice that's a that's that's a cool thing to thanks for the tip that's a cool thing to learn now now it's time for you to Lear woman into the sky it's time for you to learn a lesson it's maybe a little repetitive after a while but but it's it's a totally separate game that is entirely new for Street Fighter I think the whole thing about Street Fighter six is like they've they've sort of I wouldn't say like torn up the rule book but they have they've addressed every element of the rule book and and looked at it and worked out how it can be better for everyone so the addiction of modern controls right is like somewhat revolutionary it's it's saying you know for a fighting game player like is execution of moves the most important thing or is just like getting your head into the game and like reading your opponent and stuff like that the most important thing and with One controls the idea is that someone who doesn't necessarily have the dexterity or the muscle memory from years and years of playing Street Fighter games can pull off special moves with a single button and then it becomes just the sort of like chess game of of a fighting game where you're trying to work out what your opponent's trying to do and all that stuff so that's really revolutionary world tours revolutionary in terms of like a single player mode for a fighting game because normally it's like an arcade mode where you just fight like seven guys and then that's it um so they really looked at like what makes Street Fighter you know or what could make Street Fighter like feel brand new and feel like a new game and like the last two I mean Street Fighter 4 was great Street Fighter 5 somewhat disappointing when it was released neither of them i i really grabbed me in in the way this one has and um I love all the new characters as well my favorite character is kimbery he's a brand new character to the series she's kind of inspired by certain older characters in the series But ultimately she's a brand new character with brand new [Music] stuff no and um I all the character designs are really fun and all the classic people are in there as well so if you just want to play as Ken you can play as Ken but I I I sort of went into Street Fighter 6 thinking I might just play one of the classic characters cuz I know them well but actually I've ended up playing the new characters because they're really good so yeah I I mean the short version is Street Fighter 6 is revolutionary in terms of the fighting game and the stuff it's trying and the experimentation it feels great to play and everyone on the screen is having as good a time as you are when you're playing it and I think for those three reasons that is a great game of year KO

Channel: outsidexbox

Views: 165,271

Keywords: outsidexbox, andy farrant, jane douglas, mike channell, luke westaway, game of the year, goty, review, gameplay, ellen rose, game, best of, pick, top, best game, game of the year 2023, 2023, best game 2023, best games 2023, street fighter 6, lies of p, baldur's gate 3, alan wake ii, alan wake 2, the legend of zelda, tears of the kingdom

Id: iDlPBbCNGCs

Length: 32min 40sec (1960 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023