Subjectively for me, it was. The only two games in 2023 that were in the contest were the RE4 remake and TotK, but BG3 is probably the game I played significantly more.

Objectively, it is the best game of 2023 if we consider how many awards the game won and how well it sold.

For me Alan Wake 2 was the best game of 2023.

Fallout series, just never clicked with me.

With Halo, you're probably running into the same problem as Ocarina of Time. Both caused massive changes to their genres, but later games also built on that and refined the formula so they feel dated now.

Well, I played a bunch of classic FPS games from that era, starting with the original Half Life. The gunplay of Halo felt like a step back from Half Life.

I didn't just play one Halo game either; I bought the Master Chief Collection, played Reach, CE, and by the time I was most of the way through Halo 2 I realised this whole time I was treating Halo like a chore and waiting till I get to the part where the game gets good... When it clicks and I see what people were talking about.

I enjoyed the Half Life games significantly more, despite having technically less story.

I dont like your opinions and so I dont like you as a person /s

Ah, there's the problem. You're comparing Halo to shooters on PC, which were much more developed when it came out. Console shooters were in such a bad state that Halo 1 was still competing with Golden Eye. Just having fluid motion and an aiming scheme that emulated mouselook was a massive step up in the console space.

Personally, I enjoy the wide variety of enemies and quirky weapon behaviors. The only other shooter released since then that's scratched that itch for me is Doom 2016. Doom Eternal probably would if it didn't hurt to play. Most other shooters I've tried just used human enemies with no variation in behavior and guns that all felt very samey.

I know a lot of people don't like the long time to kill, though, and the high points for narrative and gameplay are completely divorced from each other.

Have you tried new vegas (genuine question, as it is the only fallout game I like). If you don’t like it at first try with a melee build, that made it click for me

Downvote for sexism

Had me until the last part 😂

I have never player a TTRPG before playing BG3 (so no DnD background) but I still had lots of fun, though it was kind of annoying seeing people criticise the game for being too easy, while it felt very hard to me.

Just don’t play those games then. No need to find abullshit justification as to why this is evil, you just don’t like it.

For games I love, I play like 4hrs+ in one session. 12hrs+ do happen but very rarely.

Most old classics

Undertale (too hard for people with bad reflexes, I never got past Papyrus)

Half-life is such a joy to play even today

Even with beginner's guide and tips from YouTube, it was just too much. Each level up unlocks whole new stuff which requires ton of reading and understanding and remembering characteristics of each party so that so that I can increase their relationship score (forgot the exact term)

Maybe I'll revisit when I have more brain capacity or have some first hand DnD experience

No it sucks because of you want to build something you have to do all the calculations. But because there are different recipes you have to weigh that up and at the time you're choosing the recipes you don't know what will be built down the line.

I'm sure the community has optimized to the point where all the recipe choices are set in stone but still from a blind playthrough it feels bad.

Yeah, I don't really go for the endless grind either. I gravitate more towards platformers and metroidvanias and so on. I'm currently replaying Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

I don't. Who said anything about it being evil? I never claimed it was anything other than personal taste. No need to be so snarky.

ETA: Occasionally one slips through my filter. I bought Sanabi because it looked like it has interesting mechanics, but my god does it interrupt the flow with excessive slow-walking/cut scene exposition too much. I don't even mind if they keep it brief, but they went on way too long in that game. I enjoyed it a lot more after I started spamming the skip button.

... and the high points for narrative and gameplay are completely divorced from each other.

Yeah, this is the other issue I have with Halo; I've been told repeatedly that the story of Halo is incredibly deep and next level. Gave me the impression I'd get story and lore comparable to Mass Effect.

The one thing I was impressed by in Halo was enemy AI. That was really well done. Somehow, despite it being so old, most games don't bother making AI like that today.

Elden Ring yes, I've never in all my years experienced such a mismatch between how amazing everyone said a game was and the actual experience of trying to play it. It's not even about the difficulty, it just feels like I got thrown directly into the 20th hour of the game without any idea of what anything is or how it works or what I'm supposed to do

It's only easy if you cheese it (or have it set to easy) I think. Ignore those people.

Oh look, another horse!

I have absolutely no idea who said that to you about the story. It's good for a turn-of-the-millenium FPS, but it's not amazing or anything. The game writing peaks with Halo 2 in complexity and ambition, with later games being good at hitting vibes or emotional cues, but lacking the intrigue and twists that 2 had. I remember the expanded universe being interesting, but Halo's continuity eventually started being dependent on reading all the books to understand the games after 343 took over from Bungie and the whole thing really suffered for it.

The one thing I was impressed by in Halo was enemy AI. That was really well done. Somehow, despite it being so old, most games don’t bother making AI like that today.

It really is one of the best things about the games. Each species of enemy has its own AI package with distinct behaviors, and depending on the game, there are up to three, I think, variations on that that scale with rank. Higher ranking Grunts/Unggoy are less likely to panic if their leader is killed in most of the series, for instance. It's really weird that this kind of thing doesn't seem to be common outside of high fantasy games. Zelda does it, but Ghost of Tsushima doesn't have much difference between low level bandits and high level Mongols other than their health bar and damage output. I might have to check out the handful of fantasy FPS games to see if they have similar enemy variety.

This was why I loved TLOU 2. It blends both things perfectly. The gameplay was amazing. I look forward to the next fight to test shit out... But also, I really want to see what happens in the story.

Arc Raiders. By no means a bad game, it's just that the gameplay doesn't really click with me, possibly because some early missions rely on a lot of stealth and the loot system can be daunting at the first go around. One friend of mine really likes it, almost as much as we both like Left 4 Dead 2.

I might find some appeal if I give AR another chance, but I don't see that happening right away.

That's me with Noita. Maybe the whole roguelike genre is not for me. I'm more of a "save, experiment, load" type of person. And in Noita there is a lot of cool stuff, that you get quite late in the game, that can kill you immediately, and sometimes you die when you just test it, and it hits me very hard.

Game is dead now, the devs introduced aggression based matchmaking because lots of us were sick of pointless pvp, that initially made it better, then sweats figured out how to game the matchmaking and get peaceful lobbies and just kill everyone. Haven't made it through a run in weeks so I just stopped playing, after more than 100 hours. If you like the sweatiest Rust players, ARC is awesome.

Me with CS2. Feel like everything is focused into the competitive aspect without giving much care into casual play, previous CS games were pretty solid with that, even with GO.

This 100%. I bought it as soon as it came out because all of the testing done was PvE, so I assumed it was a PvE cooperative extraction game. I uninstalled after like 20 hours because of the PvP. Then I started playing again when they fixed matchmaking, and after about another 80 hours, I quit again after I kept getting ganked in "friendly" lobbies. My g/f still plays it and is constantly trying to talk it up, and I refuse to touch it until there is an option for PvE, and to turn PvP play off.

You can only game it once, then you get put back in the shit for a while. Only had one game where a team was aggressive in a PVE lobby. They cleaned up because nobody shot back.

Do you ever shoot players or loot players? I am not seeing very much PvP in PvE lobbies.

I killed 1 player. It was at the water treatment extraction point on damn battlegrounds. Everyone said they were friendly. Elevator pops up, and one guy takes out his guns and starts shooting. I managed to be in a spot where I had good cover and a line of sight to his head. I knew I was in a better position. I told him to stop shooting or I would shoot back. He didn't stop shooting. I popped off my trusty anvil and he went down after a single shot to the head. My pack was full, so I didn't bother knocking him out or trying to loot him. Aside from that, I did occasionally find raiders that were already dead, but they were always already looted too.

The 5e rules certainly make it a lot easier than most CRPGs, but if you're a newcomer to CRPGs I can still see it being difficult.

A lot of players are done playing PVE only and want to PvP to keep playing. This has drastically reduced the pool of peaceful lobbies. Any aggro rating above a 0 will put you into a PvP lobby now. So if you want PVE only, you don't get to shoot back or loot raiders without your next 10 games being PvP. When you go in a mob a care bear lobby, your next 20 games are PvP. In the rare occasion that someone attacked me in a PVE lobby, they wipe out everyone, I mean everyone. Not one of us shoot back. They usually find the players working together to hunt arc and kill them all in one spot. In a duo game, a team killed 10+ all in one spot, without any resistance.
On the flip side when I play a PvP game, I would hate going into a lobby where nobody shot back. That is not fun at all. The people mobbing peaceful lobbies are griefers at their core and not actual PvPers.

Sorry, but there are many players that WANT PvE. Most of them have given up and moved on because the devs didn't listen to their feedback.

This is also my issue with the matchmaking system. Because when I defend myself I'm more likely to land in a PvP lobby. So what, my only choice is just let them kill me, or be thrown into PvP matches I already don't want to play in. No, I'm cool with not playing. The Devs could have implemented PvE mode to fix this, but they didn't. Eventually the griefers will drive everyone else away, and the game can die. Worst $40 I ever spent.