DISCLAIMER: This article will deal with disturbing and upsetting themes some may not be comfortable with. If you are easily upset or triggered by certain distressing topics, this article may not be for you. This article also contains spoilers for the games it discusses.
With an attention span split across multiple hobbies, a lack of proper motivation to explore different games, and several other aspects of my personal life that simply took priority, the last two years have been pretty slow for me when it comes to video games. And that's not to say I wasn't spoiled for choice. 2023 alone saw some of the biggest and most groundbreaking releases of the decade, and this year was peppered with long-awaited sequels and expansions. What I have played, though, has really stuck with me. Several indie games and triple-A releases alike that I haven't stopped thinking about since, for good or for bad. Seeing as how I had no list at the end of last year, here's my combination of 2023 and 2024 games that I really enjoyed.
The Town Of Light
The Town Of Light is an incredibly heavy, incredibly dark, and incredibly upsetting game to play. Following the story of a woman named Renée, the player explores a dilapidated and abandoned psychiatric institution, or 'mental hospital' as it would have been known in the 1940s, when most of the game's sequences take place. The player experiences Renée's stay at the institution through flashbacks and memories. The story, in order, goes as follows; Renée was committed to the institution for apprent mental illness, though it seems clear her mother simply did not approve of her apparent promiscuity and was possibly concerned about depression. Renée was raped by a male orderly while there, before encountering another patient called Amara. The two began a romance with one another. The staff at the institution disapproved of this, and separated the two, while also subsequently gaslighting Renée into believing Amara was a figment of her imagination. Amara died, and was buried in a nearby cemetary. After Renée's behaviour deteriorates significantly, she is subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. The staff also intercept and hide letters sent by her mother, and she never gets to read them. Her mother commits suicide several years later. And the bleakest and most upsetting twist at the end is that Renée was eventually lobotomised, meaning that her discovery of all of this information in the present day may mean nothing to her anymore. This one moved me to tears, and I'm not surprised. I'll never forget the tragedy that befell Renée. The Town Of Light is going to stick with me forever.
Transient
Transient is a cosmic horror game rooted deeply in the mythologies set down by HP Lovecraft decades ago. Inspired by dark tales of otherworldly beings luring in mortals with sinister promises, Transient follows Randolph Carter as he investigates a chilling mystery spanning several dimensions and realities. The game utilises a unique scanning tool that lets players do a bit of detective work to find clues and piece together the mystery of what is going on. Randolph also makes use of narcotic substances to travel between realities and communicate with otherworldly entities. Sadly, my memories of the exact plot details are few, as I encountered a consistent and unavoidable bug partway into the game that caused it to crash at the exact same point every time. Nothing I tried fixed it, and I didn't want to buy it on other platforms for fear of the same bug appearing again. It's a shame, too, because it is genuinely quite an effectively spooky little horror game with an engaging mystery to uncover. Maybe one day I'll get to finish it.
Close To The Sun
Heavily-and I mean heavily-inspired by BioShock, this indie game has plenty of its own charm and identity to stand by itself and offers much in the way of a unique experience. I was drawn to the obvious parallels between it and the aforementioned inspiration, and it didn't disappoint. Close To The Sun sees journalist Rose Archer stranded aboard the ocean cruiser known as Helios, an enormous wonder of invention and home to many of the world's greatest scientific minds, including Nikola Tesla. As it happens, the backdrop of the game sees Tesla and Thomas Edison in a sort of scientific arms race and competition with one another, a competition that quickly devolved and grew out of hand. Events aboard the Helios mirror the underwater city of Rapture from BioShock, where those aboard have either gone mad or fallen victim to nefarious experiments carried out in the name of scientific progress. It's a great horror game, and a lovely homage to the BioShock series. But rest assured it has its own story to tell, and a perfectly unique one at that.
Dredge
2023 was the year of indie horror games for me, and it was apparently also the year of horror games inspired by HP Lovecraft stories. Dredge sees the player take control of an unnamed sailor, who finds themselves in a small and remote fishing town located on an island. The locals advise the sailor to go fishing, as their entire economy is based around the activity. It appears to be a cosy resource management game at first, with some mildly unsettling elements and unusual characters mixed in, but things take a turn for the worse the more players uncover. It starts with some mutated fish, grotesque creatures with extra eyes or features they shouldn't have. Then there's the fog that sets in overnight, bringing with it dangerous monsters that can destroy the sailor's boat. And there is also a cult located on a nearby island, as well as a lone man who will request certain things from the sailor. As expected, it all gets very Lovecraft and Cthulu-esque the more you play, but it's such a fun and entertaining game, whose secrets become darker and more shocking as time goes on.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
My obsession with Cyberpunk 2077 is as clear to anyone with eyes as braille is to a blind person. In 2022, I found myself deeply and mercilessly consumed by the game after ignoring it for two years based on its bugs and performance issues. Today, it is one of my favourite games ever made, and with good reason. I will take any excuse I can get to talk more about this game. Its expansion came out at the end of 2023, and it once again took a hold of me in a way that games haven't done in literal years. Phantom Liberty sees V head into the violent and degraded streets of Dogtown, Night City's most dangerous district. Under the control of the BARGHEST military lead by former soldier Kurt Hansen, Dogtown plays host to a cataclysmic power struggle after Kurt Hansen targets Rosalind Myers, President of the New United States of America. V naturally becomes heavily embroiled in the conflict and is forced to choose sides. They are also spurred on by the promise of having the Relic's life-erasing properties brought to a halt to save their life, a promise that unsurprisingly ends up coming with a pretty significant catch. Phantom Liberty brought me on yet another of CD Projekt's emotional journeys that will stick with me forever. But it is the expansion's new ending for the game that really got to me. V sees themself awakened from a years-long coma to find that all their friends have moved on and no longer care about them, and they must continue life in Night City without their former reputation, their comrades, or even Johnny Silverhand's consciousness. And to top it off, their combat abilities are non-existent after what they have been through. They are finally just a regular Joe, arguably the worst tragedy that could have befallen them. The ending is incredibly bleak and hopeless, and it made me openly weep after playing it.
Dragon's Dogma 2
A sequel to Dragon's Dogma was something I had given up on ever happening and I had resigned myself to replaying the original as a single, self-contained experience. Imagine my surprise when the second game was announced, and with a release date less than two years later as well. I was overjoyed. As a sequel, Dragon's Dogma 2 is perfectly fine, improving on most of the first game's features but not necessarily doing anything groundbreaking or unique that hadn't been done before. As a game, however, it is fantastic. That same sense of wonder and excitement from simply exploring the world and uncovering its secrets is ever-present, and there are a plethora of new monsters to fight and abilities to master. Many of its quests and questlines are also refreshingly interesting, with a particular string of missions for a creature known as the Sphinx really standing out and requiring more brains than brawns to complete properly. I found an additional element of enjoyment during my playthrough, however. Having gotten into a new and blossoming romantic relationship less than two months before the game's release, I decided to model my Arisen on myself while attempting to create my Pawn to look like my new girlfriend. It made it feel as though we were both exploring the wilderness of the game together, even though she was usually never actually with me when I played the game. So not only did I immensely enjoy Dragon's Dogma 2 for what it was, but I also made some fun of my own to have thanks to the Pawn system. I imagine I'll be returning to this one in the near future.
Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree
Elden Ring is another big standout from my gaming experiences of 2022, and Shadow Of The Erdtree came along faster than I anticipated. Not only did it provide an enormous new map filled with nasty bosses and enemies to overcome, but it also came with a hefty helping of new lore and story implications regarding Miquella the Empyrean, one of the most mysterious figures only mentioned in the original game. One of the children of Marika and Radagon, Miquella has always been noteworthy for his mysterious disappearance at the hands of his half-sibling, Mohg, and many other characters-NPCs and bosses alike-having a baffling obsession with him. He is often speculated to be one of the most powerful of the demigods, a fact which none can dispute after his eventual appearance at the finale of Shadow of the Erdtree. Having used the body of his half-sibling and the essence of the fallen General Radahn, Miquella and his new Promised Consort give the lowly Tarnished one of the toughest and most unforgiving boss fights FromSoftware have ever crafted. So gruelling is it, in fact, that I have yet to actually complete the expansion, with my single only obstacle being the final boss. One day I hope to get there, but Shadow of the Erdtree has plenty more to offer in the form of new equipment and spells, several creepy mysteries to uncover, and a whole host of ruins and veritable wastelands to brave.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
And at last we come to Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I waited ten years to experience this game, and I was not disappointed...for the most part. Surprisingly, I had my issues with the game, and there were some aspects of it that did not live up to my expectations. The finale, too, a reunion a decade in the making between the Dread Wolf, Solas, and the Inquisitor, left a lot to be desired. But I can set those differences aside for another day...and another article. For now, let me focus on the positive. I've been a Dragon Age fan as long as I can remember, and I absolutely leaped out of my skin at the chance to play a new entry in the series. I loved getting to experience the world of Thedas, especially regions of it I hadn't yet gotten the chance to see first-hand or that I was largely unfamiliar with. BioWare also really impressed me by taking inspiration from Mass Effect 2, my favourite game of all time and one of their previous masterpieces. The companions all have their own unique questlines to complete, and doing so rewards the player in ways they miss out on by neglecting their companions. The whole structure of the game and the final few missions also closely follow the blueprint of Mass Effect 2, and in a lot of ways Veilguard feels like a combination of all of BioWare's previous games in the same way that Elden Ring feels like a mix of all previous FromSoftware titles. It's the last game I played in 2024, and definitely my favourite. I don't know if there will be more Dragon Age games in future, but Veilguard ties off the lingering mysteries and plot threads of the other three games fairly satisfactorily and, in all honesty, I would be happy if it was the last one. The ten year wait is finally over, and so is this story.
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