As the year of 2023 draws to a close, journalists and supposedly professional game reviewers are all giving their pieces as to which form of benign woke slop was unquestionably the best game released throughout the year, with many outfits favoring Baldur’s Gate 3 for bastardizing the franchises name of which it stole, alongside wholesome family oriented bear fucking antics.
Other outlets have instead given their top choices to the likes of Hogwarts Legacy and or Starfield, even though all three mentioned titles would be far from my actual top choices.
I’ve instead chosen to ignore paid media publications in regards to what their preferred game of the year was, instead I’ve opted into checking out the best PC games of 2023 as revealed by Steam Database.
Why listen to a bunch of grifters tell you which game is good or bad, when they’re all featuring inclusive / diverse nonsensical themes and values when we can simply view raw statistics and user reviews to aggregate a competent list of the best games released on Steam across the year of 2023 instead.
The rankings utilize an exclusive evaluation algorithm crafted by SteamDB. Recognizing the simplicity and somewhat rudimentary nature of Steam’s official algorithm for rankings, this alternative algorithm was devised in an attempt to address and resolve these concerns (additional details can be found here).
To summarize, SteamDB employs its unique algorithm, favoring an average rating of 50%, to estimate scores, leading to potential variations from those displayed on the store.
Their approach is based on the principle that with every tenfold increase in reviews, there should be a twofold increase in certainty about the accuracy of the rating: “For every 10x the reviews we have, we should be 2x more certain that the rating is correct.”
Consequently, when a game has only one review, SteamDB is 100% uncertain about its rating; with ten reviews, the uncertainty reduces to 50%, and with a hundred reviews, it decreases further to 25%, and so on. This explains why a user score of 98% for Lethal Company translates to 96.99%, and as the game accumulates more reviews, its calculated score resembles the actual rating on Steam more closely.
And according to their sophisticated algorithm, the best game released throughout 2023 on the Steam Store is HoloCure – Save the Fans!
HoloCure is a free-to-play roguelite and bullet heaven game, showcasing VTubers from Hololive and drawing inspiration from Vampire Survivors. Developed by Kay Yu, the former lead animator of River City Girls, the game has earned an impressive score of 97.01% on SteamDB, derived from over 26,000 user reviews.
I’ve played quite a lot of HoloCure this year, it’s very addicting, and the hilarious thing about is that I personally don’t even watch VTubers, it’s flashy pixel artwork was more than enough to draw me in with multitudes of characters to unlock and play as, each with their own unique weapons, abilities and playstyles.
It’s not all Vampire Survivors gameplay however, you can opt to instead chill at the “Holo House” and play various minigames such as farming or fishing to earn additional coinage as various HoloLive characters come and go.
The second game on the list is basically a tie for first place if we’re being sincere, with a review rating of 96.96% it’s the indie sensation Lethal Company.
“Lethal Company” immerses players in a cooperative horror experience amid the industrialized ruins of various moons, challenging them to collect scrap for their company quota otherwise risk losing their job (and life).
The game’s popularity arises for its cooperative gameplay, ambience and hilarious proximity voice chat antics that put 99% of western voice actors to shame.
Featuring the utilization of diverse gadgets, the thrill of confronting and succumbing to colossal monsters, and the rewarding satisfaction of successfully retrieving scrap. Earning acclaim, it has established itself as a favorite on Steam, boasting a daily concurrent player count of over 150,000 players.
I thought it would be a flash in the pan, however a handful of months later it still remains as strong as ever in terms of player count, I haven’t personally tried it however I commend the antics of such “obscure” games being thrown into the spotlight in such similar fashion.
In terms of user reception and for what the game is, a $10 indie title that’ll surely provide hours of laughs and screams, it has no doubt sold hundreds of thousands of copies and is one of the highest reviewed games on the Steam store this year, it rightfully deserves to be amongst the very top of PC gaming across the entire year.
Pizza Tower is another indie sensation that was outright robbed by western media outlets, such as the ESG Awards for the best indie title, the quirky 2D side-scroller brandishes a review score of 96.75% from over 49,000 reviews, out of games released this year Pizza Tower is certainly unique in the sense that it’s a product that actually delivers what is advertised which is a rare commodity in this environment.
A game that allows you to play as a fat, balding middle-aged Italian man has been snubbed by majority of the press, which I cannot fathom because those words are typically used to describe what your average game journalist looks like, they like to larp about “realism” and yet seemingly refuse to acknowledge or accept realistic depictions of themselves in games and media.
Oh yeah, and did I mention the kickass soundtrack?
Pizza Tower has no forced diversity, no agenda being forced down the players throats, it’s a game that’s about a fat Italian man rampaging through various Pizza themed levels. It deserves its positioning amongst the highest rated games of this year, it’s truly a game that outright caters towards actual gamers instead of political pushing feminists.
To summerize so far, the top three games of the year in terms of reception are all low-level, obscure “indie” titles. Not a single AAA game as far as the eye can see, don’t worry though because Sony is more than happy to give its own game their own GOTY award.
This makes so much sense considering how AAA games of today downplay terms such as “fun” and “engaging” and instead rave on about “realism”, “political correctness”, “monetization” and of course “cinematic”.
For those craving a AAA fix in fourth place we have Resident Evil 4’s remake, which is basically a horror interpretation of the original action focused title that absolutely did not need to be created given the sheer amount of times Capcom continually re-released RE4.
With a 96.43% rating from over 119,000 reviews it’s fair to say that it’s a decent experience if you’re into the newer Resident Evil titles built on the new RE Engine, I would have preferred a revival of Code Veronica which makes actual sense but that’s just me. The Resident Evil 4 Remake removed various problematic voice lines such as the “ballistics” remark made in reference to Ashley’s breasts.
Considering the game is basically a retelling of the original in an entirely different genre countless features and changes were altered or outright removed, probably as a means of maintaining a cohesive pacing or because they wouldn’t mesh well with the less action focused remake.
In terms of games released this year it deserves a spot in the top ten simply because it’s more modernized Resident Evil slop for people to fawn over, but I’d much rather play the original release with the HD Project texture pack, at least with that I won’t have to look at the hideous abomination that is Ashley’s appearance in the remake which effectively turned her into a victim of menopause.
From 5th place to 10th place we have the Chinese developed VPet Simulator with a 96.29% review rating from 34,000+ reviews, Cats Hidden in Paris and Cats Hidden in Jingle Jam with over 96% ratings from ~13,000 / 7,000 reviews respectively.
I personally wouldn’t agree with these placings but then again my own thoughts and opinions pale in comparison versus a computerized algorithm, much like how malicious localizers pale in comparison to ChatGPT translations.
In eighth place with a score of 95.99% from 83,000 reviews is Dave the Diver.
While I personally rank Pizza Tower over this, there’s no denying that Dave the Diver is a cohesive indie game experience, with a plethora of intricate minigames to discover with gorgeous pixelated graphics of various sea creatures it’s certainly a whole lot better than most of the AAA titles released across this year in terms of actual engagement and enjoyment.
Following Dave the Diver in nineth place we have the infamous Baldur’s Gate 3, the collective “Game of the Year” according to journalists the world over, if you’re looking for an authentic RPG experience I cannot recommend Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 enough, the third installment however is a hard pass.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is more or less a woke inclusive skin coating thrown on top of Divinity II, another game made by Larian Studios, on its own merit it’s a long and strenuous RPG experience however due to the incorporation of “current year” themes and values, to the point where simple interactions with male characters sporadically leads to them wanting to have sex with you almost immediately, I genuinely want nothing to do with degenerate bear sex.
if you’re however the kind of individual who doesn’t mind being forced to feast upon an endless swarm of sausage there’s a solid foundation of gameplay to be had with Baldur’s Gate 3, in terms of reception and reviews, a 95.85% rating from over 515,000 moronic consumers it rightfully deserves a place in the top ten despite my personal hatred against it.
The same can also be said in regards to Hogwarts Legacy, though due to the smear campaign led against it over J.K. Rowling’s transphobic bullshit of whom had absolutely nothing to do with the game itself, from 245,000+ reviews it sits far below in 141st position with a rating of 90.86%.
And that about wraps things up, this entire list by SteamDB is comprised entirely by their own algorithm fueled by Steam reviews and reception, and I must admit that there’s more right to it than there is wrong, it’s a perfectly good measurement of actual top games released throughout the year going by actual feedback among other aspects rather than listening to western media outlets favor games based on how many ESG values they’ve successfully ticked off.
Though I simply cannot help but laugh hysterically upon the realization that the quintessential game of the year, or at least according to SteamDB is either HoloCure – Save the Fans or Lethal Company, because both games seemingly have a lot more going for them than Baldur’s Gate 3 certainly does, that’s for damn sure.
