“Thirsty Suitors”
It’s been a surreal year for video games, with publishers cutting jobs by the thousands and shuttering countless studios while, in the same breath, boasting that business has never been better. Even as a tsunami of acclaimed blockbusters began to arrive over the summer, one triple-A developer told me, “Everyone I know in this industry is laid off right now.” So in some ways the games of 2023 have been tainted by cognitive dissonance or, at the very least, a bitter aftertaste. But the best of them are undeniable, and it’s been a pleasure trying (and failing) to keep up with this year’s big releases, from “Jedi: Survivor” and “Tears of the Kingdom” to “Starfield” and “Thirsty Suitors.” That last one, from Seattle’s Outerloop Games, is a breath of fresh air in a medium stuffed with outrageously expensive, overlong works. “Thirsty Suitors” is an eight-hour story, roughly, about a young woman named Jala who returns to her hometown to sort through the rubble of her many disastrous failed relationships. Whatever’s in the air right now, that caused “Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” to reboot Bryan Lee O’Malley’s beloved comic series by deconstructing it and healing the trauma of its characters’ past lives, bears comparable fruit here. Doing battle with Jala’s exes draws the player inside their colorful, dreamlike inscapes, complete with mythical stakes, guardian animals, and cheeky jock-jam theme songs. – Alex James Kane
“Jedi: Survivor”
No one is more surprised than me at how much I flat-out adored EA’s “Jedi: Survivor,” my favorite “Star Wars”-related product in years. Not only did the end of the last trilogy leave me cold, I have little interest in any of the Disney+ shows outside of admiration for the grounded nature of “Andor.” I’m not exactly a Lucasverse junkie. And yet I couldn’t get enough of the world of this game. It’s in the design of its open-world landscapes, places that feel like they hold new secrets, upgrades, and characters around every corner. And as my Jedi grew more powerful, I grew more addicted to seeing where the story took me next, until a familiar face appeared about 3/4s of the way through the game and I knew at that minute that “Jedi: Survivor” was making this list. If the “Jedi” games continue with this degree of entertaining escapism, maybe it’s not too late for me to become a massive “Star Wars” fan, after all. – BT
“Starfield”
This was the year I finally made the leap to PC, so since October I’ve been like a kid in a candy shop, embracing my poor attention span by trying a little of everything. Despite starting more games than I’ve finished, “Starfield” continues to hold my interest. I’ve spent over 50 hours with it, first with the main story and then with a litany of odd jobs and side quests. And if there’s a “right way” to experience “Starfield,” it’s to work your way upwards from the bottom of the quest log. Once you hit the main quest’s ending and enter new-game-plus territory, your perspective on Bethesda’s new NASA-inspired universe changes pretty radically. I wish I’d avoided those aspects of the game altogether, or at least for a long, long time; this isn’t the kind of game you want to race to finish. As with the launch version of “No Man’s Sky,” this common obsession with reaching the end of the universe, so to speak, is missing the whole point. “Starfield” has its weaknesses—with a thousand explorable planets, how could it not? But if you can approach it as a space-exploration sim with “Fallout” scavenging, satisfying gunplay, and a few too many structural similarities to “Skyrim,” there’s plenty to marvel at. Particularly charming is the reverence this new world has for old Earth artifacts, and Earth itself, which is treated less like a place than a late family member everyone’s still mourning. – AJK