They’re always good - a perfect evolution of the web-slinging bedlam of the mid-2000s licensed tie-ins to the Tobey Maguire films, which were locked into the disc drives of every PlayStation 2 around the country for years. I’ve almost run out of ways to talk about Insomniac’s Spider-Man games. The next few years are set to be major for the gaming industry - Nintendo may soon announce its post-Switch console plans and Grand Theft Auto 6 will return to Vice City in 2025 - but we still fully expect 2023 to go down in history as one of the best years to play video games. This year we traveled the Milky Way, played Dungeons & Dragons, got behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car, fought dinosaurs in a mech suit, explored Night City without any game-breaking bugs, went web-slinging across New York City, tripped out with Mario, and enjoyed a bit of Hylian engineering with Link and Zelda. Major releases, offbeat indies, consecrated remasters, and long-gestating sequels kept us plenty occupied, with many gamers declaring this the best year for video games in their living memory. Photo-Illustration: Franziska Barczyk Photos: Epic Games, Larian Studios, Round8 Studio, Nintendo, Tour De Pizza, Capcom, Insomniac Games, Nightdive StudiosĪfter a down few years for the industry largely thanks to COVID delays, 2023 was surprisingly flush with exciting video games.
