When anybody talks about games in 2023, they say the same thing: man, there were a lot of good games this year. Too many to play them all, really. I certainly didn’t have enough time, which led to me hopping between games at the end of the year, trying to give everything I was interested in a fair enough shake to decide if it belonged on my Game of the Year list. Games like Mortal Kombat 1 and Street Fighter 6 completely passed by me despite hearing my coworkers effusively praising both. I didn’t even think about playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder, nor have I had the chance to touch Octopath Traveler 2, Sea of Stars, or Tchia.
Look, I missed a lot of games. I’ve always hated missing a game on release – I like being able to keep up with the conversation while it’s still going – but I feel especially guilty about not having the time to try new games now that my job is to cover them. Feeling like my GOTY list can never be accurate because I haven’t played every single thing that came out this year sucks, but it’s unrealistic of me to be annoyed with myself when I had other priorities and not enough time to balance all of them. Not to mention they also cost money.
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Next year is shaping up to be a far slower one, and thank god for that. I can finally, finally start working through all the games I didn’t have a chance to finish or even start in the beginning of the year, unless a studio shadow-drops a big game in the first quarter like we saw with Hi-Fi Rush. Again, I hate that I’ve missed my chance to jump in on the discourse of these games when they were relevant, but I also feel a little relieved that I’ll get to enjoy these games more for what they are than what people were saying about them.
Another benefit of having missed that discourse is that because I waited so long to actually buy these games, almost everything I wanted to buy is on sale for Christmas. I am grabbing deals left and right, both for older classics that I’ve been waiting for the time to play and for newer, well-reviewed games that I was too busy playing Baldur’s Gate 3 to acknowledge. The only thing I love more than a discount is a freebie, and the satisfaction of knowing I’ll get to play these games for a steal is making me very, very happy this Christmas.
Of course, Christmas sales happen every year. Video games get sold for cheaper because this is one of the most consumerist times of year, when people run rampant with their wallets open, happy to spend more money than is likely advisable in the name of gift-giving and treating ourselves for the holiday season. But the sales are such a relief in a year like this, where there are so many games worth buying and I simply don’t have the budget to buy all of them at full price. I’m generally not a fan of consumerism, but for the sake of my job and my Christmas entertainment, I am so grateful for winter discounts.
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