It’s the Year of the Big Game, and that’s a good thing

theverge.com:

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

2023 has been packed with some of the biggest games in recent memory, and I’m totally fine with that. For the past little while, it feels like the gaming industry has been more interested in time-sucking live service behemoths, games that never end, rather than satisfying single-player titles. But this year, I’m instead feasting on a delicious platter of great games I can play on my own with a bunch of great courses I haven’t even touched yet.

Those are the just games I’ve actually spent meaningful time with. I still want to play things like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (19-plus-hour campaign), Diablo IV (25-plus-hour campaign), and Final Fantasy XVI (35-plus-hour campaign), but I don’t know how I’ll fit those in between what I still want to do with Starfield, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Zelda. I’ve accepted that I’ll leave some titles unfinished, like Pikmin 4’s extra mode and getting all of the achievements in the Switch version of Vampire Survivors. 

Then there are all the big games coming out in the weeks ahead, including the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion (September 26th), Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (October 20th), and the Super Mario RPG remake (November 17th). There are shorter (hopefully) titles I’m interested in, too, like Sonic Superstars (October 17th) and Super Mario Bros. Wonder (also October 20th, lol). I may just never get to a few games that I have my eye on, like Assassin’s Creed: Mirageand Persona 5 Tactica.

But believe me when I say I’m not complaining.

Every one of those games has a self-contained story mode that I can finish on my own time, and we should be