Stephen's Top 5 PS5, PS4 Games of 2023 | Push Square

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Our individual Game of the Year articles allow our lovely team of writers to share their own personal PS5 and PS4 picks for 2023. Today, it's the turn of assistant editor Stephen Tailby.

I remember seeing Humanity for the first time and wondering how it would ever come together as a cohesive video game, but I shouldn't have doubted Enhance and tha ltd. This post-modern Lemmings-like works brilliantly; you (literally) bark orders at a stream of humans to get them safely from A to B. While the gameplay is simple, it gradually builds out new rules and commands to create a wonderfully satisfying campaign of puzzles. It's so well executed, and the fact it also has a level editor and a steady stream of community-made stages just tops it off perfectly. I love Humanity because it so confidently runs with its core idea but never over-complicates it, resulting in something simple on the surface that still makes you feel like a genius.

It's reasonably well documented that I'm not much of a Final Fantasy fan, but in the build-up to this entry's release, its emphasis on real-time combat and epic battles intrigued me. I went into it fairly blind, and came out the other side super impressed. Final Fantasy 16 certainly isn't perfect — the open spaces are often barren, its side missions leave much to be desired, and there's definitely some padding here and there — but despite its flaws, I had an absolute blast. I love the story and characters, and the soundtrack is fantastic, but for me, it's the combat and bosses that really won me over. I found it so fun experimenting with different Eikon abilities, and the huge, set-piece fights are immense, outdoing God of War in some respects. For me personally, this was a big surprise.

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