There are many ways to say that 2023 is a great year for game releases without sounding like a broken record. So instead, we’ve decided to gather all of our best reviewed games from this past year in one place. We’re talking about Editors’ Choices, games that score a nine or 10 on our popular 10-point scale.
34 games and two DLCs made it into our list of the best reviewed games of the year. But look a little closer and you’ll see that only five of those games received a perfect 10 from IGN. Most of our top reviewed games this year received a score of 9, just short of making it the top tier of our review scores, but still an amazing game by any standard.
Broadly speaking, 19% of the games IGN reviewed this year received a score of nine or 10, according to IGN Senior Review Editor Tom Marks. But if we look at just our top reviewed games, 87% of our top reviewed games list is made up of games with a score of 9, which highlights how exclusive our list of games with a score of 10 is.
Several of the games we reviewed and gave 9 were nominated for our Game of the Year Award, including Alan Wake 2, Cocoon, Dave the Diver, Dead Space Remake, Final Fantasy 16, Hi-Fi Rush, Star Wars Jedi. : Survivor, Street Fighter 6 and Super Mario Bros. Wonder. I don’t have to tell you twice why each of these games deserves such high marks. For that, you can check out our list of nominees for the Best Game 2023 Award at IGN.
However, despite their obvious qualities, there were some great games that ultimately didn’t make the final list. Blizzard released its long-awaited sequel, Diablo 4, to much acclaim. However, one of the downsides of live service games is that the experience can change as the seasons go on, and the grand release has since led to some turbulent times among fans who weren’t as pleased with the ongoing experience as they were with the initial drop. .
Another big title we gave 9 this year was Hogwarts Legacy, which made everyone’s dream of attending their favorite wizarding school come true. For fans of open-world games and Harry Potter, Hogwarts Legacy is a match made in heaven, complete with how players would live if they were real students at Hogwarts, entering the House and learning about different things. spells.
Looking through our reviews, a few patterns begin to emerge that you may not have noticed amidst the maddening flurry of great games. For example, you might be surprised to learn how good a year Nintendo had in 2023. While speculation about the Switch’s successor in 2024 has reached a fever pitch, Nintendo is still delivering great games for the current Switch. And I’m not just talking about games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Aside from the obvious suspects, Nintendo’s hybrid system Super Mario Bros. 9 won many exclusives including Wonder. Games like Platinum’s Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, Fire Emblem Engage, and Pikmin 4 impressed our reviewers, filling the year with great Nintendo titles.
While no other developer has delivered a steady stream of great games like Nintendo, an overlooked genre also had a surprisingly good year. As it turns out, 2023 was a very good year for sports and racing games. Titles like EA Sports UFC 5, Gran Turismo 7 VR and MLB: The Show 23 all received 9 points in our reviews, highlighting how sports game developers are still pushing the envelope in new and exciting ways.
But there are still plenty of games that deserve your attention, and with such a jam-packed year, there were plenty of smaller games that fell through the cracks. While we’ve already mentioned indie darlings like Cocoon, smaller studios were responsible for some of our favorite games this year: from mind-bending games like Humanity – a new puzzle title from the developer of Tetris Effect – to Ghostrunner 2 from the Polish indie giant. team One More Level. Our resident action enthusiast and reviewer, Mitchell Saltzman, hailed the cyberpunk sequel as a film that “builds on everything that made the first game great.”
There were also two notable indie platforms this year. The first is Pizza Tower, whose hilarious name belies a Mad-Cap homage to Wario Land 4, but blends the expressionist art style of classic LucasArts games. And Laika: Aged Through Blood, combining excellent 2D shooting with a trials-like motorcycle experience.
After taking the world by storm with Genshin Impact, MiHoYo, the current wizard of mobile gaming, has also released their newest title. Honkai: Star Rail is the Shanghai-based studio’s sci-fi offering compared to Genshin’s fantasy, ditching the latter’s action in favor of a turn-based combat system. The result was one of our favorite mobile games of the year, and MiHoYo is already gearing up to release its next game, Zenless Zone Zero, in 2024.
There were so many great games in 2023 that we’ve been excited about all year. Other games that received a 9 from IGN this year include tactical RPG Jagged Alliance 3, which adds another feather to this year’s great PC RPGs. There’s also the Making of Karateka, a collection of classic games and the making of an interesting documentary in one package. Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 – Super Smash Bros. from the cartoon studio. game, but with iconic cartoon characters – as well as ghost shooters similar to Remnant 2, impressed this year as well. Finally, there was a ghost pirate strategy game called Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. , another masterfully remastered classic, the sequel to System Shock and Square Enix’s award-winning rhythm game Theatrhythm Final Bar Line.
But what about the cream of the crop? Best reviewed games of the year? As I’ve said before, despite the flood of amazing games this year, perfectly scored masterpieces remain few and far between.
IGN’s Best Game of 2023, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a no-brainer. Its predecessor, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, also received a perfect score from us in 2017, and the sequel improves upon it in every way. In our review, we said The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is “an incredible sequel to one of the greatest games ever made, and improves on it in almost every way – whether it’s simple quality-of-life improvements. , a truly exciting story, or wildly creative new building mechanics that make you rethink what’s possible.”
Tears for Baldur’s Gate 3, the closest competitor for our best game of the kingdom award, also received a perfect score from IGN, and it’s likely that Baldur’s Gate 3 will have as much of an impact on CRPGs as it did on Zelda’s open-world adventure. games. Our reviewer called Larian Studio’s monumental RPG “a landmark of the state.” [CRPG] genre, and if I had to single out a paragon, I’d like anyone who does it to be inspired by it, that’s absolutely it.
It’s not like Larian Studios is even done with Baldur’s Gate 3. The RPG has finally made its way to the Xbox Series X and S consoles, and the studio recently released an Epilogue update that adds thousands more words of dialogue to the already compressed game.
Elsewhere, 2023 was an amazing year for perfect remakes, with two perfect 10s this year. Resident Evil 4 Remake set a new bar for Capcom’s remake library, with our review claiming that “improvements over the original are too numerous to list, from simple quality-of-life changes to completely overhauled boss fight mechanics.” Capcom has already confirmed that more remakes are on the way too, and if they’re as good as we’ve seen, I can’t wait.
But another remake that earned an IGN 10 was Nintendo’s Metroid Prime, which made a surprise appearance on the Switch. With newly improved graphics and performance, one of Nintendo’s all-time great games is better than ever. IGN’s resident Metroid fan Sam Claiborn said: “21 years later, in 2023, Metroid Prime Remastered has had to do little more than modernize the controls and update the graphics to become one of the best games you can buy again.”
The only VR game to score a perfect 10 this year, Asgard’s Wrath 2 is a full-fledged open-world RPG entirely in VR. It has four unique characters and stories, fantastic and satisfying combat, complex and rewarding RPG systems, and a great story, and even after more than 90 hours of gloriously slashing squid at lizards and smashing holes, it’s still got a lot to give.
Finally, a special shout-out to the DLC that made it to the list of best reviewed games. The first is CD Projekt Red’s near-perfect expansion, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, which delivers on the original promise of an ambitious base game. The second is the Konami collaboration of Dead Cells, Return to Castlevania, which brings the iconic monsters of the Metroidvania series into the villainous world of Dead Cells. It received a perfect score from IGN.
These are our best reviewed games of 2023. Let us know which of these is your favorite in the comments.
Matt TM Kim is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.