 2023 has to be one of the best years in gaming history. This video is not a poem the whole time. I swear that was an accident. I am crazy sick right now. I'm at the tail end of about a week and a half long sickness and this whole time that I've been wrapped up in a blankie full of snot and boogers, all I've been doing is playing video games. It's soft, but it's also been kind of cool because I got to blast through and finish so many games and I loved them all so much. Usually I would wanna cover all of these games in their own video and go in a specific detail about why they kick so much, but, but I don't have time. I was sick, I've missed it. I have no script, my head has hurt way too much to write anything down. I'm just gonna yell about some games that I love. We're gonna start with a good one, but I gotta set the mood. Whoa, okay, all right, okay. I don't have to make the sound of the flashlight. The Xbox 360 era might be my favorite era in video games. There was just so many wonderful and wacky video games and developers taking a chance at new ideas. It feels like we don't get much of that anymore. It's just microtransaction, heavy, Battle Royale, AAA titles that have been market researched to slap and no one's out here making the next wet. Remember wet? And back in this era, we had a psychological thriller classic called Alan Wake. I'd never heard of this game until I went to the game store one day and found a big book collector's edition of it and just thought it was cool. So I bought the collector's edition without knowing anything about the game and became completely absorbed in the storytelling and gameplay. Oh, damn, I need to do a sponsor here, but what one? There's just so many to pick from. I guess I could do Surfshark VPN, but how would I make that creative? I guess I could duct tape a fin to dollar and call her Surfdog. No, that's stupid, you would do that. Yeah, it's a shame I can't talk about Surfshark because I've been meaning to mention that they are the VPN that can help you access content that might be blocked in your country, you know, like Netflix. Did I finish Bake Off last night? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I could mention that no one in your network can see what you're doing. Not even your ISP. They also have an antivirus built into the app, which is awesome and saved my life. I'm not kidding, this is a real story. A few months ago, my Discord was hacked and they installed a bunch of viruses on my PC that was recording my screen and my keyboard inputs. I downloaded Surfshark for the antivirus, ran it, it found 17 of these .exe viruses and deleted them all like that. I immediately reached out to Surfshark to see if they would want to collaborate with me and here we are. Did I just say all that out loud? No, I don't think I did. Oh, thank God. I'm glad I didn't also say that Surfshark One gets you their VPN, the antivirus, data leak alerts, and a private web search so there's no risk in trying SurfVPN thanks to their 30 day money back guarantee. Hey, tell them about the six month deal. You know, it's really weird that you've started talking to yourself. But there is a special Black Friday deal that I would love to tell you about, you know, if we were actually doing a Surfshark sponsor, which we're totally not, where the promo code beatemups will get you an additional six months for free. Well, that is a heck of a deal. It's a shame that we aren't being sponsored by Surfshark. Well, anyway, back on with the video. Surfshark. The first game has you playing as Alan, who's going on a retreat with his wife to get away from it all because he has writer's block. And the last thing he wants to do here is write, but his wife makes him write. She thinks it's gonna inspire him. Turns out the lake they're staying on is for lack of a better word, cursed. And both Alan and his wife ends up in the dark place, which I guess you could equivalent to the upside down and stranger things where everything Alan writes seems to come true. It wasn't a super scary game at all by any means. It was a psychological thriller. You played with a flashlight and a gun, and you had to beam the flashlight at the enemies to burn away the darkness. Then you could shoot them in the head and, you know, do them in. Originally, the game ended on a weird cliffhanger that didn't tell us anything. And then I think the developers felt kind of pressured to make a bunch of DLC that explained more, but that ending still left us with a thousand questions. So once Remedy moved on and started making games like Quantum Break and Control, I assumed that was it. Then all of a sudden a trailer pops up out of nowhere a couple years ago, and Alan Wake is back, baby, but now it's a horror game? This to me looks very inspired by the recent Resident Evil re-imaginings where they've gone back to being terrifying. I thought that was a little coy, but I was willing to give it a shot. Turns out the writers of this game are so smart. I don't want to give too many spoilers, but somebody has wrote a horror story in the dark place, and that horror story is the sequel to Alan Wake. It's a sequel to what happened to him 13 years ago. And by the way, they also leaned into him being stuck in this dark place for the entire time. It has been 13 years for him as well. And now Alan Wake is trying to rewrite that horror story to save the world, but also save his wife and himself. Even writing in the FBI agent, Saga, who we play as. And that was another thing that I was willing to give a shot, but I was like, I've waited 13 years for this game, and now I have to play as someone I don't know. I want to play as Alan, but it all makes sense when you play it. Alan brought this character into the story. And from a story and gameplay perspective, it's brilliant because this FBI agent is seeing the horrors of Cauldron Lake for the first time. Just like any new player that might come along and decide to start with Alan Wake 2, and they never played the old one. To be fair, it's pretty old at this point. I would still recommend going back and playing the first one just to get a full scope of the whole story, but I like that it doesn't really seem like you need to. It definitely is a horror game, and it's a survival horror game. So you have to manage your inventory, your resources, your ammo. It was appropriately terrifying, I feel. This might be the best looking game I've ever played. I didn't expect that from the Alan Wake sequel, and I want to say to be fair, I heard the game was gorgeous, so I wanted to get the best experience possible. I got it on PC, ran a 4K HDMI to my OLED 4K TV. The opening cutscene looks so hyper realistic, and it bled straight into the gameplay seamlessly with almost no noticeable quality reduction from the amazing cutscene to the game. The hair on the characters is looking so realistic now. Growing up with older games, hair always looked terrible. But Ben, look at these curls on Saga, beautiful. The core Alan Wake gameplay and story and style is here. This is the best sequel fans could have asked for, but I think Alan Wake might be my third favorite game I've played this year, right behind Tears of the Kingdom and you know what? I was gonna say Baldur's Gate. This might be my second favorite game of the year. Spider-Man 2, that was a web sound, never mind. When Marvel's Spider-Man 1 came out, I made a whole video about that game because it was life changing. There are key integral points in my life that I can point to that made me not only a video gamer, but the video gamer that I am today. Growing up with an NES is one, getting a 64 with Ocarina of Time is two. The first time I played Devil May Cry, it was me playing a non-Nintendo console for the first time and realizing how pretty video games can be. But another one would easily be Spider-Man 2, The Movie Game. I was at the perfect age for somebody to put in my hands, Spider-Man's swinging mechanics, the likes of which we had never seen and didn't get to see for another 15 to 20 years. That game was perfect for me at the time. Literally just swinging around the city, pleased my ADHD riddled brain like nothing else before. So imagine my disappointment as the years went on and the swinging mechanics in Spider-Man games kept getting worse until Insomniac came along and made the best swinging mechanics in anything of the sort. And in Spider-Man 2, they have outdone themselves. The first thing I have to mention is the web wings, the web wings, because I wasn't sold on this at first when I saw it. What, I'm just gonna fly now? I hate to say it, but yeah, I kind of fly around the city everywhere and I'm okay with it. After two amazing Marvel Spider-Man games in Miles Morales and the original Spider-Man where we swung around the entire city, as much as they've massively improved the swinging again in this game and making it feel so much more weighted and responsive, the ability to this time kind of just let go of that and fly around the city is so freeing and so much fun. It's also not necessarily too much faster. It's just a different kind of therapeutic to build up a ton of speed, hit those web wings and just rock it across the skyline of New York City. Combine it in with all the swinging and different techniques you have to make traversal look and feel as extravagantly flashy as possible. The swinging has never been better. The combat and the action has never been better with so many new abilities for both Spider-Man. As you play and progress, you unlock so many new abilities all of the time that it keeps the gameplay and the punching and wailing on multiple enemies fresh. I had no issue with the story in the last two Spider-Man games, but thinking back, I can't remember them that well. So I don't think anything really stood out to me there that was super memorable. But boy, did they step it up with this one. It was an action-packed thrill ride adventure from the start till the end with what I can only describe as adding in so many cool comic book moments from villains to character arcs to abilities. I really wish I didn't care so much about spoilers so I could better explain what I'm saying. But if you've played it, you know. And even aside from all the comic book mumbo jumbo action cool parts, the dynamic between Miles and Peter, their own personal struggles in their own personal storylines but then also their relationship together, it was so rewarding to be a part of and to watch that. All of the side content, all the mysterious stuff, all of the flaming fist stuff, I wanted to complete it all before I finished the story. In fact, it's not that hard of a game to 100% all of the side stuff. And I had an absolute blast doing it all. Speaking of, I saw some people complain that there wasn't enough to do in the world. And I think Insomniac even addressed that and said they were more focused on building a complete story and experience. But I still feel like there was plenty to do out in the world. Sure, we could have spent 10 more hours in the world collecting and beating up more things or we can just have a tighter, more complete package that's enjoyable from start to finish. I will say that it was not lost on me as I played through this game. How 10 year old me would feel getting to experience this back then? Oh, he'd lose his hack in mind. Ba da ba da ba da ba dee, ba da ba da ba da ba doo. A lot of you might know this already. I'm not that big of a Mario guy. Whenever I look at Nintendo, for me it's Zelda. To put it in a perspective, it's kind of like when I think of Disney. When I thought of Disney, I thought of Hercules. I thought of Atlantis. I thought of those movies. I didn't think of Mickey. I never liked Mickey Mouse. I didn't like the main guy. I think I was supposed to like. And that's why every time I say I don't really like Mario and people look at me and they're like, you can't keep getting away with it. Just because you throw it in my face and tell me it's good doesn't mean I'm gonna love it. I go on that rant, go on this rant. I love 3D Mario's. I've never been big on 2D. After the NES, I just kind of fell out of 2D Mario's and just didn't really care. And when I tried to get back into them, it was during the new Super Mario era where there was like 17 new Super Mario games in a row and they were all the same and they were all boring. So when Nintendo revealed Mario Wonder with its brand new poppy cartoony art style and fun animations and a whole new voice actor, I said, finally, Charles Martinet is gone and I can enjoy a Mario again. You were all with me up until I said that. I'm kidding, I love Charles. And I think the new voice actor did great. I still don't know how I feel about Wowie Zowie. Whoa, Zowie! That's not a favorite. What I really wanted more than anything was just not another lame-ass Mario side-scrolling game where from the beginning to the end of the game, you're just going left to right until you see the credits roll. And I knew Nintendo had it in them to do it wacky and I gotta say, they really nailed it. Mario Wonder is everything I wanted the new Mario to be. There are so many crazy things that happen in this game. It comes top down at some points. You can go up easy and down and all around. It really is a joy to play. I like that there's badges in the game now, which are essentially items that you can equip one at a time and it lets you affect how you interact with the game. One of my favorite ones is the extra world jump boost. We could also get a big hat that you can glide on like it's Zelda. So depending on the level, you can equip a different badge that will make it easier to get around or explore. They packed in so many surprises in this adventure while it might only take like eight hours to finish if you just wanna be aligned to the end. The replayability and going back and exploring every element to a level can double if not triple that. The animations are so damn charming. It almost becomes a cozy game if we can talk about that in the room. I don't love the elephant. I gotta be honest. Don't love it. I don't love it as an ability. I don't love the way it looks. I don't love that you spend most of the game as an elephant. Also, the first time I played it, I had a pretty good time. I wouldn't say I was like having a great time at moments I was even frustrated. Funny enough, going back through and playing this game in multiplayer with Kim and a friend of mine that came over and watching them experience the game for the first time and being a part of that was so much more fun. Also, they really fixed the multiplayer so there's no collision. You can't ruin each other's game. You just all play and experience Mario together. I am very happy with the direction that they have gone with the game. I still prefer 3D Mario's, but this one is really good. If you love 2D Mario's, there's no reason for you not to adore this game. I tried Detective Pikachu. I watched my friend, Scootish, play through the entire game in one sitting on Twitch. I luckily have the key. Disappeared! And it looked hideously boring, but I felt bad trying to talk about it without playing it, so I picked it up and I tried to play it for a couple hours. This game stinks. My God, this game is just dead. Look at any dialogue segment where people are talking. It's just dead silence, man. I don't even need voice acting, but even just like a nice click sound in between the dialogue switches would have been nice to feel like something was happening. A little bit of... Kind of like jumbly talk would have been nice. The gameplay is super slow paced with clues easy enough for a three-year-old to figure out. There's fire marks over here. Which one of the Pokemon would have done this? The electric type? The water type? The fire type? Whatever you pick, you're gonna do a fire job. Pick the fire, pick the fire, it's fire. The QTEs, the quick time events are so pathetic. You can't fail them because it will not let you. Let's say you have to spam A in a quick time event. If you don't do it, the quick time event will just give loop whatever is happening until you do do it. And it's not even a good loop. You can see the seam where it stutters and restarts. What is this quality control? And the visuals. I don't even have a word for him. Look at this whole scene. Man trike or whatever this Pokemon is called doesn't even look like he's fully loaded into the scene. It's like he's stopped halfway. The shading on the faces and the environment are nonexistent. Everyone looks like they're molded from old Play-Doh. I don't know why Pokemon company doesn't care about its games anymore. It's like they have so many things happening with Pokemon cards and anime and all this stuff. They care about all of that. But the video games, they've given up. I'm giving up on Pokemon. Okay, I don't want to end on a bad note. I wasn't prepared to review Dave the Diver right now because I only just started it a couple of days ago. But man, if I was still making games I was addicted to videos, I might do a Dave the Diver video. You play as Dave and during the day you go diving into this gorgeous ocean. You take a harpoon gun, you take actual guns. The game's kind of ridiculous. The more you level up your suit and your equipment, the deeper down you can dive and the creepier and bigger things get. And then by night you help run a restaurant that serves all of the things that you catch. It kind of gives me moonlighter vibes if you guys played that where at night your character would moonlight in the caves, killing things, and then during the day you would sell all of the things you found in the cave except you have to run and take care of all the customers in the bar. You got to pour them drinks, you have to serve them their food. But there's also a whole management side of it where you can hire people to help as the restaurant does better and gets more popular and the more customers come in the more you'll have to upgrade to keep up with the demand. The gameplay loop of diving and restaurant working right now has me totally absorbed and addicted. And I love the art style mixing up between pixel art and then 3D renderings of things. There's a character who looks like a chunky ash ketchup where every time you get a new kind of fish he gives you a trading card for that fish. The cutscenes for everything are wild and hilarious. The story has been really cool. There's a lot to love here. And as I dive more into it, I will flesh it out more and probably put it in an eShop video, but I figured I'll talk about it now because that might be a while away. I'm going to add another game in here real quickly, okay? I'm going to get real close and do it real quick. I can't talk about this yet, but I got the Lenovo Legion Go, okay? We'll talk about that later. The video is coming. One of the first games I downloaded off Game Pass on it just to try a game was Lies of P. Why did nobody tell me this game was so good? The gameplay, it's like Dark Souls and it's all puppets. Your play is Pinocchio. I guess you're killing other Gepetto's puppets that he made that have all gone rogue. But it's awesome. Like the parry, the weapons, the upgrades, it's all like Dark Souls, but it's so stylized and I really like it. That is everything I've been playing lately. I think I want to make a video about this year in gaming in general and just how incredible it has been. It might be one of, if not the best year we've ever had in gaming. I can't believe I've had Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake, an actual good 2D Mario game, a fantastic new Spider-Man game, Baldur's Gate, which is a game I never thought I would even like and I absolutely love it. Well, now I'm just making the video, so I'm gonna shut up. I'll get to that later. I love you, bye.