Hello there and welcome along to our semi-regular look back at the year just gone, wherein we discuss how committed we are to this feature (traditionally not very, but now approaching it with renewed vigour), apologise for how late it may or may not be (quite late this time, sorry), consider whether we met our rather modest targets for updates (of the three possible outcomes stated last time – “maintain, improve, or very slightly fall away from” our usual level – eh, it’s probably the third one) and then get on with summarising what we actually wrote about in 2023.
 

Action

Plenty of, er, action here: I got stuck into a Wild West adventure in the form of Neversoft’s Gun (should I do the Grand Theft Horse-o joke again? [No – Ed.]), which was a solid enough effort, and another one ticked off the list marked ‘mid-late 00s open-world action games’ – a possible area of future investigation, although now I’ve said that, we’ll probably never speak of it again.

Also falling into this category would be the original Assassin’s Creed, which we discussed in May, although we appeared to be labouring under the misapprehension that demonstrating at least some knowledge about this series made us hip modern gamers (I guess it does, if your definition of modern is, er, 2008). Visually swish, occasionally bland, but broadly enjoyable, was the verdict.

To bolster our retro credentials somewhat, we also covered some 90s stuff: Stoo wrote about the Apogee platformer Hocus Pocus, and got stuck into a reimagined console version of a PC classic, via a modern port back to PC, in Doom 64.

And finally, we somehow managed to make our 400th review something vaguely deserving of the honour, rather than just whatever rubbish I happened to be playing at the time, to bring you some thoughts on the PC version of Metal Gear Solid.
 

Adventure

Apparently, we didn’t play any adventure games in 2023. Well, not any old-school ones anyway. However, our discussion of modern indie adventures (or adventure-adjacent titles) continued: Jo and I got dumped by Emily for a third time in Emily is Away <3, spied for a corrupt government in Orwell, and then enjoyed a gentle island adventure in A Short Hike.

A good time was had with all three, although the wisdom of spending quite so much time being told to listen to Snow Patrol on fake social media by a computer girlfriend who may or may not dump you later is certainly open to question.
 

Racing

Racing games from about 10-15 years ago were on the menu, specifically the Vin Diesel-based caper Wheelman (cheerfully terrible in places, but actually a good laugh); Bizarre Creations’ swansong, Blur (criminally underrated); and the track-exploding fun of Split/Second: Velocity (good-ish, but a bit shallow).

(Year end and new year type gaming pieces typically involves some level of self admonishment about not doing enough of X and trying to play more of Y, the practical use of which is arguably limited. However, these (now fairly old) racers have been on my list to ‘get around to one day’ for a stupidly long time. If I had any resolutions for myself last year, it was to finally fire up these games and enjoy them).

Oh, and Remedy’s top-down racer from the mid-90s, Death Rally, also received a firm thumbs up.
 

RPG

Apparently, we both now play RPGs, although Stoo is still the party member best equipped to make use of the FFG jerkin of moderate competence.

He wrote favourably about the action-RPG Torchlight, while I continued to explore Bioware’s 00s oeuvre with a look at Jade Empire: Special Edition. Which, in typical fashion, I found fairly confusing for the first 8 hours or so, then sort of got into the swing of it. There may well be more in 2024, although the usual caveats apply.
 

Sport

The sport section is probably the major reason I haven’t played all of those aforementioned ‘games I always wanted to play’. But someone must document all of those rightly-forgotten EA Sports games, dammit!

We found the Tiger Woods series in unexpectedly playful form, as our middle-aged golfer Rik was invited to hang out at the club with some American douchebags, before playing around the world against a variety of comedy stereotypes of varying degrees of propriety.

And after years of occasional and unsuccessful attempts to get it working, the buggy and unfinished (but curious in terms of its unfulfilled potential) ICC Cricket World Cup England 1999 finally kicked into life, and stayed conscious for just about long enough for an exploration of its flaws and merits. (I originally bought it on the same day I bought Half-Life, which might be why it’s retained a curious pull ever since, although I don’t necessarily ever need a reason to unearth a long-forgotten cricket title).
 

Strategy

I watched Dune on a plane, and then felt an unexpected urge to play Cryo’s adventure/strategy hybrid. (Also, to listen to the music of Sting, even though that wasn’t the version of the film I watched, and I’ve never seen the one he was in. It wasn’t even The Police, either, but his solo stuff, lute and all.)

Anyway, I understand why lots of people are fond of the game. I’ll never play Dune II, so it was nice to be able to revisit the universe in game form without getting stressed out about being rubbish at real-time strategy games.
 

Other Stuff

No big new series in 2023: not even a second instalment of The Unreviewed, which in this instance would have consisted of a brief dismissal of the Lego games as possible future review fodder (I’m probably being thick, and they are designed for kids, but I’m very bad at them, and they just don’t seem like the fun and lightweight jaunt through beloved franchise stories that I expect them to be).

Having seemingly exhausted the topic of boxed games in 2022, we did dabble briefly with it again, and there were a couple of memorable Moments in Gaming to add to the collection, but that was about it.

I guess the biggest news of the year was our renovation of the standard review pages, for which I can take absolutely no credit whatsoever. Aside from the technical tinkering conducted by my colleague, we also had to go back and fiddle with the formatting of all our old reviews and extras, a process that caused me to wonder how nice the house would look if I spent as much time doing actual DIY as I did on site DIY. There are still a few lingering issues at my end that need sorting out, but overall it’s all looking a lot neater and nicer. (The site, that is: the house really is getting neglected).

Jo and I also met (and nearly met) some of our PC Zone heroes, while I managed to achieve a lifelong dream of being vaguely associated with the magazine by writing a piece about Daikatana for PC Zone Lives. It was all so exciting, I might even try and play the game again.

And that was just about it. What can you expect in the year to come, as loyal fans and readers? Well, just consult the FFG Guarantee: our service level agreement with all our devoted followers, in which we commit to between 10-15 new reviews of games released between 1990-ish and 2013-ish, a handful of discussion pieces, and intermittent contributions to ongoing article series. It’s all there in black and white.

On a slightly more serious note, you may have noticed that Twitter (or X, formerly Twitter, as apparently it has to be called) has largely stopped working, and our minimal contributions to the de facto town square (again, not my words) have been reduced to almost nothing. For the time being, site updates will still be posted there, and we haven’t quite jumped ship altogether, but consider us otherwise in the same boat as lots of other people/sites/companies who aren’t quite sure what to do until another platform establishes itself (if one ever does).

On an even more serious note: hey, thanks for taking the time to read this site. We do appreciate it, and rest assured that we never take it for granted.

On behalf of FFG, let me wish you, and those around you, all the best for 2024.