The Xbox Series X and S has increasingly been less of a platform for buying games and more of one for Game Pass subscriptions. It’s no surprise, then, that all three of our Xbox Game of the Year 2023 selections appear on the service. Check out our picks below, and keep checking back this week for more awards!

These awards represent the consensus of the Siliconera staff. For more of the year’s award selections, check out our Game of the Year 2023 archive.

Hi-Fi Rush

We say games “came out of nowhere” a lot, but rarely do games go from unannounced to out in one fell swoop, and even more rarely are they this polished and stylish. Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush brings rhythm into its action, with frantic musical gameplay and bright environments that echo a bit of that old Jet Set Radio feel. But it’s very much its own thing! And we didn’t forget about it, even after many packed months. If you missed it, maybe give it a look.

Starfield

Platform: PlayStation 5
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix
Release: February 29, 2024
Rating: Teen

Back in 1997, Final Fantasy VII established Sephiroth as one of the most iconic antagonists in gaming history. In 2020, Final Fantasy VII Remake greatly expanded his role in the first act of the beloved RPG, and in 2024, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth hopes to give us even more context for the One-Winged Angel. We played a portion of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and spoke with several members of the development team to learn how Sephiroth is depicted in the upcoming second act of the Remake trilogy.

Well well well, here we are again. We made it to the end of the year, folks. Time to relax, unwind, and reflect. It’s been a weird one, hasn’t it?

Giant Bomb’s Game of the Year lists serve to celebrate what we enjoyed the most this year, to talk about the moments that’ll stick with us, the soundtracks we added to our playlists, the games that truly left a mark.

People made those games.

2023 will go down in history for having some of the best games ever made released in quick succession, but also for being relentlessly cruel to the people who make and cover them. Another day, another studio closure, or downsizing, or project cancellation. Opening up Twitter or LinkedIn every morning to see bad news impacting those who simply do not deserve it, while those who made the decisions get off scot free.

Valve introduced the world to the Steam Deck in 2022 and it was an instant hit with countless Steam users who jumped at the chance to take their games just about anywhere. As we close out 2023, the Steam Deck remains one of the best pieces of portable gaming hardware you can buy, both on the hardware and software side…

Read more...

2023 was a messy and horrible year that, despite itself, gave us some excellent games. You could even argue that this year gave us too many games! If you were looking for a break to catch up on what you missed, well, next year doesn’t seem to be offering much of a reprieve—at least not at the outset. Big titles like Fi…

Read more...

Read more...

This year represented one of the most difficult game of the year discussions we’ve had in some time; 2023 was overflowing with fantastic games. But our opinions are not the only ones (you can read Game Informer's top 2023 10 list right here). For a few weeks, beginning November 17, we ran a poll online, and readers sent their top five favorite games of 2023. We used ranked positional voting – the Borda count method – to gather the results below. If you have opinions on your opinions, leave us a comment below! But you can't be mad at us. This is all you.

Slay The Spire mod Downfall suffered a "security breach" on Christmas day which allowed hackers to distribute malware through Steam, the developers of the mod say. The malware attempts to steal users' passwords from their internet browser, as well as passwords for messaging services Telegram and Discord.

Read more

These are salad days for fans of novelty golf, from What The Golf? to Desert Golfing to Turbo Golf Racing. Released in 2022, Cursed To Golf set itself apart from the mini genre by being a golflike roguelike - and it's currently free to keep from the Epic Games Store.

Read more

We're now firmly in the liminal space between Christmas and New Year. Sick of your family, sick of leftovers, wondering if the day after Boxing Day is still excuse enough to eat two dozen After Eights for dinner, your mind might start to slip towards the future. 2024! What all could you achieve with a whole twelve months stretched out before you?

You could finally learn piano, you could re-commit yourself to bouldering, you could finally scratch out that novel. Or maybe you could just play a lot of video games. That's no less noble a pursuit. So what is your video game resolution for 2024?

Read more

It has once again fallen to me to pick out my favourite features, this time from 2023. This is a terrible task, because there are always a lot I like. I've tried to cut it down a bit from last year, for both our sakes, dear reader, and decided that previews don't count (because as a format previews do a lot of the work for you, to be honest). Even reducing my task this way made it tough to whittle things down, and I'm sure I've missed some excellent articles and writers - and that I will be corrected in the comments!

Still, read on for a place to start if you want to look back at the year that was on RPS. We've got interviews, community nonsense, and even more interviews for you to enjoy here. I think in 2024 I'm going to advocate for more horseposting.

Read more

Yostar has started delivering its promise to cut off account linkages with X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for its mobile games. Blue Archive was the first game to see the feature completely removed when it received an update on December 27, 2023. The company had also set up similar plans for Azur Lane, Arknights, and Mahjong Soul in the coming days, as 2023 draws to a close.

After the update, Blue Archive player accounts that were only connected to X/Twitter turned into guest accounts. That will render them unable to sync their accounts on re-installs and transfers to other devices. To help address the issue, Yostar has set up a special webpage that lets such users transfer login data from their existing X account to a new Yostar Account.

Platform: Rift, Quest, Vive
Publisher: Singer Studios
Developer: Singer Studios
Release: 2024

When you think of pirates, history mainstays like Blackbeard might come to mind alongside the fictional Jack Sparrow. An important but often forgotten name, however, is Cheng Shih. Not only is Cheng Shih one of history's most successful pirates, but she's also the woman who took over her late husband Cheng Yat's pirate armada after his death, putting her in indirect control of 40,000-plus pirates for a nearly decade-long stint in Chinese waters in the early 19th Century. While Cheng Shih's story can be found on pages of books and elsewhere, Singer Studios aims to bring her story to life in VR. 

I know you all were worried and losing sleep about this, so I’m happy to be the one to bring you this very important news: Kuma the bear will be in Tekken 8.

Read more...

Ahead of Penny Blood’s anticipated Spring 2025 launch, we have Penny Blood: Hellbound, which is a roguelike side story focusing on the enemy Hellhounders faction. Though something of a grind, it serves as a fairly fun way to get to know the world and characters of Penny Blood before the main game comes out.

The plot of Penny Blood: Hellbound focuses on Clara, an amnesiac girl with a natural affinity for Malice. After she encounters the Hellhounders, some mysterious mages appear and toss them into the inter-dimensional prison, Mictlan. They can't die in Mictlan, nor can they escape. Nonetheless, they decide to try and break out of it together, which requires defeating the magi who trapped them in it in the first place. On the way, they meet other villains who invite themselves to the Hellhounders’ ranks. These villains can help you out in various ways in the Hellhounders’ hide-out.

Now that Tekken 8’s 32-character launch roster has been unveiled, Bandai Namco has been releasing gameplay trailers for the fighters that didn’t get one the first time around. It's Kuma's turn now, and the fighting bear is embearrassing challengers left and right.

Sporting a sweet headband and rugged gi, Kuma looks to be an unbearably challenging opponent. His furious paw swipes show he has no problem bearing arms, even against his perennial crush, Panda. In fact, she could bearly stand up to him! But don’t take my word for it. Bear witness to Kuma’s grizzly carnage by watching the trailer below. 

Tekken 8 launches on January 26 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Check out our recent hands-on preview of the game's story mode here. 

We've already published our staff-wide list of the best games of 2023, but every editor had a few games they wish could have received some praise. This is where we have the opportunity to shout out some of those games. Below, you'll see each individual Game Informer editor's personal top 10 list for 2023. Check out each editor's list and let us know in the comments section which editor you most align with!

Square Enix announced that it will end service for Fullmetal Alchemist Mobile on Friday, March 29, 2024. The company has also immediately ceased all in-app purchases that require real money, such as Diamonds and Premium Battle Passes.

The game's producer Takanori Shiina also published a letter on behalf of his team. He noted that the team had worked hard to improve the game's system and balance following the first anniversary in August 2023. It also held meetings to set up projects leading up to the game's second anniversary.

However, Shiina mentioned the difficulty in maintaining the team structure to provide even more services to the game as the primary reason for its closure. He also apologized on behalf of the team for failing to publish a new original story inside Fullmetal Alchemist Mobile. The team will instead convert the story to a voice drama series. It will start publishing drama episodes on Square Enix's YouTube channel on Friday, January 5, 2024. The drama will run for a total of 12 episodes on a weekly basis.

Last year, I said 2022 was an odd year for games, with some feeling that it was largely devoid of great releases and others, myself included, finding them plentiful. But this year was even stranger, as it was better than ever while simultaneously being the worst in a long time.

Read more...

Happy New Year! Well, almost. 2023 will soon be behind us, and that means a whole calendar year of new releases to look forward to lies ahead. January might arrive with a brisk selection of titles, but it’s a pretty sweet way to kick off 2024.

Read more...

Danganronpa tea sets based on Byakuya Togami and Celestia Ludenberg are readily available to pre-order via Amnibus. Amnibus does offer international shipping with Buyee, so overseas customers will be able to purchase these items.

The items that are available for the tea set are:

• Acrylic coaster: 980 JPY
• Dessert plate: 2480 JPY
• Leather tray: 1980 JPY
• Spray bottle: 980 JPY
• Teacup and saucer: 4500 JPY
• Teapot: 4200 JPY

Here's a gallery showing the full collection of items.

A new trailer for the Witch on the Holy Night movie will appear on December 31, 2023. It’ll air after the Fate Project New Year’s TV Special 2023. [Thanks, Famitsu!]

This will be the second piece of new information since ufotable and Aniplex first teased the movie back in December 2021. At the time, we only saw a little bit of main characters Alice and Aoko. This year, we might get more scenes, as well as a release window. 

Since Aniplex and ufotable announced the movie in 2021, an enhanced version of the visual novel came out for the Nintendo Switch and PS4. A Windows PC version recently came out in December 2023. The story of Witch on the Holy Night follows Aoko Aozaki, a mage living in the town of Misaki with Alice Kuonji. Their life together changes when transfer student Sojuro Shizuki walks in on Aoko’s conflict with a mysterious mage, forcing him to live with the two mages in order to protect the secrecy of magic.

This year, I've mostly played smaller games, mostly from small or solo developers. Playing a giant timesink game all day hasn't appealed as I've sought to spend more time in forests and up hills and down rivers, and Destiny 2 burned me out so hard on live service games that I still can't face those. But a year of little games has been great fun, short bursts of play and ideas explored concisely, so here are some of my other favourites.

Read more

Promise you won't tell the other children, but the RPS staff are actually complex magical spells cast by the Sugar Plum Fairy, as part of an age old pact with the ents of the forest where the RPS treehouse was built hundreds of years ago. Each year the Sugar Plum Fairy has to collect more wishes to power the spells every year (you can help to make the spells more powerful by joining the RPS supporter program). While she's out wish-hunting, here are some Christmas Crackers to distract you.

Time to enjoy your lovely joke!

Q: What did loveable Geordie Dec say to his double act partner after a tough climb?

Read more

You've probably already seen Eurogamer's top 50 games of 2023, but we didn't want to leave our end of year thoughts there. Big lists can sometimes feel impersonal, and as you know, tastes in games can be very personal. So we wanted to put together another kind of list, something that would show you - on a more personal level - the games that we, the people who write for Eurogamer, really enjoyed this year.

This brief series of articles will collect the top fives from a handful of different Eurogamer contributors, and we'll publish a handful of them each day for four days. We're not ordering the top fives because it's not really about that this time - ordering things. It's more important for us, here, to give you a sense of why.

Oh and please feel free - in fact, feel encouraged - to share your top fives below.

Read more

Bandai Namco has opened a Digimon Games Questionnaire that primarily asks people about the recent past and future of video games based on the franchise. It also includes optional inputs that will be used to fill up segments at the upcoming Digimon Con 2024 event.

The required personal details in this survey are nickname, region, gender, age, and occupation. The survey also mandates people to mention the recent Digimon games they have played (or lack thereof). The last required-entry appears near the end of the survey, and it will gauge people's interest in purchasing Digimon games in specific genres.

The survey also specifically focuses on the three most recent console games: Digimon Survive, Digimon World: Next Order, and Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth with Hacker's Memory. It includes optional inputs where players can mention their favorite Digimon and scenes from the aforementioned games. Bandai Namco may pick some of these entries and feature them in Digimon Con 2024. The final optional entry lets people write specific requests to Bandai Namco.

Anycolor has taken down Selen Tatsuki’s cover of the song “Last Cup of Coffee,” citing that it had not passed the internal verification process. While the video is not on Selen’s channel as of the time of writing, though some of her fans have uploaded it onto other accounts.

Selen apologized to her fans via social media, saying that management privated the video. However, since her fans put so much work and money into the video, she welcomed reuploads. Several fans replying to her post expressing sympathy and outrage, as well as links to people who have reuploaded the song in question.

We can watch one of said reuploads of the Selen cover song below:

Atlus uploaded a new Persona 3 Reload trailer focusing on school life at Gekkoukan High School. There are quite a few differences between the remake version and the original game, which are highlighted in the video.

You can watch the school trailer for Persona 3 Reload here:

For starters, one of the new features in Persona 3 Reload is that you can check out what other people answered for questions in class. This is something that was possible in previous remasters and remakes, such as Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 so long as you played while connected to the Internet.

HoYoVerse revealed details about the Critter Pick event in Honkai: Star Rail. This time-limited event was initially revealed during the December 2023 Version Special Program that discussed content in the Version 1.6 Update and is live now in-game.

The Critter Pick quest will add a creature collecting game to Honkai: Star Rail. The Herta Space Station has suddenly gained an abundance of little creatures and it’s up to you to look after them.  During the event, players will be able to cultivate their own critter creations and customize them as they wish. Rare critters may also appear during the creation process.

In addition, the preview of the Critter Pick event shown during the Special Program hinted at another aspect of the quest. It seems that players may be able to play as Asta’s dog Peppy, presumably as part of the quest’s main storyline.

Greg Sewart is one of the co-hosts of the Player One Podcast and formerly an editor at publications such as Gaming Age, EGM, and Expert Gamer. You can check out his retro gaming channel, Generation 16.

One of the best parts about turning in my Games Media™ membership card was getting a chance to take a breath and only play the games I wanted rather than jumping from new release to new release all year long. The freedom to play whatever I want has crystalized into a tendency to play way more retro games each year in between the major releases I’m most interested in. So with that in mind, here are three retro games I’m glad knocked off the ol’ backlog in 2023!

Webster’s Dictionary defines “Game of the Year” as “The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above.” That sentiment is especially true in 2023, a year that was chockablock with really quite good video games.

There were so many really quite good video games released this year, in fact, that some really, really quite good video games have kinda fallen out of the “Game of the Year” discussion because other really, really quite good video games came along and hijacked the conversation. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. What am I gonna do? Complain about too many good video games?

In the market for a high refresh rate gaming monitor for FPS? Right now you can pick up the Asus ROG Strix XG27AQMR for $499 on Amazon US, a great price for a 1440p 300Hz (!) esports-grade gaming monitor that delivers a silky-smooth experience. The current price is a $100 discount on its normal going rate and quite competitive for a montor with these specs.

Read more

The Top 10 Games of the Year That Aren’t HUMANITY

Because HUMANITY Is Great. Play HUMANITY.

A Steam user on Christmas Eve had a question: How do you earn just one measly little Steam Point? They were at 68,999 points and wanted to hit 69,000 because, you know, it’s a nice number and all that. However, because of how Steam Points are earned, there seemed no simple way to get that one measly point. But then a…

Read more...

Hello wonderful Giant Bomb family! Alex Boniello here, excited to be back for another Game of the Year list. As always, endless shout outs to the crew who are not only hard workers, but are just great people. Congrats to you all on another fun year filled with change, transitions, and laughs.

Like most of you reading this, I’ve played a lot of amazing games this year, and I had a tougher time than usual narrowing this list down. I only wish I had more time to cross a few more of the ones I missed off my list.

I like to get a little funky with these lists, because games are just one of the art forms that help me get through the year, and it is always fun to share! So before we get to the games, here are some Not Video Game things that I loved this year.

While other god games might have been recently consigned to the scrapheap, the cute, toy-like WorldBox continues to improve. The early access god sim is going to start simulating family trees in its next update.

Read more

Starfield is finally here and it is big, complex, and often overwhelming. There’s a lot of stuff in this game and it’s easy to get lost trying to do it all and see everything the game has to offer. So to help you avoid getting lost in space, we’ve collected over two dozen tips and tricks to help you get started in…

Read more...

Now that we’ve reached the end of 2023, we can comfortably say that Sony has given the PlayStation 5 a solid three years of game releases. That’s good news if you’re new to the console, or if you’re just wondering about which games to pick up to fill out your PS5 library. Whatever the case, we’re here to help with our…

Read more...

After years of hype and numerous teasers, Spider-Man 2 is finally here. And lucky for all of us, it’s really good! If you are just hopping into the game now and want some useful tips, we have some! These 19 tips and tricks should help make saving NYC as either Miles Morales or Peter Parker just a bit easier.

Read more...

Mansoor is a pro wrestler and former WWE superstar where he won the only known 51-man battle royal to ever exist. You can often find him on Twitch with his fellow former Maximum Male Model tag team partner.

Everyone told me having a child would change my life. What they didn’t tell me, however, is that it would BE RUINED.