For the last video of 2023, I decided to do something different. Instead of reviewing a single game, I decided to take a look back at some of the noteworthy games that came out this year.
2023 has been a great year for video games. Players have been quite spoiled for choice this year, as we have had several highly-rated games coming out. Not every game featured in this video turned out to be a hit, but that doesn’t make them any less interesting.
Like I have said multiple times in previous episodes, the video game industry formally began in a little over 50 years ago. A lot of the games that were popular back then may not be enjoyable to play today, but without the lessons they taught, the video game industry might not have been as huge as it is today. Then again, things aren’t that good today. Yes, the games we have look and feel much better, but there are also many warning signs that we are headed in a dangerous direction. The future of video games is going to be very depressing if certain mistakes that we’re making today are not corrected.
In this video, let us talk a bit about the past of video games, and then a little about what the future might be like.
Video games based on movies don’t exactly have the best reputation, but that doesn’t mean things can’t change. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora comes so close to providing a complete package that it really is the new standard for movie adaptions. While critics have been giving this game average reviews, I believe that the main problem is the source itself. Let’s find out more in this review.
The video game industry is a little over 50 years old. In these five decades, billions of people have helped shape the culture of the overall video game community, which is stronger than ever today. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, because not everyone who plays video games is necessarily interested in interacting with the rest of the community. However, even if you don’t interact with anyone yourself, your actions do have an impact on the larger gaming community. In this video, we will talk a little about video game culture, and what can be done to avoid worrying about the negative talk around it.
Looking for a game to review from Netflix’s catalogue, I picked Raji: An Ancient Epic. Originally released in 2020, Raji has been one of the few games from India to have a multi-platform release, and has picked up praise for its traditional Indian setting and decent story. But how does it hold up as a mobile game, and why should you pick this game from Netflix’s catalogue? Let’s find out.
Are video games bad for your health? If so, to what extent? With more than 3 billion people across the world playing video games regularly, this is an activity that has an impact on a large section of the human population. So it is necessary to consider how video games can affect our health and to an extent, our wealth. In this video, let us talk about the positive and negative impacts that video games can have on our health, and also how we can minimise the negative ones to a large extent.
Mineko’s Night Market is the latest in a long line of life-sim games that are becoming quite popular as a genre these days. These are games that focus on the player spending time in a relaxing, non-threatening environment where there is little or no violence, and the gameplay loop is intentionally kept simple enough to play at the end of a long day without much thought. After the success of Stardew Valley in 2016, we have seen quite a few such games, but Mineko’s Night Market does add a few twists to the formula, some of which are quite welcome, and some which slow down the experience quite a bit.
In the previous episode, we talked about how all the video game careers can be categorised into two buckets – selling games and playing games. In this video, we will talk about the second category, which is playing games.
Jusant is a breath of fresh air in the crowded gaming calendar of 2023, and I mean this literally, because the game asks you to climb a tower and get lots of fresh air along the way.
Coming from the creators of the critically acclaimed Life is Strange franchise – Don’t Not Entertainment – this short climbing adventure provides a relaxing journey that borrows heavily from the indie-game formula, but still manages to leave its own mark.
This has actually been a bad year to consider pursuing a career in the video game industry, since a lot of companies have been laying off people throughout the year. This is not too surprising, because 2023 has been bad for tech companies of all kinds, and video games studios are essentially software companies. But this doesn’t mean that pursuing a career in this industry is a bad idea, because downtimes are common in all sectors.