Game Theory: Which amazing games slipped through last year’s cracks?
With a brief gaming lull after Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Dragon's Dogma 2, we want to know: Which great games did we miss last year?
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Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off the weekend by taking a look at the world of gaming, diving in to the ideas that underpin the hobby we love with a bit of Game Theory. We’ll sound off in the space above, and invite you to respond down in the comments, telling us what you’re playing this weekend, and what theories it’s got you kicking around.
Congratulations, game nerds: We’ve survived the first true gaming onslaught of 2024, weathering time-devouring attacks from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and that insidious little time-suck called Balatro. (Okay, if we’re being honest, we’re still losing a lot of time to Balatro, but we swear it’s not a problem.) All of which means we have a moment to breathe, to collect ourselves, and, of course, to ask what the hell we’re going to play now—as well as whether we missed anything really important over the last 12 months.
For me? That means losing a whole bunch of time this past week to Teardown, a game that I’m now actively kicking myself for leaving off of our Best Of list in 2023. (Okay, technically it came out of Early Access in 2022, so I should probably be kicking myself for leaving it off then, but I’m playing the PS5 version, which released in November of 2023.) One of the most deceptively joyful games in recent memory, Teardown starts with one basic premise—everything in the world is made up of oh-so-delectably-destructible voxels—and then slowly reveals itself to be the most innovation-driving collection of toys since our actual GOTY 2023 winner, The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom.
A celebration of lateral thinking, meticulous planning, and the sheer joy of watching shit blow up, a typical Teardown level gives you a big map dotted with Important Objects to steal, destroy, etc.—and a one-minute ticking clock that’s set off the first time you actually grab a piece of loot. The genius, then, comes in giving the player near-infinite time to plan before pulling the proverbial trigger, manipulating the environment, setting up elaborate constructions to navigate tricky terrain, and trying to find an optimal route that’ll let that single minute of adrenaline-pounding execution go off without a hitch. The game thus carries a very particular rhythm, and a thrilling back-and-forth between deep contemplation and “Oh shit, I have to actually do this now” excitement. Most importantly, it produces one of the best feelings any video game can produce: The moment where you look at a situation, think, “Could I?” and then realize that the game has given you the tools to do something that is both a) tremendously stupid, and b) tremendously effective. (My favorite example: Ripping an entire chunk out of a building, walls and all, in an effort to keep a water-sensitive safe from being exposed to the rain.)
Of course, you probably know all this, because you were not an idiot who didn’t give a fair shake to one of the best games of 2023. You, blessedly, are not me.
I bounced off of Teardown last year because it is, in its own way, a strangely demanding game: Anyone who’s played much of it knows the thrills and pains of running a plan that you’re pretty sure can be executed in 59.9 seconds of optimal running, leaping, driving, and smashing. (That’s not an exaggeration: One of my most recent playthroughs ended with exactly 0.1 seconds left on the clock.) Having to develop a brand new plan each level can be a bit draining, if only because the game gives you the tools to be so ecstatically creative every time you approach a new heist. Which is why I played it for about two days late last year, hit one too many friction points, and foolishly skipped out on one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in more than a year. I’m doing my best not to chastise myself too much, though: Games have a depth of experience that’s pretty much unmatched in the pop culture medium, and it’s easy to miss the genius of something after just a few early hours of play. It’s why we have to help each other find the genuinely good shit.
Which is at least half of why I’m writing this particular column—to highlight a game whose surface-level frustrations waved me off of a genuinely amazing time. The other half, of course, is to hear what else I missed from y’all down in the comments, because if I doped-out one of my favorite games of 2023 so obliviously, I probably missed more. Help a guy out, huh?