Before we crown IGN’s Best Game of 2023, let’s first acknowledge what an amazing year it has been for game releases. There were great games almost every month, and every nominee — from Cocoon to Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 — is certainly someone’s personal game of the year. But ultimately this year was defined by a presumed front-runner, and the surprising challengers for the throne.
When Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in 2017 it was a revolution, both for Nintendo’s beloved Zelda series but also open-world games as a whole. The number of Breath of the Wild clones created in its wake tells the story of its paradigm-shifting impact. So when Nintendo announced it would be releasing its direct sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, in 2023, the immediate question was, ‘how could Nintendo top Breath of the Wild?’ And presuming it does, how many Game of the Year wins will it rack up?
But the coronation was a little premature, because we didn’t know at the start of 2023 just how many games could realistically put up a challenge to the big Zelda sequel. As it turns out, there were quite a few games ready to take on Link’s latest adventure.
Runner-Up: Resident Evil 4
The year began with a bang when Capcom released its remake of Resident Evil 4. Already considered one of the greatest games of all time, it was hard to imagine how Capcom could improve upon the original. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But three remakes in and Capcom has developed a surgeon’s eye for what to change and what to keep in place, ditching some of the campier elements — like the giant robot Salazar — from the original, but leaving the pitch-perfect setting and pace untouched. Resident Evil 4 is arguably Capcom’s best remake yet, quieting anyone who questioned the necessity of this remake in the first place.
Runner-Up: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
A few weeks after the launch of Tears of the Kingdom, CD Projekt Red released its Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, Phantom Liberty. Even with the notable updates CD Projekt Red released for Cyberpunk 2077 over the years, it felt like we needed to temper our expectations for Phantom Liberty accordingly, just in case it repeated the turbulent launch of 2020. The result was better than we could’ve hoped for. Phantom Liberty is a truly unique techno-spy thriller that tackles all the classic cyberpunk themes of identity, class, and alienation all while pushing forward the attention to detail and level of quality the studio is known for. Coupled with the one-two punch of the literal game-changing 2.0 update for Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red can happily close this chapter on a high note as the developer prepares its Witcher and Cyberpunk sequels.
Runner-Up: Alan Wake 2
Sneaking in at the tail end of October just in time for Halloween was Remedy’s long-awaited sequel, Alan Wake 2. Remedy claimed this was the studio’s first-ever survival horror game, making it hard to anticipate just what kind of ride we’d be in for.
Who knew Remedy had such a mean streak, because Alan Wake 2 took the bones of the original — the light and dark gunplay and a healthy dash of Twin Peaks and Stephen King — and injected it with pure darkness. The live-action video segments are more sinister than they were the first time around, and Alan Wake lead actors Ikka Villi (Alan Wake) and Melanie Liburd (Saga Anderson) are given movie star-sized jobs co-starring as the haunted author and FBI profiler respectively, working together to solve the mystery of Wake’s 13 year disappearance. You can tell Remedy had a lot of fun with this one, and the future for the Remedy Cinematic Universe is looking bright.
Survival horror as a genre suffered a decade of being lost in the wilderness. Between 2009 and 2017 studios figured that horror games needed a shot of action to go along with it, and the slow, plodding pace of survival horror games from the late 90s and early 2000s weren’t exactly record-breaking sellers. Thankfully, the genre has found its way back thanks to games like Alan Wake 2, which show that horror games can successfully deliver the kind of over-the-top bombast fans expect from big game productions with the sort of stripped-back, sweaty palm survival horror gameplay.
Alan Wake 2 was one of the best surprises of the year, but even Remedy’s latest triumph can’t shine its flashlight near the biggest competition Tears of the Kingdom had this year.
Runner-up: Baldur’s Gate 3
There will be arguments over which open-world game is the best, or which survival horror game is, but as far as CRPGs go, look no further than Baldur’s Gate 3.
It’s not like Larian Studios’ newest adventure completely came out of nowhere – the Baldur’s Gate series is one of the most beloved computer RPGs to ever be released, and Dungeons & Dragons has had a real renaissance as of late. But while fans were playing an Early Access version of this game for some time now, the full release was far more than what anyone could have expected.
As deep as an ocean and just as wide, Baldur’s Gate 3 takes player choice to unprecedented heights, creating a campaign that feels like we’re truly embodying a character that is wholly our own, and not just some pre-written avatar. And although mechanically rich, Baldur’s Gate 3’s real triumph is the best-in-class writing. More often than not, branching dialogue can make us feel like we’re really saying only a fraction of what we want to convey. Not Baldur’s Gate 3, whose smart, witty, fun dialogue is the spine that holds up this massive behemoth.
Of course, it helps that Baldur’s Gate 3 is wickedly fun to play, too. Discovering that you can in fact skip an entire battle in the goblin camp by poisoning the wine jug is just one of the myriad of unorthodox ways to make one’s way through Baldur’s Gate 3.
Larian Studios deserves all of its flowers for delivering one of the best RPGs in years, for becoming the new king of the CRPG genre, and for showcasing what a smallish, dedicated game studio is able to achieve when armed with clear vision and time. It was almost IGN’s Best Game winner and the voting literally came down to the wire, with the frontrunner changing hands multiple times throughout the voting process. But ultimately, it came just short of slaying the giant we all knew was coming.
IGN Best Game 2023 Winner: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
This is the game many of us had marked on our calendars, and for good reason. We couldn’t wait to see what a sequel to one of the best games of all time could achieve. But it turns out that wasn’t the right question.
Tears of the Kingdom didn’t just deliver more of what we wanted – that would be too on the nose. Instead, the team at Nintendo put the challenge to us, asking players what could we achieve if given the right tools? Nintendo clearly watched hundreds of videos of what Breath of the Wild players were able to create — making flying machines from barrels and carts using abilities that were clearly designed for other things. Nintendo went ahead and gave us proper tools to create mechs, flying bombers, rocket ships, land rovers, kaijus… you name it. We’re still building, and will likely keep building.
In a broad sense, Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3 aren’t too dissimilar. Both offer players expansive amounts of freedom, to a point where we feel like we can meaningfully impose our wills in both games. But there’s a moment very early on in Tears of the Kingdom that serves as a kind of switch in the imagination. Obtaining the Ultrahand is the key to Tears of the Kingdom’s whole philosophy. Suddenly puzzle answers aren’t just figuring out the right color-combination or finding the right switch. The solutions to all Tears of the Kingdom’s challenges lie all around Hyrule itself, in the forests and caves and sky and depths.
It’d be a disservice to say that Tears of the Kingdom is just more Breath of the Wild. If anything, it makes Breath of the Wild seem like an extravagant test run for what Tears of the Kingdom manages to achieve. When Shigeru Miyamoto created the Zelda series, he said he was inspired by the explorations he took as a young boy into the forests and caves of his hometown in Sonobe, Japan. 37 years later and this dream of exploration seems fully realized.
Tears of the Kingdom’s opening, in fact, serves as a send-up to that original mission statement. Once all four of the main Zonai abilities are acquired, Link jumps off a ledge and right onto Hyrule, like a baby bird pushed off the ledge to fly. From there on out, the game is literally in our hands, to be played however we want to play, go wherever we want. The adventure starts and ends with us.
That is why The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is IGN’s Best Game of 2023.
Let us know what you think about our Best Game of 2023 Award Winner and the runners-up, and be sure to check out all the games on our nominees list.
Honorable Mentions:
Street Fighter 6Final Fantasy 16Marvel’s Spider-Man 2Dave the DiverStar Wars: Jedi SurvivorDead SpaceMetroid Prime RemasteredSuper Mario Bros. WonderLies of PHi-Fi RushCocoon
The 2023 IGN Awards
Best Game of 2023Best Movie of 2023Best Open-World Game of 2023Best Comic Book/Graphic Novel of 2023Best Horror Movie of 2023Best Horror Game of 2023Best Soulslike of 2023Best Stunt of 2023Best Anime of 2023Best Action Game of 2023Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy Movie of 2023Accessibility Innovation in Games in 2023Best RPG of 2023Best PC Game of 2023Best TV Show of 2023Best Character of 2023Biggest “Holy F**k” Moment of 2023Best PlayStation Game of 2023Best Xbox Game of 2023Best Nintendo Game of 2023
