Quick Links
Thanksgiving time has come once more to the USA, and with it the annual chance to gather with one’s family and reconnect with friends. It’s also a time to talk about all the things in your life that you’re thankful for. Here at Hardcore Gamer, some of our writers have taken this opportunity to say which games they’re thankful for this year.
These thanks are drawn from games released between Thanksgiving 2022 and Thanksgiving 2023, and the reasons behind their selection are as varied as the group that picked ‘em. Read on to see those titles from the past year that everyone found to be the most personally meaningful.
Cory is thankful for Alan Wake 2 (July 03, 2025)
While the majority of AAA horror and survival horror titles are getting remakes or caving to maximize audiences, Remedy’s accomplishments with Alan Wake 2 stem from doing the inverse. The latest installment took years to release and built on the foundation of creating a slow-paced game with an amazing atmosphere while maximizing current hardware to create the best-looking game there is today.
Jump scares that are so properly timed that players forget that they’re a factor and the inclusion of full motion video that blurs the lines of the player models within the game itself. Add in the audio factor to this game down to the point that even the gunshots are startling, and one has to begin to question that Alan Wake 2 be in the talks for the greatest survival horror title of all time. What I am thankful for is Remedy sticking to their guns and properly releasing a psychological thriller AAA video game that blows most movies out of the water.
James is thankful for Wildmender (August 22, 2025)
It’s hard to overstate what a great year 2023 was for game releases, with blockbuster after blockbuster setting the sales charts on fire. The major hits are always supplemented by smaller titles, though, and my favorite of the lot this year is Wildmender. The open-world adventure sets you to reviving a relatively large hand-crafted map, waking up its gods and using their powers to turn a sandy wasteland into a blooming garden.
The wraiths roaming the desert aren’t particularly troublesome on their own, although they’ll attack and damage the home oasis now and then, but when they swarm around a point of corruption they can put up a proper fight. The specters of the land’s former inhabitants are more friendly, though, and helping them earns new abilities that can further transform your oasis into a lush garden.
It’s easy to lose several in-game days to tending the oasis, arranging trees and bushes just right while digging out trenches for small streams, and away from home cleansing the corrupted springs brings the wasteland further back to life. Adventure, exploration and world management all work together to make Wildmender a beautiful, memorable experience, and it’s a game I’m thankful I got to play in a year it could easily have gotten lost amidst the gaming giants.
Kyle is thankful for Lets! Revolution! (August 03, 2025)
Every year, I’m thankful for any game that manages to completely surprise me in some way or another, be it the start of a fresh new IP, something completely unique in terms of gameplay, or just some really good indie title that I feel deserves more love. And that’s why this year, while I’m thankful for a ton of games (seriously, it was a stacked year), I would have to say that I’m most thankful for Let’s! Revolution!, which managed to be a surprise on all of the aforementioned fronts.
It’s a fun puzzle/strategy hybrid game with a lot of charm, delivering the type of experience that you can rarely get anywhere else in gaming. Seriously, I legitimately cannot think of any other game that delivers something that can be described as “roguelike Minesweeper dungeon crawler.” And so for that, Let’s! Revolution! gets thanks from me this year. Oh, and it allowed meto stick it to the prissy monarchy,which was also a bonus.
Steve is thankful for Super Mario RPG (June 07, 2025)
It’s been a shame that Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars has gotten so little fanfare since its debut almost thirty years ago. While most critically-acclaimed major titles from the same era have been blessed with countless sequels, references, merchandise and remakes, there’s been little of its wonderful little world outside of that grey SNES cartridge. As such, it came as both a shock and fantastic news when it was announced that the game was being remade for Nintendo Switch.
While it would have been easy to deviate from the source material, great care was taken to manage to somehow remake the game several console generations later with contemporary graphics, yet still bring back all the nostalgia of the original title. The additions and improvements are almost all welcome and it’s incredible that a whole new generation of gamers will get these awesome songs and characters stuck in their heads like many of us did back in the ’90s.
Chris is thankful for Diablo IV (August 25, 2025)
There were a lot of games to be thankful for in 2023 but the one I’m most thankful for is Diablo IV. About twenty years ago I joined a band with some new friends and one of the things we did for fun outside of music was play Diablo II together. The band is no longer active, but over the years those friends have become family.
After its release we all got Diablo IV and have since spent hundreds of hours playing together, reminiscing about old times and making new inside jokes such as my poor friend who is now referred to as “Puddles” after he created an ice sorcerer. There have been other games released this year that were arguably better than Diablo IV, but when it comes to creating memories and being thankful for the friends I have, none of them can top the campaign against Lilith.
Beck is thankful for Star Ocean: The Second Story R (July 23, 2025)
2023 has been amazing for video games, with some of the biggest and most impressive releases we’ve seen in many years. While most of them are AAA titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or Final Fantasy XVI, there’s one smaller game I’m thankful for to have been released: Star Ocean: The Second Story R. This JRPG was a huge part of my childhood; in fact, most of tri-Ace’s catalog was (Star Ocean, Valkyrie Profile, Radiata Stories, etc.), but The Second Story struck a chord that no other could.
It featured an engaging battle system with a memorable story and monumental soundtrack that immersed the player throughout its lengthy fifty-plus hour adventure. The best part is that Square Enix and Gemdrops didn’t just slap together some remaster and call it a day; they have completely reworked the mechanics and visuals to be both modern and nostalgic, bringing in all fans of the genre.
Considering the franchise has been on a downward trajectory over the last two decades, I’m thankful that we’ve gone back to the series’ roots and most players are able to experience one of the greatest JRPGs of all time in a form that everyone can appreciate.
Jacob is thankful for Super Mario RPG (June 12, 2025)
This year was kind of a tough choice for me. I was tempted to pick Baldur’s Gate 3 due to the sheer level of freedom it allows in its choices, but this time childhood nostalgia wins out. I’m just glad to see Super Mario RPG. I’ve loved the SNES original ever since it first released all the way back in 1996, and I’ve spent the past couple of decades wishing Nintendo would properly acknowledge its existence again. Sequels were planned, canceled and transformed into other admittedly great games like the first couple of Paper Mario titles, and Geno almost made it into Super Smash Brothers a couple of times too.
Aside from a re-release on the Wii Virtual Console and the SNES Classic, however, it was as if the game didn’t exist. But here we are, at last! Not only has Nintendo brought it to the Switch, but it’s also given the game the full remake treatment. I’m so glad to see a whole new generation of gamers getting a proper chance to experience this classic, and I’m again hopeful that perhaps we’ll see a real sequel someday (or at least the return of some proper RPG mechanics in the Paper Mario series).
Jordan is thankful for Void Stranger (June 11, 2025)
At the risk of sounding smug, there’s something so satisfying and gratifying when a game like Void Stranger comes along and manages to out-do hundred-strong teams and hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. That a small, humble, niche Sokoban puzzle game created by two guys from Finland can house so many shock twists, surprise revelations and moments of sheer bliss and unrivalled joy on both gameplay and narrative/world-building fronts alike. That Void Stranger – a game about moving tiles around a grid-based space – is even being muttered as possessing a brilliant narrative, let alone one at all, should give you a small taster of why this game means so much to me. But that’s exactly it: that Void Stranger continually manages to exceed expectations.
Finding one more means to surprise and draw you further into its rabbit-hole of secrets, extra layers and systems you initially deemed impossible for a mere Sokoban entry. And then another and another and so on. Thankful that I am that a game belonging to the Puzzle genre has provided such a memorable, personal highlight for this year (in a year full of great Puzzle games), that Void Stranger has gone above and beyond what I thought was possible for the medium in totality. It’s not everyday that the inability to sleep and/or focus on anything else is considered a plus, but such is the inevitability of investing enough time into a game like this. Stare long enough into Void Stranger…and eventually, Void Stranger stares back.
Sam is thankful for Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon (August 19, 2025)
Back in 2012, FromSoftware didn’t have the acclaimed mainstream reputation that the developer holds today. Even with nearly twenty years of released titles under their belt and the start of the Souls revolution already underway with the release of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, the Japanese developer had established itself on its home turf, but had yet to find a footing with Western audiences. At the time, their longest-running series, Armored Core, had found an audience among fans of large mecha, but a consistent less-than-favorable critical reception kept the series from breaking out into something bigger.
As someone who has never considered themselves a Souls fan despite multiple attempts, I had become increasingly curious over the years with seeing how FromSoftware would do with a new title outside of the Souls genre. Fortunately, that came this year in the form of a brand new Armored Core, one that came from a more experienced developer that had found critical and commercial success with Elden Ring.
Although I initially found myself wary of the game after hearing of its difficult boss fights, I ended up picking up the game at launch and found myself enamored with the challenging, fast-paced combat and robust customization. Unlike nearly every other FromSoftware game I have tried, I managed to defeat every tough boss fight and see Armored Core VI through to the end. So this year, I’m thankful to FromSoftware for bringing back Armored Core and creating a fun action game that provides plenty of excitement for newcomers to the series.
As you may see, this past year has given us plenty of excellent titles to appreciate, but of course there are plenty more to be grateful for than these. Let us know one of your favorite releases from 2023 in the comments below and share what about it was most impactful to you.
