My Top 10 Old Old Games of 2023

Sometimes in revisiting the past can we can find a new favorite.

What is an Old Old game? Games that didn’t come out in this list’s respective year that I’ve played to satisfaction before. That year being 2023 if you’ve forgotten. What does satisfaction mean? It can be a vague idea ranging from rolling credits, playing more than just a round or two of an online game, or enough of any sort of game where I feel comfortable speaking to its merits.

Why do I do these lists instead of a yearly top 10? Everyone does a current year list and there is a pretty good chance most if not all games I would write about have been discussed elsewhere. I also tend to play more old games than new for financial reasons, but also philosophical ones. You can expect a New Old games list soon, but until then, here are the ten best Old Old games of 2023

10. Eastside Hockey Manager (2015)

I love this game, until I don’t. I install, I struggle to close it, and I burn through 25+ hours in a week. This continues for another week or two and then, inevitably, every goddamn time I hit a breaking point and ask myself why I keep playing. I uninstall, months go by and then I do it all over again.

Eastside Hockey Manager is a deep simulation in the vein of the Football Manager series. The closest thing you’ll get to seeing the high pace and violent action of hockey is a bunch of little dots moving around on a tiny digital rink that takes up a few square inches of your screen. EHM is menus first. It’s an attempt at approximating the numbers game of being the general manager of a hockey team and it does so to great detail. The minutiae of on ice strategies, managing payroll for staff and players, setting practice regiments, and negotiating trades and contracts gives a ton of control in living out the fantasy of running a hockey team.

I love this game, until I don’t. Eventually, the lack of simulation that accounts for the human element of sports, and the ability to break the numbers game rather easily, wears thin. I can’t help but think about the many stories surrounding my favorite team, the Philadelphia Flyers, these last few seasons that can’t exist within EHM. Provorov refusing to wear a Pride Night jersey, Fedotov being detained in Russia for ducking his mandatory military service, Lindblom beating cancer, and the ceremony for Giroux’s 1000th game as Flyer, knowing it will likely be his last.

Without these stories, I inevitably put EHM down after a few weeks… until I get that itch again.

9.Age of Empires: Definitive Edition (2018)

The 1997 real-time strategy that defined much of my childhood experience with the PC is at times a revisit that makes me go “huh, I guess I should have expected this from a game called Age of Empires. This isn’t to say that there is a complete lack of awareness. The cheesy, occasionally sardonic, voice over poke fun at history during each mission summary.

The mechanics of empire via an RTS are both fun and easily read as critical of empire. Clearing forests and leaving nothing but a field of stumps provides a base satisfaction, not all that different from watching the number go up in Cookie Clicker or blasting away every last piece of dirt in Powerwash Simulator. But also, you know, seeing an entire area made barren by dozens of little worker drones is a rather stark image of empire.

Age of Empires isn’t the first PC game I recall playing- that would be Microsoft’s 1991 title, Gorillas — but it’s the first to have a lasting impact upon me. My brother and I would occasionally have to go to our dad’s office when we were too little to stay home alone, and his boss would “occasionally” play games on his PC. The two I distinctly remember are Wolfenstein 3D and Age of Empires. He eventually gave us a burnt copy of the latter and it, and its sequel would become two of the games I played the most as a kid.

8.Flower (2009)

Flower represents a period in my life and the game’s industry with a bit more naivety. Only five years after Erin Hoffman’s EA Spouse blog, but also well prior to a games media landscape that would give similar stories of abuse within the industry the attention and scrutiny they deserve on a weekly basis. One where indie games had just started to explode and Steam was still the new platform on the block. While I didn’t play Thatgamecompany’s Flower in 2009, I did eventually get to it a few years later in college when I was actively and optimistically writing about games in several different places on the internet with the dream of doing so for a living. Since then every website I’ve ever written for besides the most recent, which is a well known content mill, has long since died. Traditional websites I hoped to write for vanish or drastically pull back in their budget and scope.

It would be easy to be cynical about all this, but while replaying Flower and feeling nostalgic just days before my birthday, I felt at peace with all of this. I certainly still look for freelance work, but being full time in games media was a dream of mine in the early 2010’s, now it sounds hellish. Writing on my own terms, which includes lists about old games such as Flower.

7. Dead By Daylight (2016)

In the last couple years, I’ve fallen off of traditionally competitive online games very hard. Ever evolving meta and constant fiddling can be off-putting. And yet, Dead By Daylight, which very much has constant fiddling via new content, map remakes, item tweaks, and the broader meta, is a game I keep returning to. This is because I largely ignore almost all of it.

Yes, DBD is a competitive game, and a stressful one too as someone who mostly plays survivor, but it’s also far removed from my usual online affairs such as Apex Legends. A loss isn’t such a big deal, barring the occasionally toxic killer or fellow survivor.

As much as corporate media crossovers are over present these days, DBD’s horror focus is one of the few that feels like an actual celebration of a specific community. There is something to be said about Albert Wesker taunting Nicholas Cage as he choke slams him into the side of the Nostromo’s hull.

6. Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011)

Bioware’s Star Wars MMORPG was my favorite new old game of last year. Much of my love for it is born out of the Imperial Agent storyline and my character, Aria Avik. I now own two drawings of Aria, thanks to a friend and an artist I commissioned, and they both bring me great joy. My second character, Juna’is, is a Jedi Consular. No, the story is not as compelling as the espionage of the Imperial Agent. However, I still love this dang game.

In my second playthrough, it’s becoming clear how grand the scope of the Old Republic’s world is. While each class story puts the player character at the heart of their little slice of the galaxy, you never feel like you are at the key figure in the central conflict between the Republic and Sith Empire. Many of the most powerful figures in the galaxy remain out of each class story’s purview. The politics of the Empire and Republic are not painted in black and white, but one that shows any government with that much power will be corrupt. The place of the Hutt Cartels as a viable third power in the usual binary conflict of Star Wars, and each side’s less than noble negotiations with the Hutt crime syndicates is a fascinating wrinkle upon the familiar.

5. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003)

This year I was given another excuse to replay one of my most replayed games. This time thanks to the podcast, A More Civilized Age, who is in the midst of talking about their four concurrent playthroughs of this Bioware classic.

I’ve written about engaging with the binary morality meter, or at least I think I have, and learning to accept it for the fun first storytelling tool that it is. Darkside choices are often setup as being needlessly cruel rather, and this can clash with the very good reasons to oppose the Jedi Order who have lied, mindwiped, and sat on their hands as innocents are slaughtered throughout much of the story. Your character is a central piece in their deception as a big third act reveal is all about how the Jedi robbed you of your agency. Being righteously angry with the Jedi for both personal reasons and for the galaxy at large is entirely reasonable and yet, to oppose them means to go down the darkside where one can’t help but be the cackling villain.

4. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)

Here are five observations I came to as I played Ocarina of Time for my birthday.

1. There are so many fascinating creative choices that feel like a middle ground of Nintendo figuring out 3D worlds. From some pre-rendered backgrounds, occasional fixed camera angles, and a 3D-ish menu.
2. Link has quite the harem.
3. Sadly, elementary school WordsMaybe was wrong in assuming that musical instruments were going to be fundamental to games going forward.
4. Dang, do these vibes hold up. Find me chilling with the ghouls and ghosts in the Forest Temple.
5. It’s Ocarina of Time still. It’s the game that helped the industry transition to 3D in a big way and hit me at 7 years-old, leaving me with the wildest expectations about where games were going. It still rips.

3.Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

After the mixed to volatile reception of Dragon Age II, Bioware celebrated the success of Inquisition as a bounce back moment for the series both financially and critically. Even so, there were still plenty of detractors who continued to bemoan the fall of Bioware. There were also folks who simply enjoyed it, but were fairly critical of some of the game’s issues, such as its massive scope that was at the forefront of the quantity over quality design of AAA games that sprung up in this era. I fell into the latter camp at release, and while I think I’ve softened on my criticism of Inquisition after my first revisit all these years later, it sure is a big bloated game in many aspects. But also sometimes that’s used to incredible effect.

Inquisition is a maximalist game, and I don’t just mean in terms of its MMORPG mission design or dozen or so BIG open-world locations. Sometimes it is equally absurd and impressive how much is here. Reading interviews and retrospectives, Bioware had a chip on their shoulder’s about the criticisms of DAII feeling too small. Somehow, every 10 hours or so I was finding new places within the homebase of Skyhold. While the companions number roughly the same as any post Baldur’s Gate 2 Bioware game, boy do they talk a lot. Both in ambient conversation while exploring and in meaningful conversations back at Skyhold.

I love Mass Effect and much of the Bioware catalog, but Dragon Age has a unique place in my heart. It’s the series that has reinvented itself with each entry, not always by choice, but given the lack of a contiguous protagonist or setting, has been allowed to take more risks. No matter where the structure ended up, DA has always been making huge advancements for Bioware’s style of storytelling and Inquisition is the game that continued the companion heavy storytelling in fascinating new ways.

2.Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019)

Ace Combat is the best of its genre and Skies Unknown is one of the best of the series. Ace has always been a budget title that has succeeded on the back of its staff honing their craft at creating games that get by on subtle production values. Unsurprisingly, the latest in the series has some of the best, and even when the smaller budget appears in the form of a PNG dog, it’s still downright lovable.

The Ace series has long been goofy and absurd, but within such has often carried a message of selfhood in a world filled with war. Skies Unknown’s tale that includes a penal colony for fighter pilots tossed into the meatgrinder of aerial combat as pawns and the incredibly hot Scrap Queen who fixes up their junker aircraft is delicious. So too is the story of Mihayl, who once ruled the skies and now seeks to live on in the form of an artificial intelligence that will fuel the future of unmanned aerial vehicles is also delicious.

I wrote much more about Skies Unknown earlier this year as well as the Top Gun series which is such a huge inspiration upon it. And of course, the complicated issues of making war look cool and how this helps the countries and corporations who profit from it become even more powerful. I’d really encourage you to read that piece.

1. Dragon Age II (2011)

The entire 60 hours I put into my story of Hawke and the city of Kirkwall I was kicking myself for not being the Dragon Age II defender earlier in life. I never held hate in my heart for it, but tragically I was a very boring 19 year-old with uncompelling opinions about it being too restrictive or less grand in scope like so many others. I am here to say though Dragon Age II is a tremendous game.

Okay… Dragon Age II is a flawed game made in an absurdly short amount of time. Had it been given years of healthy development it and its developers deserved rather than well, literally not even two years all under crunch conditions, it likely could have circumvented a number of issues while further highlighting its strengths. And yet…god damn did Bioware take some of the biggest swings it has ever taken with and come out the other side with a radical message of liberation. When there is no equal desire for peace the oppressed are left with righteous, violent resistance. Dragon Age II builds up its revolutionary story over the course of a decade in a singular city with an indelible identity of oppression. It is one of the great achievements of city crafting within games — yes, even with the abundant asset reuse. Each district speaks to a history of relationships between the people and the different faces who have held power within. Kirkwall is weighed down by its past but that oppressive nature is not so different from the present. The people who wield the systems of power will always do so at the cost of the many, but in particular those made most vulnerable by the system itself. Those it deems biologically inferior, refugees of war, the poor working class, and anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into the definitions of upper society’s designs are all put through hell.

Dragon Age II is also where Bioware bet on its companions as the most important feature to their style of storytelling over any sort of high stakes plot for the first time. For as compelling as the story of Kirkwall is, each of its three acts are separate subplots within. It is ultimately the cast who are front and center. The lives of Hawke, their family, and the companions who share this city is what truly matters most. Dragon Age II breaks away from a couple of Bioware’s design tropes in this regard. The morality meter is non-present and thus Hawke’s companions do not base their judgment of them simply off the question of “does their D&D like alignments matchup with mine?” The friend to rival meter is only one spectrum of the design. For example, Aveline, a city guard, found my Hawke’s bullish attitude a recipe for problems she had to solve. But during the finale, she stood by Hawke because their views of justice momentarily aligned.

No companion is dragged into the gravitational pull of the protagonist. They have their own lives and relationship to Kirkwall. Their own homes and places of work. Their subplots are as compelling and are given the same degree of importance as any of the three major sub-plots of the main story. Not bringing any single companion along on a quest doesn’t feel like choosing favorites, it’s more in line with the natural ways we gravitate towards the people we want to spend time with, and fail to check-in with those we know we should, but put off for longer than we care to admit.

There is so much dynamic interaction between companions. From the ridiculous amounts of ambient dialogue as you travel to the ways each of their own relationships materialize. The density of writing is staggering. In the later moments of act one and early act two my Hawke had a casual and fiery fling with the pirate Isabela. However, they drifted towards the end of the second act as Hawke’s relationship with the outcast elf, Merrill began to bloom. Eventually in act three, Merrill moved in with Hawke. Companions chattered about Hawke and Isabella, whether there was any jealousy, and eventually both Merrill and Isabella cleared the air. And when things got messy between Merrill and Hawke as they awkwardly talked around Merrill’s complex feelings as an outcast within a human dominated city, and with her own people, I regularly found Varric checking in on both Hawke and Merrill as any concerned friend would. And it all tied so beautifully back into Merrill’s subplot which then weaved its way into the broader politics of Kirkwall and the entire Dragon Age setting.

Dragon Age II is the sort of game that is going to come up in my writing for years to come. Whenever I get to it in my Applying the Bioware Formula project, I know it’s going to be the longest piece I’ve ever written. Even now, I’m having trouble figuring out how to keep this conscience because there is just so much to talk about, and just so much that makes me love this medium. I feel rather fortunate to have had my love for Bioware and the types of games they make reignited in the last few years. My replay of the Mass Effect trilogy early in the pandemic left me with the feeling that even if none of the individual games are my all-time favorite, that playthrough is my all-time favorite experience with this medium. But now, with Dragon Age II, I think I have found my favorite game.