That’s right – 2008’s loudest naysayers were not heeded, and their worst nightmares have come to fruition. Here we stand after a year so positively crammed with quality videogame re-releases and downloadable content expansions that we can gloss over them no longer: they are getting their very own page this year. Much like the K-Pop albums countdown, said page will be separated into two top fives…

…is what I would have said, if the sheer strength of the DLC this year hadn’t forced my hand long after I decided to draft this page, so now it’s a top 4 and a top 6? A bit messier, yes, but hey, a lot of this stuff rivals full games released this year; it had to be done.

If you notice a particularly conspicuous major absence from the re-release section, it’s worth mentioning that only the first five out of the seven categories from this article are eligible for consideration here: “reimaginings” and reboots have to fight it out with everyone else on the main list. Parentheses indicate the platform where I played each entry.

Of course this all means that the rather flexible “Special Awards” list that stood in this slot since 2018 is taking a hiatus; but for the record I would’ve probably given Best Third Party Publisher to Capcom (Resident Evil 4, Street Fighter 6, Exoprimal, Ghost Trick, Megaman Battle Network Legacy Collection), Best Indie Publisher to Team17 (Dredge, Headbangers, Blasphemous 2, Moving Out 2), and Best Videogame Adaptation to HBO’s The Last of Us – although that last category was unusually competitive this year.

All sorted? Let’s kick on with this.

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VR BEST OF 2023 DISCLAIMER

This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you agree with me 100%, go buy a lottery ticket. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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RE-RELEASES
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4. System Shock (PC)

One of the coolest stylistic game remakes I’ve ever seen, the 2023 System Shock project takes a pixelated first-person PC classic and completely rebuilds the world using low-res 3D “voxels”, ensuring a stunning neon colour palette that runs smooth as butter even on low-power portable PC systems. Drastically modernising the gameplay was not necessarily on the top of the priority list for developers Nightdive Studios, so meticulous menu management and item balancing is still the order of the day, but combat feels nice and punchy while the unsettling weirdness that eventually inspired the brilliance of Bioshock is fully preserved in all its skeevy sci-fi glory. It really sucks that Steam cloud saves still aren’t working properly for the game at the time of writing, though.

3. Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp (NS)

One of the most unlikely revivals in Nintendo’s catalogue may already be dead again thanks to an entire year’s delay brought about by real-world events, but if this fantastic package is the only word we hear from the Advance Wars series for the next decade, I’ll have to begrudgingly admit I’m OK with that. Veteran indie outfit Wayforward has absolutely nailed the most crucial parts of the Advance Wars experience, enlivening a controversial toy-like art style with countless animation touches (Kanbei’s CO Power animation, anyone?) and tweaking the enemy AI just enough to balance challenge and nostalgia. Most importantly, this might be the best approach to music in a videogame remake I have ever played, and I’m not just saying that because The Consouls did Sensei’s Theme. Of course I do fervently hope this is not the end, and it now has to be the WF team who are trusted with the next step in this series’ mythical return.

2. Metroid Prime Remastered (NS)

A remaster so good it re-launched technical arguments about the definition of a remake all over the internet – why yes that is one of my favourite topics, thank you for asking – Metroid Prime Remastered took over the headlines during Nintendo’s best Direct of the year in February by shadow-dropping right in the middle of a regulation flare-up in Switch processing power discourse – and putting a definitive pause button on it for a good while. For a 20-year-old game Metroid Prime still looks rather good, so it would’ve fallen well within expectations for a simple HD upscale to suffice for this release – but instead we received a near-complete re-paint of all textures to go with a massively improved lighting engine and smooth modernised controls, all running at 60 FPS. It turns out Retro Studios, dormant for years as far as customers are concerned, still have the goods when it comes to making underpowered hardware sing; Prime 4 is in good hands.

1. Super Mario RPG (NS)

Evidently this tiny list turned into quite a Nintendo-centric affair in the end, but for me it’s hard not to look at the delicious platter of visual goodness on hand with 2023’s Super Mario RPG remake and say anything else deserves top spot. An absolutely gorgeous ground-up 3D render of a colourful pixel-based classic, Mario RPG showcases in no uncertain terms that while the Paper Mario / Mario & Luigi series achieved wonderful things with its trailblazing timed-prompt battle structure in the years since, the original iteration still stands firmly on its own.

The sheer weirdness of this game is something to behold in 2023, enhanced as it is by newly-imagined cutscenes and extra combat layers that only serve to make the bizarre character designs stand out even more from Nintendo’s last decade of conservative Mario casts. The sheer existence of this remake means exciting things for the future of Nintendo-made RPGs, but even more fascinating is what it means for re-release discourse in general: here is a project that cuts no actual content from the original 20-25hr SNES release, but so efficiently trims away bloat that an average playthrough comes in at under 15 hours; so does that make it better or worse? I eagerly look forward to hashing that out over the next few years.

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Honorable Mentions

–Dead Space (XSX)

This one probably deserves a higher ranking, but truth be told I did not play enough of the original game to know for sure if it falls under the remake/reimagining line – and also I can’t handle the mechanic that randomises the number of enemy spawns in the same location after each player death: it’s just too stressful. But my word, the game sure is pretty – and it nails the soul-grinding tone of the seminal 2008 title perfectly.

–Persona 3 Portable (PC)

Yea OK hold on, I know this was pretty much just a port, but I spent far longer on it than any other entry on this page, so I’m including it on my list. No, it doesn’t have any major improvements over the PSP original to write home about, but it’s still so good to see the title acknowledged and playable on modern platforms. This meant I could at long last finish the game I started over a decade ago – just a few months before a full remake of the original Persona 3 was revealed.

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DLC/EXPANSIONS
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6. Pokemon Scarlet: The Indigo Disc (NS)

This mini-list, much like the solo award that preceded it for many years, isolates individual DLC patch releases; this avoids giving the advantage to games that receive more updates within a year. But in the case of the two-part expansion for Pokemon Scarlet (and Violet) it means choosing between September’s more compact, story-focused Teal Mask and December’s more sprawling, challenging Indigo Disk. Though neither release improves on the base game’s awful performance problems, I enjoyed both immensely for surprisingly different reasons.

Mask really does feel like a peaceful Japanese country town visit gone horribly wrong, a la Persona 4, but I have to give this spot to Disk: the finale picks up its predecessor’s cliffhanger and deftly integrates it into an open adventure boasting four equally devious double-battle boss fights that will make any veteran sweat, and also gives you real incentive to team up with friends to tick away at Fortnite-style rolling challenges that reward you faster for completing tasks within a party. Then it tosses off even more shackles from competitive play, cranking up accessibility to Tera Shards, vitamins and TMs before finally unlocking the limits of the world’s skybox itself. From there, a ludicrously stacked post-game worthy of a full main title begins. If you enjoyed Scarlet or Violet despite its issues – especially if you enjoy battling – this one is well worth your time.

5. Halo Infinite: Infection Update (PC)

This entry is even harder to delineate: the internet discourse on Halo Infinite definitely turned around in 2023, and the game was once again my most played shooter this year, but which of its three seasonal updates (or half-dozen major patches) deserves the most praise, especially since the game-transforming addition of the Forge custom map builder technically launched late in 2022? The release of Season 5: Reckoning (where this screenshot is from) is getting all the attention at the moment – and rightly so – as Firefight’s triumphant arrival and the Halo 3 Reforged playlist are worth the install on their own; but it only has a half-sized Battle Pass.

I have a massive soft spot for March’s Season 3: Echoes Within, as that was the first patch to add a new weapon in the form of the single-shot Bandit, and it made it count through the excellent Escalation mode (basically a take on Gun Game from Call of Duty). But just ahead of both other contenders, I’m giving this slot to Season 4: Infection. Released right in the middle of the excitement of June’s Summer Games Fest, the season finally unlocked the vast majority of armour coatings from specific armour sets, brought in a traditional career progression system to layer on top of the existing ones, introduced some killer new maps (huge fan of Forest in particular) and of course also brought in a new take on the titular fan-favourite game mode, elegantly redefining the idea of an “infection” to fit in with the unfolding rogue-AI multiplayer story. I might actually go play some Halo now.

4. Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope: Rayman in the Phantom Show (NS)

Rayman’s long-awaited return may not be accompanied by the grand spectacle – or the true platforming adventure – the beloved character deserves, but that doesn’t make his starring role in this neat Sparks of Hope expansion – which was also one of a few the game received this year – any less of a blast. A non-linear theatrically-themed hub world packed with secrets links together a series of tactical battles designed to make the most of Rayman’s fresh sentry-spam play style, and an increased emphasis on aerial navigation (with the classic helicopter hair present and accounted for) makes sprawling stages feel effortless to traverse.

The Grant Kirkhope score is as excellent as ever, and the ongoing presence of the armless one’s original voice actor after all these years is a treat that ties everything together. There’s even a manic musical number mocking the guy for playing second-fiddle to the Rabbids for over a decade, which is an absolute blast even if that only makes the absence of a Rayman Legends sequel sting all the more. The base game goes on deep discount so often that I’d honestly recommend snapping it up just to play this DLC.

3. Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways (PC)

Capcom’s exemplary six-year streak with Resident Evil DLC just kept on hitting in 2023, as the Japanese comeback kings turned their full attention to reimagining Ada Wong’s concurrent RE4 misadventures with the same ample degree of care as the base game. That is absolutely no small feat, and the end result is more than anyone could reasonably have expected: a campaign longer than the second run of 2019’s Resident Evil 2 (and the entirety of 2020’s Resident Evil 3) for the grand asking price of fifteen bucks.

Separate Ways tosses remixed areas and enemies from the main game with brand-new spaces and returning segments from the 2004 original in a delightfully tense and cathartic salad garnished with a smattering of dry one-liners (admittedly about as far from Leon’s camp joy as possible, but they worked for me), a riotous explosive crossbow and a magnificent game-changing grappling hook. The boss fights are just as engaging as in the main game, and one of them in particular might be my favourite of the whole package. Saying Ada’s DLC “completes” this version of RE4 does a disservice to one of the best games of 2023, but if you haven’t yet played Leon S. Kennedy’s series-topping outing, grab this alongside it in the next sale; it’s a no-brainer.

2. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (PC)

Anyone paying any attention to how The Witcher 3 has been treated and tweaked over the years may have seen this coming, but Polish mega-studio CD Projekt Red really seemed to take Cyberpunk 2077‘s train smash of a 2020 launch rather personally. And yet myriad performance and functionality updates were evidently not enough, because almost three years on from the initial launch date, 2077 became something else entirely, and with a comprehensive skill tree shake-up in tow – among many, many other overhauls – a brand-new chapter of V’s story arrived to slide neatly into the main campaign.

Cards on the table: I bounced off the original release of 2077 pretty hard, so I went into Phantom Liberty with a fresh, artificially caught-up save. The sheer chaos that resulted from this call as I fumbled to work out how to play under gunfire just happened to match the tone of the story perfectly, and the much more Borderlands-adjacent progression systems clicked with me almost immediately. Combat encounters are snappy, narrative choices are grimy and rewarding, and the new setting Dogtown looks phenomenal. Also, Idris Elba and Keanu Reeves are a hoot in this, but Cherami Leigh’s performance as V? Incredible.

1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed (NS)

Some 15 years after it began, the main Xenoblade Chronicles trilogy is at last complete thanks to Future Redeemed, a “standalone” 20-hour story so polished and well-tuned it makes me wish sprawling specialists Monolith Soft had the licence – or the desire – to develop more compact experiences as full game releases. Though it naturally could not exist without the excellent technical bones of 2022’s Vagrant Rant GOTY runner-up – and the narrative is both more confusing and less fulfilling the fewer Xenoblade games you’ve played overall – Redeeemed‘s taut gameplay loop might just be the best in the series.

Exploration feeds into progression into combat to deviously direct effect within a seamless wide-linear world laced with genuinely rewarding secrets, meaty series references, sucker-punch plot twists and deeply enriching character moments. The mechanical progress in constant motion as you play is something to behold; this expansion is so good it left me properly frustrated at times at its general inaccessibility. If this had been its own separate game, it would’ve made my overall top five for 2023 despite the fierce competition. Regardless, XC3: Future Redeemed is a staggering achievement on all fronts from one of the most talented teams in the business.

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Honorable Mentions

–Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Booster Course Wave 6 (NS)

Much like in 2022, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe dominated living rooms throughout the year thanks to a steady stream of remixed tracks from both classic Mario Kart games and the concurrent Mario Kart Tour on mobile devices. But soon entirely-new tracks started to creep into the drops, and then a new character or two, until finally one bombastic final wave injected no less than four new characters, a bunch more Mii customisations, and a music player, then also completely re-balanced the game’s core catch-up mechanics before finishing on the iconic Wii Rainbow Road. Chef’s kiss.

–Tales of Arise: Before the Dawn (XSX)

Announced with extremely little warning as an epilogue to a two-year-old game many assumed Bandai Namco had completely wrapped up, Before the Dawn is somewhat of a modern curiosity in the age of season passes and roadmaps. But it is immensely welcome, as Arise‘s world is rife for further lore exploration, the cast continues to be a vibe, and the world’s settings remain visually stunning. The DLC isn’t long either, and it respects your time; it’s just a bit of a shame there isn’t much new to experience in the (admittedly already great) combat.