What Surprised Me In 2023

 To go along with my 2023 disappointments I wanted to share some surprises.

 The Finals

 The Finals surprise launched in December and I've not stopped playing since.  It is one of the most refreshing FPS games I've played in a while and I have fun every time I log in and play.  My teenager is also playing now that he has his own gaming PC and is the first FPS we've played together.  I'd recommend the game to anyone that is interested; it is free to play.

 Throne and Liberty Turn Around

 Throne and Liberty (T&L) blasted onto the scene in 2023 with an amazing trailer and lots of promise as "the next big MMORPG" only to follow up the initial hype train with a train wreck of a beta test where a completely different game seemed to have appeared.  Littered with mobile-game features like auto play and static combat the game was written off as "another Asian pay 2 win grinder".

 However the T&L development team took the harsh feedback to heart and re-engineered major aspects of the game.  Auto play was removed, the grind was significantly reduced, and combat was updated to be more fluid.  It is still a tab-target combat system but gone is the static combat where you were stuck in place.  Characters now can move with most of the combat abilities and from all accounts the system is better for it.

 T&L also launched in Korea in December... with the changes noted above.  Again that is a big turn around from the development team.  From various folks that jumped into the Korean launch it also seems like the game is in a good spot and the changes have addressed many of the initial concerns.  

 I am adding T&L to my "want to play" list for 2024.

 Blaugust 2023

 I didn't know about Blaugust until I came across it via Mastodon (gamepad.club instance specifically).  I had a lot of fun with my posts last August and look forward to Blaugust 2024!  You can see my Blaugust 2023 tagged posts here.