iPhone 15 Pro review: Apple's latest flagship smartphone titles have been out for a while, and this year the Cupertino-based tech giant has introduced several new features that make the devices more enthralling than ever. This year was not just an iterative update where some minor configurations witnessed an upgrade as we have seen the last couple of years, instead, Apple has brought out some big guns to lure the buyers. While this applies to the non-Pro models, the Pro lineup is where you see the difference. From the titanium frame to the 3nm chipset, big new introductions have been made, and alongside the new USB-C port and the Action Button, familiar features have been replaced with more useful technologies. In short, there is a lot to unpack.
BG3 Winning Game Of The Year Gave Me A Mid-Life Crisis In The Best Way
11.12.2023 - 07:58 / gamepur.com / Best
Sometimes, the desire to fall backward through time is hard to resist. This year’s Game Awards showcase strongly brought this feeling on for me. As I watched the passionate crowd cheering on the titles that had shaped them through the year, a core memory of my own came creeping up, scented in 2006 fixation and drenched in video games that changed the tides of the industry, conventions, and the lives of sensitive young gamers. Gamers like me.
I’m always hesitant to let myself float in this space. The people I shared these moments with, for the most part, have left my life. The memories of cosplay-building parties before conventions and up-all-night video game sessions blur like the view of the countryside through a car window – Final Fantasy props and Left 4 Dead campaign modes that were the foundation of my social experience as a young teenager.
But this time, instead of fighting against the nostalgia, I embraced it. As BG3 won the Game of the Year, my heart reeled backward in time, to other franchises that shook the foundations of gamers to their very cores.
Related: The Next Legend Of Zelda Needs To Take Place Outside Of Hyrule
Blockbuster Video Was The Place To Get Kingdom Hearts 2
My friends and I were obsessed with Kingdom Hearts. This is not surprising to hear if you were a gamer in the mid-2000s. Sora, Riku, Axel, and Roxas adorned every sketchbook, DeviantArt page, and cosplay picture. Conventions were filled to the brim with excited, Disney/Square Enix crossover props that took months to build.
I wasn’t a wealthy kid, and often couldn’t afford the games that came out. Thankfully, there was a Blockbuster Video just down the street from my house. I probably checked the game out three dozen times before I’d saved enough to buy it.
Like the BG3 fans of today, my friends and I spent our time talking about what it was that KH2 presented for gamers – the huge world, the colorful characters with open backstories, and the gameplay that was more freeing than many other options present at the time – all left an impression on us. I remember getting together at one of my best friends’ houses, sitting on the leather sofa as we all took turns trying to beat Xemnas.
We all had nicknames from the game, and to this day, I still have a special place in my heart for the characters, as they were interwoven in some of the best, and hardest, years of my life.
It makes me wonder who is being shaped by BG3, who is looking at this game through that lens and crafting it into core memories they will look back on decades later and treasure. Baldur’s Gate has that same power, that same awe, that captured my younger self playing Square Enix games, and I know it has likely altered people in similar ways.
The Battle
Steam's Best Of 2023 charts the year's best sellers and most played
Valve have put together their "Best Of 2023" lists on Steam. This is different from the Steam Awards, voting for which is ongoing, and instead is built from Steam data like revenue, peak concurrent players, and so on. It's interesting every year as older games or indie obscurities do better than you expect.
The best documentaries of 2023
One of 2023’s biggest cinema trends was the way accomplished filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan, and many more delivered some of the most creatively and commercially successful work of their careers. There was just something in the air this year, as one major artist after another took big swings that connected.
The best movie performances of 2023
There are a lot of ways to judge a great performance. In 2023, as in every year, some of the year’s best movies were quirky, colorful, boundary-pushing challenges to the cinematic status quo, and some were low-key, emotionally intense stories, either tracking the lives of famous historical figures or just trying to evoke the pains of real life. Our list of the best performances of the year honors both extremes: outsized performances that tickled and surprised us, and realistic ones that made us forget we were watching a performance. Here are our favorites among the many great performances we saw in movies in 2023.
Starfield Devs Talk Official Modding, Expansion and More in End of the Year Update
If you’re still exploring the vast reaches of Starfield and are somehow hungry for more, you’re in luck. An “End of the Year Update” dropped by Bethesda outlined some of what’s to come in 2024.
I truly believe Tim Burton’s Willy Wonka movie is still the best Willy Wonka movie
“Hеre is the child that you left behind. Here is the kid with the curious mind. Here is the wonder we used to feel, back when the magic was real.” These are lines from “A World of Your Own,” a song performed late in Wonka, the 2023 movie starring Timothée Chalamet as a young version of Roald Dahl’s eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka. The song keys into a frequently stated motivation for this movie’s version of the character: He wants to use his candymaking magic to create a feeling of childlike wonder in his customers, and indeed, the whole world.
MMORPG.com Game Of The Year Awards 2023
So 2023 has been a wild year in the games industry. We've seen multiple MMORPG expansions drop — and not from the genre's heaviest hitters, while the industry itself has had a banner year in the RPG genre alone. Games like Final Fantasy XVI, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and, of course, Baldur's Gate 3 dominated people's playtime this year.
In a year beset by layoffs, Games Workshop just gave its staff a £2,500 end-of-year bonus
It's been a rough year for the games industry. An estimated 9,000 people have been laid off in the industry this year, affecting employees at companies like Embracer Group, Epic Games, Amazon Games, Ubisoft, Activision, Bungie, Frontier, Codemasters, BioWare, Paradox, and many more. We've also seen the shuttering of numerous studios, including Volition, Free Radical, and Shadow Gambit creators Mimimi Games. Layoffs have also affected companies adjacent to video games, like Hasbro, which laid of 1,100 people two weeks before Christmas.
The best sci-fi movies to watch on Netflix this December
It’s never a bad time to find your new favorite sci-fi movie, so why not check out a few new ones before the holidays? Netflix has plenty of great sci-fi picks to choose from, but this month we’re looking to a some surprising choices that you might not expect.
The GamesRadar+ Hardware Awards 2023: all the year's best gaming tech
Another year done, another crop of gadgets and gizmos to pit against each other in the GamesRadar+ Hardware Awards. 2023 was a fantastic year for PC and console alike, with a new suite of RTX 40-Series graphics cards hitting the shelves and new console entries from both Microsoft and Sony. In between all that, though, we've also experienced some of the best headsets, controllers, keyboards, VR headsets, and chairs among all the other gaming tech to grace the shelves in the last 12 months.
The best gifts for the frequent traveler in your life
If you have someone in your life who’s often zipping off to exotic locales, or just traveling frequently for work, there are some amazing gifts you can get for them that can make their downtime during travel pass them by a little quicker.
Doctor Who - The Giggle ending explained: bi-generation, the one who waits, and more
Well now, that was quite the episode of Doctor Who. Clearly wanting to end the 60th anniversary specials with a bang, the latest episode from returning showrunner Russell T Davies, titled The Giggle, saw David Tennant's Doctor and Catherine Tate's Donna Noble take on the Toymaker, played by Neil Patrick Harris.