2023 was a great year for games, but an even better year for the comeback

You may be tired of hearing about how stacked 2023 was for videogames. It's hard to argue with a year that gave us a long-awaited Diablo sequel, a pretty great Star Wars game, surprise hits in Dave The Diver and Dredge, and critical darlings in Alan Wake 2 and friggin' Armored Core 6. Oh, not to mention an RPG so good we gave it our highest review score in 16 years.

Well I didn't play most of those games. While my peers were gushing about a funky musical number in Alan Wake 2 and starting third playthroughs of Baldur's Gate 3, I was pouring over patch notes and installing updates for shooters people stopped talking about a long time ago. It was a great year for new games, but a fantastic year for the comeback.

They just kept coming up in 2023. For as much as we've seen the live service model produce troubled, unfinished shooters at launch, it's worth acknowledging when studios are allowed to put in the work and turn things around based on feedback. The year's FPS comeback stories ran the gamut: we had a slow burn of updates that finally culminated into something special, monumental patches that transformed good games into great ones overnight, and one comeback that's just getting started, but looking bright. Let's talk about the year in comebacks, what went wrong with these shooters at launch, and how far they've come.

Battlefield 2042

????Released: November 2021
❌Launch complaints: Classes, sparse maps, basic features absent, balancing
✅Comeback moment: Here's the thing: Battlefield 2042 is really good now

We had a good time with Battlefield 2042 at launch, but it was clear DICE's vision for a Battlefield with bigger maps and hero-like "Specialist" abilities hadn't quite hit the mark. The maps were huge and pretty, but sometimes empty and boring. DICE evolved the class system by essentially throwing it out and letting any character use any gadget, which killed any semblance of teamwork. The consensus was that Battlefield 2042 was OK for what it was, but didn't really feel like classic Battlefield. 

Over the next year and a half, DICE would change that. The studio started by chipping away at the little things—in 2022 a proper scoreboard arrived, along with voice chat and the option to text chat with the enemy team. Then it tackled maps: several of 2042's sprawling battlefields were reined in to minimize downtime and pieces of cover were added to expanses of nothing to give infantry players a fighting chance. A classic variant of Conquest with a 64-player cap was another welcome addition. But for my money, Battlefield 2042 didn't fully click until this year, when DICE reworked the class system into a surprisingly effective merger of classic class-exclusive abilities and individual Specialist gadgets.

Seasons 4 and 5 were a big turnaround for the punching bag FPS of 2021, and things are going so well that a Season 6 is coming.

Cyberpunk 2077

????Released: December 2020
❌Launch complaints: Buggy as hell, bad skill trees, weak open world
✅Comeback moment: Forget Phantom Liberty, Cyberpunk 2077's free 2.0 patch is a staggering upgrade on its own

We all remember the launch of Cyberpunk 2077—the bewildering bugs, teleporting cops, and general "This is it?" reaction to its unremarkable skill trees. The RPG sold well, but it was a reputational disaster for CD Projekt Red that it'd spend the next two years trying to make up for. In the meantime, Cyberpunk became the poster child for disappointing big-budget games released unfinished. CDPR moved the needle in 2022 when the excellent Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime released on Netflix alongside the "Edgerunners" patch for 2077 that included a transmog wardrobe, new gigs, and guns.

The Edgerunners update made it easier to enjoy Cyberpunk in spite of itself, but it was September 2023's 2.0 patch that truly turned the game around. CDPR rewrote all the skill trees, replacing incremental stat boosts with entirely new abilities that made combat exciting again and buildcrafting a legitimate highlight. A proper police system also arrived alongside car combat, finally allowing players to rampage across Night City like Grand Theft Auto. Many agree that Update 2.0 really honed Cyberpunk into the FPS RPG it should've been at launch, and getting the fantastic Phantom Liberty expansion at the same time was an unbeatable 1-2 combo. The vibes around Cyberpunk 2077 are good these days, just in time for CDPR to move on to The Witcher 4 and an eventual Cyberpunk followup.

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide

????Released: November 2022
❌Launch complaints: Performance, fewer classes, stale missions, crossplay
✅Comeback moment: Warhammer 40,000: Darktide class overhaul patch is live, and it sure seems like the massive update everyone was waiting for

Darktide was, in many ways, exactly what we wanted from the spiritual successor to Vermintide. It's easily the best-feeling iteration of Fatshark's melee meat grinder with a punchy arsenal of guns layered on top. But at launch it was another big game that needed more time in the oven: it was a bit of a performance nightmare, and fans immediately noticed Darktide's four playable classes had a lot less depth than Vermintide's roster of five (who had additional subclasses to boot). Darktide wasn't an unmitigated disaster, but it also wasn't the slam dunk that it should've been. 

Fatshark took the feedback to heart going into 2023. Performance was smoothed out within a few months, and the missing crafting system was patched in. In October, the class overhaul patch introduced new skill trees that dramatically expanded the horizons of all four classes. Similar to the Cyberpunk 2.0 update, the overhaul meant your playstyle could evolve beyond what guns you took into the fight, and that alone made Darktide more replayable. The patch also ramped up the intensity of the Conflict Director and tidied up some input complaints. More recently, a free anniversary patch dropped that included a whole new mission.

Halo Infinite

????Released: November 2021
❌Launch complaints: Monetization, progression, armor system, map variety
✅Comeback(?) moment: Halo Infinite Season 5 has the makings of an honest-to-god comeback

I'm being hopeful and calling this one a "comeback-in-progress." Halo Infinite shared the negativity spotlight with Battlefield 2042 when they both launched in late 2021. While its first few weeks were triumphant, players quickly turned on Halo due to 343's slow turnaround on updates and frustrating progression that relied entirely on an unpopular challenge system that could only be improved by purchasing "challenge swap tokens." The qualms snowballed into 2022 as 343 delayed new seasonal content for six months. Infinite's first year was pretty bland: few new maps and lackluster battle passes while players eagerly awaited Forge and campaign co-op.

Only very recently have things been looking up for Halo Infinite. 343 has been on a hot streak of great updates since Season 5 kicked off in October, introducing new maps, AI enemies to Forge, and (finally) the ability to equip any helmet on any armor. This is where I came back aboard and noticed that Halo Infinite finally feels like a Halo game. There are lots of playlist options that let you curate a tasting menu of classic FPS modes, and if you get bored of competition, there's an active community goofing around in the Custom Games browser just a few clicks away. More recently, a throwback Halo 3 playlist with Forge remakes of classic maps was so well-received that all of those maps are here to stay.

As a cherry on top of Halo's good Season 5 vibes, PvE Firefight arrived in early December to give players a way to unwind with friends and still progress their battle pass. 343 still has work to do hammering away at the Infinite's worst qualities (those store prices can be pretty bad), but it's great that Halo finally has some positive momentum behind it. I have high hopes for 2024.