Game of the Year: 2022

It’s that time of year again, isn’t it? When Jack is two months late for the Best of 2022 article. Yeah.

Recent years it seems like if I link to this article, it immediately pulls the first image as the preview (which typically spoils my Best Game pick), so I think for now I’ll just use the image of a big game this year that I didn’t play as a header image. With that out of the way:

Didn’t Play

• Sonic Frontiers
• Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope
• Bayonetta 3
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3
• A Plague Tale: Requiem
• Nintendo Switch Sports
• Triangle Strategy
• TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge
• Gotham Knights
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Tunic
• Dwarf Fortress
• Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course

There is a lot I actually did want to play this year, but in general, this was a pretty packed year, so I don’t feel too bad about what I had to skip.

Dishonorable Mentions:

This year, two games stood out to me as especially terrible, and I simply needed a new category to express how awful these titles were. Don’t know if this will be a thing going forward, but for now…

Sports Story – Now, I only played about an hour or two of this game, but that was more than enough. The previous game in this series, Golf Story, was a year one release for Nintendo Switch, and was a very fun indie title reminiscent of the Mario Golf Gameboy RPGs. I liked it a lot and played it through around the time that I first got my Switch. When the sequel, Sports Story, was announced in 2019, I was very excited to see what we’d get when the game released in 2020. But it didn’t release that year. Or the next. But lo and behold the game reappeared in the November 2022 Nintendo Indie World showcase before drunkenly stumbling into the eShop right before Christmas. And despite more than two years of delays, the game was in a sorry state. It was buggy, it crashed, the game’s quests would often not trigger correctly, softlocking the game. The dialogue is horribly written and full of typos (and often doesn’t even display correctly in-game). The game is really bad at directing the player, leading to you aimlessly wandering around looking for what advances the plot. And there are zero tutorials. It seems like the developers expect you to remember how the golf worked in the first game (again, released more than five years prior), because it never gives you a refresher. And the tutorials are even absent in the new sports, where they’re needed the most. The game wastes no time shoving you into a volleyball match, just slapping the controls on the bottom of the screen without explaining to you how the game actually works. And to be honest, though it has been years since I’ve played Golf Story, the golf that I was able to play in this title felt way worse than I remember it being in Golf Story. Perhaps the worst thing about this game is that given how it came out right before Christmas, this screams of the devs desperately trying to squeeze some money out of fans and holiday shoppers in spite of definitely knowing that the game was unfinished. Just a really insulting and disappointing display from a really promising indie studio.

Pokémon Scarlet/Violet – This one hurts. It hurts a lot. I’ve been playing Pokémon for roughly 25 years, and for the past decade or so I’ve been hand waving the cracks that have been spreading through the series with ever increasing speed and size. But this is what finally ripped the nostalgia blinders right off of my face. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is terrible. It looks like an early PS2 era game, full of blurry textures and really basic environment geometry. And in spite of how horrible it works, it still barely runs. It struggles to reach 25 FPS, and more often lands at 20FPS or lower, and even drops to single digits in particularly busy gameplay moments. Horrible model pop-in, models losing frame at a staggering rate when you get more than 20 feet away from them (getting to below 5FPS at times, including during cutscenes), and models losing detail when you adjust the camera. The game is incredibly buggy, with the camera clipping into the ground constantly and the game crashing at least half a dozen times during my time with it. The game has cut features everywhere. Character customization is limited. Victory Road is gone (replaced with a multiple choice quiz. I’m not kidding). The Battle Tower is gone. All Gym interiors are the same (hell, all of the members of the Elite Four have to share the same room!). Gym challenges are now embarrassing mini-games that are a complete waste of time. You can’t enter most buildings in the game. Basic menu options are stripped away. And for all these concessions, what does the game offer us? An open world that some would foolishly call “innovative” and making for the best Pokémon game ever made. Except that the world is all but empty. In other open worlds, you see a cool location, you go there and find cool things to do. Special items, quests, challenges. In Pokémon you see a cool location, you go there, and you catch a few Pokémon. Just like you do everywhere else. Cities are lifeless, there are next to no real quests in the game, and the main three quests are basically variations on the same theme. Just… more of the same Pokémon battles. No hidden dungeons or bosses, no special items, no special quests, no nothing. Gamefreak built a big ass sandbox and then did nothing but sprinkle it with wild Pokémon and trainers (you know the same as any route from a normal Pokémon game). What’s the point of the open world here? To do things in “any order”? Because you really can’t. Each objective’s level doesn’t scale to how far you are in the story so you still end up doing them in roughly the designer’s “intended” order anyways. This game was a disaster, and has me swearing off Pokémon games for the foreseeable future. Easily the worst game of 2022.

Lightly Played:

Live A Live – This is a title that perhaps doesn’t belong here since it is just a remake of a 1994 Super Famicom game, which maybe makes it not worth mentioning as a 2022 game. But given that this is the first time it’s been officially released in the west, I think it can get a pass. A turn-based RPG where the gimmick is that you’re given eight different stories following eight different characters across eight different timelines from prehistoric to distant future to play through. Each is a mini-campaign that can be completed in a few hours and can be tackled in any order. The HD-2D visuals are just as gorgeous here as they were in Octopath Traveler, and the one story I did get to play through was short and simple, but still gripping in its own right. I didn’t play through as much of the game as I’d have liked, but I’ll definitely come back to it and finish it. This title is definitely one that deserves the attention.

Rogue Legacy 2 – A game I’ve been looking forward to for a while. I played the hell out of the original, and from what I’ve played of the sequel, it improves on nearly every front. New classes, tons of new weapons, and just expanding the game in nearly every aspect imaginable, I’ll definitely get back into this one someday, but for now, it’s a bit too much on my plate with all the games I was trying to get through already.

Pentiment – Well this came out of nowhere. Obsidian was working on a 2D choose-your-own-adventure game behind the scenes. And with a weird old timey religious theme behind it that I definitely didn’t expect. I started playing this too late to finish it in time for this list (which is already incredibly late), but so far it has great writing and a really interesting hook. I’ll definitely keep playing this one and maybe update you guys on what I think of it later.

Shadows Over Loathing – This is one I’ll have to put on the backburner for a while. I really enjoyed the previous game in this series, West of Loathing, but I did note that the game was long enough that the joke started to wear thin by the end. I think I need to be in the right mood for this one, so while its off the wall humor and standard but solid take on turn-based combat really drew me in, I think I’ll come back to it another day.

Dome Keeper – A roguelike mix of a base defense and Motherload (a really simple but fun flash game from Xgen Studios back in the day. They even rebooted it back in 2013 with Super Motherload). I really dug (no pun intended) the loop of this game, and I suspect I’ll get more absorbed into this one somewhere down the line.

Cursed to Golf – A golf roguelike? Why not? I’ve been getting more into golf games recently because, it turns out that I like them quite a bit. That being said, Cursed to Golf frustrated me more than it really excited me, so I’m a bit less excited to revisit it than the others in this part of the list.

Hadean Tactics – It seems like it might just be that I’m unwilling to sink dozens of hours into most roguelikes anymore? Eh, either way, Hadean Tactics didn’t really impress me. While an autobattler roguelike sounds cool, it felt hard to really get a solid build that felt both like it was strong and you had a good amount of agency over what was happening. More often than not, it felt like you just hoped that your numbers were bigger than theirs, without too many opportunities to make your units REALLY strong, which is where a lot of the fun in these kinds of roguelikes come from.

Peglin – A peggle roguelike. You heard my spiel about roguelikes already, so I’ll just leave it at “maybe try it later.”

Backpack Hero – See above, replacing “peggle” with “inventory management.”

Cult of the Lamb – It’s Binding of Issac with a sub-game of colony management. I didn’t play much of it, but I don’t think it’s really my thing. I thought Binding of Issac was a decent enough game, but not enough for me to fall in love with a frankly inferior version of it.

Middle of the Pack:

Sifu – This title had a lot of hype around it leading up to release, and it ultimately let me down. Part of that was because I’m not really the person who like the overly difficult kinds of games where you spend more time smashing your face into the brick wall of difficult to “git gud” rather than time seeing new parts of the game, but it’s also that a really interesting high concept and story were ultimately let down by a complete nothingburger. The plot is pretentious and thinks it’s far more clever than it actually is, and the interesting concept of aging as your character dies just… doesn’t quite click with the primary gameplay loop in the end. The game’s difficulty also seems to serve to hide that the game is criminally short. Playing through on the easiest difficulty will have you sail through in just a few hours. Only five or six levels exist in the game, and while they’re visually distinct, gameplay-wise, it’s really just varying difficulties of dudes kicking your ass relentlessly. The game does have some nice visuals and music, but overall, just left me feeling frustrated and wanting something far better than what I played.

Stray – I played Stray knowing that it had been nominated for a lot of GotY awards and really expected to be blown away. Instead, I walked away glad that the game was as short as it was. Now, I don’t mean that to be quite as insulting as it probably sounds, but Stray just struck me as a very standard in what I would refer to as “Limbo-likes.” It certainly had good ideas, creative puzzles, and a unique visual style, but just nothing really spectacular in it. The story really needed to elevate this game to where it wanted to be, and it just came off as extremely bland and average. And while the gameplay had its moments as I mentioned, it’s really nothing groundbreaking. It’s decent, but far from excellent. Definitely a missed opportunity in my book.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe – This is a bit unfair of me since this isn’t really a 2022 game (being an expanded port of 2013’s “The Stanley Parable”), but I felt it was worth mentioning. And it’s not that this game is bad. It’s The Stanley Parable, which is a pretty great walking simulator (and one of the earliest examples of that genre). But it’s more expensive than The Stanley Parable, and the additional content wasn’t worth the price in my opinion. While it was meant to be a jab at people who demand additional content from a game that doesn’t need it, it’s hard to see the creator’s point when this product at face value is exactly what it’s trying to parody. It’s hard to be too harsh to this game, since it was also meant to port the game to consoles, but given how much the game was delayed, I feel it either should have been a cheaper, no-frills port, or done something more substantial with the additional content.

Dragon Ball: The Breakers – While objectively, this asymmetrical take on the Dragon Ball universe is probably a mediocre to bad game, I had a lot of fun with this title. Maybe it’s because I’ve never played an asymmetrical game before, maybe it’s because I’m a Dragon Ball fanboy, but this game was really neat. Of course it’s lacking in content. While there’s a roadmap that has already released content, the title was pretty bare-bones at launch with just three raiders and three maps. The monetization was also bad, utilizing some really awful pay-to-win lootboxes that often contained critical skills and characters. And in light of that monetization, the game probably should have been F2P instead of the $20 buy-in Bandai Namco asked for. And while the dev team has been more on top of balance patches than I expected, the balance was really off by the time that I stopped playing. Still, a neat experience and maybe worth a look if you can get the game on sale.

The Good:

Marvel Snap – I’ve gone back and forth on this one, but ultimately it’s a really clever take on the digital card game format that offers a lot of variety. Though RNG can completely screw over an otherwise fun match from no fault of either player, I definitely still had fun playing this one. Though it’s getting a bit less fun now that people know how to play and the ridiculous meta decks are running rampant now. Though the balance team does seem to be working on it, it can still definitely be frustrating. And though the artwork is great, the effects are not. Especially when you upgrade your cards for more visual effects, and a card being “animated” is clearly just a cheap wibbly-wobbly effect on their cape that was probably done in photoshop in like five minutes. Still, the game design is solid and it has that “just one more game” addictiveness that makes these games work, so I can’t be too harsh to it.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands – I got to play this title kind of at the 11th hour of this list, and I definitely enjoyed it. A sequel to the best DLC ever released for the Borderlands Series (Borderlands 2’s “Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep”), it definitely tweaks the formula enough to make it relatively distinct from Borderlands while still keeping plenty of fanservice for those who want it. That being said, the UI has major issues, the writing tends to jump back and forth between great and mediocre, the balance seems off, and in general, it just feels like the game could have clicked a lot more. I might not even be putting it in this section if I didn’t play it with friends, which is definitely how this game is best enjoyed. Still, a solid title, and perhaps the first of a series, so hopefully we’ll get to revisit and improved Wonderlands someday.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land – I’ve got kind of a weird history of Kirby. I’m a big fan of some of his titles (Kirby 64 and Amazing Mirror being the two standouts), whereas many others were just unable to grab my attention. But Forgotten Land came back to remind us why Kirby is still one of the top Nintendo franchises. Admittedly, the game plays a lot like Kirby 3D World, but the puzzles, environment, and the developer’s clever use of Kirby’s copy power definitely makes the game stand out on its own. While I think the game definitely has a lot of room to grow with future entries, this title serves as an excellent proof of concept to show that Kirby can work in 3D. I hope we can potentially see a more open Kirby in the future to really capitalize on this potential.

Pokémon Legends Arceus – It turns out there actually was a good Pokémon game released this year. It was just at the beginning instead of the end. Arceus realizes the “open world” aspect far better than Scarlet/Violet does by actually giving you interesting things to find in the world and real side-quests to pursue. The modified combat system, though a bit janky and poorly explained in-game, is a breath of fresh air for the series, which has been pretty stagnant in terms of actually modifying the main battle system since 4th Gen. And best of all, the new capture mechanic is just a blast. Sprinting through the countryside flinging balls at any wild Pokémon that catches your eye is exhilarating, and makes capturing wild Pokémon (something that, despite popular belief, hasn’t been fun for a very long time) fun again. The game does suffer some serious problems. The textures aren’t great, the game doesn’t run especially well (though not nearly as badly as S/V), the story is still fairly generic, the tutorial drags on way too damn long, and the game still feels like it needed a few more touches to really make it truly great. Still, it was a great step forward for the series which ultimately was a false hope before Scarlet/Violet shit the bed in November.

The Looker – A really clever parody on 2016’s “The Witness.” It’s funny, it’s a solid puzzle game, and it’s completely free. While it’s pretty short, it helps make sure it doesn’t overstay its welcome or drag the joke on too long (See: West of Loathing). Easy recommendation.

Vampire Survivors (and the other Survivor-Likes) – This year, an indie hit burst onto the scene. It cost just a few dollars, had dirt simple graphics and a dirt simple gameplay loop, but goddamn was it fun. It was so fun that in the short amount of time its existed in both early access and full release, it inspired several clones to pop up (Soulstone Survivors and Brotato being the other two I played). And frankly, those are very fun games in their own right. But of course, Vampire Survivors still manages to feel the best somehow. It’s just a brutally fun, near-infinitely replayable experience, and the developers have already managed to churn out a cheap and jam-packed DLC to give the game even more life. Certainly one of the best value games of the year.

Horizon Forbidden West – I’m a bit torn on this game. It’s definitely a serious improvement over the original, with much better writing, plot, and character development (especially since it actually lets some character stick around for long enough to be a part of the story and have a real arc), and the improved world, side-quests, side-activities, and traversal definitely make the game better, the major issue I had with the original game, the combat, is still clunky and frustrating. It’s just a bad idea for 95% of your character’s arsenal to be ranged weapons when 95% of your enemies to be melee based and capable of closing the gap between you in seconds, and whose fat robotic asses will entirely obscure the camera once they do so. I still had a lot of fun in this game and put tons of hours into it, but the next Horizon game definitely needs to do something about the combat.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns – This one came as a bit of a surprise. Turns out that Firaxis was working on a Marvel strategy game in the background. And it’s pretty good! Though I don’t like it nearly as much as Firaxis’ XCOM series, Midnight Suns has some really fascinating ideas to throw into the mix. Adding deckbuilding to the formula, minion enemies that exist as tools to combo off of and fuel your more powerful abilities, and this interest position-based gameplay. Though the gameplay is a bit more shallow than I’d have liked with shorter missions than XCOM, the story and writing is certainly fun enough (if a bit too corny) to make up some of the difference. Pretty surprising since many of their other games have been very light on story, but the fact that Firaxis has some real writing chops is definitely a pleasant surprise.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker – This year, I needed a new Power Wash Simulator to play while I listened to podcasts, and Hardspace: Shipbreaker squeezed into that niche very nicely. Slowly picking apart a ship in the vacuum of space is a really fun and relaxing experience, and it’s definitely made me start looking out more for these fantastical simulation type games.

Across the Obelisk – Definitely my favorite Roguelike of the year. Across the Obelisk is a choose your own adventure deckbuilding epic, and I’m all about it. The game is loaded with content, secret paths, items, cards, pets, and characters to unlock, and best of all, it’s fully cooperative. So few roguelikes (especially these kinds of turn-based roguelikes) are able to pull something like this off, but Across the Obelisk nails it. I can’t wait to see more from this game and these developers in the future.

God of War: Ragnarok – Trust me, I’m surprised that this is here as much as anyone else. Going into this year I thought this was going to take my GotY easily. But even though it missed that mark, it was a really fine follow-up to the masterpiece that was God of War 2018. The animation, the writing, the combat, the characters, Ragnarok is more than a worthy sequel to GoW 2018. Stuffed with content in the form of side quests, hidden areas, side-activities, secret bosses, and just tons of story and lore to unlock even outside of the main quest, it’s just a wonderful experience. That being said, I’m not sure it’s quite as good as 2018. It just seems like 2018 was slightly more cohesive, tightly paced, and well-told as a story. They’re both excellent games, but just a few slight hangups are what keep me from calling it the best game of the year, though it comes damn close to that mark.

Honorable Mention:

Neon White – So this is an addition that I made after the fact. I played this in 2023, but Neon White is an absolute masterpiece. A weird mishmash of Monkey Ball, Danganronpa, and Doom Eternal, this fast paced speedrunning game is an absolute blast. Loaded with clever gameplay designs and a solid story, the time just disappears as you focus down single levels, trying to string together a perfect run for your best time yet, trying to top the efforts of your friends. I don’t think this entry would have made my GoTY had I played it when I first wrote the list, but it definitely would have been top 3.

The Best:

So earlier this year, a certain game was released. I played it a few months after it launched and it didn’t do anything for me, so I dropped it after an hour or two. Early in January of this year I figured I had to give this game at least one more try before I wrote it off entirely. I didn’t think anything would come of it. I wasn’t really a fan of similar games, and even after picking it back up I still felt it wasn’t clicking for me. But as I was trying to explain to myself all of the reasons why I was going to drop this game again, a realization struck me: I’d been playing this game for ten hours straight and had no desire to stop. And that was the moment when I realized that I loved

Yeah, yeah, I know “Elden Ring is the best game of 2022” isn’t exactly a hot take. It has scooped up damn near every GotY award out there, and fans have been drooling over it ever since it was released all the way back in February. But since I’ve failed to get into any FromSoftware game thus far (previously having failed to get absorbed into both Bloodborne and Sekiro), I expected this would be another game for the Soulslike Fans, and I would just get through my life without ever getting into it. So what changed my mind? Was it the story? No, that’s obscure at best, with you needing to read countless codex entries and item descriptions to piece together the plot rather than having it told to you organically. The characters? Hardly. While they look fantastic from a visual design standpoint, barely anyone is present enough to really make much of an impression. The combat? While it’s solid, it’s certainly not enough to make me play anything for… checks Playstation… holy hell, almost a hundred hours over about two and a half weeks!?! The real answer is the world. What Pokemon Scarlet/Violet failed miserably at, Elden Ring succeeds at better than maybe any other open world game I’ve ever played. No matter where you go in this world, there’s always something to find. A new dungeon, a new boss, a new character with a quest, a weapon, a spell, a summon… the game is constantly rewarding you for exploring, which makes you want to explore more. And not just trot across the map from major objective to major objective, but really dig deep into each region, searching every nook and cranny. And it’s not just the above that you’ll find. You’ll literally find Russian nesting dolls of secret areas resting within other secret areas. And by “Secret area,” I don’t mean a room with a chest in it, or even a fully dungeon. I mean a fully fleshed out chunk of the map with its own series of dungeons, bosses, characters, weapons, and secrets of its own. Yes, this game has the balls to hide an entire chunk of the map behind a lock, the key to which is split into two pieces that you need to organically hunt down and find independent of the main quest (and is completely optional!). And then they hide another two fully fleshed out secret areas within that secret area!?! DAMN. And it isn’t just the world that keeps you going, but as I alluded to early, the design of the enemies is so fascinating and at times grotesque that it keeps you playing just to see what the hell they throw at you next. A corrupt king with a dragon’s head grafted to his arm? An orb of giant snakes with a dude’s face plastered on it? A giant… fuckin’… skeleton-scorpion-beetle-snake-ghost… thing? I’m just all about that kind of insane creature design. Like I said, the story is borderline impenetrable without having someone explain it to you. And at times the quests can be completely obtuse to the point that having the wiki open in another window is practically a requirement. And the combat can certainly get very frustrating. But in spite of those problems and my prejudice against these kinds of games going in, I still put nearly a hundred hours into this game, and after all of that I’m still considering another playthrough. And I can’t think of any better recommendation than that. I never thought I’d be writing this sentence, but Elden Ring is my favorite game of 2022.