2022 was good, actually. I moved to Chicago, finally getting out of the shit hole that is Florida (seriously, fuck Florida). Bowie and I visited LA, Seattle, and Cape Cod. He’s still the sweetest little puppy, and I don’t know how I ever lived without him.
I’ve been to so many concerts — Nine Inch Nails (twice!), CHVRCHES, Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Purity Ring, Dragonforce, the list is honestly way too long to continue. I’ve started making things again. Things feel like they’re going well for the first time in a minute.
But enough about all that. Today, we’re here to talk about the games of 2022.
The Ten Best Games of 2022
Or, my favorite, if that’s more your style. Before we continue, spoilers ahead.
Elden Ring
I wake up in a chapel. As I clutch to my sword, I carefully tread through the chapel, eventually losing my life to a multi-limbed monstrosity I can’t describe with any human language. But I wake up somewhere new and venture out into the world above. The Lands Between. I scan the horizon, wondering… where should I go?
I pick a direction and start wandering, only to duck into the bushes as a armored, horseback-riding warrior patrols the area nearby. I cannot fight him now. But I will. One day.
Many days pass. Maybe it’s week. I return to the area that first greeted me upon arriving in The Lands Between. I am ready. I slay the warrior.
I move on. I claim the Elden Throne. Not for me, but for a witch I met along the way.
Elden Ring is everything I want in a game. The awe and exploration of Breath of the Wild marries shockingly well with the immaculate design of From Software’s more linear adventures of the past. It is, without a doubt, my game of the year.
Tunic
As I open my notebook to check my notes, I realize I’ve probably mistranslated something, and upon correcting my notes everything is once again in it’s right place. That’s the magic of Tunic. Beyond being a gorgeous 2D Zelda-esque adventure game with unnecessary Souls-like combat, it has secrets that unfurl as you play, namely a Fez-like in-game language that, once deciphered, massively changes the game you’re playing.
Signalis
I try to break open the door to the ship, but in the process tear off my arms. The force required is too much for my synthetic body to handle. I collapse in the red, Rebuild of Evangelion-esque sands and give up. Never in my life have I been more okay with a so-called “BAD END” to a game. I don’t know what I did wrong, what I missed that closed off the final section of indie horror game Signalis to me, but the vibes — the throwback Resident Evil and Silent Hill game play (with a neat radio mechanic) meets sci-fi anime aesthetics — hit me hard. I started it on Gamepass, but finished it on Steamdeck because while visiting my family on Thanksgiving I kept yearning to play it, and knew that poor Wi-Fi and poor cell signal would make cloud streaming impossible. An absolute must-play.
Norco
How do we deal with the passing of our loved ones? As our final days approach us, what do we turn to? Who do we turn to? Do we reevaluate our spirituality, our views on the afterlife? And how do we process all this, our lives, our traumas, our relationships — against the backdrop of a world inching towards ruin because of capitalism?
I have no idea, but that’s all I could think about as I lay on my couch each night playing through Norco on my Steam Deck. Immaculate art, fantastic writing, and a compelling story drive this point-and-click adventure style narrative title to a must play.
Neon White
Second. I always place second. My friend, who will remain anonymous, always beats me. And they beat me by a landslide. At some stage, they simply become an ideal to strive towards. An impossible goal, but one that drives me to “git gud”.
Neon White’s all about speed, style, and precision. It’s not, despite having cards prominently featured in it, a card game. It’s a level-based time-attack shooter. A Sega Saturn-ass game with anime inspired art and a visual novel story set between make it a potent poison for my tastes. To then think this came from Ben Esposito, who made one of my 2018 favorites, Donut County, acts as a nice surprise sprinkled on top.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Death is inevitable. As child soldiers rush at each other in a conflict they don’t seem to understand or even care about understanding, two warring parties come together. Their lives are short. They live to fight, and then they die. But what if there’s another option? Another path, one of unity rather than division?
Xenoblade Chronicles was an interesting, impressively large game. Especially considering it’s status a title for the under-powered Nintendo Wii. Xenoblade Chronicles X was a gorgeous, fascinating diversion for the Wii U. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was a gorgeous, awful waste of time. I spent 80 hours in that game, slogging along to the end all because of stubborn “I’ve owned this game for 3 years and need to finish it” mentality I had at the start of COVID.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 finally figures things out. I found myself interested in the world, the mystery of who the villains are. And I look forward to resuming it. Even after 20+ hours, I’ve barely scratched the surface. The story is compelling, the characters seem real and interesting, and the game is clearly nodding at the first two titles as it incorporates designs from each in its new world. The combat feels great —just complex enough, but again not as annoying as 2. The other sprawling systems all feel easy enough to just ignore, but rewarding should you choose to engage.
Whatever Monolith does next, I’m finally in place where I can just be excited for it.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
As the all-devourer consumes another lifeform, adding it to its never-ending intelligence and power, I catch myself. This is a children’s game. It’s cute. It’s cuddly. But we all know Kirby is an eldritch being, and golly it seems Hal does too.
The final act of this game feels like Evangelion for kids. I’m not joking when I say that. As someone who’s never quite gotten Kirby aside from The Amazing Mirror for the GBA, the bizarre post apocalyptic setting of Forgotten Land immediately stood out from a lot of games in Nintendo’s catalogue. It’s also a blast to play, and thanks to it being fairly easy, a super good “chill” game.
Citizen Sleeper
Just a few weeks into my time on the citadel, I make a careless mistake. As far as I can tell, it costs someone dearly. It haunts me for the remainder of my time.
Carving my path through the dice rolls, the decision making of who or what I spend my time on, I eventually find my way to a community of space Marxists. I find my crew, and I seek to help them, eventually giving myself to a new way of being.
Citizen Sleeper succeeds by making every choice matter. There’s no going back, and even the best intentions can have dire consequences. Your own carelessness too. That mistake I made? I literally just pressed the A button too many times while reading too fast through a conversation, ultimately choosing a choice (by accident) that harmed another. It informed the rest of my play-through, and not many games make me do that.
And perhaps, the wildest part of all this is when I finished Citizen Sleeper I simply went “That was fine”. And then it forced its way into my brain, staying with me for the rest of the year.
Pentiment
Andres is a horny, but well meaning man who in pursuit of art keeps getting thrown the job of solving murder every time he’s in town. Poor guy.
You don’t see much like Pentiment. It’s got the narrative trappings of a 90s CRPG but it’s not an RPG in the traditional sense. There are no stats. You play a role — Andres is a defined character but your decisions fill in the blanks on parts of his life — but you don’t level up, there aren’t really stats. You just explore a town, and talk to people. It is, somehow, incredibly compelling. And the art isn’t like much you see in the games. I’m so glad Xbox Game Studios took a chance on a project like this and while services like Game Pass could prove harmful in the long run, I couldn't see it happening with out Xbox’s “Netflix for Games” service.
LIVE A LIVE HD
Ten-year-old Cian started catching up on the SNES years he missed through the joys of emulation. Most of that time was spent with games like A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy V (which he had no idea never came to the US til a PlayStation port was released in conjunction with a FFIV re-release), and Chrono Trigger, but at one juncture he played a weird game called Live a Live. He had no idea how to say the name. Was it “Liv a Lie-ve”? “Liv a Liv”? It didn’t matter — he bounced pretty quickly. He made a mistake.
Live a Live HD’s “HD 2D” art style may not work for everyone, but I fucking love it. The music? Impeccable. And the short, bite-sized stories that comprise the game all offer enough variety and zany characters. And then, after you complete the 7 stories… another opens up. And just as it seems like everything has ended, you learn something pivotal about that final tale and it’s connection to the 7 preceding stories. And then you make a choice.
I brought ruin to the world.
The Misses
In a year that lacked many major releases, I didn’t play as many games, step back and go “what happened” but the few that did stuck out.
God of War Ragnarok
I wanted to love Ragnarok. I know how hard the team worked to make this. I know I’m in a minority in thinking it’s not a worthy successor to the original. But I’m not sorry for that, and I’m not trying to be a contrarian. This game just didn’t work for me.
The characters are wonderful, and their interactions are equally so. But I can get that in films, I can get that in TV, I can get that in any other form of storytelling. I can get that in games solely dedicated to narrative and character interaction. God of War is an action game. And it falls flat for me. It doesn’t feel meaningfully better than the 2018 one (which I loved, and made my 2018 best of list), and it feels like a downgrade in a lot of ways. Combat encounters feel poorly designed for a camera that follows so closly behind the player. The puzzles, the weakest part of the last game, continue being bland, uninteresting, and often frustrating — I wasted time trying to hit something only to realize I was just a pixel off. If I wanted a pixel hunt, I’d play a 90’s adventure game. And the new weapon? The Draupnir Spear? It isn’t a particularly interesting addition to Kratos’ arsenal.
The addition of Freya as a companion and Atreus as a playable character are the strongest things in this game. I actually wish I could play as Atreus more, he’s faster and more agile than his papa and its better suited to my play-style. But it’s called God of War, not God of Deception, I suppose.
It took me over 30 hours to finish this game, and had it been 10 hours shortly I think I would’ve enjoyed it a level similar to the original, but it drags. It drags so much.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Pokémon: Scarlet
Two interesting ideas, marred by poor tech. While the open world design of both games is a fresh of breath-air for the aging franchise, neither quite hit the mark. Scarlet is the more egregious on the tech front, but perhaps the stronger game. That doesn’t mean I can ignore my Switch crashing twice while playing it, the single digit FPS at times, etc. though — this is not a polished product and it doesn’t meet that Nintendo level of quality I expect, even from second party titles. Arceus’s technical issues aren’t as prominent, but muddy, poor textures make the world look ugly and dated. It also suffers from repetitive design, and an overly long ‘post-game’ that’s really just the actual final part of the story. Hopefully the triumvirate of Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, GameFreak can solve whatever issues are leading to these haphazard releases and restore Pokemon to its former glory.
Triangle Strategy
Triangle Strategy is fine, actually. But it’s just so horrendously paced. The game starts and you do your usual Japanese Tactics RPG battle. It’s solid! And then…
Political machinations. And not the intriguing kind, at least nothing that stands out. Characters talk. They talk some more. I can’t tell you their names in these scenes. And that’s the issue. The world feels bland, the characters don’t immediately ingratiate themselves, but the opening salvo of the game is so focused on that. There is not enough tactics in the early hours of this game. And that fundamentally hurts it. It takes way too long to get going, and not in the NieR “stick with it for 30 hours” way.
What I think makes it stick out more is Square releasing this in the same year as Tactics Ogre: Reborn, a remaster I haven’t played but that I hear is a great re-release of a fantastic tactics title.
Soul Hackers II
I’m playing Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers again on my New Nintendo 3DS at the moment. It’s dated, sure but it’s complex and fun and not like much we get these days. So, I was surprised and excited to see Atlus announce a sequel.
But the lack of an SMT branding there is important. It seems, like Persona before it, Atlus hopes to make this its own thing. And in this case, its “baby’s first SMT”. And that’s okay! I think there’s plenty of room for a streamlined, shorter, easier Shin Megami Tensei offshoot. But I genuinely don’t think this is the way to do it — so many key systems are hyper-simplified or stripped away that the um… soul is gone, and the game’s narrative doesn’t really do its fantastic characters justice. There has to be a path forward for this series that doesn’t strip so much of the core away that it reduces it down to “yet another JRPG”.
Other Notable Games
Some of these games were contenders for my top 10. Some are just simply fascinating experiments that I can’t stop thinking about. Some are just… not 2022 games?
Sonic Frontiers
As I scale the colossus, I mean Titan, Kellin Quinn, frontman of screamo band Sleeping with Sirens wails about how he’ll keep going til the end of time. He’s undefeatable. Although maybe the “he” in that sentence is everybody’s favorite(?) corndog-loving, 90s cool blue blur.
Sonic Frontiers is a headscratcher. It’s the best Sonic game in a very, very long time and while it honestly misses the mark mostly it’s a wild swing that you don’t see much of. Sonic is the absolute last character I would’ve expected to be placed in a Breath of the Wild style open-world. He’s the last character I would expect to have a skill tree. He’s the last character I would expect to engage in Shadow of the Colossus style boss battles. Hell I wouldn’t even expect him to have a screamo-inspired boss battle theme. I figured Sega would save that for Shadow the Hedgehog 2.
Vampire Survivors
Look, I mean… if you know, you know.
Trombone Champ
Let’s get this out of the way. The actual gameplay is quite good. It’s a just different enough bent on the rhythm game genre to feel different and unique. It just so happens you’re playing derpy trombone music.
What I haven’t seen captured in the meme-y videos of people playing popular Guitar Hero tracks like “Through the Fire and Flames” is that aside from the colorful, easy-going aesthetics of the actual menus and gameplay… there’s a weird FromSoft-style story of ruin and baboons and shit. It’s a weird mishmash and the exact kind thing I’m here for.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R
I never got to play JJBAASB on PS3. But it looked just good enough to be a fun time with friends, even if it’s maybe on the level of titles like Street Fighter, MvC, Tekken, Dragonball FighterZ, etc.
And then last year they announced JJBAASBR and I was ecstatic. And it’s fun! Pitting members of the Joestar bloodline against each other, letting Phantom Blood Dio face off against his Stardust Crusaders iteration in a solid fighting game dripping with the trademark JJBA style is a simple pleasure, but one I recommend wholeheartedly.
Metal Gear Solid 4
A wise man once said:
War has changed. It’s no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It’s an endless series of proxy battles fought by mercenaries and machines. War — and its consumption of life — has become a well-oiled machine.
Wait, no. Sorry. This is just some Kojima bullshit. This year I started on the process of playing each entry in the MGS franchise, a series I’ve played a little of but never finished a single entry. With the rumors of a PlayStation+ overhaul looming, I — in a less than ideal fashion — started with the saga’s conclusion.
Playing Metal Gear Solid 4 over PlayStation Now is not an ideal experience. But the game is fascinating. It’s not necessarily good, but it’s fascinating and that counts for something. And … you just don’t really see games like this anymore. MGSV is a wholly different thing than this still trapped on the PS3 entry in the franchise.
It’s also a fantastic game to highlight the weakness in Sony’s streaming service. This is a game that ends with about an hour of cutscenes. PlayStation Now will stop streaming after a certain amount of inactivity. Never have I had to be so vigilant watching the closing scenes of a game.
After finishing MGS 4 I decided that I might as well lean into the nonsensical order I’m experiencing these games in and played Metal Gear Rising (which rips). I’m excited to play the remaining titles on my list in release order— MGS, MGS2, MGS3, MGS Peace Walker, and MGSV.
Other notable titles played in 2022
Presented in list form because I have nothing more to say…
- The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls
- Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition
- Lost Judgement
- Ico HD
- Shenmue II HD
- TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge
- Final Fantasy VI: Pixel Remaster
- Metroid: Samus Returns
Looking Forward
Games I’m excited for in the year ahead…
- Final Fantasy XVI
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
- Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
- Resident Evil 4 Remake
- Dead Space Remake
- Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
- Alan Wake 2
- Lies of P
Stay tuned for more wrap-up content! We’ve still got movies and music to talk through.
