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Year in Review: Games of 2022
What were your highlights for the year? What were the best things you played? What surprised you? What let you down?
Reflect back on the year and talk about anything and everything related to your gaming experiences in 2022. You do NOT have to limit it to 2022 releases -- anything you played this year counts.
Meta note: Yes, I know this is still a tad on the early side, but I'm trying to space these posts out between groups so that they don't step on each others' toes. I also plan to post this to ~books, ~movies, ~television. I'm not active in ~anime, so if someone wants to take up the mantle for that group (or any others you feel need a Year in Review post), go for it!
I reviewed throughout the year, but I was pretty sure of this at the time and I haven't changed my mind yet--the best game this year was Tunic. It has everything I like in a game: It's cute, it rewards exploration and insight, many hours of entertainment, plenty of collectibles, a fairly original mechanic, interesting boss fights. And of course the little nods to A Link To The Past. I spent 30 hours on it but I could have played a lot more had I not run out of content. I hope the developers make more games. (Hey, it's discounted on Steam this week!)
Ender Lilies and Kena: Bridge of Spirits were also very enjoyable and generally my thing.
I haven't played any game this year other than Beat Saber.
Still, I've watched quite a few. For me, the games of the year are, in alphabetical order:
I watched Return to Monkey Island played as well and as a huge Monkey Island fan since childhood I was fairly happy with it... despite some... baffling choices regarding the framing device.
(Played Inscryption last year, but yeah, 10/10 game!)
I recently finished Pokemon Violet and honestly I really enjoyed it. The performance aspects did marr the experience somewhat, but it was still one of the more memorable games I played this year, in a positive way. I really think if I was 10 when I played it, this game would have blown my mind. It's already selling very well, and I think it's going to become a pretty beloved entry when the nostalgia starts kicking in.
Violet is the most fun I've had with a Pokemon game in a few generations now. Visually a little wonky at times (low-res textures on mountains, low-fps background characters, etc.), but I haven't run into any major bugs or hiccups in my playthrough. I genuinely don't care about the visual issues though, tbh. Graphics are so secondary to literally everything else in a game to me. Some of the decisions and performance issues are baffling, to be sure, but they don't take way from the experience for me.
I really enjoyed the story being split up in 3 different paths, although I did feel a little lost at times and did out-level zones faster than I probably should've. XP-share did help make that a great opportunity for me to keep a very fluid team of Pokemon throughout the game. I usually build a team of 6 and plow through the game with it with some minor adjustments at the end. But in Violet I basically kept swapping different Pokemon around to fit the level of the content I was facing. XP share + XP items from raids meant it was really easy to spin up a fresh team of Pokemon to fit whatever I was doing. It also really helped me out with filling my Pokedex, and let me beat the game with a little over 250 Pokemon in total.
There were so many games I played this year, and a lot of stuff that came out of left field a wildly fun. In no particular order, here are some of my favorite games I played:
Tinykin - so delightful. I loved every moment of it and had so much fun going through the game. It's a pretty quick play compared to some modern games, but it was honestly the perfect length for me. I think the style, sound design, and story are all well done and enjoyable.
Risk of Rain 2 - me and my gaming buddies played A LOT of this. There's just so much background stuff and mysteries that go on throughout it that you try to figure out through all these different playthroughs. It's been pretty rewarding even when I get my ass kicked. I love how individual the unlockable characters are and regret getting it for the xbox. Only downside is I need to get it for PC now for the DLC :')
Vampire Survivors - Weirdly addictive but very, very fun? I stagnated a little bit but when you get going on a run, and get the right combos down, it's very satisfying and chaotic to watch!
Honorable Mentions:
Coral Island - This is a pre-release game, but I really love the style and art, even if it's almost a 1:1 stardew valley clone (a lot of the same setup, and ALOT of the same sounds). But it's still pretty fun to play if not a little buggy and all the feature aren't out yet since it's just a pre-release.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: I just learned that they remastered this game!! Above and beyond my favorite FF game. I played it a lot with my siblings when we were kids and I was so stoked to get started again. I have it on the switch and playing through it has been fun and waaaaaay easier than I remember so that's nice lol! But I'm still only in the first year, so I'm looking forward to seeing how far I can get!
Tinykin is new to me, but the trailer looks good. I'll have to think about giving it a go. Thanks for the suggestion
I've played a ton of Celeste (I'm up to 194 berries!) this year. It wasn't new to me this year, but I unlocked the C sides, beat Farewell, beat all the B sides, and started on golden berries this year, so it feels like it ought to count.
Other highlights (reverse chronologically) include Chicory: A Colorful Tale, Hardspace Shipbreaker, the double header of Recettear and Moonlighter, Ikenfell, Tunic, Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe.
Best game I played this year is a tricky thing to say for sure. They definitely have filled different niches. Celeste always has a new challenge for me, Chicory has the best story, Shipbreaker was the most relaxing, and I didn't know that there were going to be so many queer people in Ikenfell when I started it, so it was continually a pleasant surprise to see the representation.
My most disappointing game was the Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe. I don't know if the style of humor hasn't aged well, or if I'm just not in the right place to enjoy it any more, but I really enjoyed the first game at release and this one just flopped for me. It wasn't bad, but I don't think it was worth the time I put into it.
I played Chicory and I was prepared to love it when I first started, but honestly the game being designed in such a way that you're constantly required to paint the environment made it kind of painful, especially given that you only have four pre-determined colors at any given time.
I found that I enjoyed the painting mechanic much more once I trusted that the pallets chosen for each region would be fine and I found the "paint bucket" brush.
Warhammer 4OK: Darktide is yet another disappointingly unfinished live service, released in a shockingly unstable state that almost sets a new low for minimum viable products. It's got the lot: missing advertised features, a fraction of the content present in previous games, a predatory cash shop running from day 1, embarrassing glitches imported from previous games and often somehow worse, atrocious performance on even the most modern systems, and a series of achievements so frustrating, toxic to team play and bewilderingly ill-conceived that they speak of a hellish development cycle. At least one major system was admitted, after the game was in players' hands, to have been canned and restarted partway through development. Beyond the first few cutscenes there is zero compelling story to speak of.
This isn't Fatshark's first rodeo when it comes to borking a release, but I don't remember the previous games being so bad. The game has, at last check, a "mixed" 67% approval rating on Steam. Don't bother until they finish it. That is expected to be potentially years away, as the company has a reputation for poor communication and reintroducing old issues with every new patch and hotfix. Honestly, I've rarely witnessed such incompetence.
And there you have it: the only game I really gave a crap about this year.
I have terrible memory so I'll probably revise this a few times.
Was it this year that I started playing The Outer Worlds? Because that's probably the best most recent game I have played. I've talked about it a lot, I know, so I won't bore anyone with details.
Though honestly, the game I think I've enjoyed the most this year is Valkyria Chronicles IV. It's one of the few games that manages to mix things up just enough that it's never not exciting.
Although they're technically not games, Valve Software deserves recognition for the Steam Deck and Proton. Together they have managed to make PC games so much more accessible than they have ever been. I'm also really blown away with how fast they managed to get Steam Decks to the players given the circumstances they started in. And they have changed the market so dramatically that I honestly do not think that there's much reason to go back to buying consoles anymore when you can get the same convenience benefits of a console with the added benefits of PC gaming.
Yeah, the Steam Deck and Proton really are incredible. I’m the only person in my friend group who cares about Linux as an operating system in the slightest, but five of us now use a Linux device for gaming. For some of them, it’s pretty much become their primary device.
Also, I’ve been using Proton for years now, but I’m still amazed at how good it is and how many titles it runs. Forza Horizon 5 ran better on my Steam Deck than on my Windows machine. Every time I booted back into the game on Windows after being away from it for a while, I’d get lots of shader compiler stuttering in the beginning minutes of gameplay that I’d just have to sort of play through until they went away. On the Steam Deck I haven’t had that issue at all.
I’m honestly so excited about the future of the Steam Deck and Linux gaming in general. Like, the Deck isn’t even fully baked yet (in some ways it still feels like a beta project), and it’s already so impressive. On the desktop side, it’s at the point where I don’t even bother to check Proton compatibility before trying out a game anymore because most titles I try just work flawlessly.