The 2022 Moosies Video Game Awards.

For anyone who regularly checks out what I write on this old blog of mine, I don't fault them for thinking this would be the first time I'd forgo this yearly tradition. Doing my game of the year stuff up as my silly little awards thing, and writing quite a lot. Given that I only wrote five other blogs this year, none of them after June, and only really about three games (two of which I wrote about twice (one of which didn't even release in 2022)), even I'm kind of surprised that I got my act together enough to write this.

And, as one might expect, this is at least partly because of the games of 2022. It wasn't exactly the most packed year, after all. Many years have dry spells, but 2022 definitely felt like one of the driest, and longest in recent memory. Thankfully we got some much needed nourishing (game) rain in the fall, and I was in fact, able to play enough games released this year that I didn't need to include MultiVersus as a pity entry. Which is not meant to be mean to MultiVersus, for what it is I think it's pretty fun. The monetization is pretty bad, though.

That said, I do want to mention a bit of a change in the format this year for the Moosies. Usually I have my top ten list, and between the numbered entries I give out “awards” to other games that didn't make the cut, as a means to write about other games while maintaining the integrity of that arbitrary ten games. Given the low number of 2022 games that I played, instead of taking the easy route and only writing about ten games, I'm instead using that space to write about older games that I played for the first time in 2022, and a couple ongoing games. One of which I can never escape, and one that has only recently gotten its claws into me.

Honestly, I came very close to doing the thing some (many?) people do, and have my top ten list be a list of ten games I played this year, instead of just ten released this year. But I played enough 2022 games that I don't need to crack that emergency glass just yet. Also, I doubt anyone reading this recalls, but my increased focus on older games I played this year does take me back to the early years of the Moosies, where I had an entire separate writeup dedicated to awarding the older games I played during the year. Over time that turned into giving an “Old Game of the Year” award to one game, and some mentions to a couple runners up.

But enough with the intro, time to get into the games with the limpest of awards...

Game I most wish I had played, but haven't...yet (of the year): Xenoblade Chronicles 3.

A decade ago I really enjoyed the first Xenoblade Chronicles, and haven't touched any of the other games in the series. I almost played X. Hearing that the story wasn't great, and that it took at least thirty hours to get access to the mechs (the thing that most appealed to me) shied me away from it. Then XC 2 released, and while not having a Switch at the time was a factor, even if I did I disliked the character designs so much that I probably would have stayed away anyway.

But XC 3? That game looks really cool! The story and characters sound really interesting! Everything I know and have seen about that game makes me think that when I do eventually play it, I'll like it a LOT. So why didn't I play it? Well, sometimes it just happens that I'm too busy with other games to want to get around to playing a hundred hour game. Such is the woes of buying into a games subscription service and feeling like I need to get the most out of my yearly fee, thus leaving me less time to play newer releases.

Runner up: Sonic Frontiers.

This is genuinely, and sincerely, the most I have wanted to play a new Sonic game since I was like, fifteen? The last two Sonic games I actually bought were Sonic Rush (DS sidescroller that I remember liking) and Shadow the Hedgehog...where I got every ending in that game. I don't remember which of the two was more recent, but that's beside the point. The point is that they actually did something fairly different by putting Sonic into a more open world-esque game, and for as strange and peculiar as it is, that only makes me want to play it more. Some day I will play this game, and hopefully write about it. But I guess that part remains to be seen.

10. Martial Arts Game of the Year: Sifu.

Sifu is a game that primarily sets out to do one thing, and excels at it. It's a game about a martial artist getting their revenge against the people who killed their father, and as a game about punching and kicking through a lot of enemies, it's great. There's enough depth to the combat to be engaging, but not enough to ever be overwhelming (even if there's a couple skills I never got the timing down for).

It might not be a fighting game level of depth (despite what The Game Awards wanted people to believe), but it's a whole lot of fun. Whether taking on large groups of different enemy types, or harrowing duels against the end of level bosses, it's often very difficult, but never to the point of losing that core sense of fun. Maybe sometimes the excitement was lessened as I found myself having to learn bosses' patterns, and memorize when the best opportunities to counter attack were, but it was still fun.

Sifu also has some really cool levels, aesthetically. The museum level in particular is neat enough through the bulk of it, fighting around sculptures, and other pieces of odd art, but it gets super cool later one when it gets less...literal, for lack of a better word? I'm still not sure if what's going on in these levels when stuff like that happens is supposed to be supernatural, or in the main character's head, as some sort of visual representation of their mindset on this quest for revenge, but either way, there's some really rad visuals going on, and that's cool.

Probably my biggest complaint with the game though, is that it only has five levels, and the rest of the game feels like it was built around a way to artificially extend the total play time. The levels only take a half hour, maybe forty-five minutes each to finish, so a full run from beginning to end would only be, at most maybe four hours long. I guess for a game at $40 full price they didn't think that was going to be a great sell, so there's the whole die, age up, and etc mechanic.

That does feel mean to say it's only there to extend the game's length, since it does tie in nicely to the game's whole theme about revenge. Yes, the game where a core mechanic is that death causes the main character to age at an increasing rate has something to say about what revenge does to the revenge seeker, and it isn't in favor of it. It's not subtle, but it works as a nice way to tie the story and game design together, and what are games for if not doing just that? That's something games can do and non-interactive media can't, so I think it's worth praising.

That said, as much as I did enjoy my time throughout, and having to replay levels to keep unlocking new skills, and get better in order to progress at younger ages so I could have a healthy number of years left going into the absolutely brutal final boss, at a point I did think it was getting to be a bit much. Not the game's core difficulty, the reason why I didn't want to turn the game down to easy was reading that among other things, it also decreases the aggressiveness of the AI, and that I enjoyed. That challenge was core to my enjoyment of the game, and for me, turning that down after getting so used to it would have just left me disappointed.

But I didn't, and I finished the game. And (I guess spoilers?) I also got the good ending that requires sparing all the bosses. Which wasn't easy, but I got it done. With my character old and grey, so no, I didn't get the Trophy for beating the game with my character under fifty years old. I bet I could get that one if I really wanted to. The one for under twenty-five though, I think I'd probably have to turn the game down to easy to get that down, and at that point, I'm not that into Trophy hunting.

Anyway, it's a really fun game. Only ten on the list because despite being fun, I do feel like the story side of it is super basic, even if I do appreciate that they tied the “revenge will kill those who seek it” theme into the game.

But not to end this on a sour note, I can't believe I forgot to mention the quality of the game's animations, and the quantity of them. They're all really good, and that's one of the key reasons why the game works, and is so fun. I'm not super knowledgeable about anything martial arts related, and I haven't even seen that many martial arts films, but at least the stuff the main character and enemies do in this game look cool. Plus there's a much larger number of finisher animations than most games get, so even if there's repetition, it's not nearly as much as most games. And that's key to keeping the game looking and feeling cool. It still looks and moves like a video game, but like a much more dynamic one than most games in this sort of space achieve, and that's cool.

Plus mops and brooms can be used as pole-style weapons, and that's fun. That feels very “martial arts film” to me, and it's also just funny to beat up people with a broom.

Sifu also wins:

• Best brawling.
• Best hand to hand combat.
• Best use of brooms/mops.
• Martial arts based finisher moves of the year.
• Nightclub of the year.
• Museum of the year.
• Talisman of the year.
• Best tying in of a central theme of the story to a central game mechanic of the year.

Best old game to play whilst listening to podcasts: Mario's Super Picross.

I don't think I've ever written about it here, but I've actually come to really enjoy Picross style games. Those ones about filling in squares in a grid based on number clues, and once it's done, it looks like something. But for whatever reason (mostly my own cheapness), I've not bought any myself. I've just played that Konami one from a few years ago, and now more recently the Mario one on the Nintendo Switch Online Super Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Video Games Archive Whatever It Is They Call It.

And while it's certainly fun to plug away at, I am still baffled by the choices of images in the Picross puzzles in this one. I was expecting it to be an array of classic Mario characters, items, etc. By the point of the SNES, there were plenty of games to draw from for this. But instead it's almost all real world objects, animals, things like that. It's just bizarre.

I do, however, appreciate that Wario has his own set of puzzles, which I preferred because his rule set differs from Mario's. In Mario's, there's a time limit of thirty minutes, and every mistake reduces the time remaining, by an increasing number of minutes. For Wario, the timer ticks up, meaning no limit, but he doesn't correct mistakes like Mario does. I like that a lot more, especially in the context of playing the Switch version where the only thing stopping me from rewinding and undoing the time loss on Mario's puzzles is my own willpower. Which as can be assumed, is not strong.

Anyway, it was a really fun way to keep everything other than my ears busy during podcasts, and ever since I finished it, I've been left wanting for more. Maybe one of these days I'll have to actually spend money on a Picross game.

9. Cat Simulator of the Year: Stray.

Stray certainly got a lot of attention for being a game where the protagonist is a cute little kitty cat. And I certainly see the appeal, with convincing use of the DualSense triggers to scratch carpets and furniture, and a dedicated meow button. However, it was the robot people with TV screens for faces, the dystopian future cyber city, and the weirdly gross flesh monstrosities that really stuck with me.

Well, that's being dishonest, the part with the cute cat was good too, despite the fact that the game is fairly arbitrary with where the cat can and can't go. It's not a true open world cat simulation, more of a guided experience, which is fine. For the type of game that it is, it's probably better to limit the cat's parkour, it just would have been nice if it was more consistent with where the playable areas are.

Given that cats are very agile creatures, and the cat's mobility is one of the first things I wrote about, it might seem like Stray is a platformer, but it's really an adventure game first and foremost. It's about solving puzzles to proceed, or getting items to then get other items, and so on. And it's good! Maybe not super great in any one regard, but it's pretty good. Definitely elevated by the novelty of the kitty and the cool robot people.

Truly though, of all the things in Stray, it's those fleshy eye monstrosities that I just...can't get out of my mind. They're not overtly disturbing, certainly not more so than any other games with things of that nature. This just doesn't seem like the sort of game that's going to go in that direction until suddenly the cat finds itself in a room surrounded by enormous eyes growing out of the walls, and it's something else.

I don't feel like I've anything else to say about the game. It was charming, occasionally a little gross-adjacent with those eyes, but mostly charming. The cat and robots are cute, and it was mostly a cozy fun game. I know maybe not the most rousing thing to say about a game in a top ten list, but I had a pretty good time with it.

Stray also wins:

• Cat of the year.
• Robot NPCs of the year.
• Meowing of the year.
• Best sleeping.
• Most traffic cones/best cones.
• Traffic cone hat of the year.
• Cardboard boxes of the year.
• Scratching of the year.
• Best purring.
• Weirdest fleshy eye monstrosities of the year.

Duology of older games I really should have played sooner: Gravity Rush 1 & 2.

This is a case where I'm genuinely not sure how I didn't get around to playing these games much sooner than I did. I can't even say, “I didn't have a Vita” as an excuse, given that I clearly played the PS4 remaster of it, which has existed for quite a while now. Anyway, I'm at least half a decade late to the party, but I'm really glad to have finally fallen for these games.

Manipulating gravity to fall around these weird cities in the sky, once I got used to it, was super fun! It's a level of freedom of movement that most games don't really afford. Like, how many other games let you just jump off the level, then halt in mid air, and fall back up, land on the underside of the level, and run around collecting stuff? It could definitely be a tad disorienting at times, but thankfully the games usually don't require a huge amount of precision with it to get by.

The first game was probably very impressive for what the Vita could do, but the second still managed to make my jaw drop with the sheer scale of the world. The area with the literal skyscrapers was especially so huge, and sprawling, that just thinking about it makes me want to load up the game again and just zoom around. My only complaint is that I wish it had gotten a patch to unlock the framerate when played on PS5, because the extra smoothness from those bonus frames would really make the game soar.

The Gravity Rushes have really interesting stories too. The second one in particular spends a lot of time dealing with things like a greedy upper class (that literally lives in mansions in the higher clouds) taking advantage of the (again, literal) lower classes that go down from those skyscrapers to a very colorful city, and down below the smog layer, to the slums. This part of the story was by far my favorite, because it culminates in the downtrodden rising up and overthrowing their oppressors, which was cool! That should happen more in real life, in my opinion.

But then the game goes off in some other direction, and that back third lost a lot of my interest in the story, sadly. It also didn't help that Gravity Rush 2 wants to require a lot more from the player than the first one did, and has way more side quests, which often had a tendency to get tedious or frustrating. So rather than pick a favorite between the very focused but limited in scope original, or the sweeping vast (and too ambitious for its own good) sequel, I've written about both. Because I think they're both well worth playing, and in retrospect I regret not playing them sooner.

Apparently 2 originally had some Strand Game elements that sounded very cool, but the servers have long since been shut off. And that's truly a bummer. I'd say I hope we get a third one some day, but that's probably not much more likely than there ever being a Tokyo Jungle 2.

8. Most Enjoyable Game Despite Rampant Screen-Tearing of the Year: Neon White.

As is fairly evident by that “award,” I'm a bit...torn on Neon White. Very specifically the PS5 version of the game, which is the one I played. I'm not a PC gaymer for a variety of reasons, and everything I heard about the Switch version sounded like the compromises were too great, so I figured I'd wait until it came to PS4/5, and play it then. So when it was announced to do just that for mid-December, just in time for me to play it and have a full top ten list without having MultiVersus as a pity entry, I bought it day one because I thought, “surely it'll be perfectly fine, it's the PS5!”

I don't think I should have expected the game to simply not have V-Sync on at all, and have so much screen-tearing. I think it was a reasonable assumption to believe a game like this would be fine, but the screen sure does tear any time the camera moves. But...I kept playing it anyway...because the game is pretty great.

I'm a known enjoyer of first person platforming games. I like both Mirror's Edge games, Titanfall 2 is an all time classic, and even Ghostrunner was pretty good, despite it having quite a few extremely frustrating sections. So of course Neon White is completely up my alley, to the point where I was willing to put up with the tearing, even as I'm sure it'll get patched at some point long after I've done anything I could possibly want to do in the game.

The weirdest thing though, is as rampant and constant as the tearing is, in the heat of the moment, Neon White moves at such a blistering pace that I don't actually notice it. It's only when I need to stop and slow down, like looking for collectibles, that it becomes unavoidable. And it sucks, it really genuinely does, to the point where I would not recommend people play this version of the game at the moment. I was originally going to put Neon White at number ten on this list because of the tearing, but as I kept playing it, I just couldn't.

Sifu and Stray are both pretty good games, but this is the first one on this list that I think, at least at its core, is genuinely great, so I didn't feel right penalizing it for a technical issue. Not when I know in the past I've not let things like that get too much in the way, when I know I've played games with worse technical issues.

As for the game itself, I know I compared it to the Mirror's Edges and Titanfall 2s of the world, but it really still feels like its own thing. It's not a parkour game like those, there's no wall-running, no sliding. Aside from a (at times too) floaty jump, all the movement skills are tied to cards that also double as guns, and the key to success is in using what the levels lay out to dash through as quickly and efficiently as possible.

There's not really too much variety in ways to figure out how to beat individual levels, as most levels require defeating all the demons along the way to finish, and that effectively works the same as checkpoints in open world racing games. Of course, there's definitely spots with shortcuts to be had, and I'm sure speedrunners have found ways to obliterate the levels. There is an in game hint system for shortcuts that I do appreciate, but most of the time I think those can be figured out just by thinking about it logically. If all the demons need to be defeated to open the exit, then a long stretch with no demons is usually optional.

Even with the glaring tearing, I still think it's a great game. Just one I wish I could have experienced in a purer state initially.

Neon White also wins:

• Platformer of the year.
• Card game of the year.
• Best combination rocket launcher and grappling hook.
• Okay-est story of the year as evidenced by the fact that I forgot to write about it at all and then just included that here instead.
• Leaderboard chasing game of the year.

Most baffling old game that I really shouldn't have been baffled by because I'd played the previous entry: Shenmue II.

For context, I first played the original Shenmue around the year 2005, so a fair amount after the release of the original, and also Shenmue II. Over the proceeding years, I kept thinking about playing Shenmue II, but never did. I thought that if we were never going to get III, why bother? But, events transpired such that I had access to Shenmue III via PS+ Extra, and it would have been extremely silly to play that without ever having played II. And, since I think the remasters of the first two are only sold as a bundle, I replayed that first one before getting to II. For as much as Shenmue is a...unique game, I do still appreciate its ambitions, and find the (english) voice acting to be very funny, even after all these years.

I had no idea what to expect going into Shenmue II, and even after replaying the first one, II still managed to leave me...baffled. Fundamentally it's still the same sort of game. Ryo goes around talking to people to figure out where to go next, occasionally fights and Quick Time Events happen, and it all moves at a pace akin to molasses.

None of that surprised me, but what did is just how much bigger the scope of the spaces in this game are than the original. Hong Kong is labyrinthine in a way that I never expected Shenmue to be, and it was overwhelming, confusing, and sadly a bit frustrating at times. But even more...impressive is that Hong Kong is only the first half of the game, because the back half (well, most of it) is in Kowloon, which on the surface is easier to navigate...at least until entering buildings.

And believe me when I say that the elevator and stairs situations in these buildings made me want to strangle Yu Suzuki. Not to death, just mildly. But seriously, I frequently felt like I was losing my MIND trying to navigate the buildings. Truly and genuinely.

First off, this part of the game is filled with buildings that go up a good number of floors, including one building where Ryo and his thief “friend” Ren need to sneak, fight, and QTE through seventeen floors to reach someone. Even before then, Ryo's quest leads him all up and down quite a few of these buildings, which is a task that can make even the strongest of wills break before Yu Suzuki.

The thing is, these are all grimy old, half dilapidated buildings where everything is falling apart. As such, elevators don't go to every floor. Now, one might think that this would mean an elevator would only go up say, five floors, and then stairs or another elevator would be needed to go up the rest of the way.

No, of course that isn't the case, that would make too much sense.

Shenmue II instead features elevators that will go to say, floors 1-4, and also 6-8, but not floor 5. Why? I have no idea! Why are there still doors for the elevators on the floors they don't go to??

Perhaps worse is that the stairs are just as bad, but they don't even have a good excuse! They're just gated off! This means that navigating some of these buildings, which is required to progress, means a mix of moving between elevators and stairs is needed.

Here's an example: I needed to get to this fighting ring to advance the story, and it was hidden deep in the bowels of a building. So I go in there, talk to someone who says I need to take the stairs up to the fourth floor, then an elevator down to the basement. After that, I had to go down three more flights of stairs, where after fighting exactly one person, I had to turn around and go back through all that again.

I can only imagine that Yu Suzuki read about some weird building in Kowloon that was like this one, and then built half a game around them.

So, all that was baffling enough, but I still enjoyed the Kowloon part of Shenmue II because it actually felt like the story was starting to move, and maybe even get interesting. It even felt like it came to a good, exciting climax at the end of the Kowloon section! Shenmue II ending with a climactic fight atop a tall building as the sun rose (or maybe set, I don't remember) in the distance would have been cool.

Instead there was another three or four hours of strolling along the Chinese countryside with a new character, and again, I am just baffled by this game.

Is Shenmue II good? Is the first one actually any good, or am I just shrouded in nostalgia that lets me enjoy a game that is too slow, and very little of any interest happens in the story?

Who can say? And I still have one more entry in the series to play...soon enough...

7. Rattiest Game of the Year: A Plague Tale: Requiem.

A thought I had during this game, is that this series is extremely in the “sad dad” style, just with an older sibling instead of a dad. And, to me, someone who is the oldest sibling in my family, and most certainly not a parent of any sort, that makes this game, and Amicia more relatable in a lot of ways than all the sad dad protagonists out there. No, I've never had to tactical espionage my way through enemy guards whilst in the midst of a fourteenth century French rat plague, but I have had to try to placate and entertain young kids while trying not to pull my own hair out.

Despite that though, and despite the fact that on paper I think this game has a lot of great things in it, and despite it being an exceptionally sad game in terms of everything that happens in it, and to the main duo of Amicia and Hugo...it didn't actually have as much of an emotional impact on me as it feels like it should have? I mostly bring this up because I feel like if anything, media bringing me to the verge of tears, or outright crying has become more common in recent years. I dunno if that's a result of the never ending pandemic and modern hellworld we live in slowly wearing me down, or my allowing myself to be more open to things, but I found myself feeling deeply emotional and almost ready to cry while watching A Muppet Christmas Carol a few weeks ago. A movie I've seen countless times in my life, mostly as a child, and previously had never felt quite like that before.

All that said, even if I didn't cry at Requiem's deeply sad ending (which I won't spoil), I did still like the game. I'd probably say I still like the first game more, but Requiem does expand the game part a good amount. More in the way of companions with different abilities to help traverse areas and deal with enemies, and more tools for Amicia too. It's cool to have a pirate lady use a weird gem to refract light and set dry grass on fire to distract guards. It's also cool to have a crossbow now, even if it's kind of messed up to be playing a game starring a teen (I actually don't know how old Amicia is supposed to be) who kills as many people as she does.

Probably my favorite thing in Requiem is the performance of Charlotte McBurney as Amicia. She was good in the first game, but truly exceptional here. Amicia has to watch over her younger brother, friends, try to navigate this horrible plague, and again, she's still relatively young. She's being forced to do things no person should have to do, and hasn't had the chance to live a normal life, beyond a few fleeting moments here and there. So she snaps, and just loses it multiple times across the game, and McBurney's performance is fantastic. I may not have cried, but she gave me chills.

Then there's the rats. There's a lot of them. No, whatever number of rats might be imagined by the phrase “a lot of them,” multiply it. The number of rats in this game goes beyond absurd, beyond ludicrous. The rats literally flood entire cities. Flowing like water, crushing buildings and tearing them to bits. There were moments when my jaw dropped, because the level of destruction on display was way beyond what I expected to happen.

Only issue being that the moments of rat-based awe are mostly only for moments that may as well be quick time events. They aren't literally, but they're still very scripted moments of just running away as fast as possible. In normal game play, I don't doubt that it's is rendering more rats at a time than the previous game, but I don't think it made any real impact on the core of the game play. Which isn't a bad thing by any means, just worth keeping in mind.

So that's A Plague Tale: Requiem. I liked it, but I wish I had liked it more. So it ends up at a lovely number seven on this list.

Also, props to the game for having a photo mode that has the most truly lacking restrictions of any photo mode I've used. Literally nothing stopping the camera from plunging straight into the ground, and looking back up through the world. Even during cutscenes, there don't seem to be any restrictions on moving the camera in photo mode! Conversely, it continues a trend that really bothers me where the camera in photo modes isn't inverted, despite my inverting it for the normal game play. Between the two obviously the game part is more important, but it's just such a bizarre oversight.

A Plague Tale: Requiem also wins:

• Outstanding performance: Charlotte McBurney as Amicia.
• Most rats.
• Most British French game of the year.
• Button mapping of the year: Press Down for Ratsense.
• "Best"/most absurd photo mode of the year.
• Stealth game of the year.
• Siblings of the year.
• Most whispering.
• Game I would least want to play in Smellovision.
• Turret sequence of the year.

Co-op Game I wish I played more of: Deep Rock Galactic.

I've spent an increasing amount of time over the last few years playing co-op focused games with friends, which is great! Playing games with friends is always good, but I definitely tend to lean toward the ones that are purely cooperative, so there's less of an element of, “I'm not good playing against other humans so I'm dragging us down.” And of the ones I've played, Deep Rock Galactic is by far one of my favorites, even if the amount of time I've actually spent playing it is sadly much lower than I wished.

Deep Rock Galactic asks the question, “What if fantasy dwarves were in the far flung future,” and answers it with, “obviously they'd be hyper capitalists that have strip mined the universe so badly that they're resorting to sending people down to work on a planet inhabited with unending swarms of giant bugs that want nothing more than to kill any intruders.” Game play wise, that means creating a custom dwarf (or really more just choice of beard and armor aesthetic), picking one of four very distinct classes, then embarking on a handful of mission types through procedurally generated levels. Mine X amount of a resource, find Y number of alien eggs, fix a space-oil pump, escort a big drilling machine, etc.

What makes Deep Rock really stand out is that despite the game coming from (as far as I know) a very small team, it really feels like almost everything it does, it does a lot better than other co-op games I've played. The classes feel meaningfully different, to the extent that lacking any one class does leave the squad feeling like something is missing. But not in a game ruining way, as I never actually played with a full group of four, only three at most. More of a, “oh, I wish we had the big room filling light from this class, but we'll make do,” or, “it'd help if we had this other class' big drills to tunnel faster.”

Forgive me for not remembering the names of every class, I only played the engineer (which can deploy auto-turrets and has a gun that creates makeshift platforms), and as this award implies, I haven't played the game in a long while. Just believe me when I say that every time I played Deep Rock, it felt like something new and exciting was happening, even when a friend and I ended up playing through the early tutorial missions multiple times as we were helping different people get through them at different times.

Both the way the levels themselves are shaped, and how the different abilities can be used make Deep Rock a more varied experience when effectively just playing the “same” missions multiple times than any other game I can think of. Plus, said abilities can have really creative uses when someone needs to get out of a tight spot. Like using my platform gun to make a staircase up and out of a pit.

On top of all that, I think it has a cool art style, and a solid sense of humor. It's fun to go to the bar before a mission, drink flagons of dwarven ale, and dance a pirouette while headbanging metal plays on the jukebox.

What a great game. I just want to play more, but that's largely dependent on my friends wanting to play more of it over the various FOMO never-ending games we've gotten ourselves sucked into. But at least I know Deep Rock Galactic will be there, flagon of ale at the ready, when I do come back.

6. Most Chaotic Game of the Year: STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN.

What a weird trajectory STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN (hereafter referred to as SOPFFO) had pre-release. It looked laughable in the reveal trailer, then the early demo released at the same time was initially literally unplayable. After it was patched, the demo...was actually pretty fun. Yes, the dialog was...what it was, and the technical side of it was...lacking, but the core game was fun! So I kept my eyes on it, played at least one more demo before release (also fun), and as evidenced by it being on this list, I quite enjoyed the final game.

For a game that at first blush feels like Team Ninja made a watered down version of Nioh, SOPFFO has a lot of depth to the combat, it's just not all in the same places as it was in the Niohs. Those games had stance switching, whereas SOPFFO has job switching, and it has a LOT of jobs. And it smartly doesn't give access to nearly all of them out of the gate, as that would be beyond overwhelming. Instead they're unlocked by progressing to different parts of the skill trees for each job, and it's all laid out in a way that makes logical sense. The more advanced magic classes require leveling up the more basic one first, for example, and jobs that use the same weapon classes often had tied progression as well.

And like Nioh, SOPFFO allows for customization of combo ending moves, which on paper doesn't sound that impressive, but in practice can have a big impact on how fights go. Certain moves have elemental affinities, and if an enemy is weak to say water, it can be handy to have quick access to a move that creates a small tidal wave, without having to take the time to cast a full water spell.

Speaking of, there's some pretty cool interactions throughout regarding elemental stuff. Like putting out fires on fire enemies, but sometimes actually the best way to fight fire is with fire after all. There's these floating fire ball type enemies, and if they're hit with fire (including using their own fire attacks against them with Jack's enemy ability stealing skill) enough times, they explode, and damage other enemies around them. Now these sorts of interactions aren't always obvious, and there's maybe not as many across the game as a whole as I wished, but they're still cool.

The combat is absolutely the highlight of SOPFFO, which given it was made by Team Ninja, isn't the least bit surprising. On the default difficulty it certainly isn't as hard as Team Ninja's games usually are, so I ended up turning it up to hard at some point along the way, which I think also made the game drop better loot or something? Truth be told, I don't remember the intricacies of all that stuff, but it's neat to have one of “these games” (Souls games) that has a variety of difficulty options that players can switch between pretty much whenever they like.

I think I went back and forth between normal and hard a handful of times in the early parts of the game, but later on stuck mostly to hard. I had really upgraded my party a lot, and gotten a good handle on the combat. SOPFFO on higher difficulties genuinely demands a good understanding of the mechanics, a good level of ability to properly dodge and counter attacks, and also a decent loadout in terms of jobs and combo moves. I always appreciate when a higher difficulty makes me work to genuinely get better, and achieve a better understanding of a game, rather than just making enemies into damage sponges.

Conversely, SOPFFO isn't that great on a technical front. I'm not joking when I say that despite the game having a comically high number of polygons for some things, it still looks like a PS3/360 game, in a derogatory way. That's maybe more of a stylistic thing than something tied to the literal character models or quality of the textures, but also part of it is the framerate. Which isn't great, though it is the (near) perfect example of what Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) can do for a game.

Without VRR, it felt like the framerate was all over the place, and it was certainly still playable, but real messy. With VRR, the majority of game play feels and looks smooth, with the most noticeable drops happening when Jack is doing his big smash red crystals finishing moves on enemies. Those are all bespoke animations, often with the camera in close while those crystals are exploding, so I get why there would be drops there, and they don't impact the game much.

And finally, there's the story which is...better than I expected? I went into SOPFFO thinking it would all be laughable, and while I still don't have a good read on how much of the “Chaos” stuff is meant to be serious, or if it's meant to be a little tongue in cheek, there are interesting ideas and concepts in this game. Questions about identity, and memories, fate, and all sorts of things one would expect from the most storied RPG franchise out there. They just don't get the time to actually be developed, or explored with much depth.

Which isn't to say the characters aren't endearing in their own ways. I joke about the “Chaos” stuff, and probably will continue to do so for a long time, but I like Jack. A lot! It's the sort of thing where he is the most generic video game protagonist imaginable, but to such an incredible degree that he wraps back around and becomes interesting and unique because of it? I feel like I've gotten pretty hard to please when it comes to generic white guy video game protagonists these days too, as I'm over here with fingers crossed that Sam “Porter” Bridges isn't the playable character in Death Stranding 2 because I found Norman Reedus' performance in the first game to be by far the worst and most boring out of all the main characters, but I digress.

I like Jack Final Fantasy. He's fun, and he hates Chaos. They let him swear in a Final Fantasy game! I still think that's the main reason why SOPFFO got an M rating.

I went back and forth a lot on where to place SOPFFO, and the games that ended up as numbers five and four on this list. Initially SOPFFO was number five, but after writing everything out, the game I originally had at six, ended up getting bumped all the way up to four. And as much as I like SOPFFO, I couldn't really find a way to squeeze it any higher up the list, so sadly it didn't quite make the cut for the top five.

But really, it's silly to try to compare some of these games, when they're so wildly different both in terms of the game design, and the story. Maybe the answer would be to do away with having a numbered list altogether, but then whatever order they're in still implies some sort of ranking, right? Anyway, since I didn't feel the need to include a pity entry in my top ten, just remember that I really like all of these games, just for their own reasons.

STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN also wins:

• New protagonist of the year: Jack.
• Crystal based finisher moves of the year.
• Best use of nu metal/rap rock.
• Most grunting.
• Crystal Eggs of the year.
• Fistbumps of the year.
• Magic system of the year.
• Combo customization of the year.
• Strangest dialog system: Fountain Talk.
• Most jobs.
• “Crystal Lizard” of the year: Cactuar.
• Most loot.
• Game most improved by VRR even though it doesn't fix it 100%.

Gayest update to a game that was originally extremely and unfortunately hetero: Haven.

I did actually write a smidge about Haven during my Cyberpunk 2077 two-part blog, specifically in relation to this update. For those that didn't read that, or don't remember, Haven was a game about a pair of lovers who flee their home to an abandoned planet, and originally this was a story about forbidden love between two heterosexual people. Me, being very not het, and the real world being what it is, I found that silly, just rolled my eyes, and skipped the game, despite really loving the studio's previous game, Furi.

Then, early in 2022, Haven got a free update, letting people choose between three options for the two main characters. The original pair, a pair of two guys, and a pair of two ladies. Complete with new actors cast, and every line still fully voiced. Given what I know about how small The Game Bakers is as a studio, I can't emphasize enough that doing this, and as a free update was going above and beyond in the realm of game updates.

So I played Haven, selecting the pair of guys, and had a really good time with it. It's a very charming, and heartwarming game, and I'm sure to a large extent it always was. From what I read, a majority of the dialog wasn't re-written, just re-recorded with the new actors (with only one new actor per pairing). It turns out that, as they say, love is love, and decent writing can transcend the characters' gender.

Okay, no one says that last part, and honestly I always cringe a bit at the people who think just saying “love is love” is some revolutionary act, or whatever, but that's neither here nor there. What is here, is Haven, which while I don't think is some incredible piece of queer representation, I do still think it's important to praise games that do something like this at all.

The current state of queerness in games is still fairly dire, I'd say. When I wrote about Cyberpunk, I did up a whole image as a bit of a joke, so I could deploy it any time I brought up queerness in one of my blogs. But in the months since then, aside from some character creators, I struggle to think of anything even approaching queer in the games I've played?? And even then, as much as I liked that Saints Row (2022) demo, I didn't play that final game, because it sounded pretty bad! More recently, I tried out the closed beta for Street Fighter VI, which somehow that was more inclusive than just about any other game, with it having gender separate from body type selection.

But for some reason its third option was just, “Human.” I mean, that was funny, but it'd probably be better if they changed that to “Nonbinary” before release.

Actually, looking over the list of games I played, I can think of a couple instances of queerness in games I played in 2022. There were some side characters in Forbidden West that were implied to be like, gay or some sort of gender non-conforming for one person. And God of War Ragnarök has a side quest that is a fairly touching tribute to a real queer person who passed away a few years ago (though its relation to a real person isn't mentioned directly in game, I saw that in a tweet). But again, side characters that I forgot about aren't the same as having queer people be the focal point of the game.

This just brings me back to the same thing I say every year, but never make good on, which is that I just need to start putting my money where my mouth is and actually buy more queer games made by queer people.

Again as much as I like Haven, I don't want to praise it too much. This update was great, but it's not a purely queer game written about a queer experience. I'm very glad I played it, and I'm super glad they took the time to make significant additions to the game, and not charge for them. But that's also about all I have to say about it without getting into criticizing its befuddling combat, and I'd rather leave on a note of how cozy and nice the game was to experience instead. Also the music is fantastic.

5. Big Bo Presents Best Bow Feel/Bow Game of the Year: Horizon Forbidden West.

This is one of the harder ones for me to write about this year, believe it or not. If I wanted to, I could be extremely reductive and say, “they made another Horizon game,” and leave it at that. Because they did. It's still an open world game, it's still combat about shooting parts off big robot animals, and it's still a story about using ancient technology to stop an impending apocalyptic disaster. Even with the things that have changed, they aren't all for the better, like the climbing, which seemingly allows for more freedom in traversal, but doesn't really do so in a way that meaningfully improves the game, never mind that it's harder than before to see where Aloy can climb in the first place.

Here's the thing though: I like Forbidden West. A lot. Yes, it's more of the same, but issues with readability aside (there's a good video about that on Giant Bomb (that I think has a clickbait title but don't tell Jess I said that, shh)), I think it's as good as, and in some ways better than the original.

The core ideas behind the combat are the same, but I think Forbidden West makes some smart changes. There's more elemental damage types, and importantly they have more impact/feel more useful than before. In Zero Dawn I found the couple of things I liked, and more or less stuck with just those through the bulk of the game, whereas Forbidden West did a better job of making me feel like I needed to use just about all the different damage types I could. Whether exploiting weaknesses to specific types, or simply using glue bombs to stick enemies in place, it's just about all useful in some way or another. The only issues I have with the combat are that the number of rope snares that can be placed at once has been significantly reduced, and there's maybe a little too many damage types, as I found myself having to switch weapons in and out of my equipment wheel, as it didn't have enough slots to have everything covered at once.

Forbidden West also has some good usage of the DualSense controller features, primarily with the bow feel. I know “tension in the trigger when pulling back a bowstring” is one of the first ideas used to sell the controller, and that feels good, but that's not actually the thing that stood out to me. What did is that there's a little bit of a kick to the L2 trigger after shooting arrows, meaning to represent the force of the string snapping back into place, and Aloy feeling that in her off hand. I'd never thought about it before, but of course that much force doesn't solely go into the arrow, and it would be felt in the bow, so it was really cool to feel that in game. It's not anything that changes the mechanics of the game, and it would be just as playable with the trigger tension/feedback turned off, but it helped me think about the physical feeling of using a bow in a way that no other game had. Which is neat!

The addition of the glider makes getting off of tall things easier and more fun, but the climbing does feel like an awkward middle step between Zero Dawn, and something like Breath of the Wild. Yes, there's way more handholds to climb with in Forbidden West, but they're still limited handholds. They aren't even visible without pinging, and even then sometimes the light is such that the glowing orange lines blend in with the bright sun on the rocks. No, I'm not just saying that because it's the thing I remember most clearly from Jess' video, I thought this specific thing too when I was playing the game. Which is why I remember that most clearly!

I don't know why they didn't just go that one last step and let Aloy climb whatever, wherever, and whenever. They could certainly put some limits on it (BotW did in its Shrines), but as it is, it doesn't go far enough. It's fine, but I can't help but think that it could, and should have gone further.

Especially because I think it's a really beautiful world to explore. I love bright sunsets/sunrises and ample foliage, what can I say? I love seeing the skeletal remains of ancient buildings jutting up, seemingly held together just by the overgrown vines and moss clinging all along them. I love climbing to the top of a mountain, and staring out at the near endless vistas, just marveling at...everything. I love seeing the glowing lights on the machines shining in the night, really making use of that HDR. At least I assume so, I just see bright glowing things in games now, and if I like them, tell myself it's the HDR, haha. Same thing with vibrant colors of any sort at this point.

And then there's the story, and characters, which I think are very good! Forbidden West does a really good job of continuing to expand this universe, in the factions living in the ruins of Earth, the world of the past, and now even beyond. More than anything else, Forbidden West spends a lot of time growing Aloy as a character, and her ever growing cadre, and that's probably the most endearing thing story wise. Aloy grew a lot in the first game, going from unsure of herself to the capable person needed to save the world, and now she has to learn (the hard way) that she can't do it all on her own. It sounds really basic laid out like that, but it works in game.

Ashly Burch, as always, does a great job, and like in Zero Dawn, does so while playing several, pretty different characters. So while at this point I expect every performance of hers (outside of the Borderlands franchise) to be excellent, I still think it's worth mentioning.

I feel like that's about all I have to say, unless I wanted to get deep into spoilers. Which I won't, but suffice it to say that I'm very interested in what happens next in this series. Or rather, what will happen in the next mainline entry in the series. I'm sure the DLC will be good. Conversely, I can't afford a PSVR 2, so I won't be playing that VR Horizon. Hopefully they know better than to put some important bit of world building or anything like that in there, right?

Writing out about Forbidden West though, did kind of make me rethink my initial placement of it on this list. Usually when that happens it's a feeling of, “oh actually I feel stronger about this game than I realized,” but in this case it's more, “I did really like this game a lot but maybe what it does different/better than the original wasn't quite enough after all.” It's still a great game, but in the end I think I found the right place for it on this list.

Horizon Forbidden West also wins:

• Most Ashly Burch performances of the year.
• Grappling hook of the year.
• Best technical visuals of the year.
• Best use of HDR.
• Best sunsets and sunrises.
• Best vistas.
• Late Title Card of the year.
• Lightning of the year.
• Robot animals of the year.
• Best use of DualSense.
• Most realistically rendered wild critters.
• Actual best photo mode of the year.
• Sweatiest game of the year (in the sense of literal sweat on the characters).
• Best holograms.
• Vegas of the year.
• New robot animal (enemy) of the year: Slaughterspine.
• Flying mount of the year: Sunwing.

Game that was somehow both the cutest and saddest (in a good way): Kena Bridge of Spirits.

Of all the games that I played in 2022, this is the one I most wish I had played when it was new so it could have been on my top ten list that year. More than anything else, Kena is just a great game that more than accomplishes everything it sets out to do, because I think it excels at all of it. It's a modern take on an early 00s style adventure-platformer style game. Modernized controls, and a much more refined combat system than games of this ilk used to have, complete with a hard mode that made the game a really fun, challenging experience.

All that, and it has one of the best art styles of any game I've played. It's truly, deeply beautiful in just about every way. From the big scale, down to the small details, it's just incredible to behold. All the characters in it look great, but those cute little rascals the Rot are just beyond adorable. Like, almost dangerous levels of cuteness emanating from those little pals at every moment they pop up...And they can wear hats!! Hats are one of the collectibles in the game, and each one gets its own hat! I want to hug them all, and just watch them doing cute little things all day long.

I knew going into Kena that I was going to enjoy the game, and find it delightfully cute, but I wasn't expecting the story to be as...sad as it is. I'm sure in intentional contrast to the bright, cute aesthetic, the story is deeply melancholic, and outright heartbreaking at times. Kena's job is to help spirits move on from the mortal world, and that's an incredibly lonely, and hard job to do, even when there's a layer of separation between her, and these spirits that she barely knows.

I don't want to spoil the story, because this is a game I cannot recommend people play enough, but there's a personal aspect to Kena, and perhaps something that she needs to accept so she can move on from something. No, she isn't secretly also a spirit that needs to move on, it's something more relatable than that.

Anyway, Kena is fantastic. It has just enough of that old style of game to remind me of my youth, with enough modern aspects to still feel fresh, and the story is really touching. And don't forget, if the sad parts ever get to be too much, those cute little Rot are just an idle animation away from coming and cheering up Kena.

4. Point and Click Adventure Game of the Year: NORCO.

Well, NORCO is an oddball of a game. A (mostly) point and click adventure game set in a cyberpunk-ish future Louisiana (specifically the titular city of Norco) that possesses everything from androids, to old timers down on their luck, to a weirdo cult of “mall Nazis,” to a man selling decade old hotdogs on the street, to a horrible fleshy bird monstrosity that runs an app that gives people Duck Coin for doing tasks. The tone, and mood of NORCO are both all over the place, but in a way that makes it feel like something special.

For example, its intro is a series of choices that don't really seem to have any impact on the rest of the game, but help set up and flesh out aspects of main character Kay's backstory. It begins with her growing up in Norco, then moves to her life on the road since leaving home. Drifting from place to place, taking part in some sort of new civil war(s?) across America, before finally returning after her mother passes away. It's dark, mysterious, and gives the game a weird, almost otherworldy vibe.

And the first thing I did once I was properly given control? Have a staring contest with a plush monkey. Which I somehow won. A staring contest against an inanimate object. Naturally the monkey was then recruited to join Kay's party. For combat. Which this game has, though it's just some easy minigames to attack.

It's bizarre, and that's far from the oddest thing it has to offer. On top of its strange sensibilities, NORCO is in touch with something that I feel like the only other game I've experienced it in is Kentucky Route Zero. Which is a deep understanding of modern America, everything that ails it, and how it's affected the people in it. For as much as NORCO is about a mutant bird, a cult trying to go to Mars, and aliens (separate from the bird and Mars cult), it's also about regular people trying to get by. While Kay was traveling the country trying to find herself (or arguably lose herself), her mother got cancer, and had to take odd jobs from a weird app to try to get the money to make ends meet. Then her brother started hawking their mother's pain meds on the street after the mother passed.

A lot of the side characters in NORCO are older folks who spent their lives working in the nearby refinery, and for as goofy as they can be, they all feel real. Or maybe it's because they're all goofy weirdos that lends NORCO this sense of realism to them. Some of them may be literal clowns, but there's a deep heart and empathy throughout NORCO, and it's all the more endearing for it.

I compared it to Kentucky Route Zero, and honestly if anything I like NORCO much more than I did KRZ. NORCO's cast of characters were way more likable, and I found its main narrative exponentially more coherent and interesting than anything in KRZ. And to be fair, I don't know that KRZ was really that interested in coherency, but suffice it to say that while I think both games are well worth playing, NORCO is one that I genuinely liked a whole lot.

Play NORCO. It's not that long, nor expensive. Maybe its weird sensibilities won't click with everyone, but even so it's always good to try something different every once in a while. And for anyone who does, make sure to poke around and interact with everything. Some of my favorite parts are missable little side things, like LeBlanc putting on (Juggalo) clown makeup. That he then wears for the rest of the game.

If nothing else sells people on the game, remember that the more I thought about it after writing this, the more this game felt like it deserved to be higher on my top ten list. I know, it's all arbitrary at a point anyway, but I just think more people should play NORCO.

NORCO also wins:

• Monkey of the year: Monkey.
• Cat petting reaction of the year: rocketing up through the ceiling.
• Weirdest sense of humor of the year (in a very good way).
• Weirdest combat of the year.
• The “this game has pretty good music but not quite music of the year” award.
• Clown of the year: LeBlanc.
• The coveted: “No it isn't my personal game of the year but this is the game I would probably most recommend that *everyone* at least try to play” award.
• Game most in touch with the tough realities of modern life in America.

Game I'm most surprised I somehow finally got into: Fortnite Save the World.

Yes, that's right. Not just Fortnite, but the co-op campaign part of Fortnite that most people forget even exists. The thing that Fortnite was sold as for five or six years before releasing (probably in early access?) in 2017, then promptly rebranding itself as a battle royale. How did this happen? Well, a friend talked me into downloading it to try out the game, and after having fun in some creator made modes and the Team Rumble mode (like the main battle royale except better because there's respawning), I got talked into buying Save the World because, “you've spent more money on worse things.”

Which, sadly, is true, so my friend Jay and I started playing Save the World...every night...for like two months straight. We have kind of fallen off it a bit in recent weeks because of a combo of illnesses and Destiny 2's new season, but I'm still playing Team Rumble to level up the battle pass because that's where I'm at.

I'm half joking, I'm having fun. It's a fun game, is the thing. It's dumb, like a lot of it is just joking with friends about who should be added to the game next, or exclaiming things like, “I just got run over by Goku.” Even beyond the endless silly crossovers, the core of the game is fun, certainly a lot more than I remember it being when I briefly tried it back in 2017.

And it looks kind of incredible now?? Ever since the update to Unreal 5.1, it looks great. Turns out that great lighting and tech to reduce visible pop-in can make a game look really good. Now if only those updates would make their way back to Save the World, so that mode can look as good.

For as much time as I've spent with the game, I feel like that's about all I can say on it. It's fun. I've “only” spent about thirty bucks on it so far, which maybe that in itself is more than I should have, but whatever. Like Jay said, I've spent more on worse, so whatever. As long as I'm still having fun, that's what matters.

3. Pokémon Game of the Year: Pokémon Legends Arceus.

First off, yes, that award is a dig on a certain pair of other Pokémon games that released in the year 2022, and second, no, I did not play those other games. I will say it was rather disheartening that so soon after writing my very heartfelt blog about Legends Arceus, in which I said I hope this was the beginning of a new era for Pokémon, in which the developers took more time, and put more care into their games. Giving them the space to breathe, and the resources to truly reach and exceed their ambitions...

And instead here we are, at the end of the year, with not only all those hopes for Game Freak/The Pokémon Company changing their ways dashed, but those games being so messy, and selling so absurdly well meaning they have no “business” reason to change for the better...that's all disappointing.

Which is why I didn't play Scarlet or Violet! I'm content with the Pokémon game I played in 2022, the first one I had since the 90s, and even if I'm much more cynical about the future of the franchise than I was back hot off finishing Arceus, that does not for a second change how I feel about that game in isolation, nor how much I enjoyed it.

For all its technical shortcomings (many of which don't seem nearly as bad now), I still think Arceus is the closest any Pokémon game has come to truly achieving what I feel like Pokémon should be. Which is a true, genuine adventure through the world of Pokémon. A game about discovery, a game where the Pokémon feel as close as they can to being real, living, breathing animals. Now obviously if someone wanted to really dissect what's going on in Arceus, it isn't anywhere near close to simulating actual wildlife, but it's a video game. It's all smoke and mirrors. What's more important is if it can use whatever tricks it has to make me buy into the act, and Arceus did.

Arceus gave me a game that's more than just battling Pokémon, and getting jumped by enemy trainers, even if obviously that's still in there. It let me research and study Pokémon in their natural habitats, it let me use stealth and cunning to avoid Pokémon, or capture many of them without fighting at all. It also made Pokémon feel dangerous because they just attack the player character. They have absolutely no qualms about trying to murder this poor kid who got sucked out of their own time, and sent centuries back into the past. Nor do they have any qualms about ganging up on the player, which is just another thing that helps make Arceus feel different. It feels like it exists before the “rules” of Pokémon were written, and all the more better for it.

There are plenty of things that I could nitpick about the game, and I probably did back in my blog about the game specifically months ago, but those aren't the things that stuck with me. What did is the sheer joy I felt at playing a new Pokémon game for the first time in literal decades. The joy of finding both old favorites (Psyduck! Snorlax!), and discovering ones that are at least new to me (Spheal! Ursaluna!). That feeling of adventure, that it could be anything around the next corner, which is truly one of the greatest things a game can convey, that's what stuck with me.

So unlike some other games on this list, that I did some fairly last minute rearranging on, Arceus is a rock solid number three. Which sounds less impressive when I write it out like that, but it's an honor to be on the list in the first place, and especially so this high up. For anyone out there that was like me, and fell off Pokémon as a kid, I still firmly feel that Arceus is the right one to return with. If it opened my heart back to playing Pokémon, I think it could do that for others as well.

Now back to hoping we get another Pokémon Legends game, and it's in an...acceptable technical state.

Pokémon Legends Arceus also wins:

• Strand Game of the Year.
• Cutest critters.
• Most animal friends.
• Best nostalgic return to a series.
• Photography room of the year.
• Isekai of the year.
• Music of the year.
• Most balls.
• Best bears.
• Bear/mount of the year: Ursaluna.
• Bearded deer of the year: Wyrdeer.
• Best bearded animals of the year.
• Cutest fashion/hair of the year.
• Egg of the year: Togepi.
• Biggest friend: Alpha Snorlax.
• Best new form of an old favorite: Hisuian Arcanine.
• Fishing bullet time of the year.
• Most functional Pokémon game of the year.

Destiny 2 Yearly Check-in: Mixed?

2022 in Destiny 2 was...mixed. It started out really well, with the Witch Queen expansion, which in some ways was the best Destiny 2 has ever been. The main missions themselves, particularly when playing with a friend on the new “Become Legend” difficulty were absolutely fantastic. Probably the most fun I've had playing Bungie shooter missions since Halo 3. Just really well designed encounters, and difficult enough to make us work for it, but never tough enough to get frustrating. Aside from maybe that one time we thought the best strategy was to try to hide in a corner that was not in the least bit defensible. That was on us, though.

For as great as that campaign was, the rest of that expansion was...good, but not great. The Throne World location is fine. The mode that accompanied that location is...okay. And the season that started alongside the expansion was pretty good. None of it felt exceptional in the way that campaign did, and that's sort of how the rest of the year has been. Going back and forth between “fine” and “not good enough.”

Since Witch Queen, this year has really felt like, “you can have decent story, or good new stuff to play, but not both.” The “Persona 4 face your shadow” season had some good character work, but the game part wasn't. It was too repetitive, to the point where every other week the weekly story thing was literally just repeating the last week's exact same mission, just with new dialog over it. All because each week the person in question refused to accept their shadow, so we had to wait a week and do it again. I'm not kidding, it's just Persona 4.

Then the pirate season added Ketchcrash, a mode about storming pirate ships in space, and another mode that I forget the name of that was also pretty fun. The story though? Nothing happened in it! It even ends with someone calling and remarking on how nothing meaningfully happened. Just bonkers that they'd even call it out themselves.

And this most recent, ongoing season is totally...adequate. It feels like the most, “they made another Destiny 2 season” in ages. It's Warmind stuff, again, and the new content is more battlegrounds, again. Which wouldn't normally be a complaint because battlegrounds are usually the best stuff they add in seasons, but none of the battlegrounds have been as good as the ones from the first season they were added. This season's in particular feel a little weak, and definitely longer than they should be.

Conversely, in the time between my initial draft of this, and publishing this blog, there was some genuinely interesting story stuff happening in Destiny 2, regarding Rasputin, Clovis, and somehow Osiris. Everyone I know (that cares about Destiny) seems to agree that it's by far the most interesting and compelling Osiris has ever been. And he didn't even have to be possessed to make it happen.

Plus...there's a secret robot dog that can be found and pet, and I love him.

Overall, it's been a very fine, average year for Destiny 2. Of course, like every year though, I end it thinking next year will be better. Lightfall looks cool! The new subclasses have grappling hook space magic! That should be rad! Maybe 2023 will be the year that not only kicks it off with a great expansion, but then continues on to be great throughout. Maybe this is the year where now that they're owned by a larger company they'll have the resources to have more meaningful updates more frequently.

Or maybe Destiny 2 will be as it always is: Good, but not great like it could be.

2. Most emotionally moving game of the year (for me personally): God of War Ragnarök.

Of all the games on here, despite being number two, Ragnarök may actually be the one I have the hardest time writing about. Not because I don't love it, because I do. I think it's fantastic, and does everything it sets out to do exceptionally well. It's because like Horizon Forbidden West, but arguably even more so, this feels like the previous game. It truly is God of More. It plays more or less the same, just with some new things added on top of the old stuff.

They're good new things for sure, like the third weapon that Kratos gets is cool. The new arrow types allow for some different sorts of puzzle solving, but at the end of the day, anything I said about the game part of God of War (2018) is true here. It's just all refined and polished to an absolute perfect shine, with a game that doesn't really seem to have any rough edges at all, which is a feat in itself.

It just makes it hard to write about without getting into what made it impact me, which is the story. So, I'm going to do the thing I try to avoid with these, and get into story stuff. Don't click into the SPOILER ZONE without having played the game! Both Ragnarök and the 2018 God of War, honestly. Which is common sense, but I felt the need to spell it out anyway.

Before I get into the literal end of game spoilers, there are a few story related things I can say that don't spoil anything. Ragnarök takes place some time after the end of GoW 2018, and even from the start, it feels like the characters have grown and changed in that time off screen, and they continue to do so throughout the game. All too often across fiction, not just games, especially in long running franchises, characters can start to feel static. They are what they are, and they're that across every incarnation of the series.

Ragnarök does what good stories should do, which is keep them feeling true to that core of what makes them themselves, but change what's around that central core. Or perhaps put better, they come closer to truly becoming who they really are. For Atreus that's easy to get, he's still a kid, still learning who he is, trying to figure out his place in the world.

For Kratos, an old man from a bygone era and a far off place, that's a lot harder. The older people get, the more stuck in their ways they get, but if there's anything that these two newest entries in this series want to drive home, it's that people can change themselves for the better. If they truly want to, and put in the work, people can overcome their past, overcome their worst selves and worst tendencies, and be their best selves. It's not easy, and often not something people can do without help, but it's possible. Seeing that, seeing that journey across these two games really resonated with me.

I was already welling up at the end of GoW 2018, and I knew going into Ragnarök that it was really going to affect me. And it did, just not necessarily in all the ways that I expected it to. And that, I think is truly the extent of what I can say about the story without spoilers, so to all those who haven't finished Ragnarök yet, skip the spoiler zone.

SPOILER ZONE START!

One of the things that most intrigued me about Ragnarök before starting was how the previous game ended, with Kratos finding a prophecy of his death. Dying in his son's arms, during Ragnarök. The game Ragnarök picks up several years later, with Atreus now more into his teens, and Kratos more grizzled than ever, even as his ability as a father has improved over that time. That said, those years between the games have been mostly spent with Kratos training Atreus, to fight, to survive, and Atreus is getting sick of it. Even as Kratos is slower to anger, more willing to listen to Atreus, it's still too much for Atreus. Yet also not enough, because he wants to try to stop Ragnarök, avert the upcoming apocalypse.

I'm not going to go beat by beat through the whole story, there's just too much to cover. Suffice it to say, Kratos and Atreus go their separate ways for large swathes of the story, as Atreus tries to find a way to stop Ragnarök, and inadvertently ends up making some new friends, unfortunately losing some others, but ultimately growing closer to the person he's meant to be.

Kratos, meanwhile, is still fraught with worry for his wayward son, while also attempting to right the wrongs he's done. He knows he can never really make things like killing Freya's son “right” in her eyes, but he can at least help her as best as he can. So the two find a way to put aside their differences, and Freya agrees to put aside her desire for vengeance, because as Kratos knows all too well, vengeance never brings the closure those who seek it want it, need it to.

The core of Kratos' journey in Ragnarök, the thing that really moved me, centers around his knowledge of the prophecy about Ragnarök, and his death. He's spent years preparing Atreus to survive because he knows that he won't always be there for his son. He believes, more than anything else, that his duty first and foremost is to prepare Atreus for that thing that every child eventually faces, which is the loss of their parents, their guardians.

And he's accepted this, because he believes nothing good can come from fighting against fate. He tried to do so, he turned back time to fight the Fates of his own land, and all it caused was more pain, and misery. So, even as he says, “Death can have me when it earns me,” (one of my new favorite lines), he thinks in the back of his head that death already has earned him. He's just trying to eke out whatever time he has left with his son, and use it to make sure Atreus is ready.

Except, even as Kratos is ready to accept his destiny, his friends, his newfound family aren't. Atreus is ready to fight against destiny, and that's without even necessarily knowing his father is destined to die, at least at first. And knowing this, knowing it's foretold only steels his resolve to fight against it, even when at turn after turn, events continue happening as they were foretold.

All this eventually leads to one final night, before Ragnarök is set to happen. Kratos, Atreus, Freya, just about everyone united, ready to fight, and hopefully bring about a better tomorrow. Kratos, who never wanted to go to war again, has taken up the mantle of general, of God of War, and is readying to lead his army to battle. But, it's night, and even gods need their rest, so as he's settling in, Atreus comes, and asks him to tell a story, to help take his mind off everything that's happening. Just like when he was a kid (though it was probably his mother telling the stories then).

So Kratos tells a story of an old man, working the fields, finding the weight of all his long years bearing down on him. So much so, that the old man wishes for death, feeling that he's reached the end of his days. And when Death approaches...Kratos realizes that Atreus has fallen asleep, so he pauses the story, and tries to rest himself, even as his dreams are still only of his long lost Faye.

Morning soon approaches, and with it Ragnarök. Except, whether due to everyone fighting fate in their own way, forging their own destines, or due to the prophecy being misinterpreted, Kratos lives. The figure dying in Atreus' arms was Odin, and at the end of the day, Ragnarök came, and all that was destroyed was Asgard.

A short while later, Kratos and Atreus are walking, and Atreus asks his father to finish telling the story. Kratos resumes, and says that when Death arrived for the old man, the man suddenly had a change of heart, and realized he did have something to live for after all. And, having a good sense of humor, the old man asks Death to help him with his work, and Death did so, helping the old man continue living, and enjoying life.

There are a lot of things about Kratos that I, and most people can't relate to, but I feel like there's some things that most of us can. I've definitely had many times in my life where I felt like I had nothing good left to live for, so having the core of Kratos' journey being him realizing that he does have plenty left to live for, that really meant something to me. I went into Ragnarök fully expecting Kratos to die at the end, and to cry over him through the credits. I expected my bit on the Moosies to be a eulogy to a character that a decade ago I never thought I would have any serious or meaningful connection to.

And instead, like Kratos, I realized what I really needed was something else entirely. Writing this all out, I found myself tearing up, and that's not something many games have achieved, even if I find myself getting more and more susceptible to it as I grow older.

END OF SPOILER ZONE.

A few last, not spoiler things. There were a few times in this game, where Kratos and Atreus embrace each other, giving the biggest hugs I've seen in a game recently, and every time that really got me too. Just a big, messy welling up of emotions for these two that I've really grown attached to over these games.

All the voice acting across Ragnarök is excellent, as I've come to expect, but I really think Christopher Judge outdid himself as Kratos. I've been a longtime fan of him as an actor, I used to watch a lot of Stargate SG-1 as a young teen, so having him voice a really high profile character like this was cool, but he really brought a lot more depth and feeling to the character. And I'm super glad he's getting the recognition he deserves. We all laughed at how long his acceptance speech was at The Game Awards (apparently quite a bit longer than the longest Oscar acceptance speech??), but he deserves his moment in the sun.

Finally, to head off an inevitable question, which game did I like better? I don't think I can answer that. More so than any other pair of games I can think of, after finishing Ragnarök, these feel like one, complete journey. Part of that I think is actually helped by the two being so similar game play wise, it makes Ragnarök feel like it is a continuation, more so than a second entry, if that makes any sense. The arcs that the characters go on feels so integral to this story that in retrospect the first game almost feels incomplete without it. So which do I like better? I love them both. Ragnarök can't exist without the former, and God of War 2018 can't exist without the latter.

At least that's how I feel.

Of course, GoW 2018 was my GOTY that year, and handily so, yet Ragnarök only got to second place...gee, I wonder what not at all completely obvious game could be GOTY? Well, find out soon, after this!

God of War Ragnarök also wins:

• Outstanding performance: Christopher Judge as Kratos.
• Most character growth of the year: Kratos.
• Dad of the year: Kratos.
• Teen of the year: Atreus.
• Best overall performances.
• Wolves of the year: Fenrir, Speki, and Svanna.
• Yak of the year: Jalla.
• Bigh dog of the year: Helka.
• Giant critters of the year.
• “Dog” sledding of the year.
• Dogsled drifting of the year.
• Dog toy quest of the year.
• Petting wolves to finish a quest of the year.
• Best overall looking game of the year (this is the one I feel most compelled to remind people is purely subjective to my tastes).
• Yakuza 5's Taiga Saejima and that Demon Bear present the award for best boss fight against a large bear in winter.
• Line of the year: “I do not need a snack,” - Kratos.
• Fourth wall breaking moment of the year: Game over screen vs. Thor.
• Melee combat of the year.
• Best banter of the year.
• Best music that I didn't really appreciate that much whilst playing the game because it kind of just sounded like more of the same from the first game, but listening to the soundtrack while writing this helped me appreciate it more.
• Weirdest collectibles: Poems about other PlayStation games.
• Living sword of the year: Ingrid.
• Most car salesman-y character of the year: Odin.
• Spear of the year: Draupnir Spear.
• Best optional bosses of the year.

2022 Moosies Old Game (that I played for the first time) of the Year: Cyberpunk 2077.

I had so much to say about this game after finishing it that I had to split it up into two (long) blogs, so I'll try to keep this short, and not repeat myself too much. Obviously it was a game that I loved, even if I had a lot of issues with certain aspects of it (limited character creator, inconsistent handling of how “cyberpunk” it really is, there still being bugs that crash the game, etc). It's a game with a great visual/audio aesthetic, a really interesting story that kept me hooked throughout, way better combat and depth to character builds than I expected, and most importantly, a great cast of characters and a deep amount of caring and sense of heart that I never thought it would have.

I already wrote about all that at great length months ago, so instead I'll just say that Cyberpunk 2077 has really stuck with me since I finished it. It's one of those games that I keep thinking about. Sometimes it's about all the time spent with those characters I grew to love. Judy, Panam, poor Jackie, Takemura, Claire, and of course good ole Johnny Silverhand. Plenty of others too, of course. Sometimes the sights of Night City, and the surrounding countryside. It really conveys both the grandeur and awe of a city of towering futuristic skyscrapers, but also the down and out grime and decay of a city, and its citizens that have been neglected for decades. And even if it's desert, there's still a natural beauty to the landscapes outside the city.

Sometimes I even think about how much fun the combat was, and its depth. I think about starting a new game, just to try out a different build, and see how silly going for a full melee build can be, as opposed to my elite hacker build. By the end of the game, I could take out whole groups of enemies just by hacking two or three of the enemies, and the quick-hacks would spread to everyone else. It was kind of ridiculous to the point of being over-powered, but in some ways that's kind of the fun of this sort of game. Spec far and hard enough in any direction, and end up nigh unstoppable.

I'm also super excited for that expansion. Even if it was “just” more Cyberpunk 2077, that would be enough for me, but Idris Elba being in it is cool! I try not to get too excited over celebrity casting in games, because usually I'm of the mindset that regular voice actors can do just as good a job, and often better because they're more accustomed to what is needed out of voice acting than people used to acting in front of cameras.

But given how well Keanu as Johnny went in the base game, I'm allowing myself to assume that Idris was well cast, and is going to play a significant role in the DLC. Plus there's going to be more Johnny too! Hopefully other, new characters that are just as endearing, even if the names of their actors aren't nearly as recognizable. I don't know if there will be any returning characters too, but only time will tell.

It's a flawed game, yes, but Cyberpunk 2077 was absolutely one of the best games I played this year, it just happened to be an older one. Never mind that the experience I had with it wouldn't have been possible back at release, even if I had a top of the line PC. Between bug fixes, and other new additions to the game, I was tempted to just include the game in my top ten. But I managed to play enough games first released in 2022 to get a full top ten (even if that meant playing through Neon White's screen tearing), so instead Cyberpunk 2077 gets to be the Moosies Old Game of the Year.

1. 2022 Moosies Game of the Year: Elden Ring.

Arise now, ye Tarnished. Ye dead, who yet read this. The call of long lost GOTY lists speaks to us all! Aloy, explorer of the Horizon. Kay, of the ruinous NORCO! Arceus, Legendary Pokémon. Kratos, bringer of Ragnarök! And one other, whom grace would again bless...

A lowly Tarnished...

What else can be said about Elden Ring at this point? It's a masterpiece. It's the culmination of everything that From Software has been building toward for the last decade-plus. It's a magnificently crafted open world like little else out there. It's an astoundingly deep world in terms of lore, and backstory. It's a game with an almost overwhelming amount of ways to build out the main character, with different skills, armor, weapons, accessories, etc. It's a game with breathtaking art design that brings everything together, and far more than makes up for any technical deficiencies it has.

It's a game that, more so than any other from 2022, really felt like the journey I went on was my journey. My early hours of struggling to get into the right groove of the dexterity focused build I was trying for, my accidental adventure deep underground well before I was properly leveled and equipped to go to such a place. Not that that stopped me from banging my head against it until I defeated a boss down there.

And so on, and so forth. Elden Ring is one of those magical games where almost anything feels like it's possible. That magic eventually wears off for all games, but Elden Ring managed to maintain it longer than any other I can recall. Even after I realized things that initially felt unique were often copied around the Lands Between, there were still other new sights to see. New enemies to fight, new bits of discovery about the world to be had.

All the while, it remained fun to play throughout. I haven't been playing the Souls games since the very beginning, but I did at least play Dark Souls prior to the release of Dark Souls II. I've seen From shape and hone their craft over this past decade, and while Bloodborne may still have my favorite aesthetic and lore (honestly it's my overall favorite) of all their games, it's hard to argue against Elden Ring being their best yet. They somehow managed to make such an enormous game, and craft it so well that nothing feels like filler, aside from maybe there being a few too many of those tomb mini-dungeons.

Part of me feels like it's anticlimactic to not have the section on Elden Ring be the longest here, but I already wrote so much of it earlier in the year, go give those blogs a read. Besides, I could just say that Elden Ring speaks for itself. It's not just my Game of the Year 2022, but also one of my favorite games ever. It's not a game that I immediately fell in love with, because I did struggle to find my footing in the early hours, in ways that I hadn't with any other of these games. But it's also a game that not only grew on me the longer I spent with it (well over 150 hours!), it stayed with me in the months since finishing it, and my appreciation only kept growing.

Elden Ring is a special game, and it may be a while yet before we get anything else quite like it. So I'll continue to cherish the time I spent with it as much as I can.

Elden Ring also wins:

• Souls Game of the Year.
• Rolling goats of the year.
• Horned horse of the year: Torrent.
• Most dogs of the year.
• Title screen music of the year.
• Best lore.
• Biggest glowing trees.
• Best open world of the year.
• Art design of the year.
• Most numerous strange bosses.
• Undead deer of the year.
• Underworld of the year.
• Yakuza 5's Taiga Saejima and that Demon Bear present the award for most surprising and biggest bear of the year.
• Best tortoises.
• Turtle Pope of the year.
• Gnarliest boss/enemy designs.
• Most fingers.
• Best jars/jar people.
• Jars of the year: Iron Fist Alexander and Jar Bairn (Jar Kid).
• Wolfman of the year: Blaidd.
• Blacksmiths of the year: Iji and Hewg.
• Witch of the year: Ranni.
• Barbarian of the year: Nepheli Loux.
• Seamster of the year: Boc.
• Biggest man on the smallest horse: Starscourge Radahn and his Trusty Steed Leonard.
• Festival of the year: Radahn Festival.
• Best game to Study the Blade.
• Longest katana of the year: Nagakiba.
• Best dodge: Bloodhound Step.
• Coolest armor and weapons.
• Boss fight of the year: Malenia, Blade of Miquella; Goddess of Rot.
• Tall lady of the year: Malenia.
• Best prosthetic limbs.
• Coolest/most plentiful dragons and related wyrms.
• Mausoleums of the year.
• Graft of the year: Godrick's dragon arm.
• Stand user/wrestler grandpa of the year: Godfrey, First Elden Lord/Hoarah Loux, Warrior.
• Best game to talk about lore with friends.
• Award for most awards given to a single game.

Every year when I write these, at least for the last few years, I go in thinking it's probably not going to be as long as the older ones. Either I won't have as much to say about the games, or some combination of my own weariness at writing and genuine laziness (they are distinct, trust me) will get the better of me. Yet here I am, having written another treatise on the games I played over the course of a year.

And to anyone who read all the way through, I of course extend my greatest thanks. I know I didn't write much in 2022, and aside from this not at all in the back half. I can't promise 2023 will be any different, or perhaps I'll write even less. But I'm sure I'll write something, and hopefully someone will be around to read it.

Once again, thanks, and I hope everyone has a wonderful day.

The couple of times I visited America this year, the thing that stuck out the most to me was just the friendliness and heart of everyday people. It's easy to grumble grumble about all the messed up shit I see people say from/about America in every piece of media, but I often forget about the people who are working hard and trying to get by. What you said about that NORCO game resonated with me in that way, to the point where I just bought it on the Steam sale... so, thanks for that bit, Moose friend.

I love reading your thoughts, as always. I still remember reading all about your Cyberpunk experience one afternoon while I was waiting an hour for the next train to arrive. It was the highlight of a very hard day, and the warmth and comfort of your writing invariably comes back to me when I think about that day. I just hope you know that you stick with me in those little ways. ❤

The 2022 Moosies also win:

• Best blog to untangle my hair to after waking up at 1 pm very slightly hungover on New Years Day
• Only GOTY blog I have read and will read from the year 2022
  
• "Oh, I should play more of that eh" award for Elden Ring
• Moose Friend of the Year: Moosey

@bed: Thank you!!!! <3 I mostly write this stuff just for my own personal...I dunno, just getting the thoughts out of my brain so they stop rattling around in there, but it really means a heck of a lot to know that my writing means something to you too. And I'm super glad when my thoughts lead you to games that I hope you'll enjoy too!

You also win the award for bed friend of the year!

Also there were a couple awards I considered saying you were presenting (like the cones one) but that felt weird without consulting you first, and I didn't get around to that. Maybe next year (which is this year, now)?

Thank you for another great edition of the Moosies! I really enjoy reading these, and appreciate the effort and thoughtfulness you put into them. I have had it in my sights, but your words have definitely sprung Norco to the top of my "must play" list. I also appreciate your words on God of War's story. Valuing life is to me the most beautiful message there is, and I think it should always be highlighted when it seems like so many stories are about self sacrifice for the greater good to the point that life almost feels dispensable. My favourite book sentence ever comes in Hogfather, after DEATH moonlighting as fantasy Santa decided to save the little matchstick girl's life and is justifying his action to his assistant.

The Hogfather can. The Hogfather gives presents. There's no better present than a future.

Speaking of LGBTQIA+ representation, I recommend "I Was a Teenage Exocolonist" which came out in August. It is very technically a dating sim, but it's much more expansive than that, as you live out your life from 10-20 years old and grow up with other pioneer kids on an alien planet. You can just as well decide not to pursue anyone and focus on "the threat", or develop deep friendships. I think it did quite a good job of showing the growing up process, and it really does have some pretty important choices which lead to 29 different endings. I won't say it doesn't have problems (it feels a bit "sprawling" at times and playing for stats gets boring) but it feels like a real passion project.

I like how in the character creator you have two sliders; One for gender and another one for sex, or "look". For instance, I had a woman who was close to nonbinary in terms of identity but is more feminine in looks. I could also have made her look androgynous or masculine. I also find it interesting how one of the Trans characters (she transitioned before the start of the game) who is also really into science might in part have an emotional resonance with the subject because she wouldn't have been able to transition if not for advanced technology and also has a twin brother who is quite distant from her and they fight a lot. I didn't pursue her so I don't know how much this gets explored, but I liked how the game acknowledged her transition and how it might shape her instead of just slapping a "trans" label on her and nothing more.

The main question I have regarding the game (which I can't answer from a single playthrough) is whether other characters have distinct sexuality or if they are all bisexual so that you can romance them. This is actually a frustration I have with many games with relationship mechanics. While I think you should be able to "pursue" romance with everyone, I honestly feel like it can diminish characters when they don't have a distinct sexualities and so come across more as "trophies". I'm fine with bisexual characters, but I also feel like lesbians, gay men and asexuals (as well as other members of the spectrum, though that feels even further away) should have a role in romance stories.

Anyways, I didn't play many more games this year. Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip is great if you are into that kind of game, but you will know very quickly if you are into it or not.