Games Finished in 2022
This is a list of all the games, new and old, I completed in 2022.
Here are my lists for past years:
List items
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(1/10) - First game of 2022! Guardians was one of those games I purchased during my time off in the holidays and played up into the new year. I really enjoyed the game a whole lot more than I was expecting. I like the Guardians movies just fine but I really gelled with this rendition of the characters/world (even more than the movies in many ways). My experience playing Guardians also reminded me a lot of my time playing Tales from the Borderlands in 2016. Not only was that also the first game I completed that year, and a sci-fi comedy adventure, but Guardians felt in many ways like a Telltale game. Sure it has a bunch of combat and not nearly as many choices but the focus on story and dialogue made it feel like I was playing a narrative-heavy adventure game like the ones Telltale used to make. Just with much higher production values. Kind of makes me want to check out the actual Telltale Guardians game they made in 2017. Anyway, I had a great time. Good game.
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(1/10) (Bowser's Fury) - This game feels like some kind of weird flex. Bowser's Fury is a short, sweet, and to the point Mario title that is better than the main game it is included with. Plenty of remasters contain extra features and levels but Bowser's Fury is basically a completely new game that could have easily been expanded into its own title. Really enjoyed my time with it.
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(1/14) - I managed to get a PS5 late last year so of course I purchased a copy of Rift Apart. The PS5 game with all the graphics. While the presentation is jaw dropping and the gameplay is fun, I didn't really love my experience playing Rift Apart and a lot of that has to do with the storytelling. This was my first Ratchet & Clank title so, while the game was clearly designed for newcomers, there were still plenty of moments where a character would show up and I just didn't have any idea who they were suppose to be. The story is also super rushed with the game almost feeling like an old-school sitcom where everything needs to be reset back to 0 at the end of an episode. Many of R&C's levels introduce a heavy personal issue the characters need to overcome and by the end of the level everything would be resolved whether it made sense or not. Plus, there was just something about the writing that made me feel like I was simply too old to be playing this game. I love watching animated kids films just as much as the next guy but R&C's writing felt like it was squarely aimed at young children rather than "the whole family" like a good Disney film or even a Nintendo game. Overall, Rift Apart was a solid game but I just didn't gel with the title as much as I thought I would.
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(2/13) - I feel like there are two kinds of RPG fans out there: people who are all about the gameplay and people who are all about the story. I'm definitely someone who falls in the later camp. However, I feel like whenever I play a mainline SMT game I become the gameplay fan. I really didn't care much about the story or characters in SMTV. I also thought the supposedly heady themes being explored were not that interesting either. What I did love was exploring the world and fighting demons. Every battle encounter felt meaningful and the game forces you to always think about how to get an advantage over your foe. And while the narrative did nothing for me, the atmosphere and vibes of SMTV got me invested in the world regardless. The music and sound design especially were amazingly moody. However, once I got near the end of the game I discovered that I basically couldn't get the best ending unless I replayed the entire game with new game plus. This also happened to me when I played SMTIV back in the day and it always sours my experience with these games. Being told I can't get the "real ending" after spending about 60 hours on something always makes me feel like I wasted my time. I enjoyed the game enough that I may load up new game plus someday and get the true ending but not right away. Regardless, SMTV was still a great game, I just wish I could have gotten the ending I wanted my first time through.
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(2/26) - I feel like I finished this game out of a sense of obligation. Zero Escape and Danganronpa are some of my favorite adventure franchises so when the creators of both founded their own company I was really excited to see what they would make. I know Death Come True came out first but World's End Club really felt like the group's first big release and all I could think while playing it was: "Why did this game end up like this?" The pieces that make up World's End Club feel like they would create something great. Amazing talent working on the project, charming art direction, and an interesting premise. But nothing came together like I'd hoped. First off, the platforming sections are so basic I'm not even sure why they are there. The most complicated level is the first and everything after that is so straightforward that it doesn't even feel like I'm doing much of anything. Now I'm not a "hardcore gamer" or anything. I don't need my games to be super challenging. But WEC does almost nothing with its mechanics. Plus, whenever the player approaches a new situation, it always stops everything to have a little cut-scenes basically explaining how to solve the puzzle before you can even interact with it. Even when the gameplay becomes a bit more complicated in the later parts of the game it is a chore to get through because everything feels so awkward to control. And the story doesn’t save the game either. WEC begins by making you think you are going to be playing a game similar to Danganronpa (kids trapped in a location that have to kill each other) but that ends up being a ruse and the game is actually more of a road trip adventure. This is cool but that beginning is so different from the rest of the game it almost feels like the story is breaking it's back trying to explain why it even happened in the first place. Almost like it has to retcon a bunch of decisions made by a different writer. The characters themselves can be charming and there are some genuinely fun twists later on. There are also some good character moments (especially between Aniki and Vanilla). I also like whenever the characters break out into a musical number. But, in the end, the somewhat awkward way the story is presented detracted a lot from my experience with the game. While playing the title, it felt like it was always taking two steps backwards every time it took a step forward. I think my feelings on this game are similar to what some people experienced with Balan Wonderworld last year. Game looks great in trailers and there are top men working on it but when you actually play it you can't help but wonder what went wrong.
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(2/28) - Decided to play this after finishing World's End Club. The story and presentation felt like a Sci-Fi Channel original movie I would have watched in the 2000s (in a good and bad way). It was neat.
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(3/8) - Played this short adventure game purely because of its charming character designs. The gameplay and narrative are nothing to write home about but I spent a chill afternoon playing through this game.
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(3/15) - I'm not into DOTA, virtual card games, or VR so I haven't played a Valve game since 2011's Portal 2. Even though Aperture Desk Job was a super short experience it was amazingly fun to return to the world of Portal. To return to any kind of Valve single-player experience. It was a small flex but it reminded me how great Valve can be when it wants to.
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(6/26) - I did grow up watching some of the old TMNT cartoon so I did have some feelings of nostalgia while playing Shredder's Revenge. But, more than anything else, the game was just a fun co-op game to play with my brother.
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(7/15) - Really enjoyed this sequel a lot. I had mixed feelings about the original Somniun Files when I first played it back in 2019 (which feels like a lifetime ago) but I liked the game overall. I feel in many ways that the Nirvana Initiative improves a lot on the first game. The presentation is sharper, the investigative gameplay is expanded, and the structure is more interesting. One of my biggest complaints with the first was that the branching storyline felt superfluous and added nothing to the narrative while NI actually uses the game's branching structure in some very clever ways. I think my only complaint is with the somnium sections themselves. These sections in the sequel are smoother, containing less trial and error, but they also feel less interesting as a result since you can't interact with as many things. And none of the somniums are as memorable as some of the best from the original. Besides that, I really loved NI. It honestly restored my faith in Uchikoshi after playing World's End Club.
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(7/15) - Having Amagami on this list is kind of weird for me. I actually played and technically completed this game all the way back in 2012 on the PSP. However, I used an old fan patch that only translated the opening section and then played the rest of the game blind without understanding any of the dialogue. Later this year a machine translation patch came out for the game and I again played a good portion of the game in sort of understandable Engrish. And then, a few months ago, an actual human translated patch was released and I finally played through Amagami for real. I got Ai Nanasaki's ending, which I had not gotten previously, and had a really pleasant time. Amagami does a great job of telling little romance stories that are a mix of sweet, awkward, and sensual. But what really stuck with me this time around was how all the characters are always present in the story. Even if you mainline a certain girl and ignore you're other friendships, you will still unlock new events that show the protagonist drifting away from the other characters. These scenes actually legit made me sad sometimes, and made me wish I had kept up with these friendships better. Anyway, it was interesting experience finally playing, and understanding, Amagami after all these years.
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(7/25) - I saw the original announcement trailer for Stray years ago and kind of just picked up the game blind when it recently released. I thought I was going to get a puzzle platformer similar to something like Inside. What I got was actually more like an adventure game than I was expecting and I ended up liking it a lot. I really enjoyed just hanging out in the world of Stray, helping out my robot buddies and occasionally sleeping on their stomachs. It was a nice chill experience (expect when it suddenly becomes a horror game). Although I do feel that the game was a bit front loaded. I spent about 3 hours in the first town and then it felt like the game rushed me through the rest of the areas to the ending. I kind of wish it was a bit longer so I could have hanged out a bit more in places like the giant tree house. Still, it was a nice "short and sweet" experience that reminded me of some of the old freeware games I used play back in the day. Good times.
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(9/20) - Didn't actually enjoy playing D that much nor did I think it was very scary. And since the whole game is on a timer, it feels like everything in D is designed to waste your time which was pretty frustrating. However, the game has a certain atmosphere, a certain vibe, that is undeniably cool. Happy I finally experienced the game for myself.
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(12/27) - Just an amazing Kirby game.
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