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2022 Ranked

So what can be said about this year's slate of interactive entertainment? To my mind, it is, frustratingly, a year dominated by disappointments more than successes. Plenty of big games came out, but a lot of them had frustrating flaws that kept them from fully delivering on their promises. A sparkling selection of smaller, indie games emerged to fill in their spaces. And hanging over all of it was this special, practically flawless experience that came out in February and was so demonstratively the best game of the year all year that it made any debate in these final weeks feel like a bit of a shoulder shrug. I liked a ton of games, but I'm not sure that I loved that many.

My free-time dwindled as I ventured back into graduate school. My focus on the games industry as a whole dipped significantly. I think part of me is sad that there's just so little to be truly excited for this year. Maybe it's the COVID dip, maybe it's just my own lessening engagement. There's certainly plenty in next year's list that excites me. But I've also grown a bit cautious that a big name or expectations don't always hold firm.

Here are the games I played and how I felt about them. Start at the bottom and work your way up.

List items

  • How do you begin to talk about a game like Elden Ring? Not since Breath of the Wild has a game so instantaneously been hailed as the next landmark moment in the ongoing evolution of interactive digital media. It's for good reason. Elden Ring is a game that you can give to twenty different people, and each will find their own unique way through its sprawling campaign. The map is so big. The bosses are so hard. The landscapes are so gorgeous. The challenge is so immense. I have yet to clear the final boss, but Elden Ring stands a shoulder above even Dark Souls as From Software's crowning achievement. Look at the universal praise levied at this game and tell me otherwise. A titanic achievement that everyone must experience.

  • God of War Ragnarok has received a surprisingly milquetoast reception from some outlets, and I'm shocked. All those folks who loved 2018's masterpiece suddenly got sick of axe combat and sad dads? This is just as good as that last game, if not better. The story may not fully deliver on its ending, but the moment-to-moment beats are so outrageously well acted that I felt like I was watching and HBO drama, and I know that at this point it's cliche to say that about Sony's first-party content, but damn, this game was great. Atreus was great! I thought his combat was fun, and I'm stoked for him to probably get his own game. Haven't yet mopped up the other trophies yet, but I'm going to settle in for a nice January grind early next year. All these characters are just so fantastic. Kratos, Atreus, Mimir, Freya, Brok, Sindri, plus a bunch of new ones. I'm glad the saga "ended" here, but I'm disappointed I don't have more to look forward to. One of the most cinematic and polished games I've played yet.

  • Speaking of one more run, let's hear it for Vampire Survivors. Is this game a guilty pleasure? I felt bad about placing it so highly, but the more I played, the more I came to understand it just could not go any lower than this. It's a simple game with practically no narrative. You just have to move your character. I was reminded a lot of Cookie Clicker, in that the joy is simply seeing the numbers go up. It's immensely satisfying, but like Cookie Clicker, I often had to square my satisfaction with that foreboding sense of "Oh my god, what am I doing with my life?" If you can overcome those feelings, Vampire Survivors is probably the game of the decade. Pure, unadulterated video game drugs. It makes you feel good and that's it. Play it free on mobile today!

  • Neon White's story is certainly something. Normally the intense anime energy radiating off of this would turn me of, but the speed running stages are so addicting, that I couldn't knock it. Watching professionals run through levels is crazy, but then you realize that you can sort of do the exact same maneuvers. Discovering shortcuts and new approaches is always satisfying. Turns out, I never even finished the main story. Nonetheless, few games felt as fun to play as Neon White this year, the perfect game for just one more run.

  • Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a beautiful, noble attempt to strike out into new territory. It is the greatest reinvention of the Pokemon franchise ever. It fundamentally changes the way that you explore this world and interact with these creatures. It surprised me, and it frustrated me. But at its core, I think this is what I want more of compared with Scarlet and Violet. As I've gotten older, the intricacies of turn-based battles have grown to be too much to manage. I know plenty of folks who still need that, but I'll be disappointed if we never see another Legends game in the future. There's a great formula to build on here. I was terrified of encountering some Pokemon in the wild. I was passionately filling out my Pokedex again. I was enjoying the varied landscapes reminding me of Sinnoh. There's just a ton to like here, even in spite of the general jankiness. We got a Qwilfish AND a Stantler evolution!

  • I devoured Tinykin in two sittings. Ravenously stuffed it down my throat. Tinykin takes all of the fun of Pikmin, removes all of the stressful components, and emphasizes action, action, action. Sliding around on a bar of soap in a 1991 household has never felt so good. Building a ladder is amazing, blowing up various objects is delightful, collecting everything is fulfilling. The shame is the main game is really only about six hours. There's still lots to collect in the aftermath, though it does grow much more frustrating when you're scouring an entire map for three pieces of nectar. Tinykin has a ton of flavor in a small package. Any fan of Pikmin should pick this up as a tasty appetizer before the main course of Pikmin 4 hits next year.

  • I'm a sucker for a collectible card game, and when news broke that Ben Brode was cooking up something new, I was always going to be on board, even if it wasn't a complete celebration of all things Marvel. How is Snap able to differentiate itself from the competition? Let me count the ways:

    1) Matches happen in a fraction of the time compared to Pokemon, Hearthstone, or Magic.

    2) There's wagering involved in every game! Nothing feels better than going all in and hearing that "Oh SNAP!"

    3) The card collections cannot be earned through monetary transactions - something that Legends of Runeterra got right years ago.

    4) Super limited decks pace means that deck building is a breeze.

    There's not quite as much depth to this one as other card games, and the constant changing of the locations each match means sometimes you're just at the mercy of the randomizer. But Snap looks and plays sharp, the animations are great, and it's bursting at the seems with reverence for some classic characters. An easy recommendation for anyone who has enjoyed any mobile card game in the past ten years.

  • Nobody Saves the World succeeds by always tempting me to play five more minutes. If I hit three more enemies with my sword as the Knight, then I can upgrade that transformation to the next level, which will unlock a new form. I'll get new abilities, which I can eventually mix and match with my other forms. The combat is speedy, the dialogue is snappy, and the end result is a game which is a joy to smash through. It's a simple game, and it doesn't require much thought, but that compulsion to press on is an irresestible one.

  • Death's Door was my favorite game of last year. The return to classic isometric Zelda gameplay and charming writing was just a delight from start to finish. It was one of the rare games where I played it all the way through a second time immediately upon finishing it because I loved it so much. It makes sense that Tunic would be equally up my alley. Still inspired by classic Zelda, the combat is a little weightier a la Dark Souls, and nearly the entirety of the game is hidden behind a language that you can't decode. So while the combat takes center-stage, there's also a central mystery you're working to unravel by collecting these pages from a game manual. It's all so lovingly crafted that it feels like an obvious contender for Game of the Year in any slot this past decade.

    And yet Tunic is a game that I want to like a whole lot more than I actually do. The puzzle-solving becomes outrageously obtuse in the end- and post-game. I'm no genius, but I can't believe the developers expect players to figure out some of these codes and secrets on their own without looking up guides. The lack of overt dialogue also keeps the narrative at a bit of a distance, again similar to Dark Souls. There are a lot of people who celebrate what this game has accomplished, but I wish I was more in love with the finished product.

  • The Delicious Last Course is making an appearance on this top ten list because it's more of a sequel than Overwatch 2 is. Cuphead is a modern delight, a creation that will likely be sequel-ized more times over than Shovel Knight. The gameplay here is sharp and demanding as ever. The bosses' animations make the base game look simple in comparison. I blew through each of the stages in a little under a week. There's not a ton here, but the prospect of new Cuphead at all is cause for celebration.

  • Stray is surprisingly beautiful. Gorgeous neons reflected in the puddle-filled streets of our robot future frequently made me stop and just whirl the camera around for a while. The game within is fairly basic. It can also be completed in just about four hours. Everyone lost their mind when the cats went viral this summer, and I couldn't play this game without my youngest cat being completely out of earshot. She was relentless.

  • Overwatch 2 feels, in many ways, like a frustrating pivot from a cash-hungry studio that is far more invested in its bottom line than creating positive player experiences. The are plenty of games who've found a way to manage this balance quite well - League of Legends, for example - but Blizzard's franchises have been absolutely crushed by a heat-seeking missile's focus on forcing the consumer to fork over wads of cash to enjoy everything their games have to offer.

    The core gameplay here is still a ton of fun. The shift to five players per side instead of six makes battles less chaotic. It's easier to feel as if you can change the course of the fight. The new heroes are fun. Soujourn's rail gun and sliding made her instantly one of my favorite damage dealers. Junker Queen is relatively weak compared to other tanks right now, but chucking her knife at your opponents and calling it back is always a blast. The new map modes make comebacks always feel possible. Locking new heroes behind paywalls is disappointing. I would sooner pay $60 for the base game and be guaranteed to earn those heroes over time. I understand that I can still pay season by season, but it feels worse.

    Losing out on cosmetics is another bummer. I'm not exactly clamoring for the return of loot boxes, but there was something about getting at least a little something every level to throw into the collection. The guaranteed skins that accompanied each holiday have been all but stopped up. It makes progression feel far less significant. Even ranked tiers only upgrade every seven wins, so I could play for hours on a given night and see no tangible result to my investment.

    Overwatch 2 is frustrating in so many ways. I'm still playing regularly now, but I can't imagine I'll ever log the number of hours here that I did in the first game. Unless Microsoft can pull some strings and reset the course, it seems that Blizzard has shifted into something now beyond our recognition.

  • Scarlet and Violet were the second (!) big Pokemon game dropped on Switch this year. And if the performance displayed by this ninth generation is indicative of anything, it's that these games should have been delayed into next year.

    I've played every generation of Pokemon. No franchise has been more important to me in my life. Scarlet and Violet maintain that joy that is impossible to escape in these games. At the cost comes all sense of place. The quest to build an open-world adventure has stripped away all personality and vibrance from the world of Paldea. Aside from the massive central city with the school your main character attends, there is not a single quality of this world that is worth remembering. Even Galar, linear though it was, is more memorable.

    The Pokemon designs here are largely great. The humanoid final forms of the starters continue to disappoint, though I'm a big fan of Skeledirge.

  • I was absolutely electric with anticipation for the Horizon sequel. I thought Zero Dawn got short shrift when it was stuck in the release calendar beside Breath of the Wild. The combat was unique, the characters and world-building were intriguing. There was plenty to love about a standard open world game that was executed with as much polish and attention to detail as that game was. This year's edition also landed alongside a heavy-weight release, but this time around, I do think the critiques levied at the franchise fit a bit more securely.

    Forbidden West feels gargantuan by comparison to Zero Dawn, and this massive increase doesn't yield positive results. The story creeps along for hours. I found myself comparing the narrative here to those of the Kingdom Hearts franchise - the central narrative has some great mystery I want to learn more about, but I have to complete all of these errands for other tribes who I'm far less interested in. There's a moment where Forbidden West channels Ocarina of Time - travel to these three diverse environments to recover these elemental programs - but the surrounding game left me cold far more than invested.

    I'm sure I'll see out the conclusion to this epic trilogy. But, man, do I really not feel that concerned about how we'll solve the problem of the future space humans.

  • Midnight Suns has a brutal first three or four hours. An onslaught of tutorials, menus, character introductions washed over me, and kept me at arm's length for quite some time. Even the flashes of card-based combat I experienced early on felt restrictive and unengaging.

    After pushing through these early moments, the gameplay loop caught on fast. Once I was able to wrap my head around the circumstances of the game, I found it to be delightfully similar to the gameplay loop of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I'd first spend some time preparing for the mission, chatting with my super friends around the abbey, upgrade some hero abilities, crack upon some caches I recovered. Then, it was onto the mission - maybe a story-focused one, maybe one just to uncover some new goodies. Once the mission was done, it's back to the abbey for more conversations, a hang-out or a club meeting, and then it's off to bed. But then the cycle repeats, and it got its hooks into me so that I always wanted to go through one more sequence. There's a lot of game here. There's a frightening amount of recorded voice lines and interactive content. I'm still overwhelmed by instant messages, ability levels, exploring the abbey grounds. It's so much to take in at first. The narrative here is less than gripping. And some of the small moments are usually hit or miss. But there is a charm to spending time with these versions of these now classic characters. I'm sure I'll come to like this one even more as I spend more time with it.

  • Bayonetta 3 is absolutely a lock for my most disappointing game this year. After feeling a tad ambivalent toward the first game, then full on loving the second, this third installment is frustratingly unenjoyable in a way that almost seems impossible.

    In a bold attempt to avoid giving us just more of the same, Platinum has decided to massively mix up what it means to play Bayonetta. The story, which is never why I come to these games, jumps on board the multiverse shenanigans that are becoming frustratingly omnipresent in popular culture. Bayonettas across the multiverse are dying, and it's up to one of those Bayonettas to fix everything right. Further complicating this is the inclusion of the ability to control the massive hair kaiju. Rather than serving the power fantasy this franchise made its name on, these beasts are frustratingly slow, clunky punches and grapples often missing. When they do hit, there's very little excitement or drama. You'll also have interludes occasionally where you play as Jeanne, but this turns into a side-scrolling stealth game.

    I want to give credit for the attempt to strike out and try something new, but the game is just blisteringly uninteresting to play. Despite having the game for over two months now, I still haven't moved past chapter four. I devoured Bayonetta 2 over a long weekend, ecstatic to see what insanity would unfold next. There's still craziness to be found here, but it's buried underneath a hefty pile of far less interesting gameplay sequences.

  • Super Kiwi 64 is an intentional throwback to the Rare collect-a-thon gems from the late 90s. If you have nostalgia for Banjo Kazooie or Donkey Kong 64, you'll find a intentionally faithful, if woefully under-realized, attempt at recreating that gamefeel once again. As a character, Super Kiwi fits right in with other such mascots. He has a jet pack he can use to glide from place to place. He can slam his beak into walls and then jump once more.

    There's just so little here. Most folks will likely be able to collect every last shred of objects and gemstones before two hours have elapsed. The challenges themselves are also quite bare-bones. A phenomenal demo for what could be a much greater, more engaging experience. It certainly made me reappreciate what those great games on Nintendo 64 accomplished nearly twenty-five years ago.

  • I think it's fair to say that MultiVersus is a far better game than anyone expected a shamelessly branded, unabashedly corporate, Smash-clone to be. The roster here is absolutely bananas. At a time when *CONTENT* is at an all-time high, a moment when the last thing I want to do is engage with games whose existence is solely meant to show off the collective intellectual property owned by a studio, MultiVersus wins some points for being better than that Nickelodeon game that came out just before this one.

    MultiVersus was intentionally designed to function as a 2v2 brawler, a bold design choice in the modern age.

    I can't say that I found much here that kept me around for longer than a week, but it's worth noting how not crappy this game is, all appearances suggesting otherwise.

  • Immortality has an impressive design and commitment to aesthetic that I appreciate. I just found it absolutely frustrating to play on a tablet. I then learned that there's an entire feature hidden inside of vibration that makes the game significantly more manageable, and then I got frustrated and gave up on it. Just as I was starting to find some cool secrets too! This one might be the one game on the list that I wish I played more of. I wish I had encountered it in a better circumstance.

  • Poinpy is a phone game where you jump and collect fruit. I liked Downwell a whole lot, but this felt like it lacked the kinetic oomph that made that game perfect for a quick gaming session. I didn't play much Poinpy. The danger with mobile games is that if it doesn't grab me in the first few moments, I'm dumping it and moving on to the next one.
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