Best Games of 2022

[henke]

Ok it's time to give up on waiting for Sports Story to come out and just DO THIS DANG LIST. Sports Story, ya fucked up! Better luck next year.

Henke's Top 10 of '22

1. Elden Ring
As much as I'd like to name my #2 or #3 GOTY, I just spent the last week playing more of Elden Ring and dammit, it's undeniable, isn't it? Elden Ring is the game of the year.

2. Hardspace: Shipbreaker
The best game about sorting garbage in zero gravity exited Early Access this year. Some people didn't think much of the story. I liked it. I love this game. It's just great, y'know?

3. Teardown
Teardown is on the same level as Portal in how it marries groundbreaking tech with innovative gameplay to create something really unique and wonderful.

4. BloodbornePSX
We got ANOTHER great souls game this year. My favourite thing about BloodbornePSX is how COMPLETE and UNCOMPROMISING it is in sticking to the "Bloodborne but on PS1" premise. Not just a low-rez filter slapped on a modern game, but extending to things like inventory management and controls. I played it on keyboard. NOT keyboard AND mouse, NOPE, that'd be too modern! Just keyboard, like the MS-DOS port of a PS1 game would've played, and it really felt like discovering some forgotten gem of mid-90's PC gaming. What's even more incredible is that the game plays just fine, with this more limited control scheme, and doesn't feel like a compromise. BloodbornePSX made me nostaligic for a game that never existed, and sets a high bar for all demakes going forward.

5. Signalis
A really good survival horror game.

6. Dakar Desert Rally
Driving rally cars and dirtbikes and big trucks through the desert. This sort of thing is my bag, baby!

7. Stray
I was not very hyped about the cat game, but since it was free in PS Plus I gave it a go and y'know what, the cat game turned out to be pretty dang delightful. It's a good time! Some of my picks are very niche, but this is a game I'd recommend to just about anyone.

8. Endoparasitic
The first thing that happens in Endoparasitic is monsters ripping off both your legs and your left arm. You then spend the rest of the game dragging yourself along the ground AND fighting monsters using just your right arm. Overall, Signalis is a better game, but this was certainly the most fresh and innovative survival horror gameplay of the year.

9. A Plague Tale: Requiem
The sequel to Plague Tale is tighter, mechanically, and more visually spectactular, tho the story didn't quite grip me as much.

10. You Suck At Parking
Delightful lil arcade driving game, with very fun multiplayer.


Free game of the year that you should play right now:
BloodbornePSX of course! Oh but also Sunset Shift, which is a lovely little game about driving a garbage truck on a tropical island.


Honorable mentions:
The Adventures of Poppe
Whatever
Weird West
Robotry
Cleaning the System
Dying Light 2
FAR: Changing Tides
Winter Ember


2022 was overall a pretty good year for games, better than last year imo. What did you think?


Our previous Best Games Of The Year lists
2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010

[demagogue]

I'll give my ranking.

I won't deny Elden Ring is the most acclaimed game this year, but I haven't played it and still haven't gotten too much into the Souls games.

The two games I probably played the most this year were Arma3's Antistasi (open procedural & persistent war mod. Edit: nice timing too. v3.0 just dropped today, a pretty epic update) and DCS, probably the F16, which was greatly updated this year, that and Sable, my #1 game from last year (edit: which is also free on Epic Games today in another weird coincidence).

My ranking:
1. Stray. Aside from being a little too railroaded and genre-switching, it gives me good Mirror's Edge vibes. It's the game I've gotten into this most this year.

2. Teardown. Perfect example of taking a procedural concept and making a great game around it.

3. Session. It's open world first person skateboarding, and that's what I've done.

4. Not for Broadcast. One of those British comedy commentary games where you play a broadcast censor as things get progressively darker. Definitely came at the right time.

5. Dakar Desert Rally. Having a rally in back countryside roads hits the right spot once you get the orienteering down. It'll be perfect when it adds the open driving mode.

6. A Plague Tale: Requiem. Still the best series for the movie-game.

7. Norco. Magical realist adventure game with great art. Tries to do for the Mississippi delta industrial swamplands what Kentucky Route Zero does for the Midwest.

8. Dorf Romantic. The game that sounds like punching ham. It takes the Carcassone formula and makes a proper singleplayer game of it. It was my go-to casual game this year.

9. Hardspace Shipbreaker. There's a nice zen to breaking up ships in this game, and it has a wry kind of story to it.

10. Stacklands. One of my unreal projects is a cardgame, so I played this to take notes. It boils the whole genre down to its absolute core, and I like really dig this kind of pared down style. (The phone game Antiyoy and its 100s of fan levels also does that for the 4X genre, and I played a lot of that this year too.)

[WingedKagouti]

8. Dorf Romantic. The game that sounds like punching ham. It takes the Carcassone formula and makes a proper singleplayer game of it. It was my go-to casual game this year.

It's a 2021 game, so unfortunately not eligible for a spot among the best 2022 titles.

Otherwise I'd put it on my list as well.

[Jason Moyer]

I'm really disappointed that that game apparently has nothing to do with Tim Conway.

[demagogue]

It's a 2021 game, so unfortunately not eligible for a spot among the best 2022 titles. Otherwise I'd put it on my list as well.

I'm just going by the dates listed on Steam, where it's release date is listed as 28 April 2022. Session has also been out before this year, but evidently in early access, and it was only officially released this year.

But since there are multiple dates one could pick for any game, I think it's fair to consider the Steam-listed date as official as any other.

I'm really disappointed that that game apparently has nothing to do with Tim Conway.

I think you or somebody cracked that same joke the first time we talked about that game. And for good reason!

[WingedKagouti]

I'm just going by the dates listed on Steam, where it's release date is listed as 28 April 2022. Session has also been out before this year, but evidently in early access, and it was only officially released this year.

But since there are multiple dates one could pick for any game, I think it's fair to consider the Steam-listed date as official as any other.

I'm going by the 25th of March 2021 date on GOG.

[Nameless Voice]

Well, I played two 2022 games this year.

1. Elden Ring
It's Dark Souls only bigger. Same level of polish and detail, same dying repeatedly to a simple boss because I'm not gud enough.

2. Darktide
It's Vermintide in the 41st Millenium (technically, 42nd now). I imagine I'll play a lot of this game in the future, as it is a new take on Vermintide's awesome combat, this time with more focus on ranged, with great attention to detail and respect for its setting - but right now the game is still a little rough around the edges.
Nowhere near bad enough to deserve the review-bombing it's getting, but it definitely needs a few months of patches and content drops before it's great.


Honourable mention to Gloomwood, but I'm not going to include that as a 2022 game as it was only a short part of the game in Early Access so far.

[PigLick]

I've only got 2 from 22 also :
1 - Elden Ring, for all the above reasons, I have never been into Souls games, but this hit the sweet spot for me. I still sucked at it, but exploring the huge detailed world on horseback was so much fun, and then of course dying to some giant cat.
2 - Xenoblade 3, I didnt technically play this, just watching my son play through, but it was awesome and weird, with some stunning visuals, especially for the Switch.

[nicked]

I think Dorfromantik came out of early access this year (1.0 release), which might be where the date confusion arises from.

I've not played many new games this year, mostly retro shooters.

Cultic - one of the most refined, polished and well-designed retro shooters yet.

Kingdom of the Dead - nice art style, but otherwise forgettable shooter.

Forgive me Father - yet another retro shooter. Also has a nice art style, and has good, if unexceptional, gameplay. Outstays its welcome a little, but you get plenty of content for your money.

Iron Lung - short horror game from the maker of Dusk; it's got such a wild premise that it sticks in the memory - you're in a submarine exploring an ocean of blood after all the stars have winked out.

Teardown - great premise, solid execution, cool technology. The only problem is the sheer investment of time needed to complete even some of the easier levels. Kinda reminded me of the Hitman games in that regard - lots of planning and trial and error, to the point where the game feels a bit too hardcore for me and I bounced off it in the end.

I think everything else I've played this year came out earlier, like Sable, Cyberpunk and It Takes Two.

[Malf]

I played a lot this year, but not over many titles, especially not ones exclusive to 2022. And the Steam Deck has also shaped a lot of what I've played.
Of those that I did in no particular order:

Vampire Survivors
Best £1.50 I've ever spent on a game (even Rebel Star back in the 80s cost £1.99!)
Moreish autoshooting that has continued to add things as I played, with a maximum session length of 30 minutes, so perfect for the morning commute.

Rogue Legacy 2
Rogue-lite Metroidvania sequel with a lot more interesting progression and some fantastic ideas for classes, like the Chef (who can reflect projectiles with their frying pan) and Minstrel (who fires out musical notes that they can then jump up and down on to create a tune while at the same time doing an AoE attack).

Weird West
Arkane gameplay transposed to a top-down isometric view with lots of opportunity for reactivity along with great Max Payne style shooting, consisting of cool slo-mo sideways dives.
And I turned a witch in to a werewolf.

Dwarf Fortress (Steam Edition)
No, this is not cheating. It's different enough to deserve a spot on this list as a 2022 game, while still retaining the core gameplay that makes DF so compelling.
It's still the best sandbox "Management" game out there, and the new graphics and interface are very cool, while the streamlined labour system means managing large populations requires a lot less micromanagement.
The interface is a bit laggy, but on the flipside, I have a fortress that currently has over 200 dwarves, and it's still very playable. And that's playing through Proton (Linux support will arrive some time next year).

And those are really the only ones that actually stand out for me.
A lot of others I've started, but not finished, which to me, says all it needs to.
These unfinished games include:

Pentiment - Charming, but too much back and forth at a snail's pace.

WH40K: Chaos Gate Daemonhunters - I really wanted to like this, but the difficulty is tuned to be far to punishing. This may have changed by now, but one too many ambushes by a stupid amount of enemies has left a bad taste in my mouth.

Stray - Very cute, but not enough actual gameplay for my liking, and as I was playing it on Deck, other, better things would command my attention (like the aforementioned Vampire Survivors, Rogue Legacy 2 or my beloved Streets of Rogue which I would vote for Game of the Year every year if I could.)

Elden Ring - Due to over-playing Demon's Souls on the PS3, I still find it very hard to enjoy From Software games these days, especially when they are all so similar. Yes, the open world is interesting, but the gameplay is still basically the same, and has worn out its welcome with me. I may get back to it at some point, if I can be arsed. I know there are people out there who have completed this game blind with a Dance, Dance, Revolution controller, but I hate that the game for me always eventually devolves in to having to repeatedly kill the same enemies over and over again in order to grind enough souls to level up and continue.

[Aja]

I played lots of games this year, but only two were from 2022.

Game of the year for me is Gran Turismo 7. It's GT's 25th anniversary, and I've been playing it since the start. GT7 has the best-feeling driving model of any racing game I've played, and it also plays better with a controller than any previous version. The economy is stingy and the microtransactions are absurdly expensive, but there's no better feeling than getting a gold lap time after learning the course and the car. And it's absolutely gorgeous, especially with the weather changes. When the sky starts to cloud over, it happens so realistically that I swear I can smell the rain.

Second is Elden Ring, which is probably my least favourite souls game but only because it went on a bit too long and felt less focused than previous entries. I loved the castles and cities and hated the Bloodborne-style dungeons and empty wasteland sections. I wasn't as enamoured with the world and lore, and I hope From doesn't spend the next decade making Elden Ring sequels. At least their next game is Armored Core, which is unexpected and interesting.

Oh, I guess I also played Stray, but it didn't grab me. The cat animations were adorable and spot on, but I got bored in the city block section and stopped playing. Otherwise I spent the year playing Death Stranding, Bloodborne, The Last of Us and replaying Control. For Switch it was a disappointing year overall; I don't think I bought a single game.

[Jason Moyer]

I think the only 2022 game I've played even a little bit has been WRC Generations. So congrats for being GotY.

[qolelis]

I haven't played enough of the (relevant) 2022 releases to say which is best, but anyway, here's my absolutely objective and not at all rushed list, consisting mostly of some games I didn't particularly dislike (release year taken from what my Steam library says when sorting by year):

The Entropy Centre had the best puzzles,
Boxville was the most charming and had the best hand-drawn art,
The Backroom - Lost and Found was the best backrooms game and most free,
The Looker was the best standing-well-and-true-on-its-own-two-feet parody/homage game,
Incantamentum was pretty good, so let's call it the best P&C,
The Lost Dachshund was the cutest short free game,
Patrick's Parabox was the best new take on a somewhat tired puzzle genre,
Memory Traces: Japan was the best 3D jigsaw puzzle game,
Babbdi was the best free Brutalist exploration game made by today's youth,
VRUSEUM was the best VR game for people who can't play it in VR and had some cool art,
Syberia: The World Before was the best "I probably have to mention this too" game.

I have more 2022 games in my Steam library, but I haven't had—or taken—the time to play them yet. I'm also probably forgetting the GOG games I played, like Scorn. Was Scorn best in any way, though? Eh. There were parts I really loved about it (like the puzzle exploration part) and parts I didn't love much at all (the boss fight). I didn't even finish it, because of how annoying the boss fight was (I have probably said this before, but I really can't stand grinding and repetitive tasks).

[june gloom]

No matter what I do, how many games I play, I always circle back to Ashes 2063.

[WingedKagouti]

The only 2022 games I've played are Shadow Warrior 3, Space Runaway and (the demo for) Sol Cresta since I count Dorfromantik as a 2021 title. Everything else I've played this year has been pre-2022.

SW3 was a holiday gift and it's been fun so far. Space Runaway and Sol Cresta both do the shoot-em-up genre well, I'm not good at those games but I still enjoy them.

So it's a list of 3 titles that each get a thumbs up from me without ranking them in any order.

[Malf]

Oh, I forgot Sifu, which is understandable, as it doesn't play nicely with Linux in its current Epic-bound state.
But it's absolutely fantastic, even if I haven't beaten art gallery lady yet.

[demagogue]

We don't have an Elden Ring thread in this forum?

Anyway, since it's coming up so consistently as GOTY, and since I got it for Christmas so I've had to chance to play a good amount of it now, and because I have plenty of experience with lots of past Souls games, I just wanted to chip in my take which is: it's not for me.

The thing it really has going for it of course is the fighting gameplay on its own terms, and the whole design linking charismatic bosses, with a variety of fighting techniques, with gorgeous locations, all of that technically works (for me) as intended. But maybe because I've lived in Japan long enough to actually become more than a little culturally Japanized, I've become even harder lined in my gatekeeping of western and jRPG norms getting cross polinated. Souls worlds aren't "real" worlds. It's particularly jarring with Elden Right, they have to throw these ghosts of other players and comments around me to make me hyperconscious that I'm just in a manufactured arena with countless other people. I mean there's a kind of humanization to it. I'm not immune to it. You see some funny, daring, goofy, pathetic, heartbreaking moments, but also a lot more pedestrian moments... But more to the point, why do I have to care about them at all?

But the main sticking point is the performative side. So much of Japanese media and expectations are purely performative. It's annoying as hell to be immersed in it. It sometimes feels, you know like when you're at a theater in some countries and the audience still hoots and howls when tits are flashed because "that's what tits do to a man", even though it doesn't make any sense this person would actually have any emotional link with this woman in anything like a real world aside from this plastic world where the director knows when to cue responses that the audience is exactly here to perform on cue. There's a reason why fan service is the defining feature of Japanese media. I get so alienated by it that I'm maybe hypersensitive to it now, and it just deadens me to be in a game world where that expectation is thick in the air around me because I can't help but feel in that world like a Japanese kid chomping at the bit to push the stim-response button and hoot and holler on cue ... which I think I wouldn't notice if I weren't so surrounded by it, or maybe I would? It's hard to deconstruct a feeling like that. And I guess I can feel justified in really not liking this side of Japanese gaming norms because I've gotten so deep into a lot of other Japanese arts and cinema, etc., where I can connect with the flip side of the same coin.

Anyway, I can get into the fighting and "exploring". ER is still a game that does what it's designed to do, in gaming terms, really well. It's still gonna be in my top ten, but it's not connecting with me in GOTY terms. It's not connecting with me like Sable did last year. In fairness, I listed Stray as my #1 pick this year, which I guess I'll keep, and I even said it gave me Mirror's Edge vibes. But Stray is not really a great game that really deserves a GOTY spot either, and it's definitely not at the level of Mirror's Edge. It's just wanting to create that kind of experience and I'm giving it a solid E for the good effort. I want to like it. And I'm a cat person. And a cyberpunk junkie.

Teardown was actually the standout for me this year in terms of a game that wasn't only charming but nailed its gameplay hook. But I wanted to put Stray above it just because Stray is the more ambitious game and world all things considered. Actually the inherit modesty built into Teardown (is that a Scandinavian thing?) is a good part of its charm, so I wouldn't even want it to change.

In the big scheme of things, there hasn't been a "great" game for me out this year. Some years are just better than others.

[Tomi]

We don't have an Elden Ring thread in this forum?

We have a whole sub-forum dedicated for these games! (but you knew that, right?)

[demagogue]

Ha! I knew that at some point, but everything fades if you give it enough time without attention, I guess.

[Sulphur]

This is the wrong thread for it, but re:Elden Ring's ghosts, I'm pretty sure the performativeness is at least partly incidental to their actual function, which is to serve as a communication tool in a place that's largely alien to new players. The ghosts are ghosts because, of course, they died from, to, or of something, and I think the point isn't the drama but the something. It's serviceable forewarning without spoiling the entire threat.

I can relate to it being an annoying artificial construct on top of a constructed gamespace, though, so you do have recourse to simply playing offline if you want to solo it in all aspects of the word.

[Aja]

Yeah, the ghosts are a holdover from Demon’s Souls (and every souls game since), where their point, as far as I can tell, is not to be performative but rather to give the player a sense that they aren’t alone. Demon’s Souls was bleak and oppressive and sometimes unfairly difficult, and it was cathartic to see other people struggling along with you. It took some of the edge off. Not to mention it was nearly impossible to figure out solo, with the whole game being designed around people helping each other out. Elden Ring’s shaved off enough of the rough edges to maybe not require the same amount of cross-player communication, but at this point it’s just tradition.

[Malf]

Like how they re-used the Basilisks (petrifying frogs) from Dark Souls.

[henke]

Player ghosts and messages and everything don't bother me, probably because they makes just as much sense as anything else going on story-wise. Which is to say, I don't understand any of it. Currently 120 hours into the game, loving it. I like writing those messages too, the one I'm most proud of was "be wary of up, dog". It didn't get many likes, probably because it wasn't a suggestion to put something up someone's butt, which is what you need to write about if you wanna get 9999 likes.

[demagogue]

Sh*t I'm sorry. After the first post I was gonna cross post it to the ER thread in its on forum too, but then it kind of got away from me. Also to clarify, I wasn't really saying I didn't like it. All the things I mentioned are fun gimmicks as often as not. I was just saying why it couldn't take the #1 spot for me. I think I was greatly overplaying my criticisms for rhetorical purposes too.

[Brethren]

Yeah this seems like a lot of drama for something you can very easily disable in the menus.