Keiran’s Top 3 Games of 2022

I’m not the only one to ask this, but where has the year gone? It feels like two minutes ago May started, and now we’ve crept our way into the depths of seasonal depression and rewatching “The Husbands of River Song“. It is difficult to summarize and write about a year in gaming when it feels like very little stands out for all the right reasons. The fact it is surprising to know Gran Turismo 7 was released only 9 months ago puts into perspective how big the dearth in the middle of the year was. Indie titles came out, sure, but can you remember (off the top of your head) many of them?

Nintendo released a Pokémon game that was supposedly meant to look like Arceus. There was that cat thing everyone was on about for a short while, and grandad Sonic rolled out of his cage again for chili dogs and money to pay for this winter’s heating bills so we don’t get a frozen dead hedgehog for Easter.

Unless you look at the big four highly-anticipated releases, it wasn’t the best year for AAA titles. In fact, looking at the back end of the year and my own playing habits, it has been a lot of catch-up and smaller releases. So what really stood out for me this year, including honorable mentions and big releases?

Honorable Mention – PowerWash Simulator

I think we’ll start with an honorable mention simply because the year has been as thin as a layer of limescale and grime. It would be a shame not to talk about PowerWash Simulator after it was finally released in full on PC and consoles. It has a simple idea of taking a mundane job, such as power washing certain things, but that’s the entire point of the simulator genre.

Was it the most exciting release of the year? No. Was it as explosive as some others? No. Is it a fantastic destressing tool you can play while listening to podcasts referencing things only three people understand or remember while you avoid being a proper adult? Absolutely!

#3 – Techland’s Dying Light 2: Stay Human

As hackneyed as it might be, sometimes I like jumping off the edge of a building. Usually followed by paragliding my way to the next one, kicking a bloke off the edge making him yell like Goofy off the side of a cliff, and hook-shooting away while cackling like a menace. Nonetheless, that’s enough about my time wearing colorful leggings with a thong on the outside and frilly panties as a mask. I also quite enjoyed my time as Aiden (I can’t remember his last name) as we did whatever was supposed to be the plot of Dying Light 2: Stay Human. Something I can’t say I clicked with.

Techland’s latest adventure into the hordes of annoying weapon degradation, free running, and a plot full of people I wouldn’t trust to put out a cooking-related fire. Despite being mediocre in almost every regard, thinking back to all that I played this year, Dying Light 2 always comes to mind. Bleak tones and tired gameplay aside, I also got to jump in Oobleck and die a little inside.

The truth is, Techland’s two efforts into the non-vaccinated world of the living diseased are hoisted up by gameplay. This is an excellent example of gameplay making an entire franchise worth something. With rumors early on in the year of the developer’s next game being high-fantasy, one wonders how such a risk will pay off, given the studio’s inability to create entirely engaging plots thus far. Kyle had something pulling him about the place and struggles to face, but if I hear Aiden-bo-Baden once more, I’m going to rip a child in half like Kratos and throw her to the night roamers.

With no half-decent Ubisoft titles this year (aside from Sparks of Hope), Dying Light 2: Stay Human filled in a slot with that solid gameplay, but the take-it-or-leave-it story was always in my game-of-the-year conversation. By no means do I think anyone is going to be daydreaming about Dying Light 2 for years to come with the same fondness I have for Spider-Man 2 from the PS2. However, what is there did the job of being cathartic in those ways I sometimes need or want. Running, jumping, kicking, and paragliding across the city of Western Europe-stan instead of the Olympic village in Made-up-Istan was great fun.

Honorable mention – The Artful Escape

Moving on to the next honorable mention, I’d be remiss to ignore The Artful Escape, the story of Bob Dylan by way of Noddy Holder and David Bowie finding themselves. Yes, it was initially released in 2021 but I’m counting the PlayStation and Switch ports as a release this year, and thus it is my loophole. It is fun, colorful, and has a decent bit of storytelling.

I just wish there was a whole lot more interactivity. After all, this is supposed to be a game. If it weren’t for that simple hangup of wanting something more than holding right and tapping X from time to time, I’d have no gripes.

Honorable mention – WWE 2K22

It’s obligatory at this point for me to have some sort of “sports” title on my list, though I disagree with the assertion that the world of wrestling entertainment is “sports entertainment.” WWE 2K22 was good this year, wasn’t it? In direct opposition to 2K20 and the mess of its release, there was a bated breath for what 2K would shovel out this year. After the abject failure that was WWE 2K18’s Switch port (which ran a “smooth” 15fps, sometimes) and 2K20’s artful defecation of the bed, the pandemic time off to build something new gave Visual Concepts the ability to start fresh.

With a rather shallow GM mode instead of what I was hoping for, and a return to standard 7 out of 10 quality, 2K22 returned to form. A slightly “janked” create-a-superstar form, but form nonetheless. I’m hoping that with this as the groundwork to build on, we’ll see a much-improved release either in the year to come or the many after. That is unless those rumors of EA’s buy-out of the contract turn out to be true.

#2 – Sam Barlow’s Immortality

In the weeks leading up to our break, I’ve sat wondering what would be my second game of the year, the runner-up to FromSoft once again raising the bar. Of course, the rules apply that I have to have played the game and much like my dishonorable mention, that is a difficult criterion this year. Though I did play quite a lot, there is very little that was memorable from my year of 2022 quite like Sam Barlow’s Immortality. As a sometimes pretentious genre, the revived FMV mystery game of yesteryear is something Barlow has been the forerunner since his fantastic Her Story.

Starring Manon Gage as this seemingly ageless starlet that never was, the tale of Marissa Marcel is captivating with some very simple controls. As one of the site’s two YouTube producers, I’ve got quite a bit of experience with editing software. While Immortality doesn’t use any proper techniques of editing it does offer a superficial example of the otherwise laborious work.

Your job is just to sit and watch these reels of film, and to the kids of Tiktok, Instagram, and Snapchat, that’s where the name comes from. With that simple idea and the tugging feeling of there always being something more, you are sent down the rabbit hole.

This is not a game that is going to excite everyone that wants almost mindless catharsis, but it is a brilliant exploration of what a narrative-focused title can be. As I made clear this year with my reviews of the Uncharted series, the movie-fication of video games is something I’ll happily rail against when it is interspaced with happy-go-lucky ludonarrative dissonant murder. Carefully crafted to tell that film-like story in a gaming setting, Immortality bridges the gap that David Cage and Naughty Dog have attempted but continue to fail at. A mystery, wrapped within a mystery, wrapped within a simple but sometimes pretentious game that I do love.

Dishonorable mention – Kingdom of the Dead

As I’ve said, there wasn’t much that stood out this year and though I did play quite a few games, none of them were actively bad. Kingdom of the Dead isn’t overly buggy, awful, or even mediocre. Yet it is getting my dishonorable mention this year simply for being a modern Doom-clone without trying to smooth out and improve upon that 90s shooter genre outside of controls.

With an interesting art style, Kingdom of the Dead starts out fine in your initial impressions. Sadly, it quickly loses favor when it hardly has anything else of its own to show you.

Honorable mention – Teardown

I was going to put Construction Simulator in here simply for how mindless and enjoyable I found it when listening to a lot of podcasts for hour upon hour. Then I remembered I could download a mod that added the White House, get some C4, and proceed to be put on an FBI watchlist for the rest of my life for playing one game. Teardown is the voxel-based destruction ’em up with more individually movable physics objects than the midriff on my flesh suit after someone offered cake and ice cream. In other words, I am more than happy when playing it.

In theory, Teardown is a heist ’em up, but like series 4 of Hustle, if it doesn’t have Mickey Bricks are there really any heists/cons? In reality, Teardown is a destruction engine with heists in the middle to get in the way. Personally, I don’t love the heists, especially when they are often so simple.

Putting that aside, you can still plow the ashes of a voxel recreation of an Astra through the wall of the Mall of America or strap enough explosives to the wall and watch your computer cry when they detonate. A consistent frame rate isn’t the goal of performance here, it is to see what it takes to make Teardown crash, and it is quite a lot.

#1 – From Software and Bandai Namco’s Elden Ring

The distant ruffle of leaves shivering in the wind, the cold and brisk air lapping up the ocean as it smacks against the rocks, and the massive bloke that just impaled my rectum on his stabby stick. Elden Ring is going to get a lot of accolades this year, especially now. Even as I write this some months in advance, we’ve all decided to bow down to the might of Miyazaki-san and George R. R. Martin’s collaborative effort on the latest open world to take up half our lives. Arguably, I can’t fault that, as I found myself doing it for far too many hours early this year too.

Personally, I found myself in a strange place. For the first time, I was reviewing something with such reverie and fanfare surrounding it, and for every moment before the embargo lifted, feeling something of unease. I’d spent the better part of a week not only playing, but devouring every inch, combing every detail and, most importantly, loving every second I’d spent in this world.

I was losing myself to the world of the Lands Between and the mythos of the Two Fingers. It was the first time I’d actually fallen in love with something George R. R. Martin had worked on, and it was paired with another fantastic piece of world-building by Hidetaka Miyazaki.

Now, months beyond the release, as I did then (and beforehand) I catch myself thinking about different runs and alternate strategies for bosses. The best ways to level up and how not to waste my time on useless characters, like Patches. Ideas of somehow beating that Scallion boss at the start, where to build up enough bleeding projectiles for Godrick’s second stage, and so many more theories running through my head every day since I started playing around February 16th. These thoughts stay with me as I play (or do) something else.

From its design down to the story, the realms within Elden Ring are nothing but a beautifully crafted piece of brilliance with more detail and love put into it than almost anything else released this year. In its land of exploration and horror, there is always another detail to find if you push a little further. With the typical Souls–Borne combat, pushing is what you have to do as you travel on to the next site of grace before running away to grind more levels because you are worthless Tarnished and Melina will grind you into paste, again.