We’re in the last 10 days of 2022, and it’s time to start looking back and reflecting on this, the year of covid-induced pushbacks on release dates. As much as I (along with everyone else) was looking forward to Tears of the Kingdom, the delay that really bummed me out this year was Company of Heroes 3.
But enough of what didn’t happen.
Here’s what floated my boat in 2022.
God of War: Ragnarok
Boy! What a game. Using largely the same template as the last game, Ragnarok takes you on a hell of a journey as you deal with the consequences of pissing off Freya, Thor, and the rest of the Norse pantheon.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and the new God of War stuck with its blend of Soulsy combat with the story of The Last of Us, with new characters entering to make Atreus’ growth into manhood more complicated.
Great combat, great storytelling, wonderfully rich voice acting. It’s polished as Hel.
Ragnarok also improved on what was one of the main criticisms of 2018’s God of War: the repetitive bosses. Well done to the devs for doing a full 180 on this, because the boss fights in Ragnarok are a highlight.
That said, I think Ragnarok played it a little too safe to be Game of the Year. I was kind of disappointed to see largely the same skill tree, gear, and playstyles, especially since the skill tree is one of the few elements that pre-2018 God of War games did better. This led to a feeling of “same game with new story and bosses,” and it needed to take more risks to take the top slot.
TUNIC
Tunic’s devs are ballsy, I’ll give them that.
Tunic released on the 17th of March, putting it directly in the wake of the year’s biggest release. Not only that, it was a direct competitor – both exploration-heavy games with Soulsy combat. Bringing out a Soulsy combat game right after the most anticipated Soulsy release? Not what I would have advised.
I think ultimately this hurt Tunic, which is a shame, because it’s one of the year’s best games and definitely worth your time.
Think Souls combat with a Zelda-like world, and a little bit of FEZ’s language shenanigans thrown in.
There isn’t much groundbreaking here, but it does combine these elements skillfully – the combat, the exploration, the puzzle-solving, all feel highly polished and engrossing.
V Rising
Sometimes, humanity just gets it wrong. Pineapple on pizza. Crocs. Or, far more tragic, Battlerite not being celebrated as one of the best PvP games of all time. It was perfect – an arena brawler with just team fights, a MOBA without all the MOBA bits.
The trouble is, Battlerite devs Stunlock have a penchant for chasing the flavour of the month. When they abandoned their dev roadmap to make a battle royale – purchased separately from the main game – it stymied Battlerite’s momentum. Fast forward, and here they are again, this time chasing the survival PvP genre, except this time, it paid off.
The result was Vampire Valheim, which solved a lot of Quality of Life issues suffered by its Viking predecessor and added content at a faster pace. There are a lot of nice touches, and I especially like how “dungeons” are mostly on raised ground, so bailing out is just a matter of jumping down several levels.
I’m happy for Stunlock. It deserves praise for the combat system it’s been working on all throughout Bloodline Champions, Battlerite, and now V Rising.
That said, if you really want the refined PvP experience this combat system has to offer, grab a group of friends for some 2v2 or 3v3 in Battlerite.
Metal: Hellsinger
Take Doom 2016 (or its sequel, Do Maternal) and combine it with Guitar Hero. Not only do you have a rockin’ soundtrack including the likes of Serj Tankian, you add a dimension of skill by requiring players to attack on the beat.
Hitting these beats properly gives bonuses to damage and score, as well as making the background track more intense. At peak multiplier, the vocals kick in. That’s when your demon is really on fire.
Mostly this is just good, intense fun, but Hellsinger also plays with the mechanics of this a bit, by including weapons too slow to fire on every beat, and enemies that require you to think differently. The idea could be taken further if they release more content, but I appreciate when games add interesting elements like that.
When people would see the game over my shoulder they’d be mildly interested and say it looked fun, but when they learned I was timing my shots to the beat, there was a consistent lightswitch moment. Now they were really interested.
Be warned: Hellsinger isn’t a binge game. Fond as I am of the endless gaming session, Hellsinger is so intense I could only take it for an hour or so. The curse of being too good at what it does.
Despot’s Game
There’s an autobattler-sized hole in my heart. DOTA Underlords is on life support, and Teamfight Tactics didn’t grab me in the same way. While the majority of my autobattler time was spent in the tower defence hybrid Legion TD 2, Despot’s Game provided a nice distraction.
This is an autobattler combined with a roguelike. You build up a band of fighters, go from room to room in the dungeon, deeper and deeper, and try to solve the various combat puzzles thrown at you. Some enemies will warp to your backline, and some will be too quick for your ranged units, etc.
A big point of difference here is your units permadie, and don’t heal between fights. Roguelikes always have a resource management element, and in Despot’s Game, you have to pay to heal.
Thus the real game is not just building synergies but maintaining them, and adapting them according to what you find in the dungeon. While you could target a favourite setup in Underlords, that’s impossible here – you make the best synergies out of the hand you’re dealt, room after room after room.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
This brain-bursting, torso-slicing sequel to Vermintide is a lot more fun than I expected it to be.
It’s Left 4 Dead replacing zombies with the happy family of Daddy Nurgle, with your expendable strike team of four sent into the corrupt bowels of hive cities and factories. Serving the Emperor well requires a balance of skills. Single-target DPS, crowd control… And when the horde gets funnelled into a choke point, you get the flamer. The heavy flamer.
Just like Vermintide, the audio is a touch above here, providing distinct sounds for when you’re about to be attacked. You’ll get to know these so well you won’t even have to see the enemy to dodge them.
I think it says something that Darktide serves up a power fantasy quite well, despite this being a team game and some classes actually being weaker than their lore counterparts. The psyker, for example, has been weakened to fit into a team dynamic, but you’ll still have moments of glory, feeling like you were the perfect solution to the problem Darktide served up.
And that’s it! Those are all the games worth celebrating this year. Thanks, everyone.
…
…
…
…
…
Oh wait! There’s one more…
Elden Ring
Exploring the Lands Between with my merry band of reviewers was the best gaming experience I had in 2022. It’s not even close.
There’s something about when a new From game is released, when the whole community converges to piece together the lore, theorycrafters test the limits of the combat system, and everyone shares stories of obscure NPC interactions.
Eventually, the community spawned its own lore. There were villains, like those who would hide AFK from invaders. There were heroes, like Let Me Solo Her.
Elden Ring added an open world, a day/night cycle with timed events, stealth, jumping, guard counters, spirit ashes, a mount & mounted combat, GRRM’s lore, crafting, and much more. Out of all that, I think only one new element didn’t hit the mark: Crafting. Everything else slaps.
From and Bandai Namco also masterfully played a trump card around Elden Ring’s release. For those who remember, the game’s beta test and previous dev comments led us to believe Elden Ring would consist of around 20 hours of play in Limgrave, with hints of Liurnia and Caelid showing.
After another private play session, I started to think there might be more to this map than we thought.
Elden Ring masterfully hid its map (and map size) from us, revealing new sections as we found them. It just kept getting bigger. We’d chuckle at a friend who thought Caelid was the final area, only to be ourselves humbled by our map zooming out again.
While The Discourse™ argued over whether Souls games should have a hard mode, Miyazaki had long since Jonathan Livingstone Seagulled out of that plane, having figured out a solution that made it all redundant.
As I wrote at the time, the idea of difficulty modes are redundant in a game that lets you organically choose your difficulty in every moment. No quitting out to select a new mode, no changing of settings, just purely what you do decides the difficulty.
I made use of this both ways. I noped out of several boss fights, returning to them later when I felt like it. The freedom, the player choice, was fantastic. Later, I started a Level 1 run with no spirit ashes, summons, glitches, or great runes. The theorycrafting and the rush of executing a plan against a boss is unrivaled in gaming.
I think it’s possible for people to have “their” game of the year, acknowledging an individual’s personal taste, existing alongside “the” game of the year, an objectively correct winner. In previous years, “the” game of the year award might be more contentious. But in a quiet 2022, it just has to be Elden Ring. It might not be everyone’s personal game of the year, but it’s objectively the best thing to come out this year.
There were only two contenders, really. Ragnarok was fantastic, but largely the same game with a new story and boss fights. And while we memed Elden Ring for being Dark Souls 4, it actually introduced a hell of a lot of new stuff – enough to warrant the new franchise.
While Elden Ring isn’t for everyone, I will remark that it’s much more approachable than Souls games, so if you were on the fence, maybe give it a try. A recent update makes it easier to play the whole game with a friend in constant co-op, so there’s never been a better time.
Whatever you played, I hope it was a good year for you, tarnished. Here’s to conquering a slew of delayed games in 2023.
Leave a Reply