2022 Quarterlies! Vote for Qt3's Best Game of 2022: "What guy? Bozo did it. That's Bozo's voice."

Games
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We’ve been doing these Quarterlies for a while and I was asked if they are happening again. Well, yes. Absolutely.

The Quarterlies are the Quarter to Three Year-End Awards for Best Game of [the year that just ended]. We are going back to that old sweet style, to somewhat paraphrase Vasily Aksyonov. Here is how it works:

Rule 1 : Just list your top 5 games of 2022. Put your picks in order* (see below), so that this is a weighted choice. Your first pick will get 5 points, your fifth pick will get one. Popularity will be aggregated to come up with a final set of winners. Please provide commentary on your picks if you are at all inclined to do so. I will quote them in the wrap up for the winners.

Rule 2 : Any game–console, PC, mobile, etc–released in 2022 is eligible. Early Access games are eligible if they were “released” by going to version 1.0 in calendar 2022. Boardgames are fine. Tabletop RPGs are fine. If it’s a game, it counts, as long as it was first “released” in 2022. (Sorry, no “these are the games I played the most in 2022, even though some came out in 1999.”)

Rule 3 : Revisions to your original post are fine. Revisions as subsequent posts are not fine because that will make me legit crazy. Imma do this by hand. Please make it easier on a guy. Only your first post with votes counts, so don’t make a new post to change your votes. Don’t separate your list into multiple posts.

That’s it. Crazy times are commencing.

Voting closes at 23:59 Eastern Standard Time (États-Unis) on Friday, January 27th.. That’s only 20:59 Pacific Standard Time. Why would I do such a thing? Because I’m going to try and tally it all up and post the winner before I go to bed. But don’t hold me to that.

(*)HOW TO VOTE

[a] All in a single post, you must post your votes on separate lines, with a number next to the place in your list you are assigning it. Please put a period and a space between the number and the bolded title.

[b] Bold your choices.

[c] You can put other stuff in your list, including discussion/explanation (which is encouraged) and stuff like platform but please do not bold anything other than the name of the game. Don’t even bold the platform, like (PC) . Here is an example from @jsnell that works great. Still there. Still setting the standard.

For reference, the “Year in gaming” article on wikipedia has been used before to clarify what was released in the calendar year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_in_video_games

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Results thread is HERE.

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It’s Elden Ring, right? That’s my pick for all 5 choices, nothing else comes close.

1. Elden Ring

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Just to clarify, the Steam release of Dwarf Fortress would not count yes (I don’t think any release of it has been anywhere near being labeled 1.0 or will be in our lifetimes and we he ascii version has existed forever) ?

  1. Dwarf Fortress: Steam Edition (tentative on final ruling)
  2. Vampire Survivors
  3. Marvel Snap
  4. Marvel’s Midnight Suns
  5. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands

The year is kind of split in 2 for me. After my daughters were diagnosed with ADD at the beginning of the year, they decided I should get tested. So, in late June I was diagnosed and they started treating me. That definitely made a difference with my gaming. A lot of gaming time this year has been spent on games from before 2022 that I’ve never finished or never got around to. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands ended up on the list, because I started playing through Borderlands: GOTY Enhanced, and tore through that at the beginning of December along with about half of Borderlands 2. So I grabbed Tiny Tina in one of the sales and started playing that.

Things that probably could’ve made the list if I’d spent more time with them: Victoria 3, Total War: Warhammer 3 once Immortal Empires released, Distant Worlds 2. I picked up a number of boardgames this past year, but I’m still working on getting a space set up to be able to play them. They are all mostly games released by GMT and Compass that were titles originally released in the 80s (NATO, Vietnam, Pacific War, Third World War, and Salerno).

An honorable mention I guess would be Gunfire Reborn. The time I’ve spent with it so far I’ve enjoyed, but it ended up getting starved of attention once folks here got me started on Vampire Survivors. Another entry probably could’ve been Remnants of the Precursors, but Ray released it on Christmas day 2021.

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By the rules as written I think it does qualify, because on Steam it’s not listed as an Early Access game. :)

Early Access games are eligible if they were “released” by going to version 1.0 in calendar 2022.

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I might shuffle around the order a bit, but I feel pretty solid about the titles:

  1. Elden Ring
  2. The Case of the Golden Idol
  3. Pentiment
  4. Citizen Sleeper
  5. Vampire Survivors
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Works for me :)

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You can only vote for stuff you played… so

  1. Plague Tale: Requiem
  2. Norco
  3. Timemelters
  4. Elex 2
  5. NFS Unbound

Uh-oh. Sniper Elite 5 was this year too. Hmm.

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  1. Elden Ring
  2. Horizon: Forbidden West
  3. Marvel’s Midnight Suns
  4. Paragon Pioneers
  5. Strange Horticulture
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  1. Elden Ring
  2. Multiversus
  3. Marvel Snap
  4. Xenoblade Chronicles 3
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I played some fantastic games in 2022, but most of them were older releases. Among those that came out in the past year, the standouts were:

  1. Marvel Snap - Digital crack.
  2. Sniper Elite 5 - I had an absolute blast in the “no cross” multiplayer mode, which is just snipers sniping at each other from opposite sides of a large map.
  3. John Company 2nd Edition - It’s odd and procedural and kind of dry, but also like absolutely nothing else.
  4. Eriantys - Maybe a cheat, since this is a re-theming of an older game called Carolus Magnus. You’re vying for influence in several factions, while trying to ensure that your favored factions dominate the map. Agonizing decisions, which are the best kind of decisions.
  5. Guards of Atlantis II - MOBA, but tabletop. It works remarkably well, and there’s tons of depth in the different combinations of heroes.

[revised to add Sniper Elite 5 and drop Slice & Dice]

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I’m pretty sure I would have included this in my list if I’d actually played my copy.

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Victoria 3 Because I am not sure what for games I bought that was actually released this year. Other than Dragonflight and ugh.
Pacific War Such a chonky game, and well, one I know was released this year
War Room, 2nd Edition Again with the chonky games.

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I may revisit this to wax poetic, but these are my picks.

Would have liked to see Horizon Dawn: Forbidden West on PC. Maybe in 2024!

  1. Dying Light 2

The writing in this game is terrible. The impact on the world of your choices is laughable. It’s not as engaging as the original 2015 game. …but man is it still a blast to parkour, drop kick zombies, and paraglide around an enormous, and gorgeous raytraced world. If you don’t have an RTX 3080 or better, this game is a good reason to take out the 2nd mortgage.

  1. Sniper Elite 5

A zen meditation on shooting Nazi’s in the nuts. Amazing level design.

  1. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide

Haven’t had a ton of oppty to co-op with friends, but hope to do a lot more of it. Looks great, feels great to melee hordes of WH40k zombies, and you can bang out a co-op run in 20 minutes or so. Good times.

  1. Gotham Knights
    Not as bad as the anti-hype and the bat kids have some neat fighting moves.

  2. Evil Dead: The Game

Janky and disjointed, but the 3 hours of co-op I played were pretty memorable, and dare I say fun?!

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Yes, of course, and please help cement this fore-gone conclusion with a number one, a period, and then its name bolded so bold. This rabid fan wants to leave nothing to chance. What if Old World released on a different platform in 2022? It is loved. It could upset things. We must protect the precious.

Yay, Quarterlies! Thanks, Brooski!

  1. Elden Ring
    Hearing of Elden Ring’s upcoming release, I decided to play Dark Souls 3. I had played the three earlier Souls titles and Bloodborne, so I knew I would like it. I just finally made the time. Dark Souls 3 was a magisterial conclusion to that trilogy–ordered, honed, the limits of its form. Playing DS3 was glorious, like Miyazaki and I were conversing. “Huh, I really expected a ground-triggered trap in this sort of tomb.” THUNK “Oh…yeah.” I finished DS3 the morning of Elden Ring’s release and realized I needed it.
    Even so, I was wary of Elden Ring. Would an open world undo the clockwork precision of the pathways through Dark Souls, break the mesmerizing labyrinth into numerous, uninteresting Breath of the Wild shrine sites, or cool the tension of what’s around each corner with plodding traversal instead?
    I still think its open-world nature is its weakest aspect, but that game is an incredible achievement. Elden Ring transforms the darkness of FROM’s earlier works into the flaking gold of past glory, the rot of a withered flower, the fading majesty of a slain great beast. Elden Ring measures you with challenge. “Thou art of passing skill” is what it taunts, but what it wants is for you to succeed. It rewards each victory by revealing more. FROM found ways in an open world to frame each area with a perfect shot, to surprise me with glorious vista. And steadily, mastery increases.
    I had to play it thrice.

  2. Signalis. It thrives being translated from its original German. The original art creates a cognitive gap that perfectly mirrors the surrealness of the story.

  3. Rogue Legacy 2. Clean platforming with good variety of approaches to the combat. Never have I been so happy to play as a cook.

  4. Norco. The story blends the uncertainty of future technology and southern mythology, and it kept me eager to discover what was going on.

  5. Horizon Forbidden West. I like big bots, and I cannot lie. The game’s too big overall, less individually flavored by adding melee instead of focusing on its notable archery, and still on the edge of the uncanny valley with its procedural facial animation. The original Horizon surprised me by earning the place of robo dinos in the world and pacing a (clever and intriguing) backstory alongside the (plain coming of age) main story. I found the sequel to be pretty. I liked exploring around and through the world. And, really, those big dinosaur battles were a ton of fun.

Beyond the top five… I ended up getting PC Game Pass to play variety multi-player with friends. That put a bunch of games in front of me that I otherwise wouldn’t have gotten to this year. So, I’m quite happy to note there are other games that also released this year that I played. That top five is no mere “all I played”, no sir.

#6 onwards: Nobody Saves the World, The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, Tunic, Immortality, Citizen Sleeper

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I’ll come back later to format the shit rite

Golden Idol
Slay the Spire Downfall
Persona 5 Royal
Marvel Snap

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Uh, wow, I did NOT play a lot of games from 2022 this past year. Partly that seems to be because, for my purposes, it just wasn’t a very good gaming year. Things I’ve played and enjoyed:

  1. Potion Craft
  2. Strange Horticulture
  3. Otteretto
  4. Gordian Quest
  5. Knotwords

Of course we all know what’s going to win here. It was a good year for masochists, I guess. :)

In fairness, I’ve not gotten around to Redout 2, High on Life, Zombie Army 4, Midnight Suns, or Sniper Elite 5 yet, any of which might readily have made this list otherwise.

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Oooh, is Slice & Dice eligible? I might have to update my list if so. I see on Itch that it released 1.0 in 2021. Maybe 2.0 brought support for a new platform, so that counts as a release for it in the last year?

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Oh god, I hope so or I can’t even field a full list!

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Bad news: the original release notes from Jun 2021 mention Android, Windows, and Mac. I don’t think it has other platforms to argue for eligibility. But, uh, I hear there’s no script this year. Just between you and me, who’s even going to stop these votes?