Quarterlies 2022! The Qt3 forum readers’ choice for best game of 2022 is …

[Brooski]

… ELDEN RING

If anything was surprising about this year’s winner, it certainly wasn’t actual “who won?” All throughout the voting, people were acknowledging that the winner was basically a foregone conclusion. Vampire Survivors actually made a pretty nice showing, considering. A very distant third was Marvel’s Midnight Suns, followed by Pentiment in fourth. (I kept typing “Penitent.”)

But by the time we got to Immortality at #5, it only had 25 points, which wouldn’t have been enough to even place in the top ten in the previous four years. How dominant was Elden Ring? If you add up the total number of points the top ten games got, and then divide the winner’s total to get a percentage, Elden Ring got 35% of those points. That’s the biggest win of the past five years, beating Hades’ 27% in 2020, and crushing Battletech’s 15% in 2018.

So what did people say about Elden Ring? Not much! Some people even said, literally, “Not much to say here,” or “No explanation needed, I hope.” Apparently, it was that obvious!

Well, there were some comments …

@_aaron

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.

@Charlatan

no explanation needed I hope. An amazing game whose open world was the hook that got me to purchase and play my first Souls-like game.

@mjgreeny75

Great game, obviously, and the first Dark Souls-like game I could actually play. However, the crazy scaling of (even standard) enemies about halfway through, which meant that even with top lvl and top gear I still get killed in two hits, ruined it a bit for me. Perhaps some day I will actually git gud…

@Left_Empty

I’m “only” 30 hours in, but so many “whoah” moments.

@Scotch_Lufkin

Not much more to say here, I was entrenched and obsessed with this game for a full month after release, and I’m still even as I type this thinking it’s been long enough to jump back in.

@thatdudeguy

Yep.

@SamS

It has been a long time since a game just pulled me in like this one. These days I am pretty much done at the 20 hour mark – enough time to see what the game is doing and yeah, I could keep doing the same thing for another 50 hours but I have other things to do. After 100 hours in Elden Ring I still had no idea what might be coming up around the next corner – it just keeps unfolding before you like… well I don’t have a good simile to put in here, but like something that unfolds in an unexpected but utterly delightful way.

@TundraToad

Its not even close. Will be in the discussion of the G.O.A.T. for me forever. Being a explorer type person this game had a world I loved. It was an adventure I’ll never forget.

@gingerturtle

(video game happiness)

@pyrhic

can’t say anything more than what’s already been said

@scharmers

One of those GOAT-contending games we so rarely get. As someone who is zooming through the Kuiper Belt of middle age, unforgiving games aren’t my genre, but ER always made banging my head against a wall worthwhile.

@robc04

Same great combat and enemy design we’re used to from a Souls game but set in a huge world that’s fun to explore. Most games I get too impatient to explore thoroughly, but not this. This is my favorite Souls game so far for a first playthrough, but due to the size of the world and me needing to ‘explore’ the entire world again on subsequent play throughs, I feel this isn’t as good for multiple runs.

@Thraeg

I don’t have anything particularly insightful to add to the discussion here, but I’m still in shock that the dark, slow, obtuse, weighty, confusing, and incredibly niche game design I fell in love with on the PS2 with King’s Field: The Ancient City has somehow become the consensus GotY.

@Dirklectisch

• Every couple of years an open world game comes by that completely consumes all of my gaming time for a couple of months, this time it was Elden Ring. While Bloodborne remains my favorite Souls like this was pretty close. Over the years I learned that a sense of discovery is an important aspect I enjoy about games, this has that in spades. It’s also effectively a move away from making every RPG just about numbers, some sort of sickness that games have inherited from MMO’s. The world is filled with items that let you play in all sorts of different ways.

@glimjack

This is mentioned pretty much everywhere, but the graphic design is amazing - creatures and world, paired with the ability to move to a new area when stuck is a fantastic combination. It brought back the wonder of exploring a new, expansive world I haven’t had in years.

@Mr_PeaCH

That is all. Comfortably in my Top 5 games all time.

@Rock8man

There’s a thrill in this game of discovering a new area that I think is almost unmatched in any other game I’ve played. When you first go over the bend of a hill and look down at a new area. The fear, the thrill of discovery, the anticipation of picking up loot, the danger of running into a new kind of enemy, the primal emotion of stepping into fog not knowing what you’ll find, the fear of heights the level design repeatedly evokes by putting you on a cliffside as you look down into the abyss or into a beautiful vista. The things this game does well are unique to video games. It’s a very gamey-game, and yet it still manages to evoke those feelings I described above that usually come with games that focus on immersion; games that usually try to make you forget you’re playing a game. I think that’s Elden Ring’s greatest trick. It somehow does immersion so well despite unabashedly reminding you all the time that you’re playing a game.

I’ve never played Elden Ring, and based on how much I enjoyed Dead Souls 3, I probably won’t ever play it. But it’s nice to know that in this time when interests are becoming more and more fragmented, we have this incredibly difficult and frustrating piece of interactive George R.R. Martin lore to bring us all together.

I don’t have that much to say about the rest of this list because I’m pretty out of touch with what’s going on, but love to see what people are playing. I actually love the one-off mentions of stuff that has no chance of winning because otherwise I’d never hear of some of this stuff. Ironsworn: Starforged? Amazing.

Here are the last five years of voting with the % of the top-ten points total that the winner captured, which I referenced above.

I will post the final spreadsheet as a Google Doc when I get a chance so people can look at all the votes.

Doing this whole thing by hand was actually fun. I don’t know that I’d sign up for that in perpetuity, but it wasn’t a chore by any means.

EDIT: Slight edit to the image showing the results for the last 5 years - no substantive changes

[Telefrog]

Congrats, Elden Ring!

And a big THANK YOU to @Brooski for this!

[_aaron]

Thank you @Brooski for MC’ing and tallying, and everyone who participated! I relish the breadth of titles and game play across all of the votes. I hope I can get to half of it in the years to come.

[Left_Empty]

Thank you @Brooski for all your work. It’s always a joy, and a good way to catch up on some things that went totally by one, during the previous year.

I really liked @SamS and @Rock8man’s takes on this year’s winner.

[Editer]

Thanks much for running this, Bruce! It’s always a great way to find games I’d not have played otherwise.

[Nightgaunt]

Well I, for one, am glad that Elden Ring has had its plaudits and now we don’t need to hear anything more about it for the year of 2024!

(Kidding, kidding. I love that people were so blown away by something this year. Sounds like an all-timer.)

Thank you, Bruce!

[robc04]

Thanks! I love these end of year votes!

[geggis]

Cheers Bruce! Always interesting to see what folk place in their top 5 each year!

[Mr_PeaCH]

I’m old, I don’t do ARPG (let alone MMO) any more. I hate PvP. I had avoided all of the ‘soulsbourne’ games like the plague based I what I’d heard.

But the lure of ‘open world’ and ‘GRRM’ was too strong and I gambled. Within a month, I’d purchased a new gaming rig to do it justice. Within six I’d put more hours into it than my job.

2022. The year I got gud. Thanks for the ride, Elden Ring. I’m only waiting now for a big DLC update so I can love you all over again.

[AWS260]

It’s always fun to see the results and read everyone’s comments. I guess I should try Elden Ring at some point!

[triggercut]

Thanks for running this again in 2022 Bruce!

[Equisilus]

What the hell?! Elden Ring!? What even is that?

grumble

I’ll probably never play it, but one year when it’s going for under $10, I may grab it just to see what the fuss was all about.

I’m happy Pentiment made it to the top 10. The only game on there that I played and had on my list, despite my issues with how it ended.

Sadly, this year’s top 10 probably has the fewest games that I’ll ever have an interest in playing out of all those in recent memory (last year’s list was probably the top for that).

Thanks again, @Brooski!

[vinraith]

@Equisilus

I’ll probably never play it, but one year when it’s going for under $10, I may grab it just to see what the fuss was all about.

I have little doubt that some day in the future when I have a rig that can run it I’ll buy it on sale, play it a little, get really excited about the open world, run into a boss fight (or, since it’s open, a variety of boss fights) that I can’t get past with a reasonable (to me) amount of time and effort, quit, uninstall, and refund.

[Nightgaunt]

Wow, so this is the first time since 2017 that a AAA game has won the vote (Horizon Zero Dawn won five years ago). And Vampire Survivors may be the “most indie” game ever to rank! Fascinating year.

[vinraith]

@Nightgaunt

Horizon Zero Dawn won five years ago

And I still can’t run it! I don’t know if it’s a bad port or if my PC is just that archaic. I own it, I really want to play it, but it brings my machine straight to its knees in a way that brand new games don’t.

[scharmers]

Thanks for the work, Brooski.

Neat to see a hardcore gamers’ game as #1, with a most casual of casual games as #2.

[vyshka]

Tough break for Vampire Survivors. It had enough votes to win a couple years, but had to settle for the silver medal.

Thanks for keeping the tradition alive @Brooski

[Equisilus]

I had to look up Vampire Survivors to see why I hadn’t heard about it. Except I had. I had put it on my ignore list on Steam when it popped up in a queue, which is the only time I’ve ever added anything to the ignore list.

Impressions from gameplay footage, I suspect. So chaotic.

[ioticus]

Why is Slay the Spire listed in both 2018 and 1019?

[Rock8man]

@ioticus

Why is Slay the Spire listed in both 2018 and 1019?

The original card game was released in 1019, and then the digital version came out in 2018 (or late 2017 technically) in Early Access, and then the full version in 2019. It was also released on iOS in 2020 and eligible again. And in 2021 for Android and eligible again.