The burnout is real. My first playthrough of Elden Ring is my top game of 2022. But then I tried a few additional characters and didn’t care for it. And the more distance I get from the game, the less I appreciate it. That’s the opposite of some other games on my list.
Just remembered I bought that one too. So 19.
This is my off the cuff ranking for 2022 games I’ve played. I’d feel good about 1-4 or maybe 1-6 making it on a final game of the year list.
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Elden Ring : I don’t think anything is going to top it. The combat and world exploration was top notch. I don’t think it is as fun for secondary play throughs as DS, but the first play through was awesome.
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King Arthur: Knight’s Tale : Great atmosphere and differentiated classes make for great tactical battles. Challenge seems well tuned on hard difficulty. A little bit of a strategic base building layer to top it off. Some missions can take a little too long with a lot of enemies, but at least they are divided up across multiple battles.
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Rogue Legacy 2 : Made it to the last battle but couldn’t win without grinding more than I was willing. That was still a lot of entertainment the entire rest of the time. Really well done.
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MLB The Show 22 : It’s always fun to play a season or two. The pitcher - batter interface is great. Feels like real baseball. I wish I could buy 1970s-1980s seasons to play with accurate player ratings and models.
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Gordian Quest : The mechanics are well-done but I prefer a game like this that is a bit more focused - like Slay the Spire. The battles are fun, but the difficulty is not balanced that well, which takes away from the game.
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Old World : While I still like it, I have fallen a bit out of love with it due to the heavy amount of family management and events. I’ve turned the frequency down on the events, but I haven’t tried it without the characters yet. It seems like it will be a bit empty without characters, but I still may prefer that once I give it a try. The rest of the game is really good.
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Dying Light 2 Stay Human : It was OK. I enjoyed the first game much more, even with the campy story. Even the game play felt a bit worse. Maybe it was too spread out and getting around was less convenient.
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Stacklands : Nifty little game to mess around with, but replaying to get further is a bit tedious. Kind of a real time resource allocation card game.
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Dorfromantik : A chill builder game that is a bit too chill to really keep me interested. It’s OK as a time filler.
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Out of the Park Baseball 23 : More of the same, but buggier.
Didn’t make the cut…
Total War: Warhammer III
Haven’t played yet but own
Distant Worlds 2
Songs of Conquest (EA)
Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga
Wartales (EA)
Want to play, but don’t own. Some may be on Gamepass?
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters
Sniper Elite 5
Tunic
Patrick’s Parabox
Sniper Elite 5 is on GamePass
The 11 and 12 on the d12 have special icons (that I frankly don’t think read very clearly) and the d6 have icons on the 6 and the 1, 2, and 3 are printed differently to indicate results for exhaustion rules. The real issue is that after the intro, the rules note the symbols instead of the numbers throughout the text so you’re constantly having to remind yourself what the rules are talking about if you don’t have the special dice. It was a big hassle for my group.
To add insult to it, the first production run of dice are printed incorrectly. They have a symbol on the 1 instead of the 11, screwing up the odds!
Both of these are on PC Game Pass.
Here’s some lists from the internet.
https://www.theyoungfolks.com/video-games/165568/the-10-best-video-games-of-2022-so-far/
https://www.pastemagazine.com/games/best-games-of-2022-so-far/
Spoiler: Blurb for their top game:
NORCO , a smart narrative-driven game about the unique ways in which institutions like religion and big business have exploited the South, its people and its land throughout history, is clearly the work of people who understand this region and its fundamental defects. It’s an unflinching, occasionally surreal glimpse into an only slightly exaggerated version of Louisiana, with its mythical and allegorical flourishes only highlighting the aimless mundanity and real-life degradations of the modern South. If you only play one game from this list, make it NORCO .
I’ve been trying with NORCO but it’s not grabbing me. Don’t know if it’s a genre or graphics thing but I want to keep playing, dammit.
Been meaning to try Norco, partly because it’s on Game Pass but also since I grew up in Louisiana. Plus I do love a good ol’ point and click adventure.
No particular order
- Hardspace Shipbreaker
- Horizon Forbidden West
- MLB: The Show
- Norco
- Dying Light 2
- Mario Strikers
- Indiana Jones pinball machine
- Strange Horticulture
- Card Shark
- Gran Turismo 7
Elden Ring, and… uh… yeah. That’s it.
hot take: Elden Ring is going to win all the GOTY awards.
Distant Worlds 2 is the only new release I’ve purchased and played this year. That will probably be true at year end. It will win my new game of the year by default.
And, based on recent patches, it will truly deserve it by then. Even with the bugs I’ve loved my time with it, but with those getting stomped out entirely (?) and more effort going into QOL patching, this gem is just getting better and better.
Thanks to everyone mentioning Strange Horticulture, I’m really enjoying it as a fresh new type of game.
I wouldn’t count Sonic Frontiers out just yet!
(this is a joke)
These are the only three I can remember playing:
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Shadow Warrior 3
I loved the platforming & writing. I didn’t enjoy how long the fights were, and gave up after dying a few times at the rooster boss. -
Taiko no Tatsujin the Drum Master
Too grindy to recommend, but it’s fun & on gamepass. -
Aperture Science Desk Job
I guess it counts?
Next week’ll be that Stray cat game. I’m sure that’ll take my #1 spot. :)
Thanks for linking all these!
Ah, ya. This seems crappy. Still seems doable but I’ll mostly read and maybe do some solo stuff since I grabbed the Strider rules for it. I can see where a group would make this issue much more pronounced.
Can I make yet another request for these catch-all threads that people get in the habit of saying a game’s name when you’re talking about it? Please remember you’re in a catch-all thread and your comments are going to be stuck between other people’s comments about other games.
I had to page back through four exchanges between @lostcawz and @telefrog to see what game they’re even talking about, only to discover it’s a tabletop RPG called The One Ring.
-Tom
