Vinny's Top 10 Games of 2022

First, thanks to everyone for reading this and supporting us over the last year. It may sound cliché or like well-worn territory, but there’s nothing certain about what we do here and the reason we’re able to continue is through your support. In 2022, games came out and games got delayed, but the biggest changes seemed to be within the industry itself and the places that cover it. The game coverage landscape has always been a weird place, but this community has allowed us all (staff and members) to continue to participate in it with respect, shared values, and without feeling like we have to compromise ourselves to keep up with external demands, whether from a corporation, a content platform, or various other pressures. When we create something we are able to just consider what we’d like to do and whether enough people are interested in reading/watching/listening to it. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that’s not always the case and we’re able to operate free from a lot of the external baggage because of your actions as supporters.

The list.

There was a sentiment concerning 2022 that it was a weaker release year due to a host of different issues. While that argument can certainly be made (I’ve probably made it myself), this year saw the release of some really exceptional games, at least one of which might be an ‘all-timer’. We got some major sequels that delivered, some smaller games that explored new territory, and most notably, a list that exemplifies the variety that is available now within the gaming world. My list will always lean toward games with a narrative focus; that’s just what I’m drawn to when it comes to spending hours in a game world.

According to my tracking I had around 100 games to choose from including games I’ve completed (28), games I’m still playing (24-ish), and games I’ve put down (48). Most, if not all, the games on my list this year are games I’ve finished and that makes sense when you consider I’m drawn towards the completion of a story over the pure mechanics in a game.

You can see the full list of games I played this year over at: https://nextlander-dev-game-db.herokuapp.com/lists

Finally, a bit of technical preamble before you scroll to read about the games I chose to include on this list. Like I said above, I played a lot of games this year so there are some great games that didn’t get listed just because it ends at the number ten. Here are five more games that could easily have made a slightly longer list:

Neon White
Spiderheck
The Case of the Golden Idol
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow
Last Call BBS

also, not technically a game but I have spent and enjoyed a ridiculous amount of time in You Need A Budget over the course of this year. Thanks YNAB.

So now you know I think those games are all fantastic, and when you get to this list you'll remember that the number ten spot already had to beat out some pretty stiff competition even to make it! Let's begin.

10. Tunic

I loved most of my time with Tunic, but felt the game asked a bit too much of me by the end. Maybe because I wanted to know everything, to decode every last fragment I could find, but the process had stopped being enjoyable and instead it felt a bit laborious. That really doesn’t diminish the wonder and enjoyment I got from the majority of my time with it, it just is why it sits closer to the bottom of this list than near the top. It’s still excellent and highly recommended regardless of some of my small issues with it.

9. Pentiment

Another game that could have been higher on the list if not for some bits of friction I had during my time playing. By its conclusion, the game had made good on a lot of the setup and time I had spent exploring the town of Tassing, but there were definitely points where I was dreading and fighting the compulsion to check and see if someone a few screens over had anything new to say to me. Initially, I was concerned the game wasn’t giving me enough information or chance to make the ‘correct’ choices but I realized, not too long into it, that what I thought was a flaw was the entire point. I still wanted to try and get all the information I could, but I knew I would probably never feel completely sure that I was right, or even if there is a ‘right’. When the game was over, aside from wanting to be reminded of some choices I had made, I felt Pentiment had earned all the praise it has gotten since its release.

8. Citizen Sleeper

Citizen Sleeper puts you into an extremely well-realized science fiction universe to tell a very close and personal story. It’s intimate in a way that I appreciate, not interacting with forces to attempt to change the fate of the universe, but mostly you are nudging and affecting the lives of a handful of characters with whom you interact. The centerpiece here is the writing and art, which are both fantastic and will keep you moving forward as you weigh your options aboard a failing space station. There’s enough of a mechanic in the dice rolling gameplay to balance the feelings of chance and decision making that I knew I couldn’t achieve everything I wanted all the time, but I never really felt I was being cheated out of narrative opportunities. Overall, it’s a great slice-of-life tale coupled with a good amount of user agency.

7. God of War Ragnarök

It’s difficult not to compare Ragnarök with its 2018 predecessor, especially considering it was my number one game of the year when it was released. I have some minor quibbles with this one, which include quantity of gear and mechanics early on, some narrative left turns that don’t feel especially earned, and the ponderous nature of the travel and collectible hunting, especially in the late to end-game portions. Some of the complaints might stem from my completionist tendencies, but when hunting down ravens or the like, at least having an option to quickly return to a Gateway would have been appreciated. That said, even with a slow start, by the end I was fully invested in my Kratos build and was loving the combat challenges. I was weapon switching like a pro, popping off well-timed runic abilities, and basically felt a synergy between what the game was asking of me and what I was giving. 

Narratively, though the story is great on its own, it didn’t hit as hard for me as the 2018 God of War, which I would chalk up to the novelty being gone. There is great work being done with all the supporting characters, and I’d make the argument that this is less a tale of Kratos and Atreus and more a story about the various creatures that come into contact with the two of them. A great follow-up to one of my favorite games over the last few years, and I can’t wait to see what is next for the franchise.

6. The Quarry

My love for FMV and adventure games is known as are my feelings that the work that is being done by Supermassive is carrying the FMV and point-and-click adventure torch forward. The Quarry is more like Until Dawn than anything in the Dark Pictures series, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! Everything just feels like it was given a bit more budget, and a bit more production time. We played the majority of it together for work, and honestly, with a group is my preferred preference for playing through this style of game. It’s not a perfect entry, with some issues tying up the loose ends at the conclusion (or at least with our conclusion) but I’m inclined to be fairly forgiving given the fun we had along the way and the nature of the branching paths. The acting, storytelling, and the general vibe all made for that ‘interactive movie’ that games have chased for so long but are rarely able to mix together properly.

5. Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection

As far as collections and celebrations of games go, Atari 50 might be one of the best I’ve ever come across, and there have been a lot of them. Atari 50 knocks out the basics of any collection, which are to collate and make playable a certain number of games. In a collection in 2022 you need to also include some additional assets, like the artwork, concept art, manuals, etc. That’s the baseline, and what Atari 50 does is go so far above and beyond that to make the collection and presentation itself an experience. It presents interactive timelines for the different eras of Atari and integrates the games, assets, and interviews throughout. It puts context and meaning into the games that few collections are able to do and also adds a much needed bit of humanity to their creation. It’s a massive undertaking, but I would love to see the love, passion, and effort that was put in here funneled into other publisher collections in the future. In a world full of collections, Atari 50 has effectively sets a new standard.

4. Horizon Forbidden West

On this list there are three big games that sit close together in my mind. God of War, Horizon, and Elden Ring. Maybe it’s because they gobbled up huge amounts of time, maybe it’s because I got the Platinum Trophy for each of them, or maybe it’s just because they have that traditional big-budget-AAA vibe. Either way, when I was making this list they felt like anchor points for my year. Horizon was a game I dumped a ton of time into and I was honestly surprised at how much narrative kept coming back at me. 

Like God of War, the mechanics and gear seemed to expand on the previous game to a fault. For most of my time it was so much that I just didn’t feel like engaging with all the upgrading when I knew I was probably going to settle on some unique item in every category that was given as quest reward. That being said, what I was most impressed with was the sheer volume of setup and story that is packed into this game. While the actual missions might boil down to a dozen or more types, the basis for those missions mostly felt unique and well-developed. I wanted to see how it all played out, and much like Mass Effect, some of the most interesting stuff was happening in the margins. Really, Forbidden West has a lot in common with Mass Effect 2, and that’s just fine with me. You’re gathering a crew, essentially doing loyalty missions, and trying to form a coalition to battle an existential threat. Along the way to saving the world, sure, you’re finding a bunch of lost wallets and keys, but at least the reason the wallet got lost is interesting. Going into Forbidden West I wasn’t really eager for more Horizon and now I’m eagerly awaiting whatever comes next!

3. Grounded

I’m not sure I can easily get the hour count for how much Grounded I played, but I’m also not sure I want to either. My kids and I played Grounded so much that I bought them each headsets, since we had to be scattered around on PCs and consoles throughout the house. While the game was officially released this year, it was also kind of wild to see the substantial changes that occurred after version 1.0. I was eagerly awaiting new patches that changed the gameplay quite a bit. Our whole miniature backyard traversal strategy was supercharged overnight when they added the ‘reverse ziplines’. We built, fought, and crafted our way through the entire campaign, weekend after weekend, and then when it was all over we immediately created a new world and started again on Creative Mode. I mean, we really wanted to build a giant castle! I hope they continue to add more to Grounded, possibly some content inside the house? If they do, I’ll be ready with my Spicy Coaltana and Mint Mace at the ready!

2. NORCO

Newsflash! There have been a lot of video games. So, it’s pretty rare when you find something that feels truly different. Sometimes it’s a new mechanic, a fresh art style, or some novel storytelling that seems to break orbit from gaming’s mainstream gravitational pull. NORCO really delivers on the narrative side of things, with a story that, at times, felt right out of George Saunders' Pastoralia. It’s an absurd dark comedy with memorable characters, all wrapped in a sci-fi-gothic Louisiana setting. Robots, corporations, detectives, and more all break from cliché and feel re-invented and unique within the world of NORCO. The art and sound contribute to the absorbing atmosphere setup by the writing, and it seems less like you are playing NORCO and rather you’ve fallen into it. It manages to be an absurd yet unflinchingly honest and relatable tale all at the same time. I can’t recommend it enough.

1. Elden Ring

I know I’m not alone out there for my love of Elden Ring. I’ve seen a lot of people put it at the top of their lists already, but I am a bit surprised it not only made it here, but that it actually might even make it onto a list of one of my all-time favorite games. I’ve played most From Software “Souls” games, not all to completion, but I’m well-acquainted with the formula. Traditionally, I like a big heavy tank (which is probably why I still haven’t beaten Bloodbourne) but I decided to mainly do a Dex build and try something a bit different. Turns out Elden Ring has enough systems baked into it that it’s flexible enough to make me feel like I was never being punished for dropping points into one stat over another. Between the Talismans, Spirits Ashes, Ashes of War, armor buffs, and items I was able to pretty much maximize or augment stats as I needed. On top of all that, there’s a relatively generous respec option for when I really needed to shift things around. While that sounds like a lot, and I’ve criticized games on this list for having overly dense mechanics already, Elden Ring’s systems wait patiently for you, ready for when you want to engage with them. To that point, I hardly used items at all during my playthrough even though I knew how achingly useful they could be. I didn’t ignore them because I was trying to punish myself, I mostly just found alternative ways to solve a problem before I had to resort to them (and I’m a notorious item hoarder). That kind of design made me feel I was never really stuck in the game, but rather I just had to rethink my approach to a problem.

Mechanics aside, the open world and exploration in Elden Ring is probably the thing that catapults it to the top of my list. I know a lot of folks that talk about Breath of the Wild’s open world as the best example of exploration, mystery, and adventure, but I never really felt that strongly about it. Elden Ring is the one to beat for me. Sure, there’s repetition in it, and some areas are better than others, but the sense of discovery throughout was something that never got old, even if I actually despised the area I was battling through. I was constantly being pulled off of a path to go explore something in the distance, and usually I was rewarded for doing so, either with some item or just interesting environmental storytelling. By the time I was wrapping up I wanted to absorb everything about the world including its history, its secrets, and especially all its goodies and items. I don’t know if I’ll jump back into another playthrough because I’m extremely satisfied with what I accomplished with my time in Elden Ring. That being said, if/when there’s additional story content, I’ll be there with my save ready to go!