I mean I guess it isn't that tardy, but still. Pretty tardy. At any rate, here are ten of the games I played this year that were pretty good and a couple honorable mentions for good measure (as well as some other biz that I simply cannot resist adding). 2022 sure is a year that happened, huh? Christ, I’m tired just thinking about it. Or maybe that’s the jetlag talking. I refuse to order these into a proper top ten, but we’ll save my GOTY for last, hmm?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
Also known as “the game that sent me down a complete fucking 2D brawler rabbit hole for a little while,” TMNT is more or less perfect as far as these things go. It does what I always want a game like this to do, which is play like I remember the old arcade and NES games playing but with a little more depth and also, crucially, having the old intro play at the beginning. Look, I’m old and this nostalgia shit works on me, okay? Leave me alone.
Evil Dead: The Game
A game I picked up on the strength of its stupid theme song and the enormous amount of attention to detail that went into making the locations pulled from the show and films feel right. As an unexpected and delightful bonus, the game plays really well too and it is fun as shit to play with friends! I also solo queued a little in it, but at a certain point everyone is running about doing their own thing and it is kind of a bummer. The single player missions are neat but some of them are Fuck You hard, though I will probably get around to finishing the last one I didn’t get eventually. Probably. Maybe.
Neon White
Goddamn this soundtrack whips ass. I listen to it way more than anyone should and I am not sick of it yet. Oh, and there’s a video game too? It’s really fucking good? Weird. The writing is a little dumb internet at times, but also I laughed at most of the really dumb jokes so I gotta let it slide. You are a good game, Neon White, and I will take all your secrets eventually.
Chinatown Detective Agency
If I were going to order these, I’d probably put this down near the bottom of the list, if only because the central mechanic (aka “look shit up on the internet”) got ruined by a shitload of websites publishing guides with the answers, and guess what google serves to you like immediately when you google? That’s right. However, I fucking adored the Carmen Sandiego games as a kid, and this is basically one of those! That’s cool as shit!
Splatoon 3
Winner of the coveted “oh god sorry I barely play you” award, this is more Splatoon, which is something I wanted anyway. I’m a big fan! It feels good and I like the (relatively minor) bump the graphics took! Ay!
Citizen Sleeper
What if you could just be a robot guy doing their best on a derelict space station in a capitalist space hellscape? What if you rolled a lot of dice to do that? What if the writing was really good? Finally, someone provided me with the answers to these burning questions.
River City Girls 2
As someone who fucking loves River City Girls, I was extremely excited about a sequel. Plus, they altered the mechanics just enough to fix some of the things about RCG that annoyed the shit out of me, like having to go into the menus to use my healing items, or accidentally recruiting someone I didn’t want, thus meaning I lost my cooler recruits. Plus, new music and a pretty good story that explains the reason you have to learn all your old moves is you sat on your ass playing video games and eating snacks for too long. I also just got back from a long vacation where I sat on my ass and played video games and ate snacks, so I mean it when I say they just like me for real.
Soul Hackers 2
Winner of the best game with Ringo in it award, because it is the best game with Ringo in it. Also, I haven’t really played a ton of it but I love me some SMT shenanigans and I love me some sassy sort-of-robot-sort-of-human lifeforms even more than that. People were disappointed this wasn’t more like the first game, but I am not one of those people.
Elden Ring
Absolutely enormous and very pretty, and also winner of the “oh god damn it fuck these gargoyle motherfuckers” award for making me extremely mad at a video game. I am not gonna bother gushing about this game too much because that is all anyone does, I think it rules and now that the PC version doesn’t run like total booty buttcheeks I’m really loving it (it also got some Steam Deck use from me).
Vampire Survivors
My personal game of the year, because I have three separate saves on three separate systems and I cannot stop playing this fucking thing. I bounced off it at first and put it down for months before idly firing it up using Game Pass Streaming on my little Retroid 3 that I’d put the Game Pass app on for some reason (the reason was so I could play Yakuza 7 on the toilet). From that point forward, I was lost forever. I haven’t unlocked everything, but I have paid for it so I can put it on my Steam Deck, and also it is the reason my phone battery drains so damn fast now. Congratulations to this game for kicking ass.
Honorable Mentions
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, which isn’t quite as good as I wanted it to be on PC, but it is good enough that I think it rules (although most of my time goes to Guilty Gear Strive these days). Also, Sifu, which is the game I look at the most in my library and think “oh yeah I’ll get back to you,” and then never actually do. One day though! Probably!
Best Jeff Minter game I got obsessed with
This is a crowed field, but I think ultimately I have to give the nod to Polybius, which you should all play because it fucking rules. I already talked a lot about Minter’s oeuvre earlier though so you can just read that instead of me going through it all here. Polybius only juuuust edges out Tempest 4000, because having the fantastic SUPERZAPPER RECHARGE voice only gets you so far.
Old 2D brawler I got real into
Streets of Rage 2, baby! I loved this so much that I went back to Streets of Rage 4, which also rules, thank you very much. That SOR2 soundtrack, though,,,, it’s good.
Game I picked up again after two years and now it has buried itself in my brain and refuses to leave and now I am gonna fucking end up playing more and probably pick up those other old games in the series again too because I have a sickness
Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Gotta put that Retroid 3 of mine to work emulating the GBA and DS entries in the series now, damn it.
Game that has nuked the battery on my Steam Deck the most
Hitman 3. What can I say, I like assassinating people while sitting at my work desk!
Game I ricocheted off of at supersonic speeds but then the power of song drew me back in
Tokyo Mirage Sessions FE# Encore which is an unwieldy name but it really does kinda rule.
Fighting game I am now constantly thinking about, why can’t I play it right now, fuck
Street Fighter 6. Juri is so fucking fun it is unfair! Do another beta please, I am having withdrawls.
Game I wish I hadn’t paid full price for
Ghostwire Tokyo. I kinda like it, I want to like it more, but I should’ve waited for a sale on this one. It’s just not quite what I was hoping for when I booted it up, and really I should’ve known better. Alas, I talked myself into it and now I gotta live with it.
I think that's enough for now, don't you?
