wow! 2022 was actually a great year for games! games that run the whole spectrum of the personal to the huge and expansive. here are the games I've been playing!
Elden Ring
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐(...do I really need to link it?)
from the moment it came out, it was like everyone on the internet was working through this game at the same time, encountering new things every day and sharing them, discovering, and playing alongside eachother for several months. it was a magical experience to play this game when its world still felt so unknown, and the game was so unrelentingly massive that this period of time lasted for ages. playing through this game was like crack. it was like every day a new massive area was discovered, a new secret was found, and so on.
Elden Ring is my GOTY also because this is the summation of everything From Software has learned in their previous games (including some things literally lifted and reused) all together in one megagame that is like 10 times the length. And wheras most open world gmaes have vast swathes of map with nothing in them, almost every corner of this world has had detail and attention paid to it. the amount of detail is ridiculous for a game this size. This game is a stunning achievement
it is also just a WEIRD and interesting world. doing away with a lot of the ordinary tropes of standard sword 'n' sorcery, it has monsters you won't have seen before, it has weird costumes and weird places: bosses like a really massive guy who uses gravity magic to ride on his tiny, skinny horse; a wolf that has been mutated into the shape of a T-Rex... and that's just scratching the surface because I don't want to spoil it. getting the full picture of this game's world is just this incredibly massive and weird place, and every day it's like you notice some new, obvious, weird thing about it that you didn't before.
Perfect Tides
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐where Elden Ring is a pyramid built by thousands of people, Perfect Tides is a smaller labour of love. this makes me love it more than E.R in a lot of ways.
It's got such an interesting vibe and mood- simultaneously, you are living on a sun-soaked island, (which the game renders in such an immersive way, with light and shadow flickering over your character as you go in and out of shade). and on the flipside of this: focus on a character going through the pains and angsts of teenagerhood. from the very beginning it's an explosion of teenage hormones and anxiety: the main character (Mara)'s friend, (Lily) confides in her a secret. she lost her virginity over break. Mara becomes anxious and feels undesirable as a result of being the only person she knows who is still a virgin; and this colours the mood for the ensuing story
I was obsessed with this game and its immersive world when I played it. I felt so invested in this world and characters, so, well done!
He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐instantly arresting from its opening lines. This game is an autobiographical work. it's told in a unique way that I have rarely seen tapped into where it manages to fuse the abstract (odd, yume-nikki-esque environments that sort of exist outside reality) as well as pulling you straight into reality when it needs to. it is brilliantly told and, despite being about subjects that are fucked up, I came out the other end with a sense of clarity. it's something a lot of people will be able to relate to and find something in.
Sylvie Lime
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐(Full disclosure: I am friends with the person who made this game) I have always thought of Sylvie as one of my favourite game designers in the indie scene right now: her games often follow a formula: metroidvanias split into sub-areas, where you go looking for tools to help you slowly uncover the rest: but structurally the level design is always mind-blowing in its own way. when you eventually see the full picture of its world, it recolours how you saw your own progress through it. in this one, the tools are all assigned to a button and about half way through it you find yourself pressing a ton of buttons in order to use mechanics in symphony that you've probably never used in a game before. it's a bit of a puzzle.
this game's full of surprises and just generally a great time. colourful, weird, and cute, what more could ya want!
Vampire Survivors
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Vampire Survivors is pure, square-eyed, TV-addicted, video game junk food. the kind of game that your parents looking over your shoulder thought that all video games were. the kind of game that would appear in the background of an episode of CSI to show how stupid video games are. in other words it's fantastic
...playing like a cross between a diabloesque shoot-em-up and a tower defence game- your weapons constantly fire off on a timer and the background scrolls endlessly: this game is a bit like a single-screen game doing an impression of a multi-screen game- waves of enemies approach from the sides no matter where you're standing, and they steadily get stronger as the match goes on. it's up to you to get stronger too, by collecting little crystals they drop to buy new weapons and defense. you'll see just how much of a tower defence game this is when you play it.
it's the kind of game that both can require focus and strategy, but also pure "sit-back-and-relax" superbuilds where your character will just obliterate everything and you don't even need to move. both of these situations are satisfying. it's a game that's not afraid to let you become OP (and with upgrades it goes even further, including a "limit break" that lets you level up things infinitely) and loads of other weird, hidden features that turn this deceptively short and simple game into a huge undertaking to 100%, filled with secret weapons, characters, and weird unique things hidden away in places on the map.
I've been raving about this game, I've been addicted to it and I see no shame in that. just a great example of experimentation and fun-maximising ideas; despite seeming familiar in its mechanics, I dare say you haven't played anything like this. Everything about it oozes style and a sense of humour, too. from the name to the in-game descriptions. to the way it plays fast and loose with the theming (are there actually any vampires in this game?)
Splatoon 3
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Splatoon 2 is fantastic. In a AAA scene full of boring and "played-safe" crap, splatoon 2 stands out as an endlessly weird, uniquely styled, and fun gmae built around a simple idea.
...you'll notice I said splatoon 2 there, rather than Splatoon 3. That's because splatoon 3 is basically the same game but with a little more new stuff. and there's nothing wrong with that- the creativity and mood is still there, it's still a ton of fun, and I've been playing it a whole bunch! ....but it feels a bit like I am playing splatoon 2 if I don't think too hard about it. it doesn't iterate on itself very much. If splatoon stayed like this for a few years that'd be fine. Will splatoon 4 expand on these ideas more? who knows.
