2022 Feels like an unfinished year for me, I didn’t get to a lot of the games I wanted to, either to not having the time, multiple overlapping releases, delays in me getting ahold of things or simply not having the drive to play it. Most of what I did play though was a great time, and it is once again time for me to write them down here so I can come back to this in a year’s time and after I have had the thought “what came out last year?”
The Awards
Lets celebrate these games with the usual “stolen former Giant Bomb awards!”
Best Downloadable Content
3. Resident Evil Village: Shadows of Rose
2. Final Fantasy XIV 6.1: Newfound Adventures
1. Lost Judgment: The Kaito Files
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Best Stories
3. Xenoblade Chronicles 3
2. God of War: Ragnarök
1. A.I The Somnium Files: The Nirvana Initiative
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Best New Characters
3. Jack Garland (Final Fantasy Origin: Strangers of Paradise)
Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guPV7SQGsYs
2. Tama (A.I The Somnium Files: The Nirvana Initiative)
Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlIsJPOVvSI
1. Eunie (Xenoblade Chronicles 3)
Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cvBX3JgQmA
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Best Story Moments
3. Acquiring the new weapon (God of War: Ragnarök)
2. The end of Chapter 5 (Xenoblade Chronicles 3)
1. The big twist (A.I The Somnium Files: The Nirvana Initiative)
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Best Gameplay Sequences
3. Baal Zebul rhythm game sequence (Bayonetta 3)
2. “Don’t look away” (Resident Evil Village: Shadows of Rose)
1. General Rahdan Drops in (Elden Ring)
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Best Soundtracks
3. Neon White
2. Pokémon Scarlet/Violet
1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3
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Best Original Songs
3. Gh()st (Bayonetta 3)
2. Blood Upon the Snow (God of War: Ragnarök)
1. Scream (Final Fantasy XIV, Patch 6.2)
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Best Styyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyle
3. Ghostwire: Tokyo
2. SIFU
1. Neon White
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Best Technical Looking Game
3. The Last of Us Part I
2. God of War: Ragnarök
1. Horizon: Forbidden West
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Best Game of Yesteryear
3. Risk of Rain 2
lots of fun had here playing the bug riddled console version, let me tell you that “fix the game DLC” can’t come soon enough. I feel like once that patch drops we will find the game too easy (probably not though).
Music Highlight – Köppen As F̷̬͈͚̃̄̚ὐ̶̻̃̉͠¢̵͉̩͇͍̒̾̕κ̸̢̻͆̔: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEqMGuTOB5Q
2. Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
After not liking the original Xenoblade back in the day, I played it once again and loved it. Turns out playing 4 hours a once week of a 100 hour+ game was not a great way to experience it. This has now been remedied!
Music Highlight – Time to Fight! (Bionis’ Shoulder): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdqGq0rZ5LU
1. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age
Star Wars is great, and this game has a lot of things similar to it, so this good by default. It is also helped by the fact that half of the main party are some of the best characters in the entire FF franchise.
Music Highlight – Boss Battle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY8oeif2oFc
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The Honoraries
Let’s move onto the games that win the “didn’t” awards, I feel this part is bigger than usual
Did Not Finish
- Live A Live
- SIFU
- Immorality
BIG’O Pile’O Shame
- Dying Light 2
- Triangle Strategy
- The Quarry
- Soul Hackers 2
- Splatoon 3
- Gran Turismo 7
- Nintendo Switch Sports
- Mario Strikers: Battle League Football
- Windjammers 2
- Stray
- Tactics Ogre: Reborn
- Chained Echoes (Thanks to Nintendo for holding my backer key hostage)
Didn’t Make the Cut
- King of Fighters XV
- Kirby and the Forgotten Lands
- Bayonetta 3
- Horizon Forbidden West
- Ghostwire Tokyo
- Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle R
- The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
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The Top Ten
Okay, time for me to put numbers in front of these games
10. Pokémon Scarlet
If the backer key for Chained Echoes wasn’t held hostage by Nintendo for a while there, I’m sure this game would have been bumped, but here we are. It’s Pokémon so I’m not going to tread water telling you what Pokémon is, just know despite the technical issues the game is very good. Music is banging, the new Pokémon are great and the characters are some of the best in recent years.
There are some issues I have with the game (not including the Very Very bad technical issues). You can’t change out of the games school uniform, other than the 4 seasonal variations making for lackluster character customization. The Champion after the Elite 4 was lackluster, their music was pretty good though. The Gym “challenges” were all boring, speaking of the gyms there was one that included a Rap battle but it just felt weird as there was no voice acting, it really highlighted that maybe these games really need some now.
The part I really want to talk about here though is the part that knocked the game UP a few points for me, the ending section. After you clear the Pokémon League and beat two other storylines you get access to the finale, characters from all three of the games plot lines come together and you all head to a previously incassable area. Once you arrive, (spoilers from here) all your traversal abilities are taken away and you are put into a party of four to explore with. The music takes a drastic tone change and a bunch of strange new Pokémon appear, it’s a great mixup from the rest of the game and the more I went through it the more into I was. You get to the end of this area and you find the the games Pokémon Professor was dead the whole time, which is a crazy twist in a Pokémon game (you had been talking to an AI Professor the whole game).
The ending made me really want a new colosseum style game, it was such a breath of fresh air for the tired risk averse series. If only there were another Pokémon game from this year that sort of fills this criteria!
Music Highlight – Final Boss Battle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTj1v1sAYX
BONUS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPJ-Tk0f3bc
9. Vampire Survivors
I love not pressing buttons to get my brain chemical fix
Music Highlight – Copper Green Intent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7qpWDSN7lM&list=PLOt3Kp6xo5oiv0vHYAObDEgVOjs4T8Pij&index=2
8. Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
Jack Final Fantasy, this man stepped out of a time capsule from 2005 looked at the the script of the usual Dark v Light plot in JRPG’s and said “Bullshit”.
The game is… okay I guess, so why is here you ask? Well, the sheer weirdness that a game like this was made in 2022, a true Triple B game, that and the fun of doing the whole thing in Co-Op, just shooting to shit while Jack tells the Final Fantasy 1 bosses to go do one was a great time. It was also cool to see areas themed on the other numbered FF games.
The game is a tonal mess, but it’s a mess you can’t look away from. I should really go back and do them DLC missions at some point, if 2023 lets me take any breaks from its constant releases that is.
Music Highlight – Main Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI6Sp3o8JSs
7. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Oh hey look at that another Pokémon game that came out this year that sorta of fits the criteria that I was talking about before! While this is not a Colosseum like game, it is the closest we are gonna get, that and this one genuinely feels like the evolution the series needs. The game has a few difference to a normal Pokémon structure, there are no Gyms, there are minimal trainer battles, you keep control of your character in Pokémon battles and Pokémon will attack you. The last one there is what feels like the biggest impact change.
If you run into certain Pokémon in the wild they will come at you, the game is set in the distant past where Pokémon Trainers are not common place, as such a lot of Pokémon are not domesticated and will attack on sight. The best example of this are the large Red Eyed Pokémon, one of the first you can find is a Snorlax, if it sees you, it will turn it’s head to lock eyes with you and will start charging a large beam. Early game your only real option is run away, it is something like lvl 40 so you don’t stand a chance with your lvl 10 Rowlet. This is something completely new to Pokemon, DREAD. The feeling of “please don’t see me, please don’t see me” a great injection of a new type fun content for Pokemon.
The game has a story.
like Scarlet this is not a looker, but it does manage look much better than Scarlet and performs better as well, this is most likley down to the game only having large open areas, as opposed to the huge open world of Scarlet. If you combined this game and scarlet I’m sure it would have been regarded as one of the best Pokemon games ever made and a pinnacle of the series.
Music Highlight – Pokémon Wielder Volo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yqm7vrCp-g
6. Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- REUNION
This remaster is my first time through Crisis Core, and while not my favorite FF7 media by any means, it is still pretty good. You can feel the PSP in this though, the small areas and the bitesize mission structure.
There is an incredible upgrade in visuals, looking at each version side by side is mind blowing, I wish this game had the Halo Anniversary graphics toggle button, I would be hitting it nonstop.
It’s a shame that the dialogue wasn’t updated, it really really needed a refesh instead of just new recordings. It’s real clunky and not how people talk at all, this was figured out in Remake and they got all the new actors in here so I’m unsure why they didn’t, such a missed oppertunity.
The big question here is why Square decided to remaster this game, the answer is that story and maybe gameplay elements are probably going to be included in FF7: Rebirth, I hope they take more gameplay stuff and less story stuff if this is the case. On the gamepley front the fun stuff they could take could be things like Matriera Fusion, it is a cool idea to make new and more powerful Materia, but I think if Rebirth were to include something like this it needs a lot of work done to it. Another thing they could take is the DMW, basically a slot machine for powerups and even levelups in comabt, who knew Zach was a gambler class, this would also need some work done.
I had a fun time with this game, but I am more than ready for Rebirth now the has wet the palate!
Music Highlight – Wandering under the Moonlight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwekknpJw80
5. Neon White
Upfront warning, the game is cringe, it is designed to be and I find the cringe to be fun, but hey your cringe mileage may vary.
Anyway, the game is an incredibly fun speedrunner, great level design all the way through and great music to boot, I found myself not moving on until I at least got a Gold Medal on every stage (getting that fastest time is really addictive man).
There is a Story, but it mostly serves to justify why the game looks as abstract as is does and isn’t much deeper than that. It is quite clear that the level and Character design came first (this is conjecture on my part, but I would be surprised to be wrong). Character relationships are the strongest part of the narrative, Yellow is the broest of bros, Mikey is great, Red is fun and Violet is also a character.
This game came out around the time my Steam Deck arrived, so if I may go off on a tangent, Great little device, Neon White runs perfectly on it. Honestly, I was expecting a fun novel handheld PC that I could do my Final Fantasy XIV dailies on, but it is clearly a little powerhouse, that in conjunction with cloud saves make the Steam Deck a great rival to the Nintendo Switch.
Music Highlight – Virtual Paradise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7alzMkyaL0I
4. A.I The Somnium Files: The Nirvana Initiative
I bought the first game in this series on a post Persona 5 Royal blues fueled whim, lets just say it worked out pretty good. Distilling this game down to the basic of basics, its a visual novel with 3rd person puzzles scattered throughout, a simple concept but one executed incredibly well. The second game only improves on this with bigger puzzles, more complex set pieces and larger plot.
The biggest star of these games is its ensemble cast. Like Persona you have a collection of really well written weirdos that make the game a really amusing experience and by the end you will hopefully love each of them.
If you like a good mystery then you would be a fool to not a least take a look at these games, it kept me engaged throughout and surprised me at a few points, both games have a moment that really flip the games on their heads and it is phenomenal both times.
I find these story games difficult to talk about without spoilers, just know they are great and you should buy them. Please buy them, please! I need a third game!
Music Highlight – Novel Ingress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbwteRDJ2hM
3. God of War: Ragnarök
I don’t really remember the reason I picked up God of War 2018, as I never had any interest in the older titles, I am glad to have picked it up though as it ended up being a great experience. Come to this game and it makes me appreciate that decision even further, the game delivers a great story with even better characters.
All the good stuff from the last game is here, the Axe, the one camera shot presentation and the continuation of Kratos’s character development. There is also some new good stuff like the increased variety of enemies and traversal and a lot more well developed characters. I’m not going to go deep on the story & characters here, but it feels like a natural expansion on the world and its the same story for the plot, the newly introduced Thor and Odin being a massive highlight.
I have some gripes with the game, the hand holding for example. In combat your partners will bark passive aggressive tips at you every 3 seconds, like “did you forget you have a shield?” every time an enemy hits you, or “Kratos your on fire!, it will pass.” if you dare get hit with a fire attack, these just get really annoying after the 3rd time they are said. What’s worse though is that these barks also apply to the games puzzles, before you even see all the elements of the puzzle the characters will give you the solution to it. It’s a shame they don’t think they can trust a player to figure something out by themselves, they basically give the player less than 60 seconds of thinking time before they feel the need to step in and walk them through by the hand like that joke at the start of Undertale. Oh there are also side quests introduced early to mid game that can’t be completed until the game is beaten which annoyed me to no end.
Music Highlight – Raeb’s Lament: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXwUy2uoI_M
2. Xenoblade Chronicles 3
For the first time ever I managed to beat a Xenoblade game in the year it was released, this also marks me having the full trilogy under my belt.
The cast is an amazing ensemble, they work and bounce off one another extremely well. If you take them apart through their weaknesses can show, especially Sena, who has little to do outside of a group setting. This is not to say she’s bad character by any means, but I was never feeling like “oh yea! A Sena scene”, Eunie however is the polar opposite. General rule of Xenoblade 3 is that if Eunie is talking then the scene is good.
The parts of the games story that shines brightest are the character moments, for example there is a scene that is just two of the main characters swapping their flutes, and it is one of the most powerful and beautiful scenes in the game. The overall plot is well done and the mystery of what is going on in the world (if you have played the first two) is intriguing. There are a fair few villains in the game and most are fine, with the exceptions being N and M who are by far the most interesting, I can’t really talk about them though, very spolierly subject.
Of course the music in this game is phenomenal, it is easily the best soundtrack this year. Every track is banger, even the sad ones.
My biggest complaint about the game is a large section where you get access to a boat, as it a very clunky vehicle that you sail around the largest area of the game. As someone who tries to uncover all of the fog of war on a map the boat made this very unfun, and exploring the area in general a chore.
As highlighted in the best story moment, the end of Chapter 5 was a hell of a trip. Part of me wants to lay it all out and gush about it, but I shouldn’t, it’s better if it is experienced blind
Music Highlight – Feelings Risen in the Sky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOLxSDUS7Zo
1. Elden Ring
Ohhhhhhhhhh Elden Ring, so this is FromSoft’s best game par none. It’s a huge but extremely dense and realised world, there is a few copy/paste things throughout, but for the sheer size of the game I think it can be forgiven. At it’s core it’s FromSoft Dark Souls to a tee, which is a great starting point, then this is built on that tenfold via the world and the enemies in it.
The best part of the game is how it surprises you, for example the first time the ingame map expands is a phenomenal feeling, you go from, “this game seems pretty big” to “oh… It’s double the size I thought” and again later, tripling in size. The game takes lessons from breath of the Wild, in that the map is not cluttered with things to do, you need to go find it all yourself, I think it is well designed in this regard as I never felt I often needed to go out of the game to find solutions to things. I do hope the Elden Ring/Breath of the Wild style of open world becomes the norm.
The game plays like a souls game, there isn’t much different there par some horse combat, the game’s combat is improved here is via pure spectacle, and the perfect fight to talk about this is the General Rahdan fight, it is by far the Souls series biggest spectacle fight, it takes place on a massive open beach, you can summon in five or six NPC summons as well as a few other players and go to town on him. The fight can be quite annoying as he has massive near one hit kill attacks, but I think it’s all worth it for the moment he jumps into the sky and rains down like a meteor. (P.S. I totes beat him before any of the patches, if that is still the arbitrary thing to brag about).
The Mimic Tear, this bad boy almost made the best new character list for its sheer will power alone. This thing is a summon who can just win boss fights for you, it is an AI copy of your player character, back when I played it was almost as strong as you, a force to be reckoned with, it is how I beat the super boss Malenia on my 10th to 11th attempt.
My complaints are that by the end the game just was not difficult anymore and deaths could seem annoying and cheap, but this works both ways as I beat the final bosses after they just stopped moving, both phases of the final boss just stood there and took it until they died, was a bit of letdown after all that work to get there. My other complaint is that some quests were just not complete and we added in later patches, so I didn’t see the end of a few NPC storylines.
Music Highlight – Main Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0SyZnnbt-k
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Outro
Ahhhhh, another year down, time to enjoy a quiet 2023 January to catch up on older rele…. What do you mean there are 5 releases and a major FFXIV Patch in January!?!
Until Next Time…
Ryan's Collection of Thoughts! 
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