Aja on 19/12/2022 at 17:40
I played lots of games this year, but only two were from 2022.
Game of the year for me is Gran Turismo 7. It's GT's 25th anniversary, and I've been playing it since the start. GT7 has the best-feeling driving model of any racing game I've played, and it also plays better with a controller than any previous version. The economy is stingy and the microtransactions are absurdly expensive, but there's no better feeling than getting a gold lap time after learning the course and the car. And it's absolutely gorgeous, especially with the weather changes. When the sky starts to cloud over, it happens so realistically that I swear I can smell the rain.
Second is Elden Ring, which is probably my least favourite souls game but only because it went on a bit too long and felt less focused than previous entries. I loved the castles and cities and hated the Bloodborne-style dungeons and empty wasteland sections. I wasn't as enamoured with the world and lore, and I hope From doesn't spend the next decade making Elden Ring sequels. At least their next game is Armored Core, which is unexpected and interesting.
Oh, I guess I also played Stray, but it didn't grab me. The cat animations were adorable and spot on, but I got bored in the city block section and stopped playing. Otherwise I spent the year playing Death Stranding, Bloodborne, The Last of Us and replaying Control. For Switch it was a disappointing year overall; I don't think I bought a single game.
Jason Moyer on 20/12/2022 at 05:08
I think the only 2022 game I've played even a little bit has been WRC Generations. So congrats for being GotY.
qolelis on 24/12/2022 at 10:20
I haven't played enough of the (relevant) 2022 releases to say which is best, but anyway, here's my absolutely objective and not at all rushed list, consisting mostly of some games I didn't particularly dislike (release year taken from what my Steam library says when sorting by year):
The Entropy Centre had the best puzzles,
Boxville was the most charming and had the best hand-drawn art,
The Backroom - Lost and Found was the best backrooms game and most free,
The Looker was the best standing-well-and-true-on-its-own-two-feet parody/homage game,
Incantamentum was pretty good, so let's call it the best P&C,
The Lost Dachshund was the cutest short free game,
Patrick's Parabox was the best new take on a somewhat tired puzzle genre,
Memory Traces: Japan was the best 3D jigsaw puzzle game,
Babbdi was the best free Brutalist exploration game made by today's youth,
VRUSEUM was the best VR game for people who can't play it in VR and had some cool art,
Syberia: The World Before was the best "I probably have to mention this too" game.
I have more 2022 games in my Steam library, but I haven't had—or taken—the time to play them yet. I'm also probably forgetting the GOG games I played, like Scorn. Was Scorn best in any way, though? Eh. There were parts I really loved about it (like the puzzle exploration part) and parts I didn't love much at all (the boss fight). I didn't even finish it, because of how annoying the boss fight was (I have probably said this before, but I really can't stand grinding and repetitive tasks).
Malf on 28/12/2022 at 14:01
Oh, I forgot Sifu, which is understandable, as it doesn't play nicely with Linux in its current Epic-bound state.
But it's absolutely fantastic, even if I haven't beaten art gallery lady yet.
demagogue on 28/12/2022 at 20:46
We don't have an Elden Ring thread in this forum?
Anyway, since it's coming up so consistently as GOTY, and since I got it for Christmas so I've had to chance to play a good amount of it now, and because I have plenty of experience with lots of past Souls games, I just wanted to chip in my take which is: it's not for me.
The thing it really has going for it of course is the fighting gameplay on its own terms, and the whole design linking charismatic bosses, with a variety of fighting techniques, with gorgeous locations, all of that technically works (for me) as intended. But maybe because I've lived in Japan long enough to actually become more than a little culturally Japanized, I've become even harder lined in my gatekeeping of western and jRPG norms getting cross polinated. Souls worlds aren't "real" worlds. It's particularly jarring with Elden Right, they have to throw these ghosts of other players and comments around me to make me hyperconscious that I'm just in a manufactured arena with countless other people. I mean there's a kind of humanization to it. I'm not immune to it. You see some funny, daring, goofy, pathetic, heartbreaking moments, but also a lot more pedestrian moments... But more to the point, why do I have to care about them at all?
But the main sticking point is the performative side. So much of Japanese media and expectations are purely performative. It's annoying as hell to be immersed in it. It sometimes feels, you know like when you're at a theater in some countries and the audience still hoots and howls when tits are flashed because "that's what tits do to a man", even though it doesn't make any sense this person would actually have any emotional link with this woman in anything like a real world aside from this plastic world where the director knows when to cue responses that the audience is exactly here to perform on cue. There's a reason why fan service is the defining feature of Japanese media. I get so alienated by it that I'm maybe hypersensitive to it now, and it just deadens me to be in a game world where that expectation is thick in the air around me because I can't help but feel in that world like a Japanese kid chomping at the bit to push the stim-response button and hoot and holler on cue ... which I think I wouldn't notice if I weren't so surrounded by it, or maybe I would? It's hard to deconstruct a feeling like that. And I guess I can feel justified in really not liking this side of Japanese gaming norms because I've gotten so deep into a lot of other Japanese arts and cinema, etc., where I can connect with the flip side of the same coin.
Anyway, I can get into the fighting and "exploring". ER is still a game that does what it's designed to do, in gaming terms, really well. It's still gonna be in my top ten, but it's not connecting with me in GOTY terms. It's not connecting with me like Sable did last year. In fairness, I listed Stray as my #1 pick this year, which I guess I'll keep, and I even said it gave me Mirror's Edge vibes. But Stray is not really a great game that really deserves a GOTY spot either, and it's definitely not at the level of Mirror's Edge. It's just wanting to create that kind of experience and I'm giving it a solid E for the good effort. I want to like it. And I'm a cat person. And a cyberpunk junkie.
Teardown was actually the standout for me this year in terms of a game that wasn't only charming but nailed its gameplay hook. But I wanted to put Stray above it just because Stray is the more ambitious game and world all things considered. Actually the inherit modesty built into Teardown (is that a Scandinavian thing?) is a good part of its charm, so I wouldn't even want it to change.
In the big scheme of things, there hasn't been a "great" game for me out this year. Some years are just better than others.
demagogue on 28/12/2022 at 21:43
Ha! I knew that at some point, but everything fades if you give it enough time without attention, I guess.
Sulphur on 29/12/2022 at 03:04
This is the wrong thread for it, but re:Elden Ring's ghosts, I'm pretty sure the performativeness is at least partly incidental to their actual function, which is to serve as a communication tool in a place that's largely alien to new players. The ghosts are ghosts because, of course, they died from, to, or of something, and I think the point isn't the drama but the something. It's serviceable forewarning without spoiling the entire threat.
I can relate to it being an annoying artificial construct on top of a constructed gamespace, though, so you do have recourse to simply playing offline if you want to solo it in all aspects of the word.
