Sean's Top Games of 2022

 

Sean’s Top Games of 2022

 

Spotify wrapped was a disappointment for me this year. Not due to the app itself, it’s simply attributed to my listening habits. An artist who will remain unnamed had again topped my yearly listening metrics. Following some events in the last few months it was borderline depressing seeing them at the top of all my most listened to categories. Luckily, this year, several other platforms released summaries of my yearly activity.

Snapchat provided me with a frightening collection of weirdly personal information I had chosen to broadcast to those few that still look at my story on a regular basis. Reddit demonstrated that my tastes in the time-wasting method that is the Reddit app have not changed in the last several years. Finally, Steam gave me an interesting insight into my ever-changing taste in gaming.

                I really enjoyed Steam’s take on wrapped, with the exception of the horrifying realization of how much time I have wasted playing Rust. For years I’ve largely rotated between the same few games, rarely branching out except to play a highly related single player release. Sometime in December of 2021 I started going to the Steam store, filtering the entire catalog of games by top ratings, usually combined with enabling the filter to display only titles that were on sale, and making a purchase from there. I did this a handful of the times over the year and most of the games on the list are a result of this boredom induced habit I’ve picked up.

                It might be worth mentioning that few games on this list actually came out in 2022. When I say “top of 2022,” I mean my top games that I played for the first time this year – not necessarily the best titles that were released in those 12 months. Without further ado, here are my top five games of 2022.

 

5. The Darkside Detective

                Point and click puzzle games have always been appealing to me. That being said, it seems like any time I tried to pick up a highly rated title in the genre, I ended up getting frustrated because I couldn’t grasp the mechanics or adapt to odd logic that point and click games tend to feature. The Darkside Detective was a refreshing experience, it’s mostly straightforward with a very charming sense of humor to it. When I’m alone I rarely laugh audibly, and TDD had me cackling aloud on several occasions.

                Another thing I really enjoyed about this game – it’s short. You may notice a pattern develop in this list, some of my favorites this year are able to be completed in less than three hours. Playing a game start to finish in one (reasonable) sitting is an excellent way to fully enjoy it. Plus, it has the added benefit of generally indicating that there’s no pointless side content in place just to artificially lengthen the play time.

                This game does not take itself very seriously and it benefits from that greatly. I don’t wanna spoil too much, but there is a part where you need to fix the internet in a building so a ghost can have jerk off material.

                I did get stuck on a few occasions but never to the point where I had to google my current situation to advance to the next section. It can be tricky, but it’s fair. When I did eventually figure out the solution to the bit I was stuck on, I couldn’t help but think “Sean you fucking idiot how did you not get that before?”

                Anyway, if you have a few bucks, a few hours, and a desire for mild brain teasers, give The Darkside Detective a shot. You’ll be saying “dammit, Dooley” in minutes.

 

4. Ready or Not

                Wayyyyyyyy back in 2006 when cable was still a thing, Tech TV had a show called X-Play. The hosts would provide comprehensive trailers for upcoming releases and review new titles. I still recall being enamored with a game called Swat 4 after I watched the X-Play review. However, I did not have any sort of gaming PC at the time and therefore wouldn’t be able to play the game until a few years later when I stumbled onto it during a Steam sale. I paid the $10 or maybe $20 it cost, and then played it for the rest of the night.

                I’ve played tons of shooters. There are of course so many good ones, but you need to wade through droves of inadequacy (or at least read reviews on what to avoid) to only play ones worth your time. The SWAT series provided a new take on the first-person shooter genre in which you are encouraged to end engagements without violence by disarming your enemies. This was of course in opposition to the usual story of immediately lighting up anything on your display that’s wielding a gun. You can shout at suspects to drop their firearms, use less lethal weapons, pepper spray, flash grenades, etc. Of course, if all else fails, lethal force is always an option.

                When I finally picked it up in 2012 it was already showing its age painfully. It didn’t hold my attention all that long, but I came back to it for a few hours once a year or so.

                Back in January 2022 I again sorted the Steam store by highest rated titles. This game, Ready or Not, was listed has having overwhelmingly positive reviews. I had never heard of it before, but overwhelmingly positive sounded pretty good. When I found myself on the store page, I was stunned to see that it is essentially a spiritual successor to SWAT 4. The core gameplay is almost identical (disarm suspects, rescue hostages, try not to taser your teammates) but with several quality-of-life tweaks and indescribably superior visuals and gun physics.

                It’s still in “early access.” Buying an unfinished game is always a risk. When I first started playing, the AI was nothing short of broken. You’d open a door, see an armed suspect facing away from you, and before you can hit the button to tell them to drop their weapons, they’ve done a 180 one tap to your head. It was infuriating, inexcusable, and not nearly enough to scare me away.

                Twelve months later it’s a night/day difference. New weapons, maps, and cosmetics have all been released. Though it’s far from perfect, it’s a great way to spend a few hours with some friends if you want a changeup from the kill on sight sort of games.

3. Nightmare of Decay

We’re 3 for 3 on games I bought on a whim because they’re highly rated. I stumbled onto Nightmare of Decay and it’s one of the fastest I’ve purchased a game after seeing the store page. It is so, so, so close to classic survival horror perfection. It’s a very similar experience to the 1996 release of Resident Evil. Fun fact – the remastered remake of Resident Evil (aka rereresident evil) has been solidified as my second favorite game of all time for several years. Old school survival horror, complete with clunky movement, silly puzzles, extremely limited ammo/healing items equivalates to pure bliss for me.

I don’t know if I could recommend this game to most people. If you had no idea what you were getting into, you’d never believe this game came out in the 2020s. The graphics are equivalent to games that were released in the late 90s. The difficulty can almost be labelled as artificial at times, primarily due to the fact that your character moves slow enough to give turtles everywhere a boost to their confidence. There is a “sprint” function that enables you to move just a hare faster. It runs out after about 3 seconds, at which point you become “exhausted” and start crawling along while the monsters are tearing you apart. I realize I’m not exactly making this sound great, but the thing is those aspects of the game are part of what makes it great (in my opinion).

NoD also gets bonus points for being about 2 hours long. If you’ve played enough Resident Evil/Silent Hill games you’ll breeze through it on normal difficulty. When Elden Ring came out this year, it was not uncommon to hear Dark Souls veterans saying they had an easier time beating certain sections than new players because they “know how the games work.” It’s precisely the same situation here. Nightmare of Decay has essentially no new ideas to it. It’s more of an amalgamation of horror game tropes executed perfectly and is easily digestible on a weeknight.

2. The Amazing Spiderman

I built my first PC back in 2007. The last console I owned was an Xbox 360. Even after I pieced together my first build, I’d spin up a few choice 360 games now and then. Still, when it finally red ringed in 2009 I didn’t feel at all compelled to replace it or to buy the next generation of the console.

That being said, I definitely had opinions in the console war. I was team Xbox for years. I had a PS2 for a while when I was in middle school. After playing Halo and seeing trailers for Knights of the old Republic, I knew I had to make a switch. I loaded up the console, controllers, something like 20 games into my Mom’s van and traded them all in at Gamestop.

Using the $6 in store credit that the trade in afforded me as well as some money out of my pocket, I purchased a new Xbox console, with used copies of Halo and KotoR.

All of that is a very extravagant way of conveying my thoughts on today’s console wars- I have no idea why the hell someone would by an Xbox over a PS4/PS5. The difference in exclusive titles is baffling. I had been sorely tempted on several occasions to pick up a used PS4 so I could play titles like Uncharted and God of War. What really caught my attention was Spiderman*. As a child one of my favorite PS1 games was Spiderman. And damn did the remastered version of Spiderman that released on PC this year hit me in all the right places to get those nostalgic happy little feelings in motion.

*(what really caught my attention was The Last of Us. I borrowed a friends PS3, bought TLoS, the game didn’t work, I traded it for a different copy that *also* didn’t work, that was the last copy they had, I gave up)

                Remember earlier when I mentioned that I liked shorter games because there was no pointless side content? Okay so Spiderman is like 60% repetitive side content. The thing is, that side content is so damn fun because the entire time you get to yknow, be Spiderman. In my opinion this is a comic book superhero adapted into a video game flawlessly. I’ve heard great things about the Batman Arkham series, and I gave some of them a shot – they just didn’t do it for me. Spiderman Remastered is pure fun and occupied almost all of my time between work and sleep for days.

                The presentation is especially fantastic. I don’t have the latest and greatest PC hardware, but my system holds its own to modern games pretty well. The game runs at a crisp framerate and looks amazing (hah) even on my hardware that is now 3 years past its prime.

                Did I mention this game is fun as hell? Because it is.

                Last thing – play it on a controller. It was a game made for a console, and the platforming/button mashing fights feel far better with joysticks than they do with a keyboard+mouse.

                Honorable mentions:
               
                A. Elden Ring

                One time I gave someone $40 of weed and they bought Overwatch for me. On another occasion I basically (ahem, straight up) stole a game from Gamestop by writing down the product key from the manual that was in the case, and then redeeming it on Steam. Still, perhaps the most interesting story of me coming to own a video game is a close friend of mine (drunkenly) RAVING about a game and telling me that he wanted to purchase it as a gift for me so I could play it ASAP. I requested, repeatedly that he sleep on the decision – if you wake up and still think that this is the case, spend that $60+tax. Otherwise, maybe wake up and realize it’s not my cup of tea/coffee/liquor. We all got off for the night with the intention of going to sleep. As I was about to drift off I realized I left my phone at my desk. I got up and bumped my mouse so that the light from the monitor would assist in my search. I found my phone, then looked up at Steam, only to see that I had a new gift waiting for me. I sighed, but excitedly began installing Elden Ring before I went to sleep.

                Elden Ring is good. I mean, Elden Ring is fuckin incredible depending on who you ask. It was my first “souls like” game. I put around 70 hours into it in 2022. I enjoyed it, a lot. I could never bring myself to actually complete a playthrough. I got a little over halfway through the main questline without using any sort of guides, then gave up. Six months later I picked it back up, started a new file, and did everything start to 70% through the game using step by step guides on how to do everything in the best possible method.

                I could not tell you which one I enjoyed more than the other. The thing is that on neither occasion did I actually complete the game. Elden Ring is fantastic and undoubtedly deserves the accolades it has been awarded. It’s not one of my top of 2022, but damn did I play it a lot (10x as much as most games on this list).

                B. Overwatch 2

                While Elden Ring got a mention because of how significant of a game it was to me this year and how it nearly made the list/deserved mention for its impact, Overwatch 2 make the list for the precise opposite reasons.

                The debut release of Overwatch is my 3^rd most played game of all time. I played the absolute shit out of this game.

                Overwatch 2 is so, so sad in comparison. Delving into the precise reasons I have for this conclusion would contribute nothing to this piece. Overwatch 2 is mentioned on this list because of how much of an impact it did not leave when it absolutely could have. I suppose you could just label it as my biggest disappointment of this year. If it did not remove Overwatch 1 from existence to become its own entity I may not be mentioning it. The fact of the matter is: one of my favorite games ever has been replaced by a “good enough,” microtransaction driven pile of sadness that I have no interest in playing.

                C. Halo Infinite

                Aight I think I did play this for the first time December 2021. I don’t really count this first month of gameplay because I only played the single player campaign (which was fun!). A few months after its inception I found myself playing Halo, online, with friends I hadn’t regularly corresponded with since high school. Halo Infinite’s online multiplayer experience ranges from “this is what gaming should be” moments all the way down to “this is why people know if computers can survive a fall from 3 stories but not 4.”

                I spent a lot of time playing this game in 2022. If I had spent that time playing this game because it was actually good, it would have made the list. I absolutely adore this title because I was able to reconnect with friends from high school. Remove that from the situation and this would be just another Halo title (which it is).

Sean's #1 Game of 2022: What Remains of Edith Finch

Ho lee shit. #1 is also a result of my Steam store sorting adventures. Another not exactly shocking fact is that this game takes about an hour and a half to finish. Bear with me because this next sentence makes me cringe as I write it as it will surely make you cringe as you read it – What Remains of Edith Finch is more of an experience than it is a game.

 One criticism that is often leveled against it is that it’s a “press w simulator,” i.e., a game where you literally just walk almost entirely in a straight line. And that isn’t necessarily untrue. It’s just that this is a way to spend your time that’s not gameplay focused - it’s entirely narrative driven.

Everyone should play this game. It’s incredibly accessible (as it is admittedly a walking simulator as mentioned above) and available on every mainstream platform.

Something else I'd like to add: this is not a horror game. There are parts that are absolutely spooky, but there are no jump scares or anything of that nature. 

It does start off a bit strangely. Stick with it – it gets less weird after the bit where you eat toothpaste and become a cat, I promise. Give it the benefit of your doubt and I promise you will walk away with some degree of an emotional response. There’s a part (if you’ve played it you already know which part I’m talking about) that is nothing less than a breathtaking experience. This game does things with storytelling that few other games have, and it does it with that sweet, sweet brevity.

I could go on and on about What Remains of Edith Finch. But if you’ve made it this far I know you’d keep reading, when what you should be doing is buying this game and playing it right now. So do that.