Rebecca Swift: GOTY list 2022
This list is not a review so much as my personal feelings on the games I spent a ton of time playing this year. The year of our lord 2022 was the first year I’ve been able to play multiple titles that released in the same year (thanks, Xbox Game Pass!) so I decided it might be time to try my hand at a GOTY list. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to play any of the big PlayStation 4 or 5 releases because I don’t own those consoles, so don’t expect to see any on this list. Not all of these games released this year, though, and I’ll mention that in the blurb about those games. So without further ado, let’s dig in!
Life is Strange: True Colors
I absolutely adore this game. I’ve been a fan of the Life is Strange series since the first game. I was not super interested in the prequel Before the Storm until recently with the remasters because Ashly Burch did not return as the voice of Chloe, and I didn’t like the prospect of playing a male character in LiS 2 or The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, so this was my first time I returning to the series since 2015.
LiS: True Colors originally released in March 2021, and came to Game Pass in April 2022 which is where I picked it up. I had heard some good things, so I decided to try it, and I almost instantly fell in love. I played it to completion over about a week, and immediately jumped back in to play again but not before purchasing it to own forever along with the DLC and the remastered versions of the first two games. I have a screenshot of Alex and Steph’s shoes from their kiss scene on my iPhone lock screen and I’m never changing it. This is without a doubt my game of the year for 2022, and maybe every other year from now until the end of time.
A Plague Tale: Requiem
A Plague Tale: Requiem is ostensibly a survival horror game, but it’s also a game about the relationship between Amicia and her younger brother Hugo. It’s a story about hope, despair, love and loss. This game was released in October, day one on Game Pass, and I don’t even know what it was that drew me to this as I never played the original ‘A Plague Tale: Innocence’, but something about it seemed interesting.
I am currently in the middle of a second playthrough now on New Game+ and it’s still so, so good. The ending I got the first time around made me bawl my eyes out; it might be the single saddest thing I have ever seen in any media, ever. I’m excited and intrigued to see if anything much is different with the alternate ending this time around.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
This game shares a very similar vibe with Power Wash Simulator; it’s a great game to just put on a podcast or some music and while away the hours pulling bits and pieces off a spaceship. The gameplay, however, is not similar at all. You are a ‘Cutter’ employed by the nefarious Lynx Corporation, tasked simply with salvaging old ships for parts, and processing or melting down what’s left. It has a story that you can either follow or ignore, and some light RPG elements as well such as earning tokens that you can spend to upgrade your equipment, and experience which allows you to level up and gain access to different kinds of ships with new and exciting (dangerous) hazards.
Shipbreaker initially had an almost game-breaking bug on Xbox Series X|S which caused the game to crash at the end of every shift (seriously frustrating if you’re playing on the timed mode where your shift ends every 15 minutes), but despite this I still finished it and have started a new casual playthrough. The afore-mentioned bug has been patched.
Vampire Survivors
Vampire Survivors also came to Game Pass this month, but I first picked it up on Steam for around NZ$3 and it is a lot of fun. It’s an isometric action roguelike where the basic premise is that you are a character (vampire? no one’s quite sure) who starts with one of the many available weapons in the game, and all you have to do is wander around the map as hordes of incrementally more dangerous enemies approach you, pick up new powers to kill them with, and survive. The maps are time-limited, and if you manage to reach the limit, a literal Grim Reaper will come for you.
It’s a ton of fun, very easy to pick up but can be a little challenging to master. It’s also not super resource intensive, so this will probably run on whatever kind of PC you have - and it even runs in a browser which you can play for free on the developer’s itch.io page!
Control
This is a game that was released in 2019, I first played it in 2020, and then it had a next-gen update in 2021. It is also a game that broke my Xbox One multiple times.
I love Control. It looks incredible, even on the older Xbox hardware, and it is a ton of fun – especially when you unlock more of protagonist Jesse Faden’s abilities. The Federal Bureau of Control is an agency for the US government that deals in finding and securing SCP-esque Altered Items and Altered World Events. The story is weird, and a lot of really weird things happen that will make you laugh, even though the story itself is not intended to be comedic. I replayed it again in 2022 and devoured it in a matter of days. Highly, highly recommend.
Unpacking
I cried at the game about unpacking boxes. I absolutely adored how this game can summon emotions through simple environmental storytelling with no characters on-screen and no dialogue.
The music and the rooms here do all the heavy lifting, and you can tell that a lot of thought and love and care went into crafting this experience. I’m excited to see what Witch Beam, the team behind this game, does next.
Far Cry 6
Another late-2021 game, I picked this up after playing through the previous instalment, Far Cry 5, when that game came to Game Pass. I didn’t care for the story in FC5, and there are some parts of that game that are just outright annoying, but nevertheless when Far Cry 6 had a free weekend, I jumped right in. I played FC6 for many, many hours that weekend and by the time it was done I was convinced to fork out the NZ$43.96 to keep the game forever
This is yet another game that made me cry this year – when two side characters die during the same mission, it ruined me. The story and characters here are much more well written, and while I can’t speak for the male protagonist, the female protagonist Dani Rojas is so cool. While at first, I was disappointed that I couldn’t create my own character, I quickly fell in love with Dani. This game also taught me how to swear in Spanish, so that alone makes it a GOTY contender.
Fortnite
I’ve played Fortnite a lot over the years since it came out, though I usually play for a season or two and then drop off for a few seasons. This year I wanted to give it a GOTY mention for the final season of 2022, and in particular the Spider-Gwen costume included in the battle pass.
This outfit looks incredible, and honestly, along with the Rift Goddess Ariana Grande outfit, it’s among my top three favourite outfits in the game to date.
Destiny 2
First launched in 2016, Destiny 2 has been through it. But these days Bungie is pumping out some of the best content the game has ever seen, with this year’s expansion ‘The Witch Queen’ having in its ending/epilogue one of the coolest story moments I’ve seen in any game, ever. The new Legendary mode for the story missions was brutal and the final boss fight with the expansion’s antagonist, Savathûn, took me (no exaggeration) over two hours of trial and error and losing fireteam members due to the difficulty. I’m not sure that’s the typical experience, but it was a fun kind of frustrating as we slowly figured out what was working and what wasn’t, and then finally, beating her.
I didn’t play as much Destiny this year as I have in years past, but I’m still looking forward to next year’s expansion, Lightfall, coming at the end of February 2023.
Hitman 3
Another 2021 game, Hitman 3 took up a ton of my gaming time this year with the addition of all of the previous games’ missions bundled in to one container – and this series has a pretty great story to boot. While the story is serious, the gameplay here is anything but. From killing a drug lord with an exploding golf ball, to letting two evil corporate CEOs fall to their deaths from a tower in Dubai by sabotaging their parachutes and helicopter, this series of Hitman is pure joy and silliness.
With multiple ways to approach every objective, and a reward system that encourages you to try everything, this is one of, if not THE most, engrossing and entertaining sandbox games I’ve ever played. It’s never not funny when things go sideways and you have to improvise very quickly to get out of harm’s way – or, what I ended up doing in one level when things decided to go pear-shaped, was just to stay in a small room with my back to the wall, checking when bad guys were coming, and just mowing them down one after the other with the automatic weapons dropped by their previously killed colleagues. I think my kill count (something the game disincentivises) was around twenty or thirty in that particular level.
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
You may be surprised to see a game that released in March of 2007 on this list. and I wouldn’t question that reaction. It was a last-minute pick, but don’t close your Chrome tab just yet! Let me explain why this game deserves to be here.
This game isn’t even one I played a ton of this year, but it is one of my all-time favourite real-time strategy games. I… acquired a copy of it a few months ago and y’all, this game is still a good-as-hell RTS. Of course everyone knows that the Scrin are overpowered, but who cares! They are so much fun to play as. It is just as I remember it, being the sort of game that you can lose hours to without even noticing. It’s still available on Steam (and… other places) it’s reasonably priced, and by virtue of it being old but not too old, whatever PC and Windows version you’re currently running (Windows XP or higher), it will still work great without much tinkering. And it’s just as much fun as you remember.
What was your favourite game, you played this year? Hit me up on the socials: @gamerswift13 on Twitter, @gamerswift13@tech.lgbt on Mastodon or @gamerswift13 on Hive.
Thanks so much for reading, and if you enjoyed this post, please consider tipping me a few dollars on ko-fi.com/gamerswift13! 💚