The Games of 2022
Against life's best efforts, I played some video games.
Ah, another year wrapped up just like that. I’ve not gotten good at releasing anything consistent on this platform, and while I swear I have an excuse this time (more on that in a moment) I couldn’t bring myself to let the curtain close on 2022 without whining about video games. Hopefully you don’t mind one more email!
If 2022 had a kind of theme, it was a sense of trying to get “back to normal.” The masks came off, the pandemic was over (that’s going well, I’m sure) and every economist in the world did everything they could not not say the word recession. Gaming definitely got itself back to its default state too. Titles are releasing mostly on schedule again and you can finally find PS5s on the shelves. Even gaming news and discourse kind of got back to where it was pre-pandemic. We had to have conversations about whether or not voice actors in games deserve better deals and then watch that conversation go real south. People are playing Cyberpunk 2077 in droves. Zelda got delayed again. Difficulty in games had to be dissected. The Game Awards were a surreal fever dream. In a lot of ways, business as usual.
Honestly, it’s somewhat hard to complain about the repeating discourse, given that it also gave us what seems to be the death knell of NFTs and crypto shit in mainstream gaming. I signed off last year’s version of this list convinced that 2022 was going to be filled with games trying to shove their own cryptocurrencies and NFTs down our throats until the youngest among our audience just came to accept it. Thankfully, despite Square Enix’s best efforts, it pretty much looks like the consistent backlash from the audience was enough to tamp all this down.
More personally - and much more personally than I usually like to get online - 2022 was a year of disappointment. I spent the year dealing with new and existing medical issues and making little to no progress. There’s no need to really worry, I’m not going to die or anything, but running around the United States medical system for the entire year is a way quicker way to lose faith in the country than any kind of history class. That was draining enough and a good reason to not have been able to maintain this little blog, but beyond that I experienced a couple of changes in my own life that kind of deflated things.
First and worst, my grandmother passed away. Losing a family member is shit, pretty much in any case. I was lucky enough to not have my grandma be an entirely shitty person, in fact her presence in my home was constant. It feels incredibly privileged to talk about in the wake of an ongoing global pandemic and in a video game blog to boot; but it feels like a fundamental foundation was ripped out of my life. If you’ve lost someone, I’m sure none of this sounds unfamiliar. The loss kind of beached any kind of consistency in anything beyond what I needed to do to survive. This blog, and even my other writing work, suffered. Speaking of…
Later in the year, we got word that The Young Folks, the entertainment site I was contributing to, was shutting down. By the time you actually read this, it’s likely already shut down in fact. I don’t know the whole story and frankly it doesn’t super matter. We were able to archive our work and the rights were released back to us, and I’m incredibly grateful to Gaby Bondi and the rest of the leadership of the site for the time I was able to contribute. As for that older work, there’s some of it that I think may be worth a re-edit or review (is that something someone would want, remastered pieces from the past?)
So yeah, 2022 was a letdown for me personally. Everything really looped back and changed how I engaged with things, including games. I returned to a state of playing things exclusively out of a desire to do so, and didn’t necessarily play new games. It was a genuine surprise when I sat down to knock out this list to find that I had even played enough games to count. But that’s also why I need to make this list. Because not everything was bad.
The Young Folks has come to an end, but the editorial staff has moved on to launching a new site: InBetweenDrafts. I was honored enough to be invited back - not just to contribute but to take on an editorial role as well. I’m sure everyone’s already seen me make the Twitter bio change, but being able to have a new canvas and direction has been a shot in the arm. Expect to see most of my work there first as I get my shit back together and decide what to do with this blog.
The launch of InBetweenDrafts is not the only positive thing in my life but it’s a good metaphor. Things can be bad, but there’s often something new on the other side of it. And that’s what this list is going to be, finding some good in the bad of my personally cruddy year. That’s actually why I like personal year-end lists rather than letting The Game Awards decide the only good ones. My experience and how I arrived at these games are different than anyone else's, if they played the same ones at all. So here they are, my games of 2022.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel
There’s a bizarre irony in the idea of Konami of all companies having the best digital TCG client right now. For one, it’s Konami, a game publisher who’s completely burned its good will so hard even Geoff Keighley couldn’t run interference for it. For two, it’s a Yu-Gi-Oh game, which has been attempted far more times than pretty much other TCG to results that can only be described as “fine.” Yet, here we are. The development team at Konami seems to have looked around at all the other clients out there, figured out what they’re doing right and wrong, and implemented solutions for all of it. Master Duel launched across all available platforms with a massive card pool, direct challenge and cross-play options, events and private tournaments, a spectator mode, and all the bells and whistles of its competition.
No card game client this year comes even close to the mechanical completeness of Master Duel. I know Marvel Snap has been the hotness, and it’s also pretty dang fun, but it doesn’t even feel as complete. Wild times we live in. I’m not about to start playing Yu-Gi-Oh again any time soon, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend a lot of time in this game this year.
Digimon Survive
I often have what I’ve taken to call my “white whales,” games that are announced and then take so long to actually finish development it almost seems like I hallucinated the announcement. Digimon Survive is one of those games - announced near the end of the franchise’s 20th anniversary but not released until it was time to start planning the 25th. The final product is a strange mix of Zero Escape and the fundamentals of every tactics game you’ve ever played and I’m not entirely sure I can actually recommend this to anyone. For me personally though, I couldn't get over how weird it is that this actually got made.
Digimon Survive doesn’t even use the word “Digimon” until the final three minutes of the game - and there’s story reasons for this that delve into how cultural beliefs evolve and change over time. The game invokes the vibe of the original 90’s anime but layers on the stakes in such a way that it’s literally impossible to not get one of these kids killed the first time through. This is not something you expect from a title in a long running franchise, much less one meant to celebrate an anniversary. I kind of love that? If we must live in the age of undying intellectual property management, I’d much rather that take the form of weird experimentation.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
On the flip side of everything I just said, Shredder’s Revenge is a damn good version of very classic gameplay and a successor to a beloved SNES/Genesis title. Folks, I’m inclined to even say that Shredder’s Revenge is better than Turtles in Time because I at least know that I can beat the former across a few afternoons. Dotemu has really modernized the beat-em in a way that is both respectful of a casual player’s time while allowing plenty of options to make sure the hardcore fan is able to feel accomplished.
Visually, Shredder’s Revenge is a perfect mix of retro and modern design. The Turtles and their friends look pitch perfect like they did in the 80’s cartoon and their associated previous games but also are updated subtly to stand out from those other titles. Full marks across the board for how to do these kinds of revivals. Between this and Streets of Rage IV, I’m about ready to see what Dotemu can do unrestrained by an existing property. If we can’t get that yet though, Simpsons arcade revival when?
Horizon Forbidden West
I think that when I was actively playing it, I was a little hard on Horizon Forbidden West. The main story went in a direction that even now I don’t think was ideal and really missed the opportunities left in Zero Dawn. That might have been due to around the time I was playing the game emotionally too, if I’m honest. For that reason mostly I was going to keep this game off the list, until the DLC reveal at the Game Awards happened. Completely unprompted, I got genuinely excited at the prospect of playing more.
That’s kind of the fun thing about games versus other mediums - sometimes, the sum of the parts don’t have to be equal. Even if I don’t like some aspects of Forbidden West, I can’t deny that it was a hell of a good time in other spots. I think of the “Wound in the Sand” side quest in particular - a microcosm of the internal struggle of the Tenakth that Aloy cannot actually win. Regardless of how this quest is tackled, it will end in tragedy, and a tragedy that will rear its head later, just to remind her that just because she knows that what these people are fighting over is a mechanical water system doesn’t mean that she can just make that fight go away. Moments like that are when Horizon is at its absolute best potential.
Splatoon 3
I’ve liked the Splatoon series. I gave the second game an 8/10 back on The Young Folks, when that existed. Even so, I usually play them for a few weeks and then move on. Neither game was able to keep me engaged for too long. With Splatoon 3 though, it really feels like the series has matured. A more Portal-esque single player mode compared to the previous two is what compelled me the most, and there’s plenty more to like here. Salmon Run is available at all times, multiplayer feels far more tuned and robust, and they put a whole tabletop card game on top of all that.
I’m not a fan of tricolor battles during Splatfests, but they have made some genuine progress in trying to fix them (and at this point I can avoid them altogether, which is perfect.) The franchise has been around long enough to have a cast just big enough for everyone to have a favorite squidkid too, and their designs really are starting to sing. Speaking of singing, Splatoon music has always slapped hard, and between the returning selections and new entries, 3 definitely has the strongest overall mix yet.
Vampire Survivors
I bought Vampire Survivors before the game left early access and then left it untouched on my PC for months. I did this because I knew, deep down, that everyone was right. Starting this game was going to scratch a particular part of my dumb Gamer brain and it was going to be hard to resist after the first taste. Yeah, they were all spot on. Vampire Survivors is bottled arcade energy, incredibly easy to pick up, worthwhile to master, and really damn hard to put down. It’s fascinating to think about it from a design perspective too.
Survivors strips its controls down to a single input, encouraging players to build their character on the run differently than other related games would. Managing cooldowns and auto timing of attacks is a different beast than something like Hades but it also means that players without perfect button timing skills aren’t turned away here. In an age of overly complicated and dense games, Vampire Survivors offers an alternative: strip away all the pomp and chaff and just move a joystick around. Seeing a game like this succeed so well is a great sign for at least one corner of this industry.
God of War Ragnarök
I kind of hate just giving this one to Sony. I’ve made fun of them for years at this point for having all of their titles just being remakes of The Last of Us (to the point of them literally just remaking that game) and I hate eating my words. But eat my words I must, because Sony Santa Monica really nailed it. Ragnarök takes the themes and story of the also impressive 2018 relaunch of God of War and walks them easily and believably into the next chapter. The evolution of Kratos from tortured horny murder man to mature thoughtful mediator is one of the most interesting writing turns that AAA games have had. If anything, he works even better here than he did in the previous game now that he’s not hiding from his past or hiding it from his son.
Atreus is actually really great here too. Ragnarök gives a huge chunk of the narrative drive to Atreus and he’s definitely up to holding things up on his own shoulders this time. The whole game is a narrative delight, reveling in the small details and taking the time to let these characters act organically. Hell, it even manages to navigate the issues of ludonarrative dissonance better than its colleagues when it comes to parsing all the action and violence against Kratos’s objections to war. For me though, the bow on this package is the inspired casting of Richard Schiff as an Odin who fits more in a boardroom than a throne room. He’s a shit-talking delight.
Pentiment
There’s a type of game out there that just ends up being bait for me. Pentiment honestly didn’t seem like that kind of game for me at first. The game is an incredibly slow burn, waiting several hours before dropping what it is actually about, but when that shoe does drop Pentiment becomes bait for me. There’s literally no way I can’t adore a murder mystery set against the backdrop of social and religious upheaval of 1500’s Europe that is also a deeply personal character study that you can directly influence. It’s not exactly like anything Obsidian has released in the past, but the DNA is here and it’s very welcome.
The social commentary here is much stronger than in The Outer Worlds and I can’t help but feel that’s because of the shift in format. Being able to build your version of Andres Maler’s background that leverages both in dialogue and in successful investigation checks immediately opens up replayability and makes me salivate with the possibilities. I’m reminded of my obsession with Paradise Killer, a game that doesn’t actually expect you to find all the clues to get to the right answer, but Pentiment goes one step further in making the mysteries it holds only the layer that draws you in.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Real talk: I hope we never get two full on main Pokémon titles in the same year ever again. That said, Legends: Arceus was a game that was both something I didn’t know I wanted and also something I’d hoped Game Freak would have made a long time ago. The Pokémon franchise has so much lore and history now that going back over some of that would easily allow for games without having to make whole ass new generations. Legends: Arceus was exactly that.
But if I’m being entirely honest, a Pokémon game kind of always makes it on this list. I often compare the series to comfort food, and this year that was more true than ever. You see, the day Legends: Arceus released was also the day my Grandma went into the hospital and would never come out. In the fog of the following hours and days, being able to retreat into Hisui and just catch some fucking Pokémon was something that I genuinely needed. That Legends: Arceus focused mostly on doing just that was a fluke of course, but one I’m grateful for. I’m a pushover for this franchise on a good day, but on a bad day I really needed it. This genuinely is the most burned in memory of any game I have for this year.
Citizen Sleeper
But in 2022, only one game really captured a very specific feeling I have about things right now. Citizen Sleeper has a blend of nihilistic melancholy and subtle satisfaction that walks an incredibly thin line and makes it look easy. The game might be set in a space station but the issues faced within it are extremely down-to-earth.
The Sleeper’s body is not really its own, and the race against time just to get the needed resource to keep it running has crept back into my mind through the many hours I’ve spent in medical facilities this year. Struggling to find meaning on Erlin’s Eye while escaping the corporate overlords who built you is a distressingly familiar feeling in our current moment. And yet, Citizen Sleeper is not as bleak as that sounds on paper. The potential of small victories are always present, poetically threaded through narration and dialogue with others trying just as hard to endure as you are. It’s a game that wants you to feel something, but what that feeling is belongs to you in your own experience. This is the kind of game that games exist to be.
Citizen Sleeper’s main gameplay operates like a TTRPG, with a limited number of proper actions offered in an in-game day. That limitation comes in the form of dice randomly rolled at the top of each cycle. You may get lucky, and there’s all kinds of prep that can be done to try to optimize how many dice you get, but ultimately mastery of what you can do is beyond you. That, more than anything, is my feeling leaving 2022. We can only do so much, what we have the capacity to do. I may not have done everything that I wanted to do, but I did what I could. There’s satisfaction in that, on its own.
I hope that in this new year, you roll the dice you need.
As indicated before, each newsletter will come with an edition Warp Zone, links to other things I’ve been enjoying or inspired by that you can jump to from here!
As I mentioned at the top, I’m now the Anime/Manga editor at InBetweenDrafts, along with serving as the assistant Games editor there. Writing-wise, that is where I want to focus things. If you could bookmark and share it, that would be greatly appreciated in our post-Twitter world. Also, we have a Discord!
Joshua Rivera’s “The Year of Violent Denial” essay at Polygon is about film and TV’s attempts to reflect the unrest of the world right now without naming any of its causes.
“Quit apologizing and be a fucking artist” - a video response to a comment on a video about content creation burnout by Zoe Bee. Better to not say anything more.
I’m secretly a huge Go nerd (thanks, Hikaru no Go!) so Lord Ravenscraft’s video breaking down its 30-second appearance in Knives Out is extremely my kind of shit.