I’ve always voted in the GB Community GOTY poll, but have never actually posted my own list. Partly that’s because I’ve rarely had ten games that I’ve felt that good about in a single year (not that these things actually need to have exactly ten games), and I’ve also usually felt like I had little to add to the discussion, and that there were too many things I had never gotten around to playing.

But for whatever reason, I feel like there was a critical mass of interesting games this year about which I have Things To Say (though technically, not everything on this list was released this year; I’ll get to that). Some of these have already been topics of blogs of mine, or other long forum posts. Yeah, there are still plenty of games I’d probably like that I just didn’t get around to, like Signalis and Pentiment. But I don’t actually cover games for a living, so I’m going to give myself a pass and just post about the games of this year that I liked best, or that most occupied my brain.

Without further preamble, here are my top ten games of 2022 (or, uh... sort of 2022 in some cases!)

10/The (Dis?)Honorable Mention. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

OK, look, I know I just said this was a top ten list, but in truth I’m so conflicted about Stranger of Paradise that I considered just leaving it off and making this a top nine, or else slotting in Dying Light 2, which was pretty much the definition of “meh.” But I decided to include it here as an interesting train wreck.

I was initially pretty high on this game based on a demo released around E3 2021, especially since I’m a big Nioh fan and this basically looked like Nioh by way of Final Fantasy. Then the game got an early release demo that left me a lot more skeptical. The story seemed cringe bad, the graphics were terrible, and even the gameplay felt like it had taken a step back from the earlier demo.

I later picked the game up on a sale, played until I saw credits, and even finished the first post-game DLC. The core combat remains pretty darned enjoyable, which is its only real saving grace. Literally everything else about the game feels like a trash fire.

Though the final portions of the game’s story did explain why the first three-quarters of it felt so weird and stilted, it didn’t actually make those earlier portions good. The graphics and environments both on a technical and artistic side left a lot to be desired. The gear churn was a pain to manage and was never well-explained... e.g., I was into the post-game before I realized that gear level mattered way more than job affinities. And the game did this maddening thing where it would tank your max MP when you died (which you used for all your non-basic attacks), which was fine except that it meant that if you died to a boss, you were at a disadvantage for every subsequent attempt. Also, the post-game grind was... way too grindy. A second post-game DLC was released in late October that I have no real desire to play.

All that said, I did sink a lot of hours into it, and the combat remained good. You just have to be ready to ignore pretty much every other aspect of it. I live in hope that Wo Long and Rise of the Ronin (the two known upcoming Team Ninja joints) will be better. Maybe the problem was catering to the FF license and Square’s involvement. One can hope.

9. Salt & Sacrifice

I wrote a blog/review of this game back when it came out, so if you want my extended thoughts on it, you can check that out.

The short version is that it’s the latest game from indie developer genius James Silva, and there are aspects of it that I really like. Silva still really knows how to do 2D action combat well. It also looks pretty good. But a lot of the other elements come off as pretty half-baked.

For instance, the skill tree system discourages weapon experimentation by forcing you to spend XP to unlock the ability to even use other weapons. The Monster Hunter-like system of hunting mages and making funny hats out of their skin was stymied by the lack of a good way to target the mage you wanted to hunt. And some of the game’s UI and other systems were very, very poor.

I did platinum the game and spent some fifty hours on it, and if you’re a fan of Silva’s previous efforts, you’ll probably still like this. It’s a 7/10 sort of game that will still hit for the crowd it’s catering to (it’s a “Jason game”), but it could have been so much better than it turned out to be.

8. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

Enter the first game of this list that only sort of came out this year (and the next three also have this problem, but this is my list, so I can cheat all I want). Basically a big expansion pack on the game that was first release in 2013 (itself a stand-alone version of a Half-Life 2 mod released in 2011), my biggest worry about this new version was that the added material would lean too heavily on a meta-narrative that was external to the game itself, e.g., discourse surrounding the game that a neophyte couldn’t possibly get without outside reading.

The reason I worried about this is that The Stanley Parable is one of those very few games that I feel inclined to show to people who wouldn’t normally play games at all. Especially so since at the time I had entered a philosophy-adjacent PhD program (I’ve since earned the degree!) and had lots of people around me who would be interested in this type of navel-gazey meta-narrative about the nature of narrative in games. But if the new version did nothing other than refer to a cultural conversation from a decade ago that a new player couldn’t access, it would’ve dampened the appeal.

For the most part, this didn’t prove to be a big problem. Yeah, there’s that section of “New Content” that looks at Steam reviews, but that’s not actually any worse than the bits when it loads you into Portal or Minecraft. There were always going to be a few things in there that not everyone will get. But it’s pretty much as delightful a thing as it was before. I definitely laughed a few times about the damned bucket. What a stupid but wonderfully played recurring gag. All in all, still a game worth experiencing, and if you’ve never played it before, no reason not to start with this newer version, it’s just more of a game that was already a classic.

7. Deep Rock Galactic

Yeah, I know, Deep Rock Galactic didn’t really come out this year, it got released in mid-2020 after being in early access for a few years. But it came to Playstation consoles in early 2022 as a free PS+ game, and that’s where I ended up getting it, so for me it was released in 2022. So there!

Funnily enough, I have a friend group that I usually play such clearly multiplayer-focused titles with, but I couldn’t really get them interested in it. I played a little with one other buddy, but for the most part I played it by myself... on easy.

I know that this game is going to be best with a full squad and set on a difficulty level that actually requires some team coordination, but it says something about how good it is that I’ve actually found it to be quite a delightful, chill solo experience on the lowest difficulty setting, which basically allows you to ignore the combat altogether. I just put a TV show on a second screen and go out and mine stuff. Very satisfying.

I’ve ended up playing it enough that I’ve promoted all four classes at least twice, and for now I’m still going. And I still haven’t spent a cent and don’t feel at all like I need to. Pretty good for no money spent. I should probably buy one of their cosmetic DLCs at some point just to support the devs, they deserve it.

6. Resident Evil 4 HD Project

Sure, if RE4 was a human, it would now have at least its provisional driver’s license and have reached the age of consent in some states/countries (just in case you’ve ever wanted to legally fuck RE4—I mean, I wouldn’t blame you, it’s devastatingly handsome). Anyway, it is most definitely not a 2022 game. However, the 2022 fan-made graphical overhaul was released this year, so I’m including it on my list based on that.

I did a blog about the mod upon its release, so check that out if you’re interested, I included lots of screenshots with it. The really amazing thing about it is how true it stays to the original game. It’s the most impressive fan remaster of a game I’ve ever seen, and it couldn’t have been done for a more worthy title. It’s easily one of my all-time favorites, one I replay regularly even seventeen years later.

Also, there’s probably never been a better time to play this gem if for some reason you’ve never experienced it, because the remake is coming out in March next year, and you may as well play the original and be ready for the ensuing conversation when that happens (you’d need to pay for the Steam version of the game, but the mod itself is free). I wrote another blog about a particular aspect of this upcoming remake that I don’t like (knife durability), which should tell you something about how deeply in love I am with the original.

5. Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak

And here’s the final entry on my list that was only sort of released this year. The original game was a 2021 joint, and Sunbreak is the obligatory G-rank expansion that came out this June. I’ve played every North American release of the Monster Hunter series since Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on the PSP and it’s one of my favorite series of games ever, so it’s no great surprise that it’s on my list. That said, I had some problems with this game that kept it from being any higher.

This expansion did add some interesting new things that have never been in the series before, most notably a system that allowed you to modify the stats and skills of individual armor pieces, which really helps create interest for the end-game grind. But my big problem with it is that they’ve artificially inflated that end-game grind in a way that the series mostly hadn’t done before.

In all MH games prior to World, you were limited in what hunts you could attempt only by completion of a few key/urgent quests and your own skill and equipment. World was the first game to start restricting a lot of content behind your Hunter Rank, and when its own G-rank expansion hit (Iceborne), it added a whole other meter, Master Rank, which essentially reset everyone’s progress to zero, even if you’d already sunk over 500 hours into the base game. Suddenly you had to fill up this arbitrary meter in order to do all the content you wanted to do, which could take many, many hours of playing content you’d already mastered.

Sunbreak amps this problem up to eleven. They not only did the same BS Master Rank thing, but the subsequent title updates have added a third stupid meter (the “Anomaly Investigation Rank” meter) that again needs to be filled in order to access fights and materials that you need to make the new stuff. The most recent third title update raised the cap on this meter from 120 to 200, and some materials can’t be accessed until you hit level 181. Well, to go from 120 to 181 is going to take you at least 30 hours, probably a lot longer.

Seriously, fuck that. It’s so unnecessary. Here they’ve already added an armor randomization system that acts as a sufficient carrot for end-game play, and yet they still feel the need to do this BS grind padding nonsense as if they’re trying to stop you from playing any other video game. Dudes, I have other things to be doing. This is just making me burned out on your game. Fucking stop it.

All of that said, it’s still Monster Hunter, and I’m still a series devotee. It just means that next time I’ll likely end up buying any new entries on PC and seeing if I can cheat my way past some of the arbitrary gate-keepy meter nonsense.

4. Vampire Survivors

And now we’re on to the games of 2022 that I feel the most strongly about, and that, aside from the fact that Vampire Survivors and Rogue Legacy 2 came out in early access in prior years, everyone can pretty much agree actually came out in 2022.

I first heard about Vampire Survivors in early March from my brother. The $3 price point made me figure, “why not?” Soon I was as hooked as a lot of people seemed to be, and started the first GB forum thread on it. It’s a little hard to explain why it seems so compelling. The throwback Castlevania-like pixel art and the sound design and the easy mowing-down of hordes of enemies seem to all be surgically aimed at releasing endorphins from players’ addled brains. Maybe if this had been around in 1991 it could have supplied the graphics for that one mind-control game in Star Trek: TNG.

The reason this one doesn’t go any higher than fourth on my list is that I haven’t felt particularly compelled to keep playing it after finishing all the content. It’s still an enjoyable time-waster, but I did the thing most people did during early access, which was to earn all the new achievements being added every week or two and then waiting for the next update. Now that it’s content complete, I have other things to be playing (although there’s a $2 DLC coming... looking forward to that, actually!). And as others have pointed out, this feels like a game that will be spawning plenty of clones (it already has), and eventually we’ll probably end up with something similar that we can all agree is even better. Looking forward to that as well.

3. God of War: Ragnarök

I really liked that 2018 game, so it seemed pretty certain that I’d really like this sequel as well. And I sure did. My fuller thoughts can be found in a long forum post here, including lots of (marked) story spoilers.

The short version is that I did have a few problems with it. Gameplay-wise, I found the camera and the lock-on system to be a real mess. As for the story, it really dragged in some portions, particularly the early Atreus sections (the second one especially).

But for the most part, I really loved this thing. Camera aside, the combat was great and some moments of the story were genuinely affecting, and it certainly featured some great acting and interesting characters (Thor and Odin were definite stand-outs). It was good enough that after I finished it, I didn’t quite know what to do with myself for the next day or so. As big a game as it was (took me about 70 hours to platinum the thing on the highest difficulty), I was left wanting even more, it just got stuck in my brain for a bit. Hoping they’ll patch in a NG+ eventually like they did for the last game, because I’d definitely be up for another go-around.

2. Rogue Legacy 2

In a lot of other years this would have been my GOTY. I’ve currently sunk 240 hours into it, and I don’t think I’m done playing it. I’ve even created a second profile to start from scratch since I began in early access and wanted to see what the early game felt like on the 1.0 release.

Here again I wrote a blog for the release, and I’d encourage you to read that if you want my fuller thoughts. The short version is that it massively improves on the original in literally every way, so much so that the first game may as well be thrown upon the ash heap of history and never played by anyone ever again. The new classes and mechanics add so much variety that was never there before, the controls feel tight and responsive, it’s got lots of accessibility options to customize the experience, and lots of upgrades to play for. It’s just a joy to play. I really can’t say enough good things about it. If you enjoy stuff like Hades, you owe it to yourself to give this one a shot.

One bit of trivia worth noting for GB specifically. The Quick Look of Rogue Legacy 2 ended up being Jeff Gerstmann’s last for the site. At least he ended up going out on a good one.

1. Elden Ring

I’m not really sure what there is to be said about Elden Ring that hasn’t been said already. As I’d noted previously, there’s just no way that 2022 is going to be remembered in the popular consciousness as anything other than the year of Elden Ring, a sentiment seemingly cemented yesterday when it won GOTY at TGA. It came out and just massively outperformed all of From Software’s previous efforts, sales-wise.

The real question with Elden Ring prior to release wasn’t whether it would be a good game. We already knew it would be, FS is simply not a developer that fumbles these things. The question was how good their “open world” would be and how well it would mesh with the established Soulsborne formula. And the broad consensus ended up being: pretty damn well. The most oft-repeated sentiment was that it helped alleviate the “walls” of previous Souls-like games, because if you ran into something you couldn’t beat, then you could just run off in another direction and do something else for a while. Or you could take this to an extreme and “break” the game for yourself. Either way, it felt like a game that, more than any of FS’s other recent efforts, let you approach it the way you wanted to.

I know that some people felt it was a little too long. But for my part, I relished every moment. It was only in the second half of a second playthrough I was doing with a friend that I started feeling a little fatigue. Even so, I’m looking forward to playing what I assume is an inevitable paid DLC (all the Dark Souls games and Bloodborne had paid DLC, only Demon’s and Sekiro didn’t, and this game sold too many copies for them not to do something). I’ve resisted entering NG+ specifically so I don’t miss out on playing new content on the first cycle.

It'll be interesting to see where Elden Ring ultimately lands on various all-time best games lists in the coming years. The original Dark Souls has topped a lot of those lists in recent times, and yet there is a definite argument to be made that Elden Ring is FS’s best effort in this genre (which is not to say there aren’t strong arguments for other entries as well). It seems too early for such a coronation; it needs to simmer a little longer in the collective consciousness. That said, it’s not every year that a game comes out that looks like a serious contender for that crown. And speaking only for myself—as someone who’s been a From Software fan since their mid-90s King’s Field games and bought a PS3 specifically to play Demon’s Souls—Elden Ring was always going to claim this top spot of 2022 for me in the end.

(I do feel a little bad for Rogue Legacy 2 and some of the other games that got done dirty by releasing near the Elden Ring release window. I certainly wish RL2 all the success in the world, and hope that it’ll get some good attention during the award season, even if it sadly didn’t get any at TGA... big oversight there.)