by mento
Same deal as the other "GOTY (Adjusted)" lists. The idea is to build GOTY lists that are constantly in flux, ever adapting themselves to a new year's worth of catch-up gaming. Like the Borg, but for video game lists. With enough time I should be able to play through every 2022 game that piqued my interest and construct a list that ideally represents what that year meant to me in terms of games, but that wasn't going to happen on the year in question: too many full-price new releases, too little time.
2022 was the first full "back to normal" year following the pandemic so the video game industry saw a bump, in part because developers could freely work together again to finish games on time but also because so many more consumers had and would continue to turn to games for entertainment in lieu of anything that might involve going outside and getting coughed on by people. We're also firmly in the next generation of consoles at this point, though it still was slow going given the relatively minor tech jump meant games could stay multi-gen for a while.
2022 also saw the debut of the Steam Deck: nothing on it that couldn't be played on a regular PC, but it felt like we were starting to see portable-ready games really take off as a result, including puzzle games and RPGs (though for the life of me I'll never understand why you'd want to play RPGs on a handheld). Giant Bomb's own GOTY Elden Ring was also a lot of other outlets' GOTY—including The Game Awards, D.I.C.E., GameSpot, and Famitsu—and we also saw the dark horse Vampire Survivors (one of those aforementioned "great for portables" games) ensure that the "dual-stick shooter but you don't really shoot anything yourself" genre hit the ground running. I mean, you gotta run; you'll just be overwhelmed by ghouls otherwise.
Here's the original 2022 GOTY list, for posterity's sake. Usual rule for the list of games below: if it's in the top 20, or was ever a top 20 contender, it'll get a blurb.
(2022 Games Yet to Play: AI: The Somnium Files - NirvanA Initiative, The DioField Chronicle, Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, Sifu, Valkyrie Elysium, Xenoblade Chronicles 3.)
(2022 Games Yet to Buy: ELEX 2, Harvestella, Horizon Forbidden West, Pentiment, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Rollerdrome, Rogue Legacy 2, Stray, Triangle Strategy.)
| GOTYs | (Adjusted) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 |
| 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
| 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
(Last edited: January 2025)
Showing 1-10 of 44 items
2022 Rank: N/A 2023 Rank: N/A 2024 Rank: 1 The surprise new #1 isn't really a surprise to anyone who knows my love for Falcom. Normally that love is laser-focused towards the Ys series like a deranged stalker but I'll admit to being thoroughly entranced by Trails from Zero and how all the painstaking lessons Falcom's Trails/LoH team took from developing that original Sky trilogy, including how to create compelling characters and a living breathing world, was put to adroit purpose here along with even more fine-tuning of the increasingly excellent turn-based battle and ability-imparting orbment systems. Reducing the geography to a single city and its outskirts did nothing to diminish the setting's appeal, since you end up growing that much closer to the place and its citizens as you check in on everyone and their reactions after each big story event. When Trails is firing on all cylinders, as it so often is, it's hard for anything else to compete; even one of the most impressive open-world RPGs ever.
2022 Rank: 1 2023 Rank: 1 2024 Rank: 2 That's not to say Elden Ring is any slouch. It's overly massive by half and its boss quality sharply drops off a cliff (much like I often did) towards its denouement but for the most part it's the best elements and highlights of almost the entire Souls series consolidated into one game and enhanced with fast horseback traversal—and, man, fighting dragons on lil' ol' Torrent made for some climactic battles akin to Shadow of the Colossus—and some of the most elaborate character development tools yet, between the spirits and arts and everything else. I couldn't help but glut on its many dungeons and sidequests as I passed through the Lands Between and though the story required a tad more investment to get anything out of it (read: a quick trip to the fan wiki or twenty) the switch up in scope and ambition was as an impressive a leap as any of my poorly-judged hops into the abyss as I'm traversing the branches of the enormous Haligtree. I am getting slightly worried about how hard everyone is working over there in FromSoft.
2022 Rank: 2 2023 Rank: 2 2024 Rank: 3 Tinykin's just delightful. Setting itself up as a Pikmin type, it's not really that so much as it's an expertly-made 3D platformer with that always welcome "small guy in a big human house" aesthetic where you're constantly followed by your own hype crew wherever you go who occasionally help carry things around for you. The way the mostly vertical levels incorporate ziplines and knock-down ladders for shortcuts and getting around quickly on that bar of soap made exploration an uncomplicated dream, and I'm always a huge sucker for collectibles and checklists of stuff to complete. Really one of the best non-Mario 3D platformers out there and, given I played the studio's earlier game Splasher some time later, retroactively was not a surprise it turned out as well as it did. Hope to see many more games from that studio, since only Nintendo (and apparently Asobi) matches their level of mastery over the genre.
2022 Rank: 3 2023 Rank: 3 2024 Rank: 4 The first of two "menial labor" sims from 2022 that really caught my attention, Hardspace puts you in the workman boots of a professional spaceship dismantler: the goal being to carefully take apart derelict ships and toss their component parts into either the recycling, salvage, or incineration bins (and it's important to know which). The game starts you off easy but then continues to add problems for you to overcome with the larger and more elaborate ships, including disposing of the engine before it melts down, venting the atmosphere inside the ships so they don't violently depressurize and send everything (and you) flying, and eventually some eerie alien nanomachine goop interfering with the ships' systems. It's always a mix of high-tension high-precision work, like defusing a bomb, and the more relaxing busywork that follows of moving the rest of the parts into their proper disposal zones. Both halves proved deeply compelling.
2022 Rank: 4 2023 Rank: 4 2024 Rank: 5 That's not to denigrate how effectively PowerWash does what it does, which mostly involves little dopamine hits after you "ping" a surface to 100% cleanliness, but it can only do half of what made Hardspace so engrossing. Absolutely zero tension or conflict (though depending on the type of player you are that might be preferable) and more just getting on with things and having a system to clean what might be a single vehicle or an entire structure of oily gunk and dirt with a high-pressure washer with various settings and upgrades to buy. Whenever I grab a new month of Game Pass I usually make a beeline to PowerWash to get my fill of cleaning all the new seasonal DLC they're regularly adding, and my hope is that they put some of those IP-based DLC on Game Pass too (though they probably won't; those licenses still need to pay for themselves).
2022 Rank: 5 2023 Rank: 5 2024 Rank: 6 Vampire Survivors was certainly a phenomenon when it released and given its relative simplicity the devs can continue to add free content and features over time to make it one of the more appealing value propositions of any game in recent memory. Your goal isn't so much to kill everything, though with enough weapon upgrades you'll be doing that anyway, but to simply manage the hordes that are chasing you down by out-damaging and out-evading them before they can swarm you to death. The game's cheeky Castlevania aesthetic, which renames all the familiar monsters and heroes and doesn't actually feature vampires at all (or at least the last time I checked; it's been a while and they did officially add some Castlevania content in with Konami's blessing), and dozens of little quests to pursue to unlock more toys to play with makes for an addicting loop. Just need to remember to carve out 30 minutes of your day if you're hoping for a successful run.
2022 Rank: N/A 2023 Rank: N/A 2024 Rank: 7 A long time ago, Squaresoft decided it wanted to try making a Final Fantasy game that was one of those hot new tactical RPGs you were hearing about, like those Intelligent Systems and Quest Corp were making, and put out into an undeserving world the greatest example of that genre ever made. Some 15 years later, they tried the same trick again with a particular style of RPG that elevated a footnote of a developer into one of their most fiercest rivals. I'm not going to claim the results are quite as profound this time but handing development off to Ninja Team, who'd already gotten their katanas wet (phrasing?) in this format with the Nioh games, was a smart choice as Stranger of Paradise not only is an excellent game in that model but finds its own Final Fantasy spin on the elaborate character builds of the Souls games, implementing the old canard that is the job system to devastatingly overpowered effect. It's not going to give you a hard time once you've figured out how to break everything but you'll still have a ton of fun while doing so: to that effect, it's like the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night of 2022.
2022 Rank: 6 2023 Rank: 6 2024 Rank: 8 Chained Echoes came out of nowhere to be one of the best 16-bit-style (though maybe closer to a pixel-based PS1 game given its scope) throwback RPGs in Indie history, even surpassing the likes of Zeboyd and Square's own attempts at rediscovering that old-school flavor through Tokyo RPG Factory. Not only are the storytelling and battle complexity equally dense but there's a huge amount of incidental character development through an achievement-style system that unlocks a grid of passive and active skills and other buffs. The mech combat isn't usually my thing but it's applied here as well as it is in the various Xeno games and there were some rough nailbiters in the endgame and scattered around the world as optional encounters. Curious to find out if Sea of Stars is going to dethrone it (IMO) in that very specific arena of throwbacks.
2022 Rank: N/A 2023 Rank: N/A 2024 Rank: 9 I dithered on The Case of the Golden Idol for way too long after scoping that Klasky Csupo-esque artwork but that was a mistake, as Case is one of the best logical deductive reasoning games since, well, the last one anyone made—The Return of the Obra Dinn. Easily its rival, the goal of assembling Madlib statements through keywords gleaned while investigating the crime scene in situ for the culprits made for a series of fascinating brainteasers that often had you rethinking your initial take as you picked up additional, conflicting data. I whizzed right through it but I know it's only because I was fortunate enough to be on the developers' wavelength somehow: I'm definitely intrigued enough to see if that streak continues for its 2024 sequel The Rise of the Golden Idol.
2022 Rank: N/A 2023 Rank: N/A 2024 Rank: 10 Supraland was a very pleasant surprise when it launched a few years prior as it took a genre that had only really been seen in Metroid Prime—the first-person 3D explormer—and found a way to implement both a "small guy in a big human house" setting (the second for this list!) and a sense of humor that made discovering collectibles and solving its puzzles that much more enjoyable. With upgrades like the solid laser beam that could connect between wooden surfaces to make bridges, which makes a return here too, the sense of "oh shit, I can go here now" that explormers thrive on is all the more potent despite the added dimension. Six Inches Under is really all of that with more focus on Minecraft-style digging puzzles and a new story about a "trickle-up economics" town that has pipes funneling money to the guy living at the top, but it's all exceptional stuff if a bit familiar. Hoping the official Supraland sequel, Supraworld, can break some new ground.
