by jigenese
For me personally, 2022 was a much better year than 2021. However, it was a strange year in gaming for me. As you will see from the list below, one game essentially absorbed all of my gaming time this year. I sometimes joked with friends that Elden Ring ruined gaming for me. And, all joking aside, it is almost the truth. I only played Elden Ring the first half of the year, and when I tried to play other games in the second half of 2022, I found myself just wanting to go back and play Elden Ring more. The other games that I played weren’t necessarily bad, but they just weren’t as good as Elden Ring. However, with that said, I do have a few honorable mentions for games that I did find some enjoyment in between Elden Ring playthroughs.
Giant Bomb doesn't have Rick Henderson (my Honorable Mention 2) in their wiki... That's a bit strange. So, I'll add it to this top section here:
Honorable Mention 2: Rick Henderson
My friend recommended this game on his Youtube channel (youtube.com/@fitaurus1). While I was watching his video I was getting major Dead Cells vibes from this Shmup. So, I tried it out, and I wasn’t disappointed; this is the Shmup version of Dead Cells, one of my favorite games of all time. There was a period of time during the late summer that I needed to monitor and test some large code changes during the night for work, and I used this game as a distraction as I waited for the engineers to commit their code changes. I loved the varied play of each run, and just like Dead Cells, when you got that perfect build and were in the zone, a run could last for a feel-good length of time. It’s a nifty little run-based shooter. My only complaint: some weapons can really destroy a good run, so make sure you memorize what each weapon does so you don’t accidentally pick up one that you don’t like and have your run ruined.
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Honorable Mention 3: Valkyrie Elysium Valkyrie Profile is a game that I always had interest in playing, but I never did. When I saw that they were making a modern adaptation, and the rumor was that it would have a battle system similar to FFVII Remake, I was very intrigued, so I bought the game. Although I wasn’t necessarily disappointed (I mean I am putting it as an honorable mention on my GOTY list), this game is not comparable with the wonder that is FFVII Remake. By comparison, the combat is simplistic, the story is mind numbing anime-whohash, and the game isn’t overly long. However, I did find myself enjoying the game. Mainly the combat. I think it acted as an easy, relaxing alternative to Elden Ring’s demanding attention to precise combat execution. It’s a fun little romp that doesn’t have anything offensively wrong with it.
Honorable Mention 1: Tactics Ogre: Reborn Tactics Ogre is a game that I have wanted to play for years, but never got around to it. When I heard they were doing a remaster of this game, I was all in. FFXII is one of my all-time favorite games, and I know that Tactics Ogre was FFXII directory’s first major release. At first, I wasn’t disappointed at all; the music was surprisingly similar, the art style was the same and enjoyable, and the writing and narrative used the same troupes that I loved in FFXII. All-in-all, the game really pulled me in and I was finally not thinking about Elden Ring for the first time this year. I really loved it… until… I just couldn’t put up with one major game design flaw, and I had to put the game down because it just wasn’t enjoyable to play anymore. That flaw? If you’ve played this game before, you know what it is: level-cap…. Yep, that’s right, this TRGP prevents you from leveling beyond a specific level in each section of the game. Although I understand why a developer may choose to do this with some games, the way it is implemented in Tactics Ogre is unforgivably unnecessary. The level cap makes all experience and leveling meaningless in the game because a casual gamer must grind in training battles in order to hit the level cap when the cap is raised, instead of story important missions in order to beat just the first story mission in each section. And then you watch all experience earned during the story critical battles go to waste for the remainder of the section. The levels are meaningless and the cap is frustrating. Just let me grind if I want to grind! Even the Souls-Borne series lets me grind. In the end, the thing that I assumed would happen did, and the game difficulty jumped suddenly at the end of a section, and I was unable to grind to help make the battle a bit easier. I completely lost interest in a game that may have become an all-time favorite contender… What a shame…
Game of the Year: Elden Ring Any other answer is unacceptable. Elden Ring is both objectively, and subjectively the best game of 2022, and possibly the previous 10 or 20 years. It’s that good. However, it didn’t start that way for me. When I first started playing Elden Ring, I didn’t like the open-world aspect of the game, and about 10 hours into my first playthrough I came very close to turning the game off and never playing it again. I am so grateful that I didn’t stop. My biggest complaint at that time was that the open world aspect stole the perfectly crafted experience that you found in the Souls-Borne series. However, I was wrong. As I kept digging deeper, Elden Ring revealed a carefully crafted world that provided countless challenging battle opportunities all throughout the entire game, even in the open world. As I mentioned, Elden Ring ruined gaming for me in 2022. However, I should reword that to say that Elden Ring ruined other gaming for me in 2022. Whatever I played just wasn’t as good as Elden Ring. Compared to Elden Ring, other games were too linear, their combat system too clunky and simplistic, the stories were too boring and uninteresting (with the exception of Tactics Ogre’s amazing writing and story). Elden Ring stands out above most all games in just how finely crafted every aspect of the game is. In particular, here are a few aspects that I would like to mention. Art Design: Although the graphics are amazing, it is the art style and art design in Elden Ring that very few games in history can even be compared to. Every little detail of each enemy, weapon, armor, building, really… anything is filled with details that tie into the lore and story. This has always been my favorite part of the Souls-Borne games, and Elden Ring outdoes all of its predecessors. The style, look, and capabilities of some of the weapons caused me to be giddy like a child. The harmonious patchwork of world locations, as seen on the horizon, filled my heart with a longing to explore every nook and cranny of the crampacked world. The uniqueness of many of the armor sets caused me to pause and admire dead enemies, NPCs, and even my own character as I dressed them up more for the aesthetic than the usability of the armor. Bosses: Let’s be honest, the beating heart of each Souls-Borne game is the boss encounters. The art design, music, combat, and item discovery in these games is second-to-none, but it is the boss fights that propel these games to another level attained by no other game I have ever played. Not just the unique and frightening boss designs, but the methodology of each boss encounter is the best in video games, and Elden Ring doesn’t hold any punches with its boss encounters. Childhood wonder: In the past, I often mentioned to others that I’m not sure if I will ever play a game again that will break into my top ten favorite games of all time. To my disappointment, my childhood wonder and excitement for a game has faded to middle-age jadedness, and it keeps getting worse with each passing year. A friend of mine told me that Persona 5 was her favorite game of all time. I found myself jealous that she was able to still have such a profound experience with a recent game that it overtook all other gaming experiences from a time when our childhood imaginations and wonderment added a perceived unattainable layer of enthrallment to a video game. I was jealous that I was beyond that point and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy a game to that level as a jaded adult… Although Elden Ring will not take the top stop in my all-time favorite games list, I am happy to say that it will likely reside very high in the list. I found myself obsessing over Elden Ring like no other game in the past few years (except maybe FFVII Remake). I watched countless Youtube videos about Elden Ring’s lore. I was pulled completely in. I wanted to know more about the entire history of the Lands Between. I played the game through to completion three times with three different builds (still no sorcery - that’s coming). When I had a few days off for Christmas break, I could have started God of War Ragnarok, but I chose to start a new character that looked and was built like Guts from the Berserk manga instead. Along with 2020’s FFVII Remake, it’s been good to finally have gaming experiences that I count among the best that I have ever experienced. I hope I have more in the future.
