Welcome to Go! Go! GOTY! 2022

It's that dreaded time again: Game of the Year season has descended upon us like so many enormous prehistoric locusts (man, was Jurassic World: Dominion not a great movie) and we can do naught but cover our heads and run indoors until the swarm has safely passed. As Giant Bomb is gearing up for another relatively early GOTY season during the holidays, so too am I getting a headstart on a bunch of 2022 games that deserve some attention.

Rules are the same as always: I spend up to a maximum of one week on each game, and I try to get through to the end of as many as I can across December. I might even stretch this out into January since my free Game Pass trial extends that far, though I'm still aiming to have a semi-formal top ten by the time GB starts rolling out their GOTY content towards what will probably be the end of the month. That's the hope at least. (Meanwhile, my secondary goal is to somehow find the time to polish off Elden Ring this year, which I'm some 90 hours into and the finish line is still nowhere in sight. I keep getting distracted by caves! You know how I am about the caves, bro! Bro!)

All of the games in the following table are available on Game Pass for those cramming along at home, though I can't guarantee for how long given how damn ephemeral every subscription service is right now. Modern problems, am I right?

If you're new to Go! Go! GOTY!, I've got you covered with links to some panicked backlog clearing of yesteryear:

• 2014
• 2015
• 2016
• 2017
• 2019
• 2020/2021

And without further ado, here's this year's table of contents (be sure to check back in occasionally for new entries):