I managed to finish ten games from my list of thirteen 2022 goals and, unsurprisingly, I have a few thoughts.
I ended up at a whopping 48 video games beaten in 2022, and I'm extremely happy with that number. This is my largest single-year total since 2011 when I finished 50, and the 48 from 2022 have far fewer "I'll finish this game that was more than 80% done years ago" situations. My annual goals, however, fell a bit short, at only 10 completed out of a total 13 - 11 would've counted as a passing grade and all 13 would've been a perfect score. I've only succeeded in my gaming goals twice since I started making gaming goals lists in 2012, and I'm a little disappointed I didn't get it done a third time. Alas.
But hey, I played four-dozen games in 2022, and they were almost all good! I won't drop a mini review of all of them (I kinda already did that on my Twitter account), but I will go over around half of them in vaguely organized blocks, and then organize the ten that were part of my 2022 written piece into a ranked list. And I played enough good games that I won't have to cheat for the top five like I did last year. So here goes:
Kingdom Hearts II
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Yakuza 6
The Legend of Zelda
AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative
The sequel to 2019's brilliant The Somnium Files doesn't quite hit the highs of the original and has a few character and plot moments that I ultimately find bad or confusing, but I'm not full of hate - this is a pretty good mystery visual novel (sort of) with a few wildly entertaining plot twists. The time-crunching Somnium puzzles are also generally more intuitive and mystery-focused than the first game (with one glaring exception that had me pulling my hair), and the mystery itself was intriguing throughout. I enjoyed nirvanA Initiative, but the first one was better, and I wouldn't call this sequel a must-play.
Kirby's Return to Dream Land
Extremely solid Kirby title that was a pleasant surprise to me, who mostly disdains non-remake Kirby games of the 2000s. Return to Dream Land reminded me of NSMB Wii (which I also played for the first time in 2022), as it's a solidly made 2D platformer on Wii with some cool stage designs, but an emphasis on multiplayer that I'm not sure is a strength or a weakness. But overall, this is a very, very good Kirby game with some fun ideas, cool powers, and a better-than-expected story. Return to Dream Land received a remake very recently, and if I hadn't *just* played it I would probably be picking that one up! (Great timing, Sollosi.)
Suikoden
This is where the rankings got pretty challenging - I found Zelda 1 and Somnium 2 good-with-some-frustrations and KRTDL good-but-not-awesome. This top seven are all games that I really, really liked, and the positioning shuffled around quite a bit before I settled on a ranking. So I must apologize to Suikoden, an absolutely lovely PS1 RPG that isn't among the best on its console (including its superior sequel) but has some great character moments and hugely satisfying recruiting and base-building persistent quests. If the game wasn't so slow-paced in parts I might've ranked it higher, but in this section of the list competition is fierce.
Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd
Judgment
A Like A Dragon title in all but name, Judgment is an open-world detective drama starring Yagami Takayuki (with the likeness of popular Japanese actor Takuya Kimura), a lawyer-turned-detective who doesn't play by the rules. Judgment drops players into Like A Dragon's signature fictional Kamurocho district of Tokyo, but instead of your usual organized crime drama, Judgment focuses on helping innocent defendants, uncovering police, hospital, and government conspiracies, and befriending folks in the community. Judgment isn't as broad or dense as the biggest and best Yakuza games, but it has very similar (and awesome) combat, writing, and side activities with a change in character and tone that's always interesting and eventually great. One of the better Ryu Ga Gotoku studio games, which means it automatically rates quite high.
Super Mario 3D World
I played through four different Mario platformers in 2022, mostly just to get through part of my collection of unplayed Mario games, but 3D World was the only one I planned ahead of time, and it turned out to be one of the best of the bunch. Hugely imaginative stages, a few great power-ups, and a tremendous amount of JOY instilled in all of the action. The extra scenario added to the Switch version, Bowser's Fury, is an absolutely fantastic standalone level that's as good as the main quest. I don't think I love SM3DW as much as Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario Galaxy, or Mario Odyssey, but... this is an absolute top-tier Mario game. It made me excited to play MORE Mario in 2023, and that's about the highest praise I can give.
Tales of Xillia
Is this my new favorite Tales Of game? Probably not, but this was probably the non-Demon's Souls, non-Mass Effect RPG that got me the most excited in 2022. I got very attached to the main cast, strongly enjoyed the array of villains, and was pleasantly surprised by most of the story turns and outcomes. The segmented empty spaces aren't the best replacement for a proper world map, but in general I loved the characters, combat, setting, side quests, and story of this RPG. Tales Of games had a pretty fabulous run in the late 2000s and early 2010s, didn't they? I might have to start playing Tales of Graces F sooner than I originally planned.
Hollow Knight
---
So that's that! My first blog post in six months was fun to write, and I hope you had fun reading it. See you in... hopefully less than six months!
Unplayed, Embarrassingly
Triangle Strategy
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (pictured)
I didn't really put any hard time into these by year's end, as one of my finished goals didn't roll credits until December 31st. But I still would like to get to these three eventually, and they are all candidates for future goals lists. In fact, Kingdom Hearts II is on the 2023 edition.
Played For the Podcast
Salt & Sanctuary
Final Fantasy XIII
LIVE A LIVE
The Secret of Monkey Island
The Wolf Among Us
Broken Age
The Quarry (pictured)
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition
The above eleven (!?) games I played for the first time in 2022, and all for the Retro Encounter podcast. My 2022 podcast game number is actually fourteen, because two of them are in the top ten list below and one was a replay of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (one of my favorite GBA games). This was also my second time running through the Mass Effect trilogy, but my first time playing it via Legendary Edition. I won't go into specifics on all of these, but they were all 100% worth playing. My overall favorite podcast game of the year was... probably Mass Effect 2 or 3? The Lair of the Shadow Broker and Citadel DLCs are nothing short of spectacular.
My Biggest Surprises
Grim Dawn (pictured)
Psychonauts 2
Bugsnax
These were one-offs; essentially games I wasn't planning to get into when the year began, bought on some kind of sale or whim either in late 2021 or during 2022, but had an absolutely lovely time with. None of these broke 40 hours, which is a relief. Grim Dawn is a great Diablo clone that I still think about revisiting; Miles Morales is a contained open world superhero action game with some delightful writing and set pieces; Psychonauts 2 is a hilarious, imaginative platformer that was one of my favorite games I beat in 2022; and Bugsnax was so wild and weird that I almost want to give it its own article. I highly recommend all four of these games, and all of them would've been fairly high in the top ten below if they qualified.
My Biggest Distractions
Demon's Souls
Pokémon Legends: Arceus (pictured)
Pokémon Scarlet Version
These are similar to the above four, in that I wasn't planning on playing these in 2022, but it happened anyway, but with the added bonus of taking up A LOT of time, and either continuing or inspiring new personal obsessions. Yakuza 6 was a continued playthrough from 2021 and my first finished game on the year, and while it wasn't a personal favorite it cemented my desire to see this series through in perpetuity. The two Pokémon titles were both 2022 pickups because it was an unusually strong Pokémon year, and also my girlfriend adores Pokémon and I wanted to play them together with her (ultimately a good decision!). Demon's Souls is a game I've owned since 2010 or 2011, ignored for years, then finally tried in April (this time the PS5 remake). And holy shit. One of my favorite games I played on the year. Now I need to play the rest of the Souls games. ...OK maybe not "need" but definitely "want" and maybe even "will try."
If the above four qualified for my top ten list, then Arceus would've finished near the middle and Demon's Souls would be in the top three. But that's enough for the also-rans. Below are the ten of my thirteen target games that I managed to finish on the year, ranked by how much I enjoyed them, with some commentary. Here it goes:
Sollosi's Top Ten of the 2022 Gamer's Dozen
Number Ten
This is unfair, as the original 1986 Legend of Zelda came a decade before the second-oldest game on this list (Suikoden I), and twenty years before the third-oldest (Trails 3rd). And while The Legend of Zelda is nearly unmatched in long-term influence on the art of video games, it was a bit of a rough go in 2022. Wildly uneven difficulty and a few *very* opaque event flags (re: some required dungeons are near-impossible to find) might be typical of a NES game, but I'm not giving the NES era a pass this time. Zelda 1 is a good game for 1986 and I'm glad I finally played it, but I'm not scoring it better than tenth.
Number Nine
Number Eight
Number Seven
Number Six
This was probably the hardest game on this list to rank, as it was probably my biggest timesink of the year, but also an expansion to my favorite video game of 2021. Sunbreak is a worthy expansion, with several super-dope new and returning monsters and truly epic scenarios, plus my favorite multiplayer experience perhaps in all of video games. It feels unfair to rank it in the top five, however, because it is *just* an expansion, and most of my love for it is predicated on the original Rise, my favorite video game of 2021. So as a compromise, Sunbreak ranks around the middle of the pack, but I also acknowledge that I played this damn thing for well over a hundred hours.
Number Five
Trails 3rd lacks most of the RPG trappings of the other Trails RPGs, but goddamn I still loved it. Bringing together over a dozen characters from the first two Trails games (including a few former villains!) and having them crash through alt-universe dungeons is super fun, as a pure distillation of the Trails in the Sky 2nd gameplay. There are also around 20 optional story scenarios called "doors" that flesh out the Trails world in fascinating ways, with a few specific doors presenting scenes so powerful and memorable that they're among the best in the entire series. Look, this is a fanservice dungeon-crawler squarely aimed at people who loved the first two Trails games... but that's exactly what I wanted out of Sky 3rd. Now I'm more excited than ever to get to the Crossbell games!
Number Four
Number Three
Number Two
Number One
You're a bug and all of the enemies are also bugs. You jump around and slash at stuff a lot. That was an extremely poor two-sentence summary of Hollow Knight, which more accurately is a somber, intense Metroidvania title that has breathtaking environments, platforming, boss fights, and hidden secrets. The best battles in Hollow Knight (of which there are several) feel like dancing a perilous waltz, and the different settings range from beautiful to terrifying, but always with an undercurrent of "this is a decaying world that's a shadow of its former glory." By game's end, I was questioning the blank-faced hero's motivations and despairing about the fates of various NPCs, which I never would've thought possible in the very early stages of this masterpiece. Hollow Knight is a unique, special video game and I'm so glad I played it. I finally understand what the Silksong fuss is all about.
So that's that! My first blog post in six months was fun to write, and I hope you had fun reading it. See you in... hopefully less than six months!
No comments:
Post a Comment