My Top 10 Games of 2022

These are the best games I played in 2022. Yes, hardly any of them were actually released last year. I'm a bit behind. You can probably expect God of War Ragnarok and Elden Ring to appear in my 2025 list. Any who, on with the list.

NUMBER 10

Sin and Punishment Successor of the Skies

I recently hacked a Wii, which sounds infinitely more impressive than I copied a couple of files to an SD card. The great thing is with said hack you can play Wii games online again. So one of the first things I did was boot up Sin and Punishment 2, the best shooter ever made. Who has two thumbs, a blog and is the best sin and punishment player in the world(on a hacked console). Yeah this guy. If you've never played Sin and Punishment, its an on rails shooter where the camera automatically scrolls through levels and you face creative boss after creative boss. Its a relatively easy game to get through, but the challenge and fun comes from trying to play near perfectly to maximise your score. Every time you shoot something your points multiplier goes up, conversely every time you get hit it goes down. The other gimmick is you can deflect missiles back at enemies, if you swing your sword at the last second, this is where you rack up big points. Its a great risk and reward system that is super addictive.

NUMBER 9

Keep talking and nobody explodes

This is a party game, which almost anyone can play. There's a ticking timebomb that only one player can see. Everyone else has a bomb manual to look through. The bomb is covered with simple puzzles, that the bomb disposal person has to describe. The other players rapidly look through the manual, and try to find the solution based on the description. The difficult bit is explaining what you're seeing, and its hilarious watching two people argue over whose fault it is, that they cut the wrong wire. The Morse code puzzle can properly do one though, that stuffs just not fun.

NUMBER 8

Gamecube Games

Yes I'm cheating, I've got a list within a list. This year I decided to start collecting Gamecube games. The highlights so far have been '1080 Avalanche', 'Bloody Roar Primal Fury' and stay with me on this 'Shrek 2'. I'd never played these games before, and they've aged really well. 1080 Avalanche is a snowboarding game with a focus on racing, rather than doing tricks, and its got a great sense of speed. In single player there are specific courses where you're racing down the mountain, and half way down an Avalanche triggers. Its tense and visually really impressive for a Gamecube game. Bloody Roar is an arcade fighter where you get to turn into a animal mid fight. So its pretty unique. Its also got stage transitions which are great to see. Shrek 2 is a multiplayer action game, that is surprisingly fun to play. It plays a bit like a Lego game, where you have a squad of characters with unique abilities, and you have to switch between them to get through the levels.

NUMBER 7

Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core

A prequel to Final Fantasy VII, which is one of my favourite games of all time. Its pretty fun to play, and its cool to see familiar locations again. Some of the special moves look really impressive. Much like the recently released Final Fantasy VII Remake, Crisis Core is an action game, no turn based combat to be found here. The fights are a highlight, and the soundtrack is great too. The only downside is the story is written by the creator of Kingdom Hearts, so expect unnatural dialogue and weird pauses. At times it feels like you're watching bad fan fiction. Still its got a charm to it, and I like Final Fantasy VII enough to look past its faults.

NUMBER 6

King of Fighters XV

I really enjoy learning characters in King of Fighters. The combos are fun to learn, and cancelling specials into Supers, into more Supers makes you feel like you're doing some fancy shizz. At its core KOF is a 3 vs 3 fighter, which can be a bit off putting. It means you have to learn 3 characters, instead of the usual one. My tip is just learn one character, stick them in the third position. Then fake it until you make it with the other two. The final character gets access to more special meter than the rest. If you've got your favourite on the end and know some fancy combos with them, you're almost guaranteed to have some fun staging a comeback. I got the uber fancy limited edition which comes with a fancy case, soundtrack and artbook. So this is definitely my most expensive purchase of the year.

NUMBER 5

Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight

A 3DS game made my list, and it is a good one. It's a super traditional turn based role playing game, with a unique gimmick. You get to draw maps on the 3DS touchscreen. Its just a nice relaxing time. Exploring the dungeons, gives you the same feeling of slowly putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The battle system is also quite challenging for an RPG, you actually have to think about what moves to use. A lot of the characters have moves which work best when combined with other team mates moves. Attacks will have conditions, like reduce defence for 10 turns, but only if an enemy has been poisoned or put to sleep etc. Its interesting because you have to stay engaged, you can't just turn your brain off and mash a button.

NUMBER 4

No Man's Sky

No Man's sky released a while ago. The developers created a super impressive universe, and made a bunch of promises. They aimed high, and missed the target by about a mile. Since then they've gradually updated the game, and its actually starting to resemble what was promised. Its quite good now. It still feels like a half finished game, but in a way that's ok. The game is still being developed, and the potential is there. The base building is fun, and the sense of exploration is great. It just needs a bit more depth everywhere, and some interesting characters to chat to would be nice. Its very addictive though, and the tech they've developed to create a whole universe is awe inspiring. This feels like the first step into something bigger. I'm really looking forward to future updates. I kind of want them to take the stabilisers off, so you get to see some more weird and wacky things. One of the issues with the game, is a lot of the planets feel a bit samey.

NUMBER 3

Bayonetta 3

Its just the pinnacle of action games. It feels like someone put John Wick and Deadpool in a blender, and served them with a little umbrella. Bayonetta spends the game concocting a ballet of death, with winks to the camera in every spare second. For those unfamiliar Bayonetta has guns strapped to her arms and legs, can freeze time when she dodges attacks at the last second, and also has the ability to summon screen filling demons at will. It feels like you're playing God of War, but amped up to the extreme. It just makes you smile, every 15 minutes or so. I think this would be higher on my list but I've only just started playing the game.

NUMBER 2

Earth Defense Force 4.1: Shadow of New Despair

Starship troopers the game. Its that simple. You're part of the EDF, and its your job to repel an alien invasion made up of Giant Ants, Wasps, Dragons, Spiders and Robots. It's dumb, oh so dumb, and kind of impressive in how jank it is. The physics are great. On one occasion a giant alien robot was air dropped on top of the tank I was in. I was propelled literally miles across the map and into the sea. Its by far the best online multiplayer game I've played this year. Get a couple of friends to play this online, and the hours will disappear. The levels and weapons are varied enough that you're always curious to see what the game will throw at you next. Plus one of the quickchat functions makes your character sing a patriotic song, and any game with that as an option is worth playing.

NUMBER 1

Disco Elysium

You wake up, having drunk yourself into oblivion. You remember nothing, not your name, not where you're from. You stumble downstairs to discover a man has been Lynched, and you're the lead detective. Its your job to listen to the plethora of voices in your head, and work out who killed him and why. Disco Elysium is down to earth, completely off the wall and really interesting. I played through it three times, and logged about 100 hours on it this year. Its not perfect, sometimes due to the nature of the game you feel a bit ripped off by dice rolls. Its definitely not a game for perfectionists, things are going to go wrong, pretty regularly. That's the charm of it though, the main character is far from perfect, so it makes sense he occasionally does something really, really dumb.