ALL OF 2022, RANKED
2022 was a good year and I spent way more than I needed to on games - most of which were mid! But there were still a lot of highlights and fun laughs over vc. My tastes didn't evolve much, but I felt my linguistics and understanding of old favorites maturing.
This is EVERYTHING ranked - plus blurbs for the Top 50.
(Set to 'List' view for best reading of the blurbs, or 'Grid' for best display of overall ranks.)
Excluded replays:
-Dynamite Headdy -Vectorman 1/2 -Star Allies -Time Crisis 3 -Sonic CD -Ninja Gaiden -Knuckles in Sonic 2 -Barney's Hide & Seek Game -Darius MD [Extra] -GG Aleste -Jurassic Park (Arcade) -Warlords -Sonic & Knuckles -Sonic Classic Heroes -Shinobi III
Excluded new plays:
-Super Cream 64 -Radar Mission -Top Pro Golf 2 -Answer These 10 Questions And I'll Tell You What Kind of Lover You Are -Death Crimson -Two Girls Punch Me Repeatedly -Prehistoric Isle 2 -Boxy & Prisma -New 3D Golf Simulation: Harukanaru Augusta -New 3D Golf Simulation: Waialae no Kiseki
This is EVERYTHING ranked - plus blurbs for the Top 50.
(Set to 'List' view for best reading of the blurbs, or 'Grid' for best display of overall ranks.)
Excluded replays:
-Dynamite Headdy -Vectorman 1/2 -Star Allies -Time Crisis 3 -Sonic CD -Ninja Gaiden -Knuckles in Sonic 2 -Barney's Hide & Seek Game -Darius MD [Extra] -GG Aleste -Jurassic Park (Arcade) -Warlords -Sonic & Knuckles -Sonic Classic Heroes -Shinobi III
Excluded new plays:
-Super Cream 64 -Radar Mission -Top Pro Golf 2 -Answer These 10 Questions And I'll Tell You What Kind of Lover You Are -Death Crimson -Two Girls Punch Me Repeatedly -Prehistoric Isle 2 -Boxy & Prisma -New 3D Golf Simulation: Harukanaru Augusta -New 3D Golf Simulation: Waialae no Kiseki
230 Games
Frontiers releasing the same year I graduated, moved out, started solo gamedev and became part of a real community was a spiritual closure I didn't know I needed. Corny as it is, Sonic was there for me from the beginning, and Sonic Team couldn't have picked a better time in my life to pull of a NieR-esque flick about embracing yesterday to chase tomorrow. It could've stopped at being the first spiritually-fitting Sonic in decades, but they cracked out one of the best 3D Platformers in the process. The design and execution is amazing, and even the rougher edges hardly impede the core loop of exploration and movement. I cried and screamed constantly and loved every minute.
Sonic Frontiers 2 will be the first 11/10
Sonic Frontiers 2 will be the first 11/10
2
Praising media for being 'subversive' is always gonna fill me with ire but killer7 is GENUINELY one of the most subversive and powerful AAA gigs of its era. It defies every expectation on how movement should work, how sociopolitical storytelling is framed and divulged, the role of difficulty in self-perception and universe participation, how climaxes should resolve, etc. An incestuous divulgence of the culture of human bodies as tools for war, propaganda and genocide. And even without thinking a moment about the philosophical implications of its events, it's still a standout railshooter adventure game with scathing character beats and unparalleled sound design. A game that predicted indie design schisms a decade before people even realized it. No hunger resists the bullet.
The best realization of the 'collect a lot of little things that amount to a huge violent arsenal' roguelike structure. So many deck types to build, so many potential synergies, and even the weakest tools can be blown into game-breaking ballistas. We come to know roguelikes now as the 'dopamine machines' thanks to garbage like Vampire Survivors and the borderline idle-game structure they popularized, but STS couldn't be further from that. You WILL die. You WILL suffer. Even on your best runs, you WILL come out with broken ribs and gouged eyes. But it's so so worth it to build yourself out as an unsung mastermind killing-machine. Gave me the same theorycrafter high from playing Pokemon TCG in middle school.
Absolutely uncontested best beat-em-up ever made. Perfect injection of combo tech and character action sensibilities into the classic big-button schemes of SoR2. No game ever made me shout 'THEY GET IT, THEY GET IT, THEY GET IT' like this did.
Ok, real talk? Cardfighters Clash kinda has a terrible structure when engaged as an RPG. The card drop randomization is awful and the late-game bosses cheat. But I didn't care man, I loved the main mechanics and I loved collecting the cards: That was enough to get me over the hump. I GET TO BUILD DECKS WITH THE POWER STONE GANG!
A witch looking for her lost cat in the alps but the witch is Europe's strongest they/them and the alps is the prettiest church in videogames
videogames came back
Not a piece that hit me hard personally, but its ripple effect on the last half-decade of world and systems design is mindblowing. Gaming's new Evangelion - not because it's a norm-defying masterpiece, but through its synthesis of the experimental and psychologically-wrought into a single AAA experience. Been the best catalyst to 2017-2022's top hits.
Watching one of the most overworked gamedev teams on earth finally get their closure after a decade on this passion project was incredible. Intentionally unfair and miserable. Couldn't have it any other way for a perfect sendoff.
10
Monkey brainfood. Not even somewhat balanced or intelligently designed but it's a totally-stuffed romp of quirky, playground-y pleasures through overpowered tools and wacky worlds.
Played a lot of golf this fall and this wound up the best on a pure player experience level. Excellent swing tools on top of 10/10 course design. Sucks that online got cut and 30% of this game's content is gone but I still got my fill from mastering the courses and perusing the character creator.
12
Treasure from another mother. Not the tightly-knit epic the original RKA was, but its wild movement tools and wonderful MIDI-orchestral sounds make it almost as perfect. SNES action doesn't get as hyper-adrenaline-infused as this.
Low-poly golf got me acting strange. You lose a bit of your senses when you see a 3-D shoreline crashing against the waves on a 1988 processor. There's better golf games mechanically but I think T&E Soft's classics are the best for getting a 'clean' golf experience: Just enough read tools to have full control over your decisions, but not so many that you're controlling the world itself. A good golf game reminds you that you're a participant in a larger plane, and the forces of wind and luck will have the final say in your fate.
Also a proxy for Harukanaru Augusta and Waialae no Kiseki: Essentially the same game across different courses.
Also a proxy for Harukanaru Augusta and Waialae no Kiseki: Essentially the same game across different courses.
One of my favorite indie plays! A marriage of the 'live for fun' design schemes of 2000's flash games into the system-psychotic quirks of Treasure games. Rare to find an indie throwback to 16/32-bit gigs that understands the same child-like wonders and humors those did.
'Videogamey' reinterpretations of golf are hard to land without becoming glorified party games but Dream Course nails it. Very clever use of control and physics options, and I'm always a sucker for a good isometric romp.
Beat-em-ups, run-and-guns, shmups - all very contextually similar in abstract, and Sunset Riders blends tropes across all 3 for one of Konami's best arcade gigs. Yee-haw.
And the winner for 'Best Child-Friendly Game That's Secretly About Genocide & The Ethnostate' goes to, uh
hmm
hmm
18
One of the few non-deckbuilder roguelikes that I think is truly impossible to divorce from its content randomization: Zagreus' doomed escapades are a solid action spree supported by good components in all the right places. Makes you feel so proud of yourself for overcoming challenges but never steeps to the obscene difficulty peaks other roguelikes do. No real weak points and a lot of heart to love. Excited for 2!
Every list needs a review that succumbs to the clickbait 'what if things you like combined?' comparison. Monster Train is Slay The Spire meets Pokemon TCG. I'm so fucking smart and my ass is fatter than baked yeast.
20
What the fuck do you mean data east made this. The joe and mac guys? The 'bootleg plug-in-play in the wal-mart discount bin' guys? The 'this month on NSO SNES' guys?
Somehow turned out to be my favorite Compile shmup of what I've played so far. It's not their most distinct work but the merit of playing a meaty 8/10 on the fucking Game Gear is surreal.
A little groan-inducing when people call this the best golf game ever made but it does rock regardless. It gets how to bring an often sim-like sport into a fast-paced loop, trimming the fat on imprecisions and letting you focus on blitzing ahead. Nobody does jovial globe-trotting tournaments like SNK.
Shmups as jazz: So much shit on-screen and so many weapon types all set against chill house beats. Masterful contrast and the total peak of the SNES' STG library.
24
"I love JRPGs but hate grinding" motherfucker JRPGs ARE grinding. this shit cums
25
Funky. Peak gaming is dumb control schemes just because you can. Kind of a mess but what wouldn't be more appropriate for this brand of monkey business?
There's another universe where this is in the top 5 - it's COOLSVILLE's Castlevania. Everything achieved solely out of desire to be 'shonen meets shoujo'. But, it was oddly annoying to play, somehow moreso than most of its more-challenging siblings. Definitely prioritizes the 'style' factor too much - and as a result, many things feel like they were designed brashly, then later neutered. A lot more frustrating and obnoxious than other Classicvanias despite being regarded as the easiest among them.
After mulling it over and suppressing the urge to be a sniveling contrarian, I have to agree: This is probably Capcom's best beatemup not named Final Fight 1. Very bold to just make every enemy type a reiteration of cinema's most iconic monster and then give you their best arsenal of moves and weapons to plow them with. Missing the tight design of their more refined games but definitely the best to play out of pure indulgence. Guns, motion inputs and throws for days.
It's killer when you get a taste of the weakest spice and it still has more potency than a monster truck. If this is considered the LOW point of the series, I absolutely need to feel the highs right now.
29
'UNLIKE MOST SHMUPS THIS ONE IS ABOUT THE CHARACTERS' but silly and quirky
"THEY KNOW SONIC IS A PLATFORMER - I REPEAT, THEY KNOW SONIC IS A PLATFORMER"
Target Earth/ASL was the biggest 'I want to like this game but can't' crisis I had this year - powerfully-innovative but mindlessly-cruel in difficulty. The remake takes cues from classics like Armored Core and Ranger-X, adding improved control while respecting the sense of weight and agency a mech has. Peak OVA gaming.
Sunset Riders 2: More style, less substance.
The trojan horse meme but the horse is 'the worst shmup you've ever played', Troy is 'touhou fans' and the Greek soldiers are 'killer7 but about drawing fetish art of your crush'
A cool jetbiker girl rides through the endless sea, eliminating foes while jamming out to jazz-rock. An extremely solid yet overlooked Namco gem - and to me, a shining star of the early MD library.
35
One of the few replays I opted to include in the list because it was so eye-opening. The safest and most edgeless entry in a trilogy predacated on high-budget tech-demo thrills, but still a smooth runtime with solid production value in spite of that. Flaccid and biteless compared to most 3D platformers but it knows not to push your buttons with unruly mixups. Very Foxbox-core too.
top 5 beatemup from 4th gen and it was shocking when people told me 'yeah the remake is just objectively better in every way'
The way I felt about Forgotten Land was the same way I imagine most people felt about Frontiers: "wow i can't wait for these innovations to be a used in a good game"
Mad props for just making an isometric, fixed-camera platformer in 2022 but damn I kinda wish it had any meat instead of 'do a bunch of gacha-y tasks' nintendo thing. Becomes a bit of a slog very quickly and has a lot of things I just don't want to engage with in a Kirby game, which just tests my patience when the main levels recycle the same 4 midbosses and only have half as many copy abilities with half as many moves. Affirmed my belief that Kirby fans mean well but are kinda babyheads who eat literally anything.
Mad props for just making an isometric, fixed-camera platformer in 2022 but damn I kinda wish it had any meat instead of 'do a bunch of gacha-y tasks' nintendo thing. Becomes a bit of a slog very quickly and has a lot of things I just don't want to engage with in a Kirby game, which just tests my patience when the main levels recycle the same 4 midbosses and only have half as many copy abilities with half as many moves. Affirmed my belief that Kirby fans mean well but are kinda babyheads who eat literally anything.
38
This artform is truly about weird polygon creatures shooting each other with laser beams for fun. Just as a giggle. A hallway nerf gun fight.
39
Joystick made me realize I like men (satire (not satire (who knows?)))
Aw jeez rick, oh no, augh, i ended up in golf hell rick, they put the green on a steep mountain rick, awww, thats pretty bad y'know cause like, if you hit the ball too far it falls all the way to the bottom, and then you have to start over again rick, auuugh, that's pretty fucked up isn't it rick, jesus christ
C-C-C-commando
The most appropriately-peanuts Peanuts game ever. What else would be more fitting to the meandering everyday of Snoopy than terrible point-and-click platforming, slide puzzles, and a 2 hour fetchquest minigame?
Regrettable for being a retread with mostly no improvements and lots of little bastardizations to the original. But, it's still Battle for Bikini Bottom, and it was a fun replay to break in the new gaming setup.
44
Lots of people's ideal platforming control schemes are conked-out MMX-style speedrun tools with millions of multi-directional airdashes and parkour. But I think I found my soft spot in rigid-style controls supported by a few touches. Skyblazer is a solid realization of Hook's floaty heaven-chasing platforming with strong level design and aesthetic.
Nero is the most invested I ever got into a DMC character arc. I was constantly frustrated and disappointed with the game's numerous issues, but it still left an imprint where it mattered. An accurate reflection of Nero's surging rage and love. Gaming's most relatable teenager.
The PS2 Hot Shots games would be the best golf of their entire generation if my american ass could play the version without the bad mighty beanz ass 'tude characters
My fetish is playing historically-hated Sonic things and finding out they actually kick ass
Like the best intersection of early Capcom's traditional beatemup design and late Capcom's gimmick-driven beatemup design. Very cool.
I hate this game but my brother loves it and demanded me to play it with him. Imagine Portal 2 co-op if it was 10x less funny and had 10x more backstabbing people over spikepits. Bad shit, groan-inducing writing - but, I can't deny the experience got a lot of miserable kicks.
Konami spent 2 decades being beat-em-up's false prophet but I gotta give credit where due: Turtles in Time's SNES port cleans up really well. All those tv-quality sprites finally put to good use in something with impact and a satisfying rhythm.
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