So, there are no “Best” or “Favorite” Games of the Year this time around, I barely played enough titles to make a Top 10. I just put in a lot of hours to a few specific games so here are the games I played in 2022. I’m noting only the platforms I played these games on in 2022, not every system they’ve been released for.
I’m Still Playing This? Super Smash Bros Ultimate (Switch 2018)
By the time 2022 came around I had been playing Ultimate almost every night for two years. There was no more DLC to release. The Switch Online matchmaking and general Online Play had somehow gotten worse. But for some stupid reason, I decided I was going to put the time in and “git gud” at Ultimate so I could attend Super Smash Con 2022 and not embarrass myself. I had no dreams of doing well or even realistically winning a game, but I wanted to at least lose with dignity. So I decided to choose a main and “really practice”. And for whatever reason, while I was practicing against CPUs and playing Online Quickplay I really clicked with Banjo & Kazooie and decided to make them my main. This was a terrible decision. Banjo is one of the worst characters in the game and is also one of the most tech-heavy. I only switched to full-time Banjo a few months before Smash Con. I think everyone knows where this is going.
I went to Smash Con and got completely washed with Banjo. I was never even in a match. I could give many excuses but really it just comes down to time – as someone with a family and a full-time job I have very little time to dedicate to a videogame. Not anywhere near the amount of time everyone else who went to Smash Con does. So, it was never going to do well, but the Banjo choice was also terrible in retrospect. I should have just kept grinding with one of my existing characters or picked up an easy top-tier. Or maybe not? Would that have felt better than when I did win a set at a local with Banjo? Or when I completely embarrassed someone in an Omega Stage tournament (before I get embarrassed in the next round)? I was going to go 0-2 no matter what.
Who knows, things look different in retrospect. But I do sort of wish I had just decided to play as Rosalina, another tech-heavy character I wouldn’t have done well with she is my actual favorite character.
So after spending all my limited videogame time grinding, trying to improve my pitiful Banjo only to be out of Smash Con in less than five minutes I was pretty much sick of Smash Bros Ultimate. But you know I’m getting the new Amiibos soon, maybe if I pick up Pyra/Mythra things would be easier, maybe I should just play some Rosalina & Luma for funsies…oh no I’m getting sucked back in.
Again, I’m Still Playing This? Madden NFL 23 (Ps5 2022)
Every year I played Madden. I buy it Day One every year. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, it’s the only NFL game on the market. And it’s people like me who make are allowing it to be mediocre.
As someone who only plays single-player Franchise Mode, it’s getting pretty bleak. EA continues to strip features out each year. Yes, some of the bizarre bugs from the last version are gone – but not all. Yes, the player models look better than ever (though still stuck in an eerie uncanny valley). In 2021 there was a very cool feature where you could start a Franchise at nearly any Week of the Season and it would be real-time up to date. I liked to play the Washington game as realistically as possible every week. And that’s gone now, in the 2022 Calendar Year you could choose to start in Pre-Season, Week 1, or Week 10. Weird things have been removed like choosing whether you want to kick or receive the kickoff. It seems impossible for any challenge to actually overturn a play and they won’t show you a decent angle anyway. Overall it felt like a huge step back for a year it was supposed to be honoring Coach Madden. But, I’m going to be Madden 24 Day One anyway. Do I have a choice?
My Fighting Game of the Year? Dead or Alive 6 (Ps4 2019)
After I was done with Smash I was looking for an actual fighting game to be my daily game and I thought I’d check out all the fighting games you can play on the Ps5. I had no idea that this would be the one I would spend the most time playing in 2022. Yes, DOA is mostly known as the fighting game with overly busty girls in bikinis. And pretty much all of the DLC for this version is different skimpy costumes. But to reduce it to the “horny” fighting game is to do it a disservice. I think the main reason I played it so much was I had a friend over for one weekend and we wanted to put a lot of time into one fighting game (but only had that weekend). We tried a few and this was just the most fun to pick up and play. And the more we played it, the more we realized it actually had very deep mechanics, strategy, and counter-play. So we ended up playing it most of the weekend, the way we used to play Smash. And yes, getting some more costumes.
But I don’t think this will be my main fighting game. The competitive scene is dead and the meta becomes very deep the more you play. Games like King of Fighters 15 may seem more complex at first but I think in the end, DOA 6 is more complicated than KOFXV.
I’m not into These Types of Games but I Enjoyed This One Before I Fell Off – Neon White (Switch 2022)
Neon White kinda came out of nowhere in 2022 and for a brief period, it seemed like everyone was talking about it. So I checked it out, even though a game that is basically just perfecting speed runs for each level did not sound like my cup of tea. But the game was really stylish, easier than you would think to pick up, and the multiple runs were not tedious at first. I genuinely enjoyed it while I played it. But then of course it eventually happened – I reached a point where having to go back and redo a level to get a better score just to unlock more levels didn’t seem worth it anymore and I moved on to other games.
I Thought I was Going to Play this Game A lot More This Year – Fortnite Zero Build Mode (Multiple Platforms), MultiVersus (Multiple Platforms 2022), Overwatch 2 (Multiple Platforms 2022), Splatoon 3 (Switch 2022), Mario Strikers : Battle League (Switch 2022)
So Fortnite added a Zero Build Mode, and Dragonball Z, John Cena, and seemingly every other IP in the world in 2022. That still really wasn’t enough for me to really click with it. Maybe if it didn’t seem like I had to button through a bunch of irrelevant cutscenes before I actually played it the few times I turned it on I would be inclined to give it some more time.
MultiVersus was supposed to be the Smash killer and the savior of the Community that had been abandoned by Nintendo. It did end up being a fun platform fighter with great support from its developer – even in tournaments. It just didn’t grab me the way Smash did, and even Nickelodeon All-Stars Brawl got one intense weekend marathon in 2022 that MultiVersus never did. And while it had some fun to watch tournament sets, it never came close to any Smash classic.
Overwatch 2 was a disappointment in so many ways. First, there was the having to provide your phone number to play the game. I held out for as long as I could, but eventually, I wanted to play the game. Then there was the Free-to-Play aspect. I think Overwatch 1 owners were supposed to get all characters in Overwatch 2? But I never did, despite having bought Overwatch 1 on multiple platforms. So, instead, I ended up buying the Battle Pass on multiple platforms instead to unlock all the characters. And the Battle Pass system is obviously a way to extract more money from the players, compared to how you were rewarded just for playing the original. Then it ended up just being Overwatch 1 all over again, the same maps, the same gameplay, slight tweaks to characters and team builds. The Story Mode was fun, but there just wasn’t enough to justify turning off the first Overwatch and forcing you to get 2 if you wanted to keep playing. And the final nail in the coffin is matchmaking. It goes beyond incompetent, it seems like it’s purposefully mean. Two nights in a row I matched into five different matches and my team got utterly destroyed each time. It wasn’t just that I was bad, it was that I was bad and everyone on my team was bad and every single person on the other team was better than anyone on my team. I would have thought it was a fluke, except it happened 10 times in a row. I haven’t played it since.
Splatoon 3 feels pretty much the same as Splatoon 2. I was pretty pumped to play it as I did really enjoy 2 the year it came out. However, this is yet another game that was signifcantly hurt by Nintendo’s bizarre Family Account/Child Protection restrictions. We bought this physically so we could play it on all three Switches we own. And that worked okay for my oldest child. But my second kid is younger so he’s on a more restricted Child Account and he was unable to play online, which meant he was unable to play Splatoon 3. So I let him play on my Switch, but then he has to use my account and my character. So I gave up playing Splatoon 3, and eventually my kids did as well, it was just easier for them to play 2. It really shouldn’t be this hard to play more than one account on one game.
Maybe it was a time, place, and age thing but those GameCube Mario sports games I played so much with my friends back in the day. And every time one comes out on the Switch I buy it and see if it my kids and I will have a similar experience. And inevitably we play it one or two weekends and then move on to the next Switch game. So my kids really wanted it when it first came out. We bought it, downloaded it, and played it as soon as we could. We had a lot of fun that weekend. And we’ve never returned.
This Wasn’t Was I Thought it was Going to Be but I Really Enjoyed it – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (Xbox One 2022)
For some reason, I thought this was going to be what the Cowabunga Collection actually is – a collection of the old 8-bit, 16-bit, and Arcade Turtles games. But this is actually a simpler and more modern Beat ‘Em Up. Does it have the gameplay of a Streets of Rage? No. Does it have the style of a River City Girls? No. But it has decent enough gameplay and enough style on its own. And each fighter plays differently enough to be meaningful. But I think the thing that puts this game over the top and allowed me to finish the entire story is the online co-op. You can open up your game to allow other players to join you or you can join in on other players’ games. And the more players you have the easier the levels are. Some boss levels are pretty much impossible on your own but can be a piece of cake with multiple co-op users. In a fun way, it really turned the sometimes punishing difficulty of Beat ‘Em Ups on their head.
The Game of the Year if I did Game of the Years – God of War Ragnarok (Ps5 2022)
I’ve heard a lot of criticisms for this game – the difficulty is too easy, your companions spoil the puzzles, it is too much of a retread of past God of War narratives. None of that matters to me. It’s an incredibly gorgeous game, it plays so smoothly, you can jump in and out of the game at will. On top of that it has multiple ways to tweak the difficulties and some of the best accessibility options I’ve ever seen in a game. As someone who always wants to play the big Triple-A Action games but never has the time or patience for them, this is really a perfect game for me. I can enjoy a big epic adventure without ever being frustrated by dumb save mechanics or giving up because I get stuck on a puzzle or boss.
I Make this same Mistake Every Year Game – Elden Ring (Ps5 2022)
Nearly every year Giant Bomb or now Nextlander will crown their Game of the Year, and in some cases, it’s just not my type of game. Whether it’s something like Inscryption last year, Outer Wilds in 2019, or Hitman in 2016, I’ll often buy a game and try it out just because it won GOTY and just hate the experience. Throughout 2022 I kept hearing how great Elden Ring is from various places. But I kept just filing it away as something I would never play. Punishing difficulty, no clear tutorials, the possibility to play for hours without advancing stats or the story – it just sounded like everything I hate in a game rolled up into one place. Even when I heard “It’s the Best of these Souls-like” and “I never liked these type of games, but I love this one” that didn’t sway me. But then finally it won not just Nextlander’s but multiple sites’ Game of the Year. And I just felt like I had to play it. I guess I was finally swayed by everyone’s praise. And it sucked and I hated it. It wasn’t different from those other games I don’t like; it just looked better. If you don’t like the Bloodborne/Souls games you’re not going to like Elden Ring, I don’t care what anyone says.
Why is this my Actual Game of the Year? – FIFA 23 (Ps5 2022)
I’ve played FIFA games off and on for the past couple of decades, but I’ve also always been an avowed supporter of Winning Eleven 7/8 (aka Pro Evo 3 and 4) as the actual best soccer games of alltime. But the Pro Evo Series has fallen into hot garbage the past few years, and its transformation into eFootball has been even worse. For some reason I wasn’t entirely expecting, I pre-ordered FIFA in September so I could play as Ted Lasso and AFC Richmond a day before wide release. Which was fun and all, but not exactly mind-blowing. Then, for reasons I’m still not entirely clear about, I just never stopped playing it. To get it out of the way, there are a lot of issues with this FIFA iteration.
They lost the rights to the Japanese and Mexican pro domestic leagues and teams because of eFootball’s exclusive licensing deal (Ugh). You can play as Brazilian teams only in the Cup Mode, they’re not available in Career Mode. So Career Mode feels like it’s missing three of the biggest Soccer leagues in the world. There is a World Cup Mode for the 2022 World Cup, but everything about it feels underwhelming. Women’s Teams have been added, but there are a lot teams and atheletes missing and no Career Mode. And like Madden, it’s trying to push the Ultimate Team card collecting/fantasy soccer mode above all others as a way to extract more money out of players. I only play single-player Career Mode so no idea of the quality of online multiplayer.
The controls have been fine-tuned to the point of perfection. Years ago, FIFA added multiple control schemes and allowed you to customize the controls further to pretty much whatever you wanted. I’ve used what’s really just the Pro Evo scheme ever since. But they made a few small tweaks this year that make the whole thing feel so smooth. I’m not even sure what, but this might be the best controlling soccer game ever.
And while the Career Mode can seem a bit empty and very light on overall career goals and progression, some things just have me keep coming back. The Scouting, Youth Academy, News Headlines, Yearly Objectives, and Press Conferences are kinda meh on their own but put them all together and they’re keeping me engaged. And the different leagues and cup competitions are all presented slightly differently, which seems like a small thing, but makes each league feel different and can make the different years in Career Mode feel unique. It’s the little things that keep me still playing Career Mode over three months later.
So, FIFA 23 is my Game of the Year I guess. I’m sure EA will screw up next year as they’ve already lost the FIFA license, but for 2022 FIFA reigns supreme.