Top Games of 2022

It has been an incredible year for games. 

Elden Ring feels like a shift in how adventure games will be built for the next 10 years.

Vampire Survivors has imprisoned people world wide in a loop of, "One more run." 

And arcade beat-em-ups return in a big way with Ninja Turtles.

I can't remember the last time I was this excited to play everything I touched. It had to be close to one of those Mass Effect or Skyrim years when it comes to pure fun. 

I played a lot of games this year. I'll rank them all. Remember, these are games I played this year, not necessarily games that came out in 2022. 

Creepy Games in 2022

Horror games on the PlayStation 1 were what turned me from a gaming hobbiest to an obsessive. They were the reasons I spent long hours on dial up, reading forums about the behind the scenes and rumors about games. They were the reason I spent weeks building an Angelfire site and joining a web ring. 

To this day, I still love them. They are some of the few games that don't tell your standard super soldier story. In fact, the weaker and more flawed your character is, the scarier the game tends to be. 

After completing Elden Ring and it owning March through August, I wanted to play a few shorter games. Horror games lend themselves to this need because the sweet spot for a good horror game is about 5-15 hours. Anything beyond that and the fear has diminishing returns

Top Games of 2021

2021 was a weird year. Things started off much as 2020 did, locked inside, wondering when you would get out. 

But then things started opening up. And I stopped wanting to be inside. 

It was still a year that found studios having a difficult time creating games remotely. PS5's and Xbox Series S were still damn near impossible to find. 

Despite everyone trying to keep me from playing games, I covered a bunch this year. (Mostly thanks to Gamepass which might be the best thing to ever happen to games.)

So the rules are the same, the games did not need to come out in 2021, I just needed to play them in 2021. So here they are, my top games of 2021. 

Backlog: Alien Isolation

The Ripley family just has hell of luck with Weyland-Tutani and aliens. They just seem to be magnetized to each other. 

I started Alien Isolation in 2017. I liked the idea of a slow moving, stealth focused game, rather than a run and gun. 

Creative Assembly nailed the aesthetic of that 1970s retro-future, clean white walls with random buttons and tape drives everywhere. All the computers are that fake DOS/Apple 2 interface. And every... single....door... is automatic. (the absolute height of future technology). 

Backlog: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Like many Americans, my only exposure to Fire Emblem was the 37 sword characters in Smash Brothers. Fire Emblem just never sounded like a game for me. Maybe part of that was that I constantly got it confused with Dragon Quest. Maybe part of it was that both of those franchises are smashed in my brain as a throwback grinding JRPG. Something I loved in my childhood, but sadly do not have time for anymore. 

Fire Emblem: Three Houses came out when I was traveling a ton and I didn't have any Switch games that were holding my attention. 

Backlog: Silent Hill 3 (HD Collection)

In 2012, Konami put out a HD collection for Silent Hill. Consequently, this was around the time most people realized Konami hated their videogame division. 

I bought the HD collection, around the time my OG backwards compatible PS3 bit the dust, as a way to still play some of my favorite games. And it sat on my shelf, for damn near 8 years, in it's plastic wrap. 

Top Games of 2020

2020 has been a hell of a year. You would think being locked in, unable to go to bars, hockey games,

and on trips, would give me infinite time to play video games, but ultimately apathy took hold. I played some long games, but not a lot of games. 

I tended to favor games with a lot of repetition this year. Instead of wanting snap judgements and strategy, I would  slide into a meditative trance, let the world fade into the background, while I grinded like it was 1998. 

As always, these aren't necessarily games that came out in 2020, but games I played in 2020.