Kyle’s Personal Games of the Year
By now, I am sure you know the drill. These are the games I’ve played this year, not games that came out. That doesn’t mean if a game came out in 2022 that it’s automatically off this list. And in fact, I have a long-winded explanation about how I come up with this list on my Games of the Year 2021 post, if you’re interested. So, let’s get into it! These are my games of the year. In some particular order…
The Good
Naraka: Bladepoint
Naraka: Bladepoint was announced at the Xbox showcase, and actually came out this year! See, I do play current releases! Naraka is a battle royale game where 60 ninjas fight to be the last ninja standing. The word gets smaller, you fight more people, and you avoid the purple death that creeps towards you. We all know the battle royale genre by now. There’s a twist! Almost all the combat is melee combat! So, grab a sword, or dual blades, and chop up your enemy. Face to face! No snipers here.
On release, it was so well received, that it’s all my entire friend group was playing. Combat is smooth and fast, and the tide of battle can turn in an instant, making this game a very intense experience.
The fact that it launched straight into Game Pass is an added bonus. One that allowed everyone I know to pick it up and fall in love with it. In a world of other battle royales, Naraka stands head and shoulders above the rest. At least in my opinion.
Immortality
Now this game came completely out of left field. Lee (my podcast partner in crime) started playing this game and was immediately sucked in. Ah, the beauty of Game Pass! Normally, these aren’t his types of games, so colour me intrigued. After hearing his eagerness to discuss this game, I started it and was hooked from the get go.
The game play is simple really – you’re watching through random scenes of three feature length films, trying to piece together what is going on. But at any moment, you can pause the scene and click on an object or person in the frame. This will lead you to a new scene from a different movie, a behind the scenes recording or an intro to another character. You almost never know where or when you’ll end up.
Immortality is the definition of going down a rabbit hole, and I loved it for what it’s trying to do. For example, in one movie you can select the ladder, and then you’re transported into a different movie that has a ladder in the background. Selecting this new ladder then moves you to a behind the scenes screen test with a ladder, and then selecting it again puts you in a caravan where two actresses are having a discussion about a party! Round and round you go – from people to glasses of water, paintings on the wall to crucifixes hanging around someone’s neck.
It’s fascinating and kept me up way past my bedtime on many occasions.
High on Life
From the creators of Rick and Morty comes a game featuring the voice cast of Rick and Morty. And the humour of Rick and Morty. But it’s not Rick and Morty. It’s entirely different. We promise you…
Now, I am not a Rick and Morty fan. I find the humor to be crass and annoying. So why did I play this game? Two simple reasons.
1. It’s on Game Pass, so why not?
2. Get through the humor and crassness and you have a solid FPS with great gunplay
So, I played it. And while I have not finished it yet, I have actually chuckled out loud about 3 times now. Just put the guns into reduced talking mode so they don’t quip after every little thing, and you have a pretty solid little game.
The Not-So-Great
Need for Speed Unbound
We all know Need for Speed. We all know what to expect from a Need for Speed game. So, it’s with a heavy heart that I have to put this game on my list. And not for the reasons you’d expect.
You see, the core gameplay is really good. The graphics are an amazing mix between stylized anime effects – think cartoon smoke when you burn out and hyper-realistic environments with lighting that will make your jaw drop. The cars look good, sound good, and most importantly, drive good. You feel like you’re going fast. And each race feels like a proper battle where you’re constantly just winning (or losing). The challenge is there. So why the heavy heart?
You see, NFS Unbound completely messed up when it comes to the music. The one thing that will carry through the ages! An entire 50% of wanting to play a Need for Speed game is for the music. Take, for example, Need for Speed Underground and Underground 2. These two are often referred to as the best Need for Speed games ever made. And if you ask anyone why, they will answer without a moment’s hesitation “the music was just so good”. And how does Unbound fare? A minus 10 out of 10. It’s all mumble rap and really bad hip hop. Not one real instrument in the entire soundtrack! In fact, everyone I know just turns the music off.
I played this game and was blown away with how nostalgic it feels – it’s like the modern day Underground 2. But then the music happens. And I uninstalled the game after about 4 hours.
Seriously – fix the music and this will be the best NFS game to have come out in a decade.
Unpacking
What a waste of time. It tries to tell a deep and meaningful story, but it’s super predictable, the main character is annoying (even though all you’re doing is unpacking their things and they never really speak to you) and the gameplay is completely unsatisfying.
I played this game for easy achievements. And was ambivalent towards it. Sure, one of the houses you unpack is a caricature of “I’m not like the other girls – I’m quirky”, and another house is full-on-nerd. But even then, I didn’t harbor any negative thoughts towards the game. Until you near the end. And then it’s so predictable and boring. I finished the last achievement and didn’t even quit the game to uninstall it.
Scorn
Scorn is an interesting game that does one thing well. Like really, really well! And then tried to do something else and falls flat. Such a pity…
What Scorn does extremely well is the environment and puzzles. It’s gorgeous in a very gross, fleshy way. The whole feel of this game is organic – soft, squishy, and moist. In fact, Scorn has no doubt invented the squelch genre. And it’s modelled like an H. R. Giger fever dream. If you’ve watched Alien, you’ll know what I mean. Walls of bone, buttons of flesh, sphincter like holes that you plunge your entire hand into. It never stops being so… organic.
But then it throws in combat, and you end up not really enjoying the game. You see, the controls are just, so, clunky. Perfect for figuring out puzzles. Not so great when trying to be a twitch shooter. Which is a pity, because this game is made to be experienced. It really has to be seen to be believed.
The Great
Dyson Sphere Program
A factory building game? On Game Pass? For PC? Where do I sign up!
Dyson Sphere Program scratched my Satisfactory itch in a big way! And that’s saying something. I mean, I did write up an entire, efficiently balanced, iron to screw production line for Satisfactory at one point. And Dyson Sphere Program is almost making me do the same thing…
The game itself is in beta, so there’s still some changes, but is still rock solid. The aim is to build the legendary Dyson Sphere by taking over planets in a star system, pillaging all their resources, turning them into giant factories and harnessing the power of the sun. Then you move to the next star system and do it all again! Each map has about 25 stars with about 6 to 8 planets, just waiting for you, making this one a slow burn. But its on Game Pass. So try it!
Persona 5 Royal
What an absolute surprise! And a fantastic one at that! Revealed at the Xbox Showcase in June, this was one game release I was most excited for.
Persona! On my console of choice! A dream come true. I never thought I’d see the day. I was so excited, I instantly bought it. Sure, it’s on Game Pass and I could just play there, but I want to show that there is a home for Japanese games on Xbox.
Persona 5 is an over-the-top JRPG that just oozes style. The menu system, the enemies, the everything makes you want to live in this world. But being a JRPG, it takes many, many hours to complete. Even if you rush through, you’re looking at 90+ hours. I started it, got about 10 hours in and then had to reassess if I continue. Jumping in and out of this game will mean I forget some of the story, so maybe it’s best I wait until I can devote a month to just this game. And I want to give this game all the attention it deserves! So, while I started Persona, onto the backlog heap it goes.
At least for now…
The Artful Escape
The Artful Escape is the runner up to my Game of The Year. Seriously. It’s so good, I bought it after about 2 hours of actually playing it. And I’ll do it again!
This game tells the story of Francis Vendetti pretending to be someone he’s not. But then, of course, aliens come down and allow him to be anyone of his choosing. At one point in The Artful Escape, you make up your own backstory. Did you fight off aliens on the edge of a black hole? Or maybe, you partied so hard the universe itself gave you your star-guitar?
It’s so off the wall and insane, you can’t help but love it. And it succeeds in making you feel fantastically, absolutely, incredibly, awesome. As you run around, shredding on your guitar, you bring life into the environment. For a 4-hour experience, this game perfectly nails everything it has going for it.
If Cyberpunk 2.0 didn’t come out this year, then The Artful Escape would have easily been my game of the year for 2022. Which leads us to…
Cyberpunk 2077
Ah yes. Cyberpunk. What is there to say about you? Coming out in 2020, Cyberpunk was, without a doubt, very overpromised and underdelivered. Random bugs that should have been caught in testing, performance issues on old gen hardware, and just being a little bit of a mess plagued the game. You may even have even heard about it.
But with the release of the next-gen patch in February 2022, many considered this to be the games soft relaunch, and opportunity to become the next No Man’s Sky. And it succeeded. The next-gen patch felt like a 2.0 release with bugs being squashed, performance increased, graphics tweaked, and a whole bunch of other stuff added. This was definitely the game the devs wanted to make.
Because of this, Cyberpunk 2077 is my most played game of 2022 – clocking in at over 80 hours now, and I am nowhere near finishing it. The world feels alive! It makes me want to explore. I am reminded of playing Fallout for the first time and realizing that I could, if I wanted to, walk over that hill in the distance. And in doing so, encounter a completely new adventure. One that had no quest marker or no lead up. The sense of exploration and discovery in this game is something I absolutely love.
I could wax lyrical about everything Cyberpunk 2077 does right, but I’ll just tell you to play it instead.
Quick Bits
The Pizza Delivery Boy Who Saved the World
A quick little visual novel that has one or two funny bits in it. It made this list because it knows exactly what it is, and doesn’t try to teach you anything, or do anything other than tell a very stupid story.
Oh, and I did chuckle at one or two of the jokes.
All in all, it’s worth a quick playthrough just to experience the weirdness.
Halo Infinite
While I still haven’t gotten around to playing the story, the multiplayer is still a lot of fun. A group of friends, a couple hours, and you’re looking at a great time. I never thought I’d get sucked into Halo multiplayer, but here we are.
League of Legends: Wild Rift
And now for the mobile game shoutout. This year, I spent more time than I care to admit playing Wild Rift on my iPad.
And boy, this game does not disappoint. On the iPad it runs at 120fps while looking amazing. And nails the “one more game” feel. I can see now why people end up playing LoL on PC and nothing else! To add to my excitement, Xbox announced that Game Pass members will get all the characters unlocked! It cemented in my mind that this will be my mobile game going forward. Even though each game takes about 20 minutes or so…
If you’re looking for some League of Legends in your life, but don’t want to play on PC, I can highly, highly recommend this game!
Wrap Up
2022 was a good year for gaming. Lots of surprises and, strangely, lots of 2022 releases. Something I almost never do as I continue to fight with and add to my backlog. Some games came out and just really struck a cord with me. Like I knew I liked the cyberpunk genre, but I didn’t realize HOW MUCH I like the cyberpunk genre, if you get my drift.
To wrap it up, last year I did something pretty silly and tried to plan my game time. But then real life (read: Game Pass) came in, laughed at those plans and hit me in the face with a bat. A bat made of games. So, should I try again? Or should I admit defeat now and save myself the embarrassment?
Or, and here’s another option, I should just write about what games I am looking forward to playing next year.
That way I save both of us from getting egg on our faces when life takes over.
