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
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 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.
'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.
Joystick made me realize I like men (satire (not satire (who knows?)))
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.
Sunset Riders 2: More style, less substance.
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.
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.
top 5 beatemup from 4th gen and it was shocking when people told me 'yeah the remake is just objectively better in every way'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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
My fetish is playing historically-hated Sonic things and finding out they actually kick ass
"THEY KNOW SONIC IS A PLATFORMER - I REPEAT, THEY KNOW SONIC IS A PLATFORMER"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
