Games of the Year 2022: Splatoon 3

Splatoon 3 is both good and disappointing at the same time.  At its core, Splatoon 3 is a solid game.  It still has lots of fun with squid kids, octolings, and fresh styles.

All the fun from the past Splatoon games is represented here and there are nice quality of life features that are notable improvements as well.

But, unfortunately, it doesn't actually do much new.  There's new gear, a new single player campaign, and one new (time gated) mode.  Besides that, it's basically the same game as Splatoon 2.

So, although the core gameplay is fun, this one ends up fairly low on my list since it's not really doing anything new:

1. Elden Ring
2. Xenoblade Chronicles 3
3. FFXIV Endwalker
4. Citizen Sleeper
5. The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
6. Horizon Forbidden West
7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
8. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
9. Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition
10. Cult of the Lamb
11. Neon White
12. Halo Infinite
13. Vampire Survivors
14. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
15. Playdate Season 1
16. Immortality
17. Cyberpunk 2077
18. Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC
19. Triangle Strategy
20. Mario Strikers: Battle League
21. Multiversus Pre-Season
22. Stray
23. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
24. Nobody Saves the World
25. Unpacking
26. Kaichu
27. Tinykin
28. Splatoon 3
29. Total War: Warhammer 3
30. Tunic

Maybe they'll drop free updates or DLC that is more novel in the future, but I'm a little disappointed by what this game has on offer.

Games of the Year 2022: Kaichu

Kaichu is a cute and lightweight game about Kaiju dating.  You take on the role of a Kaiju looking for love.  The core premise is that Kaijus date through destroying landmarks together.

The gameplay quickly shows itself to be a fairly simple game about trying to guess the right answer for compatibility on your dates with other Kaiju.  It's not a complex game... but it's cute, it's cozy, and it has a lot of heart.

This one was a quick hit but I had more fun with it than I thought I would.  It ends up near the bottom but... not in a bad way:

1. Elden Ring
2. Xenoblade Chronicles 3
3. FFXIV Endwalker
4. Citizen Sleeper
5. The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
6. Horizon Forbidden West
7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
8. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
9. Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition
10. Cult of the Lamb
11. Neon White
12. Halo Infinite
13. Vampire Survivors
14. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
15. Playdate Season 1
16. Immortality
17. Cyberpunk 2077
18. Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC
19. Triangle Strategy
20. Mario Strikers: Battle League
21. Multiversus Pre-Season
22. Stray
23. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
24. Nobody Saves the World
25. Unpacking
26. Kaichu
27. Tinykin
28. Total War: Warhammer 3
29. Tunic

I'm happy to be adding this one to this list!  It's just such a quick hit of a game that it doesn't rise to the heights of many others on the list.

Games of the Year 2022: Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 blew me away in a completely unsuspecting way.  I love a good JRPG but had previously bounced hard off of the first two games in this series.  This one looked like it had some good quality of life improvements and the story hook was more interesting than the previous games, so a few friends were able to convince me to give it a shot.

I'm so glad they did.  After about 70 hours and rolling credits, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is currently sitting as my runner up game of the year right behind Elden Ring:

1. Elden Ring
2. Xenoblade Chronicles 3
3. FFXIV Endwalker
4. Citizen Sleeper
5. The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
6. Horizon Forbidden West
7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
8. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
9. Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition
10. Cult of the Lamb
11. Neon White
12. Halo Infinite
13. Vampire Survivors
14. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
15. Playdate Season 1
16. Immortality
17. Cyberpunk 2077
18. Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC
19. Triangle Strategy
20. Mario Strikers: Battle League
21. Multiversus Pre-Season
22. Stray
23. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
24. Nobody Saves the World
25. Unpacking
26. Tinykin
27. Total War: Warhammer 3
28. Tunic

I loved the story, combat system, class system, open world exploration, setting, premise, and so much more about this game.  I'm not sure if I'll go back to the previous entries that I already bounced from, but I'm definitely a convert and will be excitedly awaiting any future Xenoblade Chronicles games they make.

My running GOTY list isn't intended to be full on reviews, otherwise all my thoughts about this one would take up way too many words.

Instead, I'll just say... if you're a JRPG fan, I can easily recommend this one to you as a game I absolutely loved!

Games of the Year 2022: Playdate Season 1

Playdate is a weird one to cover in this list since it's a game system and not a game itself.  But I decided to wrap in all of "Season 1" as an item on this list.

If you haven't heard of it, Playdate is an experimental 1-bit handheld game console that came out earlier this year.  They have a cool site that gives the basic rundown so I won't reiterate all of that here.

I've had a lot of fun poking around and playing on this console.  I've played a bunch of games I downloaded or bought from itch.io but I've now also completed their full Season 1 content which is why it felt like a good time to add it to the list.

Season 1 is a set of 24 games that were included with the purchase of the console.  Each week on "new game day" they deliver the next 2 games to your console.  That must mean I've had this for about 12 weeks.  The games themselves ranged from tiny arcade games, to full on adventure games, to little experimental music generators.  In some ways, it felt almost more like a toy than a console... but in a good way.

I really love the potential of the Playdate and I'm super excited for the future.  That being said, none of the games actually held my attention for more than a few days before I got bored and set my console down to wait for the next week's games.  The one exception is Pick, Pack, Pup.  That game rocks.

In my rankings, this one lands around the middle for being a super interesting experiment with a lot of potential but didn't end up higher because I feel like that potential hasn't been fully realized through the games on offer:

1. Elden Ring
2. FFXIV Endwalker
3. Citizen Sleeper
4. The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
5. Horizon Forbidden West
6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
7. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
8. Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition
9. Cult of the Lamb
10. Neon White
11. Halo Infinite
12. Vampire Survivors
13. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
14. Playdate Season 1
15. Immortality
16. Cyberpunk 2077
17. Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC
18. Triangle Strategy
19. Mario Strikers: Battle League
20. Multiversus Pre-Season
21. Stray
22. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
23. Nobody Saves the World
24. Unpacking
25. Tinykin
26. Total War: Warhammer 3
27. Tunic

I'm still very excited about the potential future of this little experimental console.  If they end up doing a Season 2 of content, I will definitely be there on day 1 to try it out!

Games of the Year 2022: Immortality

Immortality is a hard one to write about so this may be short.  But, I have to say something about it become it is most definitely interesting.

Immortality is an FMV game, but you discover the FMV clips through free association of objects that you click on within any given freeze frame of any scene.  The scenes themselves are clips from a series of made up unreleased movies that all star the same actress.

On it's face, the game is about uncovering movie clips and mentally putting them together to see this actress's career.  But, underneath, there's a ton of hidden stuff going on.  There's a whole secondary story that I didn't stumble onto until I had uncovered a large majority of the clips.

This one is really strange but is so unique that I needed to acknowledge it in my list.  Personally, I was pulled into the game for one session where I played through the entire thing until I hit credits.  I have a feeling this will be some people's game of the year this year.  For me, it's worth acknowledging but lands somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Here's where I ended up putting it:

1. Elden Ring
2. FFXIV Endwalker
3. Citizen Sleeper
4. The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
5. Horizon Forbidden West
6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
7. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
8. Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition
9. Cult of the Lamb
10. Neon White
11. Halo Infinite
12. Vampire Survivors
13. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
14. Immortality
15. Cyberpunk 2077
16. Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC
17. Triangle Strategy
18. Mario Strikers: Battle League
19. Multiversus Pre-Season
20. Stray
21. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
22. Nobody Saves the World
23. Unpacking
24. Tinykin
25. Total War: Warhammer 3
26. Tunic

In my mind, this is just "below the cut" for my mid-range ratings on this list.  It's holding fairly strong there in the middle of the pack but I expect it to get bumped down as more games hit this list.

Games of the Year 2022: Tinykin

Tinykin is an interesting game that I almost chose not to write about for this list.  You'll see shortly that it ended up near the bottom of my list.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was doing something interesting that deserves some acknowledgement.  And that was my goal with this running this during the year.  I wanted to highlight my favorite games while also highlighting games that ultimately didn't click with me when I tried them but were doing something noteworthy.

Tinykin reimagines what a Pikman style game can be and do.  That's the reason I wanted to give it some acknowledgement.  Pikman doesn't have many games like it and all of the Nintendo Pikman games follow a very similar formula.  You collect Pikman within a level and have to accomplish some collecting objectives within a time limit.

Tinykin takes the core idea of Pikman, that idea of gathering a small army of different and useful creatures that follow you around and are at your command, and places it into a much more open structure.  It's not exactly open world but it's more like an open level design of something like Banjo Kazooie.  It's a really interesting take on what you can do with these core mechanics.

If any of that sounds interesting to you, this one is out on Game Pass to try without a lot of commitment.  In that respect, it's an easy recommendation.  Go sample it if you're interested!

That being said, for me, it's landing third from the bottom on my list:

1. Elden Ring
2. FFXIV Endwalker
3. Citizen Sleeper
4. The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
5. Horizon Forbidden West
6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
7. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
8. Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition
9. Cult of the Lamb
10. Neon White
11. Halo Infinite
12. Vampire Survivors
13. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
14. Cyberpunk 2077
15. Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC
16. Triangle Strategy
17. Mario Strikers: Battle League
18. Multiversus Pre-Season
19. Stray
20. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
21. Nobody Saves the World
22. Unpacking
23. Tinykin
24. Total War: Warhammer 3
25. Tunic

I played a few hours of Tinykin and appreciated what it was doing, but didn't actually have a ton of fun with it.  I needed the platforming to be more compelling or the level design to be more interesting.  I would honestly love to see what they do with a sequel if they end up making one.