Games of the Year 2022: Pokémon Scarlet and Violet

Pokémon Scarlet (and Violet by extension) was the rare Pokémon game that hooked me and kept me interested all the way through.

I'm not doing a full review, but I do feel the need to call out how much this game struggles on performance.  It chugs along, has tons of bugs, and the frame rate is just brutal.  Although, none of that really detracted from my overall enjoyment.  Your results may vary.

The two things that truly let this game get its hooks into me were the open world and the new quality of life feature auto battle feature.  The open world fairly quickly gave me three main story progression paths to go down and complete freedom in the order I wanted to pursue them.  The typical Gyms are here but so is a storyline about Team Star and a completely different storyline about Titan Pokémon.

Given the freedom of the open world and the ability to do almost instant auto-battles for experience, I quickly threw on some podcasts and audiobooks while just running around the world.  It was a ton of fun.

And, in the end, the story had me invested.  All three storylines come together and do some cool things towards the end.  Ultimately, I'm not sure how much (if any) endgame content I'll do now that I've rolled credits... but this game was great.

It doesn't quite make my top 5 but it easily slots in just underneath it at number 7.  This is easily above two other strong open world games, Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Horizon Forbidden West.  I went back and forth a bit on almost putting this at number 6 but The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe just kinda blew me away.  They're such different games that they're hard to compare, but it's my list and this felt right to me:

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

There's really not much of the year left so you're looking at an almost complete list at this point.  The last few games that I think have a real chance of shaking things up near the top of the list are God of War Ragnarok and Marvel's Midnight Suns.  God of War Ragnarok is one I started but I literally put it down to play Pokemon, so we'll see how it feels to return to it.  Midnight Suns is out later this week.

There's always a chance that one of the last minute indie games or Game Pass games that I'm catching up on over the holiday break crack the top 10 too, but those typically come out of left field.

I'm excited to see what the final list looks like in about a month!

Games of the Year 2022: Marvel Snap

Marvel Snap is the best digital card game I've ever played on mobile.  In general, it's one of the best digital cards games I've played in years.

Their are a few key factors here.  The two biggest of which are the speed of play (fast) and the monetization (cosmetic).  This isn't a trashy mobile pay to win game.  If you want to spend money, you can spend it on cosmetics but you can't spend it on power.  As you "upgrade" cards you're just upgrading how cool they look, you aren't upgrading how good they are against other players.  Which means this game can actually be balanced and fun for everyone.

The speed of a single game is also super fast.  Most of my games last 2-5 minutes and that's just about perfect.  You only ever play six turns and then the game is over.  It's enough time to engage your brain and feel like you actually did something mentally stimulating, but short enough that it's not a big deal to lose and you never feel like you're on tilt in a negative way.  I've been able to consistently find ways to fit this game into my life because of the approachable match lengths.

Compare this to something like MTGA, which is another excellent digital card game, but the match length of a MTGA is so much longer.  It requires more of a commitment and, if you lose a few in a row, it's so easy to fall into a bad headspace about it.  Marvel Snap is breezy and lightweight in comparison.

There's also so much room here for interesting interactions.  I bought the first battle pass not because I wanted the cosmetics but because it had interesting challenges in it.  I love a good mini-challenge to work towards and Marvel Snap is constantly throwing those my way.  Not to mention the new locations they are rolling out regularly which change up the gameplay without fundamentally messing with your cards or decks.

Marvel Snap is still very new in full release but it comes roaring out of launch and into my top games of the year at number five:

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

I'm pleasantly surprised to be adding a game this high up the rankings this late in the year.  There are really only a couple games left to come out this year that might land higher than this.  There's a chance this could slip to spot six or seven by the end of the year but it could just as easily stay at number five through year end.

Games of the Year 2022: Gotham Knights

Gotham Knights is an interesting entry on this list.  As much as any game can be measured objectively... this one isn't great.  It feels like a solid 7 out of 10 type of game and it's hard to argue for it to be rated much higher than that.

But, for me, this is one of the 7 out of 10 games that just hit right and kept me interested.  I was craving an open world game and I enjoy the Batman/Gotham setting.  This hit at the right time and was good enough to keep me coming back to play more.

It's extremely rough around the edges, doesn't always feel great to play, is full of compromises and odd decisions... but I had fun messing around in it.  Honestly, this is probably higher on my list than it would have been if any other open world game hit around the same time.  The release timing on Gotham Knights was right around the time we typically get Assassin's Creed games which tend to scratch the same itch for me.  Without one of those around this year, my attention was put into this instead.

So, although it's hard for me to recommend this one to anyone else, I ultimately enjoyed my time as Batgirl roaming the Gotham streets and digging into the Court of Owls storyline.  This one ends up slightly higher than the middle of my ranking, right next to Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin:

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. Gotham Knights
15. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
16. Playdate Season 1
17. Immortality
18. Cyberpunk 2077
19. Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC
20. Triangle Strategy
21. Mario Strikers: Battle League
22. Multiversus Pre-Season
23. Stray
24. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
25. Nobody Saves the World
26. Unpacking
27. Kaichu
28. Tinykin
29. Splatoon 3
30. Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope
31. Shovel Knight Dig
32. Total War: Warhammer 3
33. Tunic

Similarly to Maneater in 2020, I wouldn't recommend this one to many people but I personally had fun with it.  I really don't expect to see it on anyone else's games of the year list, but that's totally ok with me.

Games of the Year 2022: Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope was an interesting game to play around with.  I made it through the first world and a half before realizing the game wasn't what I was in the mood for.  It has a lot of interesting things going on with it, but ultimately didn't click with me.

Which is interesting, because I could also see this game being the game of the year for certain people.  It's trying new and interesting things in the turn based strategy X-COM-like game space.  I loved the move away from a grid and instead having a certain radius distance you can run.  The addition of movement abilities that don't use your two "actions" each turn was super cool too.  It was consistently fun to do a slide dash through a bob-omb, pick it up, throw it at a group of enemies, watch it explode, and then realize I still had my two primary actions left to play around with that turn.

In the end, it was the Rabbids and some minor annoyances that turned me away.  The game takes a long time to load anything, the animations are too slow, the enemy turns are too slow, the menus are slow and clunky, there's just a lot of tiny friction throughout interacting with the game.  That friction was a major reason why I put the game down.  And, not to hit on this too hard, but... the Rabbids just don't do anything for me.  They actively make me less interested in the world and story.  I think this game would be so much stronger with just the core Mario cast.

With all of the above being said, I still wouldn't be surprised to see a strategy game fan have this high on their list of favorite games this year.  For me, it ended up near the bottom of mine.  Still worth an entry since it held my attention for awhile, but not very high up the list:

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. Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope
30. Shovel Knight Dig
31. Total War: Warhammer 3
32. Tunic

Now that it's November, we're getting close to the end of the year.  Not much time left for things to shift around but there are a couple big releases I'm still excited for.  We'll see what kind of impact those have.