My Favorite Games of 2022 (That Didn’t Come Out in 2022)
I love playing video games, but I rarely play new ones. This becomes a problem at the end of the year, when pundits and publications unveil their list of Best Games of the Year, and I’m still just replaying Fallout: New Vegas. I’ve got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle, but I’m out of the popular discourse.
Here’s my thoughts on eight of my favorite games that I played in 2022 — none of which actually came out in 2022.
Read to the end to find my actual favorite game of 2022. One that came out this year. I can’t believe it either.
My Favorite Games of 2022
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. MGS3 achieves the impossible: it highlights all of creator Hideo Kojima’s strengths and none of his weaknesses.
The story is straightforward: the American undercover agent Naked Snake must sneak into Soviet Russia to track down and recover a nuclear weapon. From there, we experience a tale of espionage, international intrigue, romance, grand conspiracy, double-crossing, triple-crossing, and more; one of the most sophisticated stories in any video game.
MGS2 often fell victim to an imbalance between gameplay and cutscene. In that game, between moments of intense stealth action, there would be long stretches of what basically amounted to a visual novel: characters would often talk for extended periods of time, and then need to be walked into the next room, where they could again talk at length. As much as I enjoy that game’s plot, its gameplay deprives the player of agency at some level.
Snake Eater reverses that trend. Gameplay first, talky cutscenes second. Instead, it hides its lore behind optional codec conversations that the player can ignore or miss. In my opinion, this actually works in its favor— the story it tells through mandatory gameplay and cutscenes works on one level, and it is supplemented by those optional codec calls. Nothing’s lost by the player skipping out on them, it just creates a more textured world.
In technical terms, there’s significantly less scenes of someone standing in a room, awkwardly talking on their codec so that the animators didn’t have to animate a person-to-person conversation — another improvement over MGS2. Snake Eater also introduces outdoor environments and geographic depth to the series, and the camera amplifies them. The stealth gameplay takes place outside primarily, no longer in cramped halls or dank warehouses. Snake can hide behind tall grass or in swamps, and I love it encourages you to use those hills and valleys. The addition of the 3D camera from the Subsistence re-release is a godsend as well.
I sought to challenge myself with this playthrough of Snake Eater, and I was able to successfully execute a nonlethal game. Instead of blasting through buildings, getting rid of every guard who annoyed me or caught me sneaking around, a nonlethal run presented an exciting challenge. A stealthy secret agent probably wouldn’t be a dog of war, after all. Oddly, the game did seem to disincentivize me from doing so at certain points — the opening of the game is very difficult and there is one pretty punishing on-rails section towards the end if you’re actively trying not to kill people.
Everything about Snake Eater hits just right, and it’s completely unforgettable. From the music to the voice acting to the variety of levels you encounter, it’s all a blast to experience. MGSV may have sharpened the series’ stealth gameplay, but Snake Eater makes a case for being simply one of the best games of all time. It’s the best game I’ve played all year.
Fallout: New Vegas. I find myself coming back to New Vegas again and again and again every few years. There’s just something about it.
Set in a post-apocalyptic American Southwest, you play as a courier who was carrying a very important package. That is, until you were shot and left for dead. You have to find the guy who shot you and figure out why that delivery was so important. Over the course of the game, you’ll meet different factions vying for control of the remains of California and Nevada and you’ll be confronted with decisions that decide the fate of the wasteland.
New Vegas is far more interested in its world than Fallout 3 was, and the writing is sharp, witty, and well-crafted. New Vegas’s world is also far more expansive. Fallout 3 was a game that was devoted to one story, and was quite linear in retrospect. Its Washington DC locale was expansive, but was often pretty shallow, repeating landscapes over and over, until you ended up at the one place its story led you to.
New Vegas, on the other hand, offers several different story paths you can take, and presents you with a rather large variety of choices that you can choose to involve yourself in. Do you join the fascists that have modeled themselves after Roman rulers? Do you join the suspiciously aggressive technocrats or ally with the region’s richest landowner? Or do you ignore all of that and choose to take charge yourself with an army of robots at your side?
Or do you simply want to gamble your life away while listening to Marty Robbins? The choice is yours.
The Outer Wilds. Unlike the preceding two titles, this one was new to me this year. I must confess, I prefer more basic puzzle games to the logic puzzles found in games like Myst. So I was kind of blown away by how much I enjoyed The Outer Wilds.
You play as an unnamed amphibious space explorer who is about to embark on a new interplanetary mission. But something mysterious happens that traps you in a time loop. The universe will explode in 22 minutes and your day will start over. Figure out why and stop it.
The central Groundhog Day-type time loop is equal parts addicting, fun to explore, and frustrating. The game gives you hints and a brief guide pointing you in various directions, but you can basically do whatever you want. You can try to rush everything into one loop, but you’ll never figure it all out in time. You will have to work at uncovering the mystery, die, explore, die, check out different planets, and die some more. Not even to the time loop either — I ate a lot of shit trying to figure out how to fly my spaceship. But it was always fun. Even though the ticking clock can sometimes be annoying, as certain elements are only available from the 20th minute on, it never becomes overwhelming or obnoxious.
The music was great, and traversing space and the various planets was tons of fun. There’s a ton of effort that has been put into the different planets and galactic landmarks you can encounter, and they all have their own unique gravity, weather, dangers, and events that take place during the time look. It’s fascinating just observing how every planet has its own schedule and routine, and how they often intersect with one another.
I’m not the most clever person, so I’ll admit I needed a guide for the more obtuse late-game puzzles. Still, it was a rewarding experience to play and one I thoroughly enjoyed.
Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2. I’ll confess, even though I purchased Hitman 3, I never got around to its content. Instead, I imported the levels of Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2 into 3, and spent dozens of hours revelling in those.
In the Hitman series, you play as Agent 47, a mysterious secret agent with an unknown past trying to uncover an equally mysterious international conspiracy. You are sent to various extravagant locales and you have to eliminate specific targets in any way you deem fit. Sneak in quietly or create a scene, the choice is yours.
I had beaten Hitman (2016) before and easily put over a hundred hours into a few of its levels. This year, I finally sat down and beat the game in one go, more or less. The levels are huge, with so many parts that make them all akin to Swiss watches. It’s so easy to get lost in exploration, or simply observe the levels’ routines without actually killing anybody. But you don’t have to approach things delicately — you can just blast everyone away if you really want to. It’s not quite a stealth game like the Metal Gear Solid series — the fun comes in figuring out exactly how you want to execute your mission.
The Hitman games present you with dozens of different challenges per map — challenges based around exploration, activating different objects, eliminating targets in certain ways, or simply messing with people. The replayability of each map and the massive variety of ways you can go about your mission is astonishing. You can spend hours upon hours in one map, and I basically had to force myself to continue onto the next level. Otherwise, I’d have spent all day in Paris and Sapienza, two of the finest maps ever created in a video game.
The story never really congeals for me. It doesn’t quite aspire to the plot of a Tom Clancy novel, or even a James Bond movie, but that’s not really the point as far as I can tell. It’s all about how Agent 47 bonks a guy on the head with a silly object and quietly tosses his body into a lake.
The iterative improvements that Hitman 2 and 3 bring to the table are worth noting. Improved enemy AI, improved threat detection, and the ability to hide in tall grass are all welcome additions. It ratchets up the tension and makes stealth a more viable, fun option.
Skyrim VR. It’s the most immersive game I’ve ever played. And then it isn’t.
Portal 2. I enjoyed the portal-based puzzle game Portal 2 at the time of its release in 2011, but I never really went back to it. I was obsessed with the original, but the sequel came out when I was in college and I didn’t have the time to do as much PC gaming, so it was a one-and-done for me. Part of that may have been my aging computer that only barely chugged across the finish line.
I was hugely impressed going back to it. The puzzles are still delightfully satisfying, and the game is excellent at slowly doling out mechanics and escalating them in fun ways. The detail and improvements to the Source engine are immediately apparent over the first game, and the maps are positively enormous by comparison. There are lots of new areas and maps, and thus, lots of load times, but given the decade plus since its release, the load times are basically seamless on the Xbox Series X.
The script is often fun and funny, and it gives the characters depth in ways I never anticipated in all the time I spent playing the first Portal. A decade after its release, I’m blissfully glad that it doesn’t dwell on cake memes or the weighted companion cube. Remember those? A lesser studio would have beaten that dead horse into a nasty pulp.
Luigi’s Mansion 3. This one was also new to me. I love couch co-op games, frankly, and I relish the opportunity to play them. Lately, it seems Nintendo is the only company who still appreciates the experience. Pikmin 3 Deluxe was my GOTY for 2020 solely on the strength of its co-op experience.
My only previous history with the Luigi’s Mansion series was a brief time spent with the original about fifteen years ago — I never beat it, but I enjoyed it as a thoroughly weird tangent in the broader Mario universe. Luigi’s Mansion 3 is kind of the same game — Luigi’s brother and their friends get trapped by some ghosts, and Luigi uses a vacuum to save them. If it ain’t broke, and all that. Luigi is joined by Gooigi, a jello clone of himself that can slip through gutters and walk past fences that Luigi can’t traverse.
Gameplay is intuitive for the most part, and easy to pick up. Catching ghosts is satisfying, and it makes up for a lot of other gameplay flaws. The fixed camera occasionally works against the player, and the act of rotating and moving Luigi/Gooigi while using the vacuum is cumbersome. I found that I either swung too far in the opposite direction, or I swung not far enough in the right one. This could be fixed by gyro controls, of course — and there are gyro controls! But only to look up and down while vacuuming; not to look left and right. It’s very confusing.
Player 2 is relegated to Gooigi, and though it never feels like an afterthought, playing as Gooigi is inferior to playing as Luigi. You can’t open doors, only Luigi can. You depend on your partner to move from one area to the next. The camera is similarly impacted.
Despite these issues, it was a very fun cooperative experience. It requires a lot of positive reinforcement and communication in order to get stuff right, especially in later puzzles. It’s a must-have if you value sitting on the couch with a friend or loved one and playing a game.
Slay the Spire. Slay the Spire is a randomly-generated dungeon-crawler card game. Every round you play is different, with new enemies, new cards, and new dungeons every time.
It really succeeds at blending the rogue-like genre with its card-based gameplay, and it’s quite addictive. It encourages playing and replaying the game to see what you’ll experience differently next time, and you do feel a sense of progression and achievement as you go forward with your characters. Although if you’re like me, you’ll fail a lot, and replaying the initial Act 1 does get repetitive.
It rewards trying again and again, and although there is luck involved, it teaches you how to play the game and get better, which is more than what I can say for something like Enter the Gungeon.
Ultimately, I downloaded it out of curiosity, put about fifty hours into it over the course of three weeks, and then immediately deleted it from my hard drive in an attempt to hold onto my sanity. If I hadn’t, I’d still be playing it to this day, its menu screen burned into my TV.
Honorable Mentions
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond. This was last year’s mainstay Pokémon game, and I’ve generally liked every one I’ve ever played. The differences between them are minor.
Brilliant Diamond held my hand far less than Pokémon Moon ever did. The new 3D character models, cities, and the Pokémon models are all faithful to their original pixel designs. The world is designed to be a concentrated dopamine hit, and it succeeds. I was flat-out obsessed with this one in a way I haven’t been with a Pokémon game since Heart Gold. Completing the PokéDex felt like a fun goal rather than an obligation as it did in Moon.
The amount of post-game events is disappointing. After you beat the Elite Four, there’s….not much. You can trade online. Do some battles. Explore the underground (which, in the course of playing the regular game, you’ve almost certainly mapped out). There were a few time-limited online events, but, since BD had the bad luck of being released a few months before this year’s Pokémon Legends Arceus, they promptly dried up. Fun while it lasted, though.
The Outer Worlds. A space opera from the creators of Fallout: New Vegas sounds immediately appealing. The Outer Worlds is no Mass Effect, but it makes an admirable effort at what made those games so memorable. Well-developed combat and a delightful crew of interstellar explorers help make the titular worlds you explore feel very alive, even if it lacks replayability.
The crew you gather and travel with all have distinct characteristics and personalities, and they’re fun to spend time with. It was a thrill to take different guys and gals out and about to see how they would react to story missions and to the planets the player encounters. There aren’t very many crewmates available to you, but I enjoyed the brief time I spent with TOW and the people in it.
Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. Actually, this is one of my favorite entries in the franchise. Going back to Peace Walker after playing MGSV: The Phantom Pain, it’s easy to see that this is a pivotal entry. This is where its groundwork is laid, both in terms of story and how its gameplay functions. Instead of one long, linear, story-based game, Peace Walker makes the wise decision to break up the story into bite-sized missions. This is, naturally, because the original game was on the bite-sized PSP.
What this effectively means is that instead of long stretches of people yammering occasionally interrupted by gameplay, the longest single chapter will only ever take about 30 minutes. It’s a welcome change after all the yammering in MGS4. I particularly delighted in the “Hold Up” missions — you’re armed with a weapon and have to sneak up behind someone. Only instead of a gun, you’re holding them up with a banana.
The story itself is an interesting commentary on the issue of nuclear deterrence. Again, the story has to be concise because of the original system it was on, and except for some plot retreads from MGS3, the story is quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of interesting character backstory hidden behind optional tapes that are easy to avoid. There’s far more important plot you can simply miss than in the codec conversations found in Snake Eater.
Civilization VI. In short, it’s a remarkably solid PS4 port of a remarkably solid Civilization entry. It doesn’t feel as if they had to strip out mechanics or dumb down the game in order to fit it on consoles.
The problem is that I had to uninstall the game in order to stop playing. One more turn became one hundred more turns. I simply can’t be productive in my day-to-day life with a Civ game around.
Additional Thoughts and Demerits
Fallout 4 was a title I played a ton of, thoroughly enjoyed, but was ultimately kind of annoyed by. I called it a day after 60 hours, completing the 3 major faction endings. The central gameplay loop is fun and addictive: you explore the big world and grab large amounts of junk so you can tinker with your weapons and armor so you can explore more dangerous areas, rinse and repeat. It’s basically Borderlands 2, just with less annoying dialogue. But that affirmative gameplay loop comes at a cost — it’s a real poor Fallout game, especially when played right after Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
There’s no reason to put points into attributes like Charisma or Intelligence at all because the dialogue is incredibly limited. It is far more important to put all your points into Strength and Endurance so you can live long enough to pick up every screw, duct tape roll, and hot plate in your path so you can tinker with your equipment. My play-through only required one speech check in the entire main quest.
The story itself isn’t as compelling as either of the preceding 3D Fallouts, and the plot fizzles out at the beginning of the third act. In a weird turn of events, especially compared to New Vegas, your actions seem to have bizarrely little effect on the greater world around you until the last hour or so. You can get ridiculously far in the main quest while being liked by every single faction, and they will all often accept you working for and with people who are aligned against their material interests.
Still, the game did cast some sort of spell on me. 60 hours of playtime ain’t nothing. It’s fairly easy to see the iterative gameplay improvements Bethesda brought to the table. But it’s kind of a bummer that the most effective way to play 4 is to be the dumbest possible pack-mule as long as you can one-hit anything in your way.
Saints Row The Third Remastered. Oh good lord. What did I ever see in this game? 2011’s killer sophomoric delight has turned to ashes in the mouth of 2022. Edgy dialogue yields edgy humor that only exists for the sake of being edgy, and it’s all deeply embarrassing. In the first hour, there’s a sarcastic “Thank you, Captain Obvious” played straight. It’s unbelievably dated in a way that I didn’t think was possible.
There’s some memorable stuff in here, to be fair. The opening hour features a fun freefall sequence that features your character diving out of a plane into another plane, into vehicles, and so on. I still remembered it after all these years. But in 2022, it really struck me as if it tried to be the Fast and Furious for people who have convinced themselves they don’t like the Fast and Furious series.
Surely the gameplay must still be good though. It’s hard to screw up a Grand Theft Auto clone, even those managed to get locomotion and movement down. Driving felt fine, but the gunplay felt really unsatisfactory. Every single enemy feels like a bullet sponge and it’s often hard to tell if head shots will actually do any damage. Shooting people in big chaotic firefights is a major part of gameplay, and it is just not fun to play. I’ll leave my memories of Saints Row The Third in college, where they belong.
My Favorite Game of 2022
You might be thinking to yourself: Spencer, that’s a lot of words for older games. What new titles did you actually play?
Pokémon Legends Arceus.
That’s about it. Seriously.
I bounce off From Software titles, so I didn’t bother with Elden Ring.
I enjoyed Tunic, but I didn’t finish it and I don’t feel qualified to speak to its quality in full. The serene Power Wash Simulator was quite fun, but it was in early release last year before coming out in full this year, so I don’t count it.
Arceus is a radical re-imagining of the Pokémon formula. If you remember how Pokémon Red played, you generally know what every game is like. Get a starter, meet a professor, get gym badges, beat your rival, get bigger and stronger guys, beat the Elite Four.
Arceus is an exception. You still gotta catch ’em all, but you do so in a vast open world rather than a top-down one periodically broken up by doors, homes, and tunnel entrances. More than anything, the game is fast. Almost everything that kept you from catching little guys is out. Gyms are out. Your rival is out. The Elite Four is out. Even traditional turn-based fighting is out, for the most part.
Instead of having to fight Pokémon in tall grass, you can simply throw a ball while hiding or walking by them, essentially sniping them from a distance. You’re able to instantly catch them, more often than not. It is incredibly satisfying to play and very addictive. The areas you encounter are all distinct and different, with very few Pokémon being featured in more than one place.
It is simply fun to play, and that’s why it’s my de facto GOTY 2022. Just fast-forward through the story.
