Your 2022 Game of the Year

I haven't played Elden Ring yet, so I can't field that one. I want to say Valkyrie Elysium, but I haven't been yearning for Valkyrie Elysium; I've been yearning for Valkyrie Profile 3: Hrist. And when I realize I've only played 2 games with actual releases in 2022; I have to say Final Fantasy: Strangers in Paradise.

Everything else has been older, some even PS2/3 era.
 
Had to check which games came out this year that I played, that is how unremarkable 2022 in gaming was to me. The only really new games I played was Orcs Must Die 3 and Neptunia x Senran Kagura: Ninja Wars and I am not comfortable giving either of those an award for anything other than for mediocrity, I did also play Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance 2 and Shadownan. While the former was just a port and pure indulgence in nostalgia, the latter was a decent remaster and holds up pretty well, besides some of the voice acting in the early part.
 
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Looking over what actually came out this year, my GOTY is easily OMORI. With all it's kickstarter woes and being an RPGmaker game aside, Omori closes it's first act with a gut punch and continues to kick you while you are down for the rest of it's 25 hour play time.

Other games I played that I either haven't finished or didn't think measured up:
Cult of the Lamb: I liked the game, it just didn't have as much depth as I had hoped. Once you learned brainwash 90% of your problems go away. Had it been $15 I could recommend, but not at $25. Maybe with the content update, but I'm not holding my breath.

Tunic: Very cute Zelda clone that I need to get back to. Worth playing on Game Pass

Signalis: An okay survival horror game that tries too hard with the spoopy metaplot instead of actual horror.

Vampire Survivors: A fun time waster letting you kill a half hour at a time and still feel like you are making some sort of progress.
 
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I played barely anything this year, so the options are limited to whatever continuing game I've been playing into this year, Elden Ring, Cod:MW2 or Rainbow 6: Extraction.
  • GOTY: Elden Ring, by a far margin. Great game, really enjoyed it.
  • Honorable mention: COD:MW2. Fun but incredibly stupid campaign, multiplayer is fine, DMZ is fun when I get friends online.
  • Dishonorable mention: Rainbow 6: Extraction. It's a fine mindless grind with friends, but holy fuck the content is hyper repetitive, the monetization is worthless, and new content is few and far between.
 
Elden Ring no contest. Atmosphere, story telling ability, combat, build variety...CONTENT. AAA games are so lack luster but FromSoftware earns every preorder from me. Shout out to voice actors as well. ER is in part so viral because of the emotion done in the voices.

TMNT Shredders Revenge...Classic beatemup that gave very solid nostalgia but fun for people who didnt grow up having Turtles in Time.

Personal: I've gotten into Bayonetta 1/2 and if 3 is as big improvement from 1 -> 2 than 3 would be up there. addicting gameplay..hilarious scenes and feel good action game.
 
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2022's game of the year is 2013's Teleglitch.

It's the only game brave enough to run in a forced 4:3 resolution at a capped 30 FPS because the developers presumably didn't have access to widescreen monitors and couldn't afford GPUs with more than 256MB of VRAM.

Unironically a great game. It's like a top-down Doom running at max difficulty.
 
Marauders. It's a less autistic Escape From Tarkov with a "WW1 never ended" theme. It's still very much a work in progress, but each update just makes it cooler.

Honorable mention: UT99, which I had not played in 20 years and only picked up because of Epic's retarded decision to take all Unreal games off all digital storefronts.
 
Safe to say Donut Dodo has this sewed up

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I feel like an alien because I really disliked Elden Ring to the point of almost hating it. It just felt like a worse version of Dark Souls to me with a really boring open world and less interesting characters and lore.

I am happy to see From Software get a lot of love I just don't think they earned it with Elden Ring.

But looking at the rest of the year it's hard to argue for anything else being much better maybe Bayonetta 3 but that has its share of issues.
2022 was grim for gaming
 
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I'm gonna throw my hat in with the crowd and say Elden Ring and really be original and say it is so by a wide margin. I also played Dark Souls for the first time since ER was my first souls game and my friend wanted to watch me play through it blind. it was really good and tight as hell in world design for the most part, but I just feel like ER offered more in pretty much every avenue.

I really didn't play all that many games since so few I am interested in come out in recent years and that just made sinking 200+ hours into ER feel all the more satisfying.
 
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