The best games I played in 2022

It's that time of the year again where I compile all of my favorite games I played this year and put them in a list no one is going to read. Not every game here is a 2022 release, sometimes games finally make it out of the backlog, and they typically end up on this list when they do. Despite this being the first "post-pandemic" year where game launches were destined to be few and far between, 2022 was a huge year for me personally and really shaped out to be a great year.

I like to start my top 5 list with a handful of games I played a lot of this year and deserve the mention before I get to the list of my favorites.

Deep Rock Galactic

This is one of the best games on steam you haven't played. A few friends and I all got this when it was included in a Humble Bundle deal. We knew when we picked it up that it would be really fun to try out, but we sat on it for a few months after the launch of Overwatch 2 absorbed much of our time.

One November night we finally decided to try it out. Deep Rock Galactic is easily one of the best Co-op PVE experiences out there with 4 classes of dwarves each with there own varied set of abilities and upgrades. Each class has meaningful impact on the missions you will play, and each have their own advantages in different scenarios.

This game has been out for a few years and the developers over at Ghost Ship Games have been crafting and building easily one of the best Co-op/Horde/extraction games out there.

Vampire Survivors

This probably would be in my top 5 if I had hopped on this train sooner. Vampire Survivors is a small indie game from Luca Galante. This is the best game you can get for under $5 on steam. If you like rougelikes like Hades or Dead Cells you will like this. The concept is simple... Survive and upgrade. There are a ton of levels, items, upgrades, enemies and characters and they all work together really well.

It's on Gamepass, but its only $5 on steam, do not pass up on this one.

Elden Ring

Don't click off of this article. I get it... Elden Ring should be in the top 5... Elden Ring is the best game of all time... Elden Ring won game of the year... yea, yea, yea. This game is amazing and while I haven't beaten it, I can safely say it is definitely one of the games ever made. I fully believe this game is special, massive and extremely beautiful in a tragic gothic way.

But I am not a Dark Souls kinda guy. This game is easily the most accessible Dark Souls game out and I really do like this one, but it just isn't for me enough to be in my top 5 this year... but everyone should give it a shot at least.

Overwatch 2

I debated putting this in my top 5, but ultimately have decided to leave it out and put it in this "honorable mentions" list.

I have played Overwatch since launch. It was the first game I bought on PC after building one in 2016. All I can say here is, while I think making Overwatch "Too" a sequel is not how they should have transitioned into the new age of Overwatch. I absolutely love this game and it has been extremely refreshing with the changes they have made. The promise of consistent content, the change to a 5v5 format, hero reworks, all of these things have truly made Overwatch fun again and I plan to stick around for a long time.

Now onto the list...

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No. 5 Death's Door

This is a game I knew I wanted to play the moment I saw it. It came out during the summer of 2021 and at the time I was dealing with moving and living in a temporary residence so I just couldn't get to this one when it came out. Thanks to a steam sale this year I got it for $10 and it was easily worth that and more. You play as a small Raven who works for a soul collection agency and you are tasked with going after a major soul locked behind Death's Door.

This is a wonderfully crafted world with a beautifully dreadful art style. You are a tiny bird consistently faced against much larger scarier creatures in this isometric action-adventure game.

The music and art are the standout for me and the feeling of being a tiny bird overcoming monstrous enemies is one that never got old.

I completed the 100% of this game which was difficult enough, but manageable.

There are puzzles, abilities, collectibles and plenty of secrets in Death's Door and I 100% recommend this one.

No. 4 Pentiment

Oh boy, this was a good one. But it is not one that many people will end up playing. I am honestly surprised I was able to myself.

Pentiment is a game with no combat, no upgrading, no crafting, almost no gameplay at all... just a small town in the middle of 16th century Bavaria during the time of the Holy Roman Empire.

This game is 100% based on dialogue, talking to people, reading notes, and solving the mystery surrounding the town of Tassing. The game is told from the perspective of an artist named Adreas who is living in Tassing temporarily while he prepares to launch his art career.

After murder strikes in church that oversees the town, you are tasked with talking to the people of the town to solve this murder. During the investigations you are limited by time of day and the information you are able to uncover by talking to the people of the town, before ultimately having to make a choice based on what you have uncovered.

I think the best way to describe this game is a really good murder mystery book that lets you guide the dialogue and choices.

It has a beautiful 1500's art inspired style that really slams home the immersion into this small intricate world.

This is a game I really recommend, but it won't be for everyone. If you can get to the murder in the story and you aren't hooked by that point than it probably just isn't for you.

No. 3 V Rising

Just like last year (Valheim, 2021) a small studio came up with an idea to make a survival/crafting game that was created simply to make me addicted. To set the story here I was sitting at my desk at work on a Monday. I had already taken the next three days off to simply have some time off work. I am scrolling YouTube on my lunch break when I notice a new Skillup video about some little indie vampire game he played. So I click on it to see what it is. I am then immediately interested in this vampire-themed diablo-like survival/crafting game. Then by the end of the video I find out it is launching early access THE NEXT MORNING. The moment I got home I purchased it on steam, woke up the next morning and proceeded to play it for 12 hours a day for the next three days. Thanks to V Rising and Valheim last year, I have concluded that I REALLY like a good survival/crafting game. When they make progression fluid the way Valheim and V Rising do it just really makes me feel good. You unlock one thing that leads into the next, that gives you the ability to craft something, that lets you kill the next boss, which in turn gives you access to a new resource, etc...

A good twist on V Rising going with the vampire theme, while most survival games make night more dangerous, day time becomes your enemy as you have to travel across the world dashing from shadow to shadow before you burn away.

Combat is KING in this game. Stunlock Studios, known for Battlerite, a similar camera POV hero-brawler moba-lite, brings that combat over to this while making it a mostly PVE experience. It is filled with tons of upgrade trees and abilities that give each vampire a lot to work with for killing enemies and bosses.

I played on a PVE only server, but this game allows for PVP, which opens up another world where players can fight with each other, or raid another vampires castle.

The games sense of direction typically leads you in a path of bosses that must be killed in order to gain access to what is locked behind them. Each of the bosses become increasingly harder to the point where some of the bosses feel almost MMO raid boss levels of difficult.

In V Rising, you pick a server which is basically shared worlds up to 30-40ish people that can occupy a world. You can join up with others to take on certain areas of the game or to overcome a boss that many people on the server may be struggling with. It isn't an MMO, but if you join an active server you definitely get the feeling of living in a world occupied by others. I can only imagine the level of intensity on a PVP server each time you cross paths with someone who may just want to walk by, or kill you for your loot.

This game is extremely special, and like Valheim I crushed what was available and when they eventually reach a 1.0 version I will return to fully experience everything they can come up with for this wonderful game.

There haven't been any seriously major updates yet, but this game is packed with content for an early access game. It's $19.99 and it is worth every bit of it.

No. 2 Cult of the Lamb

Like I said in the last section, I have become a sucker for good looking survival/crafting games. But at the same time I have also become a real sucker for good rouge-lite games. After playing the likes of Hades, Curse of the Dead Gods, Slay the Spire I have developed an appetite for good Rouge-likes. So what happens when you mix both of those games into one and give it a beautiful cartoony art style. You get Cult of the Lamb. This is my game of the year if another game about being a god also didn't launch this year.

I will start with the art style because that is one of my favorite things about it. You can't look at this game and not be absorbed by its eye-catching cute cartoon style. The game is colorful and so pleasing to the eye. On top of that, the animations and the way things just interact with each other works so well, and it just makes you feel like you are playing something truly created with passion.

This games blends the rouge-like gameplay into a crafting/village management sim putting you in place as the leader of your own animal cult, managing your villagers, crafting food for them to eat, cleaning up their poop, upgrading your character, dealing with disputes among your followers and then sacrificing the ones who beg you to eat the poop dish.

Not only is there a great rouge-like here where your lamb is tasked with fighting through the 4 different worlds to defeat a godly creature and its minions after they tried ridding the world of lambs. But then in between runs you can talk to your own minions, craft new buildings that help develop you cult into a stronger force, which in turn upgrades you on your runs through the dungeons. You can make new food recipes that give new buffs to your villagers, send them on missions for resources, and make them clean up their own poop.

This game really just nails everything it looked to accomplish and excels in everything.

I managed to 100% this game as well with the most challenging achievements being the no-hit boss kills. The developers over at Massive Monster have made it known that there will eventually be added content, maybe DLC , maybe an expansion, either way I will be there for it ready to start cleaning up follower poop once more.

This one is $24.99 and I can't recommend this enough.

No. 1 God of War Ragnarok

First off as you read this, you are required to click play on this video. This will establish the immersion you need to read on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5Ar0dKnl6Y

What can I say that probably hasn't been said about this masterpiece. I can start with that, this is a masterpiece. They took a masterpiece from 2018 in the original reboot title and made it better in every way.

If you played the 2018 God of War, this games takes the grounds laid 4 years ago and made everything bigger, better and more breathtaking. This game is beautiful. It is the continuation and finale of Kratos and his son Artreus living within the 9 realms of Norse mythology.

The combat feels similar, but amped up. They created more environmental interactions within the fights, they added more verticality to the world, and they created so many ways to go about chopping, slashing, or stabbing enemies that you always feel like you yourself are a god. And everything just flows so well together within fights.

One of 2018 God of War's criticisms was lack of enemy variety. They laid that to rest here. You will go through this game fighting so many different types of enemies you will think you started playing a third separate game.

This game is huge.

God of War Ragnarok looked like it was positioned similar to Spider Man: Miles Morales as a smaller supplementary title in between big launches. Boy, could that have been more wrong. The run time on the story alone is somewhere around 30 hours. And this game is packed tight with "side" content to do either while completing the main story, but also endgame bosses and quests that continue pushing the world forward.

If I had to have a criticism here is that due to the longer story, there are a few parts where it tends to drag. And if you have played you know specifically what part I am talking about. I didn't hate that part, but it went on for too long.

Side content can't be understated here. Not once did I do a "side" quest and think it wasn't meaningful to the overall world. There is no "side" content here. I have only one boss left before I have 100% this game, and the only reason I haven't done it yet is because once I do, I will be done with everything.

A huge highlight for me here is characters and their interactions with each other. The acting cast here deserve an award all to themselves. Christopher Judge won Performance of the year (well deserved) but the whole cast belongs in a category all on its own. Everyone, from the friendly dwarves to the multi-personality tree squirrel to the rage-filled Freya feel like real people who you truly can resonate with. The fact that the entire time I have played this game pushing through all it has to offer, even after beating the main story, the characters STILL have new and interesting things to say.

The Witcher 3 has long stood as my favorite game ever, even after playing the 2018 God of War. While it may be too early to tell if this game takes that No. 1 spot for me, I can confidently put God of War Ragnarok in my top games of all time.

This is the reason I bought my PS5, and this is a must-play in my opinion.

(P.S. I bought the Thor hammer)

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Ok, that is the list, what games did you play this year?