2022 was easily the best year for games in, well, I can’t remember how long (as you can see from my companion piece, “The Best Video Games Of 2022“). But that doesn’t mean there weren’t some real pieces of shit as well.
Here, in the order I suffered through them, are my most hated (and most disappointed by) games of 2022.
For years, I’ve started my “Best Video Games Of [insert year here]” lists by lamenting how it was a terrible year for games, but that there were some bright spots. Not this year. 2022 was easily the best year for games — well, the kind of games I like, anyway — in maybe 10 years.
Here, in the order I played them, are my favorite games of 2022.
Let’s be very clear about something: The sci-fi first-person shooter High On Life (Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC) is absolutely, positively not a Rick & Morty game. Sure, it’s made by Squanch Games, the studio co-founded by Rick & Morty co-creator and voice actor Justin Roiland, who uses his Morty voice to voice one of Life‘s main characters, Kenny. And it has the same kind of weird, off-the-cuff, ribald, but also clever sense of humor as Rick & Morty. But it is absolutely, positively not a Rick & Morty game.
Though it might as well be.
As someone who spent the late-’70s and early-’80s watching Godzilla movies on TV, the classic mid-’80s arcade game Rampage — in which you get to be a gigantic monkey, wolf, and yeah, lizard who trashes a city — was an early favorite. It’s why I was so curious about Terror Of Hemasaurus (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One, PC, Switch), an old school-style arcade game in which you, yeah, get to be a giant lizard who trashes a city…but in a way that adds new menace to his rampage.
It’s always annoying when a game designer refuses to admit their game is like someone else’s. “So, it’s a sci-fi first-person shooter in which a genetically-modified super soldier in power armor fights religious aliens on a circular world…and you don’t think it’s like Halo? Really?” Thankfully, the good people at Striking Distance Studios who made The Callisto Protocol (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One, PC) aren’t afraid to admit that their third-person sci-fi survival horror action game is a lot like 2008’s third-person sci-fi survival horror action game Dead Space. And not just because some of them worked on both games. But while The Callisto Protocol is very Dead Space-y, it does add some new elements that make it more compelling than a clone.
I hate to say it — and hate that it’s making me say it — but Need For Speed Unbound (Xbox Series X / S, PlayStation 5, PC) gave me some serious “so what” vibes. While it’s not terrible or anything, this open world, arcade-ish illegal street racing game is just kind of…basic.
If you grew up playing video games, then you grew up with the frustration of some well-meaning relative buying you a terrible game you didn’t want and not the one you did. But while that’s also the indignity that Dul suffers in the graphic novel Super Trash Clash (paperback, Kindle), Clash writer and artist Edgar Camacho says in the following email interview that you need not be a frustrated gamer to understand, and enjoy, this heart-wrenching story.
As the very public face of such iconic video game franchises as Gears Of War and Unreal Tournament, designer Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski was, for years, one of the most recognizable faces in videos games. While fellow designers Shigeru Miyamoto (the Mario man) and Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid) were called auteurs, Bleszinski was considered a rock star designer, one that earned the nickname “Dude Huge.” But while the game industry is usually as tightly controlled as the opening mission in a Call Of Duty game, Bleszinski is being far more open, and honest, about himself in his new memoir, Control Freak: My Epic Adventures Making Video Games (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook). In the following email interview, Bleszinski — who I know from my own career covering games — talks about why he took this approach to telling his own story.
Some people think every new installment of a thing should be a reinvention, or at least add a lot of new stuff to the mix.
It’s why there will undoubtedly be people who’ll criticize God Of War: Ragnarok (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4) for not being as innovative as the previous God Of War, which rebuilt this long-running, third-person, hack & slash action / adventure game series from the ground up.
And while yeah, it’s not as huge of a leap forward, this sequel is still so epic, exciting, and effortlessly engaging that you probably won’t notice.