IT IS TIME FOR THE GAMES OF THE YEAR 2022! I’m actually surprised at how good 2022 ended up being as far as games. There were a lot of good ones, so much so that I couldn’t play all the interesting ones. There was just no time. Not that all games were good, Sonic Frontiers and Return to Monkey Island exist, after all. But overall, there was plenty of good stuff.

So it is this time of the year where I can talk about all the great games I loved that came out that year. I usually do 6-7 GotY winners, one of which would be my grand TOP GotY choice, but I don’t know if I can do that this year.

I will also rant about the year as a whole, as usual, with a focus on the big 3.

There’s some games I was interested in during 2022 that I have yet to play, in case you’re wondering. Who knows if I’ll get to them, but if you think they’re really good and are sad they’re not named here, know that I probably hold no ill will against them, I probably just didn’t play it.

Amongst big games I haven’t played that could’ve had a chance: Digimon Survive (actually bought it but haven’t played it yet), A Plague Tale: Requiem, God of War Ragnarök, Horizon 2, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher, Choo Choo Charles, Signalis, Soulstice, Sports Story… and many others. A lot of interesting games came out this year, was a bit hard to get to all of them.

So let’s go!

Click here to skip to the winners if you’re not interested in my inane rantings.

So I reviewed a decent amount of games this year. But I played more than what I reviewed. I did have a few “I don’t want to review X game” posts, where I’d give a quick synopsis of why a review felt a bit pointless, or I didn’t finish the game and had little to say about it. Like Dawn of the Monsters which I found kinda meh, or Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes which I really liked but didn’t review because it’s just another Warriors game.

So I figured, let’s take all these games I played and didn’t review, and put them all in one big stupid post. Why not!

Here are the games I’m having a look at in this post: Windjammers 2, Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX 2, Azure Striker Gunvolt 3, Hot Wheels Unleashed, Blossom Tales 2, River City Saga: Three Kingdoms, Shovel Knight Dig, Metal Hellsinger, Omega Labyrinth Life, River City Girls 2, Freedom Planet 2, Demon Throttle, Gungrave G.O.R.E., Ground Divers. A bit of a random post, but hey I like talking about most of the games I play, so there it is.

Well, let’s go!

I didn’t quite get all the reviews out that I wanted since the last post. Xenoblade 3’s review has been in half-written form for a bit, I just finished Rollerdrome, I finished Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 like 2 weeks ago, I’m not done with Super Bullet Break and Blossom Tales 2 which I started a bit ago… I need to start actually getting stuff out. Also I started Soul Hacker 2 yesterday but obviously that’s got a while to go before I can review it. Reviews for a bunch of stuff, coming soon, I’m trying 😀

September actually has some games. Which is nice. A lot of curious, interesting ones that might end up being good, but as far as big heavy hitters, there ain’t much. So here I’m highlighting: 19 Multiplats, 2 Switch games, 2 PC games and the dumbest PS5 release yet. I’m getting something between 5 and 9 of these, I dunno.

*EDIT 08/30: ADDED A MULTIPLAT GAME*

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

I’m super happy E3 was not a thing this year. The ESA sucks and E3 has been very pointless for a while, providing nothing good for the consumer. With the internet being a thing for a long time now, we should have evolved beyond E3 LOOOOOOOOOOONG ago. Nintendo, with their Directs, set the stage to how game announcements should happen. Sony badly copied Nintendo with their State of Play presentations (there’s been only ONE of them that has been any good so far (the March 2022 one)), but went a step further by dissociating from E3 pre-pandemic. That’s good. All companies need to dissociate from E3.

With E3 gone in 2022, people thought there’d be nothing, because people are idiots who thing the gaming industry revolves around E3 for some reason. But the presentations came just the same. Of course they would, game companies don’t just… stop announcing games because there isn’t an expo for journalists.

So let’s talk about this year’s not-E3 and see if any of the presentations were any good! Hint: no.