My favorite games of 2022

Pentiment, Pokémon and a browser game are in my top ten from the last year.

I won’t lie: when I started thinking about this list a month ago, my first thought was, “oh no, all I’ve played this year is Yakuza.”

As you’ll see in the list at the bottom, I played five separate Yakuza series games this year. I came to the series incredibly late but I’m absolutely all-in now; between the overly melodramatic main stories, the wonderfully off-kilter sidequests and the comforting familiarity of Kamurocho, I’m dreading the day when I finish my Yakuza backlog.

Even with my Yakuza fixation, I managed to play (at least) 37 games and finish 11 this year, which I’m pretty proud of, especially since it probably doesn’t count the time I’ve spent tinkering with the Steam Deck and retro consoles this year. Of the games released in 2022, these were my favorites.

Honorable mention

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Courses

Adding more tracks to the best (and best-selling) Mario Kart game is such a no-brainer, so it’s genuinely mystifying that it took so long to happen. Happy as I am to see some classic tracks return, I’m more impressed by how well the Mario Kart Tour tracks work; changing layouts every lap sounds gimmicky, but for the most part it works, and is a good nod to the way Tour works.

Ten

Slow Roads

Kicking things off with a weird one here, because this runs in a browser and can play itself. Slow Roads (https://slowroads.io/) is a simple driving game with an endless, procedurally generated road. It’s an incredibly zen experience; just your car gliding over a series of gentle curves, past small lakes and wooded hills stretching into the infinite distance. It’s such a calming scene that sometimes I’ll turn auto-drive on and just leave it running in another window while I work. (Side note: We have enough racing games. Bring back driving games!)

Nine

Cursed to Golf

I’ve never really liked roguelikes; there’s something about the randomness of the levels and futility of endless repetition that I can’t really stand. But Cursed to Golf works for me; it really works for me. The framing makes a lot of sense, the variety of courses is brilliant, and it’s just a wonderfully creative and fun game that I’m happy to pick up and play over and over again.

Eight

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

Kirby isn’t challenging, but it doesn’t feel patronizing either. The Yoshi games have a little too much handholding for my liking, but Kirby’s first fully 3D adventure strikes a good balance between being simple enoguh for younger players and not being too obvious for the rest of us. An oddly comforting experience.

Seven

ElecHead

It’s just so clever. ElecHead takes a simple premise — your head is a power source that “activates” whatever surface it touches — and stretches it to devilish limits. Solving a room ends up being satisfying on two levels: partially because you figured it out, and partially in admiration of just how damn clever it is.

Six

Return to Monkey Island

Ron Gilbert’s follow-up to LeChuck’s Revenge is the perfect revival: it feels thoroughly authentic and modern at the same time. It doesn’t look anything like the originals, the UI is streamlined, there’s a clever hint system and the voice acting is great — all things absent from the first two Monkey Island games. And yet… playing Return to Monkey Island takes me straight back to 1991 again.

Five

F1 Manager 22

Anyone who’s watched Ferrari in the last few F1 seasons knows how important strategy and tactics are. One of my favorite moments in any game this year was my first race in F1 Manager: seeing my driver stuck behind a slower car, watching the data, spotting an opportunity hidden in the numbers, then switching my pit stop strategies and pulling off a sensational overcut to get on the podium. It’s the sort of thing you shout at the TV to see happen in a real race; to have that control and pull it off in a game is so satisfying.

Four

Pokémon Scarlet/Violet

Let’s get it out of the way: this is a deeply flawed game. It’s riddled with graphical errors, the frame rate constantly tanks, it promises openness but hides a set path, the world design is uneven and it has the worst towns of any Pokémon game. But it also does a lot right. The Pokémon themselves feel even more at home in the world than in Legends Arceus; it’s really something to watch a pride of Litleo roaming around a Pyroar, or a flock of Swablu taking flight together. Being able to actually see the Pokémon around you — instead of having them hidden in the tall grass — makes a huge difference not just to player agency (good riddance, random battles) but also to your motivation; spotting a Pokémon you need to collect is a big draw. The issues cannot be ignored, but the core loop is so compelling that it almost makes it worth it. Almost.

Three

Ghostwire: Tokyo

Maybe it’s (yet again) my lingering desire to visit Tokyo again, but I found Ghostwire’s creepy rendition of the city fascinating to explore. I understand why it turned people off — there’s more than a whiff of Ubisoft about the many random sidequests littering the map — but between the references to Japanese mythology and the finger-gun spell casting that made me feel like Doctor Strange, it really clicked with me.

Two

Pentiment

Where on Earth did this come from? A medieval murder mystery set in 16th Century Bavaria that looks like an old tapestry, Pentiment leans into its setting in a way that can be alienating but I found refreshing; it doesn’t shy away from the history it’s trying to portray. The eye-catching graphics are unique, but I love how the developers have really run with the base concept to add even more character: older townsfolk are drawn in fading paints that looks spotted and cracked, and when characters get angry and speak in a heated tone the typography in their captions becomes messier, with ink blots strewn between the letters.

There’s a good deal of tension to the story, thanks to the lack of a golden path and the pressure of time. But, truthfully, as much as I enjoyed the main murder mystery, what really grabbed me was the way it fleshed out the inhabitants of the small town of Tassing. Everyone has a story, and as the years pass their stories evolve and their family trees grow and intertwine. A triumph of originality, and a game I’m looking forward to playing again and again.

One

Pokémon Legends Arceus

Just last year I talked about how spinoffs like Snap showcased the personality of Pokémon far better than the main series games, and then Legends comes along and does it right. Legends makes searching out for and catching Pokémon incredibly compelling; flipping the series tradition of “Pokémon hide from players in tall grass” to “players hide from Pokémon in tall grass” is brilliant, allowing you to observe them in their natural state. I love the framing of filling out a Pokédex by catching multiple Pokémon and using their moves. And the actual mechanics of throwing a Pokéball are simple — but so satisfying.

It remains deeply odd to me that there were two open-world Pokémon games in 2022, both of which seemed to be developed in parallel without sharing notes with the other. I wish Scarlet/Violet took more from Legends, like its movement, traversal and Pokéball targeting. Equally, I wish Scarlet/Violet’s more natural Pokémon habitats and behaviors were in Legends. Still, it’s a minor quibble, and if I had to pick, I would definitely choose Legends as the game setting Pokémon’s future direction. I know that this series is primarily based on turn-based RPG battles, but to be honest, I hate turn-based battles! Legends provides that works without them, and I love it.

I’ve been playing Pokémon games for almost 25 years, and this is everything I’ve ever wanted in a Pokémon game.

All the games I played this year

(Games completed are in bold)

Aperture Labs Desk Job, Burnout Paradise Remastered, Cursed to Golf, Dorfromantik, ElecHead, FIFA 23, F-Zero GX, F1 Manager 22, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Horizon Forbidden West, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, ISS Pro Evolution Soccer, LEGO Builder’s Journey, Lost Judgment, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Mario Party Superstars, Pentiment, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Please Fix the Road, Pokémon Legends Arceus, Pokémon Scarlet, Return to Monkey Island, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation, A Short Hike, Sleeping Dogs Remastered, Slow Roads, Sifu, Splatoon 3, Sports Story, TABS, Vampire Survivors, Wordle, Yakuza Kiwami 2, Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4, Yakuza 5.