Alex's Top 10 Games of 2022

Hi everyone. I don't have a big long preamble this year. I started and stopped a few versions of this intro, but ultimately, the only thing I wanted to communicate in regards to the last year is gratitude to all of you. 2022 was our first full year of Nextlander, and it did my heart good to have all of you along for that ride. Apart from all the gaming content we churned out, we launched the Watchcast last year, which was kind of my pet project, and it's been really wonderful to see people enjoy that show. So thank you for watching and listening along with us. 

OK, onto video games. Turns out I liked a bunch of video games in 2022, despite there not being as big a volume as usual of them to choose from. Here's what I dug most.

10. Elden Ring

In 2015, there was The Witcher 3. In 2017, there was Breath of the Wild. In 2022, there was Elden Ring.

What do all these games have in common, apart from being enormous and beloved open world adventures? They’re all games I played, liked, and completely fell off of. And they’re all games that, despite my inability to push through and finish them, I couldn’t bring myself to not highlight in some way on my year-end list.

In Elden Ring’s case, I was inches from not putting it on here at all. This number 10 spot is the one that gave me the most trouble, as there were like five or six games that all felt like they could occupy this spot. With apologies to Splatoon 3, Immortality, Stray, The Quarry, and everything else I decided to leave off of here, I couldn’t bring myself to not give this one to Elden Ring, the only modern FromSoft game I’ve actually gotten reasonably deep into.

OK, calling my time in Elden Ring “deep” is probably fudging the truth. I did put like 25-ish hours into this thing, which is certainly more time than I spent playing most any other game this year. But as we all well know, that’s barely scratching the surface of From’s most expansive effort to date. But give me some credit here: I kept pushing despite running into some of the same frustrations I have with the Soulsbornes, which is to say I suck at them and do not have the patience to get better. In Elden Ring, the majority of my time was spent wandering around the world, just looking for sites of grace and poking around to see what I could find. In From’s previous works, I’d inevitably run into a difficulty wall (pretty early on, if I’m being honest), throw the controller down, and never come back. When I’d hit a wall in Elden Ring, I’d just go somewhere else, see what there was to see, find another wall, then repeat the process. I’d probably have kept doing that if my job weren’t to keep playing other, new video games week after week.

I will probably go back to Elden Ring someday, just like I will probably go back to Witcher 3 and Breath of the Wild. When that will happen is anyone’s guess, but despite having seen the ending (thanks to watching Vinny stream his late-game action), I’m looking forward to that imaginary period in my life where I have a hundred free hours to drop into this thing and see it all for myself. It’s a high quality production, and I admire the hell out of it.

9. Dorfromantik

Look, I’m not trying to be controversial and say that Dorfromantik is a better game than Elden Ring, but when I tally up the hours I spent on games this year and take stock of just how often I ended up playing what I did, I have no choice but to place Dorfromantik right here. Alongside Vampire Survivors (more on that one shortly), this is the only other game I played pretty much from the beginning of the year right up until this very moment.

Dorfromantik is a lightweight puzzle game in which you are building a little world piece by piece. Each turn you’re presented with a randomized tile that features some piece of terrain with a combination of elements on it. Aspects like trees, homes, fields, railroad tracks and water features all can be connected together to create bonuses. You’re scored on how well all those pieces fit together and how many tiles you’re able to produce before you eventually run out. The scoring also feels mostly beside the point.

The real point is to relax and plug away at the map while some low key music plays behind you. I don’t think I had a single run in Dorfromantik where I was eyeballing my score until the very end. The only game part I really paid attention to was making sure I was boosting my tile supply wherever I could so I could keep playing. Otherwise, I mostly zoned out and looked for ways to create the most idealized bit of countryside I could. I promise I’m not one of those “We Must Retvrn to Tradition” weirdos, but even I am not immune to the calming pleasures of pastoral idealism.

Sometimes I just need something pleasant to focus on for an hour or so in order to recenter myself, and Dorfromantik proved a helpful tool for precisely that. I’m still popping into it once or twice a week when I’ve got some idle time.

8. Cult of the Lamb

Cults are not fun. They’re not cute, goofy, or typically a good time for anyone involved outside of leadership. I say this only to acknowledge that there is one hurdle to enjoying Cult of the Lamb, and that is being able to put that knowledge of what real life cults tend to be by the wayside. I was able to clear that hurdle and have a very good time with Cult of the Lamb. I recognize not everyone will be able to do so.

This is a very goofy little game about a cute animal cult that you run yourself, with as much ruthlessness or benevolence as you please. No one aspect of it is particularly deep or exciting on its own, but the way the systems all work together is what makes it sing. The two primary components are a roguelike where you enter various randomized levels in one of a few different worlds, kill enemies–and eventually a world boss–and then return with loot, and a societal management sim where you create new cult doctrines, build structures for your subjects, and cater to their needs as you see fit. Again, taken separately, neither of these elements is deep enough to sustain a game by themselves. But combined into the structure Cult of the Lamb operates within, it strikes a terrific balance.

Your cultists have their own little personality traits that can either be a boon for your group or a detriment. You can punish them when they engage in heresies and reward them for loyal service. You can imbue them with demons and send them out into combat. You can bury them when they grow old and die, or you can turn them into food. I didn’t do that last one, but I did have a good think about it when it came up.

The management stuff is definitely where I had the most fun, but the combat runs are satisfying, and the boss fights are pretty well-designed. Thankfully this is also a game that knows exactly how much juice it has in terms of content, and doesn’t drag out the experience beyond what is reasonable. I had a great time running my little cult while it lasted. But then, I suppose that’s what all cult leaders would say if asked.

7. Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope

The first Mario + Rabbids is one of those oddities of gaming that I truly never expected to see a sequel for, despite liking it a bunch. The core concept of smashing Nintendo’s Mario characters with Ubisoft’s proto-Minions into an XCOM-like strategy game was a bonkers concept that never should have worked as well as it did. Hell, even putting a gun in Mario’s hand felt like an idea beamed in from an alternate universe. But the game did work! It fell off a difficulty cliff toward the end and dragged its length out, but the core strategy of the battles was shockingly solid, and it even found a way to make the Rabbids palatable after years of Waaaaaahhhhndering the video game desert in search of a new hook.

But a sequel got made, and in most ways, Sparks of Hope is a considerably better game than the original. The changes on the battlefield to how characters can move around–you can move around pretty freely prior to attacking, and even use team jumps to boost your characters to greater distances–gives the combat its own dynamic beyond being an XCOM-like. Plus you’ve now got the sparks to work with, little stardust-infused Rabbid creatures that offer up special abilities tuned to the various damage types that you can swap between characters. Also, Rabbid Rosalina is the best Rabbid since Rabbid Peach. She’s the depressed hot girl you didn’t know this squad was missing.

Hearing this game didn’t do as well as the first is a bit of a bummer, as I really think they hit their stride with this one, and justified continuing on with this concept beyond its initial novelty. I no longer feel all that weird about giving Mario and the Rabbids guns. I now want them to give even more of these characters even more guns. Give the Shy Guys guns. Make a Rabbid Birdo. Do whatever you want. You’ve earned the right to muck around with these characters as much as you like, Italian Ubisoft employees.

6. Marvel SNAP

When constructing these lists, sometimes I am forced to put a game on here out of pure, grudging necessity. No part of me really wants to have Marvel SNAP on here, but not putting it on here would be dishonest. I played way, way, WAY too much of this thing not to highlight it.

What an abject fucker this game is. In the grand tradition of other mobile deck builders, Marvel SNAP is a game designed to be played in bite-sized chunks, and yet it still manages to eat up hours upon hours of your lifespan. If you’re lucky that’s all it’ll claim from you, as the monetization elements are laser focused on enticing you into buying more currency so you can get new card variants and upgrade your collection. So far I’ve only paid for the monthly battle passes, which give you access to that month’s tier of themed rewards, but I’ve had my moments of weakness where I saw a particularly attractive variant and had to deep breath my way away from the store screen.

The actual game is good, I should say. The board is made up of three zones in which you play your cards. Over the course of the first three turns, the stat bonuses or debuffs related to each section of the board are revealed, and you only have six turns (sometimes seven) to play all your cards. It’s snappy (heh) enough to keep any battle from lasting longer than a handful of minutes, and there’s enough variety to ensure no one deck can dominate every single time out–though some of those Wong decks are really pushing the boundaries there.

Look, I’m not immune to addictive deck builders. I had a multi-year Hearthstone habit despite not really caring all that much about Warcraft. In the case of Marvel SNAP, I DID have a pretty sizable collection of Marvel trading cards when I was a kid, and always lamented that there wasn’t much for me to do with that collection beyond looking at it and continuing to buy more cards. This is scratching at the part of my brain that stores those childhood memories while also being a fairly fun game in its own right. It’s also a nightmare of a timesuck. I can’t recommend this game enough, and simultaneously cannot warn against ever playing it enough. It’s great, and it’s a fucking nightmare.

5. Atari 50: The Anniversary Collection

The Atari era of gaming is one that almost entirely passed me by. As old as I am, I was just outside that window where I would have owned an Atari console unless I had an older sibling or parent that was particularly interested in video games prior to Nintendo’s American debut (I did not). My buddy Frankie had a 2600 that I’m pretty sure he got by way of an older brother, and I did spend a handful of nights during sleepovers playing stuff like Pitfall and The Smurfs, but that is almost the entirety of my experience with that company and its hardware.

I say this to illustrate that I have no particular nostalgia for Atari or its history, and to help emphasize that Atari 50 is such a magnificent package that it absolutely does not matter.

We know Digital Eclipse does good work when tasked with creating collections of old, beloved games. Hell, they did a masterful job on ANOTHER collection in 2022 in the TMNT Cowabunga Collection. Those are games I actually do have a fair amount of nostalgia for, and I’m still putting Atari 50 on here over that one because it truly is on another level.

It’s not just the roster of games, which is thorough, if not complete. All those games can be accessed as a list like you’d expect, but the best way to experience them is through the timeline, which is best described as a sort of interactive documentary. All the scans of arcade and box art, promotional materials, and archival footage is embedded alongside the games themselves and a host of new interview footage with the developers and executives who worked at Atari over the years. It’s an ingenious way to present this stuff, and basically creates a new gold standard for how these kinds of collections should be put together. I’m never going to play any of these individual Atari games beyond booting them up for the first time, playing a minute or two, and going “Yep, that’s Pong alright.” But having access to all those games is wonderful, and I’m sure I’ll be referring back to these interviews and archival materials whenever I need to remember something about Atari. Incredible work all around.

4. Citizen Sleeper

Most of my favorite games of 2022 ended up being pretty text heavy compared with previous years. Not sure exactly why that was, but I did also finish more books last year than I had in a while, so maybe that was just the mood. It also helps that these games had incredibly engrossing stories, and Citizen Sleeper’s story was easily one of my favorites.

Taking place on a not-quite-derelict space station in the distant future, you play as a sleeper, a human consciousness uploaded into an artificial body that’s been sold to a space corp. You wake up on the station not really knowing what’s going on or why you’re there. All you know is that the station itself has been all but abandoned by its corporate overlords, and the people there are scraping by, repurposing various parts of it for their own ends as they try to survive.

I don’t want to describe much more here as a lot of the enjoyment from Citizen Sleeper is in meeting the station’s various personalities and slowly working your way through their stories. The gameplay is light–mostly a series of dice rolls that come along with story beats and choices–and that’s just fine. What interaction there is drives the story forward, and that’s what you’re here for. The character art and music and writing are the stars of the show, and I loved meeting all the different folks that populate the station. Moments of tension are well delivered, and the variety of endings all feel like worthwhile ways to wrap up your story. I haven’t had the chance to go back and check out the DLC content they added post-launch, and if I’m honest, I always find it a little weird when games decide to bolt on more story content to a campaign after most people have finished it. But I’ll probably do it at some point, because I loved my time in Citizen Sleeper enough to want more of it.

3. Vampire Survivors

This top three was supposed to be a very neat and tidy collection of three games that are all of a type. Vampire Survivors was going to be number four with a gajillion bullets, but throughout the holiday break (and well into the start of this new year) I played so much Vampire Survivors that I had to reconsider. So here it is, breaking up my perfect trio of text-heavy games and ruining my carefully laid plans. Considering that’s what Vampire Survivors did to most of my 2022, perhaps that’s fitting.

Nothing about Vampire Survivors reads as the sort of thing that will take over your life when you first start playing it. It’s the simplest game. You pick a character, start walking around the map, and depending on which character you chose, a particular weapon will start firing at whatever enemies are surrounding you. The aesthetic is lo-fi, the enemies all look like Castlevania rejects, and you don’t do anything but walk around and collect the fallen gems from bad guys, which give you XP. But after a few runs, it becomes clear that there’s more going on under the surface. Not mechanically, mind you. You’re always just walking around and killing, but my god, the amount of death you can add to your character is nothing short of outrageous. When you really get going in Vampire Survivors, the visual cacophony that takes over your screen is unlike much else I’ve ever played. It’s an explosion of bullets and energy waves and Frankensteins and whatnot. It is, dare I say, orgasmic.

Vampire Survivors was technically in early access for most of last year, and the way the developers kept piling on hidden levels, characters, and other secrets was a delight. Once I’d run out of stuff to unlock, seemingly right on cue, a new patch with some new hidden doodads would come right along. Now that it’s fully out, I’m going back through and looking for the stuff I missed. Last night I unlocked a tree. Like, a tree you play as. The tree that doesn't move so good, but sure does kill good. 

I’m not even sure if I’ve beaten Vampire Survivors. Like two or three different times I was certain I had, but I’m still not 100%. I may never stop playing this thing. It’s the ideal way to burn off a half hour of brainless idle time. What a thing.

2. Pentiment

I am not a big history buff. I don’t know a lot about the Holy Roman Empire, I know even less about the political divisions of the Christian church in 16th century Europe, and my knowledge of art history is mostly limited to Warner Bros. cartoons. Suffice it to say, I am not the target player of Pentiment, a historical buffet of a murder mystery adventure game from Obsidian and designer Josh Sawyer. Honestly though, I’m not sure being a target player here matters much at all. While historical nerds will undoubtedly have a field day picking through the exquisite amount of era-appropriate detail here, there’s a completely engrossing game here for anyone who just likes good storytelling.

You play as Andreas, an artist-in-training who finds himself working on commissions in the scriptorium of an aging monastery in the sleepy Bavarian village of Tassing. While there, a patron of the monastery–an intellectually curious, but mostly disagreeable lord–is violently murdered, and an aging monk you’ve befriended is accused of the crime. This is how things kick off in Pentiment, but without spoiling what happens, I’ll simply say that this is just scratching the surface of what the story is really about.

While Pentiment is a slow-mover, it’s so jam-packed with small details and engaging characters that I never felt like it was dragging me along. You have some room to fill in the margins of who Andreas is and what his background is as you engage with the various villagers and monks that occupy the town, but a lot of that boils down to flavoring. This isn’t a game that’s particularly obsessed with the idea of making the right or wrong choices. If anything, it’s staunch in its dedication to portraying the choices you do make as rife with unintended consequences.

Saying more would spoil the fun of seeing where Pentiment goes, so I’ll just say that even if you don’t find the story quite as brilliant as I did, there’s enough excellent art and music and historical flavoring peppered throughout Pentiment to still make it eminently enjoyable. I know a smaller team at Obsidian made this thing, but it’s still wild to me that a game like this would come out of a major first-party studio in this era of gaming. More passion projects like this, please!

1. NORCO

I’m not sure I’ve ever played a more confident debut game than I have in NORCO. A point-and-clicky adventure game set in an alternate present, NORCO is a straight up triumph of story and atmosphere. It takes place in a real life locale, the titular region of Louisiana that houses a high number of oil refineries. But in this vision of the place, far-flung technologies and otherworldly mysticism permeate everything. You play someone who grew up here amid the toxicity of it all, but eventually found your way out into the greater world. You return after your mother’s passing from cancer to find that your brother has gone missing, and that your mom has left behind a mystery it’s up to you to solve.

The adventure game-ness of NORCO is fairly lightweight. There are puzzles to solve, but few of them require a great deal of strained thinking. Mostly you’re here for the story, and what a wild and wooly story it is. It shifts back and forth in time a bit between your character and your mom prior to her death. In this vision of NORCO, androids aren’t an uncommon sight, untethered consciousnesses roam through cyberspace, and cults of wayward boys occupy abandoned retail infrastructure. But for as buckwild as some of NORCO’s imagery can be, the story has a shockingly grounded and authentic feel to it. A lot of that is owed to the characters, who feel deeply, believably human. It’s an incredible cast, though special mention is owed to LeBlanc, the scumbag detective you run across who straight up takes over every scene he’s in. Despite not having any voice work in the game, I could hear this guy in my head every time he spoke. He is a shitheel of the utmost pedigree.

More than anything else, I admire just how many wild swings NORCO takes. There are no pulled punches in this game. Even when it doesn’t connect–and that’s a fairly rare occurrence–it never lingers too long before throwing another haymaker. Its wrap-up is its biggest swing of all, and for me it totally worked. Some people will probably find it bewildering, but that is, to me, exactly what it should have been. I loved every second of my time in NORCO, and I can’t wait to see what these developers do next.