Best of 2022 is ComingSoon’s weeklong celebration of the entertainment that made this past year so memorable.
While I didn’t quite beat my number from 2021, I still played and completed a ton of games last year. And going through so many games demonstrated the staggering breadth of experiences available throughout 2022. For example, Supermassive Games made a disappointing horror adventure with dead-eyed mannequins with The Quarry in June and then the same team also developed a disappointing horror adventure with dead-eyed mannequins in November’s The Devil in Me. All joking aside, 2022 is probably my favorite year ever for game releases because of how many different titles there were and how hard it was to choose a top 10. Regardless, here are my favorite ones from 2022.
I was late to the party, but I fell very, very hard for Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle earlier this year and came out on the other side thinking it was Ubisoft’s most creative game in quite some time. Not only was it not an open-world collect-a-thon stuffed with microtransactions, it was something the Mario series had never quite seen before and a fresh take on the strategy genre.
Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope lost only a small amount of that luster, but it is still one of my favorites of the year for many of the same reasons. I already enjoyed its tactical combat and adding more movement and customization options only made it more engaging (even if it generally wasn’t quite as difficult as the last game). The talking characters were annoying (shut up, sassy Roomba!) and the game’s lack of level scaling deflates my will to revisit older levels, but Sparks of Hope is a great sequel despite these small stumbles and still only Ubisoft’s second-most creative game in quite some time. Rabbid Mario is also hilarious and should have been the star of the upcoming Mario movie.
Blasting to the beat is just a fantastic core concept that made me pay attention at all times. Every small decision is important and I appreciate it when games try to make every second count. I am not even a big metalhead and I was still able to fall in love with this game because of how it infuses its head-banging music into its gameplay. But I can only hope The Outsiders is developing Hip Hop: Hellsinger next to better suit my tastes.
The kicker is that it is incredibly aware that players like me will judge it like that and uses that to cleverly set up some of its best jokes. That gulf between expectations and reality is why comedy works, and that is baked into Ultra Deluxe’s very premise. I cackled at its absurd gags, appreciated its clever fourth wall breaks, and endlessly admired its commitment to the bit. Ultra Deluxe is not a rerelease nor a sequel, but it’s kind of both and goes all the way with it and then some.
The step up from Zero Dawn is incredible, a gulf I was more able to appreciate after replaying that debut earlier this year. Combat is smoother and more responsive, but still keeps the “strategic dismemberment” that I found so gratifying in the first game. Guerrilla almost could have aped the Dead Space marketing phrase for it because it’s so similar in practice; carving off a necromorph’s bladed arm is as rewarding as tearing off a Tremortusk’s Plasma Cannon.
Learning more about the world is more engaging since the improved animations make it easier to pay attention to and absorb the carefully crafted post-post-apocalyptic world. Its Photo Mode made me appreciate Guerrilla’s craft even more, as I spent so many hours lining up beautiful pictures that are some of my favorites of the year. This higher general level of polish also means the side missions are better and worth completing since these characters emote like humans and not like, well, side mission characters.
While I would have liked it to take more from Breath of the Wild’s playbook in terms of surprises and exploration — one of my only true knocks on the game — Forbidden West improves upon everything that was in Zero Dawn. Its stunning cliffhanger ending already has me giddy to see the next entry, but I’m also more amped to see how much better Guerrilla can do after this. And hopefully the studio can release it during a period where it can breathe and doesn’t get overshadowed by, say, an all-consuming FromSoftware or Nintendo heavyweight.
Its combat checks off just about everything I’d want in a game like this: It’s responsive, dynamic, rewards skill, and has plenty of moves with different properties. It’s a golden blueprint that means fighting always looks, feels, and sounds incredible. I ran through the game multiple times and even got the Platinum trophy in the PS4 and PS5 versions and would gladly do it again if it somehow makes its way to some other PlayStation platform down the line.
It’s also a punishing game and while I appreciate the easier mode Sloclap added after launch, that high difficulty meant that I had to learn the game and get good. That process of gradually getting better and eventually overcoming was thrilling and worked because of the smooth controls. I am not only thrilled that Sloclap is still adding more to Sifu, but I’m even more excited to see how the studio builds on this in future games.