I’m not sure what I’m supposed to write here for an intro, the concept of a GOTY list is simple enough to grasp. Maybe I’m supposed to say something profound about the year in sum, make an observation about the state of the industry or group all of these games by a unifying theme. But I can’t, this was a generally lackluster year that had one clear standout, a bunch of pretty good or okay things I liked fine enough, and LOTS of disappointments and delays.
I think my only real takeaway is that Game Pass has done something very interesting to my consumption of games; I’m constantly waiting things out to see if they land on the service so I don’t have to pay for them. Which is scummy, but I’m not going to ever drop $70 on day one like a “Guardians of the Galaxy” again (despite how much I liked that game) because then I’ll inevitably get burned when it comes to Game Pass.
I tried a lot of things, which is good, because otherwise I wouldn’t have played half of these games. But I also didn’t even get to a handful of them because I really just want everything to end up being “free” (free beyond the fact that I’m already paying a monthly fee to have access to a lot of my digital library).
So let’s get the games out of the way that I did not have time for this year, or did not want to buy outright because I’m waiting for a sale. Or yeah, them to come to Game Pass. Does it seem obvious that I really like Game Pass?
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RAN OUT OF MONEY AND TIME, I’LL GET TO THEM IN 2023
“Shovel Knight Dig,” “COD: MW2,” “The Callisto Protocol,” and “Rollerdrome.”
I PLAYED THEM BUT THEY DID NOT MAKE THE LIST FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER. OR THEY WERE DISAPPOINTING, YOU FIGURE OUT WHICH IS WHICH
“Overwatch 2,” “Nobody Saves the World,” “Dying Light 2,” “Horizon: Forbidden West,” “TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection,” “Capcom Fighting Collection,” “Cursed to Golf,” “Metal Hellsinger,” “Super Kiwi 64,” “Tunic,” “High on Life,” “LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga,” and finally “Pentiment.”
22 - Scorn
I enjoyed it until I hit the brick wall that was “combat” and just never came back. Such a shame it ever involved shooting or enemies.
21 - Kirby and the Forgotten Land
A perfectly adorable, cromulent 3D platformer.
20 - Immortality
I kind of wish this was a movie…is that bad to say out loud?
19 - The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
Love this game to pieces, and the new sequel stuff is very good. As is the new bucket Stanley gets.
18 - Powerwash Simulator
Really did not expect to hypnotically play this so much with my friends, but this is the perfect video game made for podcasts.
17 - TMNT: Shredder's Revenge
If this wasn’t three hours long, and was molded after “Castle Crashers” in scope and size, it might be an all-time brawler. But alas…
16 - Tinykin
Looks like a late '90s Cartoon Network cartoon show, plays like a dream. This is just that one level from the second Paper Mario game, where a million little dudes follow you around. It's a 2D platformer, and it has a soap skateboard, and it rocks.
15 - Neon White
Soundtrack? Best of the year. The speed, momentum, violence, the art, the locomotion, all just killer stuff.
14 - Prodeus
The actual best Doom clone ever made. A true hidden gem.
13 - Cuphead Delicious Last Course
I NEED MORE CUPHEAD IN MY LIFE.
12 - Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
A return to form for Borderlands! I’d like to see where this series goes from here, and if they can make a sequel as good as “Borderlands 2.”
11. Ghostwire: Tokyo
A de-facto top ten game (because I jokingly listed "Elden Ring" on here three times just to pad this out to a full 22 games for the headline and SEO), this surprised me by how fun it was. Yes the combat is repetitive as all hell, and waiting to charge up your attacks is bad, but everything else is a rock solid base for future iteration. Microsoft should not let this be like “Sunset Overdrive” and should capitalize on a sequel. A real, authentic Tokyo in a video game is impossible to beat, as a setting.
10 - My Third Playthrough of Elden Ring
Samurai build, DEX, arcane, arrows, katanas with bleed, all the side quests not done the first two times around.
9 - Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope
I did not think two strategy X-COM inspired games would rank so highly on here but life is full of surprises, just like when my ex left me to live with some guy in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The removal of the grid was a good idea, but leaving Yoshi out was not. Rayman being in the DLC is good, but removing Donkey Kong and Cranky Kong was not.
8 - Stray
A literal indie darling, this was all the rage over the summer drought and captured the attention of every non-gamer in my life. A real phenomenon happened thanks to TikTok and Twitch, and thank goodness it also happened to be a great, chill little game.
7 - Pokemon Legends Arceus and Scarlet
I’m lumping these together and there’s not a god damn thing anyone can do to stop me. I played more Pokemon this year than any since 1998, and these would be all-timers if not for the fact that they were made by a committee of business people and corporate suits who mandated deadlines on the devs, they both run on the Nintendo Switch which is only slightly more powerful than a PS2 (kidding but not really), and Scarlet/Violet failed to take the easy win and just take the good ideas from Arceus.
No one asked for two of these in one year, take your time! You’re going to make all of your money no matter what, make these at least run competently and not look like total dogshit! This is a money laundering scheme, I’m so embarrassed to have these ranked so highly, but they’re a ton of fun and I sunk too many hours into both.
6 - My First Playthrough of Elden Ring
I didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t look anything up on the internet until I beat it. Strength build, dual swords, jumping and smacking the crap out of everything I could. I think I tried to skew faith as well, but I had to respec. Just overwhelmed by the options in this game, it’s a real cornucopia of melee builds.
5 - God of War: Ragnarök
Not nearly as good as GOW4, but still good enough to recommend playing through. It just doesn’t do anything better than the first one, and the puzzle mechanics are some of the worst I’ve ever seen designed. The sigil system, with the arrows, just awful, putrid stuff.
4 - Vampire Survivors
Not going to lie, this should have made the top three for me, but the game reset my progress on Steam, so I started again on Xbox thanks to Game Pass, but just couldn’t summon the motivation or focus to get back to where I was. A real shame, because this is going to inspire a trillion copy cats.
3 - Marvel Snap
This was not the "Hearthstone" replacement I thought it was going to be, and after hitting the highest rank on the ladder one could do, I lost interest. I’ll still play on my phone when I have down time, but this has a long way to go to be the best digital CCG on the market. But it has potential, those early weeks of collecting cards and playing were some of the best moments of the year for me. But once you get everything, and break through rank 100 infinite, you literally have nothing else to do but spend money. The gameplay is solid, but I’m really intrigued by what Ben Brode and co. will do in the coming years.
2 - Midnight Suns
I think these top three games on this list all made me stay up late and kept me wanting to play well past my bedtime. Yes I have a bedtime, and yes I am only 31. I was absolutely stunned that two weeks ago this was not even on this list, and then out of nowhere quickly became my obsession and is now number two. A totally addicting, transfixing mesh of systems on top of systems and a perfectly crafted gameplay loop. It’s Marvel Heroclix (a nostalgia trip for me), "X-COM", "Fire Emblem", "Hearthstone", "Slay the Spire", the Krypt from "Mortal Kombat", and the research part of "Roller Coaster Tycoon" all rolled into one game. It’s a lovely time, and one I desperately need DLC for because I want to keep playing but once you finish the campaign, you go back to a previous checkpoint or do new game plus.
1 - My Second Playthrough of Elden Ring
This is the easiest, least controversial GOTY winner for any publication maybe ever. I cannot recall a year where the only real option, the best choice, was by far just one game. “Elden Ring” is on a short list of games I was playing, actively saying to myself and others “oh yeah this is one of the best things ever made.”
I don’t think I can go back to any of those prior Soulslikes without the jump button, spirit summons, accessible co-op functionality, mount, fast travel points, or Stakes of Marika for boss fights. Just a perfect encapsulation of why these games are so much fun, with more enemy variety, build variety, locale variety, and freedom than any previous From Software title.
It’s going to be so hard for them to top this, but then again, I’ve been saying that for a decade now. These games are so mainstream now that they leaned in and delivered something anyone can approach, get into, and get good at. I’m going to dive headlong into this DLC and never come back.
This second playthrough was my first true blue Mage build, full INT, because the spells in this game are so much cooler than any previous Dark Souls. It also helped that I used a guide and encountered every secret, every boss, every area, and left nothing behind. A hundred plus hours in, and I wanted it to keep going. Hard to think of how open world games, RPGs, and combat in general can ever not be compared to this game, it's simply one of the best experiences I've ever played in forever. A stunning, towering achievement in the art form.
A chef’s kiss to Miyakazi and to my large turtle pope. Praise the sun, if only I could be so grossly incandescent.
