The year is almost over and the holidays are nearly upon us. At the beginning of the year, 2022 looked poised to be one of the absolute strongest years in game releases in recent memory. Unfortunately, there were a plethora of delays that pushed many major games into 2023. However, that didn’t stop 2022 from having a slew of strong releases that caught everyone’s attention. Thus, here’s mxdwn’s Top 10 Games of 2022! Enjoy!
Nostalgia is a funny thing, especially when it comes to video games today. We all have memories of our favorite games, and nowadays, they are coming back in a whole new way. Remakes being built from the ground up with new technology for a new audience, remasters available on current platforms, you name it, it’s most likely been done in some way, shape, or form.
And then there are games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, the old school, classic beat ’em up from developers Dotemu who specialize in developing and releasing retro-style games on modern platforms with games like Streets of Rage 4 and Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap.
Dotemu not only brought the nostalgia back for the classic arcade beat ’em up with its beautiful full-color pixel art graphics and the old-school gameplay, but they also brought it back with one of the most popular IPs of its era with TMNT. This also ties into the nostalgia of the 80s animated tv show which catapulted the popularity of the franchise.
Everything from the timeless, classic brawling gameplay enhanced with super-fresh mechanics, to the beautiful full-color pixel art, to the cinematic intro paying tribute to the 80s cartoon theme song, and the hard-hitting OST that culminates with an original song from the Wu-Tang Clan makes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge a fun, addicting, engaging experience throughout bringing back the nostalgia for old fans, making it for new fans, and one of the best games of 2022.
This game has captured the hearts of many players this year, not only because of the internet’s love for cats, but also because of its unique gameplay. Developed by BlueTwelve Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive, Stray lets the player take control of a stray cat traversing through a long-forgotten city in search of its missing family. BlueTwelve Studio did a phenomenal job developing the controls for the player character and overall environmental design. It’s not a difficult game by any means but it still managed to make its challenges accessible for gamers and non-gamers alike. Stray is the ultimate experience for players who want to spend their time as a cat. Its story, iconic meow button, and all around appeal makes it a perfect choice for the 9th best game of 2022.
-Caitlyn Taylor
Dying Light franchise is the actual definition of the term hardcore parkour. Dying Light 2 keeps that notion alive and well while expanding on the 2015 original. Even after seven years, developer Techland can still make the action of fighting zombies an intense experience.
Dying Light 2 focuses on a more city environment which not only adds in exploration and parkour traversal options. There are plenty of side activities to do as well. The big thing in the this game though, is the sense of choice in the story. Throughout the game, there will be a variety of different choices that impact characters or factions. Sometimes these choices have some pretty decent ramifications and can even impact you specifically by making things harder or easier for you. The overall story isn’t the strongest or most compelling, but the gameplay which is the one of the best parkour systems in all of games, and shows more games should try to dabble in that. With that, Dying Light 2: Stay Human makes our list for the best games of 2022.
-Zach Dalton
Coming in at number 7 is possibly the most artistically striking game and our first strategy RPG on the list. Triangle Strategy released earlier this and continued Square Enix’s trend of releasing some amazing throwback style games. First off, Triangle Strategy is visually stunning and takes full advantage of Square Enix’s unique 2D-HD art style. Then comes the combat, while it’s not anything too crazy from the typical strategy RPG fare, there are still a variety of ways to tackle each fight with which units you want to bring with you into the encounter.
However, the big thing with this game is the story. This game is heavy on story, and the story is very engaging as you learn about all the characters and different factions in the world of the game. Unlike other games on the list, Triangle Strategy has some major choices players make that’ll change the way the story unfolds making you want to go back and experience the game again to see how different choices influence the game. With all that, Triangle Strategy is easily one of the top games of 2022.
-Zach Dalton
It’s been a while since we’ve gotten any real new Mario game, and, luckily, this year we got a really strong outing from one of video game’s most important characters. Back in 2017, no one thought the pairing of Mario and Ubisoft’s Rabbids franchise and adding in blasters would work, but the original game caught everyone by surprise with how well everything came together. Now, Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope is easily one of the best Switch games and one of the best overall games of the year.
The game sees a wide variety of improvements compared to the first game. The exploration is more open ended, the characters such as Rabbid Rosalina and Bowser are awesome additions to the team, and combat itself has been improved with more free movement for characters to go through instead of grid based movements. You can’t go without mentioning the Sparks either. The 24 unqiue Sparks throughout the game allow for a variety of different options for combat and can be changed at the beginnig of every battle, so you never go into a fight under prepared. There’s plenty to love and enjoy about Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope. You’d never expect this crossover to work as well as it does, but Nintendo and Ubisoft continue to prove doubters wrong with one of the best games of the year.
-Zach Dalton
Monolift Software took everything that made the first and second entry great and amplified it by 100. This was greatly emphasized by the side quests, which felt like they were actually important and mattered to the main story, and only appeared in certain instances. The fighting mechanics were also vastly improved upon, adding the ability to swap out with six playable characters, new transformations that allow you to deal massive amounts of damage, and utilizing new amazing chain attacks.
Giving us the ability to trade classes with another character only adds a new dynamic of leveling progression, especially when it comes to mastering the class and learning all of the abilities that come with it. It kept giving the game a breath of fresh air, and didn’t feel like a long grinding slog to the finish line. While the story may have felt a bit overwritten, the overall gameplay and overworld was more than enough to justify the journey through Aionios, and all of this makes Xenoblade Chronicles 3 my favorite Nintendo Switch title of 2022, and one of the best title to release in 2022 as well.
-Alex Levine
Sifu is the best Kung Fu game of the year. This independent game does a great job of depicting a Bruce lee style Kung Fu movie that keeps the player on his or her toes as they fight their way through wave after wave of different enemy types to reach their goal.
The story of the game is reminiscent of a classic revenge story, a young Kung fu student witnesses their father/master and fellow peers being murdered by five disgraced masters. While the story’s premise isn’t original, the selling point of the game is both the combat and the core gameplay mechanic. The core gameplay mechanic is the talisman that brings the player back to life. While coming back to life may sound normal in video games there is a catch to coming back to life which is that every death ages up the student by the amount of times they have been killed meaning that if the player was killed five times the student comes back to life five years older.
The games combat mechanics are also a major part of why this game is one of the best kung fu styled games of recent years. Every enemy that the student defeats grants XP which can be used to unlock either new moves or increase stats that are only granted through shrines. This game is also stacked in terms of gameplay and secrets.
Overall Sifu is one of the best kung fu indie games I have ever played. I appreciated the challenge the game really tested my patience and strategic thinking which are major requirements when facing enemies. In this game death is the players best teacher and it can also have major advantages and disadvantages. All in all, Sifu is one of the best games of 2022.
-Louis Heimansohn
Aloy and the robot dinosaurs of the post post-apocalyptic world of Horizon returned this year. PlayStation and Guerilla Games really made this game a showpiece for both the PS4 and PS5, and it shows. Horizon Forbidden West took everything about the original and made it better.
The combat feels smoother with a variety of new weapons and abilities for Aloy to use. Traversal has been improved with new mounts to get around on as well as the glider that Aloy can use to soar down from the highest spots. There are even plenty of new machines to fight against that are just as satisfying to take down as the ones from the original. The biggest draw of Horizon Forbidden West is its story which takes the insane sci-fi story of the original and cranks it up to eleven. You could seriously not guess where the story of this game goes from first glance. The game is full of side quests that can be just as engaging as the main story.
With all that said, Horizon Forbidden West is easily one of the best games of the year. Even with other games being ahead of it, there’s still nothing quite like this game. It will be interesting to see where Guerilla takes the franchise with so many new projects apparently in the works, but it definitely shows Horizon is here to stay in the long run.
-Zach Dalton
Let the placement of this entry sit for a second. This was a year that a game that has the amount of quality present in God of War Ragnarök, was the second-best game of the year, says a lot about the past year in gaming. God of War Ragnarök is a visual treat, that despite all of the self-added hype attached to it, being a follow-up to one of the best games in recent years, also being hailed by PlayStation as their diamond for 2022, a lot was riding on this game to rock the boat.
So, when this game out, about a month ago, and it not only met our expectations but kept exceeding those as the game kept going and going. Improving on the issue found back in the 2018 reboot, and expanding on what worked, God of War Ragnarök is a near perfect example of a sequel that leaps off the first on, instead of standing in the same pool. But even at #2 God of War Ragnarök had the best cinematic feel to a game that has come out all year and has set the bar for what PlayStation has cooking for the PS5’s future.
-Diego Villanueva
Elden Ring is our Game of The Year for 2022 for a reason, definitely not because of it being just another soul-like game. With the help of the legendary novelist, George R. R. Martin, and well-known game director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, FromSoftware created a beautiful well-paced place which we now know as the Lands Between.
FromSoftware took everything that made their previous installments good and just put it on another level. This can be seen from design of the Lands Between that offer a variety of different biomes range from the beautiful night sky of Nokron, the Eternal City, to the red corrupted environment of Caelid.
While the story of Elden Ring isn’t its strongest point, FromSoftware makes up in the gameplay department. Elden Ring revolutionized itself for adding open-world to its soul-like formula and let players roam around to discover mini bosses, dungeons and much more. Not just that, Elden Ring offers 10 starting classes that are vastly different from one another and keepsakes which offer a lot of replayability.
The gameplay itself doesn’t fully make the game, I believe really well designed bosses add twists to the gameplay. Let’s take what I believe is the hardest boss in the whole game, Malenia the Blade of Miquella. Not only she’s is extremely mobile and the ability to close gaps through attacks and dashes, Malenia also has a second phase where she turns into her Goddess of Rot form, and trust me this part isn’t fun. When I originally fought her, I thought it was all over until I saw her turning into her second phase and it wrecked my soul.
The overall gameplay and world design of Elden Ring is more than enough to justify all the times spent playing and making it the best game of 2022.
-Tom Hoang