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The Best Video Games of 2022 … So Far

Size isn’t just a matter of square footage when it comes to the games that have awed us this year.

The Best Games of 2022 ... So Far
Photo: Sony Computer Entertainment America

Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better—and you don’t need The Stanley Parable’s snarky, fourth-wall-breaking British narrator to tell you that. But in a world that increasingly seeks out escapism, we find that our list of the best video games of 2022 thus far is dominated by massive games in which a player can get good and truly lost.

This is most obviously on display throughout FromSoftware’s remarkable Elden Ring, which is so densely packed with content that you can miss entire regions and dungeons as you wander across the game’s vast open world. This emphasis on size is also keenly on display in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which makes the most of mechanics new and old across a campaign that inches the franchise just a wee bit closer to a fully open-world experience.

But size isn’t just a matter of square footage when it comes to games that awed us this year. Case in point: Patrick Traynor’s Patrick’s Parabox, a modest sokoban game that’s filled with hundreds of optional levels, each iterating on the last in dazzlingly creative ways. Above all, the year’s best games don’t lack for grand and idiosyncratic ideas, from plant-based shopkeeping (Strange Horticulture) to an exploitative dice-based send-up of futuristic capitalism (Citizen Sleeper), with the tiniest of minutia vibrantly hooking our imaginations.

The goal of this list is to make sure that regardless of how long a game seeks to captivate the player, you don’t overlook a thrilling experience. Aaron Riccio


Citizen Sleeper

Citizen Sleeper (Jump Over the Age)

Can you afford to wait a little longer to pay an unsavory character’s protection money? Is it worth spending one die on working for a meal so that you don’t have to dip into the limited funds that you’re saving for something else, or is it better to skip food altogether with the hopes of eking out the most progress toward a prospective reward? In Citizen Sleeper, these decisions flavor what’s essentially a richly imagined visual novel, illustrated by some gorgeous character art and a 3D overhead view of the Eye that doubles as your navigation screen. At one point, you might prioritize working for an intimidating character because she seems like a viable source of protection. At another, you might grow weary of someone who promised to remove your tracking device but keeps finding new objectives for you to accomplish before he does so. Citizen Sleeper is evocative in its etching of such trade-offs, leaving you acutely aware of your own vulnerability and your dependence on others. Steven Scaife

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Destiny 2: The Witch Queen

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen (Bungie)

There was a time when the world balked at Bungie keeping Destiny a viable property alive for a decade or more. In 2022, though, Destiny’s creative future has never felt brighter, or full of more promise. Indeed, Destiny 2: The Witch Queen feels less like a new Destiny expansion than a renewed statement of purpose. Beyond the abject architectural splendor that’s been there since the beginning, the main campaign stages are longer, more creative, with multiple, well-crafted twists that upend what we know about Destiny’s universe, the nature of the power that rules it, and its greatest heroes and villains. But even once the main quest is done, the post-game sprawl reveals itself to players, and it’s more comprehensive and freeing than any Destiny game before it. Hardcore players get to reap incredible rewards for being intrepid with difficulty and missions, while casual players still have a vast world of options to see more story, earn more useful items, and keep growing at their own pace. There was a time when Destiny, like many MMOs, felt like a job. Now, it’s nothing short of a joy. Justin Clark


Dying Light 2

Dying Light 2 (Techland)

Dying Light 2 is a rare example of ludonarrative harmony, as every element in the game, from its setting to its gameplay mechanics to its story beats, moves together in unison to expound on its themes. Here, conflict isn’t always the solution, but some individuals—especially those in power—cannot be left to freely carry out their actions unchecked. Early in the campaign, Aiden Caldwell’s guide tells him that he’s free to abandon his quest and just explore the City as a playground, which, yes, is an option that’s available to players. But doing so is irresponsible, as it would leave many to suffer as a result of his lack of intervention, while limiting the gameplay variety that the player can experience. This is game about choice and consequences, and it rewards the player for exploring and engaging with the City’s environments. Unlike the derivative setting of last year’s Far Cry 6, the City is a character of its own, alive with lived-in detail and a refinement of the use of environmental storytelling. And it’s all the more incredible for making us feel as if we can change it for the better. Ryan Aston


Elden Ring

Elden Ring (FromSoftware)

In Elden Ring, failure teaches you one thing: that there is a main path, and getting there will never be a straight one. There’s adventure, there’s advancement, there’s aid, and there’s power waiting for you in every direction leading away from Margit the Fell Omen. Where you get the power to slay him and what form it takes doesn’t matter, but you’re meant to go find it elsewhere. “Getting gud” is such a tiny sliver of what progress in Elden Ring looks like, and it’s less about FromSoftware placing bosses and obstacles in front of the player as it is about rewarding our willingness to be intrepid, creative, and truly courageous. The game represents the studio taming the monster they created, not by filing down its teeth and claws, but by giving players the weapons and armor to endure it. It’s the first of their games to not feel like a brick wall but a doorway, with allies in every direction all reaching out to help you tread carefully to the other side. The result is a paradigm shift, a seemingly once-in-a-generation recalibration of old ideas and taking them to the next level. Clark


Hardspace: Shipbreaker

Hardspace: Shipbreaker (Blackbird Interactive)

With Hardspace: Shipbreaker, what you see is more or less what you get across the 30-plus-hour campaign. As an employee of the LYNX Corporation, you dismantle vessels in an outer space shipyard. In addition to suit thrusters and a helmet, you’re given a handheld grapple device that lets you push and pull heavy objects from afar, as well as a cutting tool with two settings, one for long incisions and one for a focused beam that vaporizes a target. The ships grow larger and more complex as you rise through the ranks, but the basics remain the same. To your character, dismantling ships is a job, but it’s also engaging work that’s impressive to behold as you push around objects that are too large and volatile to be handled by anything less than sci-fi technology. The tactility of the experience, like the ambitious sense of scale and progress, never loses its wonder during the game. Within the medium, Hardspace: Shipbreaker has few comparisons, as developer Blackbird Interactive has carved out an exceptionally fulfilling niche by simulating what amounts to futuristic grunt work. Scaife

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Horizon Forbidden West

Horizon Forbidden West (Guerrilla Games)

If there are moments throughout Horizon Forbidden West where you feel the linearity of the adventure a little too much, it makes up for that by endearing us to its characters, to the bite-sized episodic stories that fill its vast, startlingly detailed open world, and by making every activity have meaning to someone within it. Even the Tallneck tasks—this series’s version of the typical open-world “climb a tower, reveal the map” trope—have been crafted not just as self-contained action set pieces that are more thrilling and adrenaline-pumping than most full games, but as one more occasion to tell us stories of the world that was and how it collapsed. That connection to the past is also this game’s ace in the hole, giving us a parallel story to Aloy figuring out how to save her world, filling in the blanks left unanswered by Horizon Zero Dawn. As in that game, these stories are captivating, sad, and, at times, terrifying. Clark


Know by Heart

Know by Heart (Ice-Pick Lodge)

The world of Moscow-based developer Ice-Pick Lodge’s Know by Heart is overtaken by a strange illness that causes an infected individual to forget the people they know, apparently at random. As people simply forget, they grow cold and distant in their stubborn determination that something cannot be true if they don’t remember it. Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind without the cautious optimism, the game slowly decimates the only meaningful currency it gives us: the memories, in the form of leaf piles, that are the only “collectible” here. Details like the cause of the disease and how it spreads are unclear, though it doesn’t appear to be fatal. Much of the game involves simply existing in the midst of this incident, experiencing the story while trying to hold certain relationships together as things grow more grave. The slow progression of the disease lends itself to tear-jerking melodrama, but the characters’ horror is quiet and largely internal. Occasionally, they verbalize their fears, but mostly their memories just gradually and inevitably fall away, like leaves in autumn. Scaife


Nobody Saves the World

Nobody Saves the World (Drinkbox Studios)

Freedom in its purest sense—and most exhilarating self—is at the heart of Nobody Saves the World. As a so-called nobody, players spend the game discovering who they are, in the process magically shapeshifting into 18 different forms. This gimmick is what gives the game—otherwise a classic top-down Zelda adventure filled with overworld exploration and foe-filled dungeons—a compelling sense of identity. You don’t have to stick to any form for too long, such as the familiar sword-wielding hero, and you probably won’t given the idiosyncratic draw of the other forms, from a horse that attacks by kicking its hind legs to a mermaid with a tail-swipe that’s powerful both in and out of water. “Why not?” is the modus operandi here for both the comic action-adventure gameplay and the outrageously punny plot, and it’s the most entertainingly weird game you’ll play this year. The only problem is that fighting’s so much fun that you might forget to get around to saving the world. Riccio


Norco

Norco (Geography of Robots)

You can feel the end coming in NORCO, not through some dramatic flame-out but as a slow and undignified crawl. Partially set in the real-life Louisiana oil town that serves as its namesake, this sci-fi adventure takes place in some indeterminate future where advanced AI coexists with chunky, outdated technology like landline phones and rickety old pickup trucks. Playing mainly as Kay, you return home more out of duty than anything else, needing to settle affairs following her mother’s death. It was a slow, cancerous death that doesn’t suggest a larger mystery, but Kay finds one anyway that includes ecoterrorism, space-bound incels, and a duck-based neural network. NORCO functions mainly as a point-and-click adventure across pixelated screens that are strikingly detailed, emblematic of the game’s desolate, poignant, and often hilarious specificity. With modest tools and a rotation of weirdo companions, Kay’s investigation goes to the poisoned heart of humanity’s need for belief and how undiscerning we can be. Splashing every line of text and every image with local color, developer Geography of Robots has crafted nothing less than a new classic for the medium. Scaife

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Patrick’s Parabox

Patrick’s Parabox (Patrick Traynor)

An old riddle asks, “When is a door not a door?” The playful answer: “When it’s a jar.” Developer Patrick Traynor has taken a similarly mischievously punny approach to an analogous question. Within the classic block-pushing sokoban puzzle genre, he dares to ask, “When is a box not a box?” And the answer is right there in the title of the delightfully inventive Patrick’s Parabox. In this bursting-at-the-seams collection of over 350 handcrafted puzzles, you’ll need to think both inside and outside the box to not only solve each conundrum but, in some cases, solve seemingly impossible recursive paradoxes in order to proceed. The idea of a Sokoban in which players push boxes into and out of other boxes isn’t new; Traynor credits that concept at least as far back as the 2018 puzzler Sokosoko by Juner. But Traynor’s taken the idea far beyond that game, and not just because he comes up with more than a dozen different types of boxes that can be entered and exited. By combining the various principles of his puzzle boxes, he’s turned them not just into optical illusions but into art. Riccio


Pokémon Legends: Arceus

Pokémon Legends: Arceus (Game Freak)

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Pokémon franchise, and it’s bizarre that it’s taken all that time for the series to grow up alongside its audience. To be fair, it hasn’t really had to, as most fans are perfectly content with Game Freak reliably creating new critters to catch and battle, with only incremental changes to the RPG formula over time. But now we have Pokémon Legends: Arceus, a semi-open-world RPG that uses its traditional turn-based combat as a jumping-off point for something much more thoughtful. The nature of studying, capturing, and training Pokémon now resembles the mechanics of the Monster Hunter games than it does, say, Pokémon Sword and Shield. These are animals who roam sizable natural habitats, hostile to regular humans, and befriending one truly feels like a deliberate, careful effort. That’s paired with a story that may still be simple enough to speak to children but gets just complex and intriguing enough to surprise adults along the way as well. Clark


The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe (Crows Crows Crows)

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is a pseudo-sequel in the guise of a console port with some nice new accessibility options that cannot stop riffing on the fact that the original game was pretty much already a masterpiece. It’s also filled with surprises ranging from an existential crisis revolving around the implications of a “skip” button to a philosophical game show about the nature of signifiers and an instructional video on proper comedic timing. At the end of the day, players truly are Stanley, deriving pleasure and purpose from pressing buttons as prompted by the Narrator. This is a game that borrows a scene from Firewatch just to mock the concept of an open world and which sends up Steam user reviews—er, “Pressurized Gas” comments—and the idea of expectations and entitlement. Funny, right? But even if you’re not laughing with this exceedingly well-written game, it’s definitely laughing at you, and that’s as it should be for taking your entertainment so seriously. Riccio


Strange Horticulture

Strange Horticulture (Bad Viking)

The typical shop management game asks you to invest your earnings and adjust your inventory based on customer demand. Strange Horticulture does neither, using the shop that you’ve inherited as more of a story framework to puzzle out an arcane inventory of plants. You try to organize by consulting a reference book and heeding customer descriptions. But as the information you get is incomplete, your job is to fill in the blanks. Though you’re free to adapt your own organizing methods, you also get no confirmation of what’s right or wrong until you present a plant to a customer. You could be wrong for any number of reasons, perhaps because you haven’t found the right plant yet or because you’ve outright misinterpreted something; many plants seem to fit one description or another, until you find the obvious answer later on. Strange Horticulture weaponizes our desire for tidy, simple completion, our willingness to believe that the answer is in front of us and to draw the wrong conclusion because it’s easier to do that than confront the sheer breadth of what we don’t know. Scaife

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Total War: Warhammer III

Total War: Warhammer III (Creative Assembly)

Total War: Warhammer III is a worthy conclusion to the Total War: Warhammer trilogy. The game’s centerpiece is its strong central campaign, Realms of Chaos, a continuation of sorts of the Eye of the Vortex campaign from Warhammer II, which saw the player’s fantasy army battling an endless tide of daemonic Chaos warriors emerging from the void. This time the player takes the fight to the enemy, traversing Chaos Rifts to battle otherworldly nightmares in their twisted realms and claim four souls of the Daemon Princes. But these battles take a toll, and the longer one spends in the Chaos Realm the more likely they will be infected with negative chaotic effects. Boasting the same deep real-time-strategy gameplay that has seen the Total War games thrive as others in the genre have faded, Warhammer III is an evolving entry in the series which has seen continuous updates and improvements, including the promise of a new Immortal Empires campaign on the horizon featuring all playable races, factions, lords and units from previous titles. Aston


Tunic

Tunic (Andrew Shouldice)

Tunic is more than an imitation of The Legend of Zelda, as it focuses on the most unexpected elements of its forerunners in order to reward players with a rapturous sense of discovery. Though Andrew Shouldice’s game is designed to lead you along an obvious path, it’s possible to stumble upon various secrets by accident. Starting Tunic over will allow you to use your accumulated knowledge to complete tasks more quickly and out of order, if not bypass certain parts altogether, though you may not want to given how charmingly rendered the world is here. This sense of discovery follows through to the game’s surprisingly systemic nature, of realizing that certain interactions exist once you watch them happen. Where other isometric games of this sort heavily telegraph areas and objects that you should return to later, the levels here subtly fold in on themselves in ways that are both slyly hidden and obvious in hindsight. Tunic appears unassuming and even a little routine on the surface, but it constantly reveals how clever it is every time it encourages us to take a closer look. Scaife

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