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GOTY Category 10: Game of the Year (Patreon)

Published:
2023-01-30 18:13:41
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

And here we are! The final category! What's the best game of 2022? Easy question, right?

As someone who's been picking things like this for a long time, I've had extremely easy years and extremely tough years. Sometimes the choice is very simple, one game just stands above the rest in a way that refuses to be ignored. The difficult years usually come in one of two flavors. Sometimes you have an abundance of great choices, a number of games that you feel passionately about, any number of which could take your top spot. Some years it's the opposite, where you have a bunch of games that'd make a great #5 on your Top 10 list, but none of them immediately rise to take the top spot. In those years, you really gotta grind down what it is you like about each game to try to compare them with one another, and that can lead to some silly situations where you're comparing things that are so vastly different that it's hard to call one "better" than the other.

This year I'm finding that I have a few strong choices that I'd take as a #1, but, but I think my #1 choice is just peeking above the #2 game by a little bit... but it's also a case where the two games are so dramatically different that the choice seems a little bizarre. You get used to it!

We'll cover the categories on the podcast this week, so let me know right now! What's the best game of 2022?

Comments

Luis Gomez

Elden Ring is the best game of 2022.

The Phantomnaut

Vampire Survivors. I think I played that game more than any other released last year. Also the Steam Deck created a perfect storm of being fun but also relaxing.

SPELDGE FELGUS

It’s a tie between vampire survivors and elden ring. Never have i had two games hook me in that way…aside from RuneScape back in the day

Kpapa

Vampire Hunters. Felt like a kid again playing that game.

Josh Harper

Elden Ring. It feels a little bit like a boring answer, but I've never been hooked on a souls/born game the way I have with Elden Ring. I think I put about 150 hours into my playthrough and greatly enjoyed it for basically that entire time. A super impressive world that's fun to explore

Chris Mate

Elden ring. That game just hooked me in a way that nothing else did this year. I'd be remiss if I didn't give some honorable mention to vampire survivors, sopffo, and tactics ogre reborn. Three other games I sunk a tremendous amount of time into and greatly enjoyed, but yeah, nothing touched elden ring for me this year.

Vidya Obscura

For me it was Fire Emblem: Three Hopes. It’s a musou, sure, but boiling it down to a Dynasty Warriors-clone is like saying that every FPS is a doom-clone. There’s so much Fire Emblem in it, that if you already like those game, you’ll find an experience that takes a lot of those mechanics and elevates them into something new. It’s my Syndicate (2012) to Syndicate (1993)… a change in genre I did not expect, but a fantastic game that blew me away!

trash

Tunic. This is one of the only games I’ve played not just in 2022 but maybe in the past decade that just reminded me why I love video games in the first place. Everything from the style to music pulled me in 100% and I wish I could play it for the first time all over again.

Horns

Vampire Survivors. I've probably put over 100 hours in it 30 minutes at a time.

Kyle

Elden Ring by a mile for me

Andrei M Burke, P.E.

For me it is World of Horror. If that doesn't count, it is Citizen Sleeper

BEEFCAKE

Sonic frontiers. I’m not joking. That game surprised me.

miscu

Tunic by a wide margin. Nothing else had that same magic last year.

Chris Looney

Completely seriously: Vampire Survivors. Name another game in recent memory that has not only nearly-completely invented a new genre of gaming, but has done so humbly, and that has since spawned a wave of imitators and iterators. It's not a AAA experience, it's not a game you sink 80 hours into a finely-crafted story with celebrity voice acting. It's pure, simple, distilled video games, in a way we haven't seen in a long, long time.

Brody Doss

Elden Ring, no contest.

Adam W Hamilton

Vampire Survivors was such a breath of fresh air, and made me enjoy run based games like I haven't enjoyed since I was a kid.

Tom Ma

Weird West

AJ

Hardspace: Shipbreaker

Rakete

Return to Monkey Island Ron Gilbert managed to recapture the feeling that made the first installments so special to me. I also came around on the art style which I was not a fan of at first, but it quickly grew on me m.

alucard1801

My true pick is Persona 5 Royale, but id probably just say Elden Ring.

Ryan Heise

Elden Ring. Even though I bounced off of it and need to go back (at some point? Maybe?) it’s undeniable how good and important this game.

Prophane33

Elden Ring. I could never really get into From Software's non-Armored Core games; however, I heard that a lot of the things that made be bounce of the Soulsborne games were modified or non-existent in this game. I bought it completely on a whim and a hundred or so hours later ended up getting the platinum trophy. It ended up being one of my favorite games (easily in the top 5) of all time in the 35 years I've been playing video games. Like many others, I believe Elden Ring is hands down, far and away, the best game that came out in 2022.

christian ates

Tunic, by a tiny hair…tough one this year for sure. I really thought it was going to be Elden Ring. I absolutely love that game. From games are my jam… and ER flat out nails it. Then I finally got around to Tunic, and holy shit I was just floored. I like it for the same reasons I like From games, which is probably what makes it such a tough decision, but that manual is what ultimately swayed me.

Tyler S

My personal pick based on time and enjoyment — Modern Warfare 2.

Ryan Hays

Return to Monkey Island, never expected I’d see another MI game from the original creators again, and for it to arrive and hold up to the legacy was such a joy.

coribald

Tunic is the game of the year!!

Alex S

Even though I didn’t finish it, Elden Ring

Craig Parker

Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I'm gonna assume you want a personal favorite answer as opposed to a "what is the best as perceived by all gamers" which would give me a different answer. This game moved me so hard that I didn't see it coming. The Mitsuda score was my favorite of his probably since Chrono Cross. The characters and English voice cast were superb, the story hooked me from start to finish, and for a Switch game this was quite the looker. The battle systems were basically infinite, but I gave them a chance and found them to work really well together. This was the first Xenoblade game I was moved to complete and I ended up with over 150 hours on my save. I loved it.

Cheyenne

Neon White Lot of good games this year, but Neon White gave me the biggest rush I've had in video games for a long time. I know some people may be turned off by the writing, but the game itself is a brilliant blend of old school shooters and platformers that is absolutely dripping with style. The soundtrack from Machine Girl is also one of the best soundtracks in gaming. Incredible game front to back and I wish it got more praise. I'm a huge souls fan and I loved Elden Ring, but Neon White is truly something special.

Wes Koop

Arcade Paradise... i didn't really play any huge games FROM 2022... tons of indies, The Case of the Golden Idol is a close runner up.

Sean

1. Elden Ring 2. Pokémon Legends Arceus 3. Pokémon Scarlett/Violet 4. Tinykin 5. Vampire Survivors 6. Kirby and the Forgotten Land 7. Immortality 8. Neon White 9. Coromon 10. Chained Echoes Some honorable mentions… RPG Golf Legends, Dark Souls, Mario Strikers, Digimon Survive, Tunic, The Klonoa Remakes, Persona 5 Royale and Ni No Kuni

R. Ballien

Tunic, despite the endgame frustrations.

Parallax Abstraction

Citizen Sleeper. A really surprising, choices matter narrative adventure where the choices *actually* matter. It also has a fantastic story and setting that I haven't seen done before and which really stuck with me after finishing it.

Tenser's Gifts

For me, personally, NORCO meant the most to me and absolutely blew my expectations out of the water. It’s the goty in my heart whereas Elden Ring is the goty in my brain.

Colton Royle

HyperDemon has to be it for me. That game is so above and beyond anything I could have hoped for in a shooter. I never played Devil Daggers, so it was great to get all the mechanics in a clean new attempt. No footage can do it justice. That game moves and feels amazing. I wanted to upgrade to a 240hz OLED monitor just for HyperDemon. There is something about the way that game handles light and movement. It is so underrated.

Jeremy Barrett

Pentiment. Going into this year, it was Elden Ring with a bullet. I don’t necessarily have a reverence for FromSoftware games but I have enjoyed the ones I have played well enough. I got wrapped into the hype and bought it day of and it has sucked close to 100 hours from me and I haven’t even beat it. However, when Pentiment dropped, I was invested in that game in a way I haven’t been in years. I felt bad for not taking my free time to continue the story of Andreas and Tassing. On top of it being a wonderfully researched and realized world, with a deliberate and gorgeous art design, it just has to take the cake.

Rhett Woody

Neon White The story and the often cringe inducing dialog didn't do much for me, but holy shit was the gameplay loop incredible. 2022 was a year that had some real bangers, but nothing else gave me that feeling that Neon White did. These days it's not often a game grabs me in such a way that playing it is all I want to do with every spare moment. It's not often that a single player game gets all my attention during the scant few moments I set aside each week to play multiplayer games with friends. I'm typically not a score chaser and I don't generally go in for multiple endings/outcomes. Once I progress through a given part of a game, I'm generally done. Neon White completely flipped my whole gaming philosophy (since having a kid) on its head. When playing through Neon White, all I could think of was doing that next run and shaving off those fractions of a second that would get me the next medal. Then after spending run after run rushing through the same level over and over again looking for the fastest way from A to B, I went right back to it to slow down, explore, and solve whatever platforming puzzle there was to get the gift. On the surface, Neon White is everything I don't care for in a video game, but what a treat it was to be wrong this time. Neon White is just pure, concentrated fun. What an incredible video game.

Daniel D Pinali

2022's 2012 GOTY Counter-Strike Global Offensive (CS almost always wins this category for me) but really it's gotta be Elden Ring right?

Jonathan Batchelder

Vampire Survivors, it's just got this simplistic style but game mechanics that run super deep. It's so much fun.

Mason

Elden Ring

Duncan Parker Newton-Gaines

Despite some incredible games that came out this year, Elden Ring not only pushed every button I love in a fromsoft game, but it pushed out in so many directions with the open world. The sense of exploration and wonder people told me that Breath of the Wild was supposed to have, I actually felt in Elden Ring.

DJM

Oh it's Vampire Survivors no question.

DaddyWarbucks

Tunic. Elden ring is insanely good but Tunic is something special.

humantree

Elden Ring The first Souls game I’ve finished. The one that made me understand why people love this genre of game (changes aside). But most importantly it was a game that made me feel wonder basically every time I played it, finding something around every corner of the world because the game wasn’t pushing me directly there. A feeling I haven’t had since BotW.

Michael Tillapaugh

Vampire Survivors. Hands down the most fun game I played this year

Ian Zamojc

Neon White. Vampire Survivors. Rogue Legacy 2.

Cory McQuhae

Of the games I played last year, it's Rogue Legacy 2. However, I started Elden Ring right as December was ending and that would be far and away my game of the year if I had played it before then.

Iron Arse Hands

Arcade Paradise. It brought me unexpected joy and laughs last year. I loved the daily grind at the laundry and finding time to sneak off to play games. The soundtrack was bangin', so much so that I bought the L.P. I felt that it had the 'just one more round' pull down so well that I constantly kept chasing higher scores. I thought the setting and the rich out of touch Dad was a great character and antagonist. A real banger and my fave from 2022.

Supaslicer

Vampire Survivors... As a man with a toddler, it's been my best friend while I get 15 minutes on the can

Bobby Downey

It’s Elden Ring and Vampire Survivors in a battle to the death. Both at opposite ends of the scale.

Handamonium

Tunic is my favorite but Elden Ring is the unquestionable GotY

Kuno Woudt

Elden Ring Dark Souls is one of my favorite games, but every time I've tried to go back to it it feels too difficult. So I've finished all dark souls games once, with a lot of looking stuff up and summoning help. I didn't get very far into Sekiro at all. All of this to say that From software games IMO are too hard, and could use some difficulty options. Elden Ring almost gets this right, it is still too difficult toward the end, but it's a lot more manageable. And it has a magnificent open world with lots of mysteries and things to explore.

Stefan Karius

Elden Ring. New all time top 10 entry for me.

Tyler Hyduk

Elden Ring for me. Vampire Survivors is a distant 2nd.

Jonathan

Elden Ring. Like Dark Souls before it, i feel it will be a decade defining game that all others of its kind will be judged against.

Adam Marcucci

Atari 50, and I say this having zero nostalgia for Atari. When I think about the types of games I want to see more of, and the types of games I want to experience more of, it's the thoughtful and entertaining package of Atari 50. It sets the standard for all historical game collections going forward and I would love nothing more than to see this industry begin to embrace its history and its creators far more than it does.

Henry Coates

Gotta go with Elden Ring, though Vampire Survivors is a close second.

Drew

Vampire Survivors

Kevin Johnson

It's hard to choose anything but Elden Ring. I've enjoyed GoW: Ragnarok, and Midnight Suns has me putting in the hours for that awesome deckbuilding. Nothing has quite hit like Elden Ring, though, and there's a certain sense of accomplishment from finishing it I haven't felt from most games I've played recently.

GaddockTeeg

Elden Ring may have entered my top 10 of all time.

Johan Lidén

I loves Tunic and put many hours getting lost in that game, I dropped it at the end though. I guess I would have to go with Elden Ring, my first experience with a Souls like, I’m no good at it but objectively it is a very good game.

Ometeotl

Xenoblade Chronicles 3, baby

Conor Devine

Probably gotta go with Elden Ring. But Tunic is so close.

David Allen

Elden Ring. It's real tough having to choose between this and Tunic but it just occupied too much of my mind in 2022 to not win.

Andrew McCann

It’s Elden Ring. I didn’t know what I expected from it, but I was certainly not prepared to be blown away by it. Vampire Survivors is a very close second, but Elden Ring was just such a complete package.

Jordan Hass

Kirby and the Forgotten Kingdom. In an anniversary year for Kirby and a platformers nightmare of going from 2D to 3D, it's a great update to kirby and reminds me of Mario 64 in so many ways.

Chanel Bell

Elden Ring, just Elden Ring.

CamGearz

Vampire Survivors was a pleasant surprise with the amount of depth and replayability. Pure joy, but also, definitely like a drug.

Aaron Seddon

I’d probably pick Modern Warfare 2, it’s the most impressive game I played in a mostly lacklustre year for me. followed by Shredders Revenge as a close second. Props to Elden Ring for being the first FromSoftware game I didn’t immediately jump off of, although it does seriously intimidate me in terms of returning back to it.

Mike Maloney

Elden ring, vampire survivors as a runner up

PastaPirate

Elden Ring without question. Vampire Survivors and Neon White are runners up.

Kacho

Neon White. With the addition of gyroscopic aim, I haven’t felt so electrically connected to a game’s mechanics in a long time. When I hit that goal and the music goes off, I realize that my whole body’s tensed up in some bonkers way as everything eases back into real-world mode. Also, the soundtrack bangs alongside the biggest and best soundtracks of all time. It’s a game that restored hope that this old bastard will keep liking games further into the future; it’s also why I can’t wait to jump into VR for the first time in about nine years. Shoutouts to Hyper Demon, which inevitably would have been in contention if I had a decent PC setup. Game looks wild.

First Warden

Elden Ring Sorry Kratos, can't beat it

feliscele

Pentiment. With the possible exception of Kojima’s stuff, it is the boldest, most niche, and most uncompromising game ever released by a major publisher—this is a Microsoft-published game where having lengthy arguments about Catholic rites and Martin Luther is central to its gameplay, themes, and overall identity. It is a wonderfully esoteric passion project with a clear-eyed vision that can only come from a team of people that are making exactly the game they have dreamed of playing for years. I have never been more moved by a video game, period, and I am so thrilled that it exists.

ShadowSkill

I spent over 140 hours on my first play through of Elden Ring. Besides the what if we made Skyrim and Dark Souls make a baby stuff. Somehow FromSoft made an evolved Dark Souls that is somehow easier if you pay attention than all of their older Souls games because of all the extra tools and abilities they give you. I assume to open up Souls to mainstream (which they did sales wise) and even to games journalists who have Microsoft Project tabs up measuring each second of their day they can devote to gaming. I played GoW Ragnorok and liked that game too but it felt like more of the same to me despite its quality. While going blind into Elden Ring was just incredible. Walking outside that tomb and looking around. Wondering if I should be afraid of the rabbits or birds I saw. Collecting some berries and shrubs. Then squatting in a bush next to the Tree Sentinel while thinking “He’s so close to the starting point, how hard can he be?”

David Johnson

Elden Ring. No contest. In every way that the open world genre has become bloated over the years, Elden Ring is the opposite. There wasn't a single time I went exploring and felt like I had wasted my time. Every item, even if it didn't pertain to my build, had me thinking about how it could be useful.

Matt

It’s Elden Ring by a mile. Miyazaki was given the ball and he fuckin RAN with it. It’s an absolute triumph of the “soulsborne” genre. All of the best parts of those games with intelligent QoL improvements and new mechanics that really make the game shine.

Angel

Signalis.

Michael Hash

It’s Tunic. It was always Tunic. Nothing came close to that experience for me.

Nathan H.

Elden Ring, 100%

Kacho

Heck yeah! Agreed on all counts.

Phantasiu

Elden Ring, without a shadow of a doubt.

Greg Petrie

Elden Ring, with a shout out to Vampire Survivors

Melly

It’s Elden Ring, no doubt about it.

normal cool adult male

Elden Ring rules, kicks ass, and pwns. A truly amazing game from start to finish.

Steve Francis

Elden Ring was my GOTY, closely followed by Rogue Legacy 2

Cheese

Elden Ring. This year, Hi Fi Rush, what a banger that game is.

Merc-a-dude

As someone who avoided Elden Ring the entire year... it's Tunic. I love the 2D Zeldas more than the 3D ones, I have a romantic dreamy nostalgic vision of my childhood shaped in part by Legend Of Zelda ALTTP and Links Awakening. But Tunic isn't just a nostalgia play, it's more than that and I spent a decent chunk of 2022 gnawing at it. Honorable mentions: Inscryption - Came out for PS5 in this year, and was my first time experiencing it. Admittedly it did get weaker in the back 2/3 as opposed to the very strong first third, but overall as a package I enjoyed it as much as Tunic if not more so. Signalis - this would've been my GOTY... if I didn't wait until January to finally dig into it. A bizzare amalgamation of Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Resident Evil and Anime, it feels like it shouldn't work nearly as well it does, but I was so absolutely gripped that the moment the final credits rolled I was ready to dive right back in. Legitimately a survival horror all-timer.

caseman

God of War Ragnarok

nahcq

Citizen Sleeper gripped me and moved me in so many ways and it stuck out as the one I would cherish the most out of a number of wonderful games out in 2022 Signalis close second Elden Ring close third

David Redekop

Neon White - the style, the music, the speed and the skill kept me coming back for ages and replaying to perfection.

Mason W

Pentiment is my goty because I will follow Josh Sawyer to whatever game he wants to make.

bakayoyo

I think Elden Ring is basically the new Skyrim, a game that defined the genre for over a decade.

Joseph Tavano

Easy as shit to say Elden Ring is GOTY, but I don't think it has that classic lasting power. I think the real king this year is Vampire Survivors. It came out of nowhere and consumed the world. I'm willing to bet people had more joy playing more hours of VS than Elden Ring.

Captain Ginyu

Elden Ring. Runners up for me include Neon White, Vampire Survivors,and DRAINUS.

FameDouglas

Tunic! The last time I experienced the same sense of wonder and discovery was with Fez. Fez is its own crazy thing that I don't think anyone will be able to match, but I would almost go as far as to say that Tunic made me fall in love with video games again. The game trusts its player and never talks down to you. <>

Andrew Rouse

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - that world and those characters were so good. It's the first time I haven't ended up getting bored with the gameplay of a JRPG and rushing through to get to the ending. Neon White a close second.

ben Korol

1 Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - they nailed almost everything that game set out to do. I didn't want it to end and when it did I was too satisfied to do a new game plus. 2 Vampire survivors - best way to kill half a hour that turns into two hours 3 Dwarf Fortress - Punching someone in the teeth then throwing said teeth at them has yet to get old, also apparently there's a steam release or something

Rose

Tunic

autumn sevier

for me it was vampire survivors , i Thought early on nothing was going to beat rogue legacy 2 for me but when it came time to truely think about the order of my list VS just floated to the top since no other game honestly made me want to keep coming back for more and do Everything in it the way it did.

zma1013

Elden Ring... ohhhhhhh Elden Ring. What can I say? I'm a sucker for From Software RPGs.