Damn. We really made it, huh? We’re over a month into 2023, and I’m sitting here writing a Game of the Year list. 2019, 2020, and 2021 kind of blurred together for me, but 2022 felt eternal. An endless march of a year that is at last finally behind us. I don’t know that it was that bad for me, exactly. But spikes of intense stress throughout the year as we launched Battle Crow, relaunched Novel Not New, dealt with our webhost ghosting us when technical difficulties hit and having to rebuild the site on a new host, then all the RSS breaking, then all the RSS breaking again… you know. You know? It was just a whole hell of a lot.
But there’s always time for games, especially when you’re editing a podcast where the audio is pretty much fine and you’re doing little more than a Quality Assurance pass. So let’s talk about my ten favorite games in 2022.
10. Gran Turismo 7
Mannnnn. This stupid game is scraping by at 10 when it could be so much higher if they hadn’t sabotaged the damn thing. My history with the series is one of hostility- I hated 3 so much I sold the game I’d bought new back as a used game the very next day, and when I gave the franchise another shot in 5, I won a few races by ricocheting off walls in a Ferrari 512BB faster than the Ford Focused I was up against could match no matter how well they drove… then I rolled my eyes and dropped it.
Why did I even give 7 a try, given my disdain for past entries and having never enjoyed a single racing sim? I’m afraid the answer is neither deep nor flattering- I’m kinda stupid. If I played something and hated it, I won’t come back… unless, of course, I don’t think I understood the appeal. Madden, I’m safe from. I don’t find that game fun, but I understand why some people do. But when Starfield launches, catch me putting a dozen hours into it, miserably unhappy the whole time, trying to understand what the appeal is. I’ll end each play session more unhappy than I began, and finally in a deep depressed funk I’ll give up. This I have done with Fallout 4, Skyrim before it, Fallout 3 before it, and so on. The wheel turns, and the only certainty is suffering.*
Unless, right? Unless this time I understand why people like it, whether I feel the same or not. And say what you will about this process, like “it seems like a stupid way to torture yourself,” but sometimes it works! When I picked up Gran Turismo 7 for another round of this, I got it. The first revelation came as I paid attention to what the driving line was having me do. Combined with the excellent trigger vibration communicating what surface I was on, and suddenly I had what a racing sim had never given me before: actionable feedback. I could actually get better, instead of winning until I hit races more difficult than I could handle, and having no recourse.
Then came the second revelation. I was struggling to complete a race, but having fun trying, unlike before. I was gradually improving, under the strict tutelage of the driving line. And then there was a, uh, “long medium right,” I believe it’s called. Dutifully, I checked the driving line for guidance. Gently brake into the corner, then accelerate out of it.
In my memory, everything stopped here, but of course it didn’t really. I remembered the last half-dozen attempts, and how slowly I came out of the turn. I remember seeing the gap widen, and the rumble of my engine fighting to accelerate as fast as I was demanding. And all the evidence pointed to one impossible yet inarguable conclusion.
The racing line was wrong.
The racing line was wrong.
I pressed the accelerator harder, and turned hard. The driving line’s prophecy grew more dire as it urged me with brighter and brighter red to abort this plan before I fell to ruin. But the driving line was no Cassandra, had no gift of foresight. It was merely doing what it always did- telling me the average game plan for the average car. And I was not driving the average car. There were weaknesses to go with the strengths, but my Subaru WRX had better grip than my advisor could imagine. To brake here would be an insult to the spirit of four wheel drive racing. Going forward, I took the driving line as it was: wise but fallible. And this was what truly brought me into understanding racing sims.
“Six,” you say. “This is number 10. This write-up does not describe a game that barely made the list.” Yeah, well, the rest of the story is pretty boring- the game’s post-launch support has been dedicated to pissing on any goodwill. The economy is TRULY fucked, so badly that I’ll spent more time afk farming credits with a bot than playing myself. New races added are tuned both so difficult and so restrictive that I genuinely would have been happier if they’d never been added. And levels with ridiculous time trial expectations remain unaddressed, walling me off from a reasonable challenge.
If they hadn’t fucked it up? Number 3, I’d guess. But they really, really fucked it up.
9. V Rising
I dunno! It’s just nice! I’m sorry, I don’t have a super smart argument here. It’s a crafting/tech tree game with fun combat! But probably I most value just the time I spent playing it with Nick. That guy’s ok, whatever I claim elsewhere.
8. Neon White
First person platforming is a pretty unforgiving genre. We can pretend that first person is the most natural perspective, since it’s how we humans view the world… but it’s not. Humans can feel ground beneath our feet, we can feel weightlessness as we fall, we have a sense of our position relative to our environment (some less of a sense than others, but the point stands). A first person game without those is more like a GoPro strapped to an RC car than the human experience.
There are lots of tricks developers use to ease this gap- screen shake, Coyote Time, and more. I don’t actually develop games- I’m not smart enough to break it down for you! What I know is, Neon White pulls it off. And that’s just the beginning- from there, it builds levels and abilities tuned to feel response, rewarding, demanding, and satisfying. It uses small levels with (when played well) no downtime and a Tony Hawk quick restart to build a gameplay loop that I can’t get enough of. And it does it with a visual style that never gets in the way, but I don’t get tired of either.
The writing is hit or miss. The story is trite and predictable. If these things bother you, I get it. They don’t matter as much to me, because I’m just mashing that retry as I try to sniff out the optimal path. Or optimal enough, as this is Neon White’s gift- you get to feel like a speedrunner without actually having to invest the hundreds of hours the real ones do.
7. Riichi Mahjong
I played mahjong nearly every day in 2022, and though I can’t get stats easily, I know I played well over 400 games of it. I don’t wanna put it higher for two reasons- one, it’s already been on my personal GotY list before, and two… I dunno, it’s just part of my life now? I brush my teeth, I do a Duolingo lesson, I play mahjong. These are habits. And I like mahjong! I like it a lot. But it isn’t this exciting new thing anymore. It is a thing that I do, and I enjoy.
For those who haven’t been given the sales pitch: riichi mahjong is the Japanese version of mahjong, a storied tile-based hand making game. For a lot of westerners, the best touchstone is rummy, though mahjong’s way better. You play it with four or three people, and if you wanna give it a try, I and other enthusiasts on the Abnormal Mapping Discord are more than happy to show you the ropes.
6. Spelunky 2
Mark my words: the streams will continue.
Spelunky HD is one of the ten best games ever made. It took concepts that the young roguelike genre was toying with and made versions of them so expertly crafted that nothing since has matched them. Its procedural generation, systemic interactions, and network of secrets and surprises locked it in the Hall of Fame, and I will now try anything Derek Yu makes- a statement I don’t think I can say about any other developer. So obviously, when Derek Yu announced Spelunky 2 nine years after the first, and five after the HD rerelease that perfected it, I sat up in my chair. If Derek has decided he has ideas that he thinks merit an entirely new Spelunky? Yes. I am in.
I was crestfallen upon launch. Spelunky 2 was just too damn hard. More than hard, it was mean. It felt petty- like it wanted to laugh at Spelunky players for thinking they had any skill. Like it was made for the players doing Eggplant Runs, and anyone short of that level of complete mastery was not worth their time. I dropped it. I was sad.
There have been patches to Spelunky 2 in the meantime, but far less has changed than you’d think. It’s really just… spawn rates. Adjusting some enemy spawn rates, correcting a few bugs, and the game is transformed. It’s still hard, of course. It can be KINDA mean. But Spelunky 2 wants you to laugh when you die, and it’s hit that mark now. And though I’ve only played 11 hours on PC (limiting myself to exclusively playing on stream), I can already see the hints of what Mr. Yu had in mind. The Spelunky HD engine couldn’t do the things he’s trying here, and the scale is beyond what I could have imagined. I can’t wait to see what’s beyond the next tunnel.
5. Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Working at Game Freak might genuinely be the most thankless job in the industry. I don’t know what they’re paid, or what hours they work- it’s a Japanese studio, it would take an act of god for that information to get out. What I know is, they are given shoestring budgets and zero time to build new entries in one of the biggest franchises in the world, with next to no room for new ideas and no opportunity to truly finish anything. Year in, year out, you ship broken games on a bad engine, not because you don’t have the skill to do it right, but because if your speed ever drops below breakneck, Miyamoto is sitting just offstage with a gun.
I don’t know how Pokémon Legends: Arceus happened. Did they intentionally sacrifice Sword and Shield to buy time behind the scenes to actually develop new systems? All I have is conjecture. Whatever Game Freak did, though, Arceus is a miracle. For the first time in over two decades, Pokémon was allowed to be ambitious. And it works. They’ve reinvented the Pokédex as a thing you can actually enjoy. They made catching Pokémon more than a menu option. And perhaps most importantly, they’ve opened the door to a brighter tomorrow for the Pokémon series.
Twenty years from now, I will be so sick of the systems that Arceus created, because it’ll probably be that long before Nintendo takes its hands off Game Freak’s throat again for long enough for the developers to try anything. But the next handful of years will be a delight because of the work they did here.
4. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
I don’t think any of us expected that Chaosposting would foreshadow one of the best games of 2022. We all know Square Enix’s marketing team leads the industry in How Do You Still Have A Job, but that cuts both ways. They can make anything look like dogshit, but sometimes the game actually is dogshit! It’s impossible to tell! And we all had plenty of cause to be skeptical about an underfunded Team Ninja prequel to Final Fantasy I written by the writers behind Kingdom Hearts and fucking Crisis Core. Like, woof!
Hopefully you’ve listened to our Novel Not New episode on Stranger of Paradise, as I don’t have a lot to say that wasn’t already said there. Obviously click the link if you haven’t, great episode with some great guests! Instead, I’d like to take this time to talk a bit about Team Ninja. Who here remembers Tomonobu Itagaki? He was one of the founders of Team Ninja, who drove projects like Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden. With his departure, many despaired the studio’s future, and their immediate projects thereafter (Metroid Other M, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, Ninja Gaiden 3) didn’t give much cause for hope.
But I think it’s time to openly state that Team Ninja has been better since they got out from under Itagaki’s egotistical shadow. Definitely, there was a rough adjustment period. But look at what they’ve done since 2012: Nioh 1 and 2, Hyrule Warriors, Dead or Alive 5 and 6 (which are fantastic, simply overshadowed by their fanservice), even the terrific but forgotten Dissidia Final Fantasy NT. They have a loot problem, of course: they’re seemingly addicted to putting the worst loot mechanics you’ve ever seen in nearly every game. But damn, they’ve really figured their shit out. And I just wanted to say that, because they got a lot of grief in those early days, but I haven’t seen anyone go “hey actually y’all got better after Itagaki left.”
except Ninja Gaiden 2, to be frank the highs of that game you still haven’t reached since, but that’s ok
3. Touhou Mystia’s Izakaya
The concept of the izakaya is just such a cozy thing for a story. A bar/restaurant that opens at night so people can come in to relax after work? Wow. You get to see people with interesting lives who are coming in for Chill Vibes only. The perfect situation for a fictional restaurant. Plus, as the owner of an izakaya, you get to do normal human things during the day, because your work is always at night!
In a lot of ways, Touhou Mystia’s Izakaya is just an excellent combination of familiar ideas. As much as the name feels bad in my mouth, there’s a legacy here from games like Diner Dash. You’ve got to make sure your food isn’t Overcooked, so you Cook, Serve, and it is Delicious. You know me- I just love cooking games.
But it’s the little things that make Mystia’s Izakaya so charming. The low-stakes rhythm game you play to sing to yourself as you cook. The magic spells high profile guests cast on your restaurant to express their pleasure or disdain. The delightfully charming and colorful pixel art. But most of all, the feature every cooking game needs: omakase.
I have played so many cooking games where I get the ticket, and it’s order up. Cheeseburger extra tomatoes, done. Fish and chips, you got it. Stuffed peppers, whatever you say buddy. But Touhou Mystia’s Izakaya is about the moment you walk up to a regular customer, ask for their order, and they say “I dunno, what do you recommend?”
You have to consider their taste. Their mood. Their budget. What recipes you have on hand, and what tweaks you could make to them to better match this particular customer. Do you want my multi-page Google Doc on what makes my various regulars happy? Too bad, I worked hard on it! It’s mine! Make your own! The little tragedy of my 2023 so far has been that I’ve had to stop playing Touhou Mystia’s Izakaya so I can focus on games that I’m covering for pods or that are relevant to Gimmick Award conversations. But soon… soon I can go back to the kitchen.
2. Witch on the Holy Night
In the wake of Tsukihime, I was more than a little skeptical about our then-upcoming Novel Not New episode for Witch on the Holy Night. I was somewhat acquainted with Fate/stay night, so I knew writer Kinoko Nasu could write things I didn’t hate, but it was hard to maintain that optimism in the face of Tsukihime, a game I straight up hated. Still, our guest Fen was excited, so was Jen, and… ok, honestly? Type-Moon games are popular. They get attention. Covering one on its first English release was just a good idea for getting folks to check out our work, no matter how unpleasant I found the work.
I fired up the game, and for a time I resisted its charms. The first scenes of magic being practiced left me cold, and I narrowed my eyes at how swiftly our female lead was made to share the spotlight with a clueless boy bearing the telltale traits of an audience surrogate. Certainly, the presentation was astonishing and the art breathtaking- from the first, it’s the most beautiful visual novel I’ve ever seen, and my confidence in that only intensified as the game went on. But I was bracing for this White Bread Boy to seize control of the story, relegating our titular Witch to a secondary spot because of Nasu’s misogynist tendencies.
Not only did this never happen, even our bland anime protagonist boy ended up having some charms of his own. Still, all my favorite parts of Witch on the Holy Night star another character, be it our main character Aoko, her somber partner in crime Alice, or Alice’s familiar Robin, who now gets added to a list of MAYBE three mascot characters in the history of fiction I genuinely like. The writing is evocative, imaginative, and fun, and I really can’t overstate how incredible this game looks. It’s not simply good art, it’s an approach to animation that draws on the legacy of the visual novel genre that had me head over heels.
Anyone who cares about visual novels needs to play Witch on the Holy Night. It’s… well, a wonder.
1. Live A Live
It’s a crime that the West didn’t know about this one. That I didn’t know about this one. We went nutty for Chrono Trigger back in the day, and Square (soft or Enix, it’s a crime of both) never thought “hey maybe we should show them the even better game those folks made the year before?” It was only when Em and Jackson of Abnormal Mapping did their podcast episode on the game that I learned about it, and just how much I’d been missing. Until then, I was mentally conflating it with Date A Live. Can you imagine. What an (unintentional) insult.
I suspect that a simple localization and port of the SNES original would still have made my top 10, and possibly still the number 1 spot to boot. The core game is that good. But an incredible all-star anime voice cast, gorgeous artwork that finally makes Square’s HD-2D seem like more than gimmicky bullshit, and a beautiful soundtrack by Yoko Shimamura take this classic and push it to the stars. The additions to the game are nice, though they don’t impress me as much as they do Jen. I just am happy to be here, in 2023, thinking about how long I should wait before replaying this game. Not long.
I don’t look forward to games like I used to. I definitely enjoy them, and there are games that I know I will check out when they release. But I just kinda go “oh hey that’s out, great!” instead of getting excited like I used to. So for me, looking forward at 2023… it’s actually NOT the games that I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about the work I’ll do on this site, both for it and literally ON it to make it a better experience. I’m thinking about the people I’ll get to work with, and the readers and listeners I’ll get to show that work to. So, here’s to a good 2023- to a good 10th anniversary for Scanline Media.
*In truth, I have done this song and dance with Bethesda RPGs in particular so many times that I have begun to suspect I’m not missing anything. There is no secret appeal- the art is bad, the writing is bad, the level design is bad, the combat is bad. All there is, is volume- there’s so much of it. People just like eating til they get sick despite the content being moment-to-moment terrible. I just can’t bring myself to fully accept this. It’s too terrible to make peace with. It’s the death of video games.
