If you have not already listened to the podcast of this category, this is the final results, so this will spoil the course of the discussion on that podcast! Be warned!
Who would have thought they’d ship a good Need for Speed, finally? Or that Gran Turismo 7 could teach me to love racing sims? There were plenty of surprises in 2022, but when you have to get down to one winner and two runners-up, it gets knives out fast. So for all the lesser surprises, shoutouts. But these are the top three.
The Winner
Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
Y’know, that Team Ninja? Hell of a team. They have certain… aesthetic sensibilities I am not a huge fan of, but they know how to make a damn fine action game. And with Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, they’ve shown that they can do it under any circumstances. Your publisher is embarrassing your work in advertisements, while moving the goalposts for your project and slashing the budget? That doesn’t stop them from putting out a fantastic game.
Of course, a lot of that credit should go to the writers on loan from Square Enix, Kazushige Nojima and Tomoco Kanemaki. The writing in this game is truly remarkable- it’s human in a way nothing Square nor Team Ninja has ever put out before. Add to that a great aesthetic sense, and the gulf between what we expected and what we got couldn’t be larger. It’s a clear Best Surprise.
The Runners-Up
Live A Live
It came out. They actually made the damn thing.
In 2022, they did an HD-2D remake of Live A Live, a game that Squaresoft put out on the SNES ages ago, never translated, and forgot about. That it’s good is beside the point. Of course it’s good, it’s freakin’ Live A Live! The surprise is that it happened. The surprise is that I am sitting here and can write, “they remade Live A Live.” I can say “the West finally got Live A Live.”
It’s just short of a miracle, I tell you.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Few franchises have felt as set in their ways as Pokémon… at least, until 2022. After twenty-five years, Game Freak was finally allowed to ask “what if we rethought the Pokédex? What if we fully ditched random encounters? What if we dropped gyms for action-infused boss battles, and we made catching more than one of a given species appealing?”
For a lot of franchises, this wouldn’t be remarkable- this is what you do with sequels. You iterate. That hasn’t been Pokémon’s MO, because they haven’t needed it to be. Updated art/graphics, a new area, and new monsters- that’s been enough to make bestseller after bestseller. And we critics can whine, and moan… and play the games anyway, like everyone else. Because it’s Pokémon, and even when it’s painfully unambitious and repetitive, it still has a magic that we crave. But Legends: Arceus really and truly tried, and in doing so, it captured our hearts in a way the series hasn’t in decades.
Already in 2023, we’ve had a few surprises, and I’m sure this category will be poppin’ once again come next February. For now, though, we’ve had our say. Our next category comes on Wednesday, with Biggest Disappointment!
Our art for the Gimmick Awards 2022 is a commission from @inkopolis on Twitter.
