January 2, 2023|Posts, Top 5 Lists
2022…. the year everything went back to normal? Well kinda I guess. The year saw me really solidify that PC gaming is where I think I will spend my golden years forsaking the controller for a keyboard and mouse and playing the earliest of access games. The year also saw me spending a ton of time just staring at my monitor tryin to decide what I wanted to play and put my energy into. The previous years we have done our top 5’s I have had quite the lists of played game to pare down to make my top 5. This year I played barely 50 different titles, compared to 90 plus I seem to usually play. I actually had a really hard time figuring out a top and was actually considering just doing a top 3, strange times indeed. But I put in the time, figured it out and without further ado here is my top 5 games of 2022.
As always remember these aren’t necessarily games that came out this year, just games that I played this year.
Number 5
Overwatch 2 (All Platforms)
So they call it Overwatch 2 but really I feel it should of been called Overwatch 1.5. The biggest change to Overwatch 2 was that the game went from a full retail purchase to free to play, which has its long lists of pros and cons for sure. The biggest pro is that they unified all your Overwatch accounts into one master account, which for a player like me who had put in most of their Overwatch time on the Switch and very little anywhere else was reaping the benefits of the progress I had made there. The unified account is great and I understand that games like Fortnite and Destiny have been doing it for a long time but the ability to just hop on anywhere and the progress you make is just on everything is a great new feeling to me. The biggest benefit of the game for me thou has been how much it has opened up my multiplayer friends list. Friends who didn’t think my word was enough to drop the $$$ on the game are actually getting into it now (and loving it uh huh) and I rarely play this game by myself now. The other big change that was made is that the main game went from 6 vs.6 to 5 vs.5. You now have 1 tank, 2 damage and 2 healers and I really feel this has opened the game up significantly. But besides the free to play and the number of player changes, everything else is pretty much the same, a super polished high speed first person shooter that I will continue to sink many more hours into.
Number 4
V Rising (PC)
V Rising is described as an open world, settlement building, survival game and I actually think that sums it up pretty well, especially if you add Diablo like vibes to that description. You start the game off as a newly resurrected vampire and you just get right into it, you have to start gathering your materials to build your shelter and immediately you encounter animals in the woods and humans trying to take you down. The combat systems are very well thought out and scale very well as you progress, the weapons are just down right cool looking and can make you feel OP at times, but in a real good way. One really cool thing that I have not seen in another game is the day and night cycle, so as you are playing time is constantly moving along. You are most powerful when the sun is down, but as soon as that sun comes up look out!!! You are forced to navigate through buildings and stick to the shadows during the day or the sun will mess you up big time, worth noting is that the sun damage effects are pretty darn cool looking, I may or may not have found myself on occasion stepping into the sun just to see the effects mess me up . Also worth mentioning being a vampire there is of course a whole blood system to this game. You are constantly collecting blood from your kills and taking essence from the living to feed your powers. You also use blood in all your crafting, which leads me to my one little nit to pick. The castle you build needs to be constantly fed blood to keep from decaying and as far as I progressed in the game this never changes, it kind of feels like a thing that when you hit high lever or end game you should be able to just craft something that keeps your castle fed automatically. I just mention this because if your like me you want to log and and play quick but don’t have enough blood to feed your castle you are stuck farming because literally nothing will work in your castle until it is fed, its not a huge problem but it can lead to the feeling of “I don’t want to log in just to farm” and maybe just playing something else if you have limited time. The game play loop is satisfying and I never felt lost or misguided, I was always pretty aware of what and where I had to go next. Maybe this is a good time to note that also I did not play this on a regular server but on a friends server and I have heard that the experience is definitely different on the public servers, but playing online with other people is not required, you can play solo PVE. I had a lot of fun playing this game this year and I really hope it becomes more popular as it continues to grow and maybe gets its final release. The game is in early access but not once did it feel like it.
Number 3
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
I know I know this game was huge in 2021, but I didn’t get to it till this year. I don’t have much experience with the Ratchet and Clank series, I know its been around forever, but leading up to Rift Apart the only other Ratchet and Clank I have played was 2016 self titled game. That game left an impression thou, it was the one of the first games I received on PS Plus when I had purchased my PS4 and if you remember my history with console gaming I didn’t have a lot of time in on consoles at that point. I was blown away by the graphics of the 2016 title… it was literally like playing a cartoon, and the action was great and the platforming was tight, and the humor had me in stiches, it was an unreal experience. So my expectations going into Rift Apart were lofty, and the game did not disappoint. Rift Apart is the game that should of launched the PS5, as it definitely feels like an next gen game. The graphics are stunning, the load times are blazing fast, and the controls take full advantage of the haptics and triggers in the controller. Its the whole dang package!!! But as we know things have not gone well this generation in terms of delays and shortages and I kind of feel like this game didn’t end up being the monster hit it should of. So lets break down the game and talk about the graphics first. Wowza… that is all just wowza. Just kidding but seriously the fidelity and the amount of detail that went into this game is insane. The characters and the environments are detailed and shiny in ways you just don’t see in a game, and the little things like fur on the Lombax’s or that you can actually see every part you knock off an enemies armor and its not just some generic animation, if you knock off a shoulder pad its knocked off and gone of that character till he is taken down. The game also takes full advantage of the SSD in the PS5 and makes the game feel like its all happening in one take, you rarely notice any load times. Lastly all your crazy weapons take full advantage of the DualSense controller, the biggest trick being with the triggers. You pull the triggers a short distance and meet a little resistance and that’s the first level of shot from that gun, pull it past the resistance and you you unleash the super level of the weapon. This is actually quite intuitive once you use it a few times, but I’m not gonna lie a few times when the action gets crazy I would accidentally pull that trigger all the way out of excitement. The last thing I wanted to touch on is something Sony really touted as being something truly spectacular and that’s the rifts in the game. My feeling about them is that they were fine, they are in every level but really don’t feel that spectacular after using them a couple times and the graphical feat it is being sold as feels a little smoke and mirror like. I’m not saying it takes anything from the game, it just feels like that special feature that’s supposed to knock your socks off and kind of just pulls them down a little bit. I did love every minute of this game, even if the adventure felt short in comparison to the 2016 game, I was able to complete the game in about 10 hours and spent another 2 hours collecting everything I could. Still this is the best experience I have had so far in this current generation and highly recommend it to everyone.
Number 2
Splatoon 3
So you know the saying, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”? Well that largely applies to this latest entry in the the Splatoon series. Splatoon 3 is full of everything you loved about Splatoon 2, and just a little bit more. There are of course some new levels, some new weapons, and a new single player campaign as expected. Also some quality of life changes to the lobbies and common areas. The biggest improvement thou I think is in the multiplayer grouping which was one of the biggest things that needed it. In the previous Splatoon’s if you wanted to play with friends you could, but you would all just be thrown into a match together, so sometimes you would be on the same team sometimes and sometimes you be against each other. But you are playing together right? That’s good enough right? Right?!!?!? It was such a Nintendo thing the way it was set up, you know so close to being awesome, but just that one little thing that had to mess it up. Well they finally got it right in Splatoon 3, you can actually join up with friends, be on the same team and go from match to match. Did they make it easy to get your friends set up in a multiplayer match? Well no, there is plenty of fumbling but once you figure out the weird sub menus you can do it with ease, but it is not intuitive at all. They also have added seasons to the game, so as you do your regular leveling you also level their version of the battle pass, unlocking cosmetic type things for your character. Also from getting levels in the battle pass I unlocked packs of cards… apparently there is some sort of card battling game somewhere in the game that I have yet to stumble upon. The problem is, and its not really a problem I guess, but when I log in I just want to hop right in a match and get playing, no messing around just go.
This leads me to thing that kept this game from being my number 1 this year, the communication errors. Nintendo has never been known for their amazing netcode and I’m not sure if its because this game was a bigger hit out of the gate then they expected, but between “communication errors” and “Player has left the lobby” messages it is nearly impossible to string together more then 2 or 3 matches in a row without getting punted to the lobby to start your wait for a match again. It is super frustrating when you play for an hour get punted 5 to 8 times on average (check out my game streams on our YouTube page for video proof). If I didn’t have a love for this game, or maybe it was the first entry in the series I probably wouldn’t have the patience to continue. This is a serious issue and I hope it is dealt with eventually.
Splatoon 3 is more of a good thing, and despite the online multiplayer issues will be in heavy rotation in my gaming in 2023.
Happy Splatting everyone.
Number 1
Vampire Survivors (PC)
So this should come as no surprise to anyone who follows us on a regular basis that this my game of the year. Apparently 2022 was the year I fell in love with Vampire themed games (see my number 4 of the year), thou Vampire Survivors (VS) really has little to do with Vampires. When you play VS the game plya is super simple, you only have to control the movement of your character as all your weapons auto fire. AS you kill monsters on the screen you collect gems, when you collect enough gems you level up, and when you level up you are given choices of what new weapons to add to your arsenal or upgrade your current weapons. You also earn gold as you progress through the levels which you use at the end of a run to either buy stats or unlock new characters. this game hooked me so hard with its easy to play, hard to master mechanics and its quick runs (the longest a run can last is 30 mins) which made it the perfect bite sized game to hop on and play a quick round of. The other satisfying aspect is the feeling of power and carnage, and instead of trying to describe it check this out.
This is a very typical looking round of VS, just hordes upon hordes of monsters attacking you and you holding them back. This is the carnage feeling I was talking about and how freaking cool is that!!!
This is the feeling of OP I was talking about, this here is a fully upgraded monster mashing machine just tearing through thousands of monsters.
So on top of the simple game play there is a quite in depth upgrading and evolution system. You see you pick and choose weapons and you also choose attributes as you level up. Certain weapons and attributes will combine for evolutions, so when you are making your leveling choices you are always keeping these things in mind to try and power up your character.
This game just scratched an itch that I had gaming wise this year, and probably will for some time to come as I’ve started new games of it on Xbox and iOS as its had releases on these platforms late in the year. Also they just released DLC adding more levels and characters to enjoy.
Vampire Survivors renewed my faith in gaming that there is still many new genres that can be created and that creativity is alive and well.
The Grumpy Old Gamers 
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