Who’s going to win? Who’s going to lose? That’s what you get to find out now! We had a blast putting together nominees for this past year’s Game of the Year Awards, and if you missed our livestream award extravaganza, or prefer to read things instead of watching them, we have all of our awards right here… for you…
Best Music: Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Runners-Up: Beacon Pines, Sonic Frontiers
Yasunori Mitsuda and the rest of his team at Monolith spared no effort when composing Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s gargantuan 12-hour soundtrack. With so many pieces having variations and arrangements to match specific scenes, the sheer scale of this body of work is commendable in its own right.
What’s even more impressive is the meticulousness and raw energy invested into every minute of the experience. The soundtrack ranges from luscious solo piano pieces to monumental symphonic metal epics featuring traditional Japanese woodwinds and large choir ensembles.When trying to discuss–I repeat- 12 HOURS of music it’s hard to choose specific highlights that would accurately portray so many other songs, and yet it’s incredible that not a single track chooses to take the easy way out. There aren’t 4 chord loops or extended ambient cuts anywhere to be seen. Even down tempo numbers like the lovely off-seer melody features multiple variations on its main motif with slight changes in progression, phrasing, and harmony every time a passage repeats that show just how much love and effort was poured even into the music that wouldn’t call attention to itself.
But, it’s of course in the high energy numbers that this team’s dedication has an opportunity to really shine, such as the theme for special enemy encounters, “A Formidable Enemy.” Not content with being an extremely catchy and danceable piece of symphonic rock, it’s awash with so many riffs, and small flourishes for each part of the ensemble, packing into a single piece the amount of ideas that other musicians would have spread over 4. And let us not forget the incredible instrumental heroics from the guitars dive bombing and chugging away even as the beautiful strings drown it out, to the preposterously flashy piano solos. This entire score is performed with all the fire of a shounen hero, and what could be better fitting for a JRPG?
With its amazing composition, passionate performances, and sheer size, this is truly a score worthy of accompanying an adventure larger than life.
-Walker
Best Audio: Signalis
Runners-Up: Faith, HYPER DEMON
As early as the first time you read the title of the game, Signalis evokes the feeling of distant radio signals, so far and so removed from you that you can only sit and speculate their meaning. One of Signalis’ biggest inspirations are real world numbers stations; cryptic shortwave radio signals that would broadcast seemingly arbitrary sets of numbers (as well as the occasional national anthem or piece of classical music) that have been the subject of mountains of speculation and conspiracy theories surrounding their origins and their purpose. The world of Signalis is similarly distant and alien. It draws from the familiar, like a set of numbers you recognize, but like the feeling of hearing a sudden crackle after listening to the same set of numbers being read back to back, it distorts itself in cryptic and horrifying ways.
While the game sports its own unique in-game numbers stations alongside other stations with other vague and mysterious purposes, its use of audio goes far above and beyond a simple numbers-stations-as-metaphor gimmick. Signalis sports a soundtrack by artists Cicada Sirens and 1000 Eyes full of dark distorted synths, haunting, often offkey and deeply compressed piano strings, and classical swells that are employed so so effectively at all the most heart wrenching moments of Signalis’ ambiguous yet deeply emotional story.
Signalis’ soundwork in all aspects is truly amazing. From the gun sounds that feel all too familiar to Resident Evil, to the deeply distorted and jarring cacophony the KOLIBRI enemies overwhelm you with when you walk into a room full of them, to the low screech that plays while your screen fills with the deepest shade of red you’ve ever seen every time you save your game (an all time Best Save Screen contender if that ever becomes one of our GOTY categories), it truly should come as no surprise that we loved how horrifying Signalis sounds.
-Scott
Best Visuals: Signalis
Runners-Up: Scorn, Elden Ring
“PS1 Graphics” used to be a scathing remark upon the graphical quality of games from the 00s and into the early 2010s. These days, thankfully, more and more people are recognizing both the latent charm and aesthetical advantages of low-fidelity textures and polygonally-limited environments and models. rose-engine’s Signalis, a survival horror game taking large inspiration from PS1-era games like Resident Evil, brandishes this antiquated style with bombastic effect to accentuate its levels, atmosphere, and characters.
Every frame in Signalis brims with a retro-futuristic flair, matching perfectly with the excellent array of worldbuilding art scattered across the game’s eerie rooms and corridors. The UI itself is replete with details, taking the form of a CRT screen to highlight both the technological and utilitarian aspects of the world Signalis invites one to explore. The uncomfortably unhinged androids skulking about are made all the more horrifying as their lack of detailing and polygons leaves the mind to fill in the blanks as they screech and succumb to visual distortions, heightening their terror.
With Signalis, every visual aspect has been considered and refined to a razor-sharp point, and the full effect is immaculate. The low-fidelity style of the moment-to-moment game is so crisp, it even manages to match unbelievably well with the high-quality sprite artwork showcased in the game’s cutscenes. The game is just that stunning to behold. In the past, game developers had to work within the limitations of older hardware to create vibrant and stunning worlds, but in the present day, rose-engine proves such limitations can be used to brilliant effect in enhancing a game’s experience.
-Spencer
Best Presentation: Pentiment
Runners-Up: Signalis, Faith
Pentiment is a rare video game that actually looks like the era it represents; the way that people would have depicted themselves and their life in 16th century Bavaria. The art style focuses primarily on Reformation woodcuts, with some scenes played out on medieval and religious manuscripts and art. Character text is presented as though being written by hand, with fading ink and misspellings corrected in real time, and different script-styles for different status and social classes that can change when uncovering new information about a person. The audio of Pentiment is all soft footfalls, the scratching of a pen, the solid thump of a press, minimal vocalizations, and an early music instrumental score. This is all very appropriate for a narrative that’s mostly a murder mystery, but is just as much focused on history, commentary on the dissemination of the printing press and the written word from the church to the common people, and the way that art can change or erase the story of a community. From the color palette and art style to the writing to the sound design, everything in Pentiment builds off of each other to form a game that’s interesting, visually stunning, and expertly composed.
-Franny
Best Mechanic: Soul Hacking (Xenoblade Chronicles 3)
Runners-Up: Throwing a Pokeball (Pokemon Legends Arceus), Throwing Your Guns/Alt. Fire (Neon White)
Blue Mages are cool!!! I will always stand by this one true fact about gaming: it’s super cool to learn the moves of your enemies, and use them against them in an incredibly modular and broken format. In recent years, more and more games are realizing this, from Final Fantasy XIV finally adding Blue Mage, to games like Nioh 2 taking the concept and making it fit into their pre-existing gameplay systems. It’s an idea that’s understandably limited by the scope of a lot of games, especially those that are focused on maintaining some sort of “balance”, but when it’s there, let me tell you, I am popping off. So imagine my joy when the notorious developer who doesn’t give a damn about scope or balance Monolith Soft decided to put Blue Mage into Xenoblade Chronicles 3!
Soulhacker is one of the many classes your characters gain access to over the course of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and it just might well be the best in nearly every way. Firstly, from an aesthetic standpoint, it’s taught to you by a member of the main antagonist organization who doesn’t seem to really care about anything because he’s a crazy old pirate, so the class’ outfit has you wearing their weird techno uniform while wielding two flaming anchors as fist weapons. Second, it integrates itself perfectly into the world by having you learn your various abilities via defeating the Xenoblade Chronicles’ series recurring unique named monsters, providing them with new purpose outside of just being a mini-boss in the open world. Finally, it provides a new dynamic to strategize your party around, which helps make the game’s occasional reliance on the holy trinity of RPG design (Tank, Damage, and Healing) a lot more fluid.
You can make any of your characters into a Soulhacker, and even further, you can make any of those Soulhackers more specialized into doing anything from more healing, more debuffs, being able to draw more aggro from enemies, the list goes on! While it’s really fun to play as a Soulhacker, the real joy comes from its hearkening back to an entirely different era of RPG design. An era where a certain class was allowed to be ridiculously strong, where there were so many different systems going on at any given time with a game, that it made things feel like almost anything could be possible. More games could stand to learn from letting players fool around and getting lost in their systems, and in other Role Playing Games’ case, it helps make their worlds all the more richer.
-Rose
Worst Mechanic: 2 Minute Job Design – Final Fantasy XIV Online: Endwalker
Runners-Up: Viola Block Parry for Witch Time (Bayonetta 3), Weapon Crafting (Destiny 2: The Witch Queen)
Final Fantasy XIV job design has had a history of being rebuilt to be more accessible with every new update. Back in the day, we had resources like TP, a form of MP for melee jobs that would fully drain when you sprinted to worry about, and cross-class abilities that required leveling multiple jobs. We had healers with swappable stances for healing and dealing damage, and tanks who, if they had their aggro generation abilities running, could barely do any damage. At first, the design focus was on getting rid of redundant systems, removing abilities and cross classing to solve issues like button bloat, then on taking away stances and TP to make jobs a little bit easier to manage.
With Shadowbringers, the jobs in the game had some of the best balance and depth they’d ever had. Most were easy to pick up and beginner friendly,with tanking and healing as more accessible roles, and every job getting simplified for the new and casual player, but full of depth and strategy for the high end players. Jobs having buff windows going out at one minute, 90 seconds, and 2 minutes made figuring out the best ways to do damage a lot of fun. Do I hold my 90 second buff so it lines up at 2 minutes? Or do we have a smaller burst at 3 minutes and a massive one at 6 when everything lines up? Raiding in Shadowbringers was some of the most fun the high end of the game had ever been.
And then Endwalker came around and suddenly nearly every job buff was set at 2 minutes. Which, shock of shocks, when every single damage buff in the game outside of a few hit at 2 minutes, suddenly you go from miles away the highest damage dealing classes in the game, to ones that aren’t really worth the tradeoff you get of not having any group buffs, which led to them shifting all of the abilities that weren’t on the 2 minute timer to that time frame. Jobs like paladin that always did sustained damage but not during burst windows suddenly became locked out of high end parties because everything was so reliant on that window. Every raid tier there have been multiple jobs locked out from being able to participate unless they could put together a team with friends. The first tier was Paladin, Dancer, and Machinist, the next it was Paladin, Warrior, Machinist, and Reaper.
Of all of the mechanical decisions in gaming, the 2 minute window has done the most harm to long-time players of the game. It might make things easier for new players who started in Endwalker, but it has led to a homogeneity that even casual players are feeling; leading to a lot of people taking long breaks, or even unsubscribing from the game altogether.
-Lorelai
Best Character: Eunie (Xenoblade Chronicles 3)
Runners-Up: Ranni the Witch (Elden Ring), Sage (Sonic Frontiers)
I would’ve been happy to see any of Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s main cast in this spot, but Eunie was the obvious winner for me. She’s a brash, sharp-tongued woman who still finds a way to show she cares about her friends. She’s a healer, but takes no shit and can fight just as well as her more aggressive counterparts. She’s also absolutely hilarious, shooting down insincerity from anyone. Grey, a mysterious cowboy hero, often hides his emotions around the party. Eunie is quick to tell him to drop the façade and just be honest about how much he likes the crew. The main thrust of her character arc is struggling with her collective pasts, the continuous war that every person in their society is trapped within for all time. Eunie breaks free from this cycle with confidence, leading her friends and society as a whole in healing from the trauma of the endless now.
-John
Worst Character: Lien (AI The Somnium Files: Nirvana Initiative)
Runners-Up: Kenny (High on Life), Ghost (Destiny 2: The Witch Queen)
AI: The Somnium Files – nirvanA Initiative has been a pretty divisive game around my circles, but if there’s one thing that nearly everyone agrees on, it’s that Lien really sucks.
You’re introduced to Lien within the first hour of the game, where his literal first action is to profess his undying love to Mizuki’s high schooler friend Kizuna, while he cries about being laid off. In another game, there could be something to this! There could be some sort of analysis about the way that women quickly become tools of comfort in the eyes of men without any sort of thought or consideration. Instead, nirvanA Initiative does absolutely nothing with this concept, and in general, does nothing with Lien at all!
Lien stalks Kizuna relentlessly for the next six years, while other characters grow and change in all sorts of ways, Lien remains exactly the same, still stalking the same girl since she was in high school. When it comes to engagement with the overarching narrative of the game, the most Lien does is pop up in situations where incredibly contrived reasons are devised to utilize his singular talent of lockpicking. In the last couple hours of the game, where everything is popping off and things are really starting to happen, the game actually forces you to go do a whole sequence with Lien out of nowhere just so you can open a lock somewhere, and it grinds the pacing to a ridiculous halt.
All of these issues on their own make Lien unlikeable in his own right, but what truly puts him beyond the pale is that nirvanA Initiative actually rewards his stalking, and puts him together with Kizuna at the end. Thoughtlessness doesn’t even begin to convey how bad this sort of writing is; the idea that if you stay true to the grind and harass a woman nonstop, she’ll eventually realize just how charming you are. Maybe if there was any sort of chemistry between Lien and Kizuna; maybe if there was a sense of meaningful growth as they each changed over the course of the game, a story like this wouldn’t feel so bad. There’s even a universe where Lien’s terminal lack of coolness, despite his slightly edgy appearance, is charming! Instead, the lack of care and awareness that went into the writing of his character does nothing but bring down what should have been an amazing sequel to an amazing game.
-Rose
Best Surprise: Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher
Runners-Up: Sonic Frontiers, Weird RPG
If I had to think about the most unlikely series to get a new installment in 2022, I’d probably think it would be Monster Rancher. The monster raising sim franchise hasn’t had a new installment since the phone app My Monster Rancher in 2011, and prior to this year we only just got an updated port of Monster Rancher 1 and 2 for the Nintendo Switch, which simplified the physical feature of scrounging up CDs to a new keyword format in order to unlock and train new monsters. So color me surprised when not only do we get a new game in the series, but it’s a crossover with the much beloved Ultraman franchise. Now with that kind of a mix of two not-incredibly-popular series stateside, it would make sense that any English translation would be relegated to a South-East Asian release only for import. Yet, Bandai Namco truly cooked this year by letting Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher release stateside digitally for many curious and eager fans alike to enjoy.
Nothing ostensibly big has changed in the formula here: you get to choose between buying a stock monster from the local town or insert keywords (song titles in Japan and Southeast Asia versions) to potentially unlock a completely new kaiju from the hearty tokusatsu franchise to then raise its various stats and make compete against other monsters in a fighting sequence that’s all about positioning and luck. Admittedly, the accuracy component that was notoriously difficult in previous games feels more even-handed here; you’re just as likely to get hit with a devastating blow that retires a Kaiju as you are to sweep an entire cup thanks to dedicated min/max strategies beforehand. Training increases your Kaiju’s Anger meter, and once it’s full they’ll go on a Rampage which could end up in a surprisingly good outcome or a smackdown from the titular hero himself. I knew I’d have a good time training various Kaiju up to their retirement, but I definitely didn’t expect it to become my gateway to Ultraman after having spent over 50 hours in the loop. Thank you, Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher, for opening my heart to the likes of Alien Baltan and Gomora through my time raising them to victory and acclaim.
-Maverick
Best Moment: The Eclipse (Xenoblade Chronicles 3)
Runners-Up: Project Protection Protocol (Pokemon Scarlet/Violet), Final Level Sequence (Spark the Electric Jester 3)
About 50 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles 3, The Eclipse occurs, which sees our party at their lowest. They have been captured by their enemy, locked in a prison for months, and now Mio, the catgirl of the team, is set to be executed. I don’t want to fully spoil what goes down, but there’s plenty more game after this, so you can figure some of it out. Going from the lowest to the highest point in Noah and Mio’s character arcs in a masterful, transcendent way is a big reason why The Eclipse stands out as the highlight in the incredible story of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but I’d be remiss to skip mentioning that this is a moment that weaponizes cucking someone. Someone gets broken up with so hard it ruins an entire evil plan. The greatest victory the Ouroborus crew gets over their enemies, Mobius, is thanks to realizing that the future is important to accept instead of living in the present, even if things are at their lowest. Also you gotta be nice to your catgirl or you’re done for. Xenoblade rules.
-John
2022 What the Fuck Award
Ah 2022, a pretty lively year for games but even livelier with games news. Specifically, a whole lotta bad news with the way this hobby we share gets tossed around and stomped on. For starters, Disco Elysium creators and creative co-op ZA/UM saw the removal of key members Robert Kurvitz, Aleksander Rostov and Helen Hindpere, prompting a subsequent lawsuit from the trio over accusations of fraud. Truly ironic that the developers of a game reckoning with the forces of capitalism and poor politics ultimately got upended by capitalism and poor politics.
If this were the only sort of company wide fuck-up that’d be one thing, but 2022 sure gave us a look into just how little companies care about games media. Tencent effectively sundowned Fanbyte and its related sites, a shame given how personable the site made itself to its audience (RIP to the two articles Maverick made for its wrestling vertical). While something like the collapse of G4 seemed inevitable, and doubly so once finding out that its demise came from the joint mishandling of funds between CEO expenditures and payouts for streamers, one of the biggest shocks of the year came in the form of Jeff Gerstmann getting fired by Giant Bomb, the company then being one of several bought by Fandom, and Fandom then laying off several staff members across GiantBomb and GameSpot including recent GB hire Jess O’Brien and long running member Jason Oestreicher. Jeff’s been able to set up a Patreon and weekly streaming/podcast setup, but this entire year’s been a grim reminder that people making most of the money in these media verticals really couldn’t care less about the people who hustle day in and day out to make these sites interesting.
Of course, the true nature of the What the Fuck Award wouldn’t be complete without an out of left-field moment, and among the several squares on people’s proverbial 2022 Bingo Cards, Yuji Naka getting arrested on two separate accounts of insider trading probably wasn’t on any of them. The man responsible for Balan Wonderworld, a bogus game that insulted the audience it was meant to placate, had gone on to become somewhat of a hero for the common man after blaming the game’s rough development on the greed of publisher Square Enix. Then, Yuji Naka actively removes a member of his staff when sharing a snapshot of the development team for Balan, offhandedly confirms connections between Michael Jackson (his collaborator, actually) and Sonic 3, and then finally invests in upcoming mobile projects for the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series before their public announcements. Truly, Yuji Naka had a case of Going Through It and we could all feel that on the day he got double arrested. As we look onward to the new year, I guess between the genuine dread of being in games media and greater desire to leave a mark in life be it good or bad, it becomes easier to recognize you truly aren’t off the deep end when it comes to how video games play a role in your life. Solidarity forever, and fuck Balan’s Dad.
-Maverick
2022 For the Win Award
2022, for as many turns it gave us, also had plenty to celebrate!
For starters, the Zelda Wiki has completely defected from Fandom, after its announcement of its mass acquisition campaign . The Wiki had been running through Gamespedia since 2017 and after surviving Fandom’s buyout of their original host, the decision to leave is admirable. Being able to hit the bricks instead of trying to appease the wants of a force like Fandom who’ve all but ransacked the honored tradition of forum posting and GameFAQ updating felt like something that couldn’t happen anymore. Godspeed Zelda Wiki, may Tears of the Kingdom get you a motherload of hits once people start searching for lore.
In the wake of Activision Blizzard shitting the bed with everything regarding its game development, treatment of employees, and credibility as an employer, it’s always reassuring to know when workers are able to get demands met (since the headassery of one CEO or Project Manager shouldn’t cost the paychecks of those below him). Blizzard East, formerly Vicarious Visions, along with Raven Software, managed to get union voting on the table and ultimately have their unions recognized, or at least vocalized amidst the general conversation regarding whether or not Microsoft might make a bid for the company. Times are hectic, and in the wake of seeing multiple people lose their jobs for no good reason, it’s a helpful reminder that the workers do have power when in collaboration.
Finally, more games are being able to implement features that allow for more inclusivity in who gets to play. This trend has been ongoing for quite some time, but it’s a great reminder when AAA studios are able to truly dedicate budget and resources towards including features that games made with much less had still taken the time to incorporate. Big shout-outs to God of War: Ragnarok in particular for how much it allows the player to work with while still maintaining its core features. From being able to change the text color and presentation of subtitles to incorporating a screen reader to even changing gameplay so that someone doesn’t have to wreck their wrist button mashing, these inclusions do show what happens when studios recognize just how much money they have on hand and that making games available for everyone isn’t going to harm the vision that’s there.
-Maverick
Best Writing: Norco
Runners-Up: Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Pentiment
There are something around fifty-or-so different government registered townships surrounding Lake Pontchartrain, one of America’s largest, briniest, and shallowest lakes. It’s haunted as shit. One of these lakeside towns is Norco, LA, which stands as the centerpiece of an entire universe where nothing ever changes (the mini-mart is now fully automated and the last cashier they had is now the bodyguard outside the mart) yet everything is happening (boat and floaty party, you’re invited, at the rocket launch in the center of the lake! Not evil!) Norco celebrates the joys and pains of humanity to its fullest through combining folktale, sci-fi, and a noir-ish Americana to depict a bayou town’s struggle with belonging and identity in an increasingly disconnected late-capitalist world.
Sometimes you’re feeding people week-old hot dogs, taking in a puppet show, fueling a stalemate between coked up Proud Boys, trawling for gators, hanging with a juggalo detective, or just having a staring contest with a stuffed monkey…but most importantly you are making connections with people. During a time when folks in America are so isolated from each other, where you can be constantly surrounded by people and still feel utterly alone – Norco is a game that takes suburban depression and nihilism together and embraces them as understandable characteristics of human life. It criticizes institutions of labor and faith and gives space to let the people who get wrapped up within them (often absurdly so, in our case) speak for themselves. Sometimes people, gods, or crocodiles do evil things to gain power, but as much as they fight against it, even the wicked aren’t disconnected from the tethers that weave us all together. By the end, Norco is a staggering story where you continually ask simple questions to a local community member or a god and receive an incredible, complex tapestry of an answer. It makes you think that if this is what Norco is like, then what about those 49 other tiny towns that surround Lake Pontchartrain (again: haunted as shit!!!)
-Solon
The 100% Orange Juicin’ Award For When You’re Juicin’ Your Game Hard And It Feels Good to Play a Game Award Not Presented By Balan This Year (His Dad’s Going Through Some Stuff 🙁) Award: Evil West
Runners-Up: Rumbleverse, Neon White
When I first started playing Evil West on stream, one of my girlfriends immediately came in to ask what year it had come out in, only to be flabbergasted when I said that it had come out just months ago in 2022. Evil West is pure concentrated Xbox 360-era B game THQ-ass gold in every way, and it fucking rules. They do not make games like this anymore, but Evil West proves they should.
Evil West is basically just your average third person action game, but the sheer breadth of tools and breakneck pace at which they are given to the player is admirable in a world where most games take hours to even unlock new traversal features. You start Evil West with a huge metal gauntlet and a pistol, and not two chapters later you’ve got teleporting, electrocution, a rifle, a shotgun, and all sorts of new kinds of punching to do. It’s the closest we’ve gotten to the light of God Hand in almost twenty years, and WE NEED MORE OF THIS!
It would have been so easy for Evil West to just be a half-baked B game with mediocre combat that never strays too far from its opening level, but instead Flying Wild Hog Games decided to follow the Vampire Survivors creation ethos and recreate the sensation of one of those fancy insane slot machines without any of the nasty gambling. Every move you have is tied to a different button; left trigger to aim down sights with your rifle, right trigger to fan the trigger of your revolver, square to fire a shotgun, the list goes on. When you electrocute an enemy with your grapple or any of the other various ways to do so, you immediately go into a rapid ridiculously over the top punch combo that literally makes slot machine noises. Couple all this with the fact that every enemy that you fight explodes into comical bursts of viscera and it just all feels so damn good.
-Rose
Most Disappointing: Bayonetta 3
Runners-Up: Neon White, AI The Somnium Files 2: Nirvana Initiative
I truly don’t know what else to say about this game. In the final quarter of 2022, I was more or less thrown on an emotional rollercoaster with the release of Bayonetta 3. First there was excitement that it was happening, then concern over Helena Taylor being replaced for the role, some embarrassment over how a lot of the ensuing discourse got handled, and ultimately I sit here in dejection and resignation over what the game is. I’ve got a review out for the bigger points, Rose and I spent three whole hours stomping on what makes this game insane to us, so it’s only natural that this whole campaign ends with a declaration: Bayonetta 3 is the most disappointing game of 2022.
Mechanically, it’s not a bad game; the part where you play as Bayonetta is the tightest the series has felt, and the implementation of multiple demon and weapon loadouts leaves plenty of space for replayability. That said, the story commits its most grievous sin of taking “The Lore” of Bayonetta way too seriously, and brings the entire project down to Inferno with it. Jeanne is an afterthought at best and a wet fart of a minigame segment at worst, Viola, while fun as a dorky Nero equivalent, is irritating to actually control since no one bothered to make a game all about dodging work inherently with parries. Luka is the most disposable he’s ever been, which is mind boggling considering how much they want to make him a plot point to the extent of writing in a new rich backstory, and it’s especially head-turning when, in any and all conversation about this game, I can bet 5 bucks against anyone that they won’t know who the main villain for the game is. Bayonetta famously said that “As long as there’s music, [she’ll] keep on dancing” at the end of her outrageous introduction to gamers back in 2009. Well, three games in I can confidently say the music’s over; get your shoes, honey, and get off the dance floor.
-Maverick
Best Ongoing: Warframe
Runners-Up: Monster Hunter Rise, Harvestella
While too many AAA games are chasing the phantom clout of trying to be too much like films and prestige television, Digital Extreme’s funny little free-to-play space ninja game has been steadily refining itself over the years since its launch in 2013. In 2022, Warframe launched cross-play, allowing players to connect with each other regardless of their platform; a big step for any online game to be sure. But the real clencher for Warframe’s position as the Best Ongoing Game of 2022 lies in the execution and follow-through of one of its greatest story arcs – The New War.
The New War is an incredible demonstration of what an actual film-like experience in a game can be. Warframe had been building up to the New War for years, and the payoff was well worth the wait. It opens with the second invasion of the Sentients, a robotic faction from ages past, who have returned to take over the Origin System. Instead of throwing the player into a series of samey missions as is standard practice for shooters these days, the player first takes control of a Grineer soldier; a grunt-type enemy the player has killed countless times before. The mission makes it imminently clear how overpowered Warframes are, and how deadly and dangerous this world is to the average person. From there, the player takes control of other characters as well, including Teshin, Warframe’s PvP vendor. Imagine a Mario game that opens up with you playing as a Goomba; imagine a Splatoon game that has you play a level as one of the Splatfest idols. That’s the kind of experience that the New War offers, and it’s all for the purpose of contextualizing just how all-encompassing this invasion is, as well as what the world is like for the factions the player has come to know, and that’s just in the first few missions.
I won’t spoil what happens in the New War, but it certainly has some of the coolest moments I’ve ever experienced in a video game (if you really liked the Azem reveal in FFXIV, you’ll like what the New War does). And once you complete it, the world of Warframe permanently changes. Locations, environments, and even the world map change to reflect the damage the New War has wrought. Some of the newest content in the game expands on aspects brought up during the New War, from the Veilbreaker update offering missions where you once again play as that Grineer soldier, to the Angels of the Zariman, which adds a unique fusion of Warframe’s open-world and mission-based gameplay offerings.
It’s always been easy for me to recommend Warframe since the movement mechanics are fun to learn, the nature of its design allows for cooperative play and interesting buildcrafting, and its one of the few free-to-play games that actually embraces that structure of game content delivery, as it doesn’t lock players out of content or cosmetics with an additional price tag with each update. Nobody is doing what Warframe is doing, and more games should follow their example.
-Spencer
Worst Game: Babylon’s Fall
Runners-Up: High on Life, Fashion Police Squad
It’s insane to think that there was in fact a point in my life where I believed Platinum Games could do no wrong. A time where I even went out of my way to buy a Wii U just to play The Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2. Unfortunately that age is long behind us, and while Platinum has been putting out some questionable work over the last few years, Babylon’s Fall is easily the worst.
Babylon’s Fall was supposed to be a follow-up of sorts to Platinum Games’ developmental relationship with Square Enix that was forged by NieR: Automata. It was shown at an E3 presentation to a middling reaction, with the reception becoming only more dour with the reveal that it would be a Live Service title. In a perfect world divorced from the way this model has been utilized across the past few years (and to be safe maybe a world without capitalism), the idea of a Platinum Games’ title that got continual updates almost seems like a boon in their favor. Players of Character Action games already love replaying the same levels over and over, so giving some sort of tertiary hook in the form of cosmetics, or pacing things out through a time-locked format has a lot of potential! Sadly, the only potential Babylon’s Fall made good on was the potential to further accelerate the erosion of Platinum Games.
Immediately, the gameplay of Babylon’s Fall is somehow on the level of a bad licensed hack-and-slash game from the PS2 era, with limited weapon options and even fewer combos. The core loop of the game involves queuing into missions Monster Hunter style, and doing some mediocre platforming as you make your way to a slightly stronger enemy (or sometimes even a boss!), defeating them, leaving, and starting all over again. Again, if the gameplay was even close to parity with any of Platinum’s flagship titles, there could have been something to all this, instead of creating an experience so dire that a server shutdown notice was put out only months after release, and PC player numbers peaked at just 1106 players.
Even outside of the gameplay, there isn’t much else to love about Babylon’s Fall. Several player animations and gear sets were directly imported from Final Fantasy XIV, which in a vacuum would be just fine, but without any sort of aesthetic base to work off of, end up making the game feel like a thrift store of ideas. Despite being a full-priced game, Babylon’s Fall also wanted to operate on a battle pass model, asking for additional money right from the get-go (though they would quickly make that first battle pass free). With other games that use this system, like Destiny 2 and Warframe, and even shooters like Apex Legends or Fortnite all available for free, it’s mind boggling that this model was seen as even remotely viable for any game, let alone one as rough and bare bones as Babylon’s Fall.
While all sorts of discourse around Platinum Games later in the year would quickly overshadow Babylon’s Fall, it still remains as a perfect exemplification of all the recent problems surrounding the company. It was a project with no real ideas behind it, and the lack of direction and complete misuse of developers and their talents resulted in what can only be described as the worst.
