Game of the Year 2022
So I have reposted my thoughts on Horizon Forbidden West and now I want to give a reflection on Game of the Year. In my first post, I listed five games that I was mulling for Game of the Year: Horizon Forbidden West, Inscryption, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise, Marvel: Midnight Suns. I also would like to add two more for consideration as I had plenty of time to play games over my Winter Break: Trails from Zero and Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core Reunion. This will be a long post but I will try to summarize my thoughts in one-two paragraphs per game and come to a final deliberation. I have three main criteria for my Game of the Year reflections. First, the depth of story and its capacity to think about ethical issues, second, the capacity for using unique parts of my brain either in gameplay or reflection, and third, does the graphical design match with the aesthetic created by the game world? For me, gaming is an art, and it is one of the places I find my meditative calm, so for me, these three questions really get to the heart of what induces meditative calm for me.
Screenshot taken from my PS5
Horizon Forbidden West
I’ve said a lot about Horizon: Forbidden West on this blog already. Its reflection on human greed creating a bleak world, the challenge of finding the truth of the world’s past, and the challenge of building a coalition to tackle ever-growing problems was masterfully told. The diversity of biomes and locations show a great relationship with a variety of peoples and the land. The music in Horizon: Forbidden West was well orchestrated and evoked feeling, the environment, and tension in great relation with the art design. I got to think about cloning, artificial intelligence, the preservation of knowledge, and many other ideas. The puzzles were also well done in Horizon. The puzzles weren’t difficult but used the environment and different elements well. The combat was real-time but requires knowledge of enemy weaknesses and they removed a lot of the spamming tactics you could do in Horizon Zero Dawn.
I wanted more from Horizon in terms of delegation. You only see Aloy’s progress and there are very little direct ways to control teammates or send them on quests. With a team of capable people, the characters spend most of their time hanging out in the base which felt odd. The Zeniths are also a little cartoonishly evil at points and I think more could have been done with the dread element of people seeming good and doing evil as a surprise element rather than the Zeniths being as cartoonish as they were.
Screenshot taken from Adam Fitzpatrick’s PS5
Inscryption
I love card games. Inscryption is a deck builder It is more fun when a game forces me to try a type of game I don’t play regularly. I don’t do much with Roguelike games and it was a lot of learning to get through the first Act of Inscryption. This game is uniquely three different variants of a card based game with different deck-building mechanics for each act. There are a lot of hidden puzzles and there is such a creepy ambience throughout the whole game. It also has an overarching meta discussion of a youtuber who buys packs and pulls cards. I thought so much about what it means to learn the truth and the unintended consequences of learning truths which powerful people do not like. Inscryption’s puzzles are extremely difficult, especially because they rely on a lot of hidden mechanics (an escape room would be an apt comparison.) People better than I am at escape rooms will love the first act of this game.
The music is well done and does three different styles of music in the midst of the game. It is retro feeling but not choppy which is hard to do synthesizing retro styles of game music and synthesizers. I felt creepy and scared most of the game and that was the goal of the game. I do think this game suffered from doing too much at times given that each act is its own style. Especially in Act 3, the quality does diminish a little bit and that’s a shame. I think the pacing of the story could have been better handled as well.
Screenshot from my Nintendo Switch
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is the best of the Xenoblade Chronicles games. A complex story tying together themes of war and who causes and controls conflicts, loss and the desire to freeze time, and interpersonal strife and the ability to build human connection is intricately done. Trauma is such a unique and challenging reality and people respond to trauma differently. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 does an outstanding job of giving characters realistic and different responses to the traumatic nature of Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s world. The score is legendary and I’m looking to find a way to put an official soundtrack on my Spotify. The manipulation of the world has so many resonances with how war is promoted and encouraged for the benefit of only a few people. The puzzles are not difficult and for this game that’s good because the world is deeply immersive and difficult puzzles would break the immersion.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 suffered from not being obviously connected to the worlds of Xenoblade 1 and 2. That makes for a good entry point but a lot of good potential lore is lost unless you have the patience to find Easter Eggs in a 80+ hour game. I also wonder about some of the combat mechanics and the lack of suspense in terms of the game’s romantic pairings.
Screenshot taken from my PS5
Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise
The game where Jack is obsessed with killing Chaos. This meme of Jack, the main protagonist gives players the feel that the dialogue and story is a joke. This prequel and reimagining of the world of Final Fantasy I gives a strong reflection on heroism and how we value heroes. I also thought a lot about simulation theory and what it means if what we think is real isn’t. In an age where we are getting truths dispelled in many sectors, knowing how to deal with existential dread is vital. Final Fantasy Origin is such a strong telling of how characters learn about existential dread and find their own answers. The puzzles are not too difficult but the gameplay is punishing, but for this game, I like the difficulty. The difficulty of dealing with existential dread is one of life’s hardest difficulties and dealing with challenging bosses gives players a pinnacle to climb. The high level cap and escalating challenges is so well built, minus some issues with the pacing. Who are our heroes and what do we really know about them? I’ve never been haunted by this question as much as I have been while playing Final Fantasy Origin.
The challenge of this game is getting past some of the early cheesy dialogue and figuring out the equipment system as you head towards the end of the game. The other three characters also have very limited customization options so I often had inventories of piled junk and that chunk of time in the inventory really breaks game flow in a game relying on heavy action and exploration sequences.
Screenshot taken from my PS5
Marvel: Midnight Suns
I am not a Marvel person. I haven’t seen any of the movies and know very little of the lore. However, I highly recommend Marvel: Midnight Suns as a game on its own merits. The turn-based card combat works really well with the team building and the combos you can do. The relationships with other characters are real and raw without delving into too much romance (though there are definitely charged moments, I think, it’s hard to tell and I’ve never picked up on those well.) The team building tensions are articulated well and the revealing of the secrets was well paced. The exploration around the Abbey was fun and the new abilities you get from exploration are important. I never felt like I was wasting time on side quests. There are a lot of great ways to build interpersonal relationships and different ways to build each character in battle. The score is phenomenal. I felt the tension and sadness in the MIdnight Suns world through the environment and music well. I went into this game excited for XCOM style combat with a different skin and got the environmental combat I wanted and yet the personal connections and gifting mechanics were really positive.
Screenshot taken from my PS5
Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero
I just got time to start this game and am halfway through Chapter 3. The Legend of Heroes series is 8 games in English with several more translations coming forth next year. We have Trails Into Azure and Trails into Reverie due this year and Boundless Trails due the year after. The Legend of Heroes is the best integrated world in gaming, and for me it’s not a contest. To take a world and build a consistent narrative flow through 11 games with aging, intrigue, and political development is very underappreciated in the gaming world. Trails from Zero centers on Crossbell and the key aspect is the corruption of the Crossbell state. As an American, a lot of pieces in the narrative ring relatively similar to what is happening under the surface in a lot of American cities. Your existence as a main character is part of a PR stunt put on by the police department to try to win favor over an independent guild called the Bracers who is protecting the civilians. There are mafias, corrupt politicians, business owners currying for favor, street gangs, and the overall feeling of powerlessness in the beginning of the game is palpable.
This is a translation of an old game and it does have its limitations. The hidden quests can be really weird to find, especially in a map as large as Crossbell. The battle system is a weird hybrid of a grid and turn-based combat system which doesn’t flow well. The music still holds up and I am appreciative of the depth of storytelling. This game makes you want to be a part of the lore in a unique way. If we had gotten this game in the arc when we were supposed to get this game, (after the Trails in the Sky trilogy), then the graphics make more sense, but in 2022, this port does play like an older game.
Screenshot taken from my PS5
Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core: Reunion
I never played the original Crisis Core, except for watching another friend play the first hour or so on his PSP. Final Fantasy VII is a fantastic world and really was a key reflection piece of learning how corporations can be really problematic and harm the common good. Crisis Core has a mission based structure with some free-roaming information gathering and quest fetching. The ambience is good, I liked the music in battles and the varying music styles. It also answers a lot of the prequel questions in the original Final Fantasy VII world. The story is very relatable as I worry about the influence our energy companies have over large sections of the world and how energy production is causing great harm to the planet. Corporations can manufacture war and outrage and Crisis Core has given me a lot to think about how to counteract the influence of corporations and their perception on public opinion. The ambience is of a punishing world and Crisis Core pulls that off well. The gameplay is excellent. I love the sword combat and different dodge and guard styles which Zack gains over time.
There are some distractions from this: 1) The Mission based structure when you have to grind certain missions over and over again to level takes away from the ambience. There are some games where level grinding adds to the experience but Crisis Core is not one of them. 2) There are so many hidden mechanics in terms of leveling up that it is challenging and it really drove me nuts trying to grind materia. Being a remaster, it is understandable to not want to change the mechanics too much from the original, but there weren’t even great explanations of the hidden mechanics which took a lot of time and research to figure out how to proceed.
Conclusion
This is a very difficult decision as all of the games were good and all of the games have some drawbacks. I also know I did not play Elden Ring or God of War: Ragnarok so that does present a different perspective as those were the two landmark titles this year. For me, the games in this list are all great. I could recommend these games to any gamer as reflective and overall good games. I can’t even use the which world do I want to go back to clause as all of these games have DLC or new content based in the same world due out this year and I want to return to all of these worlds. I still play the Mods in Inscryption and am waiting for a sale to get the FInal Fantasy Origin Season Pass. Many of the DLC or new games are on my pre-order track for this year. So I am a very happy gamer last year and continuing into this year. However, the game I keep thinking about and wanting to come back to is…
Screenshot from my Nintendo Switch
Xenoblade Chronicles 3. The dialogue, the tension, the ethical quandries, all of these in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 are top notch and I still wonder about the foundations of our world based on the endless empire spending arising in the United States, China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. I hurt for the characters who struggled to get through endless war and the DLC looks fantastic. I feel enchanted by the music and I like how the characters build good chemistry and seeing their problem solving skills unfold. It is an immersive world and I don’t think Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has gotten the credit it deserves even as a Game of the Year contender at the Game Awards.
I hope you have enjoyed this Game of the Year reflection. I’d love to hear your thoughts about Game of the Year. Please find me at @whatcouldbeingb on Twitter. Next week I will begin to write about some of the games on this list which I have not written full content for yet. I’m also dreaming of a Discord Server and I think I know what I want to build but it still needs some time to percolate. Until next time!
