Games I Played in 2022

A short-ish review of every (new) game I played 2022. New as in new to me, not as in released in 2022. This project was mostly an excuse for me to get through my backlog of games, and I’d say it worked to an extent. I’ve organized the games in the order than I played through them.

Metroid Dread (2021)

Metroid Dread is most definitely a Metroid game. If you didn’t know, there were rumors around the DS era of a new Metroid game titled “Dread”. A sequel to Metroid Fusion and the possible end of the story line the games had running. While we wouldn’t see another 2D Metroid until late in the 3DS, we did get to see what Dread was. And personally, I think it was a Metroid game.

Mechanically, Dread plays amazing. Samus has never been more agile, and with the new more stealthy sections the move set is appreciated. Fighting enemies, maneuvering, and getting power ups is great as expected. But my criticism lies in other aspects of the game. I feel like exploration is too linear. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by Super Metroid and Hollow Knight, but the game feels constricted. Its not like I gain some new power up that allows me to go explore and forge my own path forward, but rather it feels I get a new power up to open a door at some previously known dead end. While there’s nothing too bad about this, I just can’t help but feel a little disappointed when more modern metroidvanias have much more freedom in them. It also doesn’t help that the game encourages heavy usage of the map to figure out where to go next. The map has a feature that highlights all doors of a certain type, as well as indicating which ones have been opened and which ones haven’t. This trivializes most of the exploration as its no longer “explore to find the next power up” but rather “heres where to go to progress”.

But don’t let my complaints fool you, everything else is wonderful. The combat, the story, the environments, its all amazing. It lives up to its Metroid name. Super Metroid is still a bit better though.

8/10

Pokemon Legends Arceus (2022)

Pokemon Legends Arceus (PLA) was a bit of a surprise. Its a massive departure from the core series. Instead of focusing on battling, it goes back to the series roots of “Gotta Catch ‘em All”. But PLA is much more streamlined than its complementarities. It keeps a fast pace by allowing capture outside of battle, which greatly helps as catching Pokemon makes up a majority of the game. You’ll be spending more time running around throwing balls than actually fighting most of the time. Luckily, this game play loop is pretty solid, for the first while anyway. While fun and engaging, after the first few areas in the game it becomes a bit stale, especially if you have been doing your best to fill out the Pokedex as you go. Sadly, the game doesn’t do much of anything to add anything interesting. You only get more powerful balls as you progress, none of which fundamentally change how things are captured.

For the battles the game actually has, its a bit hard to say if it was difficult or not. I’m gonna go ahead and say I spent a bit more time than intended catching Pokemon as my team was over leveled for most if not all of the battles in the game. The battle system did see some minor changes, but seeing as the battle system is pretty much single player only and not returning, it feels like a waste of effort. Sure, it was unbalanced at times, but it was pretty enjoyable compared to standard turn based battles. I would love to see it make a return in a future game with some refinement. Catching them all was a fun enough task that I saw myself doing it for all the Pokemon. While at the end it felt a bit more grindy with the final reward being a bit lame, it was still fun to accomplish.

PLA has all the jank modern Pokemon games are known for. Its fun, thats for sure. But if you don’t pace yourself it can begin to feel like more of a slog, especially if you’re trying to catch them all.

7/10

Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019)

I’ve never really played a Fire Emblem game. Only a bit of Echos, so I really came into this with no expectations. The game play did not disappoint, but the story totally did. Three Houses contains branching paths, a mechanic that gives some great replay potential, except for the fact of how its handled. The choice you make at the very start determines what path you end up on, but the paths don’t actually split until half way through the game. This makes it incredibly tedious to replay to get the other paths. And the worst part is, some paths have much better stories than others, or so I’ve been told. I played through Silver Snow, and after seeing the ending it was incredibly disappointing. The story had me beating the bad guys, then the secret real bad guys, then throwing in a random twist villain at the end. This left a bad taste in my mouth and combining that with the need to replay half the game just to see a different ending had me stop playing there.

Perhaps if the game was a bit easier to see the other endings, I totally would just for the game play alone. Fire Emblem is a strategy game, and Three Houses brings the strategy. Planning ahead and launching attacks is incredibly satisfying, especially considering the customization allowed. Three Houses has a school phase where you can effectively set up your units to become whatever type you want. This allows for tons of different strategies to be used, making all the battles much more fun. Want to command a legion of archers? You can do it. Fly over all your enemies? You bet. Of course, some units are much better than others, and with the weapon triangle not really existing, its pretty easy to use whatever units you desire.

Three Houses is a great game, but it locks most of its story behind three additional full replays. Maybe consider a more concise Fire Emblem.

7/10

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (2020)

A remastering of the beloved Wii RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles does not disappoint. Everything about this game is amazing, the graphics, the game play, the story. Everything. The graphics are much improved from the Wii’s meager 480p. While it does take a more anime inspired art style, the game still has many incredible vistas to explore. The game play more so focuses on managing when and where to unleash powerful attacks while basic attacks are done automatically. The stagey involved with carefully selecting party members and executing powerful combos is incredibly rewarding. The story is a real thriller as well. It makes sure you get invested with the characters and makes you want to see how everything ends up. All this on top of the streamlining the Definitive Edition adds truly makes it the definitive edition.

Definitive Edition also contains Future Connected, a short post game journey. Originally, it was cut content from the Wii game that was recreated and re-imagined for the Definitive Edition. While it stands on its own from the core game, it also falls a bit flat when compared to the core game. The story is there, but is no where close to the quality of the main one. Combat has some minor tweaks, and the journey isn’t as grand, but it still is nice supplemental material. Simply put, its a nice bonus for the, but nowhere near necessary to enjoy the core game.

Xenoblade Chronicles was one of the best RPGs of its era. The Definitive Edition lives up to its name and makes it the best version to play of an already incredible RPG.

9/10

Half Life (1998)

Half Life is the grandfather to all modern shooters. Simply put, it pioneered storytelling, game play, and technical aspects of the genre. Its historical importance cannot be understated, but how does it hold up in this modern age? Surprisingly well. Graphically, its from 1998. Very basic and low poly models. But once you look past that, its a fast paced and dynamic shooter. With a variety of weapons at your disposal, the game tests your knowledge by throwing different situations that test your skills with each weapon. Movement and shooting is fast and fluid, keeping you always moving forward. But the game takes its time to flesh things out and keep you interested in more than just the shooting. The story is near seamlessly integrated into the game play, with no cut scenes and tons of environmental storytelling to keep you engaged. However, the back half of the game is where things start to fall apart. The pace of the game starts to slow and resources become limited. While it makes sense contextually, to me it completely halted the momentum the game had.

Half Life is worth playing just for the historical significance alone. Aside from that, it still holds it own twenty plus years later.

7/10

Terraria: Calamity Mod (2016)

If you read the title you might be able to tell this isn’t quite a game, and yes, you would be right. Calamity Mod is a modification to Terraria. And it is one heck of a modification. With over 6 years of development, this mod creates a whole new experience for Terraria. While still keeping the fundamentals of “Dig, Fight, Build”, Calamity adds a ton of new content and changes existing content. New bosses, new weapons, a new class, new biomes, new mechanics, and tons of new game play after the base game stops. The most interesting new mechanic is the rage and adrenaline. These are gauges that build up during fights and when filled allow for a temporary increase in damage. Rage builds during any fight, and builds faster when closer to enemies. Adrenaline only builds during boss fights, but the meter goes to zero if you get hit. These two mechanics create a really good risk-reward system that encourages risky play styles.

My personal experience was on “Death Mode”, a mode with AI changes to bosses that increases the difficulty. I will say there are some balance issues, as I found most bosses could be defeated in a handful of tries, even on the hardest difficulty (As of version 2.0.1). A lot of the boss AI wasn’t much of a challenge, they were easily defeated by going around in circles. What makes this even more disappointing is the boss fights where this wasn’t an issue. Sadly, most of those come late into the game, so your first impressions are not strong. It also doesn’t help that weapon balance is questionable at best. Some weapons where leagues better than any counterparts for large chunks of the game. This is a big shame considering the amount of new and interesting weapons added.

Calamity Mod adds a ton of content with inconsistent quality. Despite all this, its still an enjoyable adventure start to finish, largely in part of it building off an already fantastic game. Also, it has an amazing sound track with some real bangers.

7/10

Disco Elysium (2019)

For a long time, my friends would constantly reference this game and tell me to play it. I finally cracked, and were they right. Disco Elysium is a crime fighting RPG with a heavy emphasis on the RP of the RPG acronym. That is to say, the entire game centers around your personal choices to the story and characters you interact with. You don’t level up traditional stats like health or attack, you level things like Logic, Empathy, Endurance, Drama, and much more. For example, a response may benefit from having a higher level of Drama to get a more favorable result. Some dialogue may not even occur if some skills are too low. You really get the chance to build your character to be a critical thinker, a smooth talker, or even someone who gets through by brute force. It offers a level of impactful role playing I haven’t seen in any other RPG.

I find it a bit difficult to talk about the story of Disco Elysium, as that is 99.99% of the game. What starts out as a solving a simple murder case as a hungover cop turns into one of the most thrilling and intriguing mystery stories with some incredible world building that makes the world feel alive. The characters feel like living, real people, despite being represented by a static portrait most of the time. Your dialogue choices have meaningful impacts on both standard conversations and the progression of the plot. Even when you “fail” a dialogue option, its written in such a way that doesn’t even make it feel like a failure. This game is truly something that needs to be experienced first hand.

As much as I sing the praises of this game, I don’t recommend buying it. There were some issues with the studio behind the game that resulted in the firing of the entire creative team, among other things. By buying the game now, you are not supporting the hard working creative team that created this wonderful game, but I’m sure there are other ways of acquiring a copy without giving money to ZA/UM.

9/10

Pokemon Violet (2022)

I already went more in-depth with this game in another post, so I’ll keep this brief. Pokemon Violet is just like most modern Pokemon games, one step forward, and yet several steps backwards. The game gives a great attempt at having an open world, yet released as a buggy mess that’s missing several established features. The biggest issue is how empty the world is. No quests, no interesting areas, nothing special. Just the story to follow and the Pokemon placed in the world. Still, I had fun playing the game, despite all the issues I had with it.

6/10