Unsung Hero and Sung Villain 2022

[Jolly]

What was your videogame unsung hero of 2022? Perhaps not your top favourite, but something that didn't get the critical or forum reception you think it deserves.

 

And on the flip, your...er...sung villain? The game where you just can't fathom the popularity?

 

Unsung Hero - Nintendo Switch Sports

There should be a bigger buzz about this, particularly with the online competition and truly, truly brilliant Badminton. It's got the same easy-going vibe it always had and that weird air of state mandated excercise, but it's better geared towards solo play without comprising the same room multiplayer it's always excellent at. I'm certain we'll see a handful of sports delivered through 2023; Nintendo have started dropping free updates in a few of their sports titles and it makes sense to replicate that here. Mad to think that this time last year we didn't even know this existed.

 

Sung Villain - Vampire Survivors

This has appeared consistently in every GotY list I've read or listened to and I just don't get it all. A 'go' is painfully long for a shooter and the praise I always hear is that 'after half an hour I didn't have to press any buttons at all!!!!'. And that's good, is it? Baffling.

 

[Benny]

Unsung Hero:

 

Cultic

 

 

The "Boomer Shooter" explosion continues apace. Cultic wasn't my personal favourite of this particular kind of game, but it does an absolutely expert job at capturing the feel and spirit of games like Blood, and the visuals are the grottiest, grimiest, grindhousey feeling this side of Resident Evil 4's brown tinged and mud soaked villages. A dirty, violent little thing that knows exactly what it is. 

 

 

Sung Villain:

 

God of War: Ragnarok

 

 

Winning nearly everything at the Game Awards at the expense of literally dozens of more worthy entries in multiple categories. Meaning no awards for Immortality for a start. It deserved something, but not everything. And absolutely not for Narrative, when Immortality and Pentiment and Signalis and Return to Monkey Island and so, so many others are like, right there. 

 

[Jamie John]

Unsung Hero: Sifu

 

 

This was one of my games of the year and not enough people have played it, no doubt put off by the difficulty, but the easy mode that has been added since release serves as a good tutorial for a run through on normal. I loved it so much that I got the platinum trophy. If you enjoy fighting games, Sekiro, or the combat in the Batman Arkham games, then absolutely check it out. You can get it now for about £20. It looks gorgeous and is supremely stylish.

 

Sung Villain: I don't really have one, to be honest. Maybe Horizon: Forbidden West, as I played it for about 25 hours and then got bored, but so did lots of other people.

 

@Jolly: I get what you mean re. Vampire Survivors, to an extent; it's a bit of a one-trick pony, but I was still addicted to it for over 20 hours, before I had to cut myself off from it, cold turkey. If the core power fantasy doesn't appeal to you, however, then there's not much else going for it.

[Qazimod]

I was very choosy about my 2022 purchases and so I can't point at too many things, however, I kind of want to call out Elden Ring as "sung for the wrong reasons". In my mind, it stands apart from the other action RPGs of From because of things like the spectral steed, the material gathering and crafting, the open world and freedom of choice, the lack of humanity/hollow nonsense, not having to worry about shortening lifebars when you die, the lack of equipment maintenance and repairing, the speed at which you can use your steed to run back to where you died, the unique marriage of classic fantasy tropes and otherworldly abominations, and so on. And yet people (not here but the wider internet) still need to put it into a particular box. It's not Soulsborne - it's goddamn Elden Ring, and it deserves to be celebrated as a unique creative vision rather than as a bullet-point in an iterative design process.

 

I'll echo Vampire Survivors as a sung villain, although having dabbled with the itch demo I can kind of see where the appeal comes from. But for me it's that clicker game appeal; a feedback loop of getting more things that allow you to get more things faster, or for longer, until you barely have to do anything in the game.

[carlospie]

Sung hero 

Call of duty. It's cod. It's great. It has an entire free mode in warzone that is still one of the best shooters out there and can be enjoyed by all with a huge community.

 

Sung villian.

Elden ring. Boring, PS3 graphics. Huge world with death at every corner, give me my dark souls any day of the week over this. 

 

[Gotters]

is a villain something you simply don't like then ? 

 

for my money a villain should be some bug ridden mess that took your cash and didn't work, or hardware that fails instantly, just not liking the £3 game everybody else does doesn't a villain make. 

[bradigor]

VS is pure dopamine hits. 

[bradigor]

Unsung Hero - Rail Route

 

A brilliant resource management/builder where you control a train network and gradually build up and improve to automate things. It is super simple to play but gets wondering complex the deeper you get. 

 

Sung Villain - Ubisoft 

 

They continue to support and employ known abusers and continue to get away with it. Fuck them 

 

[Benny]

Speaking of unsung games, John Linneman's GOTY picks have some absolute bangers in. Genuinely good list:

 

 

 

[Fry Crayola]

1 hour ago, Gotters said:

is a villain something you simply don't like then ? 

 

for my money a villain should be some bug ridden mess that took your cash and didn't work, or hardware that fails instantly, just not liking the £3 game everybody else does doesn't a villain make. 

 

But wouldn't that logic also mean the hero should have cured you of disease and also killed Boris Johnson?

 

Instead of just being a game you liked a bit.

[Siri]

Unsung Hero - Prodeus. It's been in Early Access for ages and slunk out on every console this year to zero fanfare, but by golly it's a great FPS.

 

Sung Villain - Diablo Immortal. Everybody panned it, even in mainstream rags, and it still made $300m in revenue. Abhorrent.

[ImmaculateClump]

4 hours ago, Benny said:

Unsung Hero:

 

Cultic

 

Nice! Just played through the demo of this and bought it I haven't played a first person shooter for years!

[phillv85]

Sung Villain: Turtles - Shredders Revenge 

 

I just didn’t really enjoy this very much. It’s a decent enough game but the mechanics in this one are not what I want from a game in this genre. The lack of stun lock and the combo system just broke this for me. Glad others enjoyed it, but I won’t be going back to this one in a hurry.

 

Unsung Hero:

 

This will have to wait a little longer, I need a few more hours on Evil West first.

[BadgerFarmer]

Card Shark for unsung hero. It reviewed well enough, but I've not heard much about it since, and the thread on here is sadly short. It's a great game - original and superbly executed, with a pitch perfect art style and a smart script. It deserves to be placed alongside the likes of Pentiment, Citizen Sleeper and Norco in recalling a great year for writing in games.

[Dark Soldier]

Unsung Hero: Peglin

 

It really fits my idea of a game. Peggle + Roguelike is heaven. Bang some music on and rinse through. It's still in Early Access but is constantly being updated (recent major patch gave a shop mechanic, gold mechanic, new balls, higher 'ascension levels' etc). It's the only game I've played every single month since its launch and I'll be playing it for months, or years going forward. Also, like Peggle, majority will say its random with your shots but as you get better and better you can visualise those bounces. Literal crack for me.

 

Sung Villain: Ragnarok

 

My most wanted game of the year after Elden Ring. I've done ten hours but its an absolute chore. It looks stunning, the writing is enjoyable but I'm already bored of the  puzzle, combat, cut scene loop. And the fetch quests just to find different people. Knowing there's still about 50 hours to go nah thank you. Its not a bad game, just not what I want or need anymore.

 

I should really have put Football Manager 2023 as Villain but it'd be a 15 paragraph rant if I do.

 

 

[Calashnikov]

10 hours ago, Jolly said:

Sung Villain - Vampire Survivors

This has appeared consistently in every GotY list I've read or listened to and I just don't get it all. A 'go' is painfully long for a shooter and the praise I always hear is that 'after half an hour I didn't have to press any buttons at all!!!!'. And that's good, is it? Baffling.

 

The satisfaction that you take from it playing itself comes from the fact that such a ridiculous build all comes down to the choices that you’ve made as you’ve frantically run around and tried to survive. It’s a big fuck-off pyrotechnic table turning moment that you simply get to bask in the glorious splendour of while the points roll in.

[Calashnikov]

10 hours ago, Jamie John said:

Unsung Hero: Sifu

This was one of my games of the year and not enough people have played it, no doubt put off by the difficulty

 

I bet they’re cursing the name / firing the shite out of whoever’s decision it was to release it originally with only that punishing OG hard mode. Fucked the game’s whole rep up beyond repair.

[Jamie John]

1 minute ago, Calashnikov said:

I bet they’re cursing the name / firing the shite out of whoever’s decision it was to release it originally with only that punishing OG hard mode. Fucked the game’s whole rep up beyond repair.

 

Yeah - it does seem like a bit of a cock up. I played it post the Easy mode patch; I'm not sure how long I would have stuck with it for if I'd gone straight in on Normal.

 

The devs also made that Absolver game, which was similarly supposed to be good but was underplayed. Hopefully they'll crack it properly third time lucky.

[jonamok]

Unsung hero: Norco

 

Started it on PC GP (streaming via Deck) yesterday, finished it today.
 

Incredible game. Not played anything else like it. Fell in love with the pixel art graphics immediately, adored the writing, amazed at the constant creativity on display in the various methods of interaction with an ostensibly point and click game world.
 

It comes together as a genuinely unique, thematically timely, thoroughly engaging story, that is wild and unhinged as fuck, while simultaneously homely and charming.

 

If you haven’t played it yet, you owe it to yourself to go play it. You’ll thank me.

 

Snuck it in under the 2022 wire, and up there just behind ER for my GOTY. Marvellous.

[ChewMagma]

Another thread where we make a big song and dance about not liking Popular Thing? Crikey.

 

Anyway I'm not sure I played anything obscure enough to be classified as genuinely "unsung", but Citizen Sleeper could have done with more love and Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak seemed to bypass the forum almost entirely.

[Strafe]

Unsung hero: Mario Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. It’s really good!

Unsung Villain: Stray. Yawn

 

[El Spatula]

Unsung hero: Trails from Zero. Belting JRPG that had me ridiculously addicted for it's entire runtime. 

 

Unsung villain: Pokémon Scarlet/Violet. Played it all before now with added jank, bugs, and horrible visuals. Would have been eviscerated critically if a certain logo was not on the box. Shame as Arceus was at least a mildly interesting take.