The Rllmuk Games of the Year 2022 - That's a Wrap

[Lyrical Donut]

Elden Ting

[Darwock]

Elder’s Ring should have had a bigger turnout at the polls, I’m shocked.

[Siri]

11 hours ago, Darwock said:

Elder’s Ring should have had a bigger turnout at the polls, I’m shocked.

 

People voting for it forgot to add (game), as per the wiki.

 

Spoiler

Yes, I know it's not on the actual Wikipedia article, it's just banter

 

[Benny]

Should be another update later hopefully, or tomorrow.

[Made of Ghosts]

Did I miss Stray? Thought it would be in here somewhere. 

[Girth Certificate]

looks like it got a handful of votes, doubt it was enough to get into the top whatever

[Benny]

On 31/12/2022 at 17:24, Benny said:

Can't help but think I'm forgetting something this year. Ah well, probably not important.

 

[footle]

7 hours ago, Made of Ghosts said:

Did I miss Stray? Thought it would be in here somewhere. 

We’re a bit more discerning than ResetEra or TGA.

[Made of Ghosts]

[therearerules]

Tried Vampire Survivors on the back of it's placement on this list. Good daft fun.

[Benny]

Biggest disappointments of 2022

 

It was not all sunshine and roses in the gaming landscape for all of us in 2022. Here is what you most had a bee in your bonnet about:

 

(background music included for each entry for your delectation)

 

 

 

 

10. Bayonetta 3

 

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=ThkRVTd-tPc&feature=share

 

What’s wrong with sexy? Rather a lot it turns out, as apparently a few voters were not down with video gaming’s most prominent icon of either women’s empowerment or objectification (depending on who you ask about the games) strutting and gyrating her stuff across a third outing. Down with this sort of thing indeed. 

 

 

 

 

9. Diablo Immortal

 

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=As2fsX_YrTo&feature=share

 

Blizzard continues to make obscene amounts of money from predatory and unethical gaming practices. The fact it was so successful despite the widespread condemnation and agreement that it’s a terrible terrible thing is incredibly depressing, and Bobby will I’m sure be crying himself to sleep in his big gold coin filled vault as the gaming press continues to cover the latest garish and low effort battle-pass skins for Overwatch 2 

 

 

 

 

8. Deathloop

 

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=e2JYvCp6Jxs&feature=share

 

A game apparently so bad that a few people hated it enough to vote for it in game awards for more than an entire year after it actually came out. Deathloop is fine. It’s not as good as Prey, it’s too ambitious or its own good. It’s somewhat distastefully nihilistic. But it’s fine.

 

 

 

 

7. Scorn

 

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=FsIoLaXDsEo&feature=share

 

The most blatantly plagiaristic game of all time? It’s certainly up there, where its visuals somehow don’t feel like it's using its inspirations as a springboard to something unique as much as just going, yeah, you like all that kind of artwork? Well here’s an environment full of art we just ripped from them for you to explore, get stuck on stupidly obtuse puzzles, and rage out at terrible, terrible game design and frustratingly dull combat encounters.

 

 

 

 

6. PS5

 

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=lkpLbEM06qE&feature=share

 

£70?! Absolute daylight robbery. Given how often Sony keeps stubbornly trying to charge actual money for their games, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were trying to run some sort of business. How dare they, though? How actually dare they? Microsoft understands that the only future for video games is where they are completely free and piped into your eyes intravenously as a public service, subsidised by… Erm I dunno, virtual AI driven browser clicks or something. Why must I pay for my games? WHY SONY.

 

 

 

 

5. Gran Turismo 7

 

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=kfSQkZuIx84&feature=share

 

I don’t know about you, but one of the things I always thought was missing from video games with cars in them, was that you never actually had to buy them like you do in real life. It always seemed so silly that those amazing vehicles that all those car companies worked so hard on never got adequately compensated for the sterling work they were doing creating machines that are slowly turning the planet into a burned out husk. And so I salute Gran Turismo 7: for not just charging £70 but also for packaging more of your enjoyment into nice, expensive little money grabbing capitalist extra chunks.

 

 

 

 

 4. Advance Wars

 

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=f-e8-DUqt0I&feature=share

 

Many people were clearly very upset that a game got delayed. I think they forgot there was a war on or something.

 

 

 

 

3. Elden Ring

 

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=0JELtw-R9kU&feature=share

 

Doesn’t look like anything to me.

 

 

 

 

2. Somerville

 

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=88sARuFu-tc&feature=share

 

What with many people being huge huge fans of Limbo and Inside, there was clearly a lot of anticipation for a game directed by someone who was… “Executive producer” on those games? Anyway, apparently it was a load of shite, based on it getting to 2nd place this year. I never really got the love for Limbo and Inside though personally, as they were quite frustrating to actually play and felt like a bit of style over substance in some respects, and not in the same league of many similar audiovisual narrative experiences like Journey or whatever. Is that even a genre? Am I even a real person and not a complex, open road loving AI version of Benny? We will never know.

 

 

 

 

 1. Xbox

 

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=W87Tmvu7iz8&feature=share

 

Let’s face it, there could only ever have been one winner in this award category this year. If there is one thing every voter can agree on, it’s that Xbox is a big pile of shit with no games. With absolutely no first-party releases in 2022, it’s enough to make you wonder why you bought your bloody “most powerful console ever made” other than to use it as a makeshift urinal after a particularly heavy night when you can’t find your curtains.

 

I mean why would you possibly want to have the supposedly main reason to have an Xbox: Game Pass, when there was absolutely nothing worth playing on it (for free) released in 2022.

 

Apart from Pentiment. 

 

And Immortality. 

 

And Signalis. And Tunic. And Norco. And TMNT: Shredders Revenge. And Citizen Sleeper. And Return to Monkey Island. And A Plague Tale: Requiem. And Chained Echoes. And Hitman: Trilogy. And Tinykin. And Metal: Hellsinger. And Sniper Elite 5. And LEGO Star Wars: The SkyWalker Saga. And Warhammer 40,0000: Darktide. And Windjammers 2. And…

[Stanley]

Jimmy Somerville  this made me laugh more than it should, hey it’s Saturday night, I’ve had a few beers. Bravo @Benny

[merrychan]

3 hours ago, Benny said:

Biggest disappointments of 2022

 ...

Absolute God Tier post 

[Benny]

Developer of 2022

 

One of the less subscribed awards of the year, we nevertheless can take this opportunity to recognise the people who actually make all these lovely games happen.

 

 

 

3. Luca Galante

 

 

You had to wonder what wizard was responsible for Vampire Survivors, such is its irresistible pull. But it makes sense that they previously worked on gambling software. We can only all breathe a sigh of relief that they have since decided to use their powers for good. For now.

 

2. FromSoftware

 

 

Ah good old FromSoftware. Best known for the King’s Field games, they’ve become quite popular lately. They released quite a big game in 2022 apparently, but its name escapes me at the moment, I blame my elder brain.

 

1. From Software

 

 

I assume this developer is no relation, but they are clearly incredibly popular as they got the most votes in the poll! I really have no idea what this developer has worked on as even Wikipedia is turning up a blank for their name. Well, whatever it was they did, congratulations to From. Software.

[therearerules]

Pity Fromsoft didn't win anything this year, really thought they had a chance.

[Benny]

Best Eye Candy of 2022
 

Yes we all know what you’re really here for, you superficial little voyeurs, you. What games this year had the best frame rates, the least stuttering, the smoothest of frametimes? That’s what really matters in video games, so let's see how we fared…

 

 

 

5. Immortality

 

 

It’s not just the whole cast that are easy on the eye in Immortality - the fact the game encompasses several disparate film making styles in terms of the shot composition, type of film used and the style reminiscent of each time period or genre, let alone the sheer number of props, sets, costume designs and so on and on and just the sheer level of craft put into everything, and it’s something quite unlike anything else you’ll see in interactive experiences.

 

 

 

4. A Plague Tale: Requiem

 

 

I hope you like Rattus rattus, because this is the most technically impressive representation of them in a game since Bad Rats. The most surprising thing about Requiem, is that even through all the grimness, the beautifully rendered wading through literal shit covered offal in pits round the back of butcher’s shops, there are moments of truly awe inspiring next-generationally rendered beauty, which static images really do not do justice. Sometimes the “real” world is really the place to be for your virtual holiday.

 

 

 

 

3. Horizon Forbidden West

 

 

But even a post-apocalyptic future real world can have its moments. And Horizon Forbidden West is undoubtedly, just like the previous game was when it came out, one of the most technically impressive and incredible looking games currently in existence. It may be a little skin deep, but who can argue with such lovingly recreated face fur.

 

 

 

 

2. Pentiment

 

 

Sometimes technical wizardry is not the key though to a truly arresting work of art, and Pentiment succeeds wonderfully with its own truly unique manuscript inspired visual style. The artwork itself is the subject of the main character’s profession, and there are many delightful touches, such as the way ink is filled in and corrected on speech as you talk with various people, or just the subtle and wonderfully realised expressions as characters interact… It’s a truly intimate labour of love.

 

 

 

 

1. Eternal Ring

 

 

You can trust FromSoftware to really pull out all the stops and deliver something wondrous, as is traditional. But here they’ve gone beyond even the wildest expectations to make a game that is as terrifying as it is beautiful. A world that exists beyond your imagination and is filled to the brim with wonders. Who knows where they will take us next.

[Benny]

Most music to the ears in 2022

 

Sometimes it's good to just sit back with a good pair of headphones and take in some classic tunes, amazing soundscapes, or dodgy voice acting. Here is the year's most gratifying aural stimulus.

 

 

 

5. Metal: Hellsinger

 

 

I’m sure it has literally never been thought of before: fusing First Person Shooting with a METAL soundtrack, but joking aside, what has only been done a surprisingly few times is making an FPS rhythm action game. The soundtrack is also quite a treat for those who enjoy the genre, with several established names lending their talents to this unusual and compelling experience.

 

 

 

 

4. A Plague Tale: Requiem

 

 

It’s not just the visuals of Requiem that feel grimy: there’s a truly grotesque soundscape in it at times that feels like all the filth of its world is sticking to the characters ever more wetly as they squelch their way forwards. And the voice acting (at least in the French iteration I played it in with the previous game's voice actors), is also excellent. The soundtrack is also extremely special.

 

 

 

 

3. Splatoon 3

 

 

Splatoon always sounds just so bloody weird, but in a good way, I think. I’ve never entirely taken to the games, but as far as their soundtracks go, they are so bloody annoyingly catchy in a way that irrationally enrages me.

 

 

 

 

2. Vampire Survivors

 

 

The gems. The GEMS. All those lovely addictive little slot machine sounds that are so precisely designed to keep you going, so moreish, so delightful. Play it with the sound off and marvel at the game’s reduced addictive power. Yet even those qualities pale next to the tunes for each stage, that somehow evoke classic Castlevania riffs while also being somewhat silly and jolly and somehow not tiring in their endless loops. Get it out of my head!

 

 

 

 

1. Eternal Ring

 

 

And for the winner this year it was not surprising again really: FromSoftware once again proving a master of all elements that make up the atmosphere of their games, with a world that is constantly breathing, as seemingly scattered with unconcerned natural life all around you as much as it is foreboding. And when those epic boss themes hit, they really hit.

 

[MW_Jimmy]

Studio session version of Clickbait was uploaded recently - I always love seeing the singers with the squidvocoder applied - can't wait to see Anarchy Rainbow!

 

 

Splatune 3 was also recently confirmed - 4 discs! (Splatune 2 was 2)

[Benny]

The Compellingest Yarns of 2022

 

There’s no time like story time, and these games have been some of the finest examples of the craft quite possibly in all of gaming history:

 

 

 

 

5. Return to Monkey Island

 

 

The legendary pirate adventuring returns, but with a story that has matured along with its creators and protagonist. An absolutely wonderful tale that acts as commentary on the very nature of nostalgia whilst having a huge amount of fun in the process. A genuinely heart-warming, funny and lovely story.

 

 

 

 

4. Citizen Sleeper

 

 

A game that managed to hit on a deeply emotional level despite its relatively simple interface and visuals. I was a Sleeper that yearned to be free yet felt tied down with all the connections they had made and ultimately people they didn't want to let down. A game that understands the processes that lead to a sense of belonging and the desire to find a place to call home.

 

 

 

 

3. Eternal Ring

 

 

Not quite a clean sweep at third place! You wouldn’t have thought FromSoftware had enlisted a bit of outside help for the background story, considering everything about this game is absolutely steeped in their trademark lore and atmosphere. But it’s often the little moments that are the more poignant, with those rare individuals you meet on your travels with their own lives and agendas in the world that make your journey feel more fleshed out and meaningful. 

 

 

 

 

2. Pentiment

 

 

I said pretty much all I needed to say in the review, but one thing I can add which I had not touched upon, is how brilliant the clock of the game is in the way it represents the restrictive monastic structure of prayer times.

 

This both represents and informs the way that character’s relate to their world: you could for example argue it was an oppressive restriction on people’s freedoms by the Church, keeping peasants busy and obediently following tradition such as it benefited the ruling classes, making sure the work day was adhered to correctly.

 

Or alternatively you could argue it was a much needed and comforting structure in many people’s lives: the collective contract provided by the inevitability of each part of the day making sure all people partake in the same social activity.

 

Pentiment is just full of such details that you can reflect on long after the story is over.

 

 

 

 

1. Immortality

 

 

And speaking of reflecting: I didn’t fancy reviewing Immortality as much as I was less keen on it than some people, but when I think about the really stand-out experiences over the last year, it’s very hard to argue it’s not in the very highest echelons of interactive experiences in general.

 

Immortality can really get under your skin, a visceral kind of reaction that can make you come away from it frustrated or elated. But it knows exactly what it wants to do, and achieves it with a near flawless execution.

[Benny]

Best blasts from the backlog in 2022

 

Now for the real game of 2022: the game of clearing the backlog. Some interesting entries here, considering how old some of these games are. But there’s no time limit on working through that clogged up gaming schedule, and just one day maybe you’ll be allowed out of the play cellar. Once you’re finished extracting the value of all that money you spent on them. You casual scum.

 

 

 

 

5. Satisfactory

 

 

I do like the smell of a nicely oiled machine. But while you can't smell the inner workings of the gears of Satisfactory, apparently all the other pleasures of building the perfect automated number generator is something players have been enjoying for a long time now.

 

These games aren’t for me, but I know an addictive time-sink when I see one. I salute the brave virgin soldiers still plugging away at it. 

 

 

 

 

4. Return of the Obra Dinn

 

 

Now this is one that’s been on my personal backlog forever, and I still havent got round to it. I’m confused why it got so many votes this year, as it’s been out on Switch for a while, so it’s not like it’s the sudden Switch burst of interest that happens whenever a fancy low-res but portable version of a game is released on it.

 

Oh wait, did you all get it free with your Steam Deck? Now that would be a killer app.

 

 

 

 

3. Slay the Spire

 

 

Ah but of course. Slay the Spire transcends backlogs. It IS the backlog. It’s the forever game. It will never go away. It will always consume your time. You cannot escape. There are no other games. Sweet, sweet Apotheosis.

 

It's now also a board game. But why. Also, try Inscryption: you can actually finish that one.

 

 

 

 

2. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

 

 

The forever kars continue - DLC tracks are still being released with just more and more to come. Nintendo will never need to release another one. It’s practically the Smash Bros Ultimate of Mario Kart games at this point.

 

Can’t wait for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Deluxe, full 60hz version

 

 

 

 

1. Cyberpunk 2077

 

 

Well the only conclusion I can draw from this is that they finally fixed the game and it was actually very good, once the relevant dev teams had been suitably lashed to within an inch of their lives and had their health and joy crunched further away to satisfy the angry hot take hordes.

 

I can only assume whoever was responsible for the initial fuck up was then sealed away to manage The Witcher 3 “next gen” upgrade. Whoops.

[Benny]

Tomorrow will be the final entry. A very special birthday.

[Danster]

Satisfactory is so much more than making numbers go up.... It's the systems, systems making stuff and conveyor belts laid out in sweeping neat stacks, with so many materials, going from smelters to constructors, to assemblers, to manufacturers. And of course that all needs powering, with coal, then oil, then finally nuclear. And trains and trucks and massive factories all encapsulated into a fun dystopian corporate chore of more! And programmable splitters! 

 

Delivered by what seems like a genuinely fun and involved team of developers.

 

 

[Benny]

And the TRUE winner is…

 

 

 

1. Elden Ring

 

 

 

 

 

(Yes obviously I meant Elden Ring in the previous award entries)

 

So at last we come to our final entry, the actual number one. The game of the year; maybe the decade.

 

And it’s a very special day today, because Elden Ring is now one year old. How time flies when you are exploring The Lands Between.

 

 

I put my extended thoughts on the game down earlier this year:

 

Quote

When I was growing up, I was obsessed with the Slaine comic in 2000AD. The Horned God specifically.

 

Unlike any other comic I had read, 2000AD transported me to so many weird and strange places, and the world of Slaine was the one I took to most. Simon Bisley’s art pulsated with rippling flesh and writhing landscapes that were awash with fine mists of hazy colours.

 

The world depicted was nothing like the Lord of the Rings books I had read, and felt more raw, more threatening, with deep and dark eldritch gods warring with the goddesses of the earth, where champions and heroes would spill blood in the name of ancient beings from myths formed in a time before whole continents had sunk beneath the ocean.

 

It left an indelible impression on me, and opened my imagination up to the possibilities of fantasy to explore realms beyond the kinds of books Terry Pratchett described as, “rearranging the furniture in Tolkien's attic.”

 

As far as creating a unique and interesting world went, The Horned God made me realise there could be worlds out there that would surprise, excite and horrify me beyond what I already knew, and it was intoxicating.

 

I’ve been playing games now for over thirty years, and if there’s one thing I’ve always loved about them, it is that they can open up your imagination in ways unique to the medium. From their early beginnings, simple visuals and sounds meant your mind had to fill in so many of the missing parts. So much of their appeal lied more in what was *not* said about the worlds you explored, with early home micro titles often being somewhat inscrutable in their presentation.

 

They generally required something of a bargain being struck with the player: the technology did not exist to sculpt a fully realized world in the same way a film might, or even a short novel - there simply wasn’t the literal storage space or computing power to do that, so the unwritten expectation was that you would puzzle out the meaning of these strange places for yourself.

 

In this way, players would often forge their own myths and legends. The story of their journeys through each of these games would be intensely personal: with so little being there to flesh out the context of why they were exploring these worlds, it meant imaginations could run riot and immerse formative minds in ways other media couldn’t.

 

This was never more apparent to me personally, than in a 1986 home computer fantasy game for the Amstrad CPC and others called: Firelord

 

The plot, such as it is, simply casts you in the role of a knight who has to free the cursed kingdom from an evil queen by collecting four “charms”. Not that I ever remember reading the tape inlay, but that was all there was. The game required you to travel a vast (for the time) and inhospitable town, with no indication of where to go, who to talk to, or how to survive.

 

You would pick up a crystal that you could use to shoot at the ghosts that wandered around the various villages and hamlets, but they were relentless. The only “living” people you could meet were all hiding inside their houses, cowering from the apparitions that stalked the streets outside.

 

The world it conjured up in my mind was desolate and foreboding. What had happened to all of the spirits of the townsfolk who stalked the streets and alleyways? What had this evil queen done to the land before I got here?

 

There was no dialogue or narrative to follow, just your quest to complete and your imagination left to wonder what this strange world was you were exploring. Going into buildings (often blocked off from the horrors outside), meant silently bartering with the inhabitants to try to trade for directions, items you had to collect, or magic to teleport you to where you wanted to go. You could try to steal what you needed, but that risked going on trial for your crimes and, potentially, death.

 

So much of it may seem “simplistic” now, but through this simplicity it was into the gaps and hidden places of your thoughts where games like this went, to linger on in the memory and seem like something more than they were.

 

As videogames have marched ever onward in technology and innovation, the scope for creators simply being able to literally “tell” you the way their worlds work and present players with a story told traditionally like any other form, through spoken dialogue, cinematic sequences, and written backstory, means player imagination can almost invariably take a backseat, and allow narrative sequences and the scope of the intended stories to simply play out.

 

In some cases, it can feel like games that have pushed too hard in this direction have contributed to the medium losing something it always had as a great strength: that of giving us scope to dream our own unique dreams within them. Why tell us what to feel, when you can let us loose in a world that is unique and let us puzzle out what it all means for ourselves?

 

Escaping to a world you had never dreamed of before is still something the best games do well, from the ethereal landscapes of Shadow of the Colossus, to the psychedelic, endlessly evolving wireframes of Rez. And one thing Hidetaka Miyazaki’s games also have in common with these: you are let loose in his worlds, and given *just* enough minimal hooks to let your imagination run wild.

 

The world of Elden Ring is the stuff of waking dreams. From the first moment you emerge, bleary eyed from your cave of “rebirth”, the vast expanse of the Lands Between stretches out before you, great castles looming in the distance. The journey you will likely undertake seems to coalesce in a roughly hewn path through the trees into the distance, a lonely knight on horseback the only obstacle on the way.

 

And so this small, seemingly manageable first step will form the basis for every stage of your journey, each milestone opening up another landscape that stretches out in front of you…As you gaze into a distance that seems to get further and further away, the scope of your quest rising exponentially even as you renew your resolve to press on.

 

And press on you will, because every place you visit in Elden Ring will be like nothing you have seen before, and you will want to explore every inch.

 

The vast landscapes, from almost every angle, resemble gorgeous matte paintings that have somehow come to life. It feels handcrafted, in the way that everything you ever see in concept art always looks so much more interesting than what finally appears in the film or game that it inspires. 

 

But in Elden Ring, that artistry is apparent in every still frame and direction you face in the world. 

 

It exists in the grotesque and creative creature design, in every brick and stone of the vast castles that rise up over the horizon as you charge forth across lakes of low hanging mist.

 

It exists in the small touches, the moments of grace and terror, as you hear something wonderful inside a dark forest and creep forward to seek it out.

 

It exists in every single moment where you pause, reflect on how far you’ve come, and see the next winding path laid out for you to the next moment of wonder.

 

Elden Ring is filled with so many of these moments of self-discovery that I often nearly wept from the simple joy of it. It made me wonder “How is this even real? How did people even make this?”

 

Because the world of Elden Ring is so complete, so vast, so magical, that it comes together into something that represents the very best of what games are, what they can be, and how they can make you feel.

 

Just like the Slaine comics I loved when I was a kid, and still do: it feels like a place beyond imagination and time, but something tangible and real. A place where glorious battles are being fought and myths are being made. Where great and terrible gods are wreaking havoc in a dying land. It’s a journey more epic than any you will take in any other game.

 

And for that reason, it’s one of the most terrifying, awe inspiring and incredible creations in the history of the medium.

 

I could say so, so much more about Elden Ring but… Oh I don’t have the right, oh I don’t have the right.

 

 

 

But on such a special day, you also all get a lovely Jolly bonus:

 

Quote

It sort of crept up on me. One Friday night I swilled a whiskey in a glass and stood with my elbow up’pont the mantle staring deep into the fire. Ruminating on the night’s adventures. The places I discovered. The friends I made. The foes I felled. The stream of mind-altering, unfathomable batshit that had been fed to me from the moment I started the game to the moment I turned it off. ‘Could it be? No!’ I muttered to myself, and tossed the glass deep into the devouring flames; regretting it instantly as my wife walked with the fire getting a little out of control. ‘Jase, what the fuck are you doing? Why is there glass everywhere?’. I laughed. But twasnot a happy laugh. Twas a laughed laced with sickness. With madness. She know naught what she hath witnessed. She not knoweth the knot deep with my spleen. Lady hath no mind of the schism in my soul. Basically; she didn’t know what I was on about. I slowly raised my gaze to meet hers – my mouth dry with anticipation. Hairs raised. Muscles tensed. The world stopped. 

 

‘I…I…I think Elden Ring is the best game I’ve ever played’

 

‘That’s great. Now are you going to sweep this up or am I?’

 

I’d avoided everything about this prior to launch. It was out fairly early in the year, when the schedules are as bleak as the weather, and aside from knowing it was from From; creators of one of my all time faves in Bloodborne; the only other thing I’d picked up was the collaboration with George R R Martin. Old Georgey boy is largely famous for writing the Game of Thrones books – the TV show of which I didn’t particularly gel with. Oh look, a dragon. Oh look, a boob. Oh look, a dead. I’ve got the same problem with Dark Souls. That setting just does nothing for me. If somewhere has a ‘keep’ or if there’s pointy ears I’m basically out. So, I went in with middling expectations. This will fill some time. This will be alright.

 

Sweet mother of God, I’m a fucking idiot. I will say – without hesitation – that Elden Ring is the single greatest achievement in videogames. It’s as simple as that. It just is. The scale is mind-blowing. The density is impossible. It’s a game that doesn’t just exceed your expectations but leave them vanishing in the distance. I found myself getting up early on the weekends to have more time with it. I found myself jogging home after work for a few extra minutes. It completely and utterly consumed me. It completely and utterly consumed everyone. I can’t remember a time when opinion seemed so universally accepted. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the greatest videogame ever made. Let’s not fuck about. This is the best videogame. It’s this one. Look no further.

 

I find it genuinely difficult to parse how the fuck they did it. This is a game that starts off large and then just gets bigger. You open a door within the first few minutes and get ‘a moment’ as the world folds out around you, full of possibility. Ruins lie in the distance with a ghostly golden tree towering over the horizon. Many, many hours later you’ll find yourself under that tree or exploring those ruins. But it’s just replaced one tantalising horizon with another. Then you get to that horizon and guess what? There’s a-fucking-nother one. Why did they not stop? Why did they keep making more-and-more? What drives people to do that? It’s an accomplishment that truly has a dash of madness to it. It’s just stupidly, stupidly huge.

 

At any given point you will have 360 options and at the end of each of those options will be something amazing or terrifying or both. This is a jaw-dropping simulator. A WTF generator. You are guaranteed to see something incredible every fifteen minutes. One Saturday afternoon my mother-in-law caught me playing (Elden Ring has the ability to capture literally everyone in its tractor beams and force them to watch) and she was excitedly pointing in directions for me to check out. ‘What’s that?’. ‘Oh, it’s just a goat’ I laughed but went over to check it out regardless. Brilliantly, fantastically, hilariously, the goat curled up into a ball and roly-polied down the hill. Nothing is ‘just a’ in this game. Everything has something. Everything is a surprise.

 

It managed to smash through my boredom barrier. I think it actually reprogrammed my brain and briefly altered my personality. I have this incredibly short attention span and my number one complaint for games, films, TV, everything is ‘could be a bit shorter’. After the 100 hours it took me to reach the end – during which I barely scratched the surface – I wanted to go back. At around hour 90 I looked up what the Dragon Hearts did and it turns out they’re used somewhere I explored ‘fully’ about 70 hours previous. Mate, if you think you’ve seen everything in an area, you definitely haven’t. Had a moment where I went ‘oh I don’t feel like I’m going to achieve anything today’ and then immediately found a medallion I’d been looking for for half the game. When I finally found the strength to move on I purposefully played something mindless (Ratchet and Clank) afterwards. This’ll be pretty, I thought. This’ll be different. It was meant to a palette cleanser, but it felt so fucking grey. Could anything have softened the blow? Let’s face it, I could have played a fucking Zelda right after and I reckon I would have still had the pangs. 

 

It frees From Software’s design philosophy from its self-inflicted prison. Souls games are famously brutally difficult, with a large part of the satisfaction coming from conquering the insurmountable. Elden Ring chucks all that out the window and it turns out it doesn’t matter. Struggling against a boss? Don’t worry about it! Just go do one of the hundred other things available to you and come back later. There’s no gate keeping, only gate crashing. Like Jurassic Park on curry night, there’s piles of astounding shit round every corner. Pull on the tiniest thread and it’ll turn into an epic yarn. Look, it’s really fucking good alright. I’m running out of superlatives here.

 

Fuck knows what George R R Martin actually did. A Zoom call and a name on the box, I reckon. Massive fucking shrug. Seriously, stick E L James on it for all I care, the game is where it matters. The combat, the scale, the ambition. The design, the thought, the balls. It’s a game that follows deep complex cities and long treacherous mountain trails with whole sulphuric skied regions designed unlike anything you’ve seen before. It’s a game with a subtle yet beautiful soundscape that will hold a single string note for a minute, allowing the tension and dread to fill the room before crashing it around your ears. It’s a game that doesn’t understand the concepts of ‘enough’ or ‘average’. It’s a game with fifty-foot walking bell. It’s a game with a turtle in a pope hat. It’s a game with a guy with worms on his face called Wormface. It’s a game that towers above all others. The roly-poly GOAT.

 

Fucking hell, Elden Ring, man.

 

Fuck.

 

 

 

Plus this year had one of the most amazing things ever happen related to the game with Ste Pickford's Elden Ring diary:

 

 

 

 

 

And because we’re popping the Champaign and inhaling the helium balloons, how about EVERYONE who did a write up in the voting thread gets their love in:

 

On 09/12/2022 at 14:32, Girth Certificate said:

I'm sure there are games that technically have better graffix that Elden Ring but nothing I've seen this year made me stop and go holy fucking shit like some of the vistas in the Lands Between. Particularly the blue fire spitting dragon under the sky of raya lucaria. From's mastery of colour is astonishing in this game.

 

On 09/12/2022 at 15:50, SuperCapes said:

Elden Ring... I mean it is sensational, nothing much else to say other than an evolved take on the Souls combat, with plenty refinements and a jump that blows up not only combat, but level design too. 

 

On 11/12/2022 at 09:03, Danster said:

Elden Ring is a masterpiece, there is no doubt in my mind that it deserves every 10, every 100% it got. A masterstroke of game design, world building, challenge and imagination. It's superb, and I really must finish it! I've put about 150 hours in, so I've definitely played A LOT, but there is so much more and so much detail and so much still to reckon with that I could easily put in another 150 and not feel like I'd finished with it.

 

On 16/12/2022 at 17:33, Alan Stock said:

The game that keeps on giving, the game that spawned in this forum alone a wealth of discussion, sharing of stories, Ste Pickford's awesome art notebook. I deliberately handicapped myself for the challenge and faced some of the toughest bosses I've fought in gaming, and came out on top. I love the way the true scale of Elden Ring continually surprises you with its ever expanding map and vistas of places you never even knew existed, and the secrets within secrets. A triumph.

 

On 01/01/2023 at 20:36, MW_Jimmy said:

Yeah yeah, Elden Ring. Never guaranteed to take the top spot at all but seeing all of those votes for it, you start taking for granted what Elden Ring accomplishes. I really like the Souls series but I wouldn’t say I am one of those hardcore day one types, completing them multiple times or anything. I’ve only played most of Dark Souls and completed Bloodborne. I think the part that hooked me into buying this was the fact that I was hearing that reviewers were struggling to finish the game by review deadlines, not because of the difficulty but because of the sheer size and openness. I went into Elden Ring like all other of these games (no guides, no multiplayer, no magic, no reading anything!) and thus, my first two weeks with this was the most incredible sense of adventure and discovery in a game in a very long time. I think the part I love the most about Elden Ring is how seamlessly it meld open world areas and intricate soulsy labyrinths and very often concort them into spaces you didn't anticipate. 

 

On 02/01/2023 at 12:16, BitterToad said:

I'm currently sitting here scratching my head trying to work out my fifth favourite game of the year. Normally this takes as long as it does due to the sheer breadth and depth of the medium we all love but this year it's simply because I can't think of anything else to go in there. And that is all because of my number one game on the list. I spent literally half the year playing Elden Ring. Well to be honest given my social life at the time I spent half the year playing life and living Elden Ring. It is a completely majestic piece of work the likes of which we've never seen before and which we'll be incredibly lucky to ever see again. I don't know if I love it as much as Dark Souls, all of Elden Ring's best features; it's size, its variety, it's complexity weirdly put it at odds with the tight knit connected toy box brilliance that makes the first game's world so utterly perfect to me, but it's very clearly one of the most complete, most enormous, most most video games ever made. 

To take the Souls formula and expand it out in so many directions whilst also keeping that tight knit brilliance of a "Souls Map" in its many dungeons; some if not most of which are absolutely the best designed area in any Souls game ever is nothing short of a masterwork. What Miyazaki and his brilliant team have done across that incredible world in terms of pacing, design and just making it feel like a real world is genuinely impressive from those first steps in Limgrave all the way to the very end 120 hours (for me) later. There are a few drawbacks, a lot of the harder bosses definitely feel cheaper and more AOE based attack wise than in previous Soulsbournes and it's definitely a shame that the lads at From didn't space them out across the campaign to avoid the slightly boss rushy feel of the last 10-15 hours, but once you're through that and looking back on your memories in that world that I literally cut off all other gaming for half a year to spend time in and explore all of that fades into insignificance. It's up there with your Red Dead 2, with your Breath of the Wild, your Cyberpunk, truly real feeling places that offer true discovery throughout their playtimes. And that, I've learned over the last few years, is exactly what I want from video games.

There was a tweet that went viral this year talking about how none of your best memories when you die are going to be of playing video games. Now obviously this is completely thick across the board but it's games like the ones above that absolutely prove it wrong. When you're discovering things across beautifully designed worlds it doesn't feel like playing a game, it feels like travelling. And Elden Ring is absolutely one of the best if not the best example of this I've ever played. 

 

On 09/12/2022 at 14:47, Qazimod said:

I'll admit that after I tried the beta I was a little nervous. Not necessarily about the quality of the game – I was confident that it would be decent – but I wasn't sure if the open world would be as liberating as I had hoped. As the last day drew to a close and I was nowhere close to defeating any of the bosses, I wondered if the full game would be an open world full of insane encounters that would completely ruin me, no matter which one I chose to take on. However, Elden Ring has a lot more going on than a large expanse where bosses hang out. With the invisible walls of the beta taken down, a player can set off in pretty much any direction and enjoy one of the most carefully crafted videogame environments out there. Going into Elden Ring after so many other open-world games makes you look at those other games and realise that they could be doing a lot more with their space. Creating an impressive amount of square miles and littering it with the same objectives we've seen before isn't nearly as captivating after you've spent some time exploring the various regions in this game. Sites of Grace serve as checkpoints and allow you to push further out into the world, certain landmarks unlock further details on your map and offer teasers of more intriguing destinations to explore, and various catacombs invite you to explore and loot them – if you can survive the encounters within.

 

Coming from a developer so adept at creating oppressive, focused sequences in their games, it's refreshingly unrestrained. You can begin a play session with one particular goal in mind and come away with three or four more things you discovered on the way and intend to investigate next time – new checkpoints, new bosses, a new NPC questline to follow or perhaps a new piece of equipment to upgrade. And Elden Ring isn't afraid to lead you into areas your character isn't ready for - the game is kind enough to let you walk away from a particularly difficult encounter, but it rarely stops you from stumbling into that encounter in the first place. With this in mind, your discoveries are what help you push forward – locating a secret cave with upgrade materials, or finding a more manageable zone with enemies that drop plenty of runes. Just as you map out the hostile areas where you're barely able to survive, you also start to identify areas that benefit your character the most – and this continues to shift as your character's stats improve. By the end of the game you're teleporting around the map with confidence (with the exception of the final encounter and a few nightmarish optional battles) – and next to the other From games, it's a sensation that feels unique to Elden Ring.

 

In a world where everyone is so desperate to compare everything to Souls, I think I could easily recommend this to someone who didn't enjoy From's earlier Dark Fantasy Action RPGs. A few gameplay staples are shared between the games, but the generosity of the open world sets Elden Ring apart from the rest of them. I haven't even mentioned the offputting From tropes that this game happily throws out – there's nothing that's really like hollowing or humanity or insight, no chance of human invaders ruining your solo fun with their gimmick build, those once-tedious runs to collect your dropped currency are trivialised by pointing Torrent in the direction of your runes, weapon durability isn't a problem… and of course, it's much less linear. From Software have created something uniquely wonderful, and throwing it into the increasingly vague "Souls" generalisation is doing it a disservice – Elden Ring is so much more.

 

On 26/12/2022 at 21:58, Jamie John said:

Elden Ring is a work of untethered ambition and brilliant execution, particularly when you consider that the game is *130 hours* long. I often teach my students about the Romantic concept of the sublime, defined by Edmund Burke in the 18th century as a sort of crossroads between beauty, terror and overwhelming awe, and something that the likes of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats all tried to capture in their poetry. Hyperbole aside, in this sense, I honestly feel that Elden Ring is frequently sublime: it's scary, gorgeous and staggering, all at the same time, with an unparalleled sense of scale. Many are the moments where it's left me entirely bewildered, almost incredulous, but not once in the six weeks since I started it have I wanted to play anything else. It's possibly the one most compelling piece of media I've ever consumed: I just had to play it, and I couldn't possibly entertain doing anything other with my time.

 

On 10/12/2022 at 02:30, Darwock said:

When I was a kid I read the Lord of the Rings for the first time. I remember one particular afternoon I was reading the second book in a corner of the kitchen, and as I was reading I fell asleep. I had a very vivid dream and woke up with a very strong feeling that I had experienced being in the world myself, and had been torn out of it by waking up. Since that moment I started trying to recapture the feeling of living in the worlds of imagination - I would read the biggest books I could find, and pace them out so they would last as long as possible. The same for the games I played - I would ration the time spent on them and try to totally immerse myself for as long as I could make them last. Back then it was not an easy thing to do as games tended to be short - in fact it wasn’t until FFVII that I found a game that really provided enough substance to keep me satisfied, and still I didn’t want it to end.

 

So obviously Elden Ring is the game I’ve been waiting for all my life. I probably said the same thing the first time I discovered Demon’s Souls, but I got the most out of that by replaying it over and over. With Elden Ring I don’t even have to try and milk it. I’ve been playing since the launch, and as we approach the end of the year I’m at the final boss, 500 hours in. I think I can honestly say it has provided me with enough that I can actually be satisfied. But I haven’t pushed on to the conclusion yet because I still don’t want it to end.

 

The thing is my experience with it has been changing and evolving all the time, and I have had epic encounters I was dying to talk about at the time that are now just water under the bridge. In the early days before I had figured out how the world was built I remember going into a tomb and thinking… hmmm this looks just like the last one. I bet people are complaining about that online (I promised myself not to read anything on the game until I was done with it). After three or four tombs that had all provided different puzzles and challenges I had another call back to my youth - playing Advanced HeroQuest with my mates, with the same corridor pieces and enemies rearranged each time to make a unique experience. After doing one catacomb run with an online friend I actually had a moment where I was like “this is it, they’ve nailed it - finally a perfect HeroQuest game!”. However that turned out to be just one tiny aspect of what is presented here, as I was only a few weeks into the journey.

 

I remember when the map only showed Limgrave. I genuinely felt that was going to be the size of the whole game, with Stormveil castle being the end. The moment I entered a warp gate and it expanded up to include the capital, I was quite stunned. I thought that was going to be the whole game, with Leyndell being the end. Until the map expanded further… and further.

 

There’s a lot more going on here than just a big map though. It feels Iike an era defining experience to be honest, the Star Wars of gaming if you will. As I write this I’ve just watched Animal from the muppets talking about the Malenia boss fight, and I’ve had conversations with real life friends about various moments in the game that make me feel like I’ve been part of a shared journey, even though for me it’s been quite intensely personal and, due to my decision to avoid forum threads and spoilers, private.

 

If I had a complaint it’s that some of the quests are too oblique and hard to progress/easy to screw up, which in a game the size of Demon’s Souls is not much of an issue - but Elden Ring has been such an investment of time that to realize you have made a fatal error somewhere is actually quite soul crushing. I’m actually not sure that I can properly finish the game due to an ill-informed decision I made a few months ago… but the only way to avoid it would have been to look it up online and there is no way I was spoiling the first experience of a game like this for myself.

 

It does mean that I will be going into NG+ looking to fix those mistakes by myself, and still not able to join in any forum discussion for a good long time because there’s still a lot here that I want to experience first hand. So that’s 2023 booked up already.

 

On 13/12/2022 at 11:17, Hewson said:

This had to be Elden Ring in the end, simply because of the time I spent with it, the fabulous sense of exploration and challenge and the way From pulled off the trick of expanding their template into the most ambitious open-world since Breath of the Wild. But the game which most excited, surprised and fascinated me this year was Pentiment and I very nearly put it top of the list. Immortality had a similar impact on me in terms of how much I thought about them when I wasn't playing them. I played Dying Light 2 in a lull when nothing was really scratching my gaming itch and it was the nicest surprise of the year. The story was a distraction that I skipped right past, but the mechanics were rock solid and I somehow didn't really mind the Ubisoft map-marker template because the minute-to-minute gaming was so well executed. Vampire Survivors is a late-night kebab of a game. Not terribly good for you, but absolutely delicious.

 

On 01/01/2023 at 21:05, feltmonkey said:

An all-time classic.  Took over my brain for months.  I am not a Souls kind of guy - I've tried several of them and enjoyed them, but never got very far in any of them.  Elden Ring's open world transformed this kind of game simply by making it possible for you to go and do something else of you hit a wall. Stuck on a boss?  Go off in a different direction. You might level up, or find a better weapon or summon. This is transformative, but it's not the thing that makes Elden Ring great - that's everything in the game itself.

[Qazimod]

Never heard of it.

 

Thanks to everyone involved in this, and thanks for inviting me back for commentary.  I enjoyed reading everyone’s write-ups and it brought a few nice games to my attention.

[Jamie John]

Well-deserved. An incredible piece of art.

 

Kudos, as ever, to @Benny@Jolly, @Qazimod, @Wiper and everyone else who contributed.

[Made of Ghosts]

[Nick R]

So where did Sonic Frontiers really place, if not first?

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

Elden Ring was fuckin shite man.

[Benny]

14 hours ago, Nick R said:

So where did Sonic Frontiers really place, if not first?

 

 

It got a couple of votes, so somewhere around 37th place I think.

[Benny]

The final list of all the games voted for:

 

(games which scored the same have been grouped together in bold)

 

Quote

1     Elden Ring
2     Vampire Survivors
3     Immortality 
4     Pentiment 
5     Kirby and the Forgotten Land
6     Splatoon 3
7     Gran Turismo 7
8     Tunic 
9     Neon White
10     God of War Ragnarök
11     Return to Monkey Island
12     Xenoblade Chronicles 3
13     Horizon Forbidden West
14     Citizen Sleeper
15     Powerwash Simulator
16     Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
17     Chained Echoes
18     Sniper Elite 5

19     Triangle Strategy
20     Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga

21     Roadwarden
22     Pocky and Rocky Reshrined

23     OlliOlli World

24     Bayonetta 3
25     Tinykin
26     Atari 50

27     A Plague Tale: Requiem

28     Gunvein
29     Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak
30     Cultic

31     Sifu 

32     Nintendo Switch Sports
33     The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe (2022)

34     Sonic Frontiers
35     Pokémon Legends: Arceus

36     Marvel Snap
37     WRC Generations

38     Trombone Champ
39     Total War: Warhammer III
40     Norco 
41     Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II 

42     Like Dreamer
43     FIFA22
44     Patrick’s Parabox
45     Escape Academy

46     Arcade Paradise

47     Stray 
48     Need for Speed Unbound

49     F1 22
50     Boomerang Fu
51     Tactics Ogre: Reborn
52     Metal: Hellsinger
53     Strange Horticulture
54     Grounded 

55     Live A Live

56     Z-Warp
57     Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope
58     Ghostwire: Tokyo
59     FALLGUYS
60     Drainus
61     Opus: Echo of Starsong - Full Bloom Edition
62     Dwarf Fortress
63     The Case of the Golden Idol
64     Deathloop
65     The Quarry
66     Poinpy

67     Slice & Dice
68     Dead End City
69     Nobody Saves the World
70     Tunic
71     Session: Skate Sim
72     Dying Light 2
73     Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course
74     Hardspace Shipbreaker
75     Mario Kart 8 Booster Course Pass
76     Madden NFL 23
77     Card Shark
78     Taiji

79     Tukiyono
80     Flat Eye
81     The Last of Us Part I
82     Asterigos: Curse of the Stars
83     Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters
84     Know By Heart
85     Marvel’s Midnight Suns
86     Persona 5
87     Dorfromantik
88     Prodeus
89     Into the Breach DLC
90     Grapple Dog
91     Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
92     Pokémon Scarlet and Violet