RECAP — Brando’s GOTY 2022
In preparation for the Game Awards 2023…
In preparation for the Game Awards 2023…
I’m importing my old article about my Game of the Year picks from 2022. It was a quieter year for me last year! But I still stand by my picks. This year is going to be quite a bit tougher — have just been playing masterpiece after masterpiece. What do you think of my picks? What do you think will win out this year? Stay tuned for my eventual “Brando’s Game of the Year 2023” article!
Another year, another game to define it.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been using Backloggd for almost a year now, with this GOTY 2022 event being the first I’m able to participate in. The categories the nominees will compete for this year are:
GAME of the YEAR
Gameplay
Narrative
Art Direction
Soundtrack
Multiplayer
This year, I was able to play quite a few eligible games (Eligibility spans from November 15th, 2021 through November 15th, 2022), but it’s still a pretty small list. My specific eligible games are the following:
Devolver Tumble Time
Mission to Snowdriftland
Vampire Survivors
Elden Ring
Aperture Desk Job
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Stacklands
Rifftrax: The Game
POINPY
Neon White
The Jackbox Party Starter
Cheese Runner
Multi-Versus
The Ascent: Cyber Heist DLC
BONE LAB
Marvel SNAP
The Jackbox Party Pack 9
Rogue Legacy 2
While you have seen the image preceding the article my picks won’t surprise you, but perhaps the reasons will. Let’s get into the WHYs.
Best Multiplayer: Marvel SNAP
Out of the eligible games for multiplayer, it was a no-brainer. I have played a ridiculous amount of Marvel SNAP. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve been an avid participant in both seasons that have been offered since launch and I play on a regular… daily basis. The amount of joy and entertainment I’ve squeezed out of this game (in the multiplayer sense) doesn’t even compare to the other eligible multiplayer experiences I’ve had in other games released this year. The matches in SNAP are QUICK, less than 4 minutes, and there’s no real pay to win. What happens is everyone kind of gets their meta, as they build their collection randomly with drops from specific “pools” of cards. I imagine this will change as more people join the community and the meta will just be people who have played the longest… but starting is easy, deckbuilding is quick because your decks are built of just 12 cards, and it’s overall just a really fun time with a great community and excellent developers. Has rightfully earned its spot as my multiplayer selection.
Best Soundtrack: BONELAB
Moving up into best soundtrack, you might be surprised to see Bone Lab, after my big rant about it, but the truth is, the soundtrack truly is one of the best things about it. The passion you can feel behind each piece from Michael Wyckoff, and the variety of each of the pieces, just further elevates how incredible it is that it was carefully put together by one person. The true shame of Bone Lab is that the gameplay and narrative couldn’t be tuned up to a higher quality to let the music shine as it should. The middling and short story combined with the gimmicky ever-present tech demo feeling throughout Bone Lab tries so hard to bring the soundtrack down with it, but the music finds a way to prevail and exist as a beautiful, independent piece of work. Have spent oodles of time listening to Lab Jams on Spotify, and I imagine I will continue to visit it until my next Soundtrack-related obsession.
Art Direction: POINPY
POINPY is my selection for Art Direction, and that also may be shocking to some. I mean, a Netflix-published indie mobile game? Yessir. I might be a little biased because of my love for its creator, Ojiro Fumoto, but I do love the art here. The colors are vibrant, the animations are, for lack of a better word, JUICY, and the entire game is just such a fun romp through these creative and cohesive worlds and levels. Worth it to pick up Netflix for a month so you can play the tar out of it? Maybe. Up to you to decide.
Narrative: Kirby and the Forgotten Land
For the best narrative, I have Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Of my selection, I thought hard about this choice and I’m pretty prepared to stand by it. What it boiled down to, is that I think Kirby killing a god-being is always funny. It was also a logical conclusion from the eligible nominees; many of them don’t have narratives, and those that do… well it’s easy for me to disregard them. Can I give the best narrative to the Lego Star Wars game, where the narrative just comes from the movies? Can I count Elden Ring when I have seen hours of people explaining the narrative to me on YouTube? BONELAB is a thousand steps below BONEWORKS narrative, and I’m not letting Neon White win in two categories, so Kirby it was. But I’m fine with that! As I said, a pink ball creature kills a god. It’s funny every time. Surprisingly dark. I always have appreciated the Kirby games for that.
Best Gameplay: LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Now for the first heavy hitter. Gameplay. I had to give it to LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. I know. Surprised me as well. But, I’m one of those people who played all the old Lego Star Wars games. Those old games helped shape me into the gamer that I am today, all those hours playing them on Gamecube, Wii, and DS. After The Complete Saga came out, I felt that my journey in those cames had come to a close… Fast forward to this year, and I never could have expected the scope and scale the series would experience with The Skywalker Saga. Combat has been completely overhauled to give melee characters a rudimentary combo system, the camera has been changed to a 3rd-person perspective, characters with blasters have complete control of where they’re aiming, and the WORLDS are explorable! Ships are pilotable! As someone who reveres the first 6 Star Wars movies especially, I am in complete shock and awe at how fun it is to play this game, with these characters, on these planets, experiencing some of my favorite movies in an entirely new light. This formula is so good that I even found new things in 7, 8, and 9 to care about! It was done with so much love and care and playing it was an absolute joy. Rightfully earned its award as my pick for best gameplay this year.
Game of the Year: Neon White
So.
NEON WHITE.
I played this game for a month straight and I was just obsessed out of my mind, I played and played and played, listened to all 50+ Machine Girl tracks on Spotify, challenged the leaderboards, and played THE ENTIRE GAME without dying on TWO separate occasions, and I. Just. Did. Everything. Everything it had to offer. The game’s 100% completion trophy sits in my Steam account as my pride and joy. It’s prominently featured in my SteamVR home as well. Cozy place, you should visit sometime. Anyway, so why? Why did I become so obsessed? And how does all that make it eligible for my Game of the Year?
Neon White is all about going FAST. It’s ‘speedrun the game.’ I haven’t ever been someone who has liked the whole Speedrun thing. But this MOVEMENT chef’s kiss is perfect. Going fast feels fast. Optimizing routes to cut seconds, even milliseconds off my time was incredibly addictive and rewarding. The gameplay loop is simple, but mastery has such a high skill ceiling. You can spend hours on a single 20-second level in an attempt to crawl to the top of the worldwide leaderboards. I found a lot of enjoyment in getting better than myself. When that wasn’t challenging anymore, I beat all the developer times. After that, I had my fill paha. But that movement kept me coming back for more and more and MORE.
Something I also enjoyed, despite a large number of the wrong target audience not liking it, is the story. Very pseudo-biblical, has huge anime influences, and overall is great stuff. I loved finding the gifts in all the levels so I could increase White’s relationship with these characters. While cliche, I found the whole amnesia thing to be quite interesting… who were these characters in White’s life before? I had to know. It all kept me coming back day after day to play.
Even if I wasn’t interested in that, the gifts from the relationship system brought a whole new dynamic to each stage that contributed to me playing each level at least 5 times to completion (but, let’s be real, I’ve probably played each level at least 20+ times). Once the first time through (to the point of getting an ACE medal), a second time, focused on the puzzle of platforming to the gift, a third time with fresh eyes and an experienced mind to beat the dev time or my previous best, once for my deathless ‘entire game’, run through, and lastly a time for my deathless ‘[redacted weapon] only’ entire game run. Ah, man. Love this game.
Neon White is masterfully crafted, and expertly put together, and I cannot help but recommend it to anyone who might even be partially interested in playing it. Out of my eligible selection, this is the no-brainer choice for me as my Game of the Year 2022.
Honorable Mentions and More
Now, I’m sure that these picks, even from my eligible game pool, are going to turn some heads. I need to address the elephant in the room:
No Elden Ring.
That’s right, I elected to not nominate Elden Ring in any category. Here’s why:
I’m not sure I’ve ever been so stressed out because of a video game, which largely made my time with it very love-hate… the dopamine boost from winning just wasn’t enough to rectify the constant stress I was under while playing, be it from losing levels of Runes, to nigh impossible boss battles, up through poorly timed invasions… every turn Elden Ring was a nightmare for my anxiety. Completing it was an incredible accomplishment and that felt great of course… but I wasn’t always having fun getting to that point. I could never consider Elden Ring MY Game of the Year for that reason. The dopamine highs never outweighed my stress and anxiety and the work it took to obtain the win screen.
For the other categories, Elden Ring does have great multiplayer, music, art direction, and gameplay, but much of it feels derivative of other FromSoft games (even though it is FromSoft’s magnum opus), so I didn’t feel comfortable putting it in any of those categories either. It definitely can’t compete in the narrative department because of how hidden most of the narrative is and how easy it is to miss all of it in casual play, so that was also out of the picture for me.
Now, in case you weren’t bored of reading this massive page, let’s talk about some of my honorable mentions:
Ah, man. Vampire Survivors. When I bought it on a whim a month ago, I thought to myself… huh. I’ll see if it’s as addicting as everyone says. Didn’t think twice about it the first few times I booted it up, but then it got its hooks in me. Soon, unlocking all the upgrades and achievements became an obsession. “What will this weapon evolve into?”, “How can I maximize my DPS with this character?”, “What is this secret on the map?”, I just have been positively obsessed, and now I’ve got 45+ hours logged. No idea where that time came from or went, and I regret nothing. Oddly enough, there isn’t much gameplay to be had… the most you can do with a character is move them around while they do the attack spamming for you, and you go through menus to select abilities to upgrade. I originally thought I was going to pick this for best gameplay, but when the gameplay is just moving, I figured I should pick something with a deeper gameplay system. But man, that’s incredibly fun and is a game I highly recommend.
Stacklands is the indie darling that almost took my Art Direction slot, but POINPY overtook it. For the small 8 or so hours I played Stacklands I was obsessed with it. Growing your population, assigning jobs, and ensuring you have enough food and stuff for your people was addicting, and the quests calmly guided me in my cozy quest. The card designs were simplistic and cute, the sound design was great, and it’s overall a really neat package, especially from the standpoint that it was made in a single month by a small dev team.
What may be shocking is my lack of inclusion of Rogue Legacy 2. Earlier this year I sent numerous tweets praising the game for its “back to basics” rogue-lite vibes and exceptional gameplay. The game sits in my Steam library with a whopping 70 or so hours. So what gives? While I did enjoy the game immensely… I feel like it was missing a real wow factor. I understand that Lego Star Wars TSS and its wow factor, may very well come from a subjective and biased place within me… after all, it is one of my favorite IPs in a style I am nostalgic for. Logistically it would be easy for me to say that the simplistic, somewhat middling combat of the Lego game couldn’t compare to the deeper and more intricate combat experience you get from Rogue Legacy 2, and thus Rogue Legacy 2 has better gameplay and is more deserving of the Gameplay award. I see that for sure. But, the places that the Lego game was able to take me emotionally because of the gameplay and their innovations (regardless of the nostalgia and everything else)… that’s why I ultimately picked it for the slot over Rogue Legacy 2. And it didn’t make sense to me for the other award categories. I’m a bit sad not to see it there, but decisions had to be made, and I made them.
Now let’s talk Rifftrax, Jackbox Starter, and Jackbox 9. Rifftrax is THE best iteration of the Jackbox formula since Jackbox came into the public eye. In some circumstances, I prefer it more. While it is just the same game mode over and over again, it’s the crowd you play with and the movie clips that make it something special. Have had some incredible laughs from the most ridiculous answers on the dumbest movie clips. I highly recommend the game. Plays well on SteamDeck too. Ultimately though, I have had more fun in Marvel Snap, but it was highly considered for the Multiplayer slot, especially because it feels more ‘multiplayer’ than a solo feeling game experience on SNAP.
Jackbox Starter I didn’t necessarily play, more than I claim to have played it. I’ve played the games that are included in it, and out of everything Jackbox has ever produced they are my favorite. But seeing as they are all old games not released this year, it was disqualified in my mind.
Jackbox 9, so far seems fun, but I’ve only had two sessions playing it. With my dwindling social life and familial connections, it’s just getting more and more difficult to find the time to get a group together and play. I have purchased all of the Jackbox games… but this is probably going to be the last. I couldn’t properly compare it with anything else from my lack of playtime, and thus I disqualified it from my selection.
Last honorable mention: I don’t know who on God’s green Earth made Cheese Runner. But I love you and need you to know that I too, have created a fictional universe with (truly) illegal cheese. We are kin of this idea. Hope to meet you someday. Seriously considered Cheese Runner as my narrative choice. That sounds like a joke, like hyperbole, but it was very close to taking the spot because great minds think alike…
So, what did you all think of my picks? What did you play this year, and what are you voting for? Let me know in the replies and post links to your Backloggd pages so I can see them there!