Games I Beat - 2022

A lot of people I know keep track of a backlog of books or games. I make a point of instead tracking the stuff I finish. I think focusing on accomplishment is a better angle than perpetually staring at a mountain you build yourself.

This is a list of games I beat this year. It doesn’t include any “endless” games, such as multiplayer games or games with no real end-point. That’s not to say I haven’t played a bunch, but that’s for a different list.

Now, in the order I beat them:

Deus Ex (2000) [PC]

In some ways, Deus Ex is a game that feels like it hasn’t aged a day. In others, it feels like it’s wobbly-kneed like a newborn fawn still trying to get its footing. The world design and the writing hold up remarkably well, and the very X-Files aesthetic of everything is charming. In gameplay, however, it feels deeply clunky. It tries to allow the player with an incredible amount of freedom – it’s a shooter, it’s a stealth game, you can talk your way out of almost anything! But it never quite succeeds at any of those.

I ended up playing a shooter-y style JC, but a lot of my time was spent cheesing enemies with grenades.

Sable (2021) [PC]

Sable is a beautiful game in every sense. The music and sound design are incredible. The visuals are stunning. The story is touching. The world is a delight.

The gameplay is largely focused on the style of exploration anyone who’s played Breath of the Wild will be familiar with, complete with grab-anywhere climbing and a glider. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game, and it is a joy to lose yourself in and just go exploring.

I imagine I’ll play this again once the memory has faded a bit more.

Elden Ring (2022) [PC]

So, Elden Ring is a lot. And it was also the very first souls-bourne-like I actually sat down and beat. This game came out at a great time for me because I had recently injured my ankle and was able to focus in on it shortly after it came out.

I love world design that isn’t afraid to let the player explore, and Elden Ring does that in spades. I’m certain that I missed a ton of stuff, maybe even as many as two bosses! But that’s OK. I still enjoyed it a lot, especially the co-op parts I played with my friends. Due to its length and complexity, I’m not sure if I’ll be playing more of this.

FIFA 17 (2016) - The Journey [PS4]

I’ve really gotten into sports in the last few years. I blame Blaseball for showing me that sports are competitive story generators. While the real world never gets to be as wild as Blaseball, I can still appreciate a set of simple rules + the human element creating compelling narratives.

Looking into sports games is kind of disappointing as far as a desire for a narrative goes. The closest thing most games get is a sort of “season manager” style mode. As cool as that can be, it’s a lot to take in for a newbie like myself. Enter: FIFA’s “The Journey” – a narrative-based mode that follows a single player, Alex Hunter, through his career. From FIFA 17 starts the journey, and while it can feel a bit clean and pre-scripted, there are some really cool elements that react to the player.

The Journey continues through FIFA 19, but after that it was dropped (not as profitable as those player packs, I guess). I already grabbed a copy of 18, so I hope to continue The Journey to see what it has in store.

Psychonauts (2005) [PC]

It’s easy to see why Psychonauts has such a cult following. It’s a totally unique setting with a ton of possibilities. And the game itself has incredible stages! The abstractions of different characters minds makes for an awesome way to create a variety of stages, and provides the designers a toolbox they can use to further build out the character whose mind you’re in. The gameplay felt a little dated at times, and certain stage gimmicks were really fiddly. Still had a lot of fun.

I hope to play Psychonauts 2 soon.

DiRT Showdown (2012) [PC] - Showdown Tour

I don’t think DiRT Showdown is a very good game. It lives in a really interesting niche of almost B-games that I feel kind of died out. I played this because I was getting into cars due to grabbing a copy of Gran Turismo Sport, and was interested in a more arcadey car game. Also, I had this in my Steam account already (probably some Humble Bundle). The game is split into races, demolition derbies, and trick combo stages. Those trick stages are the worst.

Still, I made a point of finishing it. So that’s something.

Neon White (2022) [PC] - 100%

Neon White is an absolute joy. The most wonderfully cringe characters, a plot that feels like it’s ripped from Toonami (according to my fuzzy memory of Toonami anyway), and gameplay that is snappy and fast. The game does a lot to teach players to speedrun and the short stages make it absolutely painless.

I strongly recommend this game.

Disco Elysium (2019) [PC]

Disco Elysium deserves all the praise it’s earned and then some. The writing has a masterful control of tone, the art is stunning, the music is lovely. This is definitely a story and an experience that will stick with me for a long time. The setting is like nothing else, and neither is the way the player is introduced to that setting. It feels as first like being dropped into a fictional European town, but throughout the game, the world expands and slowly shows the player all it has in store. Maybe not all, per se. There are still plenty of secrets and unknowns.

I look forward to replaying this as a different role. My first playthrough was a “Sorry Cop”.

Sunset Overdrive (2014) [PC]

Sunset Overdrive feels like a game out of time. Like Crackdown just came out and Insomniac wanted to do one of those. The movement in this game is fun, and there are a lot of aspects of it that clearly were brought forward into Spider-Man (PS4). The writing is utterly ridiculous, and only a couple of times elicited a laugh from me.

Half-Life 2: VR Mod (2004/2022) [PC]

Major props to the development team on this mod. The VR gameplay feels incredibly good here! But I’m afraid it’s often clear at times that the original game was never really designed for it. Still a fine way to replay HL2.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus (2022) [NS]

One thing I like about the recent trends in Pokémon’s side games is that the devs use that space to experiment in ways that would likely rock the boat a bit too much in the mainline games. Arceus continues the focus introduced in the Let’s Go of prioritizing catching over battling, but with wide open spaces and some interesting changes to the battle system.

It takes place in the past, so abilities and having Pokémon hold items haven’t been discovered yet. All moves now have an additional Strong style and Agile style, which modifies the move’s damage and place in the turn order. That’s right, this one has a turn order which you need to take into consideration. At times, you can be battling multiple enemy ‘mons and need to keep a close watch on the turn order and who you’re targeting. Overall, I think the battle changes weren’t significant enough to have a major difference on the combat, which I found disappointing. It didn’t help that there isn’t much battling in the game in the first place – you don’t ever really get a chance to get a feel for the new system. I sure did enjoy the wandering around, catching and finding stuff part though.

Also, since there’s no need to trade, I might actually finish the Pokédex for once! Maybe.

Half-Life: Alyx (2020) [PC] - Commentary Run

For my money, Alyx remains the AAA big fancy high quality VR title. That’s both a great thing and a terrible thing. It’s great because it’s really polished and fun. It’s terrible because it sits squarely in an ongoing franchise (bad for getting new players) and PC-only (bad for getting new players with cheaper standalone headsets). I admit that I doubt VR will ever be widely adopted due to the cost, space, and physical mobility required to engage with it, but these added hurdles help nobody.

All that being said, the commentary track for Alyx is excellent as every other Valve commentary track. I greatly appreciate the inclusion of commentary tracks, and wish more developers would do it. Sadly, I imagine there’s not a whole lot of incentive for them to do so.

Yoku’s Island Express (2018) [PC]

Yoku’s Island Express is almost exactly the sort of game I’ve been looking for since I first really dug into pinball table design. There’s something really cool about pinball that I still haven’t quite put my finger on, but I have thought that it would work well in a sort of RPG style game. Bethesda’s Bethesda Pinball (which I first played on iOS) does something like this for the Fallout and Skyrim tables. Sadly, the iOS version of that doesn’t make it really possible to play without microtransactionsy stuff.

Yoku, however, isn’t an RPG. It’s an adventure game (in the “metroid-vania” style) about a cute bug and his lovely rock that he’s tied to. Some of the game you spend rolling your rock around, and some of it you play pinball with rock-and-bug. It’s all very cute. There’s some interesting stuff going on with the setting and myths and legends of the island, but it would require quite a bit of collecting hidden doo-dads. I don’t imagine I’ll be doing that.

Pokémon: Violet (2022) [NS]

Pokémon: Violet is the best Pokémon game I’ve ever played. I really mean that. Where most reviews spend a lot of time hand-wringing over bugs and performance issues, I sincerely believe there’s a really solid game here in spite of that. The overall loop of exploration and battling feels engaging, and the world is fun to explore on your past/future-bike-mon. The ability to venture off in your own direction and run into scary over-levelled ‘mons makes for a more memorable experience than the usual hand-holding railroad prior games take you down.

I really enjoy the gimmick for this generation too – “Terastallization”. It’s a way to temporarily change your Pokémon’s typing, which enables a variety of strategies. The Tera Types can cover weaknesses in an otherwise unviable ‘mon, of it can bolster strengths and make them more hard-hitting. I look forward to seeing what this enables for the folks who play competitive.

In the wild, most of the Tera’d Pokémon you see are in raids. The raids system in this game is far more interesting than the one in Sword/Shield. Here, the raids are real-time, and the enemy Pokémon’s actions are much more varied. The additional typing also makes for a bit of a puzzle to figure out what to bring with you, since you have to contend with the Pokémon’s regular type(s) and the types for their attacks, but you want something that can effectively hit their Tera type too.

I plan to keep playing this. I even want to complete my Pokédex, something I’ve never done in one of these games before. The competitive battling side of things still seems overwhelming to me, but I’m enjoying the game so much I might do that too.