Pokémon Legends: Z-A (Switch2) – The Mega Dimension DLC is a little repetitive, but good gravy did it ever rope me in good. The new mega evolutions are also awesome and wild, with many of them being for Pokémon you really wouldn’t have expected to get a mega. I just really like this game in general, and I’m happy for additional content, even if it was muy expensivo.
Kirby Air Riders (Switch2) – Cleared the Road Trip mode, but will be playing it more to unlock the true ending. Also just played a bunch in general, both on my own and online multiplayer. This game is the most fun 🙂
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (Switch2) – Been waiting for this one for what, like 20 years? Maybe it’s more like 17 or 18, but man… It was worth it. While it’s a bit too linear and doesn’t top the heights of Prime 1, in my opinion, it’s still really good. It still gives you the opportunity to explore a Metroid game in first-person, and that’s all I really want in life. Now, to replay it on hard mode…
While it’s not the only VR game I’ve played this year, it’s the only one I’ve spent more than like an hour with.
Release Year: 2025
Developer: Radical Forge
Platform: Quest
Vampire Survivors is nothing new; it’s been out for a few years, have been ported to almost everything under the sun, and has spawned a fair number of copycats. However! In 2025, it mysteriously got a VR version, which is not something that I ever really knew I wanted, until one day when I put on my headset and it was all like “Hey we’ve got Vampire Survivors now!” And because I am more than happy to own Vampire Survivors on as many machines as possible, I bought it right away.
Now, we all know how the game works, right? You pick a character and a stage, which then has you fending off never-ending waves of monsters for as long as you can. Defeated monsters drop experience points, and when you level up, you get to choose from a new weapon or item that will help you keep fighting the good fight. Your gear can level up to become more effective, and eventually you’ll even be able to evolve your weapons, which will make them even better at slaying hundreds of thousands of monsters. Then if you manage to survive for 30 minutes, the grim reaper shows up to kill you instantly and the game is over.
There is a little more to it than that, and Vampire Survivors has a lot of secrets to discover, but that’s the gist of it. In between rounds you can use coins you earn in battle to upgrade your stats permanently and unlock new characters, each with his or her or its own special trait. There’s a bestiary where you can read about all the monsters you’ve slain, and a compendium of all the items, weapons, and evolved weapons you’ve discovered. Maybe there’s even more buried in there, I don’t know. For all the hours I’ve spent playing different ports of this game, I’ve never unlocked everything.
Sadly, the VR version doesn’t add a whole lot to the mix. Mostly you just get to look around 3D environments while you’re poking around the menus. The actual gameplay takes place in a 3D area based on the stage you’re on, but the game is played on something of a tabletop within that area, so it’s exactly the same as you’re used to. The one really nice touch is that all the sprites and environments are in three dimensions on that tabletop, which gives the game at least a little more depth than the flat versions we’ve all become accustomed to. And maybe there’s more to it as you progress, I don’t know, but I do hope there are at least a couple more surprises that make use of the VR setting.
So while the core gameplay of Vampire Survivors hasn’t changed in its transition to virtual reality, it has done at least one very important thing: made me spend dozens more hours playing Vampire Survivors. And hey, as a little bonus, since the Quest 3’s battery life is so ass, I only end up playing for about two hours at a time, and don’t lose entire days to it. Which I absolutely would if I were given my way, because one of the hardest things to do in life is to stop playing Vampire Survivors.
DEAD OR SCHOOL (PC) – I bought it because the title made me laugh out loud. Much to my surprise, it turned out to be a pretty enjoyable little hack ‘n’ slash. Could use a bit more polish, but it’s just the right difficulty level and I had a fun time playing it.
Ring Fit Adventure (Switch) – I’ve been making time to play this for an hour or so every Sunday for a couple months now, and I’ve finally, finally beaten the game on New Game+ mode. Now to start New Game++! Hopefully I’ll stick with it better this time around and finish it within 2025.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind (Switch) – A brand-spankin’ new arcade-style brawler that came out of nowhere and I purchased immediately. I have no regrets. While it could have used a little more time in the oven, it’s exactly what I both expected and hoped for.
Peglin (PC) – What more do you want me to say? I guess I could stop listing it in the “Game Over” section, but does a successful run not count as “beating” the game?
FNAF VR: Help Wanted (Quest) – Played this again for the sake of a let’s play. Good times were had, except for the stupid Funtime Foxy levels. Those are the WORST.
FNAF VR: Help Wanted 2 (Quest) – As much as I enjoyed the first game, this is one is scores better. While it doesn’t have any mini-games that are quite as engrossing as the FNAF1-3 recreations, it also doesn’t have any ridiculously difficult mini-games like the stupid Funtime Foxy levels.
Beyond Good & Evil – 20th Anniversary Edition (PC) – 20 years later, I finally understand why this game has a cult following that is desperate for a sequel. I’m not in that boat myself, but I get it. Alas, to a cynical Modern Ryan, it seems kinda like a very ambitious project that ran out of money halfway through development.
Peglin (PC) – Several rather large updates means, of course, more Peglin.
TMNT: Splintered Fate (Switch) – 2000+ words coming soon. I like this one. A Lot.
Gal Guardians: Demon Purge (Switch) – Ran this one into the ground with the 100% clear. Read many more words about it here! Somewhat spooky.
Pikmin 1 (Switch) – It feels a little rough, coming directly from the incredible Pikmin 4, but man, it’s still such a good game. Would have been nice if Nintendo had added a few of Pikmin 4’s quality-of-life features for this re-release. Oh well! No spooks here.
Mercenary Kings: Reloaded Edition (PC) – After a little over a year of playing it on and off, it’s finally done! A little grindy, yes, but despite that, it was still pretty fun. And I got a nice, long YouTube series out of it. Hardly spooky at all.
Well, another year is behind us, and as usual, I frittered away a huge chunk of it playing video games. To help justify spending all that time on viddygames, here’s a big, long list of the ones that I liked most.
If this is your first time reading one of my Top X Games lists, I don’t make them based on games released in the previous year, but rather, games I played in the previous year. There is one constant rule: I must have played the game for the first time in the last year. And I added a new criteria for 2022, which is: no two games from the same franchise. Helps to keep the list a little more diversified. Oh, and the games are listed in the order that I played them. No playing favourites among the favourites.
Okay, that’s the preamble. Let’s go!
In 2021, I played most of the games in the Ys series, and most of them were really good. Ys: Memories of Celceta even managed to secure a spot on my Top 10 list for 2021. So the only video game “goal” I had going into 2022 was to finish off the Ys series by playing through the two games I had outstanding: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, and Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. Needless to say, they were also really good.
Lacrimosa of Dana in particular gets to adorn this list because it is definitely my favourite game in the series. It takes everything that was great about Memories of Celceta and makes them even better. So really, you could probably just read what I wrote last year and it would mostly still apply, and I could skip writing another paragraph here. But I suppose that I should at least go over some of the highlights. Specifically, I enjoy how the combat is exciting and very speedy, exploring is more fun than ever with map and treasure box completion percentages for every area, the metroidvania-style way that the world slowly opens up as you gain new traversal abilities is always appreciated, and I think that this game has the best cast of party members in the series.
One thing that I cannot praise enough about Ys VIII is that it has one of my absolute favourite video game soundtracks of all time. All Ys games have phenomenal music, but Ys VIII’s in particular really stands out to me. Not only did I get an imported physical copy of the soundtrack, but I also bought the Ys VIII: Super Ultimate arrange album, and I listen to both of them quite often. Sunshine Coastline specifically is straight up one of the best video game songs I’ve ever heard, and multiple official and cover versions of it live on my phone so I can listen to them all the time.
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (PS2) – You know how in FNAF, there’s “the one you shouldn’t have killed”? Well this is “the one I shouldn’t have played.” To be fair, it wasn’t that bad, and while I did enjoy some of my time with it, it was an absolute struggle to play much more often than I would have liked. Also the ending was poop. The biggest shame of it all is that I likely would have been totally ga-ga for this game if I’d played it back in 2004, but it just feels rough in 2023.
Picross S6 (Switch) – What more can I say than “it’s more Picross”? No, like, literally, it’s exactly the same format as the last two but with different puzzles. Which is all I ask for, but it doesn’t make for a very interesting review.
Kirby’s Dream Land (GB) – With the release of the Game Boy Online app on Switch… I took the opportunity to revisit some old favourites.
Here is a big ol’ list of all the video games that I spent a significant amount of time playing in 2022. It’s not a comprehensive list, as I left off a few little indie games that were more “experiences”, games that I gave up on after a single session, and games that aren’t really games (like Rocksmith and Fitness Boxing). If you’d like to know how I felt about any of them, I included the month in which I started playing each one, so you can conveniently look up the appropriate Month End Round-Up post.
Of note is that of the 75 games listed below, 53 were eligible for my “Top X of 2022” list. I’ve narrowed it down to the ones I liked best, and I was left with fifteen finalists. Now I have the unenviable task of deciding if I want my GOTY list to just be 15 games, or if I want to try to figure out which five to cut to make it a nice, round Top Ten. Or, should I add seven more games to make it the Top 22 of ’22? Find out in… I don’t know, like a week or two, maybe? I’m going to try to get it done before February, anyway.
I’ve grown to really enjoy how Nintendo compiles your play history and presents it in statistical data for the year. And apparently Steam did it this year, too!
Alas, Nintendo’s offering for 2022 was weak, with much less data than the last couple of years. What I got was a list of the 21 Switch games I played the most this year, and how many hours of each. No graphs, no in-depth breakdowns, nothing else. So, here are the top three…
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes the cake for sure, and I still have a ton of game left to play there. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s definitely going to rank high on my 2022 GOTY list. Monster Hunter Rise got second billing because the Sunbreak expansion came out this year and I spent a lot of time grinding away at that with my brother. Lastly, and just squeaking in there at the end of the year, is Pokémon Scarlet, which is even a few hours richer than what it says above, because I’ve played it a bunch since these stats were delivered. Also, the assertion that I only played Pokémon on 10 separate days cannot be right. It just can’t!
