Several titans of video games clashed in 2022, with two of Sony’s biggest studios launching sequels to some of the best games of the last generation in Horizon Forbidden West and God of War: Ragnarök, a healthy year for Nintendo Switch owners and some real highlights like Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and that’s before we consider the strength of third party games like Marvel’s Midnight Suns, A Plague Tale: Requiem and more.
The winner of this year’s Best Single Player award, overcomes some of the recency bias that we can often see when handing out Game of the Year plaudits. Not only that, but it managed to meet and even exceed the huge amount of hype and expectation that had built up over the past few years.
It’s no surprise to see Elden Ring, what could comfortably be called the ultimate FromSoftware game, as the winner here. The sheer breadth and depth of this game make it hard to fathom if you’ve never played it before, and you’ll be spending hundreds of hours flitting between joyous victories and agonizing defeats with a big stupid grin on your face.
It helps that you can come back to the game to enjoy repeat playthroughs with entirely different weapons or builds too, because the fun never has to end. The story is amazing, there are plenty of unnerving NPCs to find, and you’re unlikely to see everything the game has to offer in your first trip through it anyway.
Elden Ring is simply the most immersive and impressive game that FromSoftware has made, and while many thought it would just be Dark Souls in an open world, the new systems and plethora of little tweaks helped to make sure that wasn’t the case. Elden Ring is undoubtedly one of the best games of the year, but it might just be one of the best games of all time too.
– Jason C
God of War: Ragnarök – Runner Up
God of War: Ragnarok encapsulates everything we’ve come to expect from Sony’s push for prestige singeplayer experiences. This formula has yet to show signs of fatigue, sandwiching together epic storylines, stunning set piece action, and vast world to get lost within.
Critics continue to shower this sequel with praise and it’s easy to see why, transforming a terrific yet tired hack n’ slash trilogy into a landmark action RPG.
– Jim H
Marvel’s Midnight Suns – Runner Up
I had faith that Midnight Suns was going to be at least “good”, but if you would have told me it would be one of my favourite games released in 2022, I wouldn’t have believed you. I’ve seen it labled a lot as Marvel’s own Fire Emblem, but I think that’s unfair to Midnight Suns. It serves as it’s own unique experience, enabling you to do some pretty cool things on the battlefield, and on the side, make friends with some of Marvel’s finest in truly corny fashion. It shouldn’t work, but it does and I found myself just as invested in getting to know the heroes as I was fine tuning my decks for each hero. Also, it’s Marvel so it’s going to get the eyes of a wider audience to hopefully start playing more of these types of strategy game. Sounds like a win all round to me.
– Nick P
