Your Games Completed of 2022

Has a strong air of "50p in a Steam sale" so I'll hang on for a bit. I think my brain might explode if I played two of these things back-to-back anyway.

Ah yeah I loved Four Last Things. Such a genius way around having to create your own game art, too.

It's on my list (Procession to Calvary, that is) and on the Playstation store so I will pick it up at one point. Excited to learn of Four Last Things; disappointed that this isn't on Playstation.

The Gunk
Mass Effect 1
Sonic Racing Transformed
Mass Effect 2
Pokémon Arceus - That last hour was a trudge. It completely ignored what made the game fun, and turned into a visual novel for some reason. A really, really bad one, about… stones, and time, and something.

The game as a whole is a step in the right direction though, and I’m excited for the new mainline titles.

Spoiler - click to showYou don't even get to go back home lol

Spoiler - click to showYeah I was waiting for him to say "Erm, guys, so am I just…?"

It's a shell of a game. But the main loop is very compelling.

Pokemon Legends Arceus
To The Moon

Elden Ring - I've said it before but this is like three Dark Souls games in one, it's an absolute buffet of Soulsborne in more ways than one, it's like attending the most exquisite feast imaginable set up with a comically long table, every bit of food on the table is your favourite and it's all for you. However, despite the nagging guilt at leaving slices of the 27 inch Pizza and the side of Wagyu Steak on the table still uneaten, you kinda' have to say 'I have been gorging myself for over 100 hours and I'm getting rather full'.

So….that's what I did, I felt happy with what I did in the game and unturned most of the stones. My overall feelings for the game are positive with one very big asterisk for me, but I before I say that I will get this out of the way: The open world stuff and the open world stuff is fucking amazing, it is one hell of an acheivement and it's the star of the show for most people. But personally it's the interior levels of the game that get me, it's like someone put the whole of Dark Souls and scattered it around the map.

However, I do have to say…I hate the boss fights in this game so much they soured the game a little for me, it's a few enemies too actually (I'm looking at you, Banished Knights with your ridiculous wind shields) and the best way I think to describe it is the enemies/bosses are playing a different game to us. From Software have tried to up the ante from way back in Demons's Souls and it felt like they forgot why people found Dark Souls so hard in the first place and thought 'yeah, let's make the player have to do pixel perfect, just frame rolls several times in a row just to not fucking die'. So whilst bosses are moving like Capcom characters we're still in the classic Dark Souls movement, some of these boss fights were downright miserable for me (and my twitter mutuals who had to suffer my salt powered outbursts online).

Glad I played it, but it's gonna' take a while to digest and I dunno if I'm coming back for those boss fights…maybe with a more co-op summoning mindset, who knows I just wanna' play Sekiro again tbh.

Good grief, Al, it's been out a week.

This is a game whose completion time can vary from 10-100 hours I think.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla: The Siege of Paris

Disappointingly shit second expansion for a game that was already four times longer than it needed to be. I actually really liked the first expansion, Wrath of the Druids - I thought it was the best bit of Valhalla, overall - but this one was terrible. Eivor goes to France because reasons and finds herself in a low-quality knock-off of A Plague Tale, all mud and rats and comedy 'Allo 'Allo accents. Turns out that although Eivor can take down a dozen heavily-armoured soldiers with ease, she gets eaten to death by rats in a few seconds. I wonder if Ubisoft realises that literally no-one buys a Viking power fantasy RPG to swipe ineffectually at rats.

The landscape is drab, the side missions are incredibly repetitive, you only actually get to see inside Paris for a single mission and then you can't get back in again, and the voice acting is abysmal, with every character seemingly pronouncing words however the hell they feel like it.

Yeah, this one was a stinker. It's kind of put me off the game a bit now, I think I'll give it a long break and pick up the Dawn of Fragglerock expansion (which actually looks decent) further down the line when it's cheap.

I don't know how you've had the stamina to make it through multiple modern Assassin's Creed games. I'm 20 or 30 hours into Odyssey and so far I've managed to complete a total of four plot missions and uncover approximately an eighth of one percent of the map. And it still seems to be throwing new mechanics at me.

I throw it on for an hour or two a night to chip away, ineffectually, at this towering, daunting mountain of stuff to do, and I can't tell if it's actually any good. Or maybe it's just not giving me the tools I need to play it the way I want? I want to be a stealthy, lethal scalpel, but the game is determined to make every attempt at sneaky-sneaky murder time devolve into a drawn-out, bloody sledgehammer brawl against a half-dozen enemies. There's just no room for precision.

Or maybe I should just pack it in and go back to Hitman.

They're comfort gaming for me, really. I like the historical settings, they're never particularly difficult, and there's always something new to find. Valhalla's been the weakest one for a while but I'll no doubt get the new expansion at some point once I start getting the hankering for something low-effort and familiar to play.

The newer RPG ones (Origin, Odyssey, Valhalla) are ludicrously big though and the skill trees are a huge nuisance. You'll be able to play the way you describe, in about a hundred hours' time when you've unlocked all the skills.

I spent most of my time in Odyssey kicking people off cliffs. I was delighted when I finally unlocked a similar skill in Valhalla.

Is Odyssey the one with separate difficulty sliders for stealth and combat? Those helped me a lot. I think it's easier to stealth in Odyssey than the other two modern ones, once you've unlocked a few skills.

But yes these games are getting ridiculous. Valhalla especially feels more like a platform than a game; an aircraft-carrier-sized thing that keeps getting loaded with new content.

They're comfort gaming for me, really. I like the historical settings, they're never particularly difficult, and there's always something new to find.

I've been describing Ubisoft's map-tidying games as 'Dad Games' since the first Assassin's Creed for exactly this reason. There's nothing wrong with this, of course. God knows that I've done the same thing most recently with Far Cry 5 and AC Odyssey, but as soon as I have any decent time to devote to playing games these take a back seat to something which is a bit more actively engaging. I also happen to think that if you are playing these when you are lucky enough to have some decent time to play a game then you're not really Doing It Right.

I also happen to think that if you are playing these when you are lucky enough to have some decent time to play a game then you're not really Doing It Right.

If someone I didn't know had said this to me then it would have met with a resounding Fuck Off because I play the games I want to play in the time I have available, thank you very much. I don't much care for the kind of attitude that says some games are more "worthwhile" than others, and I think everyone here has a pretty broad gaming diet anyway.

I'm mostly using my new Xbox to play Mini Ninjas.

I'm starting to think that my problem is just some kind of subconscious time limit, and then I just get a bit bored. I've got 32 hours in Arceus as well, and I'm feeling pretty done with that, too.

Though maybe it's the grindiness of them – they've both had moments where I've tried to go somewhere and encountered opposition many levels higher than me, so I have to go trudge around the same areas I've been trudging around, fighting the same enemies I've been fighting, until I scrape together enough XP.

It wouldn't be so bad if there was some kind of strategy I could employ to level the playing field against a more powerful opponent, but in both games a stronger character can just squish you in a couple of hits and you have little to no recourse except legging it. Or, in AC:O, dodging backwards while firing arrows for several minutes. (Not quite the epic power fantasy the ads would have you believe.)

The skills I learn as a player are irrelevant; the systems are gatekeeping everything, offering a wide world and limitless possibilities, a map studded with temptations and icons and treasure, and then slapping me down if I try to do anything before the game decides that I'm ready.

It's at moments like this that I find myself most jealous of people with a temperament compatible with Soulsborne games. in the other thread, you lot make Elden Ring sound like everything I want from a game right now, even as I know deep in my bones that it is Not For Me.

It's at moments like this that I find myself most jealous of people with a temperament compatible with Soulsborne games. in the other thread, you lot make Elden Ring sound like everything I want from a game right now, even as I know deep in my bones that it is Not For Me.

Elden Ring is absolutely not for me, and yet I'm loving it. Probably because all the things on the map I'm finding are me finding them, not because the game's scattering icons everywhere.

Don't get me wrong, I'd never have bought it if I hadn't paid less than half price. But now I have it, I love it. So, if you can find it for a good price, I'd give it a consideration.

Elden ring does sound great. And awful.

It's absolutely both.

You get summons in Elden Ring, not (just) the AI people you find or actual players, but a slowly accumulated set of phantoms to helping you, new mechanic. Whilst you can't summon them in the world map, you don't really need to, so it's not perfect but they are pretty potent.

I also happen to think that if you are playing these when you are lucky enough to have some decent time to play a game then you're not really Doing It Right.

If someone I didn't know had said this to me then it would have met with a resounding Fuck Off because I play the games I want to play in the time I have available, thank you very much. I don't much care for the kind of attitude that says some games are more "worthwhile" than others, and I think everyone here has a pretty broad gaming diet anyway.

Yeah, this was not elegantly phrased so sorry about that. What I meant was that, if you're playing these sorts of games to the exclusion of everything else just because it's your regular thing then it might just turn into a rut.

I get the appeal of these games, I honestly do. I also understand that there are certain in-game markers you'd want to hit even though it might take dozens of hours spread over a relatively long period of time. Until you get there, this will be your go-to game. Then, once you get there, you might press on with more map tidying or just mix in something else because the stars have now aligned and now is the time you want to do that.

I have found, from my own experience with these games, that I would sometimes not stop playing a game because I wanted to finish a questline but it might involve a bit of a grind even though I really wanted to move on for a bit. (So, the 'you' in my earlier post was actually 'me' - I was just posting in a hurry at the time.). I have these completionist tendencies for reasons I don't really get, but it sometimes turned 'fun' into 'chore' in the past and that's what I meant by "Doing It Wrong". My way of dealing with this is having a pile of bite-sized indie games to pop on for a bit of change until the wind is back in my sails and I feel I can now maybe sink another 20-30 hours into something. (Although I do accept that I maybe am still Doing It Wrong.)

I have these completionist tendencies for reasons I don't really get, but it sometimes turned 'fun' into 'chore' in the past and that's what I meant by "Doing It Wrong".

This was me, especially when it came to achievements. Looking at something, going 'Oh, that's doable' and then subjecting myself to 10, 15, 20 hours of a game that I didn't overly enjoy but knew I could get everything for was the way. I wouldn't have finished The Gunk if it wasn't. I very much 'do gaming wrong' a lot of the time, it's one of my few opportunities to escape all the bullshit and relax. It shouldn't be work… I'm lucky enough that when it is work, it's literally because it's work.

My way of dealing with this is having a pile of bite-sized indie games to pop on for a bit of change until the wind is back in my sails and I feel I can now maybe sink another 20-30 hours into something. (Although I do accept that I maybe am still Doing It Wrong.)

This is increasingly my approach too, along with forcing myself to call it quits. Deleting something I've put effort into but not quite finished is hard! But I'm definitely more into playing something that can be done quickly (read: 8-10 hours, which is still over a week of my playtime) over a sprawling adventure. Hence my initial reluctance to get into Elden Ring, which is now pretty much all I can think about. But there's an ID@Xbox presentation soon (next week?) and they've announced Tunic as being on it, which I'm pretty sure is out this month. So… shadowdrop on the night? Probably. I will play that immediately.

Pokemon Legends Arceus
To The Moon
Elden Ring

Death Stranding

I really liked this, though it's a bit too long (I skipped every side delivery too). I really like how it makes an open world setting and makes that world itself the obstacle for you to overcome with the help of other players, making it feel different to pretty much every other open world game I've played. The 'helping people' isn't just a gimmick either, it's a very clever way of intergrating the themes of connecting people together in the game and the story, I can't imagine playing this game offline and not having other player's zip lines, roads and rain shelters pop up around the map. (makes the Souls series player messages look like the joke they are at this point)

The story itself is great and the story of unravelling the mystery behind the Death Stranding event is intriguing…the way it is told is not. Lots of text dump in the in game logs to flesh certain characters out (which I didn't read because boy those are walls of text) and some truly dreadful lines (Poor Lea Sedoux) can really distract you from the fact that the game really is just about bringing people together.

The Gunk
Mass Effect 1
Sonic Racing Transformed
Mass Effect 2
Pokémon Arceus
Monster Hunter Rise – I knowwww it's not properly finished, but it's going on the list so I don't forget. I wouldn't have even considered picking a Monster Hunter game up if World, and then Rise, hadn't been free. And now I'm searching the internet for any clues as to the next-gen version.

I might even give Elden Ring a go. It can't be any more frustrating than trying to time a hammer wirebug attack, right? …Right?

It can't be any more frustrating than trying to time a hammer wirebug attack, right? …Right?

If it makes you feel better, this is 100% the MH Rise experience, if you play Longsword you will get to experience the joy of connecting every single hit of the spirit combo and whiff the last one (the olny one that actually upgrades your power) because the monster decided to pivot to your dog.

Oh I've had quite a few of those. I've also (very rarely) had everything go perfectly, and landed three or four red-outlined slutdrops in a row before the monster could run away. Those make you feel like a god.

Mini Ninjas

Yes, it’s ancient and I could have been playing something new but I really enjoyed this linear journey through low-poly, poorly lit, but somehow still gorgeous fantasy Japan.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

Extremely strong 6/10 energy with this one. It's a game of two halves, really, because on the one hand it looks and sounds tremendous, completely nails its characters, has the right energy and is genuinely very funny. On the other hand, gameplay mostly involves pushing forward like some kind of Marvel walking simulator, and it has one of the most tedious combat systems ever invented.

So it's a great-looking semi-interactive 15-hour Guardians movie, where you occasionally have to hammer buttons until you get bored. If you're thinking of playing this, stick the combat on easy and just enjoy the ride.

Forgot to add…

JANUARY
Inmost
The Pedestrian
Gorogoa
Botanicula

FEBRUARY
Kirby and the Forgotten Land

MARCH
Nobody Saves The World
Tunic - Loved it, but I'm also totally done with it.

AI: The Somnium Files - yep, this was great. Very much in the mould of 9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors, it's a wordy visual novel with a knotty plot featuring multiple timelines and some very odd situations that somehow manages to tie everything together in a satisfying manner at the end. Clever and fun.

I don’t often post in here, I don’t often finish a game!
Bravely Default 2 - all three endings in 187 hrs. I started NG+ but it’s not really holding my interest.

Borderlands 3
A Plague Tale: Innocence
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Call of the Sea

Elden Ring

An incredible thing, really. Even understanding why people don't like it as much as me, and/or would bounce off it, it's still a remarkable game. My completed save has 95 hours on it, and I spent more than half of those in wondrous, beautifully designed and realised areas that would've been easier to miss than find, and even then I know I missed an awful lot more.

The detail and thought that go into parts of this game astound me. There's an NPC in an early castle who suggests an alternate route to just barging in through the front gate, and after that I never really saw or even thought about him again, save for when he's basically rejoicing at the death of a boss you just killed. Then yesterday I saw a post where someone pointed out that he actually follows you around the castle (you can see and even interact with him at various points, if you're looking), steals a third of your runes when you die, and even locks you in a room with a horrible semi-optional boss at one point. I never realised any of this, and to me he was just a generic NPC I saw maybe three times, in two different locations, but if you're looking for it there's so much more, and that in microcosm what I both love and find daunting about these games.

After I finished it last night using my Faith build, with a few Incantations and the Blasphemous Blade, I used my last Larval Tear to respec into a build more suitable for the ending I got (high Intelligence, dual-wielding magic great swords), and then started NG+; I feel like I should play something else (too), but honestly at the moment I don't know what that would or almost even could be.

Seeing as I've now finished two Soulsbornes, and they're among, if not actually just outright my favourite games ever, maybe it should just be another one. After a little break, at least…

A Memoir Blue - beautifully drawn and lavishly animated, this isn't even really a game at all but an interactive 90-minute animation about depression. It's the kind of thing you'd stumble across late at night on Channel 4 and then wonder in the morning if you'd dreamed the whole thing. Definitely one of the stranger curios in the Game Pass library.

(After I finished it, I went and checked out a couple of reviews and IGN have misinterpreted what this game is about so spectacularly that they really need to just pack up and go home.)

Completed Halo Infinite then finally - I honestly can't remember the last time I completed a video game, really enjoyed that, I will need a think but that is up there with the original, reach and ODST as potentially my favourite. So much so that as soon as it ended and you went back to the map I just started a little quest of heading down the map clearing things out. I have missed some High value targets, one fob and one stronghold and then a whole host of the captured soldiers and armour pickups etc, so I want to grab all of that before I stop.

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga - great fun. I've run through all the story levels now (5 missions for each of 9 movies) and it's fascinating to see the differences between this and the earlier games. While the original Lego Star Wars games were fairly straightforward attempts to tell the story of the movies in Lego form, the levels in this are more like abbreviated highlights told through the medium of slapstick. They'd be incomprehensible if you didn't already know the movies; assuming you do then this is basically a rapid-fire collection of parodies. It works. I guess with so many more films to cover, they can't really take the time to dwell on any of them.

Of course the meat of the game is in the collectibles and the unlockables and here the game's dozens of hub areas come into play. There's loads of this I've just run through that I now need to go back and explore thoroughly. 38% complete so still a very large amount of stuff to do.

Pokemon Legends Arceus
To The Moon
Elden Ring
Death Stranding

Chrono Trigger
I honestly can't think of anything wrong with this game, it might actually be flawless. I guess that's what you get when you have the freaking creators of Final Fantasy AND Dragon Quest work together to make a game with music from Nobuo Uematsu and Mitsuda. I dunno another equivalent of this, like if Shigeru Miyamoto and Yuji Naka made a joint developed platformer? If Capcom and SNK made a joint fighting game, imagine how sick that would be

Full of clever ideas that involve time travel enhancing both the story and the feel of the game, several Dr Who time twisting trickery in here including one which still blows my mind quite frankly. Also, it's only 20 hours long too, and yet I feel completely fulfilled. Also I am not joking I really can't think of anything I don't like about the game.

On to Chrono Cross.

Tomb Rider definitive edition 9.5/10
I remember really liking this reboot back on the 360 years ago. Now the FPS has been boosted to 60 on the Xbox, Thought Ill go back to see if it holds up. It really dose! I'm trying to think, but this may be the best reboot for a series ever. The story and gameplay are solid, but the character ark is incredible.

Rise of the Tomb Rider 8.5/10
Shadow of the Tomb Rider 9/10
Never got round to playing these two with Rise being a time exclusive for the Xbox one at launch which I didn't have. Both great games with Rise being more action shooting, and Shadow being more optional tombs and side quest.

Windjammers 6/10
Rocket League Sideswipe 8/10
Perfect mobile game. With kids at home this is the only game I play during the day.

Nobody Saves the World 9/10
Awesome game, and a massive jump for me for the Drinkbox Studios. I liked the Guacamelee games but this had so much more to it. A funny Zelda-like RPG.

Evil Within 8/10
MGS revengeance 7/10
Dead Space 8/10
After playing this I kind of understand why 2 and 3 got the Xbox FPS boost treatment and this one didn't, because this game hasn't aged at all. It still holds up! All I would of wanted is 60 FPS and there wouldn't be a need for a full remake.
Crossfire X 2.5/10
Fable Anniversary 7.5/10
battletoads 5.5/10
Sherrders 6/10
Tunic 7.5/10
Splinter Cell Conviction 5.5/10
Nothing about this feels like a slinter cell game. Luckily, Ive got Blacklist in my backlog. I've heard it goes back to it's roots with that one.

Resident Evil Village 7.5/10
Ring of pain 6.5/10
Feel a little bit bad for this one. I enjoyed it, but every time I play it, it just makes me want to play Slay the Spire.
Slipstream 7/10
Really cool retro type game. If you enjoy Outrun I have to recommend this. It's got that Sage pixel art style to it. Kinda takes you back a bit. It only came out like two weeks ago and It was £8 on release.

I think Tomb Raider being the 'best reboot' is a little strong tbh :p

It's a bit out there, but as of right now I can't think of a better reboot. It's perfection I tell ya. The character Lara is brilliant. She more reliable in this reboot, while becoming a boss by the end of the first game. Also people remember the classic games from the PS1 era, but do you remember underworld and legend? I pretty much just played them because I was a fan. They aren't great games at all.

It's interesting, but what would you say is a better reboot?

Well, I think it's a bit harsh to say they aren't great games off the top off my head but it's been…. decades since I played PS1 Tomb Raider so I might be wrong but wasn't the appeal of the old games the headscratching puzzles in the level design and anxiety inducing platforming…and the new remasters kind of just gave you the answers without being direct so it makes you feel clever, and the reboot is just basically Uncharted and even more far away from the PS1 games?

Does Ninja Gaiden count as reboot? I'd say that's mine.

I won't allow a bad word said about Tomb Raider Legend. I loved that game.

I can't believe Tomb Raider has had two re-somethingorothers

I won't allow a bad word said about Tomb Raider Legend. I loved that game.

To be fair, I remember it was a bit of a return to form at the time.

@Alastor I love the Uncharted games, I'll even say Uncharted 2 change how the whole of Sony studios work. It set the bar for that cinematic action. The shooting and story telling is better in Uncharted, but the exploring like the platforming, loot collecting, puzzles (side quest tombs are brilliant), equipment that can be upgraded. It allows you to return to areas to unlock more secrets. It's the way the levels are designed. By the end of the game it's kinda turns into one big hub. A lot of people compare them, be they are really different I think.

Tunic 7.5/10

Oof, that's interesting. What didn't you like about it? Other than the combat feeling a little out of place, this was a solid 9 for me…

Fair enough, I'll trust you with that. I still have fond, fond memories of the Tomb Raider trilogy on PS1 though.

I didn't like the Tomb Raider reboot much at all, it just felt like Uncharted with a side order of torture porn. The speed with which Lara went from "traumatised teenager" to "seasoned killer getting bonus points for headshots" was ludicrous too.

I really enjoyed Shadow of the Tomb Raider though, much much less combat in that one and some proper old-school tombs. Still very much a 7/10 but much more in the style of the older games and more enjoyable as a result.

It's about time it got rebooted again, really.

I didn't like the Tomb Raider reboot much at all, it just felt like Uncharted with a side order of torture porn. The speed with which Lara went from "traumatised teenager" to "seasoned killer getting bonus points for headshots" was ludicrous too.

This was the only one I played and I totally agree. She's all 'Oh god, what's happening to me, this is terri-stabs man through neck with arrow-ble, I can't believe this'. It's really disconcerting and not very well written.

Which is odd because the script for that game was famously written by Rhianna Pratchett and she's received lots of praise and awards for it. It's absolutely terrible though.

Which is odd because the script for that game was famously written by Rhianna Pratchett and she's received lots of praise and awards for it.

Means nothing. People praise bad things and middling talent all the time, doesn't make them good.