And it’s a real blast when your AI disappears for a moment only to return riding a giant beast to help you take down your target. For solo players, this helps bring the social aspect of the game out - even if you’re “socializing” with a computer. There are also some fun additions, like co-op hunts with AI, where some story-specific characters can occasionally join you on a hunt. Rise’s incredible Wirebug gets some major upgrades in the expansion, making mobility an even more important part of combat. But that flaw doesn’t take away from the incredible gameplay added with Sunbreak’s variety of new moves and bosses. In our review, we criticized Sunbreak for hiding too much of its new stuff behind old, familiar monsters. Last year’s Monster Hunter Rise was an excellent addition to the long-running franchise, and this summer’s expansion, Sunbreak, built upon its solid foundation to bring new, more varied monsters to the title, alongside some truly beautiful locations. While its semi-random method of storytelling can leave some of its deeper themes frustratingly difficult to piece together, discovering what’s really hiding in Immortality is an experience unrivaled this year. What eventually becomes apparent is that Immortality is about more than just the fraught story of an enigmatic muse. It’s magical moving between clips this way, and you’ll immediately start using it to track down cast and crew and any props that give off a Chekhovian vibe. Immortality’s truly impressive technical achievement is that players can hop between clips by quite literally clicking on just about anything in the camera’s focus to be almost instantly brought to another clip containing that object. Scrolling back and forth through the footage is intentionally made to echo the feeling of working with film in an old flatbed editor (this is best experienced with a controller’s force feedback), which gives the superbly acted clips an even more tactile feel. Players unravel this mystery by watching movie clips, rehearsals, and other pieces of cinematic ephemera from her three fictional films. Immortality is best experienced with only a vague understanding of what you’re in for beyond its central mystery: What happened to the infamous actress Marissa Marcel? Image: Half Mermaid Productions via Polygon They will be eligible for inclusion in our end-of-year rankings for 2023. 30 as the cutoff for consideration, meaning that Warhammer 40K: Darktide was eligible (and is indeed present on the list) but Marvel’s Midnight Suns, which we very much enjoyed, and Dwarf Fortress’ Steam version, which makes one of the most important video games more approachable, were not. Any video games that were released in 2022, updated in 2022, or achieved renewed cultural relevance in 2022 are eligible for this list. Over the past month, the Polygon staff voted, debated, and resigned itself to the series of compromises that is our top 50 games of 2022. Mike Mahardy, Senior Editor, Reviews How the Polygon top 50 list works Until then, these 50 games will more than suffice. As studios splinter, ideas disperse, and developer talent strides off toward new horizons, it’s undeniably apparent that the medium’s best work is still only a seed in some creator’s imagination - and if the pattern holds, it will take a fair number of asterisks, caveats, and parentheticals to describe it. But still: I’m amazed at how many other games have equally strong arguments for that top slot. Sure, a clear winner emerged as Polygon staffers’ votes began to trickle in - a surefire indication of the one game we collectively predict will, looking back from some point in the future, be the video game of 2022. Some of the best games of the last 12 months: a two-button roguelite about the meta strategy of character progression a dungeon-crawler-meets-management-sim about organized religion and echo chambers a dice-based paean to the power of community that’s also a visual-novel lament to the things we lose in pursuit of wealth.įor me, it’s this erasure, reinterpretation, and reinforcement of genres that defines the list below. And in 2022, more so than any other year, I threw up my hands and allowed myself to revel in the chaos. Like any worthy art form, they require constant categorization, re-categorization, and re-re-categorization, just to keep track of every twist and turn in their labyrinthine evolution. Even “Metroidvania,” a portmanteau created specifically to denote a certain set of design tenets, often comes with a cascade of asterisks, caveats, and parentheticals.īut of course, video games’ stubborn refusal to be pinned down is part of what makes them so damn fun. “Turn-based strategy” isn’t doing all that much work anymore. Simple terms like “open world” and “first-person shooter” have lost much of their original meaning. It’s becoming increasingly difficult, as the years go by, to describe my favorite video games.
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