Our individual Game of the Year articles allow our lovely team of writers to share their own personal PS5 and PS4 picks for 2022. Today, it's the turn of assistant editor Liam Croft.
5. Rollerdrome
At the start of 2022, I told myself I wanted to make a bigger effort to play more indie games — or at least more than the ones everyone recommends — and the highlight of that is Rollerdrome. It feels amazing to play, like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater with weapons. Gunning for high scores, a stylish art style propels you through the air at top speed with roller blades attached to your feet. Perform tricks to replenish your ammo, and then get back to killing enemies with flair. It's an addictive loop that'll have you replaying levels for better scores, and I loved every moment of it.
4. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion is incredibly stupid, with some of the dumbest dialogue imaginable. And I just so happen to love it. Whether I could tell you what actually happened in the Final Fantasy VII prequel is debatable, but the remaster brings back a fun combat system and the inventive DMW to hand you random buffs and abilities. While we wait for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Crisis Core is an enjoyable stop-gap to fill the time.
3. A Plague Tale: Requiem
It's criminal how under the radar A Plague Tale: Requiem is going; it's one of the best PS5 games of the year and I'm the only person on Push Square with it in their top five! I love games that make their plot just as important as the gameplay mechanics that tie those narrative scenes together, and Asobo Studio is a master of the craft. A much-improved sequel in virtually every way, Amicia and Hugo return for a bigger, better, and significantly longer experience that tells one of the best stories of the year. Please play it, and the first title if you haven't already.
2. Elden Ring
As the editor assigned to review Elden Ring, the FromSoftware masterclass occupies a fairly unique place in my heart: it represents one of the most stressful weeks of my life, but I could always tell I was playing something revolutionary. I did not give it a 10/10 rating, but with a gigantic, freeing open world combined with excellent visual design and many more inventive boss fights, it's probably the most important game of the year. You'll see more titles in the future attempting to emulate it more than anything else released in 2022. A true classic.
1. God of War Ragnarok
The Oxford dictionary defines the word "outstanding" as "extremely good [or] excellent". Synonyms include marvellous, magnificent, superb, wonderful, exceptional, first-class, first-rate, and masterful. All of these words accurately describe God of War Ragnarok. An incredible game that only gets better the more you play. After a pretty bad year for PS5 titles, Santa Monica Studio at least ended 2022 with something quite special.
What do you think of Liam's personal Game of the Year picks? Feel free to agree wholeheartedly, or berate relentlessly in the comments section below.
Comments 39
I’ve only played numbers 1 & 2… but they just happen to be number 1 & 2 on my list too. So, good list!
Finally, A Plague Tale: Requiem on someone’s list.
Really need to get around to the Plague Tale games, cheers for the reminder
Glad to see Plague Tale get some love. If not for Elden Ring I think it would have been my personal GOTY. Such a brilliant game from start to finish.
If ER were a ps "exclusive" it would be #1 and viceversa
Sds like a fantastic selection and I'd wish I'd already played elden and gowr but gt7 has me hooked line and sinker ,no its not that bad an addiction ,just my precious gaming time has been mostly on gt7 since March lol
I agree with your number 1 but how can you say this was a bad year for PlayStation when we got HFW,GT 7,GOW,Tlou part 1 remake along with multi plats and indies like stray. If that’s a bad year I don’t even want t know what your definition is of a good year
A good list indeed.god of war ragnarok and crisis core final fantasy 7 reunion.and elden ring is cool.word up son
blame asobo for not trusting requiem and just sell it dirt cheap to xbox
$10 is the right price to buy requiem
@Oscarjpc Wrong.
@dark_knightmare2 Next year is what a good year looks like. I don't think Horizon Forbidden West is a particularly great game, The Last of Us: Part I was a remake, and most third-party stuff never managed better than an 8/10.
@arra1213 considering how much it went under the radar, they made the right business choice. At least they should be getting substantial checks from Microsoft.
@dark_knightmare2 Don’t forget the Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection!
@LiamCroft Completely agree regarding Horizon Forbidden West. A very good game for sure, just not a great one.
@LiamCroft It's been a terrific year for indies though, wouldn't you agree?
Headed by (imo) the brilliant Cult of the Lamb, but we also got Lets Build a Zoo, The Ascent, Weird West, Nobody Saves the World and Sifu, to name just a few.
I got a lot more enjoyment from these kind of games than the 'big' AAA's that tend to dominate these end of year lists.
A Plague Tale Requiem took my GOTY spot.
@LiamCroft wow I don’t agree like at all but I respect your opinion. If HFW wasn’t a great game especially open world game along with Elden Ring,Marvel midnight suns,Tactics Ogre Reborn and numerous others third party games your standards must be crazy high
@Gamer_Guy I have a fair few promising indies in my backlog to play! Cult of the Lamb is one of them.
@The_Pixel_King yeah I forgot about that. HFW is the second best open world game this gen so far behind just Elden Ring even though I liked HFW better and I def think it’s great. It scored 88 on metacritic and was in the top 5 best selling games for the year in UK and top ten for the year in the US.
Great list. Need to play Rollerdrome and Elden Ring. Looking foward to Final Fantasy Reunion over xmas
Why does Plague Tale fly under the radar so heavily? While it wasn’t one of my favorite games this year, I find it baffling that the game doesn’t have more success. The storyline alone is more compelling than 95% of games this year. The visuals and audio too. It’s got a lot going for it, as did the first title. For me, I wasn’t a fan of the level design and the gameplay (but let’s be honest, it’s not far removed from TLOU, which is beloved to so many, and I’d rank A Plague Tale above that franchise). In a year without many AAA titles worth getting though, it’s absolutely a game everyone should play and form an opinion on. Shocked to hear it’s not in more lists.
@Casco it went under the radar cuz xbox is marketing the game for free on gamepass
why tf ps gamers buy this game for $60 if u can play it plus other games for $10
I still need to finish A Plagues Tale Requiem, my right Hearing Aid malfunctioned the day after I started playing it, took 4 weeks to repair, and I didn't want to play a heavily story-driven game with just one Hearing Aid, especially considering the speech volume was a tad low already. Then by the time my broken Hearing Aid was fixed & returned, I was lost in God of War Ragnarok which had amazing Accessibility Options that made playing with just one Hearing Aid a non-issue.
I really have to applaud Sony/PlayStation and all their First-Party Studios for leading the charge with these fantastic life-changing Accessibility Options, really helps someone like me who has both Eyesight & Hearing Impairments.
@somnambulance - I asked myself many of these same questions about A Plague Tale: Innocence, which was an incredible game, and ended up being my personal GOTY back in 2019, but barely anybody seemed to play it or even talks about, which is a damn shame because it truly deserves more love and attention than it currently gets.
@Oscarjpc Yeah, it is predictable. Elden Ring so far wins on 80% of sites, while losing on playstation blog and other playstation centric places.
@arra1213 - So we can own the game and replay it whenever we want versus renting a game and then praying it's still in the service next time we get the urge to replay it?
@Flora2122 Aah please, the ER junkies need to stop whining when it does not win Game of the year.
@arra1213 And why would that affect Playstation sales? Sorry not following your logic.
Users like myself that have both consoles sure, I wouldn't buy it on PS, but we're a minority. If it wasn't on Gamepass, it would still have gone under the radar on PS.
@Oscarjpc Yeah... No
@JustPlainLoco I preferred the first title. I actually started it this year too in anticipation for the sequel and at the goading of a personal friend. I’ll be honest, I wish I liked the level design and gameplay more because the story is incredible. Really everything about both games is 9/10 or 10/10 tier, except, man, sometimes, in those two categories, it shows that Asobo built themselves from Disney game adaptations.
Good list and i agree with your number 1 and 2 choice but i'd have them the other way round as i got so much in return for my money from elden ring..roll on the dlc..
I put over 100 hours into Elden Ring and I’m only about 15 hours into God of War but Ragnarok is my game of the year already.
@somnambulance - I thought the level design & gameplay for the first game was mostly great, but in the 7 hours I've played of A Plague Tale Requiem, yeah the level design is indeed questionable. Especially the more open areas swarming with enemies and you have to stealth your way through, which normally wouldn't be an issue if the game gave you more means of sneaking by, incapacitating enemies or simply distracting them, I feel like the first game gave you the right tools at the right time, but early on in Requiem I felt like I often just had to wing it and hope for the best because I didn't have any of the early-game equipment that early game Innocence gave you. And I'm not a big fan of how much this game forces you into combat scenarios, where you have no choice but to fight, the first game only forced you into combat scenarios only a handful of times and gave you plenty of time to plan your move, but Requiem plays the combat scenarios too fast with little to no time to plan your move, as a result I died an absurd amount of times in some sections where I really shouldn't have.
@JustPlainLoco Requiem’s stealth also felt a bit wonkier to me for some reason, like I was doing the right thing, only to die because the game was ready for me to die? I dunno. It was really sort of frustrating, but, I mean, it was frustrating in the same way their take on Toy Story 2 was years ago. The first game felt pretty much verbatim as a third party, lower budget Naughty Dog title to me. I was hoping the second one would build on things in a different way perhaps.
You’re absolutely right that the first game had better pacing with gameplay building too. The second one just sort of throws you in there and it’s a little different. I felt lucky I had just finished the first title upon jumping into the second. But, man, what a story! Definitely one of the best narratives this year.
Maybe games about pandemics just aren't as popular as they might have been a few years ago.
@Casco u act like that 1 million copies sold are all ps copies 😂
its either those 1 million (ps, pc, xbox) that bought the 1st game never like it and didnt bother to buy the sequel 😂 or they are gamepass (20 million) subscribers 😂
This is the first time in several years where the top 5's have been very good.
@Sanquine I hear you! I was on another site in an Elden Ring group and had to leave because the moment anyone complimented another game or said another game does some particular thing better they’d lose their minds. It’s so crazy!
Not GOTY but if there was an indie category: Chained Echoes.
@dark_knightmare2 definitely forbidden west is definitely great. it's funny he put final fantasy and insulted it the whole way through lol
@middyone lol right and it’s really crazy he calls plague tale requiem one of the best plots this year because that games plot is comically mediocre it’s the characters of amicia and Hugo that carry it. That games plot can be summed up as let’s go here Hugo they arrive and say how beautiful it is the place proceeds to get destroyed and they move on to do it all over again across twenty hours. Its repetitive as hell just like the simplistic combat.
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