The 2022 Video Game Retrospective

I did a Twitter thread this year with short blurbs on each game I played as I finished them with the expectation that I wouldn’t spend a bunch of hours writing up a big end-of-year post, and yet, here I am doing that anyway! That’s fine. It’s a tradition and I enjoy doing it. It exorcises some of the extraneous thoughts from my brain and tosses them into the void, which I feel is a good exercise. Heh, exorcise, exercise. You can find previous retrospectives at the links below:

The 2014 Video Game Retrospective
The 2015 Video Game Retrospective

The 2016 Video Game Retrospective

End of Year 2017 Catchup

End of Year 2018 Catchup

The 2019 Video Game Retrospective

The 2020 Video Game Retrospective

The 2021 Video Game Retrospective

To get the stats out of the way, I finished fifty-four games this year and played several others. I replayed many more games than usual this year due to becoming much more interested in gaming on PC. For the first time in many years, I read several books—seven of them, to be exact, but I still had plenty of time for games, perhaps even more time than in the previous two years.

#1: Ruined King: A League of Legends Story (PS4)

January 7, 2022

I was initially attracted to this game because I’ve wasted far more of my life on League of Legends than I care to admit. Having an outlet to spend some time with those characters without actually having to play the game they come from seemed like a great idea for me, especially since this is a turn-based RPG from Battle Chasers: Nightwar developer Airship Syndicate. The game itself is a bit of a mixed bag, though. The art is great and the plot and dialogue are passable, but none of it really struck me as exceptional. The combat system seems inspired by something like Grandia with a heavy emphasis on the speed of your actions and the delaying of your enemies. Although certainly workable, it never totally came together for me and I even sometimes found it a bit tedious. The game is certainly an interesting experience, but it actually made me a bit less excited about the prospect of more games in the League of Legends universe—although I have to admit the planned fighting game tentatively titled Project L is still really enticing to me.

#2: Super Robot Wars T (PS4)
January 9, 2022

It’s really interesting to look this far back in the year because it makes me remember that I’ve played a lot of Super Robot Wars this year. This was the first of, what, five of these games that I finished this year? That’s saying something, too, because these games are epic undertakings. Each of these games is somewhere been 40 to 60 missions long and many of them take at least an hour to get through. SRWT is no exception. I found I enjoyed SRWX a bit more than this one, but it continues to suffer from what a lot of the newer SRW games do—it’s just too easy. Even when playing on Expert, it’s really trivial to craft absurdly powerful units and steamroll entire maps, even with a single mech. I remember doing just that with Gun X Sword protagonist, Van in Dann of Thursday. I had him set up so his counterattacks were particularly deadly. With the help of one of the game’s many pilot skills, he was able to launch his counterattacks before enemies, meaning he could effortlessly destroy every enemy by himself without being in any danger.

#3: Shin Megami Tensei IV (3DS)

January 23, 2022

I went through a phase this year of revisiting the 3DS. I really do miss that little guy, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that an aggressive Atlus sale didn’t have a large influence on that decision. I’d been meaning to play SMTIV (and a lot of other 3DS games) for years, so I jumped at the chance to grab it at a deep discount, even if that meant I was limited to a digital copy. I enjoyed this game a lot, even if it doesn’t quite match the atmosphere of Nocturne. There’s something about that Shin Megami Tensei formula that really works for me either way. I enjoy getting to that point of the game where my main character is incredibly powerful and I can cover any weaknesses I have with my demons. Now that I’m thinking about it again, I really need to get around to playing Shin Megami Tensei V.

#4: Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition (PC)
January 30, 2022

Speaking of phases, this title marked another trend for the year. In this case, it was replaying games I’ve already beaten—but this time on PC. I’ve definitely become more interested in playing games on PC this year for a few reasons. First of all, my living situation changed dramatically, meaning I have more convenient access to my PC whenever I want. Secondly, I got a Steam Deck, but that didn’t happen until quite a bit later. Suffice it to say, though, this is Dark Souls and it’s great. It’s funny to go back to Prepare to Die Edition after having played the remastered version initially, but I enjoyed that I could play it despite it no longer being available for purchase. I technically tried Dark Souls many years ago and just couldn’t get into it, much like with Demon’s Souls before it. Here in Present Day 2022, I’ve beaten every modern FromSoftware game and spend a pretty significant amount of time watching speed runs and other challenge runs of the games. As a result, I’ve picked up a lot of tips and tricks along the way, so this particular run was quite trivial. It felt good to go back to the same version of the game that seemed insurmountable before.

#5: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (PC)

February 3, 2022

When I first played Sekiro, I really enjoyed it but found it so difficult that it crossed over to the point of being extremely frustrating. By the time I’d defeated the final boss, I retired from the game in relief, vowing silently never to play it again. After seeing speedrunners effortlessly complete the game in 20 minutes or less many times over, though, I regained some confidence and tried it again for myself. Playing on 60 FPS was a dream, but perhaps more importantly, I found that I was having a considerably easier time with it than before. Just being intimately familiar with how the game worked made the entire game so much easier and genuinely a lot more fun as well. Sekiro went from a game I felt was good but ultimately too frustrating to one of my favorite FromSoftware games just from playing it a second time. I think this is a big part of why I decided to replay games more often.

#6: Nioh 2 (PC)
February 14, 2022

Let’s get this straight—Nioh doesn’t have that “special something” that the Souls canon has, but it does have an extremely good combat system. This is just as true for the sequel as it was for the first game with the added benefit of a robust character creation system. It’s worth playing for the combat and bosses alone, even if you have to suffer through some tedious level design and repetitious enemy encounters. I do think I stumbled into an overpowered character build, but I don’t mind that since it was something I just discovered on my own. Plowing through enemies with a giant axe was never not entertaining. Despite Team Ninja’s weaknesses, I’ll be signing up to play Wo Long and whatever else they produce right away.

#7: Super Robot Wars 30 (PC)

February 15, 2022

This is a really important game for Super Robot Wars fans. I still feel a little like an impostor when I call myself an SRW diehard, even though I’ve finished probably a dozen of them by now. There’s just so much of that series out there and you have to be at least a little bit of an anime fan to really grasp what’s going on SRW 30 has an overwhelming amount of content in it, including a huge cast of characters, many series that have never appeared before, and many bonus missions. I liked the game a lot, but it still doesn’t satisfy me like some of the older games, possibly because it gives you just a bit too much freedom. It’s too easy for your units to get too strong. I could definitely be setting more arbitrary restrictions on myself, but I also want to do as many missions as possible, so overleveling is pretty much going to happen no matter what. My favorite balance is where you can level up to your heart’s content but the game still challenges you. Having said that, I still had a blast playing the game and I’m eager to experience more ridiculous giant robot action in the future.

#8: Inscryption (PC)
February 18, 2022

You could make the argument that this game kicked off a trend of digging deep into deckbuilding card games, but that would be really selling Inscryption short. In retrospect, this is one of the best games I played this year, not just because the gameplay speaks to me, but because of what it does with its narrative and how it surprised and delighted me along the way. I really enjoy games that defy characterization like this and want others to experience them too, but it’s so hard to talk about a game like this without giving away the secrets that make it special. So I won’t. The surprise of what this game becomes is a wonderful part of the experience, so if you happen to be reading this and think you might be interested, definitely play this game.

#9: The House in Fata Morgana (PC)

February 25, 2022

I didn’t know what to expect when I first started reading Fata Morgana, but I found that when I started, I never really wanted to stop. There was something about its narrative (and enchanting soundtrack) that always made me want to learn more. It also reminds me of a time in my life this year when I was feeling very uncertain and anxious about what was going to happen. I don’t know that this beautiful and darkly tragic story comforted me, per se, but it did leave an indelible mark on me. I’ve done a lot of reading this year, but I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this story in particular. Thinking about it now, I do think it influenced me to read more in general, because of just how thought-provoking and engrossing this particular tale ended up being.

#10: Elden Ring (PC)
March 7, 2022

I can’t remember many other games that sparked as much feverish anticipation as Elden Ring. I was extraordinarily excited to play it but was greeted with a host of technical issues on Day 1. This PC that I was now spending considerably more time with and had come to see as reliable was now rendering this new prestige game at a choppy framerate. Despite this, I committed to playing the game for many marathon sessions, finishing at something around 120 hours within the first two weeks of release. Despite glowing praise and adulation from the gaming press, I found it to be a bit more of a mixed bag than that. The best moments of the game are truly stellar. I haven’t had many moments of awe that compare to the first time I descended the Siofra River Well and uncovered what lay there. On top of that, the world is truly huge. It’s staggering just how many areas there are to explore and bosses to fight. On the other hand, I found myself missing the more interwoven, handcrafted environments of a Dark Souls or Bloodborne. Every time I came across another Erdtree Avatar, dragon, or gargoyle, I found myself thinking that every time I found a new one, it somehow made every other encounter less special. I found myself thinking that less is more. I genuinely would have enjoyed a version of Elden Ring that was significantly pared down from what it is. As competent an open-world game as it is, I ultimately don’t think it ever needed to be one. There’s not much about the open-world aspect of the game that makes it a better game beyond just the sheer scale of it.

There are immaculately crafted boss fights in the game like Margit and Godrick, two of the first major boss fights most players will encounter, but there are just as many bosses that are painfully frustrating, many of which unmercifully bar your path in the final gauntlet of the game. It’s inarguable that my breakneck pace damaged my perception of the game, but I frankly just don’t prefer the design philosophy of many of the encounters. Fights like Radahn, Godskin Duo, Commander Niall, and any number of other duos or trios clearly expect you to make use of Spirit Summons, a mechanic that to me, was just never very fun. I’ve always played Souls games as a melee fighter for the most part and that’s what has kept me hooked. I love the feel of being locked in combat with a single enemy, but Elden Ring sees fit to pit you against multiple enemies with annoying frequency. Distracting bosses with cannon fodder is undoubtedly effective, but it makes these erratic bosses even more unpredictable. In some cases, it might even make them harder. I’d much rather just learn the moveset and get better through repeated deaths, but the decision Elden Ring repeatedly had me make was to either play the game in a way that was less fun for me or enjoy getting one-shotted from full health either because you’re outnumbered or because the boss in question can simply just do that. (Looking at you, Howrah Loux and Malekith.)

Anyway, given what happened with Sekiro, maybe I’ll repay this one day and fall in love all over again. As it s now, though, I have too many reservations to agree that it’s a perfect game, but I’m definitely on board with calling it a very good one.

#11: Bravely Default II (Switch)

March 11, 2022

I’ve had my fair share of problems with the previous Bravely titles but generally found them charming due to their high level of customization in party building. Of course, with any game structured around a job class system, grinding is going to be a big part of that. Personally, grinding isn’t really a dealbreaker for me. I’m happy to do it if it means I’m getting interesting new abilities for doing so. What I’ve actually typically found more tedious in these games is their dialogue. The original Bravely Default is also infamous for its cycle of repetition during the end game. I found Bravely Default II to be generally more balanced in all areas. Most importantly, one crucial change was made to the combat system to make things feel a little less binary. Turn order is split between every combatant, friend or foe, instead of just selecting all of your actions at the beginning of the turn. This makes the pace of combat feel a bit more streamlined and strategic than before.

#12: Horizon Forbidden West (PS5)

March 29, 2022

Like hordes of other players out there, I dropped Horizon for the Elden Ring release, despite the fact that I’d been enjoying it. Horizon is another mixed bag of a game but in very different ways. On a technical level, almost everything about it is exceptional. It’s graphically stunning, the voice acting is extremely high quality, the sound design is great, and the combat is fantastic. As per usual, the world is enormous and there are countless things to explore. On the other hand, the story is a bit less interesting than in Horizon Zero Dawn, and I’ve grown a little fatigued of prestige games like these signposting just about everything that needs to be done. I’m very prone to falling prey to “checklist syndrome” in AAA games where I feel compelled to complete the list of tasks in front of me, even when I might not otherwise do that if left to my own devices. I didn’t particularly enjoy completing Hunting Trials or playing the in-game board game with NPCs across the West, but I nevertheless felt I needed to. Despite all that, I felt pretty fond of the game even by the time I reached the end. It’s quite similar to its predecessor but has some nice expansions to combat. It’s a very pleasant, extremely competently made game that I nonetheless probably won’t be thinking about a whole lot in the future.

#13: XCOM: Enemy Within (PC)

April 1, 2022

I don’t remember exactly why I decided to revisit XCOM other than remembering that I liked it and constantly not having the drive to finish it because of inconsistent access to my PC. That all changed this year, so I finally decided to dive back into it and of course, still enjoyed it a whole lot. It’s definitely more sci-fi/military than most games I play, but it still definitely worked for me. It has enough tactics and progression to keep me happy. I combatted the infamous RNG by ruthlessly save scumming when I had to. I have zero regrets. I really do need to get around to playing XCOM 2 (and Midnight Suns!)



#14: Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster (PC)
April 4, 2022

Final Fantasy VI is one of my favorite games of all time, or at least it’s definitely one of the most important games of my life. It was instrumental in developing my taste in video games and profoundly influential on me. Having said that, I don’t know that it’s aged all that well. It’s still a fantastic game and I love what it does with its ensemble. It also has a lot of fantastic scenes. On the other hand, I never thought it had the best combat system (especially coming after FFIV and FFV, both of which are more fun to play) and it’s more and more apparent that the characters I envisioned as a kid as having all this depth… is mostly a fabrication on my part. It’s still a lot of fun to imagine and fill in the gaps in what these characters are, but they’re definitely rendered in broad strokes, much like any JRPG of the era. It was a touchstone in what a console RPG could do with characterization and plot but it would be disingenuous of me to say that Terra or Sabin or whoever are fully fleshed-out characters. Western RPGs were doing much more on this front at the time (think Baldur’s Gate), but Final Fantasy VI did it in a very melodramatic, theatrical way that I still very much enjoy. It also cemented in me a lifelong appreciation for ensemble casts that I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of. It’s also definitely worth noting that the musical arrangements in the Pixel Remaster are fantastic and only serve to remind me how incredible this soundtrack was in the first place.

#15: Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse (3DS)

April 16, 2022

I’d heard that a lot of folks really didn’t like this game because it made Shin Megami Tensei more like Persona. Well, I like Persona a whole lot, so I wasn’t sure how that would necessarily be a bad thing, especially in what is essentially a spinoff. When I actually played the game, I didn’t feel like it especially reminded me of Persona. Sure the party members take a much more central role, but the combat system is definitely straight-up Shin Megami Tensei, and so is the exploration and sense of dread. Yes, there’s more dialogue and much more of a “power of friendship” dynamic going on, but that part of the game is honestly kind of half-baked. I’m not sure SMTIV was necessarily the pinnacle of storytelling in the first place, so when Apocalypse went in a more character-driven direction, it didn’t really matter too much to me. I mostly just wanted to run around and negotiate with a bunch of demons and plan out my build along the way. I definitely did that and found the latter parts of the game considerably more difficult this time around. Either way, I had a lot of fun and liked the game just fine in the end.

#16: Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux (3DS)
May 2, 2022

I had a weird arc with this game. For the vast majority of the time I was playing, I absolutely loved it and considered that it might be one of my absolute favorite Shin Megami Tensei games. I love dungeon crawlers and love SMT combat, so it was a combination that really worked for me. I also really enjoyed the sci-fi/’horror aspect of the plot in that you assume the role of a task force investigating a “spatial distortion” in Antarctica that essentially ends up being Hell on Earth. In other words, it’s a sprawling dungeon full of demons. These dungeons are grid-based and explored in first person, much like Etrian Odyssey, a series I absolutely adore. A weird wrinkle to the combat system is that each demon is either Law, Neutral, or Chaos aligned, and of course so is the player character. Your choices impact your alignment, but this also impacts how well you work together with certain types of demons. This is really important until near the very end of the game, at which point you really can’t afford to even go for combo attacks anymore, since the final boss will brutally punish having similarly aligned demons.

In fact, that’s part of why the game stops working for me. Even though I enjoyed so much of it, the game has a brutal difficulty spike near the end and also features an incredibly tedious bonus dungeon that turned the whole affair into a bit of a slog. That’s a shame, but it deserves praise for how entertaining it was up to that point.

#17: Yakuza 4 Remastered (PC)

May 23, 2022

I adore the Yakuza series. Every time I play one of these games, I think “why has it been so long since I’ve played a Yakuza game? This is great!” but then I invariably remember that the combat in these games is not especially great and not every piece of side-content is meticulously designed. Yakuza 4 has some pretty tedious side content that I nevertheless feel compelled to complete. I could just make a beeline for the main plot, which is consistently fantastic, but no, I have to train a bunch of wrestlers and do 50 sidequests. Yakuza 4 is particularly cool because there are four playable characters this time around, who are all interesting in their own ways. There’s Saejima, who has just busted out of prison and is one of series staple Goro Majima’s old pals. Tanimura is a crooked cop with a heart of gold. Akiyama is a mysterious moneylender who’ll lend any exorbitant sum—as long as you can pass his test to prove your worth. Then, of course, there’s Kiryu Kazama himself, former yakuza, current orphanage owner, and surrogate father to Haruka. I genuinely love the story and characters in all these games and if I focused mostly on that and less on the busywork, I’d probably play through them a lot more quickly and enjoy myself more.

#18: Steins;Gate (PC)
June 4, 2022

I loved Fata Morgana so much that I decided I was going to start reading more visual novels in general. Steins:Gate was one I’d heard about a lot over the years and I was given at least one personal recommendation, so I decided it‘d be a good one to start with. I’m a big fan of time travel stories in the first place, so the narrative here definitely worked for me. There were enough twists and turns to keep me entertained along the way. If I had to levy any criticism, it would just be that it does feature a lot more anime tropes than I’m typically comfortable with, including a lot of casual misogyny and transphobia. These parts were always a bummer and always served to sour the experience when I was otherwise engaged.

#19: Triangle Strategy (PC)

June 5, 2022

I had high hopes for Triangle Strategy, but it really is a mixed bag of a game. I’m a huge fan of tactical RPGs, and technically, Triangle Strategy has everything I could ever want. It has a well-written story featuring an ensemble cast of characters, you can make decisions that greatly impact the outcome of the game, there are disparate classes that fulfill entirely unique strategic niches in combat, and the isometric visual style is pretty great too. On the other hand, that aforementioned story is appallingly dry and long-winded. In the first three hours of the game, I was in combat for maybe fifteen minutes of that time. This would be fine if I was more invested in the story, but I found myself having a pretty hard time feeling engaged with these three kingdoms’ conflict over the control of salt. Yes, a huge part of the game’s plot is about the control of salt.

Things definitely get more interesting later, but then comes the other problem. I made the mistake of playing the game on hard mode, which is appallingly unbalanced. Enemies can generally take out your characters in one shot while it takes you five or six hits to take them down. For boss units, this disparity increases dramatically. I spent at least an hour on one early map slowly whittling down the boss from atop a hawk while turtled in a corner she couldn’t reach. Luckily, the game gives you a lot of tools to control the battlefield, but more thought should have gone into the balance. I also have issues with the poor distribution of items needed to promote your various characters. It’s not possible to upgrade all of your characters appropriately, which would be fine if not for the fact that you’re eventually forced to use all of them in a gauntlet of missions near the end of the game. I don’t mean to complain, because I love that kind of thing in games like this, but I sure do wish I could have had the option of equipping everyone appropriately.

#20: Super Robot Wars: Original Generation (PS2)
June 12, 2022

I had been meaning to get around to this game ever since I heard it had received a fan translation. The GBA version of Original Generation was the very first SRW game I ever played, mostly because it was the first game to ever have an official English localization, all the way back in 2005. Although its sequel also received a localization, there wasn’t another SRW available in English until all the way in 2016, when SRW OG: Moon Dwellers came out, and even it was technically a Southeast Asian release with a very stiff, literal translation far weaker than many of the fan translation efforts that had been released in the meantime. It was also the fifth game in the OG series, meaning there was a lot of missing context to contend with there.

Anyway, I have memories of absolutely salivating over footage from this game well before a fan translation was available. Having only played on Game Boy Advance, the fidelity of the animations was unlike anything I’d seen in 2D. As a lifelong fan of 2D artwork, I desperately wanted to experience the game for myself and at the time didn’t have the wherewithal to try playing a game in Japanese. (That has certainly changed.) Having said all that, I had a blast revisiting this game and finally getting to play it in English. By now, I’ve seen a lot of great 2D animation in other games in the series, but the PS2-era graphics still definitely hold up and I really adore the art style of all the original characters. It’s also much more difficult than any of the more recent SRW titles. Despite these games stripping out the crossover element of the series, they’re still some of my favorites.

#21: Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (Arcade)

June 16, 2022

It’s funny to look back at times like this and realize that the most innocuous of things can prompt me to get a wild hair that turns into a Whole Thing. I recall listening to a podcast around this time that happened to mention playing Street Fighter II in the arcade. I thought about the fact that I’d played the game on SNES many years ago but of course, had never played the arcade version. I thought it might be interesting to challenge myself to beat the game with every character—and if could do that, well, could I maybe move on to other games in the series? I’ll take a little about how my ambitions grew as I move on to other entries, but as far as this particular entry goes, I had more fun with it than I expected. The controls are a tad primitive but absolutely functional. I had quite a bit of trouble with Guile, but the real challenge at the time was Dhalsim. On the surface, his range is exceptional and you’d think you could really use that to your advantage, but the AI is really good at punishing every single one of his movements and he’s frail as all hell. I did get a lot better with Dhalsim later, but there were other challenges to come.

#22: Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (PS5)
June 18, 2022

I mentioned earlier that I’d be willing to try anything Team Ninja put out, and this was no exception. Despite many viral tweets about the unintentionally hilarious cutscenes in this game, I found it to be a competent action game with tons of Final Fantasy flavor to satisfy my cravings. Yes, Jack is an absolutely ridiculous character and the plot is ludicrous, but the combat is about as solid as a Nioh game with enough to differentiate it from that series that it doesn’t just feel like a carbon copy. I should go back and try out the DLC at some point.

#23: Street Fighter II: Champion Edition (Arcade)

June 19, 2022

I think I’d already decided at this point that I was going to try to play every Street Fighter game. Once I set my mind to something, it’s over. It’s going to be done. Champion Edition, as many know, is basically the same as The World Warrior, except that the four “villains” are now playable. I decided that it wouldn’t be necessary to complete the game with all the characters again—I would just need to finish it with the four new ones. This proved to be more difficult than I imagined. It felt like it took about as long as beating The World Warrior with those 8 characters. The exception to this rule is M. Bison, who felt noticeably more powerful than everyone else, especially when abusing Psycho Crusher, his full-screen charge attack. This might have also been when I started learning how to use a fight stick, so that might have contributed to the extra time.

#24: Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting (Arcade)

June 20, 2022

This version of the game didn’t add any new characters, so I figured beating it with anyone in particular would be fine. I chose M. Bison, since he was by far the easiest win in Champion Edition. I think this was a good decision, since the increased speed of the game made reaction time even more important. Spamming Psycho Crusher meant I didn’t have to worry about that too much.

#25: Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (Arcade)
June 23, 2022

It can be easy to get confused about all the different versions of Street Fighter II. It doesn’t get a lot simpler from here with future entries, unfortunately. Super Street Fighter continues the trend of steadily increasing difficulty with these versions but mercifully reduces the speed of gameplay to what I would consider the “standard.” Four new characters were added in this version so I again challenged myself to complete the game with those characters. I had a pretty good time with Fei Long and Dee Jay, struggled a bit with T. Hawk, and struggled a lot with Cammy. There’s a common trend in Street Fighter II where you can get a lot of mileage out of interrupting aerials with fierce kicks or punches and I abused that considerably with Dee Jay. It was a lot more difficult to do that with Cammy. With Fei Long, I was able to abuse his speed and combos to get an edge over opponents. T. Hawk has incredible reach but is also enormous and slow.

#26: Super Street Fighter II Turbo (Arcade)

June 24, 2022

I’d been dreading playing this game in particular because I’d read in a lot of places online that there was a glitch that essentially maxed out the AI difficulty. When I finally got to experience that, I realized they really weren’t kidding. Fortunately, I was able to exploit M. Bison again to eke out victories very gradually and was able to prevail with some perseverance.

#27: Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors’ Dreams (Arcade)
July 1, 2022

After finally clearing the gauntlet of Street Fighter II games, I finally moved on to Alpha, a game I had absolutely no experience with. It has a lovely art style that leans much more into the anime aesthetic than in previous entries as well as some great animations with tons of stylish smear frames. It also feels a lot more floaty, which I personally enjoy. I don’t know anything about how competitively stable these games are, but they feel really great to me just to play casually. Since this was a brand new sub-series, I needed to beat the game with all characters again, but fortunately, Alpha doesn’t have a huge roster in the first place. It was nice to see a lot of new faces here, though, like Adon, Birdie, and Rose, for instance. I didn’t know at the time that many of these characters recurred from Street Fighter 1, which I had skipped due to it being terrible. On the other hand, I did recognize at least one Final Fight character in Guy, which was a crossover I didn’t even realize existed in the Street Fighter series.

#28: Street Fighter Alpha 2 (Arcade)

July 3, 2022

Alpha 2 adds five new characters, including the return of Zangief and Dhalsim. More important is the first appearance of Sakura, the schoolgirl protege of Ryu. I’d previously been familiar with Sakura from Street Fighter IV, one of only two Street Fighter games I’d ever played prior to this little marathon. She’s just as fun to play in this iteration and still ranked as likely my favorite of the newcomers. The elder master Gen did have an interesting stance-switching combat mechanic but he was a little awkward to play. Rolento worked out a little better for me with his flurry of baton strikes, even though I’ve never liked his weirdly fascistic character design.

#29: Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Arcade)
July 7, 2022

It was at this point that I decided I wanted to actually make something of the fact that I was playing through all these Street Fighter games. I thought it might be interesting to make a video about my experience, assuming I could make it through all of them. I’d already been taking some notes, but now I was recording every single moment of gameplay as well. I wanted to revisit what I tried doing in 2016 when I made a bunch of video reviews of video games. None of those videos got a ton of views, but it was a lot of fun to do. This whole year has been a year of experimentation and trying new things, even when I thought they might not be practical. As for Alpha 3 itself, it seems like it’s the most well-received of the Alpha series, but I found myself missing the simplicity of the previous games. Despite enjoying some of the new additions like R. Mika and Karin, I didn’t love that each character had three different fighting styles to choose from. I mostly ended up just picking the same one for every character and calling it a day.

#30: Steins;Gate 0 (PC)

July 7, 2022

It would be tempting to characterize the third visual novel of the year I’d read as a break from Street Fighter, but it wouldn’t really be accurate. I was spending my days (and generally my downtime while working from home) playing Street Fighter and reading Steins:Gate 0 before bed. I enjoyed this sequel just fine, although it really didn’t have the emotional gut punch of the original. It takes place in an entirely alternate timeline from the events of the original game, so it has this feeling of a “what if” story, which ultimately felt less impactful.





#31: Street Fighter III: New Generation (Arcade)
July 9, 2022

With a brand new Street Fighter sub-series, I was determined to play all these characters all over again. Luckily, the vast majority of them were completely new and wholly unfamiliar to me. I was excited to give them a try. I was struck right away by how fast-paced and fluid the combat is. It has the most meticulously animated 2D sprites I’ve seen just about anywhere. It’s also a lot more difficult than the Alpha series, partially due to that pace. I was drawn to Ibuki right away. She’s probably my favorite ninja character in the whole series. None of the new characters were a complete miss for me, although I did struggle to get anything done with Elena at the time. Her capoeira style felt awkward and hard to control. Dudley’s gentleman boxer aesthetic struck me as a great contrast to the more straightforward boxing style of Balrog from previous titles. Sean was an interesting take on a shoto character in line with Ryu or Ken with more of a rough-and-tumble style. Alex is basically an American wrestler archetype with a design clearly reminiscent of Axl Rose. He’s not my favorite, but I prefer him to something like Zangief, for instance.

Character design also sometimes leans into the bizarre and grotesque with Oro, an aged, hunched-over, only vaguely humanoid guy with an extremely strange fighting style. I could really only get through the game with him by abusing his Mortal Kombatesque teleport attack. On top of that is Necro, a strange amalgam of Blanka and Dhalsim in terms of moveset. This is one of the few characters in this series that I don’t think has recurred yet and it might just be because his design is really off the wall.

#32: Street Fighter (Arcade)

July 12, 2022

When I first started this exercise, I tried the original 1987 Street Fighter out of the gate but quickly abandoned it because it felt literally unplayable. Street Fighter II felt immensely more responsive by comparison. After clearing a whole pile of these games and committing to making a video, I decided that having footage from the original would be helpful, so I buckled down and finished it anyway. It’s really not a good game, folks. It is possible to get through it, though, by facerolling the controller and hoping you get some lucky hadokens and shoryukens.

#33: Street Fighter III: Second Impact: Giant Attack (Arcade)
July 12, 2022

Second Impact technically only featured two new characters, although the Chinese martial artist twin brothers Yun and Yang have now become distinct characters in the selection menu. I didn’t discuss Yun and Yang earlier, but it’s interesting to look back at them not only because they were competitively some of the strongest characters in this game, but because they were designed to be broadly appealing. I think there must have been some ambition for them to be the new Ryu and Ken. This definitely didn’t happen, but it’s funny to see that they very closely resemble Trowa Barton and Duo Maxwell from Gundam Wing. As far as newcomers go, we have Urien, who plays similarly to Gill, the final boss, but with fewer fireworks. He’s still straightforwardly quite strong. On the other hand, Hugo is a monstrously huge, ponderous fighter. I have to give Capcom credit just for including such an improbably giant character on the roster, even if he’s not necessarily the most fun to play.

#34: Street Fighter III: 3rd Impact: Fight for the Future (Arcade)

July 15, 2022

It’s worth noting that the notes I was taking as I was playing had now become extensive. I was discussing my impressions of each fighter and their aesthetic and gameplay design in detail. I wasn’t entirely sure what this video was going to be, but I wanted it to be an exhaustive recounting of my experience as someone who isn’t a fighting game veteran. I haven’t even talked about the final boss of these games, the infamous Gill, if only because I’ve now beaten him so many times that he no longer seems like the menace he once was. The reason he stands out in the series is that he’s capable of healing himself to full health after you take him down. I soon discovered that you could interrupt the healing process and it wasn’t a big deal, but it initially felt pretty unfair. As for this game’s roster, Chun-Li finally makes her return, but there’s also a couple of oddball newcomers like Q and Twelve. Q is some kind of weird android dressed as an old-school detective. Twelve is a somewhat amorphous alien that puts me in mind of Glacius from Killer Instinct. Then there’s Remy, who is another in the line of characters somewhat resembling Guile in terms of play style, but he’s a bit more agile. Makoto is by far the standout of the new characters for me, though. She moves very slowly but strikes quickly. I really love her design a lot.







#35: Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (Switch)
July 25, 2022

Again, it’s tempting to say I took a break from Street Fighter to play this, but that’s not really the case. There’s a good reason why there was a bit of a delay on the next two entries that I’ll get into soon. As for this particular title, I have mixed feelings about it but I quite enjoyed it overall. Every musou game feels kind of the same as far as the combat goes, so if you really hate musous, this one probably won’t change your mind. On the other hand, if you’re okay with them, Three Hopes does an excellent job of channeling what was good about Three Houses without having to fiddle with nearly as much school micromanagement stuff. I had a great time hanging out with all these characters again, much like I did with Persona 5 Strikers. It even made me want to go back and play another route of Three Houses, but with Fire Emblem Engage coming out sometime soon, I doubt that’s going to happen.

#36: Ultra Street Fighter IV (PC)

July 28, 2022

When I started this little exercise, I committed to beating every game with every character in the roster. For sub-series, I decided it would make sense to only play the newcomers, but of course Street Fighter IV is a brand new numbered entry. I decided to jump straight to Ultra not only because that was more convenient but because it’s not practical to get ahold of the older versions at this point. Having said that, Ultra Street Fighter IV has a roster of 44 characters and I beat the game with every single one of them.

Let’s not forget that at this point I was recording all of my gameplay, so I still have footage of all the time I spent playing Ultra Street Fighter IV clogging up my hard drive. I also had ambitions to discuss the experience I had with each character in reasonable detail in this proposed video and I suddenly become uncomfortably aware of just how much work I was making for myself. I won’t talk about every new character here, but I will say that Gouken and Poison were two of my favorite fighters in this particular iteration. Gouken feels like a mix of Ryu and Akuma, but there’s something about the sensation of power in his attacks that really worked for me. As for Poison, I have mixed feelings about her blatantly sexualized design, but I’m tempted to say it works because of the type of character she is. She’s playful and powerful, and a lot of fun to play.

#37: Live A Live (Switch)
August 1, 2022

I have been an evangelist for the cult Super Famicom RPG, Live A Live for many years. It is one of the handful of RPGs I keep in the back of my mind that accomplish something I would like to do if I ever made one myself. It features a disparate group of characters who achieve their own goals separately and then meet and work together later on. Live A Live is archetypal in this way. Along with Dragon Quest IV, it paved the way for titles like SaGa Frontier and Octopath Traveler. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest it was an influence on Chrono Trigger either since time travel plays a pretty important role in Live A Live. With its interesting tactical combat system, excellent soundtrack, and most importantly, its novel structure, Live A Live is still a joy to play in 2022, especially with the gorgeous revamp to its artwork.

#38: Street Fighter V: Champion Edition (PC)

August 5, 2022

Upon the completion of Street Fighter V, I had finally finished my marathon. It’s reasonable to say I was a bit burned out at this point, but for the most part, I really enjoyed my time with the series. As maligned as SFV is, I mostly really enjoyed it. It has a goofy story mode, which I’m always a big fan of in fighting games. It also has a 45-character roster, which meant a lot more footage, a lot more notes, and a lot more writing. I started plotting out the relationships between characters, my thoughts on their designs, my thoughts on how they evolved over time, my experience with their gameplay, and I realized for the second time that I had created an impossible amount of work for myself for no real gain. Even so, I was disappointed that I’d spent all this time on this project only to give up at the end. In the following weeks, I continued to write about my experience and thoughts on each of these characters, but inevitably, I just couldn’t bring myself to complete such an ambitious document. If I’m ever going to get back into making videos, it’s probably not going to be as big of an ordeal as this was. Looking back at my notes/script document, I’d already written 15,000 words with no end in sight.

#39: One Step from Eden (PC)
August 14, 2022

After spending so much time on the Street Fighter project, I felt it was time to play some games that were decidedly more lightweight. One Step from Eden is a rogue-lite heavily inspired by Mega Man Battle Network, in which you use your various cards/powers while maneuvering along an isometric grid. I enjoyed the game a lot and I’m excited to try out MMBN for the first time whenever that legacy collection comes out. I’ve played just about every other Mega Man game, after all.

#40: Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl (3DS)

August 16, 2022

I’m a huge fan of the Etrian Odyssey series. I was always on the fence about buying these remakes because I’d played the original EO1 and EO2 many years ago. After a sale I couldn’t say no to, I decided to pull the trigger because EO scratches a dungeon crawler itch that no other series really addresses. Strange Journey Redux had really reignited this hankering, mind you. I kept thinking “man, I really wish I could be drawing these maps.” I will say that I don’t love the randomness in this game’s grimoire system, but the core gameplay is still great and it goes a long way toward addressing the extremely unbalanced original version of this game. No longer can you cheese every encounter with extremely overpowered abilities.

#41: Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2 (PS2)
August 28, 2022

I took a long break in between these two games to play a bunch of Street Fighter, but it probably saved me from getting too burnt out. OG2 is definitely a test of endurance. Every SRW game is long, but many of them are easy enough that you can remedy that somewhat by blasting through enemies at a breakneck pace. This isn’t as trivial a task to accomplish in OG2, since many of the later stages are quite tough. The challenge never feels unfair or unbalanced, though, and the designs, characters, and even story in this game are some of my favorite things in the entire series. This may well be my favorite SRW game.

#42: Across the Obelisk (PC)

September 10, 2022

I haven’t yet played a deck builder rogue-lite I haven’t enjoyed. Each of them has something to bring to the table that makes it memorable and worth playing. I’m sure there are some out there that just aren’t very good, but I haven’t played them yet. Across the Obelisk distinguishes itself by featuring a playable party of characters that function very similarly to Darkest Dungeon, although with considerably fewer restrictions on formation. It’s generally a good idea to have your tank in front and your healer in the back, but there’s still a lot of freedom on how you want to arrange your characters. It also has something like 16 different playable classes, all of which fall into one of four archetypes. These archetypes have their own pools of cards, but even characters within those archetypes have a series of traits and perks that make them feel very unique to play. I love the game a lot and the fact that it has co-op is a fantastic bonus. The only criticism I can give it is that it’s quite slow-paced. It’s not uncommon for an entire run to take more than four hours to complete, which is considerably longer than something like Slay the Spire or Monster Train.

#43: Super Robot Wars R (GBA)
September 18, 2022

It’s hard to track the confluence of events that led to me starting to learn Japanese, but this game definitely had a lot to do with it. After finishing OG2, I lamented the fact that the next games in the OG series weren’t available in English. I racked my brains and thought about maybe just playing the next one anyway with the assistance of a translation guide. What I learned was that guides for that particular guide were slim, but there were some other titles that had partial translations that I’d never played. Well, I thought, surely I can get through one of these games if I can at least read the menus.

I could have just left it at that, but shortly after starting SRW R, I found a few pieces of untranslated information that I was curious about. I researched my options for looking up what I was seeing on screen and stumbled across Google Lens, which allows you to simply hold your phone up to your screen and translate kanji in real time. It worked shockingly well. Suddenly, I realized I could use this for dialogue too! I was able to piece together the story by painstakingly translating each frame.

Around this same time, I came across an old Kotaku video of Tim Rogers walking Jason Schreier through the early phases of Chrono Trigger in Japanese. He was translating each piece of dialogue on the fly, but Jason was able to at least sound out the hiragana. I realized at that point that I’d never even tried to do something as simple as just… learn hiragana. It turned out it was a lot easier than I expected! I learned hiragana in maybe a day. Shortly after, I learned katakana. Jason mentioned that he was using a site called WaniKani to slowly learn kanji, so I decided maybe that would be a good thing for me to try as well. Cut to almost four months later, and I’m level 11 on the site, having learned several hundred kanji. Of course, I have no intention of stopping there.

As for the game itself, it’s a pleasant, although primitive entry in the series with several interesting series included. I’d never heard of Gear Fighter Dendoh, for instance, but was pleased to spend time with some old favorites like Gundam Wing, G Gundam, and Martian Successor Nadesico. This was also the first time I’d gotten to use Gundam X units since I played Alpha Gaiden in 2014.

#44: Super Robot Wars D (GBA)

October 8, 2022

After successfully playing through a game that was largely in Japanese, I was eager to try it again. Since D was the next game in line chronologically on the Game Boy Advance, it felt like the right choice. The fan translation in this game was even more partial than in R, meaning that none of the character names were translated. I had many eureka moments of sounding out names using the katakana, sometimes with the assistance of Google Lens. I remember what particular instance where I crowed in victory once I figured it out. The name was “マックス” from Macross 7. I said it aloud repeatedly, emphasizing different parts, “Makkusu.” I realized suddenly that it was Max. That moment of comprehending something without looking it up was euphoric. It helped to unlock my motivation to really buckle down and learn this language.

Super Robot Wars D is a lot harder than R. It is balanced in such a way that enemies deal much more damage than usual, meaning the ability to dodge is extremely valuable. Stacking armor can sometimes be helpful, but you need a tremendous amount of it to tank multiple hits. As a result, my absolute best unit was Shogo from an anime that I’d still kind of like to watch, Megazone 23. He really stands out because he has a motorcycle that transforms into a mech and because his mobility is insanely high. I maxed out his upgrades very early and he was my most valuable unit for the rest of the game. SRW D also felt a bit unique for me because of the Valkyrie units from Macross 7 that function as pure support. I haven’t yet played another game from this series that has pure non-combat units like that, and it was a really nice spin on the formula. Honestly, this game has a lot of problems because of the balance issues, but it’s special to me because of how it catalyzed my Japanese learning and because of some really unique unit options.

#45: Vampire Survivors (PC)
October 21, 2022

I’d actually spent dozens of hours idly playing Vampire Survivors earlier in the year, but because it was still in Early Access, I didn’t really consider it beaten at the time, despite completing just about every achievement in the game. After the 1.0 release, I finished it up pretty quickly. There’s been more DLC to come out since then, so I’ll probably check that out soon. Suffice it to say, though, Vampire Survivors was a surprise runaway hit this year just because it’s extremely simple and fiendishly addictive. You’ve probably heard all about this game by now, but there’s something extremely satisfying about how low-impact the game is combined with the wide array of weapons you can unlock as you go.

#46: Surviving Mars (PC)

October 28, 2022

I’d had a hankering at the back of my mind for a good city-building game for a long time, but never found one that really clicked for me. I played all kinds of games like this when I was younger, but haven’t spent nearly as much time on them in recent years. Surviving Mars definitely scratched that itch, but I came away realizing why I probably don’t play them that often. They’re very time-consuming and eventually stressful to maintain. Also, if you’re not doing that well, they can be very repetitive. I enjoyed my time with Surviving Mars a lot, but it took me something like a cumulative 80 hours to “finish” one particular city, so I don’t expect I’ll be returning to it anytime soon.

#47: Slay the Spire (PC)
November 24, 2022

It took me a lot longer to finish this game for the second time than I expected. I played this quite a bit on Xbox Game Pass and a little on PlayStation 4, so I figured I might as well grab it on Steam as well so I can play it on the Steam Deck. I’d also never finished the game with the newest character, the Watcher, so I wanted to do that along the way. Victories with the first three characters came pretty quickly, so I was already pretty familiar with them, but the Watcher took me more than 20 tries. She’s a sort of high-risk, high-reward character that can double her damage by going into Wrath stance, but of course, she also receives double damage as well. Due to the RNG inherent to any card game, this can sometimes backfire. I know from reading about the game that the Watcher is technically the strongest character, but it certainly took me some time to wrap my mind around her play style.

#48: Everhood (PC)

November 26, 2022

Every time I play a really great indie game like this, I wonder to myself why I’m not playing them constantly. They’re generally more lightweight and digestible than most other games I play and in a lot of cases, even more memorable! Then, inevitably, I turn around and play the next 100+ hour RPG. As for Everhood, though, it’s an extremely quirky and mysterious rhythm game in which the core gameplay loop involves dodging the notes on screen with your character. The soundtrack is incredible and the story is thought-provoking. At the same time, it’s not so labyrinthine to be tiring. I enjoyed it tremendously.

#49: The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero (PC)
December 4, 2022

I was really grateful to finally be able to play this with an exceptional English translation. There’d been a fan translation available for it for some years, but after hearing this official release was coming, I decided I’d just wait. This particular entry in the series has the same classic JRPG charm that Trails in the Sky did, but of course, that also comes with its fair share of dullness, pleasant as it often is. There is a charming mundanity to JRPGs of this era, but I’ll be the first to admit that these moments don’t always hold my attention. Even so, I enjoyed this game quite a bit and I’m eager to see the final puzzle piece of the Trails saga that I’m missing when Trails to Azure comes out.

#50: Risk of Rain 2 (PC)

December 10, 2022

I finished this game more out of sheer stubbornness than anything. I really enjoyed the previous Risk of Rain because it was built around finding lots of pickups and upgrades that turn your character into an unstoppable arsenal of turrets, missiles, and powers. Risk of Rain 2 definitely does something similar, but because it’s now fully in 3D, there’s an extra dimension to the gameplay that makes it considerably tougher for me to play. I’ve never had a great sense of direction, either in real life or in video games, but because Risk of Rain 2 increases in difficulty the longer you spend in each level, that extra stress makes the game much more frustrating for me. There's a lot to like about this game when it comes to your build and character options, but I was ready to be done, so I eventually kicked the game down to Easy Mode to finish it. Even on that mode, the game was more than hard enough for my tastes.

#51: Stacklands (PC)
December 13, 2022

The conceit of this game initially appears to be that of a simplistic city-building card game. It’s a lot of fun and addictive from the outset. You’re given a berry bush card, so you stack your villager on the berry bush to harvest the berries. Each villager needs to eat two berries each day, or they will die. The strategy of the game is in producing new cards by combining existing cards and then selling them so you can buy more cards. You rinse and repeat this loop until you’ve unlocked a wide variety of cards. Eventually, you’re crafting weapons, building farms, exploring different areas, and defeating demons that pour out of portals that open periodically. The issue is that all of this is happening in real time, so it eventually becomes extremely overwhelming to maintain. The relaxing nature of the game’s early stages disappears and is replaced with anxiety. It’s a game I really enjoyed playing but not a game I enjoyed finishing.

#52: Roguebook (PC)

December 17, 2022

I mentioned earlier that I hadn’t played a deckbuilding rogue-lite I didn’t enjoy, and playing Roguebook certainly hasn’t changed that. Although I’m grumpy that the game doesn’t run that well on Steam Deck, there were a few elements to this game that really made it stand out. Probably the most obvious difference from other games like this is how traversal on the game’s world map works. It’s constructed in such a way that you use a set of paintbrushes and inks to uncover different areas of the map. As you conquer encounters, you’ll get new inks as rewards so you can explore new areas. There’s a lot more strategy in the traversal than in most other games in this genre, where your choices are generally pretty binary. I really like finding the best way to gather all the goodies in each area before taking on the boss. Or, if you’re feeling powerful, you can just rush straight to the boss if you really want to.

The other nice element of the game is that you control two characters simultaneously with combined decks. Each character combo has different strengths and weaknesses, but swapping them from the front to the back is a really important part of the gameplay. Many cards and effects have interactions with whether a character is in the front or back or how many times they’ve been swapped in that combat. I haven’t heard a lot of people talking about Roguebook, but I think it has a lot of great ideas. I don’t think its performance is optimized that well, but I thoroughly enjoyed completing runs with all 10 character combinations.

#53: Orcs Must Die! 3 (PC)
December 26, 2022

I have a long history with this series. I played a ton of the original Orcs Must Die! and I can even remember the first time I ever heard about it. This was a time in my life when I was watching a ton of League of Legends streams when that game was practically still in its infancy. The legendary (infamous?) HotShotGG was playing the first game on his stream and I thought the mix of action and tower defense looked great. From there, I played Orcs Must Die! 2 in co-op with lots of different folks and racked up close to 100 hours on it. I even spent quite a bit of time playing Orcs Must Die! Unchained, the ill-fated online-only release for the series. It started out as a MOBA and then transitioned to a more traditional entry in the series with a wide array of playable characters after that didn’t work out. Sadly, that game was eventually taken offline and now there’s literally no way to play it. That is sad. What isn’t sad is that Google funded Orcs Must Die! 3, which launched on… Google Stadia. I feel like Robot Entertainment can’t catch a break.

Fortunately, after an interminable year of being quarantined to Google Stadia, the game launched for consoles and PC. I actually played this game on Google Stadia very briefly, but I went on to play it a lot more on PS4. I grabbed it much more recently on PC so I could play it in co-op with one of the guys I’d played OMD!2 with many years back. Here’s hoping even more DLC is on the way and maybe even an OMD!4 one day.

#54: Pokemon Violet (Switch)

December 28, 2022

For whatever reason, I jumped on Pokemon Violet pretty much right away, whereas I waited a long time before trying Shield. I think the promise of an open-world Pokemon game sounded pretty appealing to me, but when the first reviews came out discussing its awful performance issues, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Those reviews weren’t kidding—the performance is awful, but I actually found that I got used to it after a while. I realized pretty quickly that I was just having a lot of fun wandering around the world, catching new pokemon, and tackling new challenges. The game still has the same issue that most of these games have in that it’s just too easy and simplistic, but even so, I liked a lot of the new designs, and a few of the fights at least had enough challenge to at least be enjoyable. The graphics certainly don’t look the best and the performance issues are basically unacceptable considering other games that run much better on the Switch, but I still absolutely enjoyed my time with the game.