What a year it’s been so far!
Maybe you’ll find something that will similarly catch your eye, just as it’s done ours.
I’ll warn you now, though.
It’s a big list.
Elden Ring
Ed:I still wonder howElden Ringis possible.
Like, how is the game such a monstrous well ofthings?
A pad that leads to an ancient city.
And that ancient city leads to a beach with giant crabs.
Just to be clear, there isn’t a bit where this happens in game.
Or at least, I haven’t discovered it yet.
Perhaps overwhelmingly so, and especially if you’re a newcomer to Souls.
Bosses will kick your ass.
Quests are easy to miss.
Your character’s stats are a confusing jumble of words and numbers.
And when it clicks, that’s it!
That’s a story to tell!
Get everyone round the pub, there’s a discussion to be had.
Hours of my life, those bastards took from me.
But, like, in a good way.
A really good way.
I think I ended up playing something ridiculous like 300 hours of Elden Ring.
As youd hope after so much time, I got pretty good at the game.
But the enjoyment stayed the same.
FromSofts masterpiece is also their most accessible game yet.
Gwan, give it a go.
Hayden:At the start of 2022, the RPS Treehouseshared our longest playtimes.
Its safe to say that Elden Ring caught me off guard, then.
After two months and over 300 hours like Ollie, Elden Ring became my defininganythingof 2022 so far.
The thing I appreciate most about Elden Ring is its commitment to letting you get a little lost.
Elden Ring does things completely differently, and lets you stumble around with minimal guidance.
I wont lie, I fucking hated it when I first played it.
I felt… pride?
A genuine sense of accomplishment?
Like Id overcome something insurmountable based on skill alone?
From there, I was hooked.
Tunic did give me pointers, though, in the form of its in-game manual.
It contains a bunch of hints and tips, and the more you stare, the more youll find.
That doesnt mean I never felt lost, though.
Tunic had me stumped plenty of times, sometimes for days on end.
In the highest portion of Tunics map, there is a huge door on a snowy mountain peak.
Against all odds, they were arrows.
They did point somewhere new.
I found a whole new location that took hours to explore.
The satisfaction from that moment alone was enough to make Tunic one of my faves for 2022 so far.
Oh, and you play as the cutest lil fox in the world.
Katharine:Tunics instruction manual is a work of art.
Im not just talking about itsbeautifully illustrated NES era, Zelda II-style drawings.
Liam:Tunic made me gasp out loud in delight at multiple points during my play through.
Thats not an exaggeration.
I think at one point I even clapped my hands together and went Ah!
like I was on the stand in an Ace Attorney game.
Tunics all about moments like this.
Tunic is a genuine journey, a Zelda inspired marvel that arguably rivals Nintendos own 2.5D adventures.
Oh, and like Hayden says, that fox is properly adorable.
Im a big fan.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Liam:I first playedHardspace: Shipbreakerwhen it launched into early access in 2020.
I was in a proper funk, unable to find anything that engaged me in a meaningful way.
Shipbreaker was the game to finally break me out of that.
The trailers for Shipbreaker are quite misleading, I think.
They suggest that theres a level of bombast to proceedings.
Sparking arcs of electricity.
Thats true to an extent, but destruction isnt the end goal here.
Destruction is the games sole fail state, if anything.
Instead, Shipbreaker is a game aboutdeconstruction.
You are Marie Kondo in a scorch-marked space suit.
You heave gigantic panels into an incinerator using a gravity gun.
You flush fuel from twisting pipes before recycling them.
I hold all this in my arms and think, yes.
This does indeed bring joy.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker has replacedEuro Truck Simulator 2as my go to stress relief game.
This shouldnt be soothing (youre constantly running out of oxygen!
Youre a billion dollars in debt!)
Too often these sorts of games are tremendously tricky, with little recompense for botched runs or quick sessions.
Unlike other roguelites, Rogue Legacy 2 doesn’t skimp out on the rewards.
The core gimmick of the series remains fun, too.
Don’t pass up the opportunity.
In other words, it sits near-perfectly at the cross-section of all my interests.
Ghostwire: Tokyo’s stand-out feature, though, has to bethe city itself.
Pretty nice guy, too.
I havent had this much fun trying to find out where stamps come from in years.
I endorse this recommendation.
It’s Vampire Survivors but you have to aim and shoot, yeah?
Good look and all.
The music’s great, too.
2 has bought me a whole lot of fun.
Take as an example ourCant Stop Playingseries from a couple of years ago.
Of course we can stop playing those games.
If we couldnt, then wed have a problem.
WithThe Cycle: Frontier, I have a problem.
This game feels like the multiplayer shooter that Ive been after for years.
Escape From Tarkov always sounds interesting, but its just too dense, too intimidating.
Hunt: Showdown is marvellous, but its grim atmosphere can take its toll.
But its also accessible, characterful, and incredibly tense and atmospheric without ever becoming depressing.
By far my favourite things about the game are the maps and the weather.
Ive never known a game to be so tense and so beautiful at the same time.
The trivial stuff, the moments that seem ridiculous to even slow down to a QTE.
Back then, I was too obsessed with trying to get a perfect run to risk such silly errors.
When The Quarry launched, I vowed to play differently.
I wanted to take it a little slower and resist the temptation to react to things immediately.
Maybe, just maybe, Id even fail a QTE or two on purpose, for the thrills.
After the first hour, I realised just how difficult it would be to honour that vow.
I wanted happy endings across the board.
But Id made a commitment to chaos and mistakes had to be made.
Taking this approach with The Quarry did have its benefits, though.
I havent spoken to anyone else who failed quite so dramatically.
Alice0:I’m just delighted to see Ted Raimi.
Hi, Ted Raimi!
I’m not sure.
I’m not sure about a lot of this game.
I don’t yet know quite what it is and how it works, and I like that.
Did you go down a corridor you werent supposed to?
Have a little joke.
Did you hop out of a window and fall below the level geometry?
Oh, go on, have a jaunty little song.
Im spoiling it already.
An absurd, self-referential delight.
Its a truly wonderful way to spend an afternoon.
Its tense, and smart, and very often hilarious a tonic for my decade-long fatigue with WW2 games.
Not, uhhh, that its been removed as an option.
Its still a stealth op if there are no witnesses, yeah?
I’m no Warhammer head, but even I love its gothic excess and attention to detail.
Even in this hopeless situation, you’ll find compassionate people.
Thats the kind of cyberpunk game I want to play.
V Rising
Ollie:Weve all said quite a lot aboutV Risingalready, it seems.
Or until night falls, of course.
Thats your time to shine.
V Rising has got to be the most polished survival game Ive ever played.
37 bosses on day 1 of an Early Access title.
Thats a crazy amount of content.
Who’s Lila?
Isn’t that fun?
It is not fun.
Something is very wrong, and uncovering all the secrets will require inviting the game into your world.
I don’t know.
Then start a new playthrough and try something new, carrying over knowledge and sometimes even items.
This can lead to fun “Aha!”
I feel no shame in having looked up some parts.
Naturally, you will break the curse.
But first you must follow instructions in your spell book to make potions.
And for those you also need ingredients!
Raw ingredients can be harvested from plants and animals, many of the latter being absurdly cute.
But it’s also, and I don’t know how to adequately communicate this, very funny.
Turbo Overkill
Ed:You have a chainsaw for a leg.
Katharine:A chainsaw.
