Games of the Year 2022: Pokémon Scarlet and Violet
Pokémon Scarlet (and Violet by extension) was the rare Pokémon game that hooked me and kept me interested all the way through.
I'm not doing a full review, but I do feel the need to call out how much this game struggles on performance. It chugs along, has tons of bugs, and the frame rate is just brutal. Although, none of that really detracted from my overall enjoyment. Your results may vary.
The two things that truly let this game get its hooks into me were the open world and the new quality of life feature auto battle feature. The open world fairly quickly gave me three main story progression paths to go down and complete freedom in the order I wanted to pursue them. The typical Gyms are here but so is a storyline about Team Star and a completely different storyline about Titan Pokémon.
Given the freedom of the open world and the ability to do almost instant auto-battles for experience, I quickly threw on some podcasts and audiobooks while just running around the world. It was a ton of fun.
And, in the end, the story had me invested. All three storylines come together and do some cool things towards the end. Ultimately, I'm not sure how much (if any) endgame content I'll do now that I've rolled credits... but this game was great.
It doesn't quite make my top 5 but it easily slots in just underneath it at number 7. This is easily above two other strong open world games, Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Horizon Forbidden West. I went back and forth a bit on almost putting this at number 6 but The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe just kinda blew me away. They're such different games that they're hard to compare, but it's my list and this felt right to me:
- Elden Ring
- Xenoblade Chronicles 3
- FFXIV Endwalker
- Citizen Sleeper
- Marvel Snap
- The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet
- Horizon Forbidden West
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge
- Pokémon Legends: Arceus
- Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition
- Cult of the Lamb
- Neon White
- Halo Infinite
- Vampire Survivors
- Gotham Knights
- Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
- Playdate Season 1
- Immortality
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC
- Triangle Strategy
- Mario Strikers: Battle League
- Multiversus Pre-Season
- Stray
- LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
- Nobody Saves the World
- Unpacking
- Kaichu
- Tinykin
- Splatoon 3
- Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope
- Shovel Knight Dig
- Total War: Warhammer 3
- Tunic
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