So 2022 was the end of the plague. After two years of monotony and drudgery, this was the year that the virus lost its potency, and people gave over caring. The virus is here to stay, joining the other collection of seasonal ailments that fill beds in the wintertime. While many countries have dropped all restrictions altogether, in Germany the regulations have become less transparent, with the occasional strange restriction still in place seemingly for the sake of it. So while masks remain compulsory on public transport, the word compulsory has evolved to mean ‘suggested’.
Joining the yearly round-ups from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, here’s looking back over the final year of the plague, 2022.
Summary
Best PC games: Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons, Gorogoa, Frostpunk, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, Slay the Spire, The Witness, Zombie Army 4: Dead War
Worst PC games: As Far As The Eye, Guns, Gore and Cannoli 2
Board games played: 29
Best board games: Concordia, Cross Clues, My City, Paleo, Targi
Worst board games: Ys
Films watched: 30
Best films: The Journey, Knives Out, City Lights, Les parapluies de Cherbourg, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Worst films: Four Horsemen, Independence Day: Resurgence, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
Books read: 34
Best books: The Complete Maus, The Point of Departure, Land of Big Numbers
Worst books: The Whisperer in Darkness, The Possessed, Singularity Sky
A Year in Gaming
This year hasn’t been much of one for solo gaming, at least not in the second half of the year. I polished off the DOOM reboot started last year, a beautiful hi-octane re-envisioning of the granddaddy of FPS titles. Largely mindless, though with some fun shooting mechanics and a rip-roaring soundtrack, it managed to be at once reminiscent of those pixelated 90s environs, whilst delivering the type of gameplay expected of a modern-era title.
Doubling down on finishing off games, I also returned to finish my cerebral punishment in The Witness. After sharing horror stories with a colleague, I fired it up again just curious about how far I still had to go, only to discover that I’d actually already completed enough to take on the final challenge, and only been put off by assuming the entire island needed to be complete before heading for the top of the mountain. Not that the final challenge didn’t also have my brain dribbling out of my eye sockets, but I bow down to Jonathan Blow’s design talents. Genius work, just a bit heavy for an addled brain.
On the lighter end of the puzzle spectrum, Gorogoa is a delicious little adventure in pictures, with a unique system of panels. It’s a game which breaks its own fourth walls, providing just enough of a challenge, with a few tricky sections, but the game doesn’t overstay its welcome and can be completed in a couple of hours.
Sticking with puzzles, perhaps my biggest surprise of the year was an epic Swedish fairytale, Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons. Essentially a solo coop, the game revolves around controlling two brothers simultaneously on their quest to cure their ailing father. I wasn’t overly enamoured with the opening chapter, and even abandoned the game for a while before returning, but gradually the world unfolds to Tolkeinesque proportions, with glorious vistas, memorable set-pieces and a truly moving story, helped along by the fantastic decision to have wordless voiceovers, spoken in the universal language of grunts and sighs.
More from the solo front, according to Steam’s yearly round-up, Slay the Spire was the game which occupied most of my time, making up nearly a quarter of the time played over 55 games. Easy to pick up and play (or perhaps interrupt and drop), it’s an intriguing card game which has depth, without being overly complex, and provides just the right amount of information to offer tactical confrontations gelled with more strategic deckbuilding, whilst being short enough that having ‘just one more go’ can easily eat into your time.
Worst PC games: As Far As The Eye, Guns, Gore and Cannoli 2
On the flip side, there were only a couple of games which disappointed. Whilst visually very appealing, I just couldn’t get into the rather tedious gameplay of As Far As The Eye. Despite being turn-based, it felt like there was a lot of waiting around between doing things, and rather than the sense of exploration and adventure a game like Civilization offers, felt like more of a chore. The interface was somehow unclear, leading to a lot of trial and error, and since every decision was so tight, a few misclicks easily spelt defeat and having to start over. When you can expect to fail even the tutorial, there’s honestly something off with the design in my book.
Guns, Gore and Cannoli 2 meanwhile was a recommendation from a colleague also into his two-player coops. It’s silly over-the-top action, everything it says on the tin, but it just fell rather flat with me.
A Year in Boardgaming
While our boardgaming habits have picked up a little in comparison to last year, we’re still far from the levels of yore, when we could expect to meet up at least once or maybe twice a month on average for an evening.
The worst game of the year has to be one we tried again many years back by the name of Ys. Basically a semi-blind bidding game in which players attempt to place workers to earn goodies, there’s a push-your-luck element to the game, but with four players at least it feels highly random in who comes out victorious in any bidding war, and it’s easy to come out empty-handed on every front and waste an entire turn, or else scoop up lots of unclaimed goodies with no competition.
Concordia was a decent tactical trading-in-the-Mediterranean game, ostensibly quite peaceful, albeit relatively cut-throat at four players. Whilst the flow of the game is fairly straightforward, with actions being played via a deck of cards which needs to be cycled through, and players principally vying for the placement of towns, I’m not too convinced about the final scoring. At least with four players, the game feels like it overstays its welcome, and the scoring at the end is pretty surprising if you haven’t been keeping tabs on what everyone is doing.
In terms of smaller games, two simple grids made a pleasant surprise this year. Targi is basically a classic at this point, a streamlined two-player worker-placementesque game about desert markets or some such. What’s so unique about the game is the way the workers interact with one another and block the other player; where many games of this ilk are virtually solitaire affairs, this game has a much more chess-like feel of trying to predict how your opponent will act to plan your own moves… and watching it all go south when they do the opposite. The other grid-based filler was Cross Clues, a classic word game in the vein of something like Codenames, but one in which the connections are already laid out in front of you, as everyone works together to clear the grid.
A Year in Cinema
One of the stand-out films this year was one I’d never heard of. The Journey is an excuse to imagine how an hour of discussion between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness might have gone. It’s contrived, ahistorical, slow and largely meaningless, but the performances from Spall and Meaney are excellent, which gives this fantasy some credibility.
Another film I didn’t actually plan to watch, Knives Out made me at least reassess my views on Rian Johnson somewhat. I didn’t in the slightest ‘get’ Brick, and thought the sequel Star Wars trilogy was utter garbage, though that isn’t all Johnson’s fault. Nevertheless this little Christie-inspired whodunnit put together a stellar cast in a dysfunctional family, plenty of red herrings, and Daniel Craig with a crazy accent. Pure light-hearted entertainment.
At the weaker end of the projector, one of the films I presumably watched too late, but on the advice of an old friend, was the documentary Four Horsemen. Some clever voices edited together in a vaguely synthetic order to produce various assertions about the way of the world and the economic order. Oh yes, and gold is the panacea. I’ll retire to bedlam.
But at least there was some vague attempt to form a cogent argument in that film. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw surely invites you to leave your brain with the usher. Do they make the CGI first and then write the script afterwards?