The 10 best games of 2022 (so far)

Elden Ring, The Quarry, and all the other titles we love that rolled out during the first half of this year

Games Lists Forbidden West
The 10 best games of 2022 (so far)
(Clockwise from lower left to right) Tunic (Image: Andrew Shouldice), Card Shark (Image: Devolver Digital), Elden Ring (Image: Bandai-Namco), Kirby And The Forgotten Land (Image: Nintendo), The Quarry (Image: 2K Games) Graphic: Libby McGuire

2022 has been a quieter year for gaming than most; outside a few high-profile releases—and one massive, medium-sweeping bulldozer courtesy of FromSoftware—major releases (at least, from the big-budget studios) have been few and far between.

But that, of course, only calls for deeper curation, and so The A.V. Club is here with a look at the best games published in the first half of 2022, whether smaller indie titles, Elden Ring, or big-budget games forced to exist in the unfortunate shadow of Elden Ring. Our list runs the gamut from open world epics to small-scale emotional adventures, and from obscurity-soaked love letters to the latest adventures of everyone’s favorite pink vore monster. But all our picks are united by one thing: These were the games we liked—and why—in the first half of 2022.

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We Were Here Forever
Image Total Mayhem Games

I liked We Were Here Forever because it feels like actually sharing an adventure with a friend. Closer in spirit to social party games like Dixit or Charades, the true challenge in the latest installment of the increasingly ambitious, online-only series lies not so much with its escape-room puzzles but with its asymmetrical division of labor tasking you with conveying abstract visual information: how do you describe a sequence of alien musical notes for your partner to play on an organ that controls the gates inside a spooky cathedral? Collaboratively chipping away at the barriers of communication that separate two different minds charges each hard-earned breakthrough with genuine delight and engenders a feeling of camaraderie sharing loot or completing a side-quest rarely does. [Alexander Chatziioannou]

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