SKELETON's Video Game Horoscope For 2022 | Winter Spectacular 2022
The world outside of my window sure as hell didn't bother stopping for 2022, and I have a sneaking, suspicious feeling that it won't bother stopping for 2023 either. I feel the years pushing in around me. Like I'm a piece of metal thrown into a vice that someone's desperate to turn into an arts and crafts project. All those old haunts, well, they feel it too. This year, I'll hit the halfway point of my life. I may very well have written half of the BEST OF lists I'll ever write, already.
I could get hit by a Hostess truck tomorrow. I could get shot, I could get shot just for going out to the grocery store and wanting to be cute. Any number of things could happen between the time this article is written and the theoretical point in time someone reads it - hey, maybe this is thirty years from now, and the halfway point of my life is long eclipsed. Somewhere a headstone reads: "HERE LIES SKELETON: THEY DIED PLAYING VIDEOGAMES". I'm okay with a life that has a message like that. I want to be the first person who ever dies, wishing they had more time in life to 100% more Sega Saturn RPGs.
With the end of the year rolling around so close it's always time to pull your loved ones close and the controller even closer. If there's something I've learned in my time on this planet, it's what people grow apart and change, but video games will never betray you. This would, I think, explain the number of people who have channels on youtube dedicated to showing off their massive collections of NES games that are all neatly organized and labelled. A shelf full of Yoshi plushies, three feet long and six feet tall.
If we're pulling our controllers close to our hearts, well, hey: it's time to decide if any of this was worth it. Everyone's going to be throwing their end-of-the-year lists in readers' faces now for the next three-to-four weeks. If it hits before the Christmas holiday? Well, no parent or spouse shopping for video games is going to read it. If you're one of those writers debating on if it should be ELDEN RING or DWARF FORTRESS STEAM RELEASE just go ahead and throw them on there. Make your top ten list exactly 32 video games long, nobody can stop you. Plus: A whole hell of a lot of video games came out this year, and all of us game-players made sure we put a few hours on the mortality clock playing them.
Yet, here we are: it's kind of like a standoff. I know what you're here for: You're here to see if I'm just as right about the best and most rewarding digital experiences that are out there. Like a lingering need for fulfilment, to know there was nothing that could really be missed out on. Come close, put an arm around me, and let's make sure we learn a thing or two about each other going into the new year.
WHAT THE BEST VIDEOGAMES OF THE YEAR SAID ABOUT YOU
ELDEN RING
Elden Ring hits you over the head with a chaotic and drastic runtime: The Lands Between are there for you to experience nooks and crannies. To lose yourself in fantasy and try to come out the other side. What is fantasy, beyond a hope that in some life we'll be recognized for the privilege we wish we could indulge? Die, die, die, die and die some more: Every time you get up in this unchanging and staid world is like a statement. I deserve to be here, and you don't. A crown is just a helmet that offers slightly less defence.
HORIZON: FORBIDDEN WEST
This year was dominated by that phrase. I deserve to be here, and you don't. Like the gravest of colonial fantasies, what if we could re-litigate every white girl's dreadlocks as Norse braids? What if we could re-litigate every scrap of Native clothing to be a fashion accessory for killing robot dinosaurs? You don't care who came before you, because you know the people coming after you don't either. Do you know it for sure?
IMMORTALITY
In this strange new world we live in, a place of abstracted points of view and clue-finding, there is no more need to create anything, only to solve what has come before. With no need for creativity, the voyeur can finally accomplish the goal it had all along: to become the protagonist. Watch the lives around you spin out with reckless abandon and cherish it all by the time to roll credits, and do it all over again any time you want.
SIFU
You breathlessly move through corridors and gang hideouts. Each punch and kick is precisely chosen and formulated. It's not so much fighting you're doing as it is a type of choreography. Enough times, you'll do a scene before you can finally say "Action" and let it rest, but at the end of the day, this is just a dance, and we all know real fighting is not a dance, and who can you dance for when the audience is yourself?
NORCO
You feel like you're looking into tomorrow all around you, and it's so strange that it looks a little bit like today, and a little bit like yesterday. All of history bubbles up like oil around you and there's nothing you can do about it but hold your loved ones tight and hope for the best, hope for some way out, and hope for the people you're going to be forced to leave behind.
WEIRD WEST
Home on the range. Video games love their flirtations with the West, the cowboy era, a place of soulful cowboy poets and gunslingers. A history where both were usually the sons and daughters of rich landowners who came out looking to push the people who already lived there far away. A history built on the backs of soldiers, Mexican cattle rustlers, Natives, and immigrants of every stripe. You'll chant "keep my city weird" now, but need a little fantasy to keep history weird. When you pull the trigger here and then do it again one afternoon later as a SWAT team member or DOOM SLAYER, just remember what Jonah Hex said: "Don't hardly seem like the human race has accomplished much these past two hunnert years "
POKEMON: SCARLET AND VIOLET
Like a chain tethering the depths of the ocean floor to the ship waiting dormant in rough waters, POKEMON: SCARLET AND VIOLET wants to know what you'll put up with for not even a little nostalgia, something different. The air you've been breathing for years. The monsters you've seen in new dimensions. A way to talk to a younger generation, finally, to reach out through the years and say yes, yes it's true: I do have to catch them all.
STRAY
Our cities lay dormant, save the worker-bee-like robots we've made to man the factories, the nurseries, the libraries. If being human is all about acts of creation and love, Stray puts you in the role of an alley-cat, at once that spirit of folk-freedom and suburban disease and mistreatment. Maybe there's a bigger picture there: what if you could have the freedom to wander the world and never have to really be a part of it?
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SHREDDERS REVENGE
Underneath the pitch-black skin of the thing that calls itself, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a legacy you remember since childhood; discretely stolen frames of animation harken back to fighting games and special moves you swear you can remember. It has all of the polish that the games you remember don't when replayed, and yet, finishes with a resounding thought: now that we have everything we ever wanted, hopefully, there is nowhere else to go afterwards.
XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 3
Every generation has the software capable of spiriting a young mind off to a different world entirely, irrevocably shaping their world. Ours is no different. Forget the various apocalypses of the western world, dour protagonists who grimace in both their memories and the present. The future is colourful. The future is bright. You can play it for 300 hours and rest assured that once comfortable, there will always be a sequel to carry you into old.
