What is the video game ‘theme’ for 2022?

[ad_1]

Now that we’re at the end of 2022, I’m taking time to look back at the year and see what it was about – and how we’ll remember this year in gaming when so long gone.

If you take a look at many sites’ GOTY listings, you’ll see that Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok dominate them all, but here at Nintendo Life, we’ve had a very different year. Two Pokémon games, the new 3D Kirby, Splatoon 3 and Bayonetta 3, and Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope kept the exclusives and first-party fires smoldering on the first Switch, and while we didn’t get a full Mario or Zelda game released this year, we did receive Lots of news about Tears of the Kingdom and the Super Mario Bros. movie.

Image: Nintendo

Personally, I’m more of an indie girl when it comes to it, and this year it didn’t disappoint, even if many of the best indie apps on the Switch are ports from previous years. I like to think that 2022 will be remembered as a year of games with weird and beautiful genre-defying narrative angles, like Neon White, Cult of the Lamb, Citizen Sleeper, Card Shark, and even if we don’t get other games in the same category – Immortals, quintuples, and gold idol status come to mind — I still think the Switch had a pretty amazing year for the indies.

However, if I had to guess what will be remembered in 2022, I think I’ve already answered the question: The two Pokémon games, which effectively bookended the year, with Legends: Arceus at the start and Scarlet and Violet at the end. Both were varying degrees of bullshit, but both elevated the series to new heights at the same time, and in a year that was bereft of Mario and Zelda, it only makes sense that one of the big dogs would take the spotlight.

Image: The Pokémon Company

Those two games were, for me at least, a real homecoming moment — the first time in a long time that I’d actually wanted to play a Pokémon game to its conclusion. For a long time, the chain has been about the same thing with different flavors; Arceus and ScarVi finally dared to take big steps into the great unknown, and despite its many technical flaws, the series is even better for it.

And distilling the themes of each of these giant Pokémon games, I suppose I could argue that 2022, five years after Breath of the Wild, was all about freedom. The freedom to roam in ScarVi and the Elden Ring, the freedom to explore in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and even the non-linearity of Sonic Frontiers — I think we’re continuing to see game design ripples coming from the giant splashes that Breath of the Wild makes in 2017, and I don’t mind at all . A lot of games, especially AAA, have benefited this year from open worlds, and if the studios can keep doing right, the games will be even better for them.

But there could be a greater and greater subject that I do not see, and so I turn to you, my beloved readers. What do you think will be the “theme” of 2022? Is it different on Switch than other platforms? And what do you think next year everything will be like, other than Zelda? Tell me in the comments!

Previously featured on Official Nintendo Magazine, GameSpot and Xbox UK, you can now find Kate’s writing all over the internet. She moved to Canada a few years ago, but gets her tea from England, because she has good priorities.

[ad_2]