GotY/Gaming in 2022 Mega Thread

[Mr EliteL]

I'll add my card once imgbb decides to work, or it died for good.

Use Imgur. It doesn't require an account unless you want to keep track of your uploads and is what I use all the time.

That's the reason why I don't want to use Imgur, otherwise I would be using it. I like to look back at my past uploads whenever I make a recent upload even if I might not use them again. Used to do that with Photobucket/Imageshack too so it stuck with me.  

Anyway, here's my card as imgbb is back.

[Moonface]

That's the reason why I don't want to use Imgur, otherwise I would be using it. I like to look back at my past uploads whenever I make a recent upload even if I might not use them again. Used to do that with Photobucket/Imageshack too so it stuck with me.

Imgur does let you look at all your past uploads if you have an account, so I'm confused why you don't want one unless it's because you don't want to make an account for it.

[Mr EliteL]

Well because I made an account of imgbb first, I don't want another one unless imgbb dies.

[Moonface]

Well because I made an account of imgbb first, I don't want another one unless imgbb dies.

Well (ha ha made you look!) then.

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Steam Replay 2022
So for the first time ever, you can look back on your gaming wrap-up on Steam with the Steam Replay, available via this link: https://store.steampowered.com/replay

I'm really curious about mine which I haven't looked at until the time of writing this post, and what's really nice is that Steam just lets you share a link to your entire Replay 2022 page, so here's mine: https://store.steampowered.com/replay/76...20485/2022
Just make sure to set it to either Public or Friends Only, otherwise nobody will be able to view it.
Another neat feature is the breakdown of your most played games giving a deeper insight into when you were playing it the most and such. Not surprised BoI is the top game for me since I play that practically every day due to the Daily Run, and I'm pretty sure the Repentance DLC for that game came out in May which would explain the huge spike in my playtime there. Not sure if anything happened in Phasmophobia in May for the spike that happens there though.

[Mr EliteL]

Sure, I'll add mine as I did play Phasmo quite a bit across the year. https://s.team/y22/vjmpwfm?l=english

Ah my sessions for Phasmo is quite high only because of the amount of times my game crashed and had to reload. Knew I played Agarest at some point in the year, need to play more of my other games next year and that particular one too so there's more stats.

[Moonface]

@Mr EliteL: I forgot that Genshin wouldn't be recorded by Steam and wondered why you only had Phas.

So I still don't really have enough experience to give my thoughts on what I think was the best game this year out of those that came out that I'll play, but with my time with GoW Ragnarok I'd say that although it is good, it feels like a weaker entry overall than GoW2018. Unless my experience with Elden Ring goes poorly I can understand why that game is getting picked more often by outlets as GotY compared to Ragnarok.

[Moonface]

So I finally remembered to look at the list of winners for the Japan Game Awards 2022 and it's really interesting to see how they approach it. They only have a very small number of categories, with most winners instead all coming under the singular award of "Award for Excellence", which has ten winners in total. I'm assuming their cutoff dates are way different to western outlets though, as everything awarded released between June 2021 and June 2022.

As for the winners though, I actually like the approach taken here where it seems the JGA's try to recognise any games that excel in some form and award them all with an Excellence award, and then do a couple of smaller ones that let a single game win. I know that for most other outlets the nomination can be seen as a similar thing, but I like how the JGA's approach curbs the "x is better than y" or "x got shafted" discourse. I also like that they explain the reasons for each game receiving an award, which is good here when ten games win the same award as it helps show where each one excels in its own way. It does definitely run the risk of the "everyone is a winner" thing that happens when school events dish out a participation trophy to everybody, but when these awards are meant to celebrate the medium of games it feels good to celebrate every great achievement rather than just the absolute best one.

[Moonface]

For anyone who likes to appreciate the work that goes into animation in games, I just came across this neat video from New Frame Plus that discusses and breaks down the best animation in games that released in 2022:



I haven't watched anything from this channel in years and that was back when everything lived on their PlayFrame channel or the Extra Credits channel, but these breakdowns have always been super detailed and interesting.