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My Top Five Video Games of 2022

/ Michael Beckwith / 2 Comments

Normally around this time of the year, I put together a list of the ten video games I’m most looking forward to in the following year. After some reflection, though, I’ve decided to stop doing that because, frankly, those lists aren’t exactly timeless. They get outdated so quickly, whether it’s because some of the games in question wound up not coming out or turned out to be bad. Plus, sometimes I struggle finding 10 whole games that I’m super excited for and we never know what the coming year’s full release schedule looks like.

I’d prefer to write something that holds up a lot better; something that can be read years down the line and not feel hilariously outdated. So, I’ve decided to follow the crowd and put together a top five list of my personal favourite games of 2022.

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My Ten Most Anticipated Games of 2022

/ Michael Beckwith / Leave a comment

I feel like it’d be an over exaggeration, if not outright inaccurate, to say 2021 was a bad year for video games. Quite frankly, there were plenty of awesome new games or updates to existing ones. On a personal level, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart properly demonstrated the potential of the PlayStation 5, both Great Ace Attorney games finally made it to the West, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate truly made the impossible possible by completing its roster with Sora from Kingdom Hearts.

But I will admit the industry itself has made it hard to be optimistic about 2022. Over the last twelve months, we’ve seen outright abysmal releases like the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy remasters, the likes of Ubisoft and Square Enix committing to incorporating NFTs (the newest environmentally damaging grift) into their games, and then there’s just everything about Activision, which has once again highlighted how horrible the industry can be behind closed doors.

While it is important to acknowledge all the bad parts of this industry, even if it’s painful to do so, that doesn’t mean there’ll be no joy to be found in it either. As always, there are already a number of select games I’m looking forward to this year and I’m sure there are a number of amazing titles that haven’t been announced yet. Plus, this is a yearly tradition at this point so let’s get on with things and get to my ten most anticipated games of 2022.

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Review | World’s End Club – 12 Friends at the End of The World (startmenu Preview)

/ Michael Beckwith / Leave a comment

Back in 2017, a group of Spike Chunsoft employees left to form their own company, Too Kyo Games. Among its founding members were Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, the respective creators of the Danganronpa and Zero Escape series. Given the similarities between both their series, it’s honestly surprising that it took until 2020 for the two to actually work on a project together. Released last year as an early access Apple Arcade title, World’s End Club is the two’s first proper collaboration, with Uchikoshi as director and writer and Kodaka as creative director.

The full game was recently released on the Nintendo Switch and expectations were certainly high for it. Danganronpa and Zero Escape are well-known and beloved by their fans for their complex mysteries, larger than life characters, and off-the-wall humour, so many assumed that World’s End Club would follow in their footsteps. And while in some ways it does, it is a very different beast compared to anything in either series.

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