This year, as last year, we at Gamer.no have taken a look at the games that have defined the past year, and highlighted the year’s best gaming experiences across various platforms.
We have a total of nine categories: Best Single Player Experience, Best Multiplayer Experience, Best Original Idea, Best Music, Best Sound Design, Best Visual Experience, Best Story, Biggest Disappointment and Biggest Surprise. As always, we’ve chosen one winner in each category, and two games that share second place.
We have chosen to divide the rating into three – simply because it is more clear. This is the third of three articles, all with three categories each.
READ PART 1: Our favorites in the Best Single Player Experience, Best Multiplayer Experience and Biggest Disappointment categories »
READ PART 2: Our favorites in the categories Biggest Surprise, Best Visual Experience and Best Sound Design »
Over the New Year, we publish a separate article which deals with the writers’ favorites from the year. That’s where we’ll probably see slightly different games than those that sit at the top here in the overall ranking.
We continue the selection with the games that had the best music:
Best Music:
Metal: Hellsinger
Available on Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
If you’re going to make a game with the main focus on music, it’s alpha and omega that the soundtrack hits. Metal: Hellsinger – developed by Swedish The Outsiders – coped with that task brilliantly, and delighted us with many great songs.
As the name suggests, it’s heavy metal. The songs from the music studio Two Feathers are catchy and it’s very hard not to stomp along to the beat – not least because it helps to knock down the hordes of demons that keep chasing you through the boards.
When you get the hang of things and the vocals come in, Metal: Hellsinger is in a category of its own. The fact that the game has included vocalists from bands such as System of a Down, Trivium and Lamb of God also contributes to raising the audiovisual experience several notches.
Bubblers:
God of War Ragnarök
Available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Bear McCreary showed in the previous God of War that he can make game music. And he confirms that position in God of War Ragnarök, with a fantastically good soundtrack. Not only does it help establish a mood throughout the game, it’s always there and builds up under what’s happening, reinforces when it needs to, and disappears at the right moments.
In video sequences, it builds up and reinforces what is happening, but perhaps best of all it is in action sequences, where it is hard and intense, and really draws you, the player, into the battles in an absolutely fantastic way.
Overall, it is the variety and depth of the soundtrack that makes it stand out as one of the very best soundtracks of the year. It is sad and subdued, but explosive when needed.
Fire Ring
Available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One
and Xbox Series X/S.
Intense boss fights require intense music. In Elden Ring, FromSoftware’s composers have delivered some of the series’ most memorable pieces of music, and there are several of the boss battles where you can almost hear the background music playing as you visualize the enemy.
The Soulsborne series has always had pieces of music that build during the experiences, whether they are weird, wonderful or terrifying. This applies to both the big boss fights and the areas in between.
In Elden Ring, you can tell by the mystery of the tones when you explore Liurnia of the Lakes, or the “I want to go home now” vibes you get when you hear the music in Caelid.
Among the boss battles, there are several masterful pieces, such as the battles against Radagon or Godfrey, where the goosebumps threaten to appear at any moment.
The music succeeds in creating the right atmosphere to lure you further and further into the universe until you are completely absorbed.
Best Story:
God of War Ragnarök
Available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
There are many good stories to choose from in 2022, but the very best of them is God of War Ragnarök. It’s a pure sequel to 2018’s God of War, so if you haven’t played it I’d definitely recommend it first and foremost.
Ragnarök turns everything up a notch, with great dangers and possible end-of-the-world consequences. Carried by very good voice actors for all the characters, we as players are taken on a journey through 9 different kingdoms, where the story in the two games will be woven together. And the developers manage to do that in an excellent way.
And even though it is big and massive, it is still the interpersonal, quiet sequences where there are no battles or gods involved, but where the characters talk together, reflect on their role and their place in the world, that at least made the most impression on me.
Bubblers:
Penitentiary
Available on Windows, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.
Many games tell a story, but few tell it as well as Pentiment. Here we really get to participate in the lives of seemingly ordinary people sometime in the 16th century. We not only meet the main character Andreas Maler and his challenges in meeting the Catholic Church and a society in conflict with the strict church, but also the many people who become an important part of this transformative era in world history.
The game’s story takes place in a small village somewhere in Germany, but it feels so much bigger. The way Josh Sawyer and his team at Obsidian allow you to get close to the many different people is both down-to-earth and warm. The game creates an incredible feeling of stepping into another time which is at the same time very close and familiar. On top of it all, we are told an exciting murder mystery that affects several generations.
Fire Ring
Available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One
and Xbox Series X/S.
The level of difficulty is perhaps what the Soulsborne games are best known for, but the cryptic story telling is at least as important to understanding why the games have become so popular.
For those who sprint through the games, it is not certain that they will catch a glimpse of what is actually going on in the terrifying universes that FromSoftware conjures up.
It is in the details that you find out how everything is connected. In the descriptions of weapons, armor and magic, in what is said between the lines of the few characters you meet on your journey.
There are large communities on social media that spend vast amounts of their free time delving into these details. They are looking for what the game creators really want to tell the whole story, the one that is hidden underneath.
Elden Ring may not be as cryptic on the surface as some of its predecessors, but there is much, much more to dive into here once you get your teeth into the puzzle of putting together all the pieces of the big picture.
FromSoftware problematizes many of the central themes of the SoulsBorne series; such as death, religion, rebirth and decay, chaos and order.
But it is only by following the myriad of details, and being a kind of detective who puts it all together, that you get the most out of the story. Elden Ring’s history is like a treasure you have to unearth, piece by piece.
Best Original Idea:
Metal: Hellsinger
Available on Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Metal: Hellsinger may not have been the first game to combine first-person shooters with rhythm games. However, it’s the way developer The Outsiders put it all together that deserves praise from end to end.
The game is all about slaughtering demons in an experience clearly inspired by the latest Doom games. To be most effective with the varied weapons Metal: Hellsinger throws at you, you have to fire in time with the music and the more often you hit, the faster the resistance drops.
The game’s real draw lies in the way it weaves the vocals into its delightful soundtrack. By reaching the maximum level of efficiency, the vocalists come into play, which sends the experience into high gear and gives you even more incentive to try each board again and again until you experience Metal: Hellsinger at its very best.
Bubblers:
Penitentiary
Available on Windows, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.
What happens if you try to use the game medium to teach the players some history, instead of just giving them an experience? We don’t know if that’s what Josh Sawyer was thinking when he came up with the idea for Pentiment, but from the results it’s certainly likely. Pentiment is a game that mixes historical accuracy with classic Obsidian gameplay.
Here we get choices and consequences like never before, but in a completely new setting. We travel to a Germany heavily influenced by Martin Luther’s confrontation with the Catholic Church. A murder is committed, and our protagonist becomes the detective who tries to find out what happened. What follows is an incredibly clever and exciting story where you, the player, must constantly make choices that push the story in different directions, while at the same time you learn new things about life 500 years ago.
Stray
Available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Windows.
“Everyone wishes they were a cat.” The success of the antics in BlueTwelve Studio and Annapurna shows that the song from the Aristocats is close to the truth. Anyone who wished they were a cat got the chance in Stray. With a little drone friend in your bag, you traverse a dystopian city populated by robots and scary bacteria, and experience a story of loss and loneliness in impressive level design.
The game deserves high praise for exceptional animation of a cat’s movements. Details in the animations that the small moment cats use before jumping up or down from something is a small touch that does a great job of underpinning the immersion in the game. Let’s also not forget that the game has a button dedicated to meowing, a function that according to our PlayStation Wrap Up has been used over one billion times.
With that, we are done with the year ranking. Stay tuned over the next few days as the writers’ personal favorites are posted.
