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.
The rating is divided into three to make it all a little more clear. This is the second of three articles, all with three categories each.
READ ALSO: Our favorites in the categories Best Single Player Experience, Best Multiplayer Experience and Biggest Disappointment »
At the beginning of 2023, you will also be served the writers’ personal favourites. It is there that we get an outlet for our own experiences, with games of both a familiar and more unfamiliar kind.
We continue the selection with the games that surprised us the most:
Biggest surprise:
Penitentiary
Available for Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
When we first got to see Pentiment in the summer of 2022, many probably grimaced and wondered what the hell this was. Was this really the next game from the RPG maestros at Obsidian? We were all ill-prepared for what Obsidian cooked up. Pentiment is something completely unique in the gaming world. It’s a game that not only tells an engaging story that’s hard to put down, but it offers something completely different from what most games offer.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is the extent to which the game offers a completely new world. We are taken back to the 16th century, to an era hardly touched by games. Not only do we get to take part in an exciting mystery, but the game teaches us in an engaging way a lot about the history and the lives of those who lived at that time. Pentiment is a completely unique experience that will hopefully inspire many to pick up a history book.
Bubblers:
Return to Monkey Island
Available for macOS, Nintendo Switch, Windows, Linux, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
When Return to Monkey Island was unveiled in the spring of this year – at first as an apparent April Fool’s joke, before it became clearer and clearer that the project was actually on the way – it was a big surprise. Here’s something no one thought would happen again: the game creator behind the Monkey Island series, Ron Gilbert, is back with more pirate fun after 31 years away from the series. And not least, the game should pick up the thread from the “cliffhanger” he left the series with when he packed his things in 1992.
The result was one of the games of the year that gave (most of) the fans what they had wanted: A reunion with, and a further development of, one of the wittiest, smartest and most tone-setting game series in gaming history. Gilbert and the rest of the developers took what had worked in the games he hadn’t been involved in (hi Murray!), and made a new game that masters the art of balancing nostalgia with new ideas.
The fact that we actually got Return to Monkey Island in 2022 is one of the more surprising things that has happened in a long time. And now let’s hope that this is not the end.
Cult of the Lamb
Available on macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
In recent years, Devolver Digital has distinguished itself as a club for finding small, but incredibly good games to bet on. Also in 2022, the publisher delivered more pearls. Among them was Cult of the Lamb – a cozy yet deeply creepy game that surprised with its highly engaging gaming experience.
The relatively simple concept – a sort of combination of The Binding of Isaac and Don’t Starve – is masterfully executed by developer Massive Monster. Players embark on heroic journeys in randomly generated environments, crushing enemies, gathering resources and saving each other’s cuddly animals. However, all the work is done for a god with dubious motives, and both resources and new companions are fed into the religious sect you are tasked with building up.
Not only is the story fun to get through. Cult of the Lamb also boasts a number of entertaining side activities to puzzle with, which keep the game alive long after you reach the scrolling text.
Best Sound Design:
God of War Ragnarök
Available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Like the music, the sound design in God of War Ragnarök is simply fantastic. Santa Monica Studio has done an impressive piece of work, and all of the effects in the game sound fabulous. The sound of Kratos’ ax as he throws and calls it back is dopamine straight into the ear canal, but there is so much more.
The sounds from all the different monsters, how the blows hit in battle, and how different abilities sound are so complete and solid. And all the effects you don’t think about that are just that. The sound of feet hitting different surfaces, how different armor creaks and rattles, sounds in the surroundings around you at all times.
And the icing on the cake is voice acting of the very highest class, with the carrying, dark voice of Christopher Judge who simply “is” Kratos.
Bubblers:
Metal: Hellsinger
Available on Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Metal: Hellsinger’s position here on the list is about two things: that the game both manages to deliver a powerful soundtrack, and fuses this soundtrack seamlessly with the gameplay itself.
In what most of all reminds of a mixture of Doom and Guitar Hero, you have to shoot the enemies in time to the tempo of the fierce metal songs that build up each of the boards. That doesn’t just apply to shooting, but even reloading your shotgun or pistol, or dashing into the air with your demon wings. If you hit the shot, you’ll do significantly more damage, keep a chain bonus, and build up your special attacks faster. Not least, the music is built up with more and more layers, right up until the vocalist enters.
When everything clicks, you enter a kind of trance where you nod your head in time with the shooting, and while the demons swarm around you, you feel a wonderful rush. Surrounded by well-produced metal music, shooting that fits in well, and gruesome demons that gurgle as you tear them apart, Metal: Hellsinger is among the great adrenaline rush games of the year.
Gran Turismo 7
Available on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4.
It’s hard not to praise the Gran Turismo series for the games’ extensive level of detail. The developers at Polyphony Digital go to great lengths to recreate cars as closely as possible in the games, and this results in the sound, among other things.
In Gran Turismo 7, the developers have fixed three-dimensional sound that offers a delicious engine roar, and sounds that respond to how close you are to other drivers, crowds and everything else. To achieve this, Polyphony has created an impressive sound system, which we saw visualized in a presentation where each car has a circle around it, where the sound reacts to all the different sound sources.
Gran Turismo 7 ended up being a critical favorite here at Gamer.no, and the sound should have a large part of the credit for that.
Best visual experience:
Fire Ring
Available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One
and Xbox Series X/S.
Elden Ring is a masterpiece in almost everything it does. And one of the things From Software most impresses with in one of the best games of the year is the visual design of the game. The open world you explore is full of dangers ranging from the beautiful to the grotesque. There are beautiful meadows and dark caves, massive buildings and little nooks and crannies. It’s massive and big, it’s varied and simply an incredibly impressive and well-crafted world.
Then also include the aunt design of From Software, who have turned it up another notch in Elden Ring compared to previous games. There are monsters you can’t even imagine, and it’s a delicious, horror-mixed joy every time you meet new enemies, and especially the many boss fights in the game.
Bubblers:
Penitentiary
Available on Windows, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.
The story in Pentiment may be the big star, but the game’s visual expression contributed greatly to making the experience truly unique. Here, Obsidian – the studio behind games such as Fallout: New Vegas and The Outer Worlds – has replaced magnificent 3D environments with a world inspired by so-called illuminated manuscripts. The result is a beautiful wall painting that you can really immerse yourself in on your way through the adventure of Andreas Maler.
Every bit of Pentiment’s appearance bears the stamp of game director Josh Sawyer’s penchant for history. Everything from the clothes worn by the game’s characters to houses and monasteries bring the 16th century setting to life, while lovely panoramic landscapes adorn the background and add the finishing touches to one of the most beautiful games of the year.
God of War Ragnarök
Available for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Santa Monica Studios has done it again! After the grand presentation of Kratos’ foray into Norse mythology in 2018, they’ve gone even further in God of War Ragnarök. This is simply a beautiful universe, with a visual variety that rocks.
Icy caves in Niflheim are replaced by hot and painful lava in Muspelheim, and so on. Each of the nine realms Kratos and Atreus visit is a visual delight, and the transition between all nine realms is seamless. Here we step in and out of visually impressive dreams, to adventurous continents in what is among PlayStation’s most graphically impressive games this year.
When the biggest moments in Ragnarök hit, it’s hard not to get carried away and immerse yourself in the massive adventure. And that’s why God of War Ragnarök is among the best visual experiences of 2022.
That’s it for part 2! In the next article, you will see which games we have voted in the categories Best Music, Best Story and Best Original Idea.
