Our Games of the Year 2022 - Guilty Pleasures

As a team, we felt like 2022 was loaded with great games. There were of course plenty of big titles that dropped that garnered the majority of the 'Best Game' conversations; but what about those titles that simply tickled our fancies? Which games did we find ourselves coming back to not because they were necessarily the best-made AAA titles, or had the most outstanding visuals or gobs of content but because... we simply enjoyed them? Here's what the team weighed in with.

Susan - Recipe for Disaster

Sometimes a game becomes a guilty pleasure for reasons that we cannot explain. This year, that game is Recipe for Disaster which is a restaurant simulation game. You get to design a restaurant, craft a menu, and hire staff to run the place. Originally, I played the game in Early Access where it had some strange quirks that eventually were improved upon for the full release. I found myself playing in the restaurant simulator more and more. In fact, I almost had a massive disaster because the kitchen caught on fire, the bathroom toilets clogged, and my staff freaked out. To save the situation, I gave them all raises and closed the restaurant early once I dealt with the issues. Miraculously, I saved the whole playthrough by reacting that quickly. Needless to say, it has become one of my guilty pleasures for 2022.

Pierre-Yves - Dying Light 2 Stay Human

On a whim, Izzy and I played Dying Light together. Not knowing if it would be either of our thing, it was all we did for a few weeks straight if I wasn't reviewing anything else. The best part? We played Dying Light just in time for Dying Light 2.

Once again diving into this zombie apocalypse based world, there were now new twists, turns and tools to help you survive. It took a lot to put this down for other titles that I needed to cover. Unlike Elden Ring that I was able to put away after the platinum, with new content continuing to be released, there's nothing stopping Dying Light 2 from continuing to be a Guilty Pleasure to sit down to.

Richard - 7 Pirates H

Shut up, it's fun. Yeah, the "physics" may be...unique and the stages a little small, but it was surprisingly fun and the soundtrack was good...Don't judge me.

Nick - Capcom Fighting Collection

This is a spot that seems to usually go to the NBA 2K series, but I wanted to go in a different direction this year. And while NBA 2K23 is probably still the game I’ve put the most hours into since it released, Capcom Fighting Collection was yet another trip down memory lane for me that I found myself coming back to time and again. Some of these titles were new to me, but most of them were favorites from years (decades) past. Maybe it’s the holidays, but my sentimentality for games of old definitely hit different this year for me.