Nate’s Games of the Year, 2022

Nathan Schmidt, Contributing Editor

On the front endpaper of his first journal in 1837, Henry Thoreau labeled his little project that his buddy Ralph encouraged him to take up: “Gleanings of What Time Has not Reaped of My Journal.” It’s a sort of backwards phrase, isn’t it? Because you would think that time is the thing you need in order to make the journal—as anyone who has ever tried to take up journaling and come to the inevitable conclusion that they will never make enough time to do it will tell you. How does time “reap” the journal? Well, maybe the journal isn’t necessarily in the words that are written down, but in the life that gets lived between the pages. In that sense, “what time has not reaped” suggests that the pages of the journal simply encompass what he had time to write down while the miasma of life was swirling around him. Time has robbed him of all the stuff he’s done and thought but forgotten about, the stuff that didn’t make it in—the writing only covers things remembered, but the whole journal, the real journal, also includes all the stuff that didn’t get preserved (and, of course, the friends we made along the way).

I’d like to offer you what time has not reaped of my gaming this year. Much like a would-be journaler, I did not make as much time for play and delight as I wanted to. When I did make time to play, it was mostly late at night, ripped from the morass of exhaustion that encumbered my days. Also, I spent like a hundred and fifty hours on Elden Ring, which made it hard to play other stuff. This year, I celebrate these games, not just for the joy they brought me, but for everything that happened around them.

Elden Ring

Could I, and the end of the year two thousand and twenty two, have the audacity to attempt a fresh take on Elden Ring? I don’t know. Maybe? Somebody has probably said this already, and I know that FromSoft aficionados have felt it all along: Elden Ring is comforting. I’ve spent so much time with the Souls games and Bloodborne that playing Elden Ring just felt…good. Like your favorite restaurant just announced that they’ve kept all the menu items that you know and love, but it’s a buffet now. I remain in slackjawed awe at the team of developers who put together this beautiful game, but now that I’ve finished it, I think the thing I loved most about Elden Ring was its familiarity. It greeted me like an old friend—an old friend that can’t wait for the next opportunity to push me off a cliff, into the maw of a terrible landbound octopus.

Tunic

Zelda and Soulslikes and difficult puzzles,
Challenging bossfights that test my hand muscles,
Charming aesthetics, a soundtrack that sings,
These are a few of my favorite thiiiiiiings….about Tunic. I do not judge anybody who got annoyed by how obtuse this game can be—I certainly got annoyed a few times with how obtuse this game can be—but my two favorite franchises had a sweet fox child, and I couldn’t be happier for them. Sure, by now some highly dedicated people have translated the game’s language, and you can pretty much choose how much or how little mystery you want to deal with. I still think, however, that there’s something so charming about choosing to plunge yourself back into the days when getting stuck in Link to the Past meant asking your friends for help or calling a hotline. In Tunic, that charm isn’t nostalgia; it’s an old gaming experience reimagined and made new.
 

Wordle

Yeah, I’m still playing Wordle, okay? So maybe the viral sensation isn’t so viral anymore—who would have thought that internet fame is fleeting? But if I’m to believe the little WordleBot that gives me the statistical breakdown of my Wordle attempt every day, there are still, like, hundreds of thousands of people playing it every day. And I’m one of them. (Except for the strike day, of course.) Why am I still playing Wordle? Mostly because I’m finally getting good at it. It’s all about the play of language and probability, maybe the closest we’ve gotten to seeing language truly stripped of meaning since Wittgenstein said “bububu.” Reduced to a set of probable outcomes, the only meaningful thing about the language of Wordle…is winning.

Late to the party: Blasphemous

Ah, a Soulslike Metroidvania inspired by religious trauma, you say? Sounds like it has my name written all over it. Blasphemous is one of those games that everybody told me I would love, and I just got around to it now, because it is hard to make time for things that you love. Even though Blasphemous has the potential to, on a narrative level, be a sad slog through the slough of despond, it just made me feel like a badass the whole time. Maybe I wasn’t as penitent as I should have been, because clearing each difficult area just made me feel triumphant and cool. Also, I don’t necessarily go back for my souls that often in actual Dark Souls games, but you can bet that I always found my way back to my death site in Blasphemous. I can’t live without that special move juice!

Really late to the party: Anodyne

I wanted to play Anodyne after we did our Zelda-themed podcast episode, so of course I got around to it in November. I found it to be such a delightful surprise, one of those games that made me look forward to getting my work done for the day so I could play it. The game definitely holds its narrative cards quite close to its chest as it moves you through its dreamscape of mysteriously themed dungeons and opaque NPCs, but once I gave myself permission to flow with it and accept the experience I was being offered, I learned to love making up my own stories about what was going on. You’re never quite sure whether or not you’re actually playing the hero in Anodyne, or if you’re just along for somebody else’s ride, but you always feel like you’re headed somewhere. Sometimes, that’s all you need.