2022 has not wasted any time.

Whether because of shifting release calendars, less reliance on the retail sphere, or delays from the COVID-19 pandemic, the early months of 2022 have become a perfect storm of video game release mayhem. We’ve wandered The Lands Between. We’ve deciphered secret languages. We’ve explored 31st-century America. And although we’re out of the thick of the hectic release schedule, we’re still coming across the occasional hidden gem or two, and returning to the games that were too huge to finish the first time around. So, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to help you separate the wheat from the chaff — to recommend our favorite games from the slew of ambitious titles that release as the months go by. We’ll be updating this page throughout the year, with the most recent releases toward the top, so you can stay up to date with all of the excitement (or at least, as up to date as possible).

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TINY TINA’S WONDERLANDS

With Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, it feels as if Borderlands’ developers are finally comfortable letting go, and the results speak for themselves. Wonderlands is a joyful romp through tabletop-RPG-inspired worlds, with seemingly minor tweaks that create huge ripples in the series’ “Diablo meets guns” formula. You can combine two disparate character classes, traverse a board-game style overworld, and pour dozens of hours into the phenomenal “Chaos Chamber” endgame. Through it all, Gearbox is willing to acknowledge that we’re not here for a script, or even a coherent narrative, and it leans into that sentiment with an appropriately scattershot story — it doesn’t take itself so seriously that it sacrifices unpredictability, joy, or the satisfaction of mesmerizing, well earned loot. —Mike Mahardy

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NORCO

Norco stands out for a lot of reasons: It’s a beautiful, honest portrayal of southern Louisiana, an inventive and dystopian science-fiction story, and a sharp criticism of the oil industry’s blight. Created by Geography of Robots, Norco is an interpretation of Norco, Louisiana — the real town whose name stands for the New Orleans Refining Company, home to Shell’s manufacturing complex. As a point-and-click adventure, Norco unravels slowly as the main character, Kay, returns to her childhood home following her mother’s death. It’s all at once a magical realism story with mystery elements, yet still firmly rooted in a sense of reality — not an easy blend of genres to balance. The writing and simple environmental puzzles, together with a unique mind-map mechanic that acts as a character list and mental notebook, lend to a fast-paced story that still leaves room to stop and take in all of the poignant weirdness. —Nicole Carpenter

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TUNIC

Some games thrive on meaningful obfuscation. Tunic is one of them. There are echoes of Myst, The Witness, and the original Legend of Zelda in developer Andrew Shouldice’s action-adventure outing. It has also drawn myriad comparison to 2012’s Fez, a game which also deployed its own unique written language to confuse, entice, and ultimately steer players toward its larges overarching secrets. Its combat can become cloying — especially during later boss fights — and its level design doesn’t always allow for the most leisurely backtracking. But its willingness to trust the player’s intelligence, patience, and most of all, thirst for discovery make it a masterful adventure in its own right. —Mike Mahardy

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ELDEN RING

Numerous games have tried to emulate the explorative wonder of 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but Elden Ring is the first game to truly succeed. With a landscape that will take years to fully decipher, it is every bit the kind of game we’ve come to expect from developer From Software: mysterious, impenetrable, and ultimately rewarding. But its open-world trappings reframe much of the brutality of those games, and don’t detract from their challenges, but rather, encourage incremental progress over brute force. It’s not uncommon to get lost in a far corner of the map for a dozen hours, only to return to a previous challenge as a completely new character, with stronger powers and newfound wisdom at your disposal. This game is a marvel. —Mike Mahardy

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DESTINY 2: THE WITCH QUEEN

Destiny has been through a lot since 2014: rocky release days, a global pandemic, and a sale to PlayStation, to name a few of its many obstacles. So it’s almost a miracle that, eight years along, Destiny 2: The Witch Queen is the best thing to ever happen to the series. With a new campaign, a new location, new weapons, and new powers, it’s more Destiny, to be sure. But it’s also Destiny without the qualifiers, or the conversations that are spoken with not a small amount of yearning: “Imagine how good this would be if Bungie did X, Y or Z?” Bungie has spent the past few years building on the potential of its massive experiment, and with The Witch Queen, it’s finally paying off. —Ryan Gilliam

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TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER 3

There are ambitious games, and there are ambitious games. Total War: Warhammer 3 is the latter. Its map is bigger than those of its predecessors combined, and it launched with eight fantasy factions, each stranger and more grandiose than the last. It’s also exceedingly weird, and refuses to rest on its laurels as the strategy trilogy wraps up, instead pushing the envelope wherever it can. It transports players to ethereal Chaos Realms before warping them back to their homelands to battle diseased goliaths and shapeshifting demon lords. It is as far from a safe third installment as we’ve seen since Hitman 3. And if the DLC road map for Total War: Warhammer 2 was any indication, the next few years will get even weirder. —Mike Mahardy

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HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST

The sequel to 2017’s excellent post-apocalyptic Horizon Zero Dawn is already one of the year’s best. Horizon Forbidden West takes so much of what made the first game great, and gives players more to work with: more settlements, weapons, and traversal options. It starts a bit slow, and can take a while to introduce some of its more creative gadgets — but it gets better and better as you unlock more tools for your arsenal. By the end, Aloy can glide off mountains, swim the deepest seas, and explore American landmarks along the west coast. This game’s gorgeous open world feels like a gift, and it’s easy to sink hours into exploring every gorgeous corner. Meanwhile, the character writing and world-building convey a civilization well worth saving. —Nicole Clark

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DYING LIGHT 2

The immersive payoff in Dying Light 2 Stay Human requires a rather stiff time investment. The plodding story pacing isn’t helped by some of the reversals and outright nullifications that can happen later, either. But the game’s first-person parkour and combat gameplay are stand-up delights. However much time you choose to spend in the vast, locked-down city of Villedor, you won’t be bored by any of it. And, as a role-playing game, Aiden Caldwell evolves into a fascinating and powerful character, thanks to multiple storyline branches, decisions that have irrevocable consequences, and two perk trees that make his athletic capabilities even more exciting to see, let alone do for yourself. —Owen S. Good

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POKÉMON LEGENDS: ARCEUS

To say that Pokémond Legends: Arceus was a long time coming would be an understatement. In fact, I’ve fully embraced the Dunkey joke that this is actually the second Pokémon game ever made. It gracefully streamlines so many of the series’ tedious aspects (the mere act of catching Pokémon in real time is now satisfying as hell) that it’s a wonder Game Freak hasn’t tried this before. It’s also the first game in which I actually care about filling out the Pokédex, complete with each creature’s challenges and research tasks. It feels less like a hamfisted series of turn-based battles, and more like a contemplative, sometimes terrifying adventure into the wilderness to sate my collector’s appetite. —Mike Mahardy

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