2022 Recap, top 5 played and 2023 plans!

1\ The Recap.

I think 2022 was a good year for me. I got a better idea in what industry I want to work in, I finally upgraded my 10 year old PC and monitor, and I got to play some dope games.

However as year after year I didn’t put a big dent in my backlog. I don’t need to count to know I added more games than I beat this year. But you know what? I don’t really care anymore about that. BLAEO nowadays serves as a sort of personal journal of what I played and thought about games, and to read what other people played. Plus the lists are a great feature of this site.

2\ TOP 5 of 2022.

This year I played mostly indie games, but only three made it to top 5. Here they are:

I had plans to write big review for this and was around 1/3 done, but never finished it and never will. The first Witcher demands some patience and effort to make it run smoothly on modern hardware, especially if you have an AMD CPU. I never got it to run perfectly smooth, but it was playable.
The Witcher 1 was a really impressive game, with great and varied characters, immersive world and interesting choices throughout the story. I was especially surprised how the conflict between Scoia’tael and Order of the Flaming Rose was handled. I’m very excited to try W2 this year and eventually W3. I feel like this could’ve been the best game I played this year if not for technical problems, jank in some areas and so-so combat system.

Fun and fast-paced rogue-like with lots of weapon options. I’m getting close to 100 hour playtime and so far I’m not bored with it. My full thoughts on the game.

Second game from “FTL: Faster Than Light” creators and another excellent game. Turn based strategy game with a lot of different mechs teams to choose from. Like FTL, it got free “Advanced Edition” update which added a lot of new content. Fun, and once you get the hand of the gameplay, it’s that type of game you can play while listening to podcast in the background. My full thoughts on the game.

If there’s a year where I play an Arkane game, it seems to always make it to my top 5 at the end! At this point I’m impressed how consistent Arkane games are in terms of quality. Excellent world design, story, great characters, a bit repeatable combat though! My full thoughts on the game.

FURI is all about bosses. Nine unique bosses, each offering a challenge, with amazing electronic OST blasting as you fight them. FURI has some really cool aesthetics too inspired by anime. I still listen to its OST and sometimes have an itch to play it again. This game deserves to be more popular than it is! My full thoughts on the game.

3\ Plans for 2023.

Last year I made a list and I managed to beat some games of it. This year I made another list and as you can see some games that I wanted to try in 2022 were moved to 2023.

DOOM’s and Wolfenstein’s are staying because I want to see how these series started and evolved (I beated Wolf 3D and RtCW in 2021).

Witcher 2 is a must play for me this year because I really want to see the continuation from fantastic Witcher 1.

I bought Days Gone and Outer Wilds this winter sale and they seem really good.

I beated Kingdoms: Classic, first Zwei game and for the first time on steam, Assassin’s Creed so I picked their respective sequels. I also beated Costume Quest 1 in 2019 and it’s time to tackle the sequel.

Arkane games have been really good so far. So for this year I intend to beat their first game ever – Arx Fatalis – and their latest game – Deathloop. I’m especially interested in Deathloop because this is first Arkane game where Raphaël Colantonio was not present on development and he was one of the main brains behind Arkane games. Maybe I will find time for their other less known game, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, but it’s not a priority for me this year.

Gemini Rue and Satisfactory are both gifts from a good steam friend so I should probably check them out asap!

I want to continue with Halo MCC. I’m hoping to beat this year Halo 2 & 3 + ODST expansion, which is half of collection.

Quantum Break is another Remedy game and I want to play it first before I even attempt their latest game Control.

Helltakers because I need that one 10 minute game I can finish to get that -1 to my backlog :D

The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe is here because I loved the first game and this one comes it’s own “Go outside” achievement… but this time it’s 10 years, not 5! The sooner I start it, the better :D

As for other games, various reasons but I won’t go into them as this post is too long already.

Hope you all have great 2023 and see ya soon in next post ;)